Bras

At some point during our adventures in France, Dad bought Mom a couture brassiere. From a fine company called Cadolle. The company is quite different from what is was in the Sixties (http://www.cadolle.com/.) Here's Mom's brassiere (draped over a pillow). And the label.

Everyone I've ever met knows exactly what they're doing

Note: I wrote this two years ago, in 2015 and for some reason did not publish. Doing so now, for all those waiting with bated breath. :)

In my life, I've met people remarkable to me because they were fully certain in their opinions and beliefs.

My high school best friend, who was certain that her former home in Dunmore, Pennsylvania was the best place on earth. And never stopped talking about it.

A college roommate, who was certain that The Electric Light Orchestra, some ice cream restaurant where she worked, her high school in Akron, were the best ever, period. And never stopped talking about them.

A community of opinionated people who thought the Kon Tiki restaurant in Columbus was the absolute best the city had to offer. And I never stopped hearing about it. (Took my parents. It was un-best.)

In their own minds, they were right, I suppose. I didn't know enough to consider that they wanted attention. But I was awed by certainty. I felt my own experiences paled because I had not lived their best ones. I was rarely, if ever, certain of anything because the only constant in my life was change. A new home and new acquaintances practically every year.

Elyria Catholic High School.

Being in my mother's house now over the holidays, walking in the town where I finished grade school and high school, made me remember all this. What I did not fully realize when I was younger was that my own experiences were rich, full and very much broader than those of the peers of my late teen and young adult life. Then I just wanted, as in every new town and school, to fit in.

Sometimes I've wished my father hadn't chosen this town to settle in after our Army wanderings were over. We had seen so much, and this little autoworkers' town was, and is, so small, and peopled with so many souls who barely venture to Cleveland, much less the world beyond.

Then again, perhaps it is rootedness that gives certainty. We could have landed in Chicago, or Dallas, or San Francisco and still I would likely have encountered people who had been there all their lives, certain it was the best place, ever, to be.

The only thing I am certain of is the gratitude I feel for being rooted in one of the nicest families on earth.

*

About the photo: In my senior year, my class streamed out of the doors in the distance for an informal class photo. There were no thick trees there then. I had a locker near one of those doors.

End of the month, you know?

I had Thanksgiving off. It was lovely, drinks and dinner friends and with family.

Worked the next day, very slow. After work, realized I needed something, fruit mostly, for breakfast. So stopped at the Shop & Save after work. Picked up raspberries, strawberries, a few oranges and some cherry juice. Also picked the shortest cashier line.

Kind of a mistake.

Maybe.

The lady ahead of me was clearly in financial stress. She had on a big jacket with lots of pockets. A green card on the counter by the register. And four stacks of quarters on that same counter. Fussing and wondering.

The cashier was so nice. The lady needed only a dollar and some change to pay her tab and thought she had dropped some under the candy and magazine rack. I looked, the cashier looked and the guy behind me looked. No change.

I'm looking to get in and out on a Friday night. Can I please go home, have dinner and read?

So.

"Can I help? What do you need?" Comes the response: "One dollar and 34 cents."

I have exactly two one dollar bills in my wallet and pass them on. The lady in front thanks me and promises to pay it forward.

Good. Can we move on?

Except no. We can't. She had another item that needed to be scanned separately and by then she had lost her food stamps card in her voluminous pockets, the floor, her purse or goodness knows where.

Her comment was "End of the month, you know?"

I gathered up my few packages and the nice guy behind me let me out. Couldn't wait anymore. By the time I checked out, he was still waiting.

Lady in distress was still fumbling and trying to find what she needed.

And the cashier was being so very kind.

And I'm so glad, because you never know when circumstance might change, that I am not poor.

*

Looking back, I think what a luxury it is to want to go home and read. After work. At a job. That pays. 

The Lottery (with no apologies to Shirley Jackson)

 Each week, I fritter a few dollars away on the lottery. I'll never win. But here's the thing. I already have. We none of us get to pick our parents, but wow, in the lottery of birth, I hit the jackpot. Born to  parents who read to me. That shaped my life. Thinking back, here are some of the authors and illustrators who rocked my world.

C.S Lewis and Pauline Baynes (The Chronicles of Narnia)
Dr. Seuss (everything, but especially the Northgoing Zaks with Stars upon Thars)
James Thurber (he wrote and drew hilariously)
Chas Addams (macabre made wonderful)
Lewis Carroll and Arthur Tenniel (Alice in Wonderland. I will go down the rabbit hole with you any time)
Charles Schulz (he drew Good ol' Charlie Brown and wrote his story, too. Bonus: Vince Guaraldi's music)
Frank Tashlin ("The Bear That Wasn't" https://vimeo.com/138897532Th
A.A. Milne and E.H. Shepard (Winnie the Pooh & The Wind in the Willows)
Ray Bradbury & Joe Mugnani (The October Country)
Chuck Jones (Looney Tunes)
E.B. White  & Garth Williams (Charlotte's Web)
plus Babar, Curious George, Calvin & Hobbes, Matt Groenig's "Life in Hell" series and "Nade" a graphic novel heroine from my childhood in France.
And former colleague Stacy Innerst, a wonderful illustrator who reminded me that I won the reading parents lottery. Here is one of his works.
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/ruth-bader-ginsburg-jonah-winter/1125674822#/

Lucky lucky lucky. Thanks Mom & Dad

Friends and Neighbors

A bit of planning and a bit of serendipity this weekend.

Visited former Post-Gazette colleagues whom I've kept in touch with via Facebook. We chatted for more than an hour, catching up and sharing news.  Margi and Rick. Thank you for letting me borrow the drill and for the coffee and conversation.

Later in the day, during my walk through the neighborhood and off my usual course because of road construction, I came upon another set of colleagues – one current and one former. Anita and Bob, outside and enjoying the late fall sun. We had such a nice chat; Anita brought down a couple of glasses of red wine while Bob tended to the weeding.

There is something special about community. Kind of like family ... you are born to it, but you can find it and make it as well.

Owl be seeing you

In late 2014, there was what's called an "irruption" (a sudden increase in population) of snowy owls in Austintown, Ohio. The snowy is the owl most recently famous in pop culture thanks to the "Harry Potter" books and movies. They weigh about 6 pounds and like most owls are predators of rodents. The 2014 visit was probably due to a drop in their prey population in the Arctic.

There's no diet crash, though, of rodents in the world of advertising, so it's puzzling why this fascinating raptor is so popular as a "spokes owl" these days.

Western Governors University. Trip Advisor. America's Best eyeglasses. Xycal medication. And then tonight a TV commercial for Pier One, which is selling a variety of owl merchandise, like this one.  And then there's Woodsy Owl, the U.S. Forest Service spokes owl of the 1970s, with his "Give a hoot, don't pollute, Give the animals a chance!" message. (Hoot if you are of a certain age and remember those commercials.)

Used to hear a couple of great horned owls in my old neighborhood, usually walking dogs late at night late in the year. The "whooo ... whooo ... whooo" between them was so enchanting, though I never caught sight of the big birds. Once even saw a baby owl in Bird Park, tucked in the nook between a branch and trunk. Can't recall what made me look up, because it made no sound.

More recently, we have an eastern screech owl living nearby, which makes a scary racket after dark.

Less recently, Owl was a character in two books of my childhood. "Winnie the Pooh," and a book whose title and author I can't recall, but was about an injured baby owl, rescued by the writer. Oh, and Edward Lear's "The Owl and the Pussy Cat" (delightfully mangled by Sally in "Peanuts" as 'The Owl and the Fussy Cat.') My grandmother read that to us often, in her gravelly, Pall Mall smoked voice. I'm pretty sure there is an owl presence, too, among the talking animals of the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis.

I'm sure I'm missing scads of other references. Hoot if you have more!

 

Top Filler at Carrie Furnace

Exploring Pittsburgh on a stay-cation, husband and I visited the Rivers of Steel Carrie Furnace site. Amazing factoids right off the bat: Visitors were from Buffalo, N.Y., Chicago and Santa Fe, N.M. to name a few.

I've lived and worked in Pittsburgh long enough to remember seeing the flaming eruptions from the mills on the south side of the Monongahela, in the early 1980s, when I would drive home from Downtown to Shadyside, then Wilkinsburg. In those days, the J&L furnaces still sat hard by the Parkway East, heading toward Monroeville and beyond.

The Carrie site was dismantled about that time.

Carrie Furnace site is ENORMOUS. The work there required supplying electricity from furnace off-gas (and cleaning that gas), supervising the ore pits (one of the resources for making iron ore), loading the "Larry" cars with coke for the blast furnace. Unloading the iron (from Minnesota via the Great Lakes). Cleaning the channels that held the disgorged ore from the furnace (can't use water, explosion danger).

All jobs: Hot, dirty dangerous, monotonous. And dangerous.

Our guide's description of one such job stays with me:

The top filler.
If you were this guy, you were stationed at the top (mouth, maybe maw would be a better word) of the furnace.

Piles of materials would come up for you to dump in the mix. Limestone, coke, iron.

But, you can't dump it all in at once. You have to swirl it all in, like cake ingredients. If it all goes in at once, the metallurgy goes bad.

Except, the material keeps coming. And coming. And coming.
 
And so you start off your 12 hour shift conscientously pouring in the ingredients at the top of the circular stack: Limestone at 6 o'clock on the dial. Coke at 9 o'clock. Iron at 12 o'clock. Next round of ingredients (because the ingredients keep coming and the furnace keeps cooking) Limestone at 7 o'clock, Coke at 10 o'clock, Iron at 1 o'clock.

But you are a human Top Filler and tired, and probably you have worked a 12-hour shift anyway and have had one day off, so you can't keep up. So after a while all the ingredients just get dumped in.

After a while the powers-that-be realize that this means the ore is poorer quality so new methods are devised for getting the ingredients to the mouth of the beast. One is a giant cup, full of mix, that rides up the to mouth and dumps in the contents, already mixed.

These mills were hives of innovation, because the jobs required of people were so exhausting and dirty and killing.

These mills also created jobs for thousands of immigrants.

Homestead, McKeesport, Duquesne, Braddock, Rankin and countless other Mon Valley mill towns contributed to America's growth and helped America to victory in World War II and fueled the growth of our economy post-war. (Think refrigerators, washing machines, that nifty Ford Mustang you drove.) My family on my mother's side is rooted in Duquesne in the late 1800s early 1900s. Not in steel, but in business because of it.

These towns all still celebrate their immigrant roots. They may not be what they were once, but they are river towns and will survive and thrive.

One thing I noticed. There are so many sycamore trees here. Sycamores love water. And the site is flat... the ladle car was in standing water, from the rainy weather we've had this summer I guess. But if sycamores mean rain friendly, that means this site is likely to be overtaken by nature sooner rather than later.

Jump. SwooshSlap. Jump.

Not too many bffs when I was growing up because my family moved too much. But for some reason I remember playing jacks and jumping rope with lots of girls wherever we were. 

Those games gave me a chance to be friends with American girls after my family returned from France. I  wasn't used to them (the American girls), although I doubt teenage American girls are much different from teenage girls around the world. Full of hormones and itching to be bitchy.

Anyway. Jumping rope at recess was a respite. Any girl was allowed. There would be two rope turners and the jumper would stand in the middle of either one.

Here's the posture: Jumper stands, knees bent, perpendicular to the rope turners (sound: rope makes a windy swoosh, then slap as it hits surface. SwooshSlap). Jumper lowers right shoulder, slightly swaying arms at sides. Jumper sways into and out of the rhythm of the turning rope, right shoulder leaning in. You have to pick your moment.

After about 5 to 10 seconds of standing/swaying/leaning, jumper hops in, right leg first, drawn up, left leg following same way.  As the rope whirs under the feet, you draw up both feet to your knees.

Then feet come down, split secondly, then back up as the rope whirs underneath again.

That gives you the rhythm (Having made it under the rope successfully to begin with).

Then it's nice to keep going:

Jump. minijump
SwooshSlap.
Jump. minijump

And jump until it's time to sway out and let the next girl in.

All this by way of saying, this is awesome:

Double Dutch

Before Keurig

A long time ago, my Mom & Dad bought me an electric espresso maker, Krups Style 963 made in Switzerland. (Vintage 1980s.)

 I had no idea what to do with it because at the time, I was used to drinking coffee from an aluminum drip maker. Producing the beverage entailed placing a filter full of coffee in between the water vessel and the coffee vessel. But first, the water so crucial to the whole exercise had to be boiled in a pan or a pot. So, it was a process (no microwaves to boil the water fast). Looking back, I realize it was a ritual, but I did not regard it so at the time. Just. Wanted. Coffee.

 Uncurious, I put away the espresso maker.

Fast forward a couple of decades and my sister Elizabeth and I start meeting for lunch occasionally in Downtown Pittsburgh at La Prima Espresso (they have a really nice logo) on Liberty Avenue (now shuttered). Late 2000s, I guess. There Elizabeth, with cosmopolitan sensibilities acquired in our nation's Capital, introduced me to cafe lattes.

Delicious.

At some point in our lunching adventures, it occurred to me to pull from storage, or I stumbled upon it in a fit of tidying up, the Krups Style 963.

It has been part of my morning ritual ever since. The grounds vessel holds about  a tablespoon of Starbucks espresso, which I prepare in the evening. Morning, I fill the maker with water, and press the red "On" switch. Then I microwave half a cup of skim milk for 90 seconds, froth it with the Aero Latte (because the Krups frother no longer works), mix in the espresso and a dash of cinnamon.

Thanks Mom and Dad. You knew what I wanted before I knew I wanted it!

Cold commute & a bridge in Pittsburgh

Roberto Clemente Bridge & plaque. Feb. 10 2017

 When I first came to Pittsburgh in the early 1980s, I wore contact lenses. Painfully. There was so much construction going on Downtown then, that any excursion from Shadyside bus stop to office in the Clark Building meant walking through clouds of grit and dust. All those nasty particles always found a way to float into my eyes and scratch my lenses.
I don't wear contacts anymore, and don't work Downtown anymore and I miss both.

Friday I had the chance, thanks to Port Authority light rail issues, to hop off Downtown and walk to work on the North Shore. Even without corrective lenses, I could see a lot has changed in the nearly two years my office has been on the other side of the Allegheny.

Sak's Fifth Avenue store site on Smithfield now flat and teeming with bulldozers. Honus Wagner, Mamma Mia's and a third store whose name I can't remember on Forbes transforming into a space for Point Park University. Walked past the former Kaufmann's building and thought how much I missed shopping there.
I also noticed a plaque on the Roberto Clemente Bridge, one of Pittsburgh's Three Sisters spans, I had never seen before, honoring its design and construction. It is a pretty bridge, a bit rusty these days and weighted down by "locks of love" (dislike intensely).
It would have been a perfect bit of transit serendipity if it hadn't been so cold!

On the other side of the Allegheny, statue of No. 21 outside PNC Park.