I hadn’t thought about Hector P. Valenti, Star of Stage and Screen, since the last time I read one of the Lyle the Crocodile books to our children. Given that our youngest is 26, it has been a while. Husband mentioned him the other day as one of his favorite literary villians.
The House on East 88th Street by Bernard Waber was one of the first books I read all by myself as a child. I loved the water colors and the storyline, about Lyle the Crocodile, a caviar swilling reptile who is abandoned by his owner Hector, a down and out performer, and who becomes a beloved member of a human household in New York City. In all the Lyle books, Mr. Valenti tries to get Lyle back into show business with him in various nefarious ways, only to have virtue and love win out in the end. I just reread The House on East 88th Street, and it is a fresh and lovely as when I first read it in 1963. Hector is a good villain indeed.
Who are your favorite literary villains? What children’s books would you like to read again? What is your opinion of Turkish Caviar?
I’ve always been a reader. I have a photo of myself “reading” to my little sister when I was about three. I knew all my books by heart, even when to turn the page; many folks thought I was reading well before I actually was. For all of my school life, I was reading above my grade level. When I was in fifth grade, I pulled “Hunchback of Notre Dame” off the school library shelf and the librarian told me it was “too old for me”. Like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
I’m also a serial reader; there is a book on CD in the car, audiobook on my laptop and assorted books in the bedroom and the living room. Right now I’m reading Eragon by Christopher Paolini (dragon book – thanks for the nudge MiG), Elementary She Read by Vicki Delaney (murder mystery), I am Thinking of You My Darling by Vincent McHugh (science fiction recommended by our Steve), Selected Poems by Amy Lowell (she was a fairly well-known poet in her day, writing at the turn of the 20th century) and finally The Peacocks of Baboquivari by Erma Fisk (memoir of a woman who lived alone for five months banding birds for The Nature Conservancy – I have NO clue where I got the idea about this one).
But why am I verklempt, you ask? Because I did not raise a reader. Saying this out loud is a little like committing hari-kari. I read to her constantly when she was young, she had a good library of books, she learned to read easily but to no avail; she has just never wanted to read. Right after Christmas I was amazed to see her toting a book around the house. Some kind of inspirational/self-help/current events thing. I teared up a little. Then three weeks ago she came to me and asked if she could use my Amazon account to buy.. wait for it… books! Now what you need to know is that asking to use my account is YA’s code for “will you buy it for me”. “OF COURSE YOU CAN USE MY ACCOUNT” I yelled as I hugged her. When the books showed up on Friday I was so excited — as I was taking the photo, you could have heard her eyes roll from a block away. She did tell me that I could read the books as well if I wanted to. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had already read two of them.
Have you infected anybody with the reading bug? What are you reading right now?
I was listening to the Broadway channel in the car on my way home from work the other day when The Age of Aquarius came on, a recording from the most recent Broadway revival of Hair. The Broadway cast recording came out in 1969, and I remember buying it at the record store in Sioux Falls not long after. I was about 12, I think. I never saw a production of it until I saw the Milos Forman movie from 1979.
Our public library had a set of Broadway Yearbooks that I just loved to look through. It was so fun to read about these productions through the decades. I read all about Hair, and felt a sort of affinity to it, as my zodiac sign is Aquarius and it made me feel like I was part of the whole anti-war, hippie culture as a Middle School student from middle of nowhere Southwest Minnesota. My parents hated long hair on men and the anti-war protests, but they also hated the war, and never minded what books I read or what music I listened to. Oh, for the time when I could really believe in:
Harmony and understandingSympathy and trust abounding No more falsehoods or derisions Golden living dreams of visions Mystic crystal revelation And the mind’s true liberation
Things like this musical and the popular music and literature of the times fueled my youthful idealism that I try to maintain at least a bit of in these most trying times.
What fueled your youthful idealism? What were your favorite Broadway musicals in the 1960’s and 1970’s? What did your parents think about your choices in dress, music, and literature when you were a teenager?
I usually consider myself a good cook but every now and then I think maybe I shouldn’t be allowed in the kitchen.
This adventure started when I looked to see if there were any Instant Pot recipes for one or two for Clyde and found an actual cook book: I Love My Instant Pot For One. You know me, I promptly checked it out from library. As is my habit, I flipped through and marked a few recipes that appealed to me. One of them was for Sweet Breakfast Grits. Believe it or not, I’ve never had grits; I don’t have anything against grits, it just has never come up. So I thought maybe it was time to try. Ordered grits from the store, picked them up. Printed off a copy of the recipe from the internet (I don’t EVER cook from library books with those books in the kitchen) and waited for a good morning to try out yet another hot cereal.
Mixed the ingredients, set the Instant Pot and 10 minutes later I was looking forward to my nice warm breakfast. In order to get the little pan out of the Instant Pot, I grabbed my rubber-tipped kitchen tongs. These are made to withstand heat but as I pulled the pan out, they seemed too pliable and in trying to hurry the pan to the counter, of course I spilled it. Not too much, but I completely ruined the recipe which was sitting there (which is why I don’t EVER cook with a library book in the kitchen). I scooped the spill into a bowl and when I went to scoop the rest of the grits to the bowl, I realized they were overcooked on the bottom. I tried to break up the lumps, but not very successfully.
As I ate my extremely lumpy grits, I decided to look up how people normally cook grits; there are TONS of these videos online. Apparently how to cook grits is on a lot of people’s minds. It took about ten seconds to find out that there are regular grits and instant grits. (Grit purists detest instant grits it turns out.) A quick check of my grits container told me where part of my mistake originated – I had instant grits – my recipe was meant for regular grits. However, after watching a couple of quick videos, I realized that my biggest mistake was using my Instant Pot to make grits. What a waste of time and electricity when you can just whisk grits into milk and water on the stove top and “voila”.. breakfast!
So Clyde, if you do find this cookbook, you can skip the Sweet Breakfast Grits recipe.
Do you make a mess when you cook? (Or do you have a favorite grits recipe?)
I’m not sure if it’s a pandemic thing but during the last year, I’ve had a greater yearning for tv shows and movies that I haven’t seen for years/decades.
It started with two movies starring Gene Wilder as Cash Carter: Murder in a Small Town and The Lady in Question. Gene plays a theatre director who helps the local police solve crimes. Even though I’ve read that he was kind of a stinker in real life, I adore him on the screen.
Then there were both of the older Death on the Niles, one from the 70s with Peter Ustinov and the David Suchet version. This is my absolute favorite Agatha Christie and both these versions are pretty true to the book.
Next up came The Girl From Uncle with Stephanie Powers. It’s very dated but I did love it at the time and am always glad when there is a woman in a leading role, especially where spy/detective stories are concerned.
I’ve looked for years for The Scarecrow. I hardly remember it except for the song and the shots of Patrick McGoohan with his Scarecrow mask. It was a short Disney series but for some reason it has stuck in my memory.
And as soon as I started thinking about Patrick McGoohan, I started thinking about The Three Lives of Thomasina. I talked my parents into taking me to see this three times while it was at the local move theatre. In addition to the cat and Patrick McGoohan (I had a thing for him early on), I loved the “witch” who lived outside the town who cured the cat.
The latest of my obsessions is Flambards. It played on PBS in 1980 – I was a young married and I still remember the haunting musical score. I only saw it that once, but I loved the story of a young girl coming of age in turn of the century (20th) England. I didn’t realize for many years that it was based on a trilogy of books by K.M. Peyton; I have just recently read the first one.
I searched for all of these movies/shows and didn’t have much luck (David Suchet’s Nile and the first episode of Flambards were available on the internet for a bit). And I didn’t have much luck with interlibrary loan either – a lot of libraries don’t really want to lend out their DVDs; they show as available but then I get a “sorry” email. I’m still waiting to hear about Flambards, but for all the others, I eventually went online and purchased them one by one. This may not seem too remarkable but purchasing DVDs hasn’t been something I do very often and it’s hard not to feel like I’ve been behaving fiscally irresponsible purchasing so many over the course of a year. But I have truly enjoyed them (over and over again I admit). I have a friend who weighs purchases by how often they are used – she calls this calculation PPU (price per use) – the more often something is used, the cheaper it gets in her eyes. By this calculation, I’m practically saving money!
We spent yesterday anxiously watching the weather and spending our last day with our grandson. Daughter in law made Spritz cookie dough, and grandson and I sprinkled them with colored sugars. We only had pastels, and no Christmas colors, but he certainly didn’t mind. The dog hung out under our stools and gobbled up what ever we dropped. A good time was had by all.
Grandson likes doing things with us. He is a champion builder and train operator, shaping his wooden train tracks into interesting shapes and making up stories about the train trip with himself as the conductor. Many books were read, especially “We’re going on a Bear Hunt” by Helen Oxenbury. It was read multiple times, and was a sure bet for getting him all revved up.
I had good experiences with both sets of my grandparents, and I feel very fortunate to have had them around into my adult years. I am grateful that our grandson isn’t allowed to watch much TV or videos, and is always eager to do things with us instead of sitting around, exhausting as it may be.
What do you remember about your grandparents or older adults in your life? What did you like to do with them? What do you like to do with small children? What are your favorite holiday cookies?
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned dragon books. Right after that, one of them came up for check-out at the library – Here, There be Dragons by James Owens. It’s part of a series called Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica and true to it’s title, we had imaginary creatures (dragons) on the first page.
As the story unfolded we also got references to King Arthur, Captain Nemo, Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, trolls, dwarves, centaurs, Pandora’s box, Stonehenge and, of course, talking badgers. Although the story starts out in WWI London, almost all of the story takes places in the “archipelago of dreams”, a world which is apparently one of many alternative realities.
As the first in a series, this one was a little bogged down by all the explanatory bits related by various characters, but the fascinating weaving of all kinds of myths and stories into the plot was just enough to keep me going as well as the quote: “Did he now?” said Charles as a smile began to cheshire over his face.” That alone was enough to make me want to pick up the next volume. And no spoiler alerts but the last chapter was worth its weight in gold, in terms of pulling together the strands of the story and leaving you with a tingling feeling that you should have known it all along.
If you could make one fantasy/imaginary place come alive, what would it be?
Last week this time we were preparing for a blizzard, and this week we had record high temperatures and tornadoes and extreme winds. If you’re smart enough to pay attention to the weather extremes going on you would call it global warming. Or you could just shake your head and say, well that’s different. Oh, it was different all right. I’d rather not have to go through that again.
I was glad the snow melted, I really just wanted the banks to melt down on the sides of the road. Guess I should be more specific about what I wish for. White Christmas or brown Christmas won’t bother me.
From the winds, we have a lot of branches down. We have an old maple tree in the front yard. A branch falls off if you look at it funny so it lost several in the winds. I have some trees down around the fields, some minor damage to some of the buildings, and most of the snowfence is gone. None of that is serious. I spent a few hours out with the Townboard guys clearing trees off township roads. I saw a couple trampolines folded in half, I saw metal roofing of a house peeled up over the top. You know if it’s windy down in our valley, it’s really windy out in the open.
I was supposed to have a choir concert at the college last Friday night. We postponed it to Monday. It was a very nice concert. The photo up top is my view from the booth with the Lighting Console as I programmed. It was nice of Santa to stop in at the concert on Monday.
End of the financial year here so I am settling up with the neighbors. I mentioned a week or two ago about pre-paying some fertilizer and doing tax planning for next year. My neighbors that do the combining and hauling of my crops sent their bill. Combining soybeans is $38 per acre. Corn is $39 per acre. And it’s eight cents per bushel to haul. They also made some round bales of straw at $13 per bale and I sold them 200 bushels of oats at $3.58 per bushel. I’ll be writing them a check for $7310. It’s a lot of money, but it’s cheaper than owning my own equipment and having the time to do it. And the neighbors with the cattle here, they pay rent on the pasture, I pay them to combine the oats, and they will buy the round bales of straw. I did some work for them and we pretty much balance out at the end of the year.
The chickens appreciate the snow melting. You can see them here gathered in a bare spot last week.
They don’t like the snow, they’ll walk over a little, but nothing deep. Except one white chicken. Evidently her feet don’t get cold. There were a few days last week when she was the only one out. Maybe she just doesn’t get along well with the others. She is kind of ornery, biting Kelly twice when she tried to collect eggs. Bad move chicken, bad move.
The MRI on my shoulder last week showed massive tears. Still waiting on the surgery consultation. Some days it hurts more than others. If I’m going to have surgery done, I’d really like it sooner than later. In the meantime, I wait. I remember reading in a John Irving book a phrase something like, “Does anyone in love ever want to ‘wait and see?’ “
How do you feel about waiting? How many other heteronyms do you know?
In searching for something on my laptop last week, I came across a list of books about dragons. Looks like I made this list six or seven years ago (last time it was saved was six years back) and I’ve read a few of the books on the list since then. I’d completely forgotten that I had this list.
Dragons, of course, are widely varied in literature. My least favorite kind are the mindless, evil dragons (think Smaug in The Hobbit). I prefer intelligent dragons who can communicate if they choose (like Ramoth in Dragonflight or Temeraire in the Novik series). My current car is named after a dragonrider of Pern (Brekke – one of the rare dragonriders who can communicate with all dragons, not just their own).
I also like dragons who adore treasure – not sure why, maybe because it’s such a longstanding bit of dragonlore that it feels right when it is included. It’s interesting that the Greek dragons who were set to guarding treasure have morphed into beings who lust after gold, diamonds and jewels. Of course I also read somewhere once that gold is a good conductor of magical energy and that dragons NEED it to exist.
The biggest problem with this list is that I have already reached the limit of books that I can have on hold at the library – with probably be at least a week before that changes. Hopefully in a week, I’ll remember I have this list of books I want to read! Maybe I’ll start yet another tab on my reading spreadsheet.
Tell me about a mythical animal that you think might improve our world if it existed! Or just if you have a favorite mythical animal.
I was doing a quick scroll on Facebook (that’s about all I can handle on FB) and noticed my neighbor two doors up looking for a last-minute sitter since the scheduled sitter has come down sick. It’s my neighbors anniversary and apparently the reservations have been made for months. This is a newish neighbor; they moved in last May in the middle of pandemic and I don’t know them terribly well, but I thought “what the heck… I don’t have any plans on Friday night” and volunteered.
The last time I did any child-minding was two Easters ago. As part of the most over-engineered-egg-hunt in history, adults go out and hide the eggs for one assigned child (13 kids 13 and under). Normally I am part of the egg-hiding crowd but that year there was snow on the ground and I was the lone voice of reason that maybe we should do something different. So I rebelled and stayed with the kids in the house while all the other adults traipsed out. Big jokes were made about whether I could handle this. I told all the kids that as long as there was no bleeding, we would be fine. The kids thought this was very funny and it’s still a running joke; I expect to hear that no one is bleeding on Thanksgiving.,
My neighbor is not a baker so I thought I might take some cookie dough to their house and bake cookies with the girls. Or maybe we could make caramel popcorn to have if we watch tv. Other than that no plans; I’m assuming from their ages (5 and 8) that they will be in bed before their folks get home, so a good book is on the docket a well. YA thinks I’m in for a hard evening despite me reminding her that I was HER babysitter for years and she’s not bleeding.
