NHR: St. Louis for Thanksgiving

John's next acupuncture treatment is coming up on Tuesday of this week. But for now: Thanksgiving in St. Louis involved 1653 miles round trip of driving for this driving-impaired person, but I got to see my son's new loft condo and a lot of other nice things so am sharing. The photo above is the building where my older son just bought a loft condo and we stayed there -- on the floor, since he has no furniture yet. Oh my back.


That's him with my dog Gabey dominating him without mercy.

This is the view out his windows:


Urban life is something I just tasted once long ago. Now it interests me again. This was a really fun place to come and go. Lots of activity: restaurants, coffee shops, little art galleries, clean sidewalks, lots of sun flooding the streets in the early morning.

We saw the Thanksgiving Day parade in downtown St. Louis:




And we saw this most beautiful sculpture I've ever seen: "Vigilance and Peace", from the old Post Office building. "Vigilance" (on the left) reminds me of my mother!!



And my doggies accompanied me everywhere I went, even to the downtown dog park where
Rufus got rolled by a St. Bernard and loved every minute of it.


Rufus has mad urban skilz. He immediately figured out how to poop and pee on concrete. Gabey never did. Rufe also figured out how to jump up on a low concrete wall and run along it. He didn't blink when asked to walk into an elevator, whereas Gabriel was flummoxed and panicked, and had to be carried. Gratings? Rufe had no worries but Gabey would drop to the ground and quiver. It was strange but I think Rufus is a reincarnated hip-hop artist and Gabey is just a sweet little angel from some protected grassy planet somewhere in a galaxy far far away...

Second #1 Son Graduates: On Wisconsin!!

What a beautiful day it was.

Ice Heaps on the Shore

We drove up the shore on Monday to observe the progress of the ice. The wind piles it up on the shore of Lake Superior around this time of year. Since the days are already getting longer (yes!!), soon it will begin to recede and then melt.

The dog brigade came along and this picture makes them look strangely tied together but it's just their jackets being parallel.

Rufus (left) continues advancing his sinister plot to rule the world; his 3 strategies seem to be: cuteness, urinating in the house, and stealing all Gabey's toys. It's working. Jan and I relax for a moment and then suddenly sit bolt upright: "Where's Rufus??" to which the answer usually is, over there behind something, just finished relieving himself on the rug, looks happy.

On the ride home the sun shot up this great ray into the heavens:


It was a nice trip and included some of this:

"7-Layer Chocolate Mocha" from the justly famous Betty's Pies. And it has no calories whatsoever! isn't it a miracle?

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE FROZEN NORTH!

Click on the picture to see:

1. That I did not realize how tangled John's forelock was with ice blobs until after I took this picture.

2. That we were f-f-freezing as I tried to set up a cute photo and I finally just gave up and snapped his profile any old way;

3. That we are wishing you a very Merry Christmas!! Stay warm and cozy, give your horses special treats, and enjoy the magic stillness of a winter's night when the soft dark silence is filled with starry promise.

Much love to all my blogging friends!!!

Thank God they made It Home

The Roman Stoics used to say that anyone we care about is "a hostage to Fortune".

Last night at 10 p.m. my two hostages to Fortune finally made it home through the killer blizzard. What would normally have been a 5 hour drive took 10 hours; they were sometimes driving 25 mph on freeway with a posted speed limit of 70.

Every semi that blasted past them flung a tsunami of wet snow on their Ford Focus windshield. They were in near white-out conditions most of the way.

You can imagine my state of mind. I wanted them to stop and get a room but they are young, optimistic, and bull-headed. And they made it.

That was a good sight: dragging suitcases up the driveway because the snowplows had blocked the entrance and they parked across the street. I had cooked a supper for them but they were too jangled to eat. So dinner tonight is taken care of!

Little Rufus, my new puppy, was at first shy of these two big lads, and ran into his crate to see how things would go. It did not take him long to see the opportunity to add two members to his cult following and he turned on the tricks...lick hands, place chin on knee, dance in place, curl up in a new lap. They duly pronounced him a handsome dog and praised his silky coat. Gabey nearly had a conniption fit but he was getting his share of lap-time and attention too.

Now I get to kick into high gear with cooking for young lads: something I love to do.


I feel like I aged 10 years yesterday night.

My Son the Guitar Player

Here's the closing song from my younger son's recent band set at a Madison Wisconsin night spot. The band, called Lords of the Trident, is officially an 80's metal parody band but they all love 80's metal so much that it goes beyond parody to become sincere tribute. My boy is the one with long hair wearing a toga to indicate that his band persona is "The Socrates of Shred".

At 2:23 my little angel has a very pretty solo I do believe.

As he has been home for Thanksgiving, we have had some home decorating projects such as the following:

which tasteful display I found this morning upon awakening from my innocent slumbers. I will give him credit though; as soon as I made a few sharp remarks about it due to the neighbors having emailed me this photo (which was rather embarrassing), he went out and cleaned it all up.

That's my boy!! The Socrates of Shred.

Redneck Bra Poem

Last spring I visited my 90-year old Aunt Pat, who is as feisty as the day is long. It was a sad occasion: funeral. But when we got to her place after the service and the supper, she shocked the daylights out of me by saying, "Evie! Take off your damn bra! Get comfortable!" never before in my life had I been invited to take off my bra.

Aunt Pat and I then had a little discussion about the discomforts of brassieres. "Isn't it just the greatest feeling to take it OFF??", she said. Indeed.

We then went on to talk about the good old days when, surprise surprise, both of us had learned to take them off without taking our blouses off.

Ahem. You Might Be a Redneck's Girlfriend If:

You know how to do this: unhook your bra, slip the strap off one arm, and drag it out of your blouse sleeve on the opposite side.

Today after work I rushed upstairs, removed a particularly itchy and obnoxious bra, and wrote a poem dedicated to my Aunt Pat:

Take Off That Damn Brassiere!

To My Aunt Pat, who once surprised me by saying,
“Evie, take off your damn bra! Get comfortable!”

Now Life has many painful sides,
And hurts and sorrows sere;
But one thing every girl can do:
Take Off That Damn Brassiere!

When we get home from work, or church,
And feel our ribs crushed near,
We have not even slight regret
We toss that Damn Brassiere.

We love the way it shapes our front
Or keeps our front from hanging;
But we hate the way it aggravates,
And causes damns and danging.

It presses us when we should float
And squishes what should bounce
And so that Damn Brassiere goes off!
Regretted, not one ounce.

When we were little girls we loved
Its bows and lace and cheer.
But now we’re wiser, and we’d like
To torch that damn brassiere!

So ladies, take the lower road,
Be less than you appear!
And say to Hell with straps and hooks,
And to Hell with Thy Brassiere!

Let’s sag and droop with gravity,
And When Old Death grins near,
Let’s snap him in the face with our
God-Damnable Old Brassiere!

She Does NOT want to buy him

Here is my roller coaster ride of the past few days:

1. Thursday night: Montana's Prospective New Owner (PNO) calls and says let's meet at your barn Saturday morning at 9, I'll give you a check for Montana, I'm so happy with him, I love him, he passed the vet check with flying colors, all is well.

2. Friday afternoon, I come home from work to phone message from PNO: She can't buy Montana, it is not about him, he is fine, but she can not do it, she will have him returned Sunday morning at 10.

? I am flummoxed. Thursday I had packed up all his papers, Jockey Club registration, baby pictures (as a 7-year old when I bought him), halter fleece, all the last things. I had cried and said goodbye in my mind. I was prepared to hand him over.

When PNO and I finally talked after phone tagging for one whole evening, she said it was about family concerns. She and husband went out for their anniversary dinner on Thursday and he got to talking: she's at the barn too much, he feels left out of this hobby, their family needs her home more, the new horse would take even more time away from them

With my friend Laura for moral support, I ended up retrieving him from her barn Sunday myself, and through floods of tears all around we achieved an understanding. Montana was upset by all the emotion but glad to get back to his old pasture buddies, who chased him around for a bit, then he chased them, then they all fell to eating as if nothing had happened.

Then because it never rains but it pours, that very same day (this past Sunday) I get a call from another PNO who wants to bring the whole family up from downstate and see Montana....Sunday afternoon! I told her he had just come back from a 2-week trial and might not be at his best, not settled....no matter, she says, we want to come today.

So! By 3 p.m. Sunday we were doing this:


And this, with the dad who wanted Montana to do western spins and sliding stops, but had never ridden in an English saddle before (his daughters teased him hard about his posting):



Dad said M's head was too high and they would 'put him in a martingale'. This struck fear into my heart for many reasons. Montana's way, when he is not sure what is being asked of him, is to slow down and do less. The confusion of new riders and strange aids caused him to be slower and more cautious than usual and I believe this PNO found him too sluggish. And frankly that is OK with me.

Here's the bottom line: I was so impressed with Montana that day. Thinking what he had experienced, looking at him patiently carting around all these new people -- two daughters and the dad -- for almost 2 hours, seeing the look in his eye ("I am trying to figure this out but it is gibberish to me") made me think so highly of him.

When all the emotion settles, I will make a long-term plan for working with him this winter; then something will happen to upset that plan, because this is horse life after all and nothing makes much sense in the end.

St. Louis Missouri: Great Place to Visit!

Click on the photo of this gorgeous stained glass tableau and see that it shows: In the middle, St. Louis-Lady being central and smug. On the right, New York-Lady being envious of St. Louis, and on the left, San Francisco-Lady also being envious or attentive. In our St. Louis dreams ladies! But oh well. It's a masterpiece of stained glass art and it decorates the entrance to the old train station turned into a Hyatt hotel where I stayed for my recent visit.

Why did I go to St. Louis esp since it required 129 million hours of driving through construction in Illinois??

Here's a clue:


Yes my older son had his "White Coat" ceremony on Friday. I had never heard of such a thing, but apparently many if not all? medical schools have a ceremony of induction into the profession where they give every new med student a white coat and a vow is recited, speeches are made, strange meatballs are eaten and parents vie for whose head explodes the quietest.



I loved St. Louis! It is absolutely filled with neoclassical art and here's just one example of a beautiful art-deco styled Pegasus, from the veteran's monument; I think Pegasus, who is there twice at either side of the entry, once led by a woman and once by a man, is perhaps supposed to be taking fallen warriors' souls away to the heavens. But this is just a guess; in some ways Pegasus (escape horse of Perseus, a favored child of the gods in classical myth) is a strange iconic choice for this monument but hey! It was the 1920's and who knows?



There was a ton of beautiful public art, including this gorgeous mounted statue of Saint Louis hisself:


And he turns out to have been kind of a mixed blessing; Crusade-instigator, patron of the arts, more and more. Here's me and my first baby standing below Saint Louis:






But here's my first-born son looking doctorly in his new white coat:


He said it was a weird feeling. "They have given us these white coats, but we know NOTHING."

And the message from the ceremony speakers was; You should always feel this proud, and you should always feel this humble. You are seeking to join an honorable profession, but you will always be a learner and a student, until you retire or die.

Medicine in our times is such a strange field - insurance, lifestyle choices, doctor's overbooked schedule, poverty and environmental damages. What sense to make of all this? All the new young med students took a vow they had written together; it was quite long and very very morally serious, about social commitments and access to affordable health care, constant re-education of health care professionals, humanism and care and personal concern for patients' welfare:


My young one is in an MD/PhD program and will not be a big-income doctor but a researcher, if all goes as planned; he is interested in gene therapy , esp for juvenile cancer. What a long hard path lies ahead of him - school will take about 8 years, with a medical residency and a Ph.D. completion included. But he looked so happy that day! I think he is in a good place, for him.


Tomorrow I get my Gabey back from his boarding, and go visit my horses, who have probably so enjoyed a 4-day vacation....

Independence Day Ride: But Not on Horseback!

We took off up the north shore of the big lake yesterday for a picnic lunch at a secret spot. Well it isn't secret exactly but it is seldom that we encounter anyone else there, and the view is stupendous.



The strangest thing about this place is the elaborate and enormous outdoor fireplace that stands there on a gigantic sweep of rounded rock outcrop. Who built it? For what? Folklore has a romantic story about it but the story doesn't add up because it would not be possible to build a house on this curving rock; it would slide off into the lake.




I've been working on my naturally horrid photography skills, looking at the gorgeous photos on other people's blogs. My husband is also great at photography and I've been asking him "OK How to get the picture I see as opposed to what the camera sees?" So if I get a net reduction in trees sticking out of heads etc. i will be happy. Here's one of my favorites from yesterday, taken in one of the great tunnels they blasted through solid rock to bring Highway 61 in a little safer distance from the lake:

The handwriting of a gentler time...

Dinner at a rather old-fashioned restaurant in a neighboring town last night, for my husband's birthday: Our waitress was at least 80 years old. And she was terrific. I wish she could open a School for Waitstaff and spread that knowledge around. What so lingers in my mind though is her beautiful handwriting, which surely comes from a more graceful time of life, when penmanship was a school subject and when a signature was a statement of integrity.

In search of the wild Trillium

This morning I rode Johnnie early -- 7 a.m.! on the trail and encountered not one other soul, just goldfinches and hawks active at that time. We had a glorious ride. The bugs were starting to wake up just as we got back to the trailhead.

Then the DH and I went on a bike ride in search of trillium. This wonderfully mathematical flower has 3 of everything: petals, bracts, leaves...it makes me think of mystical threes a la Pythagoras. Trillium bloom in profusion at a nearby state park every summer, and we love to see them in their geometrical beauty.










We were chased by mosquitoes throughout this hike, and I am not talking about little bitty ones either but monsters with racing stripes on their fiendish bodies. So every time we stopped to take a picture we were literally shedding blood for the photo opp.



But it was a gorgeous Sunday overall. We visited Lena's in Askov on the way home, to enjoy a phosphate and conversation. Lena's sells various types of Scandinavian merchandise and various old-time natural beverages and snacks. Here you may find a rhubarb milkshake should you have a yen for one.



We came back home under threat of rain; it had just rained, it was about to rain, it threatened more rain, but miraculously we were dry upon arrival. A biker's felicity!

Life is just a...

Sometimes anyway. All the wonderful summer fruit is in -- watermelons, cherries, blackberries. Now that food prices are high enough to be noticeable, I take much better care of it once it's home. Wash it right away, let it air dry, then pack it away in paper towels and airtight containers. No more moosh in the back of the produce drawer! This is good. Gas prices restrict our travel and we pollute less. There may be some good consequences of this new less economically robust world order after all.

And I have been tagged! 20 Meter Circle of Life tagged me with some questions which I will answer:

Name 4 jobs you have had:
Taco Bell, Sears fabric department, car washing at a Pontiac dealer back when car dealers sold only one kind of car, and convenience store night manager.

4 ways you know you are living your life with purpose:
I see some progress through my journal; I am generally happy all the time; I can sort of see a plan to all of my activity; I love my job.

4 things you do to take really good care of yourself:
Juicing, flax seed, make my own granola, eat organic whenever possible

4 events that formed how I live today:
Having 2 sons, taking that random philosophy class freshman year (it's now my career), my first pony ride in Jacksonville Florida.

4 other careers you have considered:
Medical technology (love the lab concept), newspaper writing, opening a bookstore, nursing or x-ray tech.

4 influential people in my life:
Aristotle, Virginia Woolf, my father, my 2 big brothers

4 foods you will not eat:
organ meats
fish with eyes in
caviar
soft-boiled eggs

4 reasons you blog:
helps me make sense of things
communication
friendly connections
explains me to myself

And now I will tag!!!
Three-Penny Jane and Sweetgrass Farm Dish it girls!!!

My son's graduation in 3 minutes!

My older boy graduated from Indiana University last Saturday and here is a 3 minute video of commencement. Any university that has the line, "Glorianna! Frangipana!" in its alma mater has my respect as well. I mean, you need a rhyme for Indiana and this is not an easy thing, so go for it. I stayed at a little cabin in Brown County State Park, to avoid the $300+ hotel rates that the town offers for graduation weekend. It is a luscious and tasty state park for horseback riding and I mean to go back there some day - what hills! And softly firm ground, and majestic trees.

I saw probably a thousand horse trailers on the road all the weekend - it is riding time in Indiana! And so many happy horses up to their hocks in sweet green grass. Spring is advanced far beyond us there; dogwood trees in full bloom, redbud, crabapple, intense.

On the way home, my truck loaded up with years of dorm and rental accumulation, we stopped in Madison to visit the younger boy and eat Chinese food at his favorite restaurant. The boys walked ahead of me talking genetics shop and I took this picture which warmed my heart:

My son singing! Handel, 'Messiah', "Death, Where is thy Sting?"

He just had his senior recital at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music. Yes he is finally going to graduate! But I still have one at Madison so the IV drip from my bank account to university bursars is still hooked up. However, here is some of the older boy's singing, not from the recital but from a concert last December. He is singing a duet with a friend: