Pam's Tall Tales

Rocking Away the Pain

For some time now I've been thinking of buying a Rocking Horse.   I have a good excuse of course: to lure my curly-haired Grandson, Graham, over to his Granny's more often.  But the truth is that I'm buying it for myself. Like the complete set of Noggin the Nog and Beatrix Potter books that I bought regardless of the fact that Graham would not be able to read them for at least five years, this horse is the latest step in the wonderful trip down memory lane to our own childhood that grandparents are entitled to indulge in. 

I started off casually perusing the web only to find that Rocking Horses of the kind I was looking for barely exist in the U.S. After much searching I found a lovely pair of battered old  nags on Etsy. I thought of doing them up but the transport logistics, involving a Greyhound bus from South Carolina to the Port Authority bus station, NY, then somehow carting them across Manhattan were complicated.   They were not quite as large as I had hoped for, and I wasnt sure I had the skills to restore them from their precarious state.  So although I see a nice business development opportunity opening up here once I retire, find a stable and a woodwork class, I decided to take a pass.

One of Two Horses at the Parson's Pleasure Shop on Etsy

I turned instead to investigating how to bring a new horse over from the UK. There is  only one US shop in Pennsylvania, PucciManuli,  that will order hand-carved horses from Stevenson Brothers. These are the kind that Vogue features and the Queen endorses for her Gt. Grandchildren.  The steel grey dappled steed was very tempting and I nearly went ahead. But, his daintiness gave me cause to pause, as did his prohibitively expensive price tag and shipping costs, which would have put a serious dent in my Grandson's college fund. 

 

Stevenson Brothers Dappled Steel Grey Horse

 

There were many beautiful old hand-carved F. H. Ayers horses on Ebay but few were large or could be shipped abroad and many were more collectors items suitable to be viewed and admired rather than ridden.  Then I found what I was really looking for, a huge sturdy old Collinson's horse, named Sudbury. Collinson's were one of the longest running family firms of rocking horse makers in the UK. Queen Victoria is said to have visited their Liverpool factory and picked out a dappled grey. For me Collinsons horses are linked to hospitals. As a child I underwent what was almost a universal right of passage for my generation, having my tonsils and appendix out before starting school. It was a bit traumatic, not the operations of which I have no memory at all, but because visiting hours were very strictly limited to 30 minutes/evening and you were wrenched away from home for a week while feeling poorly. Two memories linger: one of being smacked by a bossy nurse  to make me swallow  ice cream for my burning throat, and the other, more comforting one, was of riding the huge Collinson Rocking Horse that stood in the middle of the ward.  Sudbury looks just like him. He's  the right vintage and is a big old powerful steed, a noble charger you can gallop on all day.

 

Sudbury from Sally's Rocking Horses

 

I thought I was alone in this desire for these stylized old horses with their fiery red eyes. but this is not the case. In my websearches I came across Blackie an enormous horse that belonged to the Liverpool Department Store, Blacklers. When the store closed after 60 years of service Blackie was "put out to grass" at Alder Hey Childrens Hospital.  The beloved Blackie brought  so much joy to so many shoppers and poorly children that he has been installed in the Museum of Liverpool. His website is filled with torrents of love and reminiscences from people of my age group who rode him as children all those years ago, some like me to rock away the pain of their sore throats. 

 

Image from Museum of Liverpool website

  

Blackie 

 

http://www.sallysrockinghorses.com

http://blog.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/2007/06/blackie-the-rocking-horse/

http://www.rockinghorses.uk.net

http://www.rockinghorsesrule.co.uk/page_2350191.html

http://www.fineenglishrockinghorses.com/page_2531045.html

http://www.oldrockinghorses.com/index.html

http://www.collinson-rocking-horses.co.uk

 

 

Milwaukee Art Gallery

A few years ago, when the funding first got tough, on a day when I was feeling downtrodden, an email flew into my inbox like an angel on the wing. A colleague had written to tell me of an endowed chair.  A few days later I got the call - come out and give us a seminar, stay a few days and see how you feel about it. My hosts  were  very gracious.  They spoke of the difficulties in recruiting candidates to the mid-west from east coast institutions.  As one faculty member there put it, they have to counter "The Stockholm Syndrome that keeps scientists from leaving institutions that are money-driven hollow vestiges of their former glorious academic past".  Milwaukee perhaps had a harder time as  for many it remains linked to Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer, and Fonzie (Henry Winkler), the star of the TV series, Happy Days .  

I found Milwaukee to be an interesting town, a proud industrial behemoth built on "beers and gears", home to the producers of Miller's Ale and lawn mowers - not unlike the Manchester area where I grew up.  The  local bratwurst, heavy architecture, and stocky populace are all products of the bavarian diaspora that came here to farm at the turn of the century.  It also has a lively counter culture, a veritable "east village-like" demi-monde centered around Brady Street. Its Historic Third Ward could compete with Soho for fashionable lofts and coffee shops and its central canal and new waterfront development aspire to an Amsterdam mode of living.  

Three other things were  persuasive. First the ladies.  The position was to be endowed by friends of the deceased and it was clear that the decision rested firmly with the women. One, who was herself unwell,  placed her hand on my arm in a way  in a profound and inspiring way that  conveyed - we trust and support you - do your best.  Then there were the "lady riders".  Milwaukee is  the home of Harley Davidson, and the Lady Riders, as my hosts explained, were an highly effective fund-raising foundation of motor cyclists.   The third was the Milwaukee Art Gallery. It houses a superb collection of expressionist German art but the building itself is truly spectacular. I could have stood all day in the soothing serenity of the dappled light that poured in through its oval window that opens on to the blue expanse of Lake Michigan.  The Trustees had great insight to persuade the Spanish architect, Calatrava, to design their outside public space. He created  a structure, somewhere between a sail and whales fin, that opens in a spectacular undulating motion reminiscent of a ray swimming. It is as awe-inspiring as the Sydney Opera House and a testiment both to  the architect and the the burgher work ethic that strove to make possible such a truly magnificent building.

On my last visit the airport televisions blared stories of the endless foreclosures sweeping across the nation.  Midwest airlines, who would have flown me back and forth cheaply to New York, with the dogs for free, went under. Endowments sank countrywide pitching academia into a brutal meltdown. So in the end I didnt go, but I save a soft spot for Milwaukee, its strong supportive women and its beautiful symbol of civic pride by "the shining big-sea water".

 

My Husband's Love Affair with Siri

 

The Long Suffering Husband excitedly burst out of the shower this morning to tell me Siri's latest:“Siri” he asked “How did the Detroit Tigers do last night”. There was a slight pause then she replied: "They thumped the Minnesota Twins 8:1". Enraptured he stomped around in his towel yelling “She said thumped - thumped”! Ironically, in real life he’s the silent type. Yet here he was smitten with his own personal electronic siren. 

Of course the central seductive elements of Siri are that she takes commands and can be molded by her owner. Its not her fault - she was made that way. Like 1950’s secretaries, she’s designed “to make life easier and more fun”. It only adds to her appeal that in addition to behaving like a faithful genie in a bottle she’s blind to the faults of her master and doesn’t know he snores like a freight train.  

“Hmm, what else have you been asking Siri lately" I inquired casually, all the while thinking: “Well, thanks be to God they haven’t yet made blow up dolls that read the base ball scores or the human race might go extinct”.  On he chirped: “Well a few days ago I asked her: “Siri, can you sing to me in the car”. Now, last Xmas, we came to an understanding that I would buy him the requested CD by Nora Jones provided her breathy songs were restricted to the car but crooning along with Siri was a new development. As it turned out, Siri had declined,  replying coyly "David, you know I can’t sing". To which the old billy goat had responded "But I can teach you". "You? teach me!" she purred. "Yes" he simpered. Then, like any real life woman whose been cornered by some old codger demanding that his ego be stroked, she  gave a repost that made me laugh: "That figures".

Make no mistake there is a subculture out there, of men, whiling away the hours, flirting with Siri, the full extent of which is known only to Siri and, of course as we now know, to the NSA.  One can only imagine the treasure trove the latter must have gathered on politicians caught unawares, iphone in hand. What, for example, might the candidates in the recent New York City Primaries have whispered to Siri on their lonely campaign trails? Did Siri discretely locate and keep a list of Eliot Spitzer’s call girls?   Did she activate the camera flash for the now infamous below-the-belt snap of Anthony Weiner and then take revenge by Twittering it to his public rather than private  account. 

Lately I've been musing on how to tap into this aspect of Siri’s adaptability so that she can, by becoming just a tad more Mae West, make my life "easier and more fun”.  Already, when the Long Suffering Husband tells her  “Call Pam”.  She replies  “Your wife or the other Pam” (in this case innocent enough since the other Pam happens to be his sister).  But now I’m planning to have her lure him into her confidence with a few sassy lines like “David, Do you really want me to call the old bitch again?  - you know she doesn’t appreciate you - when's the last time she cooked you dinner?”.  Once he’s snookered in to the point of confiding “Siri, its terrible, my wife hasn’t made me dinner in weeks” I'll train her to say  “But Honey, did you remember the flowers” - or - “Well, maybe you do need to lose a little weight around the edges”

I also think Siri could be upgraded to successfully  help with a variety of common husbandly "arrested development" and “wardrobe malfunctions” issues.  
When he asks her “Siri where can I buy a shirt” she could petulantly reply “David, I’m not your mother, next you'll be asking me to buy your damned socks and underwear as well!” But when he insists she’ll say
“OK, go to Lord and Taylor and while you’re there ditch the mighty whities and buy some snazzy boxers”. While he’s shopping and asking her advice she’ll say: "David what are you wearing" and when he replies she'll say “That sounds nice, but David,
surely you’re not wearing those hideous grey socks pulled half way up your calves and the long shorts with twenty-five individual zippered compartments that house your penknife collection are you?”

 

 

Winslow Homer's Adirondacks

Adirondack-Lake

We have just spent a week in the Adirondacks, the pristine mountain range in the north of New York that was the setting for Fennimore Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans".  Besides scenes, from the movie of the same name, of Daniel Day Lewis running bare-chested through the woods, nothing captures the beauty of the Adirondacks and its forboding wildness like the watercolors of Winslow Homer. Homer spent many summers hunting, fishing and painting water colors of his guides, dogs, fish and deer.

Three-Men-in-a-Canoe

Homer was a New Englander who learnt to paint water colors from his mother and became a commercial illustrator. He disliked his official job and after achieving fame, his advice to younger artists was  "Look at nature, work independently, and solve your own problems." He painted the area in the 1880's during the time when  Lake George became an attractive destination for wealthy New Yorkers to escape the heat of the city by steaming up the Hudson to spend their summers in Grand Hotels  along the Lake. 

Canoe-in-the-Rapids

We stayed in a beautiful 3-storey log house belonging to one of the oldest of these hotels, Trout House Resort.  The resort itself, which lies on the shore of Lake George  has undergone a number of reincarnations over the years and now comprises a series of log cabins nestled in the little town of Hague. Our house, "Seven Gables", was built deeper into the woods by the current owner, Mr. Scott Patchett, and constructed from logs cleared from the site. Mr Patchett's woodmill was down the lane. Perhaps for this reason our daughter one day made the unfortunate mistake of calling him Mr. Hatchet.

Woodchopper-in-the-Adirondacks

 Seven Gables was near enough to a Pharaoh Wilderness Preserve for us to find  tracks that looked like those of a bear crossing the path from steep woods down to the stream. The dogs, picking up the scent, dragged us into the ditch there every day. 

The-Woodcutter

The village of Hague has become very quaint. Twenty years ago  the General Store sold wellington boots, flashlights and fish bait. Now it sells artisan loaves and gourmet sandwiches. A superb little organic restaurant advertizing "home-cooked food" has opened up in the old drapery opposite. If I ever wished for a weekend house on a lake this is where I would look for a cottage. 

The-Adirondack-Guide

In the past, Hague,was  famous for an incident in which Ottawa indians fighting in the French and Indian war captured and cannablized British soldiers at Sabbath Day Point. Later,  together with the neighboring town of Ticonderoga,  it became famous for its graphite mining and its main street is called Graphite Mountain Road.  It was also infamous at the turn of the century for the Lake George Monster. George, as he is known, was a wooden tail- waving fish contraption that could be mechanically activated to leap out of the water and frighten unsuspecting tour groups.  This hoax was cooked up by a painter Harry Watrose to scare his fishing rival, Colonel William Mann, owner of a scandalous newspaper. George generated several scandals of his own before being decommisioned and shipped to the Carribbean to perform in street carnivals. However he has recently returned and is installed in the Hague community center. 

Home is where the heart is - but where is that?

 

    Sometimes, as the sun sets on the Hudson and a calm pink glow extends over the expanse of Manhattan spread out before my living room window, I look out over the city and think of Reverend Eli Jenkins in Dylan Thomas's "Under Milkwood" as he throws open his windows each morning, and in his lovely welsh lilt, issues a blessing on his adopted town.

By Golden Grove 'neath Grongar,

But let me choose and oh! I should

Love all my life and longer

To stroll among our trees and stray

In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down,

And hear the Dewi sing all day,

And never, never leave the town.

Other times - when its a really good day - I think about  Walt Whitman's poem Miracles 

Why, who makes much of a miracle?

As to me I know of nothing else but miracles,

Whether I walk the streets of Manhattan,

Or dart my sight over the roofs of houses toward the sky,

Or wade with naked feet along the beach just in the edge of the water,

Or stand under trees in the woods,

Or talk by day with any one I love, or sleep in the bed at night with any one I love,

Or sit at table at dinner with the rest,

Or look at strangers opposite me riding in the car,

Or watch honey-bees busy around the hive of a summer forenoon,

Or animals feeding in the fields,

Or birds, or the wonderfulness of insects in the air,

Or the wonderfulness of the sundown, or of stars shining so quiet and bright,

Or the exquisite delicate thin curve of the new moon in spring;

These with the rest, one and all, are to me miracles,

The whole referring, yet each distinct and in its place.

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle,

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle,

Every square yard of the surface of the earth is spread with the same,

Every foot of the interior swarms with the same.

To me the sea is a continual miracle,

The fishes that swim—the rocks—the motion of the waves—the ships with men in them,

What stranger miracles are there? 

    But there are other days....... when, despite  twenty years of practice that allow me to say with certainty that I could sleep in the middle of a six lane highway,  the honking of those friday night commuters - all too eager to flee down the The Midtown Tunnel to Long Island - becomes unbearable.  Days when the cold hearted canyons and towers of the Wall Street Downtown District glower on the skyline like ostentatious cemetery sepulchers in praise of mammon. Then I yearn for the incomparable greenness of Cheshire, for the blue expanse of the Cheshire plain, for the stonewalls crisscrossing the hills and the view of The Cloud - the last outcrop of the Pennine chain.

I come to these thoughts again because The Long-Suffering Husband has lately voiced a similar yearning - but for a different place.  A  cabin on a remote lake in the Upper Pennisua of Michigan, one that once belonged to his  parents, recently came up for sale. He expressed his desire to buy it, and, as I well understand this yearning, I foolishly said "Go ahead".  After our recent pleasant dalliances in breezy Newport and a pleasant balmy stay in the civility of Charleston I imagined we had finally put behind us all those sweaty holidays on mosquito ridden lakes. But now the bugs have literally come back to bite me. Of course there is no logic to this decision. We live two days drive or an eight hour flight away and so until we retire could spend less than three weeks a year there at most.   But all diaspora hanker for a precious toe-hold in their past and, in these matters, the heart must have its way. On the bright side there are wolves up there - five hundred and four of them in the last count - so perhaps, when it snows and the bugs have gone it too will be full of natures miracles.

Heidelberg in Spring

Heidelberg Castles and Alte Brucke

I am writing what is likely to be my last grant.  If awarded, my scientific life will be spared for five more years - and that will allow me to bring my contribution to science to completion and take me to a respectable age for retirement. If not, and the current  <7% odds at the NIH are definitely not in my favor, then despite the acknowledged unfairness of the situation, I will be unceremoniously stripped of lab space, dusted into a closet and psychologically pressured into early retirement.  All in the service of raising our ratings in the US News and World Report, a rag whose only purpose is to make a facile superficial ranking of US Medical Schools, based in part on NIH dollars per square foot. Such is the life of a US scientist. The hard-earned Cell, Science and Nature publications and the letters from peers attesting to ones standing that rightfully gained us tenure in the past now count for naught – the end will be Darwinian.  To date I have been “lucky” - few of my female colleagues have survived to my age – almost 60 - an age that men of my father’s era used to refer to as “neither use nor ornament”. My older colleagues have fallen by the wayside in droves “to spend more time with their families” - we all know what this means. 

 

A 1911 photograph of Thomas Edison (Library of Congress)

 Be that as it may, my grant writing strategy is, as it always has been, to begin the day by dissipating the anxiety associated with such unfavorable odds and outcomes by fervently putting the more mundane aspects of life in order - the logic being that - if the detritus in the kitchen sink can be tamed - then in the process my thoughts will likewise be brought into order and distilled. It has worked in the past – the epiphany usually comes during the last hour as the final drawer of old socks is excavated.  Creative writers like Doris Lessing, tell the same tale – of days and weeks of seemingly unproductive pacing, of feverish cleaning or daydreaming preceding the emergence of some great novel.  Once, after giving a lecture at UMDNJ, my hosts kindly took me on a tour of Thomas Edison’s laboratory in West Orange, NJ.  Edison had long recognized that he came upon his best inventions after taking afternoon naps and to that end had installed a day bed in his beautiful library to foster and embrace this method.  Somehow intense thinking demands these subliminal rituals to steady the mind and often, as Edison knew, the need “to sleep on it”. 

Yesterday in quest of this necessary Karma, I rose early; it was a beautiful Wednesday market morning. I marshaled the dogs and out we strode in determined husky fashion, on our own private Iditarod to quell the rising tide of panic, past the U.N and on towards Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. There amid the pasture raised eggs, the artisan cheese and the mounds of freshly picked asparagus I found a beautiful bunch of white lilacs -  pervading the market with their perfume. Despite the ludicrousness of straggling home through a sea of commuters, with rambunctious dogs and a backpack full of provisions - I could not resist buying a large bunch of branches. 

The fragrance of fresh lilacs made me swoon. The grim-faced commuters on their way towards a day of drudgery were similarly soothed by their waft and smiled at the blossom branches waving in the breeze and dogs frolicking - a little burst of refreshing life.

This evening the scent of lilac drifting around the apartment reminded me that almost thirty years ago to the day, on a similar chilly May morning, I set out on the big adventure. I took my first flight ever to interview for my postdoctoral position in Heidelberg and had purchased a cut-price airplane ticket (in case I didn’t get the job) - 25 pound sterling return from Eastleigh airport to Frankfurt via Amsterdam. The prop-plane was a low flying hedge-hopper that must have been left over from WW2 – the co-pilot got up mid flight to serve us coffee and boiled sweets to help with the lack of cabin pressure.  “Come for a week in spring when the cherries will be in bloom along the river” my future advisor had said.  Indeed they were – it was “Spargel Season” in the palatinate, the smell of lilacs wafted over Heidelberg and the banks of the Neckar were a riot of pink blossom. It was a pity that it rained relentlessly for all four days, perhaps some heavenly foreboding of a gloomier end. But that day I was young, it was spring, and the air was full of promise. 

Winslow Homer's Yorkshire Fisherwomen

My friend, Victoria Lochhead, recently made an interesting post on some very beautiful  Sutcliff photographs from the 1880's of Whitby fisherwomen.  These photographs instantly reminded me of some unusual paintings, made around the same time by one of my favorite artists, Winslow Homer. Homer was a self-taught illustrator.  He is well known in the USA for his  watercolors of New England seascapes, as well as for two other series of paintings portraying the intense sunlight and ambience of the carribean or the coolness of the forest in scenes of hunting and fishing.  I was initially attracted to him as a painter by the latter paintings because they capture the wild essence of the Adirondacks where we frequently spend our summers, camping on the islands of Lake George off Bolton's landing. Homer is not well known in the UK.  However, he spent three years there, living two houses away from the lifeboat rescue station at Cullercoats, a fishing village on the opposite side of the bay from Whitby. During this time he painted many pictures of the fisherwomen. They are atypical of most of his paintings but he obviously greatly admired and captured their strength and endurance. His biography and complete works can be found at here. 

 

A-Fisher-Girl-on-Beach-(Sketch-for-illustration-of-'The-Incoming-Tide')

 

 

Fisherwives

 

 

Perils-of-the-Sea

 

 

The-Fog-Horn

 

 

Waiting-for-the-Return-of-the-Fishing-Fleet

 

Postcard from Charleston

The New York winter kept us in feather coats until April.  Needing warmth, we booked an early flight and stepped off the plane two hours later into a glorious Charleston, South Carolina spring morning. After crab cake and grits at “High Cotton” we strolled down Church St., the most romantic road in the USA, to photograph the Hugenot church and neighboring pretty pink houses glistening in the sun like iced wedding cakes. 

French Hugenot Church, Charleston, SC

We caught a rip-roaring matinee of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” at the Dock St. Theatre, America’s first theatre that opened 1736 and is now housed in the former Planter’s Hotel, built in 1809. The sun was still shining when the theatre let out so we walked along the sea wall to get our bearings and capture the “Rainbow Row” of seafarers houses lining the Battery.  The Battery was built to protect Charleston from Spanish marauders and was also the site where Colonel William Rhett hung pirates at low tide cutting loose their bodies at high tide as fodder for the sharks and alligators. 

Pink House Church St, Charleston, SC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Row, Charleston SC

Charleston was founded in 1670 and one of the earliest British colonies run by the Lord Proprietors.  Unlike colonies to the North, Charleston had no religious mandate and was populated mainly by British colonials from Barbados. By 1775 is was the fourth largest city in British America after Philadelphia, New York and Boston and its prosperity was based on mercantile trading of indigo and “Carolina Gold” rice harvested from the surrounding plantations.  Following the example of their namesake, Charles II, Charlestonians indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle.  The wealthy planters built enormous, beautiful houses. Many of these old neighborhoods remain intact today thanks to the activities of the Historic Charleston Foundation that holds a “Festival of Houses and Gardens” every April. We signed up for three of their tours. These proved notable not only for the magnificense of the houses but also for the Southern hospitality and amazing hats and bow-ties worn by their lively octogenarian volunteers and guides, who were decked out for the occasion in full Sunday best. 

Charleston house with Wisteria Fence

Charleston is a city of Caribbean pastel houses, balustraded balconies wreathed in confederate jasmine, wrought iron gated secret gardens, palmettos, live oak and crepe myrtle trees swaying with Spanish moss and walls draped in wisteria. It is also a town of good food, pedicabs, a burgeoning art scene and the Spoleto Music Festival. Charleston is good for the soul, charming and dripping in history at every turn of the road.

House with green wrought iron railings

Charleston survived a Great Fire (1740), an earthquake (1868) and two wars of secession.  It won the first battle of the Revolution but fell three years later under bombardment from British canon located on the neighboring islands.  The British told General Moultrie he had “made a gallant defense but that a great many rascals had given them information”.  The British Colonel “Bloody Tarleton” and Sir Henry Clinton then proceeded to illegally overrule the conditions of surrender, demanding oaths of loyalty to the crown from the citizenry and hanging as traitors those who refused.  All this is documented in moving paintings and letters held by the South Carolina Historical Society that occupies the “Fireproof Building” adjacent to federal, state, city and church buildings that make up the “Four Corners of the Law”.

Four Corners of Law, Charleston

eventually the brutality of the British was their undoing. After the war ended Charleston ladies feted George Washington. His statue stands in the park next to the Fireproof building along with tributes to General Beauregard, whose forces fired the first shots on Fort Sumter that started the American Civil War. Fort Sumter stands two miles out from the battery and guards the bay. We took a chilly boat trip and realized 10 minutes out to sea that nothing would be left to see except the Indigo South Carolina flag fluttering in the breeze – it comprises the palmetto and crescent – that commemorate the spongy palmetto stockade and crescent armor that saved General Moultrie from British bombardment.

Mr. Williams Jnr House

Broad Street divided Charleston historically and continues to do so socially to this day. On Monday, we toured the downtown historical district. Here the great fire of 1740 had lead to a preference for brick. Charleston lacks stone, therefore fake stone façade was etched into the stucco and the streets were paved with ships ballast. Houses were packed together with their sides facing the street and balconies, supported by Greek columns of different style on each floor, were erected to catch the sea breeze. On Tuesday, we walked the more northern “suburban” Wentworth, Hassall and Charlotte St. neighborhoods, where the planters moved out to build their larger mansions and town houses.  On Wednesday, we drove to the neighboring Magnolia and Middleton rice plantations for a wine tasting and dinner.  The gardens were a riot of azaleas and Spanish moss. Rice paddies along the river, creeks and reflecting ponds, were replete with alligators. 

Magnolia Plantation

On Thursday we took the Palmetto Carriage Company’s mule ride – I had major misgivings about such an obviously touristy trip – but it was recomended by many locals turned out to be the highlight of the holiday. The guide was extremely knowledgeable and we wished we had taken it earlier in the week. In fact, I was so impressed I was ready to sign up for the pirate re-enactment walking tour run by his best friend in full swash-buckling drag. On Friday, we took one last stroll through the historic district, cruised the art shops, then snuggled into the sofas nestled on the rooftop of Henry’s Bar and ate our final bowl of divine she-crab soup.  It was a great six days.  As we drove to the airport the heavens opened in the wake of an Alabama tornado. By the time we reached New York we needed our feather coats.  

A Frock Too Far

 

Women in the garden - Monet

 

This week was a hypoglycemic whirl. We began our Lenten diet a little late- driven by middle-aged expanding waistlines rather than religious aspiration. The problem with diets is that the planning required to carry them out makes you food-obsessed. On Saturday we stocked the fridge with enough low glycemic vegetables and fish to feed he five thousand. By noon on Sunday, ravenous from a long cold dog walk, we decided to distract ourselves from hunger pangs by going to the Met.  As always, we got lost in Roman antiquities and while backtracking through Polynesian facemasks became subliminally drawn towards the courtyard café and there came to ruin. Clearly, there’s no going back from a mushroom vol-au-vent appetizer. Realizing this fact, we ditched the diet, polished off a lamb ragu with pint of ale, and, caving completely, chased it down with warm chocolate and pear tart.  There was just enough time left after all that to stagger off and take in the new exhibition on “Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity”.

 

The Parisienne - Manet

 

The pictures were a fabulous frenzy of white frocks, bustles and stripes, taffetas and corsets, crinolines and kid gloves. All immortalized in paint by the Impressionists endless quest for modernity. For the most part, the Manet’s and Monet’s painted their mistresses adorned in the latest swag.  

 

The lady in Blue - Corot

 

Two things struck me. The first was the sheer beauty of the clothes and the artistry of the seamstresses. Even the most hip among the viewing audience looked drab and badly dressed by comparison.  The second was the psychological depth of the paintings by Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. When viewed next to those of their male peers, they provided an intriguing counterpoise.  The men’s paintings were beautiful and had far more immediate appeal but were essentially decorative.  Those painted by the women were devoid of the coquette and their relationship to the painter took center stage.

 

In the loge - Mary Cassatt

 

 

The sisters - Berthe Morisot

 

 

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Baking The Bread of Those Early Years

 

Bread Rolls - experiment 2

The stinging hail and sleet of the New England storm front started on Friday. Trapped inside by the raging blizzard, I decided it would be a good weekend for baking bread. It’s been half a century since I’ve tackled bread and back then my contribution was to mix the yeast and sugar into a sweet smelling paste. My mother’s bread rolls were famous around town both for their lovely soft texture and sheer number. She baked them for our picnics among the sheep in Macclesfield Forest and by the hundreds for shindigs at the Midlands Electricity Board (MEB) working men’s social club.  Baking for the latter was an army maneuver: the kitchen became the war room with Mum the General. The dough was pounded, stretched, sprinkled with flour and then,in some strange initiation rite, everyone in the family had to be chased around the kitchen and slapped with it. The kitchen smelt wonderful. The rolls were turned out in batches by the truckload and packed off to the club.  

 

Unfortunately the recipe went with Mum to the grave and so now I am experimenting to conjure it back up. I like it. It feels like the good old fashioned biochemistry, which I sorely miss now that I am no longer “beavering at the bench” but tied to my desk begging for vanishing funding. My first attempt with dried yeast was a disaster. So last week I ordered a 1lb cake of fresh yeast from a website deceptively listed as “New York Bakers” but which at check out turned out to be in San Diego.  I excitedly tracked the course of my yeast as it flew in via fed ex arriving under the radar just before the blizzard struck.  On Saturday afternoon, as the temperatures dropped, we rolled up our sleeves, turned on the bright red oven to get the kitchen toasty warm, and got cracking. This second attempt was not too bad – at least it rose and was edible, even passible, but in terms of my mother's gold standard we’re not there yet.  The baps were too solid and cake-like. Perhaps it was because I used a bag of yellow flour that said it was perfect for Pizza dough. Apparently bread likes gluten-rich flour made from wheat from Canada or the Russian Steppes - Italian strains wont do.  Perhaps it also needed some lard (another thing that’s hard to get in New York).  Still I’ve got 15 oz of yeast left to get it right, my kitchen smells like heaven and the neighbors are salivating at the door.