This is a straight up-homage to the day. Not the turkey and football filled day, not the sweet potatoes and pilgrim hat day. For those of us who don’t practice thankfulness as often as we should (including me), today is a day to help us do just that – practice thankfulness.
You’ve heard it before – what are you grateful for?
At Caribou this morning Nonny and I spilt an entire cup of coffee while navigating the “add cream and sugar” part of the transaction. Very quickly two gals jumped in to help, with napkins and a little towel that one of them asked staff for. Between us we wiped and wiped and eventually got it all cleaned up. I thanked them profusely and asked them if they would come later to my house and do my kitchen floor. One of them stopped at our table a bit later as she was leaving to say “have a nice day” and Nonny was surprised to realize that she wasn’t an employee. I said they were both just innocent helpful bystanders – which had made me all the more thankful at the time.
What the last kindness someone did for you?
Thanks to Charles Dickens for setting the scene….
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way — in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
And in the midst of the chaos it sat, surrounded by its golden foil wrapper. Artisanal butter – a golden yellow color, soft and salty. It made believers of us all.
Do you have a secret indulgence?
A friend of mine hosts a Soup Swap twice a year. The rules are pretty simple. You bring 6 quarts of soup, preferably frozen. One at a time you tell the group what soup you brought and what’s in it. This is when you “sell” your soup: why did you made it, where you got the recipes, what add-ons you brought along (croutons, bacon bits, etc.) Then you choose a number (there were 27 of us this time). When it’s your turn, you get to choose one of the soups. We go from #1 to the end, then from the end back to #1 until all the soups are parceled out. To help with the process, there is the “Wall of Soup” where everyone’s soup is listed. Once all of a soup has been taken, that soup gets crossed out.
Of course there is also wine, appetizers and my friend always serves tomato soup over rice. If it’s your first time at a soup swap, you are a “soup virgin”. One woman often has her mother make her soup. Occasionally someone buys their soup and that’s part of their soup story. Everything is OK.
The first time I went to a soup swap, I was the only one who brought a vegetarian soup. I came home with 6 meat soups that I promptly gave away to neighbors and co-workers. Most of the time there are a fair number of vegetarian options, but it’s the experience that draws me back.
This time I brought “Any Squash Shooters” and my add-on was a little cello bag with two shot glasses and a small packet of popcorn. I came home with Tomato Pesto, Creamy Butternut, Coconut Curry Squash, Tomato Red Lentil and 2 quarts of Vegetable Salsa Soup. I’m already planning what to bring to the spring Soup Swap.
What soup would YOU like to bring to a swap?
Last week the Trail hit 7,000 followers. This made me curious about some of our other current stats.
But these are just numbers.
What do YOU think is noteworthy about the Trail? And if you have never commented before, this is your day – just a one word comment to add to our stats?
Today’s post comes to us from Crystal Bay.
I seem to have lost all sense of depth perception over the last few years. I pull up to a curb feeling like I’m almost bumping into it, then, when getting out of the care, find that I’m six feet away from it. The upside is that it’s easy to find it at Target. I keep driving over curbs even though I try to focus on where they are. I also tend to park at an angle instead of straight in. People at my workout club have noticed this and park well away from my car.
I also have trouble gauging the narrowed path between road construction cones and barrels. Last week, I was too focused on missing the cones and hit a few barrels on the right. My passenger side has scraps to show it.
Last Saturday night, I bumped into a lady stopped for a train. I immediately put it into reverse, but instead of putting it into park, I put into drive and bumped her a second time. She never got out of her car to confront me but drove out of the line of cars waiting for the train to pass, so I continued driving home.
As I pulled into my driveway, two cop cars pulled in behind me. They said I’d hit and run and assessed my car for any damage. There was none, and I explained to them why I drove off. They were really nice, but told me that my “victim” said she had neck pain and the paramedics were called to the scene. My God!! I bumped her in a slowing stop.
I endured dread for the outcome of this experience all day Sunday, then called my insurance agent Monday morning. They said that if she filed a claim, I’d have to pay $400 more a year for five years. The citation would be several hundred dollars. I was beside myself needless to say.
My citation came two days later and was less than a speeding ticket. The charge was “Driving without due diligence” and only cost $118. She never filed a claim either. I dodged a bullet, but I think it was out of pity on the part of the cops.
My fear at this point is that I’m only one accident away from not driving, and how that would entrap me in my home with not enough money for Uber, not close friends to drive me anywhere, and no bus line. I’ve taken to only driving on slow backroads because I don’t want to be a danger to myself or anyone else.
DO YOU THINK ABOUT NOT DRIVING?
There was a beautiful full moon last night-The Hunter’s Moon. It is the second full moon of autumn, and was named by the Algonquin tribes as the moon for the time to go hunting and prepare for winter. The sky was quite clear and the moon was huge as I drove home from work at 7:00. It had an orange tint. The night before last it was almost full, and there were wavy wisps of clouds in front of the moon, making it look like the perfect backdrop for a a witch on a broom.
Tell about all the books, plays, stories, poems, and music you know of that are concerned with the moon. What are your own moon stories? Why is the moon so inspiring?
October 8 was the anniversary of three terrible fires in 1871-The Great Chicago Fire, the Peshtigo Fire, and the Port Huron Fire. There were other, smaller fires in the region that raged the same day as well. It was dry in the Wisconsin/Michigan lumber regions, and the conditions were just right for a perfect storm of fires. Thousands of people died. Some posit that meteorites from a passing comet may have started the fires, but that seems unlikely. Small fires used to clear land, as well as very dry conditions and a very windy cold front that blew through, are probably the causes.
Once, out here on Halloween about 15 years ago we had a terrible range fire in the two counties just north of us. Warm and drought conditions during the fall had left the pastures very dry. On Halloween, a very windy cold front came through and, somehow a fire started and hundreds of acres and cattle were lost. It was terrible, but not as terrible as the fires of 1871. I can hardly imagine what it must have been like.
A friend of mine is obsessed with the Titanic Disaster. She even went on the 100th anniversary commemorative cruise out of England and had period costumes sewn for the occasion. She knows everything there is to know about the Titanic. I only like hearing about disasters if there is a happy ending to the story, which there rarely is, although I must admit I spent a good chunk of my adolescence reading about the Black Death.
What disasters have you experienced. Which famous disasters fascinate you?
Today’s post comes to use from Steve. Photo credit: CNN.com
I fell in love with movies when I was a kid. Every Saturday I’d walk six blocks to the Capitol Theater, a dime and a nickel in my jeans pocket. The dime bought a ticket good for two movies, usually two cowboy movies or two Tarzans. The nickel got me a box of Mason Dots. When empty, the Dots box functioned as a rude sort of horn so I could signal my disgust when a cowboy hero smooched his girl.
In 1953 our family got a television set so we could watch the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. We went on to fulfill that classic Fifties cliché: we bought TV trays so we could eat TV Dinners while watching TV shows. But nobody in our family cared much for television. The programming back then was limited and lame. I much preferred movies.
I saw several wonderful films in the years just before and after graduating from high school. A short list from that time would include: The Apartment, Tunes of Glory, Lolita, Wild Strawberries, Bridge Over the River Kwai, Seven Samurai, The African Queen, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, To Kill a Mockingbird, Wild River, The Miracle Worker and Tom Jones. Those movies convinced me film-making at its best can work wonders.
Decades later I mostly gave up going to movie theaters because by then I had a superb home theater in my basement. I compiled a library of films on tape or DVD disks. In the 1980s movie rental shops suddenly sprouted like mushrooms after a rain. I welcomed them because I loved watching films in the comfort of my own home. At the checkout counter at Blockbuster a clerk once mused, “You’re a good customer. You’ve rented over 200 films from us this year.” I gulped. Blockbuster was one of three rental shops I was using that year.
All of that has changed. I now struggle to find one film a week worth viewing. In the past I waited impatiently for each week’s new rental offerings. When I joined Netflix I had nearly two dozen films on my queue. Today my queue has only three movies, and my expectations are low for two of them. The irony of this is that I have more free time now than at any time in my life, and yet I struggle to find films worth watching. I wonder how things came to this.
Perhaps watching several hundred movies has spoiled me. After seeing so many films they begin to look the same. Plots become formulaic. Dialogue becomes predictable. As a writer I can see how film writers manipulate plot lines and character to produce crises that feel phony or forced. Actors who once seemed fresh can become boring after you’ve seen them in similar roles several times. Maybe I’m jaded.
Or maybe Hollywood has mostly stopped making films that could interest me. I want to blame Star Wars. Ever since Star Wars rewarded its makers with incredible ticket sales, movie companies have struggled to produce a few incredibly expensive movies. It now costs between 200 and 300 million dollars to make a summer hit film. Production houses concentrate on films that appeal to teen boys, including teen boys all around the world. And movies seem obsessed with zombies, spacemen, dinosaurs and superheroes. Any good idea for a movie is sure to be franchised . . . and quite a few bad ideas, too.
Last week I read an article celebrating “the new canon,” the twenty-three best films made since 2000. I hoped the article would point to promising new films for me. Instead, the list was filled with films I had seen and didn’t enjoy. Most film on the list struck me as bleak, cynical and violent. I was startled by how differently the author of that article and I felt about these films. For him they were modern cinematic classics. For me most of the new classics were unacceptably gloomy and ugly.
In spite of efforts to avoid gory movies, I sometimes goof. A positive review caused me to rent a film called John Wick. I’ve never seen anything so bloody. Wick kills 77 people. Of course, there will be a sequel. I just read that the body count in John Wick 2 is 128, which is just what I would have predicted. Any guesses on the body count for John Wick 3?
Has your taste in films evolved over time? Do you have any favorites to recommend?
I had a long day yesterday. No fault of mine – just an enormous number of little fires to put out besides the one that needed attending. A hard deadline this morning meant I just had to push through and accept that I would be working quite late. As a confirmed morning person, I reacted to the impending late night by abandoning the healthy lunch I brought for pizza, downing one can of caffeinated pop and then one bottle of caffeinated pop. Then I had a bag of chips and a bag of trail mix for dinner. Dreadful behavior and of course, I eventually ended up at home late with a headache and a queasy stomach.
How do YOU get a second (or third) wind when you need it?
Trail Baboon 