All posts by reneeinnd

2020, Family, home, Nature, Seasons, Uncategorized, Weather

Hunkering Down

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It is supposed to get bitterly cold here this weekend. Husband and I bought all the groceries we imagined needing for Saturday and Sunday on Friday night,  and plan to hunker down, going out only on Sunday morning when we have to sing in the church choir.  If there were more of us we would stay home, but a six voice choir can’t function with two missing members.

We have all been isolated for the last ten months, but there is something strangely satisfying being at home because of the weather. Snow days are wonderful,  in my memory.  It is when my mother made waffles from scratch.

What are some of your favorite snow  day or bad weather day memories? How do you like to “Hunker down”?

 

Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Weird Food

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Husband’s parents both grew up in eastern Ohio on the the border with Pennsylvania and West Virginia.  He grew up eating far different foods than I did.

Husband loves mush, especially cornmeal mush and grits. His mother served it to him for breakfast. He doesn’t object if Cream of Wheat, Cream of Rice, or  Maltomeal are on the menu, either.  I can sometimes eat polenta, but the others are a real challenge. I think it is a texture issue on my part.

Last weekend, Husband made Scrapple, a Pennsylvania favorite, and his ultimate treat, since it combines cornmeal mush with pork. He used Julia Child’s recipe ( Who would have imagined she had a Scrapple recipe??) It is sort of yellowish brown. You can see it in the header photo.  After it was baked and cooled,  he sprinkled slices of  it with cornmeal, fried them, and ate them with blueberry syrup. I just stay out of the kitchen when he gets it out. It is too weird for me.

What is the oddest food you have ever been served? What do you eat that others won’t eat? What food have you come to like that you never imagined you would?

100 Words, 2020, 2021, History, Music, Songs, Theatre, Uncategorized

New Operas

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I am not typically a big fan of opera music, but I love the stories they tell. The other day I heard a selection from Nixon in China  by John Adams on MPR. I think it was The Chairman Dances.   I remember seeing a televised performance that opera, and I found the costuming, with all those drab Mao jackets very amusing.

Operas do a good job of immortalizing important moments in history,  and I suppose that Nixon’s breakthrough with China was monumental.  I wonder what the opera repertoire  will be like fifty years from now?

What recent events would you like to see made into operas?  What is your favorite opera?

Fantasy, Medicine, News, Science, Uncategorized

Folie a Plusieurs

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One benefit of working as a mental health professional  in the middle of nowhere is the opportunity to see people with all sorts  of different diagnoses that one wouldn’t necessarily see in urban areas due to the increased specialization there. When you are the only game in town (or a 100 mile radius) you get to see it all.  Very few of my urban colleagues have seen Huntington’s Chorea first hand, tested people with Lewy Body Dementia  or Korsakoff’s psychosis, and also treated  children with PANDAS (Look it up. It isn’t as nice as it sounds).

The recent uptick in conspiracy theories and QAnon reminded me of a case I was privy to decades ago involving a shared delusion.  Folie a Deux is a condition in which one person with a Delusional Disorder convinces someone else without a Delusional Disorder that their delusions are real. It usually occurs in couples or close relatives.   It is rare.  It barely made the last edition of the American Psychiatric Association  Diagnostic and Statistical  Manual.  The case I remember is that of  one person in a couple having  the delusion that a member of a famous  Country Western singing group loved them,  and transmitted secret messages to them over the television.  The delusional person convinced their partner this was true, and both had to be hospitalized.

I wonder if APA is reevaluating the rarity of shared delusions in our current political climate.  It may be more prevalent than we previously thought.  I love the French terms for these conditions.  Folie a Plusieurs is the term for “madness of several”,  which we certainly have observed recently.  The treatment usually involves separating the truly delusional from the ones they have convinced about their delusions.  Then they can see what is really happening.

What are your favorite non-English terms?  Make up some fun and helpful  conspiracy theories.  

books, Food, gardening, Gatherings, History, The Future, Uncategorized

Beans and Friendship

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Husband and I like to grow shell-out beans in the garden.  These are beans that form in their pods and you can let dry and then shell and store,  unlike green beans that you eat whole when they are fresh.  We use them in soups and stews.   We have grown several varieties over the years, like Vermont Cranberry Beans and Good Mother Stallard.  We particularly like shelly beans, as they are sometimes called, because some of them are pole beans and they save space in the garden since they grow vertically.  One problem with the more popular varieties, though, is that their growing season is a little too long to reach maturity here before frost.

The Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Indians were agricultural tribes who lived (and still live) on the Missouri River in North Dakota. They liked to grow shell beans, too. Many of their bean varieties were collected by horticulturists in the early 20th Century and can still be bought from certain seed companies.  Buffalo Bird Woman’s Garden published in 1917 by anthropologist Gilbert Wilson, is his account of a famous Hidatsa gardener’s advice and stories about gardening in the Northern  Great Plains.  She grew huge gardens of corn, squash, beans, and sunflowers on the rich bottomlands near the river.   All that rich land was flooded with the building of the Garrison Dam and the development of Lake Sakakawea, and the members of the three tribes were moved to family allotments on the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation. That land isn’t very fertile at all.

We grow Hidatsa Shield Figure Beans, which are fat, creamy white pole beans, and Hidatsa Red Beans, which  are smaller, red bush beans that get to be 3 feet tall and need a fence to grow against or else they  sprawl all over.  Both have shorter growing seasons.  I have never seen either of the seeds for sale locally or on the Reservation.  We got them from Seed Savers Exchange.  Our native friends from the reservation don’t seem to be very familiar with them.

I mentioned to our Arikara friend Bruce what beans we were growing, and he said he got some authentic Ree Beans (another word for Arikara)  from a woman Elder some time ago.  You can see them in the header photo.  He tried to plan them on his allotment, but the soil just wasn’t good enough.  He wondered if we would be willing to try them in our garden. I said we would be very happy to. They are brown bush beans that  seem to be very similar to Arikara Yellow Beans that I see in seed catalogs. I told him that we will have a bean feast next fall with him and his wife, and our Hidatsa friend, Leo.  I may have to refer to Buffalo Bird Woman for some recipe ideas.

Got any good bean recipes?  What are you looking forward to doing with friends once we can gather? How are your garden plans coming along?

2020, animals, History, News, pets, Stories, Uncategorized

2020 Annual Report

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Today’s post comes from Cynthia in Mahtowa

With the COVID shutdown since March, not much happening, so looking back at my past while anticipating a year closer to 80…

Photos from the ‘60s

From a letter to my friend, Barbara, I wrote from Cape Cod, fall of 1969.

Moratorium Day March, Washington, DC

“It was an experience to experience our government afraid and aloof and militarized. The White House stood unseen behind blinding spot lights while police and MPs stood guard (yet cheerfully/politely asking people to “move” and “don’t let a crowd gather”). Eerie kind of spotlights that say “I’ll get you if you make a wrong move!” The next day for the march it was the tops of buildings that gave the spooky feeling. Atop cornices and behind embellishments were soldiers – with rifles and binoculars. (They were also sandbagged in at the Capitol building.) There were people spread from the Capitol to the Washington Monument and past, besides the curb-to-curb, end-to-beginning people who marched. I would guess that less than half of the crowd actually marched on Pennsylvania Avenue – the parade permit ran out before they could get them on the street. There were many more than the modest estimate of 250,000.

“We also followed the excitement of the Yippies, Mad Dogs, and Crazies as they carried their Viet Cong flags and Agnew effigies through the rally crowd and down the field and street to the Justice Department. The minute they began their march the atmosphere changed from peaceful companionship and cold feet to electrically charged excitement. It made me want to jump and scream, laugh and run. Expectation chills. So we followed. And got close enough to see flying objects and get a face full of tear gas. (Neato stuff!)

“The police were good, but it really was quite frightening to see the numbers of them, the sight of the helmets, shields, gas masks, belly clubs, mace, shot guns in America.”

*Photo is of me on my then boyfriend Roland’s shoulders. The guy facing Roland is Jerry L. Thompson who has become a well-known photographer. The three of us were living with Roland’s mother and sisters at her Cape Cod home. Roland and I remained friends until his death in 2011.

“On Sunday, Roland’s aunt who works for the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations took us on a fun insider’s tour of the capital and offices and treated me to a middleclass tourist souvenir treat – including a photograph* of me in Fulbright’s chair in the Senate committee room with gavels in hand. We also got to read some of Fulbright’s mail (over 2-1 against/some for Nixon) What fun!”

*photographs by Roland’s mother, Dinanda“Didi” Nooney

https://www.brownstoner.com/brooklyn-life/dinanda-nooneys-brooklyn-photos-jill-nooney-interview/

Now to the present…

New bathroom floor, rug, and toilet

 

New French Alpine milk goat, “Fiji”.  Spent the summer making “chevre” and “Cinder Ella” cheeses.

 

 

New Arabian mare, “Antoinette” aka “Toni”(Derby, a friend’s POA gelding who lived here for a year, went to live with a grandfather who wanted to teach his grandchildren to ride.) Also taking riding lessons again! What fun!

 

 

 

New hens: two “Buffy” Orpingtons, one “Heidi” Hybrid & three “Little (Rhode Island) Red Hens.” Plus New (Buff Orpington) rooster, “Neil,” who has already fathered two Buffy young ones. Lovely brown eggs.

Decided to draw again – pen & ink coyote skull sketches to accompany our book club’s Zoom meeting discussing Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores.  Also bought water color brushes when I couldn’t find my old ones.  First “commission”: a Scottish Highlander cow

Hope you all are safe and well.  And here’s to a safe and healthy New Year!

What were you doing in 1969?  What are your hopes and dreams for the New Year?

 

animals, books, home, Mysteries, pets, Technology, Uncategorized

Paper Chase

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There is a mysterious creature in our home, one that is a constant source of puzzlement for our cat. The creature resides in the room with the computer. It whirs, makes odd internal noises, and then shoots out paper.  Sometimes the creature pulls the paper back inside before shooting it out a final time. It usually comes to life when Husband is seated at the dining room table working on his laptop.

Whenever she hears the creature make a noise, Luna races to the computer room and  peers into the place where  the paper emerges. She often walks behind it to see if anything is there, then perches along side it to watch the paper come out.

If she is feeling particularly feisty, she will stick her paw in to catch the paper. That usually results in me or Husband needing to fix a paper jam.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other day I changed out ink cartridges,  and Luna was very, very interested to see what was inside  when I opened the front. There was no creature to be seen, though, just gears.

I imagine Luna vowing to solve the mystery and find the creature inside the printer.  Until then, she has a constant source of amusement and intrigue to keep her life interesting.

What mystery would you like to solve?  What mystery novel character would you like to be? What makes your life interesting these days?

 

Business, home, Technology, Uncategorized

Let’s Let the Letts Fix It

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Our Governor  is a former Big Tech guy, and I am pretty certain the State IT Department  is a trial and a headache for him. He was successful in the private sector, but this is the public sector,  and things are somewhat different here.

For some reason, the State Unemployment Office, and only the State Unemployment Office,  is supported by an extremely old computer system for  which there is no IT support in the State. In fact, there is no support for the system or its programs in the entire US. The only people in the entire world who still know how to fix this system are in Latvia.

The Governor  is really upset about the millions of dollars the State is paying Latvians to keep the system  up and running. This has apparently been going on for years. He is proposing a huge item in this biennium’s budget (yes, the ND legislature only meets every two years) to replace the system. I would assume the legislature would go along with this, but you never know. It may cost less in the short-term to keep employing Latvians instead of a huge capital outlay right now.  We shall see how the upcoming legislative session turns out.

What country would you like to visit to repair things or teach people skills? What country would you like to hire repair people from, if it meant they would come to your house to make the repairs? What would you want them to fix?

 

books, Family, home, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

Standing Firm

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Our grandson is 2 1/2. His parents are good about keeping a steady schedule for meals and naps and bedtime.  Prior to our visit he suddenly started a period of change into a new developmental level, and he became disorganized and his schedule became disrupted. His appetite decreased, he didn’t want to nap, and he did everything he could to delay going to sleep at night.

A typical bedtime would see Son or DIL getting him ready for bed, reading  the requisite three books, and putting on music to lull him to sleep. In the past it only took one song to do the trick, but during our visit it turned into multiple requests for “one more song”.  Many times after it was quiet and we thought he was asleep, we found him with his light on and his bed full of books. “I reading, Daddy” he would say with an impish grin. Then came multiple requests to use the bathroom, usually with no results.  Every time he got up, he also needed to be tucked back in bed. They wisely have a baby gate in the doorway of his room so at least he has to stay there and can’t come out at will.

Son and DIL took our advice to put duct tape over grandson’s light switch so he couldn’t turn on the bedroom light. He has a night light.  They also found longer songs and stories to play continuously so that he wouldn’t keep asking for one more song.  They even agreed to stand firm and not go up to his room when he made his stay-awake ploys once he was in bed and was supposed to be going to sleep.

On Saturday night after he had been put to bed after several attempted diversions on his part, I walked past grandson’s room  His door opened, and he looked at me with big brown eyes and he said in a very plaintive voice “Oma, will you tuck me in?”   Well, of course Oma tucked him in! That sort of plea is impossible to resist.  I am happy to report that his plea to me was the last of the evening, and he slept for twelve hours despite my failure to stand firm.

How are you at standing firm?  When is it hard for you to maintain your resolve?

Family, Gatherings, holidays, Uncategorized

New Year

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Our day and evening will be spent with our busy 2 year old grandson and his parents. We typically don’t whoop it up much for New Year’s. We will cook a nice dinner and probably go to bed early.

My mother spent New Year’s Eve of 1944 in New York City with cousins who grew up in Manhattan.  They took her to the Stork Club. We have a photo somewhere of her in a fancy hat holding a glass of champagne. The only thing she ever said about it was that she didn’t like it when everyone started kissing each other at midnight. I wish I had asked her more about the club and her experiences in New York.

What will today and this evening be like for you? Any memorable New Year’s Eves for you or your family?