tall order

Like so many who moved back and forth between small places and big New York City type places, I have had a wildly fluctuating attitude toward skyscrapers.

Think of it: I moved from a village in Poland to Warsaw, where in the 1950s the highest building was 34 stories high and it towered over the rest of the capital. Then on to Manhattan, where everything was beautifully, monstrously tall. And back to Warsaw, where I retreated from loving the tall stuff to enjoying wide avenues and quiet parks.

Along comes New York again and once more I am in love with it all – from the top of the 666’s where I have my first grown-up coctail, to Rockefeller Tower, from which I can see that other perfect pencil of a building, the Empire State. I live on the eight floor, then the eighteenth floor and it all seems cool and very very adult.

After, I’m in Chicago, where, of course, I come face to face with the newest tallest giant – the Sears tower. (Though personally, I prefer the Hancock. Something about that curve that appeals to me.) Moving to Madison to raise a family feels very anticlimactic.

But then comes September 11 and, of course, my love of tall buildings is shaken to the core. Madison, with its skyline of pea-sized structures suddenly feels gentle and soothing.

Still, while I am plowing through Wisconsin winters and pedaling along its country lanes in less harsh seasons, the city just to the south of me buffs and polishes the steel and glass structures of its downtown, throws in some splendid new ones and comes out looking quite nice, in a Chicago sort of way.





I’m here for just two nights and this time I am staying downtown. My daughters, ever savvy in the ways of the urban world, point me to the Wit (see photos above) – a wonderful hotel with the sound of birds in hallways and the El just outside, and with tall windowed walls in all rooms, looking out over the city beyond and below.










And I have to say, I am taken in by it all – as if the city, which has held for a while now sentimentally bittersweet memories, is coming back in another shape and form – the place where I can come back and watch my daughters perform their adult lives (one held a summer job here and the other is a frequent visitor, for work and family reasons).


Last night, we ate in the west of the Loop neighborhood, in a wonderful new place that is as steely glassy as the best of them (Province) and again I feel the pang of cool city life, as I stare at my terrific softshell crab and wonder why Madison’s restaurant foods have to be so repetitive (the menus in my sweet home town rarely change and hardly ever innovate).





After the early meal, we do what we have so often done in the past – go to hear the talent of Second City. A dozen years back, my daughters would be the youngest in the audience. Now, I feel like tapping them for an explanation of that line or the next one. They are suddenly the ones who are in command, tuned in to the nuance of the wit, while I trail behind, laughing with just a touch of delay.





The show ends at a decent hour and even though Chicago is the Midwest, it is the new urban Midwest, so that walking back alone at midnight seems hardly different than if it were four hours earlier. I remembered the night smell of a city, and on this warm summer walk, when the moon is as beautiful as it so often is back home, I remember how once, the city mesmerized me thoroughly and I swore I’d never move away from its squalor and magnificence.






This morning, I look out my 20th story windows and watch the sunlight do its weird city thing of moving into the narrow tunnel between tall buildings, only to disappear and show up elsewhere.





For the first time in a long long time, I like this place. I forgive it its grit and grimy past. I’m remembering that a huge part of me was fed round the clock city air. The taste for it has come back now. In small amounts, but it’s there. Like the candy bar that you go back to after a prolonged stray toward better foods.

midnight

Technically, I did not fit the post into the hours that, when piled together in a 24 unit heap, constitute Wednesday. I know that. As I made the call to walk from a late night stand-up comedy show to the downtown Chicago hotel where I'm staying, I knew I'd lose a "day" of posting. And I knew that Ocean readers are accustomed to this: I have been late in my posts before.

But I'll add this further injustice: I wont put up my story for the day until tomorrow. I owe you a better text than one I can compose now, in the wee hours of the night.

In the meantime, I'll put up just one photo -- something that I snapped with my little camera as I finally crossed the river - during the last quarter mile on my long walk home to the hotel.





It all seems so darn twinkly and bright and this just really goes to show that, in a city, the texture and feel to a set of blocks can change very very quickly.

tight knit

Small town folks often think that they form a tightly knit community. But I wonder: what does that even mean? That they track each others comings and goings? I believe that.

I think of Warsaw as a tightly knit community. And I think of Madison as not especially tight, though it is a very generous and forgiving (for the most part) community. At the very least, we tend to smile at each other's eccentricities. For instance, this morning, at our local grocery store, a customer brought in her dog, just to show it off. Now, it’s probably in violation of the health code to walk in with a dog (we’re not French after all), but this woman carried her little pooch in and we all admired the dog properly, so that she could walk away with pride.





Elsewhere, she may have been called names. Or politely escorted to the door. Or to a waiting van. Here, we smiled.


At the shop on the corner, I did my share of smiling at people. But, that's work. One smiles at customers. America expects it. By contrast, you should not look for the vendor to smile, say, in Poland. The market economy has not made a significant dent in the demeanor of the sales clerk yet. She or he appear forever to be at odds with the world, or at least their position in it.


If I had to apply the word "tight" to any one set of people, I'd say it describes well my wee family. Very tight. [But not exclusive. There's a difference.]

Tonight, after another late night at the shop, my daughters, Ed and I ate at one the family favorites: Sardine.





And tomorrow, as each summer, I am following daughters to Chicago, where, for at least a day or two, we'll romp and play. In a very tight-knit way.

Communities are formed by grouping people together, right? We were once grouped under a roof and now here we are, still banding together at every opportunity. Amazing (and lovely) how that works.

missing cyber calm

Once you move past middle age (don’t ask me to define it – you’ll know when you’re there), if you’re like so many of us, you suddenly have an opportunity to sit back and chill out.

If you’ve been reading your own internal meter well, you understand that you are neither as smart as you once thought you were, not as stupid as you once feared you could become. You know which words provoke and which words help to calm things down. You know what not to say even though sometimes you’re tempted to blurt it all out.

You are at a point where life (baring tragedy) can be very smooth and you have the power to make it even smoother.

So you wake up in the morning, and if the Times is right, you (like me) turn on your laptop and you check things out: email, facebook, blogs – your favorites, to jumpstart your day.

And aren’t you just shocked at how agitated and blood-thirsty the world of cyberspace postings has become? It’s harder and harder to find the careful writers who worry about getting their story and their words out in the best possible way. Mostly, the concerns seem to be with getting every last angry syllable out before someone beats you to it.


Ah well. It could be that I am regretting too much the hour spent this morning on Net readings. By the time I pushed my sweet Mac Book aside, I was drowning from an overload of others’ bad vibes.

And after? The day simply disappeared. My watch tells me I am just about into the next day now. Sure, that makes sense. I finished my moonlighting stint just a few hours ago. Daughters and Ed pulled me out for a late meal at the Old Fashioned, where even after 10, it was loud enough that you could bring a howling dog and no one would notice.

We ate sandwiches and salads and I could feel the tension dribble out of me so that when we left, I was again drifting in mellow straights.

I leave you with a photo of an amused, but less chilled Ed. I would guess that for him, segueing from a quiet shed with two cats to a loud dining hall with three happily animated women is as tough a transition as the one I face each morning now as I turn on my computer.






But I'll say this: loud good cheer at the Old Fashioned is far calmer than quiet ill-temper of a cyber fight over one issue or another. Truly, I wish the Net was a sweeter place. In the alternative, I'll settle for a Door cherry salad with blue cheese and salmon anytime.

small talk

(My occasional traveling companion, Ed, returns unexpectedly early from canoeing up north on the Boundary Waters.)
Was it beautiful?
Sure, in an unchanging sort of way. Lots of conifers.
I’m glad you found the peace and quiet that you love… wild camping…
Well, actually, the campsites are quite frequently used. Not too many breaks in the forest.
But no people out on the waters?
Not too many… Saw some groups, one was a whole pack of canoeing women… Paddling together and singing "Kumbaya."
There! Soulmates! Wilderness loving women like yourself!
(eye roll)
How old? -- my daughter asks.
Actually they were kid type people with a few counselors thrown in...

(Earlier, at the Farmers Market, from the flower vendor.)
Are you still with that guy?
(I want to ask her to narrow that down a little, but I quickly remind myself that only Ed has consistently made the rounds with me at the market.)
Yes, he’s up north canoeing this week.
You don’t like canoeing?
I don’t like canoeing for several weeks in a row. Without access to the outside world.
(I buy the flowers and leave, but then come back to take a photo. The vendor, not seeing me, explains to the other seller – it’s sort of remarkable. He’s this crotchety guy and they… I back away. It’s good not to hear things by accident. Even as I know that Ed is not crotchety. But, Ed is Ed.)

(Taking out my iPhone with great joy, I show off to Ed its many many delightful applications.)
Can you use it in Europe?
I don’t know, I think so.
But you have to unlock it (this from a daughter, who knows such stuff) and if you do that, you lose Apple’s protection.
When are we going to Europe? I ask. But I know the answer for me. Not this year.


The sky outside is yellow gray. Stormy. As if a slow motion flash was ripping through the dark day. Breakfast is late, as daughters on vacation tend not to rush the beginning of the day (we rarely stray from the habit of having the first and last meals of the day together). Lunch follows quickly after, dinner will have to be exceptionally early. I’ll grill trout outside and then rush down the hill. My evening is given over to the shop where we are to do inventory until every midnight.

On the horizon, there is a break. Not from work, not immediately, but from the storm.

in the heat of the day

It’s hard to believe that five months from now I’ll long for this:





…but I will.

Because the rain came down hard on the poor vendors at the Madison farmers markets, we, the tardy market shoppers, had the full array of produce to pick from when we finally crawled out of our lairs (who wants to leave home when it's pouring rain?) and made our way to the food stalls.















The photos aren’t from my wonderful Westside Community Farmers Market across the street. The irony is that my local market is too convenient for a Saturday visit when my daughters are in town. They like the longer, more convoluted journey down to the Capitol Square, the slow amble among dozens and dozens of stalls, the buying of the baked goods at the place where I used to roll croissant dough for market day (l’Etoile) – all that is, for them, part of the joy of being back home.


With a wee bit of guilt, but with the inevitable pleasure of being downtown yet again, we make our way around the Square. And because it is raining (you did bring an umbrella, didn’t you? No, did you? No, not me either…), the crowds are less dense and the walk is more leisurely and really, who would even care about the wetness: it is as if someone poured a bucket of water on the produce to rinse it a little. Making it shiny. Fresh and honest.










Because it’s summer and because weather system number one came and went and we’re onto weather system number two, the rains are long gone by evening and hot air has (finally) blanketed our state. A Florida moment, you might say: humid and clammy.

As I said, five months from now I’ll be wishing it was August 7th.

blogging on a rainy day

I’ve been blogging long enough (daily, for 5.5 years) that I have given some thought, at various points, to what I am doing and why I’m doing it. I started carelessly, in imitation of bogs that I liked, but I hope that over the years I have been more deliberate, less rash, less audience driven.

The Internet has no editors or censors. Bloggers develop their own parameters of what’s right, what’s appropriate. When you first post, it’s like having your youthful alcoholic beverage – you don’t know the limits. Smart bloggers learn quickly enough where not to go.



It’s a rainy day. I don’t have evening work hours at the shop to overwhelm my schedule. It’s also the opening night of Julie and Julia, the movie about the blogger and the cook.

Well of course I would be looking forward to it! We buy three tickets to the very first show. So early that we take coffee rather than popcorn into the theater.





Did I like the movie? Yes, of course. Quite a lot, in fact. But what stuck in my head afterward was the little vignette introduced toward the end of the film, when it becomes evident that Julia Child was not keen on endorsing Julie Powell's blog. (In case you haven’t followed the trailers, the premise of the story is this: Julie writes a daily blog about a year of cooking from Julia Child’s fantastically wonderful book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.)

My initial reaction to this little piece of the story was sadness. I admire Julia Child tremendously. I have her books, I’ve read her biography, I’ve laughed at her audaciousness. I don’t want to think of her as dismissive toward a plucky, insignificant blogger.

But when you think of it, is it wrong to be cautious about endorsing a puny, inconsequential (at least before Nora Ephron got her hands on it) blog like Julie's? Especially if, like Julia Child, you possess a superb talent and you have devoted years of effort to the presentation of your cooking ideas, for others to enjoy?



It’s still raining outside. Late in the evening, I’m cooking again. For daughters. It’s not a big production, but it’s some of our favorites – rosti (a potato dish of Swiss origin), beef in mustard sauce, spicy corn. I’m not an especially creative cook, but I’m plenty competent, in the way that people who have cooked daily dinners from fresh ingredients for some thirty-five years are bound to be competent enough.

Then I blog. Competently, in the way that people who have blogged daily from fresh ingredients for some five plus years are bound to be competent enough. Think of a theme, type, edit and post. How hard is that...

Sometimes, like cooking from scratch, it’s very, very hard. And sometimes, like a souffle, a post can flop. And you can kick it under the table and hope that tomorrow you'll be sharper and just that much more insightful. Like trying for a better souffle. Only you don't have fifteen years to improve it. Just a day. Never more than a day.

to be (at the) fair

I’ve only been to the Wisconsin State Fair once before. Nine years ago, my daughters had some commitment there and I tagged along. I was overwhelmed. Thinking that fairs were, well, small things – with maybe a few prize pies and pen of fat pigs – I wasn’t prepared for any of it.

But I have learned. Based on that one experience, I can say this much: fairs are really a composite of three things: animals, carnival rides and fried foods.

My daughters love all three.

(For latecomers to Ocean, my daughters are 28 and 24 years old. They're home for a vacation break.)

Animals, rides, food: I can deal with it. I can photograph animals, nibble on foods and say no thanks to every ride. If they beg, I'll cave on the Ferris Wheel. I can handle a slow descent.

We set out for the State Fair on this warm and partly sunny afternoon (the fair is in Milwaukee). Yes, yes, it is the opening day. We’re enthusiastic. We’re also swayed by such draws as discounted admission on the first day for those who bring food for pantries, collected by the Hunger Task Force.

I wont write more. It's past midnight and I am absolutely fried. Let me run you through our State Fair pictorially. Remember, you're here to see animals, rides, and (fried) foods. Blissfully consumed by two young women (with a supporting cast of other Fair attendees) who love all this stuff with a passion.



fried jalapeno cheddar





the Fair's signature dish: cream puffs





the finishing touches





let me tell you something: people are odd





the youngest Fair attendee?





waiting for the race of the pigs





shaving the goat legs





the ribbon for the "most attractive swine"





a break from the animal world





mama goat, nuzzling





one incarnation of a potato dish





another incarnation of a potato dish





State Fair means corn (I demonstrate the art of eating it)





daughters demonstrate the art of wolfing down deep friend mac and cheese





others show off a common State Fair dessert





fried dough tootsies are supremely popular





from each county: prize winning cows





and hens. and roosters.





don't forget about the rides: daughter in yellow dress laughs loudly





ultimately, though, the Wisconsin State Fair is about the cream puff.

cash

Last night I soloed. Not in an airplane, no not that. In something far more daring: I kept the shop running alone all evening and, at the end, I closed it up.

There are 68 steps to follow in the shutting of the store for the night (I kid you not), but they are written by a person with a degree in retail and so you can assume that they make sense. After a couple of nights watching others do it, I was ready.

Except on step number 45, I stalled. The cash did not add up. I counted again. Same totals, same problem. I could, I thought, document the discrepancy and move to step number 46. But once large amounts are missing (it was nobody's fault - a system malfunction), the remaining 23 steps are affected (well, not the last: I can still do step number 68 – turn on the alarm and scoot off). I stumbled along, compounding the errors I’m sure, while daughters waited patiently outside.

We ate dinner closer to midnight than the preferred earlier hour.


This morning, I went to the market and I looked on with envy as vendors conducted their business. The beauty is in the simplicity of it all: they set out their flowers, their produce…










They take in the money, placing it in an apron pocket or a cash box…










And at the end of the day they either grin at their good fortunes or sigh with disappointment, but from my point of view, their two steps to the sale (take in money and count it) make theirs a far more pleasurable marketplace. (I’m not even going to mention what must be the joy of selling something that a customer can’t return for a store credit. One that two minutes later they turn around and use on you. With the balance going to a credit card. Or cash. Or both. Unless they decide it’s all too much and so they have you start all over again. Have a wonderful evening! You too!)


Tonight I am to work at the shop again and I now regard it in the way that the woman attacked by a distempered raccoon regards the woods: a once gentle place suddenly appears hostile and threatening, full of wild beasts ready to pounce. Except my raccoons are sitting somewhere in a corporate office far away, outlining my steps and putting together a track of music that I have to listen to. Over and over. Wondering what surprise attack the cash box holds for me at the end of the long day.

Ah well. Work is work. Even if conducted in a pretty environment, one with the soft colors and scents of summer.

pots of flowers

Can anyone truly say “I am not at all like my mother?”

I used to say it – without judgment; I just thought it was obvious. My tastes, my habits, my disposition. My insecurities, my appearance, my pleasures. Nothing like hers. I wondered why this would be so, given that, after all, she was (and is) my mother. Maybe, I reasoned, it was because I was raised by my grandparents in the first years of my life. And pretty much by myself once I turned thirteen. That gave her just a small window of influence.

Still, as I get ready for my evening work at the shop on the corner (thinking that it is really quite tedious to go out again at the end of a long day), I remember that my mother, too, picked up odd jobs late in life to supplement her income. It encroached on her free time and it sometimes made her cranky, but it also emboldened her in ways that would take too long to describe.

One could say that being able to (finally) afford to purchase an iPhone yesterday was similarly emboldening (in ways that would take too long to describe).


When I moved to the States from Poland during my university years, I found that getting extra work here was possibly the biggest difference between everyday life there and everyday life here. People didn’t (and I would guess still don’t) get part time filler work in Poland. It wasn’t the custom then to boost your income by filling out an application at a local shop around the corner.

Of course, there is work and there is work. Biking back today from the campus area I passed the community gardens at Shorewood. Two people worked, picking out the weeds of late summer (which are always more noxious than weeds of spring). A handful stood to the side chatting.





I have noticed that many plots in Madison’s community gardens are tended by people who sound like they may be non native to this town. I thought how in Poland, many city people loved tending small plots just beyond the urban centers.


Like my mother, I was hardworking in the yard when I had a yard. And like her, I closed the chapter of yardwork and am unlikely to reopen it. The garden, like the suburban house, overwhelmed me.

Let me pause here. I have my pots of flowers on the balcony to water before I go off to my evening work. Come to think of it, my mother never kept pots of flowers on her balcony.

iThoughts

August is to the summer season what New Year’s Day is to the winter holidays: the tail end of a good spell. And each – both August and New Year’s – is followed by a period of denial. Fall’s so magnificent! Colorful! Love those dead leaves! Bare branches… beautiful, no? Like arms. Artsy. Let me take another photo of the same old tree outside my window (really because there’s nothing else).

But I have to say that each day of a tail end of anything good is especially meaningful. Winter break is merely fun at the beginning, but revered at the close. Every minute counts.

So, too, in August.

And how did those minutes count for me? What beautiful summer ritual did I chase down on this warm (for once) Madison day?

I bought an iPhone.

It was inevitable. There are basically four people who occupy 90% of my cell phone minutes and of those, three are switching to AT&T and the fourth doesn’t do cell phones (can you guess who that may be?).

Having recently learned the technology of retail in the high tech age on my moonlighting job, I guessed my receptors would be ready for the challenge that an iPhone offers. Still, the rapid fire geek-speak of the rep over at Apple central (at our local mall) was slightly over my head. (I may have been his first and only customer who admitted to never texting anyone in her life; following that admission, I was too mortified to tell him that his examples, based on analogues from Star Wars, were meaningless to me as I had never seen Star Wars.)

And so I asked for a written manual to accompany the phone. Do you have a book maybe? With instructions? My daughter looked at me with pity. Or was it amusement? A book? You want a book of instructions? No kidding?


It was uphill after that. I cooked dinner for daughters and enjoyed not moonlighting tonight as the orange moon rose over the eastern skies and then disappeared again behind a cloud.

[addendum: I sent in my primary camera for servicing today; expect fewer photos in the days ahead.]

fairy tale

Imagine extravagance. Especially at a time of austerity – both financial (times are tough; moonlighting continues) and familial (daughters are still living too far for my tastes). Imagine an afternoon/evening of boisterous fun.

Of picnicking near a meadow of prairie flowers. Of eating lobster rolls with chunks of precious fresh lobster meat in an olive oil vinaigrette, of sipping a long-saved bottle of champagne and eating leftover birthday cake.











Of watching Shakespeare in a forest, of digging out a sweatshirt because the evening air turns cool.

Imagine that.

This was my fairy tale Sunday dinner and a show. With family.

daughter day

I am biking home, maybe around 6 p.m., and I am going over what if details: what if the crash resulted in a serious hurt? What if I need help getting her up and running again? At least enough to get home? [An unfortunate tumble toward the end of a long biking excursion resulted in me now pedaling back with an extra bike at my side, while the former occupant of the bike nursed bruises from the fall.]


But this was not the essential part of the day. August 1st is my daughter's birthday and this year, both daughter and birthday happen to land in Wisconsin. (She was not the one who took a tumble; it was her sister.)

I can hardly keep my eyes open in the last seconds of this day but I want to say this much: birthdays can be extraordinary. They only bring out the best. If only you catch them in the nick of time.





I'm also thinking how it's good to take things slowly, deliberately, without losing the sense of adventure. And should the road force you into the gutter, it's not too hard to get up and wipe the grit off your face.

Happiest birthday, older one! And heal quickly, little sister!