The Other Side of the Ocean

I walk over to Pasticceria Natalina on Clark. I love that place. It’s authentic-young. She takes her talents from her Sicilian grandmothers, he brings them from his family bakery in Lebanon. And they create magic.





I wait in line. They’re baking like mad.

When we run out of stuff, we’ll close for the day. For the week actually.
Taking time to welcome the New Year with your family?
Family? Oh no. Not them. Christmas is for family. New Year’s is for fun!

I just want four Sfogliatelle, with ricotta and candied orange peel (right next to the stars below) and a bag of cookies con limone, but I’m enjoying watching others buy boxes and boxes of lovely creations.





Sweeten this day a little! It’s the end of a year and we’re all here and ticking. Celebrate! And hope for an even better 2008. I’m wishing all my readers a tasty ending and a delicious beginning.

To you, straight from my favorite Sicilian bakery on this side of the ocean:

I started out early. On the El, taking it south, beyond the Art Institute. And from there, I turned around and walked back. Miles and miles of Chicago streets, until I was too spent to walk any more.

Here is a handful of photos, chronologically, from the walk, for Ocean:


































































Good night.

In the late evening, I take a walk up and down Clark Street. I tell myself exercise will be good for me after the stormy ride into town.

But it’s Chicago the way I remember it from my student days: biting cold. Sometimes I think big cities feel cold even when it’s hardly freezing outside. Chicago, New York, Warsaw – I lived in these before I came up to Wisconsin. And they all felt dismally cold from November onwards.

Inside a Starbucks, a guy sits and draws cartoons. You do cartoons? – a friendly type asks him. He ignores her. She shrugs and leaves.





I pass a place called the Cheetah Gym. I go inside to poke around. Week passes? Sure, we have week passes. Wonderful. I’m yours. Hand me a towel and tomorrow I’ll start pushing weights.

Late at night, I eat a wonderful meal at Brioso to celebrate my gym days ahead. The city is kind, the city is bright…





…and most importantly, there’s a parking spot right in front of the place on Foster Avenue, where I’m staying.

Saturday morning. My family is pushing for an early wake up. So that we can get breakfast at Pauline’s. You’ll like it, you’ll see.





I do like it. It’s a diner, a little kitschy, but very true to the neighborhood corner, where there’s been a place dispensing food for many many decades. And, the old guy who owns it now is determined to pick up dated stuff (how retro!) to fill the interior. More importantly, he is bent on serving fresh foods: Michigan eggs, no more than five days old! Potatoes, peeled and panfried fresh each morning. And so on.





My kind of place indeed. The waitress is happy to chat, I’m happy to listen.





And the blueberry pancakes on green plastic plates are outstanding.





We walk back to Foster and I look. And I look again. No car. Stolen? Really? Towed? But why? I checked the signs: no parking M – F, daytime, or when there are two or more inches of snow. Last night, there may have been a quarter of an inch here, probably less.

I call the city.
The old Toyota? It’s here, impounded.
Where’s “here”?
North Sacramento.
Where is that?
By Chicago Avenue. Look at a map.
How much to get it back?
Bring $160 and a license.
In cash?
I said $160. I don’t care how you carry it.

Oh. One of those. Hates her job. Who can blame her.

I get myself to North Sacramento and the City Pound. No fancy building here: I make my way to two trailers, filled with angry people on both sides of a dirty counter.

I want to appeal, but the appeal information person is out to lunch. At 11. Wont be back for a while. Besides, all he’ll do is give me a date two weeks from now when I can get my fat ass over to the courthouse (she didn’t say it, but she wanted to).

We go around this several times, getting nowhere. It’s not her fault. It’s none of these people’s fault. The sign saying “no parking at night on Foster in the winter at all,” or words to that effect was far from the signs that gave me permission to leave my car there. These people didn’t put up the signs. They merely impound cars.

I sigh, pick up the appeal info, pay up and go to claim the car. I can’t resist a photo: there is the Sears tower, in the distance, far from this desolate lot with a hundred cars plucked out of the streets of Chicago.

No photos! – a burly guy shouts at me.
Says who? I shout back. I lived in Poland with hostile service people all my growing years, I stopped being pushed around by them when I was thirteen.
No photos! Put that camera away!
It’s a public place! I can take a photo. Leave me alone.
You want your car, right?

Oh, he’s one of the many many men here who actually are in control of the old little Toyota. I put away my camera.

Get in the white van. They’ll take you to it.

Three burly men ride along with me. The city of Chicago keeps burly men employed. I suppose that’s a good thing. Better here in the dirty white van than on the streets of the city.

I told her, no photos. Make sure she gets it.

Hey, it’s my car, I can take photos.
They laugh. Sure you can!

I get in my blue car, slam the door. There’s not much to photograph here anyway, in the far corner of the lot. Just the jail number on the window. The car, in shame, dumped in this desolate place with high fences and a remote gate.





I drive it out. The guard is all warm and fuzzy now. You watch the parking signs now, hear? He grins. I glare. And I note the ticket pasted on the windshield. Another $100 owed for a winter parking violation. Two appeals before me, both most likely futile. City life is like that.

It’s time for me to put my energy into something other than getting angry at poorly positioned Chicago parking signs. I walk along Clark Street enjoying the spirit of the place.









And I make my way to the Cheetah Gym where I spend a good hour and a half exercising next to very fit guys in spiffy gear (having myself borrowed too-large tennies and boxer shorts for the occasion – who knew I would join a gym for the week).

City life. I like it so much except when things go wrong. Not the deep country, nor urban places are gentle on the person in trouble. You want hassle-free? Move to Madison. A commercial for my town: parking bullies getting to you? Come home to Madison, where we tow your car around the corner and parking tickets are cheap.

They said it would storm. It did.

By the time we reached the Interstate, cars were slowing down to a crawl. Those who insisted on holding their own were punished mercilessly. Nothing major, mind you. No roll overs, no screaming ambulances (thankfully). Just many vehicles whiling away the hours in the ditch.

And still, the snow continued.





It was an intense ride. Terrifying, beautiful, chock full of music, sometimes almost at a standstill, sometimes careening with the speed of the rest, not believing that there’s anything safe in numbers, no not at all. And yet.





All the way down to the south of the Wisconsin border, we bullied our way through the storm. The world was white and just a little dark. No color, there was no color.





But who cares. There was color in the absence of color. There was beauty in the ice and cold tones. Bold statements. Defiant riders. Fantastic mix of bravado and subjugation.









And for the person who cannot live without drama, there was the occasional Ace truck splashing red onto this white and gray landscape.





[photo credits: Ca, from the back seat]

Tree comes down. The condo is a mess of needles and old cardboard boxes. Outside, I see branches gently touched by snow.





A friend writes from Warsaw: no snow this year for Christmas. I want to say – tides do turn! We’re getting close to a record amount.

Tomorrow’s forecast: winter storm. I’m to drive to Chicago. It may be slow going.

But the days, they're moving fast now. It’s like when you flip the hourglass – the last grains plummet.

Goodbye decorations. How will the world be when I unwrap the toilet paper next year to take each one out?

I drive down to pick up a daughter on State Street. Goodbye State Street snowflakes.





The street is nearly empty. A bike leans against a snow mound. A bus – one of mine, the one I take from work, spins past me. Empty.

The boxes of ornaments are stacked in my storage room. End of holiday season.

I call down to Muramoto for sushi.

The day after. Empty campus. Cold office. No good mail, piles of paper, exams to read. I walk over to the College Library to pick up some books. I linger over the new collection. I'm leafing through a volume titled “All the Money in the World.” I’m on the chapter about whether money brings happiness.

Not surprisingly, most rich people think it does not. Most rich people, I think, don’t remember what it’s like to be not rich, in the same way that I do not really remember what it’s like to live in a poor country: I only recall I felt like Nina then and feel like Nina now. Troubled by everything and nothing. Is it that you only notice deprivation when others count on you for a better life?


Outside, I note that Lake Mendota is getting that sheen of ice cover. Not thick yet, not rippled, not covered with snow. Dangerously new, not solid. Kind of like a fresh relationship – the one you shouldn’t feel too comfortable with. Time hasn’t thickened the skin yet. Everything is new. Everything is shiny. Everything is fragile.





I drive to the other lake, the one with the bay at the side, The one favored by the ice fishers. And they are there. Doug-in, safe, on ice-covered snow.




It's good to be able to count on that sheet of ice growing solid. It doesn't cost much to hang out its surface and hope for a fish to make its way into the bucket. You're alone. You let someone else fix supper and welcome you at the end of the day.

The world is different depending on where you throw your stool.

The Eve is like the very end of a mad race. I'm almost there! Almost, but not quite. Hurry up, get it done, do it right, it's a big one, do it well, watch your step, it matters!

But the Day (Christmas Day) forgives it all. It’s too late to feel the burden of wanting to be a better human being. You've arrived, you're settling in at the theater. You can't change a thing. Turn on the lights, throw on the bacon, wake the kids (not kids anymore, but oh well, they're sleeping nonetheless) and let it all roll forward.

A snowflake on spice cake. It doesn’t make an appearance every year. Sometimes we just don’t have time. This year, a daughter did the cut-out and there it was.






I used to love Christmas Eve to pieces, but with time, I’ve switched. It’s the Day that holds the greatest bounty. When did the change happen? When I realized that watching my girls do a puzzle together is possibly the most beautiful sight in the world? (I’m watching them now.)


In the early afternoon, I go to the sheepshed to touch base with the person who has never thought much about holidays. The approach is always lovely...





...and more often than not, you can watch wild things (gobble gobble) move in and out of the forest.






We take a walk up the Nature Conservancy path just up the road and round the bend. The drifts of snow are deep enough to wet my pants and send icy coldness into my boots.




No matter. The sun is out and everything feels fresh. A dog runs to us across a frozen sheet of snow. Tail wagging, tongue out, a moving picture of exuberant joy. It’s a great stretch of land, isn’t it? -- her owner reflects.




The evening is food based. Cornish hens, causing the smoke detector to shriek, Yule log, requiring a loosening of the pants.





The sun has set on a beautiful sky of pumpkin clouds. The stars come out in twos, threes, then dozens, as we walk down to see a late show. I sip an espresso and listen to the clever dialogue of people way younger than you or I ("Juno"). And that's a good thing, because I want to believe that the younger generation will be more clever and witty and wise than any of us is, or was ever destined to be.

We laugh hard, and some of us sniffle now and then and on the walk back to the condo, we proclaim it to be a fine Christmas.

Goodnight sweet, forgiving Day. You're the best.

Look away from the crowds, keep your purse shut tight, walk past all stores that advertise long shopping hours, smile your way down the grocery aisles. Be merry.

No photos for you tonight. Oh, okay, of the tree. In its wonderful simplicity and splendor.





One more. Of Christmas Eve, from my rooftop.

Between 2 and 3 at night (I listened), there was a shift. The warm(ish) misty air gave way to freezing rain, then snow, then winds, then plummeting temps. It all happened within a minute. Maybe two.

I could tell this morning: a storm came, racked havoc, moved on.

Looking out, I could see it all: the ice, the snow, the wind, the passage of time. Fury diffused.

In my pajamas still, I drove toward the lake.

Does a chill in the air always follow a storm?








At dusk, I drove out into the country. The storm, never satisfied with just one hit, came back with a sweeping fury of snow and wind. I would mind none of this if only I could be assured that storms are a passing thing. That they aren’t the norm.

In the meantime, I battle them. I cultivate indifference and pretend that tomorrow, I’ll hardly notice. My personality will be transformed. Happiness will come from within, not from some freak meteorological condition out there, in the brooding skies of December.

Isn’t it true that most people view themselves as being quite independent, carving their own path, listening to some internal voice rather than conforming to the (petty) demands of others?

It seems that the time you most like to do your own thing is when what is expected is too annoying, too displeasing, uncomfortable, grating.


If you place two individuals in the same room and both view themselves as being extraordinarily independent, what happens? Maybe you’ll have formed your perfect partnership -- something like the movie version of Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, or, digging deeper, maybe Virginia and Leonard Woolf?

Off the screen and out of the manuscript, all I see is conflict. Individualism presupposes a certain degree of stubbornness, no? And if no one bends, then, unless you’re both on the same planet with your individualism (and it can happen, but how likely is that?), you’re going to be running past each other all the time.

Anyway, this season makes me think that individualism is way overrated.

Typically I write the post to fit the photo. Today, they’re independent of each other. I guess.



(at the café: brother and sister; he's killing targets on his Apple; she's dreaming)

The day is hidden. Out of reach. Unrecoverable.

Layered in heavy, wet fog.

I bake, I move from one corner of the room to another, I listen.

In the late afternoon, I drive out to the sheepshed. How to photograph fog? Each of us will “see” it differently. To me, it is best recognized in the infinite nothingness of a white field, blending into the equally white air around it.

In the center of all that emptiness, I can see a tree and a half. Because half of it seems to have collapsed.

So, a tree and a half, in fog, for Ocean.






Oh, and a partridge in a pear tree. Make it a robin in a peach tree. Same diff.

Field notes

Two animals, crossing a field. Seemingly not aligned in any formal way. But not at odds with each other either. One looks up, takes note of the other, but remains still. The other takes steps forward.





Their paths cross, then diverge. And neither is afraid. No communication there, no, not at all. Just an acknowledgement and then movement forward. Perfect, don’t you think?


City lights

It’s rare that I find myself on State Street in the winter after dark. It’s rarer that I do something so seemingly urban as “a dinner and a show.” Indeed, some years ago I turned from being a frequent concert goer to being a never concert goer. Something to do with the Madison venue and, let’s face it, age.

Tonight I did it all: I went from fields of deer and wild turkeys and farmettes with overgrown raspberry canes, to city lights and glitzy drinks and wet sidewalks that, for once looked quite beautiful on this December night.





One thing you do well if you’re an immigrant is move effortlessly between different environments. From sheepshed to State Street. No problem.

Measuring accomplishment.

Lake Mendota is slowly succumbing to ice. Look here at the progression of it:






How do you mark progress? Beauty?

In the evening we created thisyear's fantasy of glitter and light.






Warmth, color. Good things. Obviously, good things.

Wishing everything else was as obvious.

Up before dawn to finish work on an exam. Yawn. Tired. Revive with streaming sunlight. Loving every bit of sun rays in the morning. I flip through NYT pages on the web and read stories about sunlight, animals and tipping your doorman. I don’t have a doorman, but I now have a concierge. He can do a lot to help us toddle through the day. But realistically, mostly he just sits there.

A long long visit to the dentist. I sign a release: I understand that laughing gas will make me not care about anything. For three hours, I did not care about anything. I tested myself by feeding all sorts of images where normally I may have fretted and felt great anxiety and concern. Now? Didn’t care! Impressive.

After, I made my first trip of the holiday reasons to the mall. I spent all my money in one store and left.

Just outside the Law School, I encountered a whole gaggle of carrot bellied birds nibbling on crimson crabs. Finches, no?





Toward dusk, I made my way to a favorite café by the water’s edge. It’s a little out of the way for most students. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Their stress becomes your stress if you share space too long.

I drank a cappuccino which had a frothy milk layer the size of a hornet’s nest.

Outside, the snow took on dusky tones of blue; in the distance, our town shone in splendid orange hues.






A squirrel was doing her best to jiggle out some seed from the birdfeeder. You couldn’t help but applaud her audacity, even if, just a while back, you may have been rooting for the finch family.




At home, the still empty Christmas tree drank all the water in the large dish.

Some days are composed of big things, some are not.

Mine is intensifying. Though it’s really not just about the holidays. As for so many, I am swamped by demands at work and at home and none are likely to let up in the next two weeks.

It is especially gratifying to see light, any light, but in this case, morning light playing magic interludes on the world outside.

The Sunday before the Sunday before. It’s classic. The family comes tomorrow. I am scrambling to get the condo up to snuff. I scrub every surface. Ed pushes a very serviceable and efficient vacuum. I look out. Why does daylight disappear so quickly? This isn’t Estonia! Since when does dusk fold in at four?

We drive to the sheepshed so that he can get the truck shoveled free of snow. We’ll load the tree and drive it to the condo.

Except that the truck is stuck in drifts of snow and ice.

It’s no use, he tells me.

And I want to shake him: what do you mean, no use? The tree must go up, the holiday season must push forward, the family starts trickling in tomorrow. No use is not an option.

We try again. Ed pushes the truck, as I rock it back and forth. We get it past the ice and accumulated snow. (I wonder why I am wearing sensible shoes rather than warm and comfy boots. My feet are so cold!) We carry the tree and roll it into the back of the pick up.

I think this is as close as I can get to an American tableau (in my mind’s eye): a snow bank, a pick-up truck, a Christmas tree. A quarter moon, the stillness of a snow-covered field, the face of a cat staring at you from the sheepshed window.

We drive back to the condo and eat sushi.

Like I said, a classic.



the one left behind, in the field

All day long, Ed and I are lost in computer work. I have a stack of projects that would benefit from his help and we plod through these more or less successfully, with more or less good cheer.

Some have to do with Ocean (soon – I’ll say more on this soon; days maybe. Or months, who can tell…), some have a more general application. The fact is that they swallow us and they swallow the day, and it is like when you were a kid, working on something in your flannels and suddenly, you look up and see that it is getting dark and you haven’t even taken yourself out of the breakfast mindset yet.

As dusk turns to night darkness, I have mild regrets that I hadn’t even stepped out with my camera, just to take a shot of the flakes coming down all day long.

Ed’s Geo ’93 is not meant for winter weather and so I drive him to his sheepshed in the sturdier, equally old Corolla. At the farmette, he makes his way to the shed. I hang back and look around. I see a herd of deer in the distance, but I know that they will outrun me. The slightest crunch of snow will send them flying into the woods.

I walk slowly toward the fields and watch them scamper off.

Turning around, I see the lights on at the shed. Ed is feeding his cats. I look around at the snow covered land. So still. Everything is so still. Wait, is there a shadow in the hugely overgrown raspberry patch?




I move closer. No stirring at all. It’s as if the little doe feels herself to be arrested, mesmerized by the canes, by my presence, by the little flashing camera… There. I am by her side. Snow is falling and my shutter finger is getting darn cold.





She is knee-deep in snow. Her skinny legs seem to be buckling down, stuck in the drift between the raspberry canes.





I am so very close now. She heaves her body against the canes and moves a dozen feet away. I brake down canes and follow. She waits, watching. My camera is not my friend. I try settings. It takes time. I am fighting the blackness of the night and I know she will soon lose patience with me. Besides, my fingers are absolutely frozen. Still, I try again.





Too many canes in front of her beautiful frame. Let me gently push them aside. I can touch her now, but I do not. I wont take advantage of her generosity. I wont hug her, run my fingers down her snow-dusted back, touch the space between her eyes and nose . Just one last photo and I’ll be gone. Really.





My camera battery is low, my finger is completely numb. She looks around one last time and makes her way through the bushes, out into the open space. I follow, just to watch and she waits for me to catch up. But the minute I am out in the clearing, she saunters off. This is her space now. Her freedom. I have had my minutes in the midst of the canes. She is done with me. Off she goes, in search of the pack.

Ahhh, birches! Estonia, right? No, I’m back in Madison (you can tell by the snow). Where the natural world is as close as the next block or so.






People say to me that I travel with a hefty load of good luck. My flights rarely get cancelled, I sit in good places on the plane, my suitcases arrive in a timely way. My response? Oh, I am not always so lucky. Describing the misadventures would be a blog in itself. But that’s a “so what” topic. Everyone has their share of bad experiences. What new things can be said about them?

With the exception of French trains (which I do love) I neither love nor hate the getting there. I much prefer the destination. Travel, to me, requires a lot of waiting and I’ve grown used to it. There is not much you can do but accept it.

Sometimes, I have a confluence of irksome details – I had it on the flight from Amsterdam to Detroit last night: the person next to me was sick and used much of my space to make herself comfortable. The child across the aisle threw up before they closed the cabin door and, as a result, the attendants dragged her and the protesting mother off the plane, denying passage (a doctor’s okay would have to be procured before she would be allowed to board a later flight). A child of another family right in front of me screamed (not cried, screamed) nonstop for two hours, until the attendant told her and the mom and grandma to please make an effort to shut her up. To which the two adults responded – we can’t help it, the video is not working, she’s bored. Ah.

I think I mind all the raucousness less than some. Of course, I would have minded very much if my copassanger threw up on me or if I caught her incurable disease, but otherwise, it all just set me thinking – about poor babies being held accountable for their unsettled tummies and lucky adults who can hide their imperfections better, about mothers’ responsibilities to their children, about crowded planes and broken audio equipment and days where you felt lucky to get a bag of peanuts to keep you entertained on a long flight. It wasn’t always as luxurious up there in the skies as people would like to tell you now.

True, at the end of the nine hour flight, I reached the point where I was enduring rather than not minding it all, but still, it was a small price to pay for a safe arrival and a return home from a wonderful trip.

And really, I would not mind getting on a plane tomorrow for an equally tedious journey if it would put me in a place that’s new and interesting, with endless hours of walking, photographing, capped by warm food and a nice place to rest.

On the other hand, it really is nice to be now in Madison, at a season when it’s splendid to be home with people you love.

Was I appearing displeased with the weather? No, after the brief showers of the first day, the weather has been easy. Until my last day here. Suddenly it was a problem: bright skies with the occasional puffy cloud, gusts of wintry air, temps, finally, seasonally appropriate for this far north. A real bummer.

I could hardly get myself going. Too daunting. Bright skies? I should be out with my camera. But it’s so cold!!

One way to get yourself moving is to set a reasonable goal, right? For instance: perhaps I should walk the perimeter of the Old Town, hugging the walls. No more, no less than that. Let’s see how vast or how small Medieval Tallinn really was.

The answer: one hour’s worth of walking, with a pause at a store or two.

Photographically speaking, you’re not going to get much from me hugging a wall. Picture after picture revealed yet another fragment of…wall. But it was a valuable exercise nonetheless. In that short expanse of time, I passed a school, a small park, graffiti, beautiful art shops, gates, and stalls of woolen goods, sold by Russian men and women who appeared somewhat bitten by the frost.

So, walk with me. And forgive the monotony of the stroll. Look beyond the crumbing stone.

I start at the gate, right by my hotel:





Then, slip in through this narrow space...





And continue. From the outside, btw, it looks like this:





Sometimes, it seems to grow out of buildings. Or, perhaps they built around it.




And look what is protected within. A school. Kids, thinking about snowmen.





Okay, some more wall. With parks, shops, all of it:










And there you have it. By 2:30 I was cold and my walk was complete. Now, I have plenty of work with me (I aspire to be good and to get things done) and my book could use a few hours (both the one to read and the one to write), but for God’s sake, it’s my last day! I’m to be out of my hotel by 5 a.m. tomorrow! Let me not fritter the last hours here!

Still, it’s so brisk...

I had contemplated doing something completely decadent, like signing up for a spa treatment in town – scrubbed with (Baltic?) salt, wrapped in algae, doesn’t that sound absolutely terrific? Sure, but my travels are decadent in their own right (so says my occasional traveling companion). It cannot be all about pleasure and indulgence.

So I set out to shop for others. There is the market of course. No one back home put in a request for a reindeer sweater (I asked; truly I did). So I went back to my favorite art stores. And chocolate shops.

Tempting?

(I took a trial bite. With tea.)








In the evening I went to eat at a place that wasn’t listed nor recommended, but it had a tempting look and name: the Embassy of Pure Food.




It was the best meal that I had in Estonia. Now mind you, you can't scream and shout at the little things, like service, or warm white wine, or warm-ish potatoes. Those are insignificant things. And maybe Estonians demand that their potatoes be served cool because they have been thus just about everywhere. But what I look for in food is a clever idea and fresh and honest ingredients prepared in a reasonably healthy way. For instance, if you serve sour cream, don’t also serve tons of butter and heavy cream, all fried, on one plate.

The Embassy of Pure Food presented a wonderful seafood appetizer and they actually knew where the scallops came from. And their salmon was yummy (with an artful cabbage chip – who would believe that you can be clever with cabbage?), and the setting -- a restored old building – couldn’t be nicer, and the cost was right down there.







So I leave Estonia with a note on how good the food was. Travel is remarkable in its unpredictability.

Well, if you can’t take the girl to the village, bring the village to her, right?

In the afternoon I set out for Estonia’s “Ethnographical” Museum (guidebook’s choice of words, not mine). In a mixed pine and deciduous forest by the sea, just outside of Tallinn. Rural houses, moved there so that you and I can get a sense of what life was like for an Estonian some years ago.





You know what makes you feel old? When you visit a museum of years gone by and you realize they are showing habits that were part of your childhood. Yes, it’s true: my grandma (with whom I lived in my early years) cooked on a wood-burning stove, drew water from the well outside and used a kerosene lamp for light, and in first grade, I learned to write dipping a pen into an inkwell. Ah well. One forgets that even in the States, ballpoint pens weren’t common in schools until the mid-sixties.






school kids, learning about their heritage

I had wanted to see the windmills of Estonia in their natural setting (on the island of Saaremaa), but the thought of driving on back roads in the night put me off. And lo, here you have the very same windmills, transported from the island to my own backyard. There, facing the tall bare trees, on the gloomy coast of a dusky, misty Baltic.











Except for two tiny school groups and a handful of others, the entire vast forested area is remarkably empty. As daylight fades, I follow the muddy road from one farmstead to another and chat to the occasional person who has the task of trying to describe the life of an Estonian family from, say, 100 years back.






In the States, when you go to places like Old World Wisconsin (another open air museum depicting life in the rural communities of maybe 150 years ago), you sort of know the shpiel: …and so they dipped string in hot wax and made candles and washed clothes on scrubbing boards, etc etc. It’s something that you want to show your kids when they’re growing up. This is your heritage! This is what took place before Madison had State Street and the Bratfest and the Farmers’ Market!

But here, I’m on new turf. It’s a less familiar world of feudal lords and Finnish influence and I listen with interest because, truthfully, there’s not much about Estonia of 100 years back that is known to me.



It’s completely dark when I finally leave. I take a taxi back to town and I stroll again through the Christmas market. This is the place where the older style has to sell itself. Few people go out to the forest to walk through the farms of a hundred years ago. Most every visitor and certainly every Estonian has made it here, to the old town square where artifacts, with roots in the very homes I visited earlier, are now presented to a worldly mix of shoppers. The woolens, the wooden forks and spoons, old patterns on mittens and socks, now sold mostly by old Russian women (the irony!). Here we are, pushing Estonian artifacts to stay afloat. So that your heritage may stay afloat.






Estonia of the young and restless wants, as Poland wants, to push forward within the European community. Onwards and upwards. To do so, stores must sell and people must buy. Judging from the crowded stores and shopping streets and Happy Xmas signs, it’s doing okay.





I find Katarina Kaik – a back lane where a generation of young artists works in guild-like settings, producing wonderfully fresh, but by my standards, expensive art work for the public.





I can’t get much out of the one or two who are still there, selling their clay works late into the evning. The price of this? You’ll find it on the bottom. Thanks. I was looking at the sign that says DON’T TOUCH! That’s for this shelf of unfinished stuff. Okay. So what time do you open tomorrow? From 11 to six. But it depends. Ah. This is the extent of our conversation.

Next door, there is a much touted by my guide book Italian restaurant, Controvento. It’s run by Estonian Italians and the cooks are from Italy, Peru and Ecuador. I need a break from traditional Estonian fare and so I claim a table in the nicely atmospheric dining room.

Ohhhhh! So this is where new Estonia eats! At the farside table, the dour couple of yesterday is replaced by an animated pair – they could not be more engaged with each other, with life!

Next to me, a striking young woman shares a table with a guy who cannot keep his hands off his mobile. Her other companion looks a little bored with life, but they are swirling wine in the glass and looking as if they have learned the routines of fine wine consumption.





Me, I'm trying to stay with the most Estonian ingredients – salmon carpaccio (it’s Norwegian so that’s close!) and Estonian beef. With a huge wonderfully green and full of veggies salad on the side.








The cost is nearly the same as yesterday’s Estonian meal. But everything about it is tastier. My palate has migrated away from the traditional foods of my childhood years. Sometimes I think wistfully about herring with onion and sour cream and dumplings that my grandmother rolled out on her huge wooden board. But truthfully, I love the utter simplicity of a good cut of meat or a fresh fish dish, touched only by lemon juice and olive oil.

I get up to leave and I catch a conversation of three English businessmen, assessing the markets here. They have invested in Estonia. But it’s a small country and it can only deliver so much. One of the men is behind some coffee empire and he talks of rumors of the coming of Starbucks. Considering the rich culture of café life here, one has to wonder about the audacity of Starbucks, but then, Paris has more than one Starbucks and however much they are scorned by the French in the press, they seem to be staying in business.

Back at the hotel I get on Skype – an Estonian invention. It’s a wired nation alright. Internet and cell phone usage is higher here than in France. People pay for parking using their cell phones. You can even vote online.

Thinking about the day, the post that I have yet to write, the photos that may help push the narrative, I’m feeling the confusion about this place. In much the same way that Poland still sometimes confuses me. In part it has to do with the fast pace of change in both countries. Depending on which decade you were born in, your life’s experiences will be hugely different. And at the same time, in some communities, like for my highlanders in southern Poland and probably in rural areas here, time stands still. For these guys, change means the addition of a phone line and maybe a television. Maybe. And in Estonia, you have an entirely separate introduction of the Russian presence, which confuses the picture even more.

Still, it’s almost time for me to leave Estonia. I’ll do a quick post at the end of Wednesday and catch a very early flight out the next day. It’s good to leave when you’re still scratching your head. You need time to digest the one little piece of the puzzle that's been handed to you. (And the food -- you need time to digest the food as well.)

Estonia’s “red white and blue” is “blue black and white.” They are powerful words here – symbols of nationhood and patriotism. I’m not sure how the Estonian flag came to have those colors. They look a little severe. Maybe it’s all that was left. Estonia, after all, was sadly late in getting its independence.

Tallinn is the capital, but they say that Tartu is the soul. The cultural center of Estonia. Tartu is in the south and it is a major university town. It’s also very small for a city that claims soul-hood (100,000). But I know all about old university cities that feel a great cultural preeminence (Krakow comes to mind) and so I am sympathetic.

I’m sitting on a bus, heading out to Tartu. Estonia is a rare European bird in that it does not have much of a rail system. It hasn’t much of a highway system either. I assume that an Estonian, placed on a German autobahn, would freak.

But the bus is nice. Of course, I get it all wrong. I can’t read the schedule properly, I sit in the wrong seat (who knew that they would assign) and, embarrassingly, on the ride back, I try to evict a nice old lady from a seat I think really is properly mine (another, wiser Estonian tells me: just sit somewhere else; seating rules must be broken if an older lady digs in her sensible black shoes; I nod and move elsewhere).

I am eager to see the countryside. If Tallinn is the capital and Tartu is the soul, I want also the heart of the country – the towns and villages that make up its core.

But I see no town or village. Two hundred kilometers of road that passes through not a single cluster of houses.

I do note the forests. Beautiful forests of birches and pines…





…and a rare farmstead. And, almost every farm has evidence of a bird that we, in Poland, and obviously here as well, regard as somewhat of a regional treasure: the stork. The graceful, wonderful, bundle-bearing creature that comes in spring and leaves at the end of summer.





And suddenly, we are in Tartu. The bus depot is to the side and I follow others toward what I hope will be the center. The streets are wet and muddy. It’s not raining, not at all, but there is undeniable slush everywhere and if you ever doubt that money spent on street cleaning is a good investment, you need only travel to Poland or Estonia in the winter and walk down streets that haven’t had this spray of luxury in a while.

Tartu is very different from Tallinn. I see it right away. Assertive. Bold. If I thought Estonians are reserved, I’ll change my mind here. Toward the center, you’ll find this monument:





The sculptor depicted himself and his one and a half year old son – to commemorate Children’s Day in the year 2004.

Or, on the main square, you’ll find this, placed here on the eve of the new millennium:





Note her short skirt, his tight embrace. The Tartu residents mocked it for being too modern for this neo-classical square, but it’s come to appear on nearly every picture symbolizing this city.

About the square. It’s supremely lovely, but you have to also love Christmas (and I do) to appreciate it now. Here, take a look:





I am, however, hungry for a walk in the country. And I know there’s a path along the river bank that heads way up, away from the town. I find it and set out. I have only a handful of hours before it gets dark. The gray skies do little to take away from the beauty of a cluster of birches, or of the grand sweep of willows. Spend a quiet moment with me on this walk:
























I get lost in thought and photos and I hardly notice the time. I’ve run into a man and his mutt and another guy fishing. No one else. And yet, Estonia feels as safe to me as Poland did in my childhood days. My sister tells me things have changed (in Poland), and yet, I continue to feel safe, in ways that I rarely do when walking alone on deserted city streets or country paths on the other side of the ocean.

I see the lights of Tartu in the distance. I turn around and head back.






In Tartu, I pause at the legendary Wilde Café. It’s a play on words. It’s Vilde, the Estonian, juxtaposed with Wilde, the Irishman. Here they are, in front of the café, engaged in banter:





It’s lovely inside. Deeply comfortable chairs, old printing presses, an adjacent bookstore. And warm tea and “grandma’s cake:” apple raspberry, with whipped cream. Okay, so they were generous with the cream:





Very late in the evening, I am back in Tallinn. I am keeping to the deeply Estonian mood of the day and so I head to Grandma’s Place – a small cellar restaurant that has been serving Estonian food to Estonians and tourists for years.





It is a warm place and the waitress, who has been part of the establishment for a long time, absolutely blows away the image of the staid Tallinnian. (If I want staid and solid, I'll look to the Estonian couple on the other side of the room. They don't smile. At all. Ever.)





My waitress is not from Tallinn, but from the south. She is all smiles and she is efficient and warm and I let her pick out the truly Estonian dishes, even as I know what I am in for, because I see most other Estonians in the room eating the same (pork and sauerkraut).



herring, onions and sour cream



pork, sauerkraut, potatoes

I am not a fan of pork because it recalls the decades where Polish restaurants (to which we were exiled on our summer trips back home before finally moving back to Warsaw in the sixties) had nothing but pork. Oh sure, there would be other menu items on lists, but if you asked for any of them, you would get the famous “nie ma” (we don’t have any of it). But I eat the pork now, with the familiar beet salad and horseradish and pickled onions (and potatoes, never forget the potatoes) and I even enjoy it in the way that you do when you know you don’t have to have it for another… several years.

I leave in the glow of a warm dinner, finished off by a baked apple and a glass of Estonian apple wine.





I hardly notice the cold dampness of the empty streets. Comfort foods make you forget the weather. For a while.

Clouds roll in, then retreat. Time to go outside, to walk, up and down well beaten Tallinn paths and to think about it all. Especially about the Russian presence here.

It’s Sunday and so I set out for a park. A big deal park here: the Kadriorg Park, along with the 18th century Kadriorg Palace—a gift from Peter the Great to his sweetie. She was to become an empress eventually, but you have to wonder if it was worth it, considering the sleeping around she had to do (not of her own choice) to rise from servant to empress. Life is about finding ways to cope.

I take the tram to its last stop. I know I must buy a ticket on the tram, but where? I walk back and forth in search of a conductor. No such person. The tram driver sits behind a glass partition. I ask one of the passengers – sorry, but where are the tickets? A finger points to the driver. I hand over 15 KR and she slips me a ticket. Next challenge: where do I “cancel” it? This is standard East Europe stuff: cancel, or risk arrest. Or huge fines. Or both.

I slip my ticket into what appears to be a cancelling machine. Nothing happens. Flip it over. Nothing. Everyone in the entire tram is staring at me. I shrug and rehearse the “I tried” defense in case a controller hops on board.

Only at the very end of the ride do I figure out that I used the wrong cancelling machine. Should’ve aimed for the other one. Who knew.




Have I mentioned that Estonian people appear to be…reserved?

The park is nearly empty. And so less significant than, Warsaw’s Lazienki! But, maybe that’s me, jostling for my own people and their contributions to posterity in this corner of Europe.





Katerina’s little nest egg is lovely though. It’s a museum now, with international art. Nice paintings. Best are the portraits of the Tsar-folk, including Katerina and her Peter.

A group of young girls is having a museum birthday party. Cool! Better than Fast Forward (Madison’s roller skating venue)! A museum person enchants them with Katerina’s treasure trove of essentials. They giggle. I giggle. They move on. I linger.





The little palace is close to the sea and so I take a stroll toward the water. There is a monument, with an inscription in Russian. I read the words, but I cannot place the commemoration. Ships? Lost hope? On the part of the Russians? Here? I ask someone nearby and he explains: it’s a monument to commemorate the loss of the Russian war vessel that traveled between here and Helsinki in 1893. Sinking ships, sinking powers of dictatorships, is that all in the past?





The Baltic waves hit the shore gently. The water looks unwelcoming. I know this is unfair. It’s the Baltic, for God’s sake, not the Mediterranean. And it’s December. And a gray December at that.





The birds jump waves, artfully, playfully. I watch. In a few days the deep freeze is coming. I’ll be gone by then. In any event, this is plenty cold for me.




On my way out, I pause at the old Coffee House (it’s part of the estate. So it’s old). I drink a good Russian style tea and eat with great pleasure a poppy seed pastry. Better than great! A flood of sweet childhood memories hits me. Of dense, sweet poppyseeds, of warm cafés, of life in this part of the world.





I head back to the Old Town. Or rather, new Tallinn in old quarters. I pass children skating in the shadows of St. Nicolas church.





And still, there is the Alexander Nevsky cathedral, looming over us all. Staring down at the city that dared defy the Russians. And now, a Santa dangles from a townhouse and children skate and the indications are that all’s well here, in Estonia. Leadership crises and political corruption notwithstanding. I should talk... I’m from Poland after all.





I want to spend the afternoon at the Museum of the Occupation. When I first heard of it, I thought, incorrectly: oh, it’s about World War II. I’ve since found out that the museum documents the Soviet occupation – from 1940 until 1991.

But I cannot find the Museum. I ask one Estonian looking couple. No, we’re not Estonian. No clue. I ask an older woman. Surely she is a local. She is that. She answers in stern Russian – ya nye ponyemayu ( I don’t understand). She walks on. I could have persevered, in Russian. I’m okay with that much of it, but I let it go.

Is it hard to be Russian in Estonia? What if you once believed in the Soviet Union? What if the ideology (if not its leadership) appealed to your sense of fairplay? My family was like that. It was a long time before they gave up and walked away from it all. I had left home by then.

The Museum is so painful! An independent nation (finally!), vowing neutrality during the war, then aligning itself with the Nazis with the hope of preserving its nationhood, then finding that not Germany nor the Red Army would support a free state. The war years and those immediately after are like a confusing nightmare where you don’t know which person will stab you first. Except we know the real outcome – Estonia becomes part of the Soviet Union. At the very beginning of the war, the Germans struck a deal with Stalin. Sort of like handing over Katerina to Peter the Great. Here, you take Estonia.

I watch news clips. Survivors, recalling this period of occupation. It’s not the Russians we despise. It’s the government!

Well yes, sure, I understand the distinction. And yet, the Russian families came to this place to find a better life in this conquered land. They didn’t come to Estonia. They came to the Soviet state of Estonia. Who can sort this stuff out now?

I look at the row of suitcases.





They once held the belongings of those who sought to escape. From the Germans, the Russians…

And in the basement, I see the old statues. Torn down from the streets of Tallinn just in the last decade. Fallen heroes of the Soviet Union.






I walk back to the old town. A trolley bus rattles past. That and the tram cars – staples of transportation in post-war Poland as well. The buildings I pass – Same design, same windows. Same street signs, too, as those back home.





I’m back at the Christmas Market now. And now I hear it everywhere. Russian. Only Russian. Yesterday, my ears were picking out Estonian. Today it’s Russian.





A Russian here must learn Estonian to gain citizenship. A vast number remains here without citizenship. Estonian citizenship brings freedom of travel abroad. But Estonian citizenship means that you need a visa to enter Russia. What if your friends and relatives live in Russia?

I head for a sauna at a nearby hotel. So uncontroversial. I sit and I count the minutes. Saunas always make me feel as if I am one step from suffocating. I walk out when I can’t take any more of it. Maybe it is why I find them so comforting. I survived. Still breathing. Yay.

But there’s one more chapter to this day. I have picked Troika, a Russian restaurant, for dinner.

A woman croons the melodic ballads of Russia. Vodka? The waitress asks. I deliberate, then pass. I’ll drink the Georgian wine from Tbilisi, I tell her. I traveled there once. With my father and mother. When that country, too, was a Soviet state.

I eat meat dumplings and Vladivostock catfish. And boiled potatoes. I ask for some veggies or a salad and I’m given a huge plate of pickles, with honey and sour cream for dipping.













Yes, I eat it all. It’s food as I remember it. The food of Eastern Europe. Some drown their worries in vodka. Me, I eat dumplings and catfish and pickles.

It really is blustery out by the sea. I’m prepared. Hearty breakfast,




…warm outerwear, an umbrella… But it’s tough going. The wind inverts my umbrella, rain pellets spray my photo lens.

I walk to the shore, to see another face of Tallinn. A factory, an old theater with a sadly neglected open space leading toward the water. A group of girls, out for a Saturday morning away from family. They don’t mind the weather. Indeed, no one here seems to mind it. It could be so much worse.










In the distance I see the ferry boats. There’s a frequent run to Helsinki and a somewhat less frequent run to Stockholm.

Run to Stockholm. How could you not choke on that one? In 1994, the huge ferry ship, the Estonia, sank off shore, on her way to Stockholm. More than 850 died. There is a memorial to this tragedy. He is lost in thought as he looks the “broken line” monument. Did he know someone? Does he remember?





I walk back toward the old town. Colorful. That's its joy -- the brightness, even on a gray, wet day.





The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral went up during a period of intense "Russification" of this country. I try the door. Closed. They say Russians come here in packs. If they do, they may be the last of the church goers. Estonia is one of the least religious contries in Europe. Fewer than a third claim any religious affiliation at all.




It's quiet in these hilly parts of old Tallinn. You can think about this city from up here. The roofs spill out to the sea on one end (yes, the ferries are in, collecting passangers for Finland and Sweden)...





...and onto new Tallinn at the other end. Recent buildings. The higher the better.





Down the hill again. I'm drawn to the commercial heart of the old town. That's where you pick up the fragments of daily life. In the rose this guy buys for his wife:





...in the animated yet very private conversation of four old Russian women, looking over the wicker baskets at the market:




...in an appetite for blood sausage and cabbage:





At the Christmas market I watch a group of children getting ready to go on a small stage.




And now, finally, I hear laughter. Parents, looking at the precious young things, adjusting a cap, pulling up a mitten, waving, taking pictures. The sweet faces of young families. Children born in Estonia. They'll hear stories of past invadors. History lessons. Its not the story of their generation.

They climb on stage and give in to the joy of music. No Russian songs -- all Estonian. With an American thrown in. Hip-hop Christmas. Watch the show for a dfew seconds through this handful of photos:





















This is the kind of stuff that makes my eyes spill over. Kids, happy kids, cared for, fussed over, but just a little. A pat on the shoulder, a chuckle and a treat of a cookie at Santa's (though for the Estonian Santa, a kid has to recite or sing something before spilling out a wish or asking for a cookie).





Families. Tourists. Hot wine and hot pea soup. Roasted chocolate covered almonds. And to really warm up, go in to the coffee shops. I do. Over my cappucino and pound cake, I watch the others. A mixture. Young and old.






Back at my hotel, the fireplace is heating me from the outside. A glass of rosé does the trick on the inside.









Leave this to search for dinner? Not a chance. I eat at the hotel: fish soup and duck meat in lingonberry (!)sauce. Hearty and very good. Only the price of it will push me out in search of other foods tomorrow.

Growing up in Poland, I considered the Baltic states as, well, Russian. Oh, sure. Once I started reading the papers, I knew that Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians would prefer to be referred to as Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians, rather than as Russians. I figured it was like the Quebecois. Small, ethnic states, having a fit over being part of a larger country.

This isn’t the place for a history lesson, but in case your knowledge of the country is a tad fuzzy, just take in this much, for the purposes of this week’s Ocean reading: Estonia is hard core Estonian. In spirit and culture and folksong, if not, in the past, in nationhood. (The Swedes controlled it. Then the Russian Tsars. Then, for the first time, in 1919 – independence. Only to be done in by both the Germans and the Russians during World War II. Handed over to Stalin after the war. Reclaiming its nationhood and independence in 1991.)

Is there a Russian presence? Considering that 30% (40% in Tallinn) of the people living here are Russian, so Russian that they can’t even pretend to speak the difficult Estonian, you might say that there is indeed Russian in the air. And there are souvenirs, left over from the Soviet era. Abandoned coastal naval stations. The ubiquitous Soviet era housing blocks for the working poor. And a tight border between the two countries. So that even if I wanted to (and I did want to), I could not, on short notice, cross over to the “other side.”

So why am I here? Because I am from a Baltic nation too. Poland is a mere spray of Baltic sea water away. You want to know your neighbors.

And I like going to places in seasons that appear inhospitable. Poland in December or January. Quebec in February. Iceland in November. Estonia in December. It fits.



My plane pushes through many layers of gray and lands in Tallinn. An airport almost the size of Madison’s. Two other airplanes in sight – Czech Airlines coming in, Polish Airlines going out. I’m in Eastern Europe alright. And in the far north of it. So much so, that if I wanted to take a hydrofoil across the Baltic, I’d be in Helsinki in less than two hours.

It’s not below freezing now, but it’s cold. Biting, wet cold. My hotel rests at the edge of the old Medieval heart of the city (the Three Sisters: there they are, three buildings standing next to each other:)






It’s just past three. Getting darker by the minute. I remember this about life in northern Europe. After three, you need a flashlight.

I’m tired after all those flights, but I am anxious to hear Estonian and to get moving. I walk up the cobbled streets, past spires and old walls, past bakeries with gingerbread and coffee houses, endless coffeehouses with people, huddling over warm drinks.

It is an utterly dazzling place. Beautiful, even in the dark.



out one corner-room window: old warehouses




















The Square has a Christmas market. Like Krakow at this time. And I see the woolens and the stalls with hot mulled wine and smoked cheese and I think – I really am close to home.







smoked cheese, sausages, rheindeer something or other




hot fire, hot wine




girls in hoods, looking at necklaces






But the language is a puzzler. I can do a handful of words – no more. English is spoken tentatively, but I dare not dig into my store of Russian words and phrases. Their bad English is better than my bad Russian. Besides, I want to stay on the good side of the language barrier.

In stores and restaurants, I am again reminded of Poland. The books refer to Estonians as reserved. In Poland, we call this expressionless face, encountered in virtually every store and place of service – dour. It takes a lot to get a north-eastern European laughing out in public. Something to do with the long winters and past poor states of the economy.

I eat dinner at a local folksy place. The Estonians are ordering big plates of grilled meats and cooked cabbage. (Exactly. Polish fare.) I settle for an appetizer of herring, boiled potatoes and pickled onion.





And pan-fried chicken, with a nice mushroom cream sauce, more potatoes and raw cabbage.





The food is well prepared and quite good. Regional seasonal to the core. I could have opted for the hams and blood sausages off the Christmas menu, but this was a transition day for me.

In the hotel, I listen to the sounds of the night. Voices of strollers, heels against the stone treets, loud against the silence of a sleeping city. I eat poppyseed cookies and sugar coated linden berries and I contemplate opening a complimentary little bottle of Liviko. But in mid-thought, I give in to sleep.

The northern skies of Europe: cloudy, with an occasional break in the layers of gray, but mostly dark still, even at 8 a.m. local time.




I wait at the Amsterdam airport, remembering it as the first international airport I ever traveled through on my own. I was returning to the States with only a few dollars in my purse. I borrowed the precious western currency from my uncle so that I could make my way to my summer job as a nanny. Being the youngest in my own small family, I knew nothing about kids. Girls don’t babysit in Poland. Grandparents do that. You live with them or they live with you. I knew plenty about grandparents.

I grew to love my charge and I returned a year later to live with her and her New York family, but every break I had, I would return to Europe, via Amsterdam, via Schiphol airport, with its endless stores of chocolates and tulip bulbs.

This time, my flight will take me beyond Poland, to a distant corner of the continent, to a country with as many issues with invaders and conquerors as Poland has. A country with a significant minority population. Of Russians. A country where the sun hardly rises at this time of the year.

Next post will be from... there.

I’m turning my back on the isthmus. Just for a week. In a move that has been my move for years now (taking off the day after the last class – to write, recover, prepare for the next set of events… and excitements; never forget the excitements), I am flying off.




Where to? Well, I could give you many great hints, but I’m ready for the “huh?” that would follow. Indeed, the NW airline agent asked as I checked in -- by the way, where is XX? I told her the country where XX is located. She persisted: where is that?

So, a hint: it’s about as far in Europe as you can go to from Madison.

I’m pausing now in Detroit, but my flight is boarding. Off I go.

Last day of class. (sniffle)





Me, bedecked in their generous impulse:






Thank you. For a sweet semester from heaven.

Outside, there is that lovely cover of snow.





So why these brief snippets? Why am I keeping it tight? With no embellishment?I came home tonight to a cold condo. Called the heat guys. Not our responsibility. Called the management – no, not us, either. Called the builder – sweet guy that he is he’ll find a solution. Eventually. For now, IT’S COLD HERE!

Float with me today and tomorrow. I am in a spin of finishing the semester and looking with complete amazement at the sweeping strokes of snow around me.

I ran an errand to Ed’s place, just at the edge of Madison. On the way, I passed this:





The day is made easier when I spot lights on a tree at the edge of a cornfield. Thank you, whoever gave me this boost after a long day of work.

Part I: the warm

Several weeks back, Ed read a NYT article on Penna olives. (Penna Olives are harvested and prepared in California. Stupendously wonderful olives. BTW, Ed loves olives.)

If I buy my favorites, we could open them all at once. You could do an olive party and so it wouldn’t be a waste. (Ed hates waste. But he loves olives and he loves the idea of eating many different types, all in one day.)

I have always wanted to go to an olive harvest (in Sicily would be fun), but they are in the wrong season for me. I can’t leave work for more than a long week-end in October or November. So I have a dormant desire to get close to the olive and no chance to let it (and myself) loose. The idea of an olive party appealed to me.

Ed ordered fourteen jars of olives. In double. (The second set is for me, I mean for us, he says. In case your party guests eat up all of the first batch.)

I invited friends whom I thought of as olive people. And I prepared a supper based on olives. (Keep it simple! – this from Ed. Ed hates a fuss.)

Everything was ready. The olives:



…and the condo. (Ed was ready too. He remembered to turn off the TV just as the first set of guests arrived.)





We ate olives and drank wines that I thought were suited for olives (red, white, rose, and rose a la methode champaignoise – meaning, everything).

And we ate cheeses from a Provencal cheese board (Provence = olives). And slurped hot roasted (in olive oil) tomato soup and downed a roasted veggie salad. With olives.








…finishing the meal off with A Ligurian cake. With raspberries and a significant amount of olive oil.





Here’s the important part: yes, you too can order Penna olives. They are fantastic! Which was the favorite (I asked people to vote)? The Olivasecca. But don’t count on my report. As someone said – this one stood out because it was unusual. The others were all brined and thus they blurred for us. A sea of olives. Mmmm. Go have an olive party. And don’t forget to include the runners up: Parmesan Romano Cheese, Stuffed. You’re welcome.



Ed and guest, talking olives


Part II: the cold

I sat in my office today and watched the students head for their last week of classes. The Mall lawns were covered with what the skies dumped on them.

I have been proud of what Madison (and, by extension, the UW) does with snow: it removes it from places where, in its slick version, it creates a hazard.

Today, I reconsidered. Look at these photos, taken in the course of a ten minute period:

























On my way to the bus stop, I paid for my photographing of the plight of others. I was a slipper and a slider. Forewarned, I caught myself each time. But barely.

I am happy that there is snow on the ground. I am unhappy that cars have a clearer path than those of us who try to live a car-free life. But, I’m determined to keep trudging. Even though it felt like one big Rockefeller Skating Rink out there. With moguls.

Sunday. The day was dedicated almost completely to a celebration of the olive.

Intrigued? Monday. I'll tell you about it Monday.

We were forewarned. It would start in the morning and continue for some twenty-four hours. The “it” was questionable: snow, yes, for sure that, but also plenty of ice pellets and freezing rain.

We all hoped for snow.

It’s impressive how many people love the idea of a good snow storm. I suppose one reason for not abandoning a northern state such as this is that it offers (though it does not always deliver) snow.

Thinking of the words, the imagery – it’s all comforting: under a blanket of snow, the hush of a snowfall, a winter wonderland.

Of course, we know that it is a gift for children and so we are happy for them. But ourselves? When was the last time a sleigh bell tingalingled past your door and brought you great joy and laughter?

Still, we want it. We think it’ll place us in front of a (hypothetical) fireplace, with marshmallows swimming in hot chocolate and a (not hypothetical) lover’s arm around our entire self. Comforted. Made better. All because of the snow.

It came, alright. Early in the morning, I went out on the roof terrace and watched the streets slowly change from gray to white.




Readers from around here know that by afternoon the gentle white stuff turned to vicious icy, slushy pellets. I know there’s a reason for this even as I do not understand it: the temps are near twenty and we can’t even get a decent snowfall.

I went to a park with a hill to see if anyone would dare take a sled out. One, maybe two, did.




It hurt to step outside and take the photo! Kids are made of different stuff.

I drove out into the country briefly. Ed needed a ride in something sturdier than his little Geo and I volunteered. We were snarky and irritable the whole ride in, which only goes to show that images of snow and fireplaces and blankets etc etc are all fine and beautiful, but reality typically follows a different (icy) path.




By evening, the view from the roof was made gentle by the appearance of city lights. But the ice pellets continued and there was no point in lingering. Besides, there is always the task of getting supper going.