Life's Poetic Moments

Dear George,

I am taking two poetry classes this term, basic and advanced.  We have a weekly homework assignment in each, and I usually write a few extra as well for good luck.  Hence, I’m wallowing in poems.  Lately I’ve been writing about anecdotes from everyday life.  Here are some examples.

Love,

Dave

Regular Eggs

Camping in the U.P.

my spouse sent me to the corner store

to pick up a dozen eggs

I found a cooler containing cartons of eggs

but half were labelled “Low Sodium”

and the other half, “Low Gluten”

I just wanted regular eggs

I searched for a different cooler 

but no luck

A lady my age walked by with her cart

I asked if she knew where the regular eggs are

explaining all I could find

were low sodium eggs and gluten-free eggs

She smiled

“All eggs,” she explained gently

“are low in sodium and low in gluten.”

“These are just labeled for the health nuts”

Sheepishly, I picked out a dozen low sodium eggs

As it turned out, they were

just as tasty as

regular eggs

(as long as you added some salt)

Lost and Found

On my way home from the Library

I happened to glance down

and lying there on the sidewalk

a shiny silver stylus

identical to the one I use to

tap out messages on my iPhone

My heart skipped a beat  

These cost ten to fifteen dollars

I could use a spare stylus

In fact, at that very moment

I had my own stylus

in my trouser pocket

I reached in to get it out 

to compare

with my new stylus

Much to my surprise

my own stylus wasn’t in my pocket 

Then I realized

I had dropped my stylus on the sidewalk

on the first half of my walk

And then I had found it again 

on the second half

In brief, I had found my own stylus

I was disappointed

not to have two styluses

But also happy not to have zero

And I was grateful to be the finder 

It could have been a five-year-old child 

Now I am curious how many possessions

I lose on my walks

I have started to keep an eye out

Sleep Music

The last concert of the season

A string trio playing

J. S. Bach

“The Goldberg Variations”

Thirty-six variations composed by J. S.

“for the refreshment of the spirit”

Number 36, an aria entitled

“Cabbage and beets have driven me away”

The Variations reminded me of

the sleep music that my spouse plays

on the radio

when she turns off the light 

And, in fact, I soon found myself nodding off

Always a bit embarrassing

When I woke I noticed a woman in black to my left

whose head kept dipping down

and jerking up

The couple next to her seemed in a comatose state

A man straight ahead of me was either

asleep or stricken by an unknown condition 

Another man had his head resting on his chest

What, I wondered,

if the entire audience falls asleep?

The trio will no doubt  continue

dedicated, as they are, to completing 

all thirty-six Variations  

Marital Meetings: My Brilliant Idea

Dear George,

Katja and I seem to be in a state of lethargy.  We’ve started our OLLI courses at the university, but, aside from that, we haven’t managed to go anywhere or do anything for some time.  I’m worried that this time is going to slip by and we won’t have done anything.  

Given that we have been married for 58 years, this inaction probably isn’t too surprising.  For my senior paper at Antioch as a Psychology major, I wrote about research on interpersonal communication.  I don’t remember too much about my paper, but one study has stood out in my mind all these years.  Researchers somewhere — I think in the northeast — placed microphones in every room in middle class married couples homes that were activated every time that anyone talked.  They discovered that, on average, married couples talked to one another about six minutes a day.  I can’t remember for sure whether they used years of marriage as a variable or not, but my vague sense is that, the longer the marriage, the less the talk.  (I did run across a recent British study that found that couples married fifty years or more only talked three minutes per hour while dining together at a restaurant.)   

I’d like to believe that Katja and I talk more than five minutes a day, but I wouldn’t be willing to bet money on it.  We’ve pretty much staked out different parts of the house as our territories.  Katja owns the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, the den, and the bedroom, where she’s busy either doing tasks, watching TV, or napping.  I spend most of my time in our two rooms that have computers — our son J’s former bedroom and what I affectionately refer to as my junk room.  We do get together for one or two meals a day, but Katja usually does a Jumble while I work on a Sudoku puzzle or read the depressing New York Times editorials.  

The other day I came up with an idea that marriages can be rejuvenated by having “Marital Meetings”.  I got this idea while watching a trailer for a TV sitcom where the mother told the kids to get ready for the family meeting.  I guess family meetings are pretty common.  I don’t know if anybody’s ever thought of a marital meeting before, but it seems like a logical extension.  I haven’t told Katja about this yet, but I have been mentally working on this idea.  The mission would be to improve our marriage by actually talking to one another.  Marital meetings could be done more frequently or less, of course, but I think a weekly meeting would be about right.  It would be good to have it for a fixed time.  Right now I’m thinking of 7:30 on Sunday night.  We’ll have had dinner and a glass of wine.  We’d be excited because it’s just before The Durrells on Corfu on PBS.  That means we would need to stop by 8:00.  I think that should be plenty.  

All committee meetings have to have a leader, and this would be true of marital meetings too.  Perhaps we’ll have an election.  Katja’s much more talkative than I, so perhaps she should be the leader.  On the other hand, it might be sensible for the quieter partner to have that job.  In any case, we’ll work that out.  The leader, of course, is responsible for compiling an agenda.  Both persons can contribute, and this should be done in advance of the meeting and publicly announced, perhaps by posting it on the refrigerator.  Some agenda items that I already have in mind: going over the local recycling rules; agreeing that the thermostat ought to be set at 73 for air conditioning; discussing of why we aren’t going camping any more; cancelling all the store catalogs that come in the mail; not watching the shopping channel on TV, etc.  I’m sure these topics would all be of mutual interest, and Katja is likely to have some other ideas of her own.  

The only time that I’ve ever done anything close to a marital meeting was when I was a teenager and my father ordered my mother to hold weekly meetings with my brother Steven and I to discuss how we could get along without killing each other.  Actually I hated these meetings, and I tried to say as little as I possibly could.  My mother said that if we kept fighting all the time (or maybe she said if I kept torturing my brother all the time) we would never like one another as adults.  This, of course, did not prove to be true.  But, even though these youthful family meetings were a bust, I’m still hopeful about the prospects of marital meetings.  We are, after all, more mature (or at least I think we are).   I plan to mention this idea to Katja next week.  I think she’ll be enthusiastic.  If it works out, I will get back to you with a report.

Love,

Dave

Summer 2018: A Photo-Diary

Dear George,

If you asked me in a noncritical moment how many summers I’ve lived, I’d probably say somewhere around 400.  It does seem like that, but 400 is definitely inaccurate.  When you’re 80, you’ve (of course) lived 80 or 81 summers, and you might have only 5 or 10 more to go.  That fact of life does make summers quite precious.  Now that we’re entering a new season, I’ve been thinking how our summer went.  It did go by in a whiz, and I don’t remember too many highlights.  However, when I looked at the accumulated photos on our computer, more things did come back.  So I decided to make a photo diary of the season.

Love,

Dave

One of the best parts of the summer was when our NOLA family — J, K, and our grandkids, V and L — visited us in Cincinnati for a long weekend in early July. 

The art museum held its exhibition of Terracotta Warriors from ancient China — truly astonishing.   

We enjoyed four Cincinnati Opera productions this season: La Traviata, The Coronation of Poppea, The Flying Dutchman, and Another Brick in the Wall (image source: Cinc. Business Courier).  

The Butler County Fair in nearby Hamilton excelled in soft fuzzy rabbits.  

Patrick O’Daugherty’s “Twisted” display at the Taft Museum was a work of genius.  

The highlight of the Boone County Fair was the beauty pageant for one-year-olds.  

We enjoyed seeing John Isner and McKenzie MacDonald at the Western & Southern Open.  

Phyllis and I went on our annual outing to the Brookville Flea Market in rural Indiana.  

We travelled to New Orleans for J’s art opening at the Newman Gallery — so thrilling.  

Then from NOLA we had a relaxing beach vacation in Destin, Florida.  

Home again, I went off on a camping trip to Winton Woods county park.  

Good Camping Recipes

Dear George,

Aside from microwaving Lean Cuisines and tossing salads with iceberg lettuce, I don’t do much cooking at home.  When I go camping though, I carefully pick and prepare a menu from the many dozens of camping recipes that I’ve accumulated over the years.  As a contribution to the public well-being, I describe a few of my favorites here.

Love,

Dave

BREAKFAST

Breakfast Hash (serves 4)

Ingredients:

3-4 medium potatoes, diced

1 package sausage links, diced 

1 medium onion, chopped 

1 cup sliced mushrooms

1 cup diced red, green, yellow pepper 

8 eggs, beaten 

1 1/2 - 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese

How to prepare:

Cook the potatoes in a buttered skillet for about ten minutes.  Then add the sausage, Onion, mushroom, and pepper.  Cook until the potatoes are cooked through.  Pour in the beaten eggs, and cook until the eggs are done.  Top with shredded cheese, and let it melt.  (Note: the various vegetables are optional.  Crumbled fried bacon can be substituted for sausage links.)  

Cheeseburger Breakfast (serves 2)

Ingredients: 

2 Hamburger patties 

6 eggs 

Shredded cheese

Salt and pepper 

How to Prepare: 

Fry the hamburger patties, and then set them aside.  Scramble the eggs in the hamburger grease.  While the eggs are cooking, cut the burger patties into bite sized pieces.  When the eggs are done, remove from heat, add the burger pieces and cheese, and let sit for a minute or two till the cheese is melted.  Add salt and pepper.  

Grilled Breakfast Sandwich (serves two)

Ingredients: 

4  eggs 

1/4 cup milk 

2 - 4  slices of Black Forest Ham 

2 - 4  slices of cheddar or American cheese 

4 - 6  slices of white bread 

Maple syrup 

How to Prepare: 

Beat the eggs, pour in milk, and mix together.  Dip bread in the mixture and cook both sides until golden.  Add one slice of cheese and one slice of ham between two slices of the cooked bread.  Serve with maple syrup.  

LUNCH OR SUPPER

Ground Beef Stroganoff  (serves 4)

Ingredients: 

1 pound ground beef 

1 small onion, finely chopped 

1 can cream of mushroom soup 

1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce 

black pepper, to taste 

granulated garlic, to taste 

cooked noodles 

How to Prepare:  

Brown meat in saute pan. Discard fat. Add chopped onions and cook until transparent. Add cream of mushroom soup (but no water), Worcestershire sauce, black pepper, and garlic. Simmer. Serve over cooked noodles.  (Note: can substitute sliced chicken breasts for ground beef.)     

Skillet Scramble (serves 4)

Ingredients: 

1 lb ground beef (or ground sausage, ground turkey, etc.)

1 medium bell pepper 

1 medium red pepper 

1 medium onion 

3 medium tomatoes 

6 large eggs 

1/2 cup shredded cheese (or 4 slices work) 

Salsa

Salt, pepper 

How to Prepare: 

Brown meat, onion, pepper, tomatoes, and seasonings. Drain.  Add eggs and scramble all together until eggs are done. Take off heat and add cheese on top to melt.  Serve with salsa on the side (optional).  

Fried Fish Fillets with Lemon Mustard Butter  (serves 4) 

Ingredients: 

4 medium sized fish fillets (e.g., trout)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup milk

1/2 cup flour

3 tablespoons oil

5 tablespoons butter

2 1/2 teaspoons French style mustard

1 teaspoon parsley flakes

2 tablespoons lemon juice 

How to Prepare: 

 Mix the salt and milk together. Dip each fillet in the mixture, then roll in flour. Heat the oil and 3 tablespoons of the butter in a large skillet or pan. Fry the fish until they are tender and crispy. Remove fish from the pan and keep warm.  Quickly stir the mustard, the remaining butter, and the parsley flakes into the butter in the pan. Add the lemon juice, bring to a boil, and pour the hot lemon-mustard butter over the fish.

Quick & Easy Chicken Stir Fry (serves 2) 

Ingredients: 

Rice (or noodles, pasta)

Chicken (or sausage, bacon, etc.) 

Assorted vegetables (e.g., peppers, onions, mushrooms, beans, carrots, broccoli)

Pasta sauce (or curry sauce, Chinese sauce, etc.)  

How to Prepare: 

Cut up the meat and put it in a heated pan with a little oil.  Once the meat has browned,  add the chopped vegetables.  Stir fry, then add 

a jar of pasta sauce.  Serve with rice or noodles.

This and That

Dear George,

We’re trying to adjust to being back home after an exciting vacation in New Orleans with our family.  We did lots of things there, and now we are suffering from some sort of post-vacation lethargy.  Partly this is because the U.S. Open has been going on for two weeks, and ESPN has been broadcasting matches daily from 11 a.m. to 12 midnight.  This is an awful lot of tennis to watch, but we have done our best, probably averaging five or six hours a day.  Basically this amounts to watching two players hit a ball back and forth across a net until one of them misses.  For us as viewers, this has amounted to about 25,000 hits so far (e.g., 4,000 serves, 11,000 forehands, 7,000 backhands, and 3,000 volleys).  You’d think that that might get boring, but, in fact, we’ve gotten more obsessed as time has gone on.  By and large, the results have been painful.  We started out rooting for our favorites, Roger Federer and Maria Sharapova.  Maria, plagued with unforced errors, lost in the round of 16, and Roger, who said he couldn’t breathe in the hot muggy New York air, played the worst match of his career in the quarter-finals.   We still had hope for Sloane Stephens and Raphael Nadal, but 3rd- seeded Sloane was soundly defeated by the 19th seed, and Rafa had to retire from his semi-final match because of tendonitis.  I’ll be relieved when the Open is over. 

When we came back from NOLA, I asked Katja to stop cooking for me since I was going to go on my Spartan weight-loss diet.  That was nine days ago, and so far I’ve lost nine pounds.  I’ve always been fairly successful losing weight when I set out to do it seriously, although I realize I will to hit a plateau any day now.  I drink lots of water and have cut back to two meals per day.  For brunch I have a few ounces of sliced turkey, some cole slaw, and some cottage cheese.  For supper, tossed salad with tuna and or cottage cheese.  I don’t actually get too hungry.  The main drawback is that I’ve been having a terrible time sleeping.  As far as I can tell from the Internet, dieting makes your body restless and it protests by staying awake.  I will try drinking a little milk before bedtime and see if that helps.

Another source of sleeplessness cropped up when Katja asked me to type and print a letter for her requesting that a California company stop sending her skin care products.  It turns out she purchased a product that she saw advertised on TV, and now they are sending her unordered products every couple of weeks.  I looked up the company on the Internet, and they immediately turned up on “Ripoff.com".  All their customers have the same complaint.  The company sends products without asking and charges $125 per shipment.  They tell people that they cannot return products and they can’t give refunds.  I, of course, have gone slightly insane, begging Katja to contact her credit card companies to cancel future payments.   At present she’s thinking about the best course of action.  

I try to find solace in writing poetry, but I’ve been suffering from writer’s block ever since our OLLI poetry workshop ended nine weeks ago.  I apparently have become dependent on the teacher to give a homework assignment before I can figure out what to write about.  Instead of anything new, I’ve been working on revising some old poems that I’d never completed.  Some of the titles are: Foul Air; The Downhill Slide; Near the Bed of Death; Night Terrors; and Narcissistic Angst.   I’ve been putting some of these on a blog called “Funny Poems Maybe”, but Katja pointed out that most aren’t that funny.  Oh well, that’s my early September report.  Now I’m off to watch the U.S. Open Women’s Final.

Love,

Dave

Art Shows and Sea Air

Dear George,

We are just back from an 11-day vacation which combined our son J’s art shows with sunning on the beach.  It’s hard to imagine a better mix.  On our first day we went to the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in downtown New Orleans.  The Ogden is holding its annual “Louisiana Contemporary” show, featuring 25 Louisiana artists who represent “the vibrant visual arts culture of Louisiana”.  Two of J’s duct tape works were selected for the exhibition.  The two works (shown below) are “Bienville’s Deception” and “Higgins Boat at Normandy”.  The Higgins Boat piece was used to promote the exhibition on New Orleans streetcars.   

These two works are part of a mammoth duct tape project J has undertaken over the last year or so in conjunction with New Orleans’ Tricentennial.  In his words, “My plan was to start with the Native Americans living and trading on what is today’s Bayou St. John and then go on to portray the arrival of Bienville, the European colonization of New Orleans, the Americanization of the city after the Louisiana Purchase, the Civil War, the subsequent Reconstruction era, the age of Storyville and Jazz, and finally the modern era.”  There are sixty-five pieces in the whole collection, about fifty of which are currently being shown at the Isidore Newman School’s Reynolds-Ryan Gallery at 5333 Danneel St. in NOLA.  One can see the whole collection at nola300caughtontape.com.  

We celebrated the Newman opening with a family brunch at Commander’s Palace, one of NOLA’s great historic restaurants.  Our grandchildren, L and V, turn ten next month and have become perfectly at home at fancy dining outings.  We all had a joyous time.  

We left New Orleans last Sunday morning for Destin, FL, about 270 miles away.  We stayed at a Marriott hotel across Highway 98 from Henderson State Beach Park with its glorious white sand beaches.  I spent a lot of time in the ocean while Katja was content to read Homer’s Odyssey on the beach.  We celebrated our 58th anniversary at Emeril Lagasse’s new Sandestin restaurant, Emeril’s Coastal Italian. 

This was an ideal way to wind up the summer.  Soon we begin OLLI classes, with Katja studying British detective mysteries and me writing some mysterious poems.

Love,

Dave