I Scream You Scream We All Scream for Ice Cream !

There are a number of great things about my home state of Missouri. And a number of not so great things. But cicada ice cream?

These crunchy, creepy insects with their haunting screech apparently are quite flavorful.



Employees of an ice cream store in the college town of Columbia plucked these prehistoric looking creatures from the trunks of trees, riped off their wings, boiled them, ground them up, then coated them with brown sugar and added this crackly crunch mixture into a base of buttery-flavored ice cream. The first batch made sold out within an hour.

Would anyone try this ?!?

I've had a fear of these things ever since I was a kid. When the sun begins to set in the hot, steamy months of late summer they start up in chorus from the branches of trees -- a mournful mating-call howl. The family dog would always catch one of these dumb, fumbling things when it fell on the ground and bring it inside. The bug flying and flailing about letting off a screeching, piercing, unsettling sound. My mother would chase it with a broom trying to sweep it through the back door.



These chitinous insects climb out of their skin and leave the outer shell perched on the side of a tree. In my youth, my brother would always pry the skin carcass off and try to scratch my arm with their prickly, gross legs.


(images from: How Stuff Works, Cletus Lee's Flicker Acct, and What's That Bug.)

Nice!

$47.00 maple dresser at a junk shop +

overly expensive crystal knobs +

the help of one very talented painter named Kevin

=

Yes, No, Maybe So? Skull & Bones

We’ve aired our differences on blogs about mounting Elk heads on walls or using cow rugs to cover our floors. Many tend to be in favor of using these items to decorate a room, however, not without a little *twinge* -- some of us pausing for a quick moment, pondering about the once live animal.

But what about something that is human?

Remember the plastic glow-in-the-dark skulls growing up that we bought at the five and dime store? Or those out there who have bought them for your kids. They were cool, but also creepy. But if we had to handle a real human skill (excluding med students) how many of us would get squeamish? And feel, well... weird.

Christie’s (New York) just pulled a lot from the January 22nd upcoming sale. It was a real human skull from the nineteenth century that had been used as a ballot box by Yale’s elite and old Skull and Bones society (est. 1832). The skull was given an estimate of $10,000 to $20,000.

The skull has a hinged flap on the top of the head and believed to have been used as a ballot box to collect votes during the cryptic society’s meetings.

Who was the one who sawed through the skull to make the lid -- bits of bone dust flying around in their eyes, nose and mouth?


top image from Haunt Your Home; second image from Huffingtom Post.

We Are Our Own Heroes

The usual resolutions and goals set for the start of a new year are falling a bit flat for me this time around. Each year I make them -- some are met, others forgotten and a few adjusted -- and the following year I make them again. I had reasonable hopes for 2009, but the year ended with a loud, crashing thud. This New Year's Eve, I'm tip-toeing cautiously into 2010 carrying with me no resolutions, no goals, and no expectations.

I think many of us are hesitantly optimistic as we peer into a new decade still treading in thick, murky waters of economic uncertainty and personal wonder. Some of us, perhaps, are feeling a little rundown and tattered. One thing, as a few fellow bloggers have addressed, is we have a blogging community. An amazing thing, really. A platform where we can exchange ideas and knowledge, it gives us a place to grow and get to know one another. People who we otherwise would never have known. This, I believe, is quite a boon. It can shake us from the feelings of isolation when we've encountered an upset or disappointment sitting quietly behind our computer screens. While we mull over when that pendulum will begin to swing the other way bracing ourselves for yet another hard knock, we have this blogging community to believe in and nurture. As hokey as it sounds, our blogging community -- in many ways -- is like the racehorse, Seabiscuit.

A hopeless long shot, Seabiscuit was small with awkward crooked legs and a sad tail. He wasn't an aristocrat. He was a proletarian, a plain regular working horse. He came along in a time when America was desperate for hope. So many people cast doubts about Seabiscuit, but one person believed in him. And that is all it took. Seabiscuit became a hero. A hero that looked like America. He was once nobody and became something to many people.

So many millions of people have talent and beauty, but have not drifted into an area to be appreciated. Blogging allows talent to be read and beauty to be felt. No one really knows when all this economic hullabaloo will calm down. We are an angst ridden, somewhat depressed nation, with many of us grinding our teeth wondering when that next big project will come in, and how far that last pay check will stretch. But one thing for sure is when I read many posts and comments from other readers; I see that we again can believe in triumph over hardship. Many of us are simply true honest voices who believe in the power of beauty -- and that is the dream this country was built upon.

Happy Thanksgiving: A Weed Bit of History

Here is a little story that is not well known about the pilgrims and their first Thanksgiving and the new world.

How many of you have heard of a plant called ‘Datura’? It grows all over North America. In the east, it’s known as jimson weed. Out west, especially in the southwest, it is known as the sacred datura, the moon lily, moon flower, the dream weed or the devil’s trumpet.

Now they didn’t have this plant in merry ole England. The Pilgrim Fathers didn’t discover it until they came to the new World. Most likely it was one of the indigenous Americans who turned and pointed out the plant and suggested that if the immigrants wanted to really give thanks, and at the same time do themselves a big favor, they should nibble a bit of this plant. Any part of it – petals, stems, leaves – taken internally launched the person into a world they had never known before.

Not only was datura a guaranteed hallucinogenic, it had curative powers as well. For example, when consumed in a fire and the fumes inhaled, it aided respiration. The plant was also used as a poultice to salve burns and sores. Merely rubbing the eyes after pulling the leaves off the stem could cause the pupils to dilate.

This is a plant that could both heal you and kill you.

In India, for example, assassins used it to dispatch their victims. The priests of Apollo at Delphi ate datura to assist them in making prophecies.

Now let’s be realistic, how many of you have sat at a groaning Thanksgiving day table, bored out of your skull, stuffed to the gills with sodium-loaded turkeys, seated next to some long-lost cousin who can only talk about all the money he is spending, and wishing you could be anywhere else than where you are.

Well, thing about those first pilgrims who, before they sat down to enjoy their first major repast in the New World gobbled down a handful of petals from the ubiquitous moon lily. There are reports of pious Christian elders getting to their feet midway through the sumptuous feast and dancing on the table, singing at the tops of their lungs, and attempting to remove critical articles of clothing. Others, it is reported, were found hanging from tress, giggling maniacally.

Think about it. Is this not a good way to celebrate the arrival of the Europeans into this brave New World? This we do have to be thankful for.

(Jimson weed = James Town + weed)

Top and last (1932) paintings by Georgia O`Keeffe, second and third images from desertusa.com, and fourth homegrown from Missouri Plants.

My Brain

My brain in the past several days... (and NOT on drugs...) the result of too much work, a deadlined moved up, another next week and these days in 2009 flying by too quickly. A number of half written posts paitently waiting in the folders of my computer need to be completed and posted. Many thanks for those stopping by and especially to those who really do return. Hopefully, I'll be back up and running soon...

Blog B-Day

Happy Birthday little Blog. You are one year old today.

and Happy Birthday to me. I better be one year wiser.

(top image French Vanilla Ooh Lah Lah cupcake from Cupcake à la Mode...)

Guess the Date: Shoes

My mom was flipping through a box of old photographs the other day and found an article she had forgotten she tucked away. Any guesses as to the year it was written? (Click on image to read the article...)

Thoughts on the Passing of John Hughes

Though he has been gone a week, I would like to say: Thank You John Hughes.

Many of us have not forgotten you.

For those teens and young adults who struggled to understand life during the 80s, the writer and director broke everything down, categorized and explained the vunerable and impressionable dynamics of those angst-filled teenage years. He captured high school, the dress, the hair, underage drinking parties and personal emotional situations… perfectly. It was real. He didn’t sit in judgment. He didn’t make you feel alone.

The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles, Pretty in Pink, and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off were the ones I remember most. And also my favorites of the time.

I had a bit of a thing for 'Bender' in The Breakfast Club. His dirty, disheveled bad boyness intrigued me. I attended an all-girls 'Claire' kind of school and proper parents didn’t like for us to associate ourselves with the broken type. Donning our monogrammed sweaters, kilt skirts and tasseled loafers, we were groomed to marry the Emilio Estevez popular athlete who made good grades, the right choices and called his father ‘sir’.


Or worse, James Spader's character in Pretty in Pink, with his upturned collar, cigarette dangling from his lips and reeking of Polo cologne in the classic green bottle.

But John Hughes safely exposed me to the outcast creative angry type. And there was no turning back.

In high school, I was looking for the 'Bender', but instead dated a football player from another school. He wasn’t dirty or disheveled, he just got into a lot of trouble, chain smoked and dressed weird, and I liked that. I moved on and dated the various types John Hughes had characterized up on the screen, and then some in between. Regardless of which character each resembled (it's sounding as if there were many, not the case), and how diverse I thought my range to be, they all had something in common. It is interesting how there is a certain something -- a type, a look, a mind -- that embeds in our heads at a young age which we can never seem to shake. It took me a long time to realize the 'Bender' type I was looking for didn’t have to be the brooding outcast. And more importantly, he didn’t have to have an arrest record in his repertoire.

So thank you John Hughes for broadening my horizons of male suitors, I wouldn’t have explored the variety of types and made so many horrendous (and expensive) mistakes if it wasn’t for your films. I finally ended up with one who is just right. I probably wouldn't have gotten here unless I explored these other very, very bumpy roads. Though annoying and painful, I salute you for what you did to make me who I am.

8.8

To my husband who surprised me this morning with a cupcake and flowers for our anniversary. Although I know you will never be reading this, (which will also spare me from you realizing just how corny I can be), you mean the world to me.

And to my first little Westie in heaven. Happy Birthday Tulla! I miss you so much each and every day. You taught me how to be kind and patient no matter what. When you died, I felt for a long, long while as if someone had taken a metal ice cream scoop and cut out a jagged hole where my heart once beat. You waited, I am sure, to go when you knew I was safe. That gives me comfort. But still after these years, I have such sadness, my breaths are short and tight when I think of you.

(Top image from Cupcake a la Mode; Bottom image: Tulla's last birthday with her Uncle Tony)

I Think I Am That Bored

I woke up this morning anxious. As a gigantic pot of coffee was brewing, I peered out the window onto the balcony and into my flower box where two little baby birds were still snuggled alone. Early yesterday afternoon, as I typing away with a furrowed brow to finish a deadline, I glanced out the window and noticed the mother bird had left. (I also noticed that my flowers are dying since I haven't watered them in three weeks so as not to disturb the nest.) Hours passed and she still had not returned. We had new neighbors move in yesterday -- making quite a bit of noise. Could the mother have left out of irritation? Was she sick of her kids? Had she had enough of her life and left everything in search of greener pastures?

I stayed home last night, compulsively peeking through the wooden blinds to watch over the little babies. What could be so important to take a mother away from the nest with two little ones at home alone? Where was the father? There were no other mourning doves around to check on them. Years ago, when I first moved to Los Angeles, I stayed a couple months with my brother until I found a place of my own. There, on his balcony, a mourning dove had laid one egg. It hatched one day and the mother bird flew away never to return. It was excruciating to watch. I feared a similar situation.

It is amazing the thoughts we think and the feelings we feel through the skewed lenses of our personal experiences. We are sometimes quick to cast judgment and think we know what is best. This morning as I leashed Billy to go for our walk, I was doing just that. I was getting really perturbed. I wish there was a number for child protective services for mourning doves I could call, I told my husband. He sat quietly on the sofa blocking my view of his rolling eyes with a coffee cup. He didn’t read “Are You My Mother” as a little kid. That book is brutal.

I am relieved to report that nearly 24 hours later, the father has returned to the nest to care for the baby birds. The mother is still no where to be found. I cannot believe how attached I am to them -- little birds that, honestly, look similar to two hairballs some cat coughed up. I am really not that bored with my life -- just concerned with something I cannot control and avoiding a bunch of work I have to do all weekend. I am really overdue to have some fun...

The Blue-Footed Booby and me

There was a time in my youth when I was a recent college graduate and moved to New York City. I barely made enough money to pay the rent on an extremely small apartment I shared with a friend. I worked for a few dollars a day as an assistant fact-checker for an art magazine. But I had a lot of friends there, many of whom I knew from college. Despite the high price of drinks in the bars (there were no quarter pitcher nights like I was used to at school), I had a very active and fun social life. For whatever reason, I was never short on male attention, until I moved there. And then I had quite a dry spell. I could not figure out why. Surely, I had done something wrong. Were my clothes not right? Was I not tall enough? Did I let my Midwestern drawl slip out too many times, I wondered. My confidence was low.

My father came back from the Galápagos some time when I was living in New York. He told me about the Blue-Footed Booby, a type of bird which is native to the area. The male boobies have a peculiar mating dance when they wished to catch the eye of a female. I was intrigued and needed to hear more. Perhaps, there was something I could glean from this. The males are very proud of their blue feet, my dad told me, which range in blue hues from pale turquoise to bright cobalt. Females tend to be attracted to the males with the brightest, bluest feet. Although, the females’ feet are also blue, they are not nearly as attractive as the males. This is very different than humans; usually we don’t want to look at men’s feet. We spend money paying others to scrub, rub, primp and polish ours.

But in order to catch a mate, male boobies flaunt their feet. When they find one of particular linking, they start out slowly lifting one foot and then the other. They move into a slow dance, of sorts, trying to capture the eye of their chosen affection. When they think they’ve almost sealed the deal, they will stamp their feet on the ground, flap their wings, throw back their heads and let out a whistling sound. This behavior, I thought at the time, was not very different than some loud drunken 22 year-old males I know. And that display, would surely send most sensible girls right out the door. One thing I liked about the boobies was that the males will bring females gifts -- housing materials to build a nest. These male boobies think ahead. They are not a seasonal reproducing species either, nor mate out of boredom or inebriation. They seize an opportunity when they see a female for whom they’ve taken a fancy. Surely attracted to her mind, male boobies were selective and indiscrete; I liked to think that too.

I needed to resort to a different tactic in my own personal life since I hadn’t been asked on a date months after moving to the city. I would try something similar as these booby birds. In those days, young women didn’t regularly go out to their local nail shop to get their toes painted like we religiously do today. But many of these places existed and I got mine all spruced up. Bright blue polish wasn’t an option, so I went for a bright hibiscus pink instead. That Friday night with my hair in a perfect flip (much like Kierin Kirby of Deee-Lite – think of the Groove is in the Heart video), I crossed town and met up with my friends for a little cheap bourbon and raspberry soda before we ventured out to plop down half a weeks earnings on alcohol at one of the latest and trendiest bars on the upper east side (look… I was young, it was the early 90s and this is what we did). It was late spring, I wore multi-colored strappy sandals with a reasonable heel, as we did in those days … 20-somethings wore reasonable heels. I would catch the eye of another young man here and there, and then I would gaze my eyes downwards as I fanned out my newly painted toes. If I sat, I would cross and uncross my ankles surely this would capture someone’s attention. This tactic simply did not work.

I certainly didn’t want an egg, I wasn’t looking for a mate, I didn’t even want a boyfriend. I was young, egotistical and believed everything my college commencement speech said: the world was my oyster. I was living in New York City a placed I had planned on since visiting early in my teen years, I was working for one of the best art magazines even though the staff there yelled all the time and I was starving and could barely afford peanut butter for dinner. I got to see my best friends from college regularly, but I was suffering from insufficient male attention. And this, I thought in my young, naïve and dramatic way, was devastating.

When I look back all these years later, I realize that year I spent in New York was pivotal. I had a fantastic opportunity that I alone created, but I ultimately couldn’t maintain. Though I was knocked down numerous times, it was a gamble I chose and it pointed me in the right direction. I didn’t understand the world at the time -- if you work hard, you will be rewarded -- were the words I was raised on. But I realized then this notion doesn’t hold true to for everyone. I wonder if I was wise enough at the age of 22 to set aside my petty pain and understand how life really worked, would I have had to take such a rough and long detour marred with bigger issues ahead.

Images from: Wikipedia; North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences; Natural Wildlife Federation; Anderson Free Press; The Travel Blog; Big Country Audubon;

AGAIN??? !

Just when we have a break in the weather, just when my flowers begin to burst, just when I got the balcony all gussied up, I return home to make cheese and green chili pepper stuffed top sirloin burgers on the grill, and look at what I find:

The mourning dove sitting on two more little eggs...

No grilling, no loud noises or sudden movements, and no swearing for the next three weeks as I watch my flowers wilt in this heavy Midwestern heat and hold my breath desperately hoping the two little eggs will hatch and the baby birds grow up healthy and well-adjusted and fly away...

This poison will linger in all our veins even when, the fanfare returning, we are delivered again to the old disharmony. Oh, we now so worthy of such tortures, let us fervently grasp this superhuman promise made to our created bodies and souls: this promise, this madness!

~ Rimbaud

'Drunken Morning’

From Les Illuminations

I’m rebounding from the echoes of last night. Non-stop I had to work, hour after hour, day after day, for weeks I labored over my computer. I had an enormous project to turn in which had been weighing heavily on my mind since the start of the year. In the wee hours of each night, I would waddle to bed stiff from the permanent C-shape my body had formed as I hunched over my old, outdated laptop. My hand developed the form of a claw that ached from hours and hours each day grasping my mouse. At night, I was barely able to hold a toothbrush to drag it across my teeth. And when I finally completed the project, I didn’t take time to celebrate. I had baskets of laundry to do and tumble weeds of dog fur to clean which had collected underneath the furniture from three weeks of neglect. I was also overdue making dinner for my understanding husband. It seemed a good idea to open a few bottles of wine while I tackled these tasks. So I began to sip the dark red contents of my glass and felt it slide past my throat and into an empty and growling stomach while I stuffed the chicken breasts with a particularly tasty Caribbean recipe.

As I cooked I sipped and my shoulders began to lower. They had been at the level of my ears for some time. My back was in less pain. I felt circulation in my legs again. By my third glass, I let out a few giggles. By the fourth glass, I recall myself shrieking in laughter at “Kathy Griffin My Life on the D List” which ran in the background. And by the end of the bottle, I decided to take my dog for a midnight walk. I believe at this point I was skipping down the street and humming a tune, my kitchen apron still on. My dog and I decided to take a detour through a neighbor’s yard running through their sprinklers.

It was hot out last night. The steamy air was too stagnant for even insects to fly through. We needed to cool ourselves off. And it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Poets such as Baudelaire and Rimbaud believed in the “disarrangement of the senses”-- a practice which would inhibit the natural filtration and categorization of information we are methodically taught how to do in school. They did this with the aid of alcohol (and later music performers such as John Lennon and Jim Morrison exercised this through other types of chemicals….). Although I am a believer in the deconstruction of information and finding one’s own methods of relaxation, I am sorry I didn’t stop after my second glass.

I never finished cleaning the floors last night and I am having difficulties completing that task today. My eyelids are as heavy and gritty as sandbags and my brain feels like a dried nut rattling noisily against the insides of my head. My skin dry, my hair flat and my tongue thick. But the worst of all is that I am guilt ridden. I have wasted time today too worthless to do much. I have more work due and I have put people off. I didn’t even benefit from an evening out spending time with friends. Instead I cooked, drank, walked my dog then lost my head. Not a morsel of significance to the evening. The after effects of alcohol are unfair, but it certainly feels so right at the time.

The Babies Are Here !

Oh, I've been so worried. For the past two weeks. I've never gotten over March of the Penguins -- my eyes were swollen for days afterwards from boo-hooing. Thank god I watched it from the privacy of my own home and not in the theater. Someone would have had to carry me out of the movie house in a stretcher. I was fetal.


Two weeks ago, I noticed a pair of mourning doves stomping around in my flower boxes and crushing my newly planted pansies. It made me a little cranky, until I realized what was going on. Then I romanticized the whole thing. And felt a little special that they chose my flower box on my balcony. Narcissistic, I know, but it made me happy. It is the little things, at times. Every day I waited and protected the couple looking from my living room window -- through the wind and the rain and shooed any pesky squirrel sniffing around.


I avoided going out on the balcony, and certainly prevented my husband from doing so with his manly voice. He didn't share the same... affection as I did for these little eggs. I didn't want the mother to be scared off. She needed to keep the eggs warm. My thoughts went back to March of the Penguins. And the scene with the cold, cracked egg which the parent penguins mourned. I still get weepy.

When the mourning dove mother needed a break, the father stepped up to take her place and keep the eggs warm. Neither of them seemed to mind my dog, who absolutely insists on sunbathing during warm late afternoons. The cushioned chaise lounge is his. While my husband and I get a metal chair.

Two little baby birds born today. So far a success. I'm still keeping my distance until they are old enough and strong enough to venture out on their own. No BBQ-ing for a bit on the balcony. No loud noises or sudden movements, and certainly no more foul language.

My dog during a mid-afternoon nap before his snack, followed by another light walk down the street, and then to stretch out on his chair outside on the balcony. I cater, I pander, I will do anything this dog wants. After dinner and yet another walk, I put him to bed at night. And then I can finally get some real work done.