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Great Aunts and Glorified Rice

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‘Summer foods that did not come from a farm stand’

Some of you have read my Ode to Corn, and no doubt share my fondness for what can be enjoyed pretty much straight from the garden. (Or, in my case, the farm stand.) But there was a whole other category of deliciousness to be savored during summers where and when I grew up. And that was the food made by Great Aunts and dished out at Family Reunions.

My favorite of these was a dish called Glorified Rice. Here it is, in all its (sorry, I can’t help myself) glory:

I picked this photo because I have these dishes. Now I just need to fill them

I picked this photo because I have these dishes

Now, the Wikipedia entry for Glorified Rice is pretty hilarious, on a couple of levels. For one, the dish is described as a ‘dessert/salad’. For another, one of its sources was a website called lutheransonline.com, which I clicked (of course) and found is now defunct. Probably all the Lutherans grew up and moved to New York.

But more about these family reunions. They were always held in the summer, mainly so they could be outside. These were the days of Big Families, people. (No way these reunions would fit into a dining room or kitchen. Or a normal back yard, for that matter.) One of my earliest memories is of going to something called the P-A-L (Peterson/Anderson, and Lindstrom?) Reunion, held in Belvedere Park. (There was a swinging bridge that terrified me, but that’s another story.) Continue reading

Everybody into the Gene Pool

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‘There’s no such thing as too many cousins’

I guess it’s the Silly Season. Newspapers in the UK are publishing pictures of baby Queen Elizabeth doing a mini Nazi Salute. The New York Times today featured a cover story on (yawn) Hilary Clinton’s Dad. And bloggers are publishing pictures of Benedict Cumberbatch.

Looks like summertime-desperation-for-readers has set in. I’m thinking that it’s the time of year when just about anything I write won’t be able to compete with the beach. The only thing worse for my stats would be if it were Christmas. Or if I wrote about the ding-dang South Pole again.

So here goes. Cousins. I worry, what with the trend to smaller families and all, that the whole Cousin Thing will be experienced by fewer and fewer in the future. The Child, for example, has seven Henry Cousins, five of whom are pictured at the top of this post. Of course that’s waaaay more than the measly three the Whitmores managed to eke out. From six siblings (!)

I mean, when I was a kid, we had cousins. The Petersons, who were Swedish and Lutheran and played Scrabble and drank coffee, produced this batch: Continue reading

Go Betsy Go

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‘Meet me, meet me. Meet me at the Fair’

When I was a kid, the high point of Summer wasn’t the 4th of July, it was the Clinton County Fair.

This Fair was truly an Event For All Ages. If you were a little kid you got to stuff yourself with cotton candy, then get nice and green on the Tilt-A-Whirl or those crazy swings. If you were an adult, you got to feast your eyes on prize-winning livestock and pies or watch cars crash into each other at the demolition derby.

The Child and The Dude take in the view from the (extremely rusty) ferris wheel

The Child and The Dude take in the view from the (urk, extremely rusty) ferris wheel

And if you were a teen, you got to wander around the midway in awkward same-sex groups, giggling at each other and arranging to ‘accidentally’ ride the ferris wheel together. If you were a boy teen and ‘going steady’, you got to win large stuffed animals at the shooting gallery for your girlfriend to parade around the fairground like pirate booty. Continue reading

They didn’t do this for fun, you know

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‘Summer jobs I did not have. But I swear I did not make them up, either’

When I was a kid, a summer job was babysitting. Or working at the 5-and-10. Pumping gas. My best friend Norma had the coolest job of anyone I knew. She worked at the Dairy Queen. One of the perks was you could eat as much DQ as you wanted, which sounded pretty sweet until she told me she had a hard time even looking at a banana boat after the first couple of days.

But these jobs absolutely pale in comparison to the gigs scored by my personal family members in their respective college years. The Child spent one summer working with computers. ‘Yawn’, you say. Well, these computers were located here:

The Child's workplace one summer. She had her own apartment above the stables. Very Thomas Hardy-esque

The Child’s workplace one summer. She had her own apartment above the stables. Very Thomas Hardy-esque

That’s Wadhurst Park, a 900-acre estate in East Sussex. Which is in England, folks. It’s owned by the second-richest guy in Sweden. (Makes you wonder where the richest guy in Sweden lives.) Oh, and here he is, Hans. The Child said she was invited to tea with him and his wife once while she was there. The conversation was less than lively. Not sure if she met the dog.

Hans Rausing, The Child's Boss and the second-richest man in Sweden.

Hans Rausing, The Child’s Boss and the second-richest man in Sweden.

Incidentally, Hans’ dad made the family fortune by inventing the milk carton. Honest. Oh, besides owning that dog in his lap, Hans owned pigs. That’s one of them pictured at the top of this post making friends with The Child. (In addition to working with the estate computers, she performed various livestock-related duties. Including, sometimes, a bit of pig wrangling. And mucking.) Continue reading

Remembrance of Watermelons Past

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‘A look back at Summer in the town Time forgot (though we did get our Ladies Home Journal)’

I used to think Prince Charles was a total wimp. See, back when I was a kid, we had something called ‘bedtime’. Which meant that you were supposed to go to bed at an appointed time. Not when you got tired, or when you felt like it. ‘Bedtime’ was by Parental Decree.

And mine was 8 o’clock. And this meant 8 o’clock, Young Lady. No matter if it’s in the middle of summer and there’s no school and all the other kids are still outside and it doesn’t even get dark until after 9.

When I would whine about this to my mother by saying something like: “But Mom, I’m almost 13! Going to bed at 8 is for babies!”, she would reply thusly: “Well. Prince Charles of England is 16, and he goes to bed every night at six!”

Gosh. I hated Prince Charles. What a wimp.

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I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen birthdays

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‘But I’ve never seen James Taylor and The Dude in the same room at the same time’

If you run into James Taylor today, you might want to wish him “Happy Birthday”. Because, if you happen to be on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, it’s probably The Dude that you’ve run into, and it is indeed his birthday today.

James Taylor’s was in March, and he is a few years older. But, if The Dude’s heard it once he’s heard it a thousand times: “Hey! Did you know you look just like James Taylor?!?” Who knows? Maybe people are constantly stopping JT with: “Hey! Did you know you look just like this guy called The Dude who turns up in Lutheranliar’s blog?!?”

Even James’s ex, Carly, did a double-take when she passed His Dudeness on the street one day. (I heard this straight from The Dude’s mouth. And he would never ever tell a lie, not even a Lutheran one.) And I once went to a Yo Yo Ma concert here in New York (the real Yo Yo Ma, not my invented syndrome), where guess who was a surprise guest performer? Yup. Someone who looked just like my personal husband, dressed in a very expensive-looking tux over a black tee shirt. After that, I got The Dude a black tee shirt. That’s one great look on a tall baldish guy, tux or no tux.

Enough kvelling. Let’s truck out some photographic evidence, and let you be the judge. Don’t these two look rather incredibly similar, diabolical eyebrows and all?

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The Motorcycle Diaries

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Get your mother runnin’ (alongside a Honda 125)

Yes, it’s called ‘Motorcycle Diaries’ (plural) because I really do have stories (plural) involving motorcycles. Remember the one about Elvis flirting with the five-year-old me while revving a white Harley? (Elvis being the one doing the revving, not the five-year-old me.)

Well, my motorcycle story for today is in honor of Mother’s Day. And how I almost didn’t get that shiny Vespa in the picture at the top because I almost didn’t get to be a Mother. Continue reading

Short men and flat-chested women

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‘Mad Men, Memories, and Me’

What a quandary Sunday night! Two hot shows in competing TV time slots. Do I watch the one with the bloodthirsty power plays, the deadly palace intrigue, the dangerous illicit sex, the fabulous period costumes, the one where women lose their heads over the charismatic moody king?

Or do I watch Wolf Hall?

Through the miracle of modern technology (well, um, DirectTV), I actually got to watch them both. Even though they are, essentially, the same deal. TV-wise, anyway:

Mid-Century Lust (for sex, power, clothes), 16th-Century Edition

Saga of sex and power, with great clothes. 16th-Century Edition

Mid-Century Lust (for sex, power, clothes), 20th-Century Edition

Saga of sex and power, with great clothes. 20th-Century Edition

Now, as much as I’m sure you’re dying to hear my views on Hilary Mantel and Henry the VIII, it’s nah, not today. Let’s talk about Mad Men.

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Winning the Dude-A-Thon

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‘We make it to 31 on the 31st’

It snowed late that March too. A lot. So much that we were worried about travel. No, not for our guests, but for us.

See, we didn’t really have a wedding. We are officially married, rest assured. But those jillion-dollar affairs with champagne spigots and swans carved from ice? Not for us. For one thing, we were paying for it ourselves. And for another thing, while Dude Man does like attention, he does not like being the center of attention. Which can’t help but happen if you have a wedding. With yourself in it, I mean.

Speaking of being the center of attention, The Dude and I demonstrate the secret to a long marriage: racy underpants. Worn on your head, of course

Speaking of being the center of attention, The Dude and I demonstrate the secret to a long marriage: racy underpants. Worn on your head, of course. (Oh, I’ve got a story involving underpants and a huge dog you might like)

See, The Dude had been to one too many weddings where people did things like write ‘Help Me!’ on the soles of the bridegroom’s shoes so everyone tittered when the kneeling bits happened. And, speaking of shoes, he once forgot his when he packed for an out-of-town wedding–a wedding where he was the Best Man. Continue reading

The Princess and the Parent

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‘Stuck in the Maternal Memory Loop’

Yesterday The Child turned 24. How can that be, when just yesterday The Child turned four (!)

Welcome to the world of the Maternal Memory Loop, where scenes from the past find themselves superimposed over the present. And insist on being played, and replayed, in the Maternal Head. Stuck there, until I slap myself silly (figuratively, that is) in a futile attempt to dislodge them.

See, my conscious mind knows that The Child is a Grown Woman who works in Boston as a Software Engineer. But my memory-loop mind insists that she is a Child who works in her Room as a Kindergartner. (Cue adorable photos):

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