Happy as a Clam!

One of my favorite stories about the early days of my first marriage is "A Pair of Merry Mollusks." In that story about Valentine's Day, 1956, I explain to my husband that the full phrase that begins with "happy as a clam" actually is "happy as a clam at high tide." Hide tide, of course, is when clams are free from the attentions of predators, so, of course, the happiest of times in the bivalve mollusc world.

I felt I deserved some happiness. I'd been trying to see all the movies likely to be Oscar winners. Many of these didn't leave me in a happy mood. Mobs. Corruption. Same thing as I'd been seeing on the nightly news. The other evening my friend and I went to my local Regency movie house to see "1917," another somber and intense film.

I thought we needed a little cheer afterwards. I'd bought a Groupon deal earlier for a seafood feast and a bottle of wine at The Cajun Islands. I hadn't heard of this restaurant before, though it's just four miles from where I live.

When I suggested it to my friend, Bob agreed that it sounded like an adventure. Four pounds of seafood, choice of shrimp, mussels, clams or crawfish plus a bottle of the house wine.

The amenities include bibs and a bowl to dump your seafood.

"Four pounds? That's a huge amount," Bob said. 

"Remember that includes a lot of shells, so maybe it won't be so overwhelming in size as we suspect. Besides I can take the leftovers home to nibble on the next day."

Wrong. Even with the shells, it was a heap of food. We chose half and half, unpeeled shrimp and clams with basil, with medium seasonings. The chef uses fresh chilies; guests can choose Mild, Medium, Spicy, Extra Spicy, or 2xSpicy. Since our medium was pretty piquant, the 2xSpicey might burn your tongue right out of your head. But, I well know from marveling over how much hot sauce my son can consume, that it's true that some like it hot.

The house Cabernet Sauvignon proved decently drinkable and we managed to finish the bottle. It held up nicely to the spicy feast. 

Anthony and  Thu, our hosts

I don't often devote a whole blog to a local restaurant...this, after all, is a strip mall in Westminster, not the Rue du Bac on the Left Bank. But the ambiance, service, food and my companion were all so delightful that for the first time in months I felt optimistic about the future once again. If nothing else, I can always look forward to coming back to The Cajun Islands. Maybe for Taco Tuesday...won't be so messy to consume a seafood taco or two. Or maybe the crawfish. Clawing through the claws would be an adventure, indeed.

 Take a peek at the menu: 
https://cajunislandsrestaurant.com/Westminster-Cajun-Islands-food-menu?&domain=cajunislandsrestaurant.com

Crawfish Platter

Dang! I Wish I Hadn't Done That!

"a vibrant collection"

One of the joys of getting published in anthologies remains the possibility of making literary connections with other writers who can teach you something about the craft. Such is the case for me as I browse through Dang, I Wish I Hadn't Done That, a collection of stories and poems recently published by Ageless Authors. I'll have a chance to meet some of these talented older writers at author events scheduled for February right here in Southern California

You can buy this book now on Kindle for less than you'd pay for a single  gallon of gas...and it will take you farther down the road. If you're a senior, these reminisces will take you down Memory Lane to your earlier years, and you, too, will be likely to recall your  events that relate to the book's three major categories: Military Memories, Regrets and Parents.

I've read my story, "An Arrested Development" aloud twice so far to estimate how long it will take me to present it in February. It took me just 14 minutes, but if you read it to yourself, I'll bet you can do it in far fewer. Plus you'll learn one of my darkest secrets.

If you live in Southern California I invite you to attend a  reading at either Book Soup in Hollywood on February 11 or Irvine Spectrum Barnes and Noble on February 12. You'll be able to buy a hard copy and get several of the authors to sign it for you. Or you can get it today on Kindle.

This is from the press release:
Los Angeles (January 6, 2020) -- Great storytelling by four remarkable writers age 65+ and one outstanding writing educator is on tap at two Ageless Authors book events in Southern California in mid-February.
The five local writers will read their work, sign books and offer writing tips at Book Soup, Tuesday, February 11, 7PM, and at the Irvine Spectrum Barnes & Noble, Wednesday, February 12, 3 PM.
Scheduled authors include Laguna Beach writer Geoffrey Graves, Terri Elders of Westminster, Brenda Mutchnick of Beverly Hills, and Gered Beebe of San Diego. Writing teacher and author Candice Kelsey of Los Angeles, an Ageless Authors contest judge, will also participate. Each author will read from the hot-off-the-press anthology DANG, I Wish I Hadn't Done That, a collection of 34 stories and poems all penned by senior writers.
Kirkus Reviews has called the book “A vibrant collection of pieces by an eclectic group of older writers…” OnlineBookClub.org was even more impressed: “A display of courage and vision, this remarkable collection of stories and poems could be a step forward in laying the foundation for a new literary field that reflects the wisdom and experience of seniority.”
The book will be available for sale at both locations. DANG is published by Ageless Authors, a unique publisher and writers’ group that works exclusively with senior authors around the world.

https://www.amazon.com/DANG-Wish-Hadnt-Done-That-ebook/dp/B07ZS1TDDT/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31WCC9OIPF4JR&keywords=dang%2C+i+wish+i+hadn%27t+done+that&qid=1579201298&sprefix=Dang%21+I+Wish+I+%2Caps%2C220&sr=8-1 



                                             

Gonna Wash That Year Right Outta My Hair

The musical, "South Pacific," opened on Broadway in 1949. Seventy years later, in 2019, I saw two productions of it right here in Orange County. One was at my little town's Westminster Community Theater and the other at Irvine Valley College. Both were stellar.  And both reminded me of the passage of time.'

The song that always stands out is "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair." Mary Martin could do that, and so can I. But I'll change the word "man" to "traumas." I had many. 

I was 12 years old when "South Pacific" hit Broadway. The major event for me that year was marching in the annual Santa Claus Lane Parade with the /Carpenterettes, fronting the Cadillac carrying Bob Hope, Grand Marshall. I've written about that event and included the photo of my 12-year-old self here.

Seventy years later, I'm reviewing what I'd expected would develop in my life. And reviewing what I thought how I'd spend it. I'm reflecting on that tonight, seventy years later. 

 One of my favorite novels is Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. Most close followers of Dickens know that the novel had alternative endings The one I favor is? The optimistic one: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/dickens/ending.html

Wouldn't you?

What still brings me joy? Aside from personal relationships, even now it's been reading, writing, traveling. Last year those goals somehow got shoved to the back of my life's priorities So my resolution this year is to reinstate them. Here's how I'm going about it:

Reading: Right now I'm reading "Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom," by Thomas E. Ricks. I've got another Cornwell book on the Jack the Ripper murders as next on the list. My Westminster library just notified me that David McCullough's "Pioneers" is waiting for me.

Writing: The first half of the year got swallowed by my Orange County Grand Jury duties...and the second by obligations, expectations, and a series of crises almost beyond belief. I've written before that I never experience "writer's block." But ennui attacked me. I found myself wasting precious hours ruminating about what I "should" have done.  But now...that's over. New year...new me. Starting afresh and welcoming 2020. Since the first of the year I've made six submissions...some rewrites of "orphans," but also a couple of new ones. And one about the Santa Claus Lane Parade. I was twelve when Bob Hope signed my majorette boot. 

Travel: It's set. University of Cambridge International Summer School in late July...this time the history track...The Rise and Fall of Empires and Britain's Prime Ministers, with an additional week to revisit London and the Isle of Wight tucked in there somewhere. And then, at last, in December, Argentina! Buenos Aires! Iguassu Falls! And what will be my FOURTH  total eclipse of the sun in Patagonia.

That's my plan for 2020 and I wanna stick to it. No more time for regrets or for what "might have been." Moving forward. Loving life. Remembering what I came home to Southern Californium for: time with family and old friends...and theaters, movies, museums, beaches, concerts...it's all here and I am blessed to be back where I started from.

Pip and Estella

2020: Perhaps, Perhaps....But All Things Are Perhaps

Edith Wharton, 1881

 

 

 

 

New Year's Day and back in the roaring '20s once more. I've been in love with the original roaring 20s since I first read F. Scott Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise. So I'm regarding the new '20s as a beginning of possibilities.
 
I used to claim that 1988 was my favorite year. That year the Lakers won the NBA championship and the Dodgers won the World Series. Though I never picked a least favorite year, there's been some contenders, including 2019. This past year began with my car being t-boned in front of the Kaiser Permanente clinic where I was about to go in for a blood pressure check. One positive outcome...I've at last come home to Toyota after a couple of decades of Nissan.

Other calamities befell me, lawsuits, the sale of my family-owned senior living apartment complex to a huge corporation, intermittent writer's block, and several injuries, both emotional and physical. Nonetheless, 2019 brought me some treasured moments, too: a jazz seminar in New Hampshire, a visit to Emily Dickinson's home,  making some new friends, the chance to serve on the Orange County Grand Jury, seeing more of my son and daughter-in-law and brother and his companion, a third trip to Paris...and this time to Normandy and Versailles.

It's at Versailles where Edith Wharton is buried. Suffering a heart attack in Paris in June, 1937,  a couple of weeks before I was born, she had been bundled off in an ambulance. Nearly her last words were, were, "This will teach you to ask decrepit old ladies to stay."'

On my November Paris stay at the wonderful Saint Germain Hotel on the Rue du Bac, I wandered around the corner one day and found myself in front of what had been Wharton's home there at 58 Rue de Varenne. The door is now painted green

It's been a while since I last read Edith Wharton, but I plan to revisit her this year. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 1921 for The Age of Innocence, the first woman to do so. Though she never won it, she also was nominated three times for the Nobel Prize for Literature. A true giant...and a friend of Henry James, another of my favorites

Edith wrote a poem of unrequited love, "Some Woman to Some Man," when she was only 16. These lines continue to haunt me:

Whichever way the difference lies between us,
Would common cares have helped to lessen it,
A common interest, and a common lot?
Who knows indeed? We choose our path, and then
Stand looking back and sighing at our choice,
And say: " Perhaps the other road had lead
To fruitful valleys dozing in the sun. "
Perhaps — perhaps — but all things are perhaps,
And either way there lies a doubt, you know.

So as this new decade begins, I wonder about possibilities. Perhaps, perhaps.

Holidaze: When the Dog Bites

When the New Year began for me with an auto accident, I might have guessed that it was an omen. Somehow I didn't. I expected things would get better. They didn't. I learned by spring that my apartment complex was to be sold to a corporate conglomerate. For months the residents of this 310 complex didn't know if we'd be evicted or if our rents would skyrocket. We  only knew there'd be many changes. Not all of them pleasant.

Many close friends moved away. Others have fallen seriously ill and some even have died. It's been

difficult to remain upbeat when the unpleasantries begin to pile up. I countered by traveling...in August to Lake Swanzey, NH, for a week-long jazz seminar and in November to Paris, for a wonderful 10 days on the Left Bank. I felt reprieved.

Since I returned from Paris, though, I've faced a steady onslaught of setbacks. Two days after I landed at LAX with a cancelled Super Shuttle ride, I woke up and found I'd totally lost my voice. I couldn't squeak out a single coherent syllable. This attack of acute laryngitis left me miserable for a couple of weeks.

With Linda at DaVita Holiday Party

"The Elderly Brothers" at Fountain Glen party

I recovered in time to drive through pouring rain to visit my brother for Thanksgiving. Great evening until his ordinarily friendly dog bit my palm. Something must have startled him. Bandaged, I drove home early the next morning reflecting on how the rest of the season might go. The holiday parties would be starting in early December with a visit to the annual Christmas party of my friend, Linda. she's warned me that her colleagues donned plenty of sparkles for this evening, so I did, as well.

What could go wrong at a party at a hotel just two miles from my apartment?  I hadn't anticipated that the ballroom with the tables set up for guests would be centered around a white marble dance floor. With the dimmed lights to display the Christmas tree and fairy lights, I didn't see that the floor was raised about a quarter of an inch. I promptly tripped, wrenching my left leg and , scraping the skin off the back of my left hand. No broken bones, but a badly sprained knee and ankle and a strained muscle. I'm still in some pain when I try to climb up or down stairs.

To lift my spirits I've embraced every holiday opportunity that's come my way. I've gone to see Hal Linden, Jr. in "A Christmas Carol" at South Coast Repertory Theatre, to Rose Center Theatre for "Cinderella," to Golden West College to see a friend play Clara's mother for the 20th year in a row in "Nutcracker," to Cirque d'Soleil to the Dolby Theater in Hollywood to see "Holidaze," and to every movie showing locally that's been nominated for a Golden Globe or Screen Actor's Guild award.

In addition, I've enjoyed the Harbor Singers at my AAUW holiday luncheon and a hot chocolate and cookies gathering at my apartment complex. There's still another friend's annual holiday singalong

tomorrow...and Christmas night supper with my son and daughter-in-law.

Somehow I got my Christmas letter written and mailed, my packages wrapped and sent to friends and family and now I'm counting down the remaining days of this year with relief that 2019 will be behind me and a new decade awaits.

This was a most difficult year with disruptions in my life that I'd never anticipated. I donned another pair of holiday socks this morning and a favorite Christmas sweatshirt and went down to the rec room for coffee and chitchat. I've got good books to read, good DVDs to watch and good friends to visit. I'll be enjoying winter's charms.

And one of my favorite Christmas stories, "Dear John Deere," has been published in a new holiday book, Remembering Christmas.

Window Shopping: Rue du Bac

Despite the rain and overcast skies, Paris always bursts with color. This morning, after four consecutive days of what sometimes resembled a forced march, my legs warned me at dawn that if I tried to ramble through the Louvre today I'd be rumbling tomorrow and miss Versailles. So I sent my friend on her way alone and took a leisurely amble a block down the Rue du Bac.

Our boutique hotel, Saint-Germaine, offers such warm hospitality that I'd recommend it to anybody who wanted a break from the hustle of the city. We wake up to colorful and plentiful breakfast, with a lovely fresh fruit compote and various yogurts, in addition to boiled eggs and cheeses. We can sit there anywhere between 7 and 11 a.m., sipping coffee au lait, watching our neighbors and fellow travelers wander in and out of the lobby, plan our daily itineraries and get the latest news from the concierge. The desk clerks warn us of police/"yellow jacket" protests and inclement weather, as well as providing first-hand information on the nearby restaurants. They know the area well, and are solidly reliable.

On my way to the CIC automated teller, I took in how Parisian bistros invite patrons to sit outside, despite the cold. What could be more Parisian hospitality, I thought, than how Le Flores, on the corner of Rue du Bac and Rue du Grenelle, provides warm ruby red lap robes for those who want their meal outdoors. We elected to dine inside the other evening, on onion soup and a shrimp and avocado salad. Not only had there been rain, there'd also been snowflakes.

Arrived a week ago, right after the shopkeepers began putting up their Christmas decorations. Look how inviting our neighborhood windows are. My youngest granddaughter has outgown the teddy bear stage, at ten, but nonetheless I lingered to think about how delighted I would have been 75 years ago to find one of these sweet animals parked under my childhood's Christmas trees.

I'd passed the next-door pharmacy several times, stopping to gaze at the toiletries. A few days ago, I had entered and tested the Fleur d'Oranger sampler. This morning I surrendered and treated myself to a holiday present. I saved myself a trip across the Seine to the Galeries Lafayette, shopping right in the neighborhood.


Not all the displays promoted holiday shopping, though. This mannequin is parked right next to a small cafe, and I concluded it advertised a lingerie shop...but who knows, this is Paris, ooh-la-la.

A Swinging Day in Orange County

I'd been to Orange Coast College before, several times to see plays and once even to sit in on a lecture given by a friend who was a faculty member. I'd no idea, however, what services some of its departments provide our community. Yesterday I went with a group from my AAUW (American Association of University Women) branch to see a show at its new planetarium and to dine at The Captain's Table, a lab for culinary arts students. Wow...what a double treat in one outing.

You don't  have to be a primary school student to be thrilled when the Foucault Pendulum's swinging

sphere knocks over a pin, though the guide told us that the kids cheer when that happens, as delightedly as if they were acknowledging a grand slam homer. The first one I ever saw was at Golden State Park, back in the early '50reds. No science whiz, I simply stared in amazement at this proof that the earth rotated. Since then, I've been fortunate to be mesmerized by pendulums all over the globe. The earth still turns, despite the planet's recent turmoil.

The featured show yesterday, "Phantom of the Universe," tended to be seasonably spooky, featuring Tilda Swinton explaining what we know and, maybe more importantly, what we don't know, about dark matter, which apparently is everywhere and somehow holds everything together. 

On Saturdays the Planetarium couples talks about constellations with popular sci fi films of the past. The schedule of events is here: http://www.orangecoastcollege.edu/about_occ/planetarium/Pages/calendar.aspx. Parking and dropoff for the Planetarium are located in Parking Lot E, off of Merrimac Way.

Then our group moved on, to become lab rats for the Culinary Arts Department students at The Captain's Table. No, we weren't offered stale cubes of cheddar. Instead we were treated to a sit down served banquet with choices of appetizer and entree. In the fall semester, the Culinary Principle 3 class is learning "banquet-style" service in the context of American Regional Cuisine. The menu changes weekly, spotlighting regional favorites from sections of the United States.

Yesterday each course reflected the southwest states of Arizona, New Mexico, Utah or Nevada. So we all enjoyed an hor d'oeuvre of chile con queso with blue corn chips. We had an appetizer choice of bbq duck tamale red chili or a romaine salad with jicama, avocado and warm black bean cake. My entree choice was an ancho chili braised lamb shank while others opted for bacon-wrapped southwest

spice rubbed turkey tenderloin with green chili sauce. Both entrees were served with sauteed squash, Nevada corn cake, Jerusalem artichokes and yam fries. The "milk and cookie" dessert was a tiny cup of hot minted chocolate, with four different cookies. We also had baskets of flour tortillas and tubs of honey butter.

Both lunch and dinner are open to the public, with reservations strongly suggested. The seating schedules and meal offerings are listed here: Captains Table Fall 2019 Flyer.docx

Why anybody who lives in Southern California could complain that there's never anything worth seeing or doing remains a mystery to me. I concluded the day by meeting a friend for a Happy Hour margarita at El Torito, a longtime favorite chain and then a dress rehearsal preview of "A Nice Family

Gathering," at Westminster Community Playhouse. A comedy, this story features the ghost of a gentleman who neglected to tell his wife during the 41 years of their marriage that he loved her. To reverse an axiom, he died to regret it.

He comes back Thanksgiving day to visit his former family and to try to make amends. Mrs. Lundeen, his grieving widow, serves a strange holiday meal..."tuna tango" appetizers and turkey dogs with cheeze whiz. You can't blame the poor soul. She's been "going downhill" according to all three of her adult children, since Dad died following an attack of either bacon or pork chops...still unclear which part of the porker done him in.

The play's terrifically funny and well-acted, but I think I'd rather sit down to supper at Orange Coast College. Here's where you can get tickets for the Westminster performance: http://wcpstage.com/