‘10 January snapshots

January 1: Made it back from Indiana in the nick of time to ring in an auspicious new year with good friends, good food and good cheer. I’ve got a good feeling about this one.

January 1, later: Wondering how long ago my brain starting singing the Oscar Meyer theme song – only inserting my dog’s name – before I noticed it.

January 2: Stuck on a last sentence for my essay.

January 3: Missing Mexico.

January 3, later: Can’t remember if that giant farmer’s market root in the fridge is celery root or celeriac. Or is that the same thing?

January 8: I am warm and toasty and would like to suggest that the dog put on rain gear and walk herself this time.

January 9: About to attend my first-ever college alumni function. Suggested dress was “casual” but the home where the shindig is being held was described as “magnificent.” Sartorial compromise: wear the taffeta, but leave the mink in the car?

January 10: Word-wrangling.

January 11: Practically lost an eye to the mad dive-bombing of an Anna’s hummingbird at dusk; fortunately 1) I was wearing glasses and 2) at the last fraction of a second, it veered.

January 15: Should have realized earlier that my niece has never been to a play. This will have to be the year of cultural immersion. Starting tonight, with the weird and intriguing “Boom!”

January 17: Time to suit up against the &*!% rain and go frolic in the muddy woods with the dog.

January 17, later: I am reminded yet again that hiking in the rain is always worth it.

January 19: Feeling an unreasoning, proprietary pride in LK Madigan, who won the Morris Award for best first YA novel and who is no relation to me whatsoever outside of the fact that I bought my house from her.

January 20: The afternoon and evening were hijacked by the mutiny of the brother-out-law’s appendix, but all seems to have gone well and what’s a pleasant day without five or six hours in the hospital?

January 22: Music & mud: two ingredients that help make a very fine day.

January 23: More singing! More mud! Plus some painting; some flower noses poking up; and some hi-larious crazydancing in the multi-purpose room, under the tiny disco ball thumb-tacked to the ceiling tiles.

January 24: Staring at a precious jar of just-opened huckleberry jam, wondering if the wax seal unstuck just now when I was knocking the lid on the counter to loosen it, or some time well before that? It *smells* good…

January 25: Once again hopelessly behind in all forms of correspondence. On the other hand, the hydrangea has been pruned.

January 26: What shall I bring to the potluck?

January 27: Aarrggghh.

January 30: I have the crummies. Wearing the mournful expression of a Brown Barbaloot.

airport ablutions: two mysteries

At the Indianapolis airport a young man and I approached the water fountains at the same time. I had an empty water bottle to fill. He was wearing a long black coat and had brown hair that fell in side curls beside his ears, from which I guessed he was an Orthodox Jew. Bending over the fountain next to mine, he filled a paper cup with water and then, holding his hands above the basin, carefully poured the water over first one hand, and then the other. I topped off my bottle, trying to keep up with the vicissitudes of water pressure in my fountain; he repeated his ablutions over his. Then an older man, also in black and with side curls, emerged from the restroom; my neighbor greeted him familiarly and handed him the cup, whereupon the older man symbolically washed his hands over the water fountain too.

I screwed the top back on my water bottle and schlepped my gear off toward my gate, wondering two things:

1. Why perform a ritual handwashing over the water fountain when there were sinks available in the adjacent bathroom?

2. How do Orthodox Jews keep their side curls so curly? I know from personal junior high school experience that for most of us, ringlets don’t just happen. Do Orthodox Jewish men use curling irons?

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(Note: some answers have been proffered via Comments!)

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2010.

‘09 December snapshots

December 6: Can’t help scanning the creek beds for fossils, even though I’m in Oregon now and more likely to see nutria tracks.

December 7: Cold snap ‘09. My bedroom is a frosty 53 degrees right now. No kidding. There’s a thermometer in there.

December 10: Made soup in September with tomatoes from the garden. Tonight, thawed it and ate it, glad for this time-travel present from my earlier self.

December 11: Was startled to read in the paper’s trivia section today that velociraptors were about the size of turkeys.

December 12: My dog went to a party without me. She came home wearing someone else’s kerchief.

December 13: Cannot find a single one of the several dreidels I know are in the house somewhere. Drat!

December 13, later: I love gathering friends together on a dark night to eat soup and share stories around the small brave candles of Hanukkah.

December 14: This morning the dog and I startled a small hawk (sharpie? Cooper’s?) up from the creek where it had been drinking.

December 14, later: Cannot explain why the dog, after getting rather damp on our walk, now smells like tamales.

December 15: I would like to rewind the morning to the moment right before I stooped over and tweaked my back. Why do they hafta put the shower spigot so low?

December 17: My current disgruntlement is inexplicable.

December 18: Yep, I happied my Hanukkah.

December 19, 11:07 p.m.: Getting all sugared up on a Voodoo Donut and opening a just-arrived Hanukkah package!

December 21: I love turning the Solstice corner. And I noticed the daffodil noses in front of my office are already poking up!

December 23: Hangin’ with the Hoosiers. Forgot my hat, lost my gloves, but remembered the presents!… so we’ll call it good.

December 25: Old friends, frog puzzles, good food, surprise sleet, thoughtful gifts, screaming children, a flying Pinguini, a squoosh-faced cat, Eastern birds, my childhood bed, second-hand shoes, smashing geodes. Christmas!

December 27: Red cardinals; pffefferneuse; hiking the muddy, frozen creek bottoms; silly movies; etiquette for apes and ostriches; a pinheaded cat; enchilada soup; (sniffles and sneezes); a limestone cave fringed with icicles; nuthatches; the disdainful guffaw of a pileated woodpecker; … and today, a sudden – now steady – sifting of snow!

December 28: Reading my journal from the 1987 trek across Spain. Sheep are funny.

December 30: Eating a creamsicle truffle homemade by my sister and watching delicate snow sift down.

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.

‘09 November snapshots

November 2: Got a flash of summer from the marionberries I pulled out of the freezer this morning.

November 3: Rubbed my hands with salt after mincing garlic and was just as amazed as ever that it really does take the garlic-stink away.

November 4: Can’t keep up with my hobbies. Shoot.

November 5: I have to agree with Jane that the pot of gold at the end of a clip-art rainbow looks invitingly like mac ‘n’ cheese.

November 5, later: Found the book Crazy Beautiful really, really, irritating. The only way it reminded me of high school was in its painful, eye-rolling tedium.

November 6: The dog is miserably falling asleep sitting up with a cone on her head.

November 7: “Do not hustle the lobsters.”

November 8: I have a parsnip.

November 9: I love it when people send me good soup recipes. Or good anything recipes, actually. But today it was soup.

November 9, later: Can check “shirking” off my list today.

November 10: Ate toast off a plate emblazoned with a handsome hand-painted rooster.

November 11: Writing up notes for the Mock Printz and feeling curmudgeonly. I swear, I really like some books! Just not the last two.

November 12: Ready for cancer to f**k off, now.

November 13: My water polo-playing niece kicked butt at State semis today — which is allowed if under water and out of view of the refs.

November 14: The day included not only canning green tomato salsa and volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, but also the screamingly thrilling girls’ water polo championship game, which our team won with the indispensable help of my talented goalie niece. Are we go-getters or what?

November 15, morning: Feeling a strong compulsion to rearrange the furniture all over the house.

November 15, evening: Hadn’t played Hearts in years and years but it allll came back, ha ha ha!

November 16: Dinner for breakfast and breakfast for dinner. A pleasing culinary symmetry.

November 17: Cannot seem to convince the dog that skateboarders are our friends.

November 19: Wondering how to fit the giant stalk of brussels sprouts into the refrigerator.

November 20: Eating oodles of clementines.

November 21: The neighbors let me pick a whole bunch of their persimmons. Now, what shall I do with them?

November 23: Having piled them in several large bowls, have concluded that I have more fuyu persimmons that are strictly necessary in a single household.

November 24: Didn’t leave my book at work after all. Yay!

November 25: My front porch appears to have been visited by the brussels sprouts fairy!

November 26: Feeling grateful. And sleepy. And hopeful for tomorrow.

November 28: Pushing back my sleeves, turning on loud music, and preparing to wrassle the turkey carcass.

November 29: Hurdles overcome. Yellow dog on red chair. Turkey soup (with matzoh balls) in fridge. Bills as yet unpaid. Cookie tin broached. Mud on shoes from lovely urban hike. All members of family talked with, even those on a Mexican beach. This may all turn out okay, after all.

November 30: Encountered an exceptionally snooty parking meter tonight. True, upon eventual examination under a lightpost, my quarter was revealed to be a 5-rupee piece, but don’t you think the meter’s uncompromising attitude was just a little bit provincial?

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.

you call this a persimmon?

Two streets over there is a tree covered in yellowish fruit like hard, squat tomatoes. I learned when I moved to the West Coast that people out here will point to such a tree and claim it is a “persimmon,” which sounds nonsensical to a Hoosier like me. I grew up stepping on the little persimmons of southern Indiana, which are like spicy, squishy pumpkin pie filling tied up in delicate bags. The way you know they are ripe is when they fall to the ground and splat. We would turn them into divinely buttery baked puddings made from family recipes and bring them to potlucks.

By contrast it is very hard to know when this firm, glossy, West Coast persimmon gets ripe. I watched my neighbors’ tree for weeks, wondering if the owners – who kept a very tidy yard and supported the tree’s branches with 2×4’s – planned to pick the fruit. These same people’s Asian pears were left to fall uncollected. I figured this was because they were on the small and gritty side; still, whenever the dog and I walked by I’d put a fallen pear or two in my pocket to cut up later onto my cereal. Meanwhile, the persimmons on their tree stayed hard and yellow and firmly attached to their branches. October passed and November ticked by. The rains began in earnest. All the leaves fell off the persimmon tree, revealing the golden fruits bobbing brightly at the end of their naked branches like marshmallows held over a campfire. Finally one day last week I saw that squirrels or crows had begun taking bites out of the fruit, and I concluded that they simply must be ripe now. And if the family was picking them at all, they were taking an advent calendar approach of one fruit a day and might need some backup.

I spoke with lady of the house, for whom English was not a first language and “persimmon” not a staple of  her vocabulary. Nonetheless we communicated nicely with pointing at the “fruit” tree and it was agreed that I would return the next day to harvest the persimmons. This I did with the help of a friend and the supervision of the man of the house, who offered us the use of several different ladders and then took a smoke break to watch us work. We came away with a grocery bag full of fruit.

I brought my home and piled them in bowls, gloating over my hoard. I peeled the blushingest ones, cut them up into crunchy little wedges, and ate them. This went on for a few days and the level of fruit in the bowls did not noticeably diminish.

My persimmon-picking accomplice, who grew up in California, was able to ID our haul as fuyus. I’ve learned this week that fuyus are conversationally distinguished from the other local Asian persimmon, the hachiya, as being “the flat hard ones” rather than “the pointy squishy ones.” I have also learned that hachiyas are less common here, and are startlingly astringent until tamed by the first frost; or until you put them overnight in the freezer, after which they become creamy and succulent and you can eat them with a spoon like an ice cream cup. I have not yet lucked into any hachiyas so I haven’t tried this yet but it sounds great.

Fuyus, on the other hand — in addition to sounding faintly insulting like something Danny Zuko might say (“Hey! Fu-yu!”) — are mellow and sweet from the ripening get-go. Supposedly they can become soft but so far mine are all firm and crunchy. Well, crunchy with give: like an apple crossed with a firm cantaloupe. Their flesh is a pretty golden-orange and each one contains maybe two thumbnail-sized brown seeds, like flattened baby chestnuts.

I still haven’t decided what to do with all my fuyus. I eat several every day; I’ve sliced up and frozen the flesh of some and given others away. I was hoping to make some kind of preserves but it seems that they do better in freezer jams and I simply can’t sacrifice the frozen-soup space. Still, as I admitted to my mom, even if I give the rest away, it was worth it to finally scratch the urban-gleaning itch. That neglected persimmon tree was driving me… fuyu.

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.

“Myself, et al.”

Which would be a fantastic name for an autiobiography, a chapbook, a catalog of wonders. But it was even better where I saw it: as an answer to the question, “Who is your hero?”

A: “Myself, et al.”

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.

Totally the same clown

I was loitering in the tchotchke aisle at the Powell St. Goodwill tonight when the pair of twenty-somethings next to me had this conversation:

Girl I’d noticed earlier because of the striking carved pendant she was wearing: I have to tell you a story about this!

Gangly guy in knitted hat: I was wondering why you were holding on to that. I thought, Is she really gonna buy that?

Pendant Girl, laughing but excited: No! But it’s crazy, this is exactly like the clown I had when I was a kid. Exactly! I mean, mine was plastic and this one’s ceramic, but it’s totally the same one. Same face and everything.

[As I browse the mismatched saltshakers I can see from the corner of my eye that she is lifting up a gaudy figurine for him to regard.]

Pendant Girl, reminiscing: I don’t even know where mine came from, I think my Mom got it for me or something. I had it from when I was really little. And what I used to do was, I would paint it all the time.

Gangly Guy, minimalistically: Yeah?

Pendant Girl, remembering the important part: … I painted it with nail polish! A different color every time. I would kind of lose track of it for a long time, like years sometimes; and then sooner or later it would turn up again, and I’d get out the nail polish and paint it another color.

Gangly Guy, unsatisfyingly: Hunh!

Pendant Girl, fondly: That’s what I did with it. I don’t know why. Man, I can’t believe that! Totally the same clown!

She sets it down on a shelf so she is eye to eye with the insouciant little clown, gazing at it in affectionate, stupified wonder. Gangly Guy wanders around the corner to the weird wicker aisle.

Me (I can’t stand it that Gangly Guy wasn’t properly fascinated): That’s kind of a great story. Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing.

Pendant Girl turns to me, smiling happily: Thanks! Isn’t that weird? It’s exactly the one I had when I was a kid.

Shaking her head she gives the clown one last friendly look and strolls off after her companion.

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.

‘09 October snapshots

October 1: almost all packed up — off to Hoosierland in the morning!

October 4: played Ultimate Frisbee tonight for the first time in maybe 12 years. This time without breaking a single toe.

October 5: Spent the day at my favorite cabin in the world and was so happy to see that the box turtle still lives under the porch!

October 6: I luv my hometown.

October 6:  Today my sister told me I was dressed like a Dutch Oompa-Loompa. Obviously I am quite fashion-forward for southern Indiana.

October 7:  Luckily for us, my sister is an amazing baker of amazing cakes.

October 8: I abandoned my drenched sneakers in a foot locker and happily toured the art museum in two pairs of dry socks provided by my docent sister.

October 12: Soup for breakfast. Must be fall.

October 12: Started the day observing a court-mandated parenting group and ended it snacking on risotto crunchballs with friends.

October 13: Just returned from volunteer zombie training.

October 15: Helping support my public radio station.

October 15: I swear to you that braised cabbage makes a divinely succulent fall dinner.

October 16: Wondering if it’s possible to rehabilitate a really leggy rhododendron.

October 17: Wondered why the maple tree was filled with scores of screaming crows – and then saw, hunched on a branch, the great horned owl.

October 18: Lucky to have friends who make things like tomato tapenade, salmon bisque, braised leeks, and peppers Provencal for dinner, and then invite me over.

October 19: I am dismayed by how quickly the December airfares have shot up.

October 20: The house smells good from the Asian pears simmering on the stove.

October 20: I need a magic sneaky way to get an affordable plane ticket at Xmas, besides going back in time and buying it last March…

October 22: The dog invited me to play Hedgehog Push; Small Ball Under Couch; Big Ball Noseball; and Hide the Squirrel. So I did. Next up: Drinking Some Water.

October 23: Making spiced pear butter and sensibly putting off everything else.

October 24: Halloween cemetery tour guide training? Check. Asparagus soup consumed? Check. Next up: selection of all-black outfit and off to sing.

October 25: Carved punkins and talked trash with riotous friends while the terrible terriers (plus one Golden) cavorted underfoot, alert for stray bits o’ squash.

October 27: Dug up some potatoes and triumphantly ate them.

October 28: Wearing red shoes.

October 29: I like the green apron best, because of the stripes and the pockets. And now, having cleaned up the kitchen and dismantled a pomegranate, off to bed.

October 31: Off to give Tours of Untimely Departures at the cemetery.

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.

cacawphony

There is a spring-fed wetland on Reed campus the terrier and I like to visit. It is tucked into a shallow canyon, shaded by deciduous trees and gussied up with snowberries, Indian plum, and Oregon grape. There is always some kind of critter action here: nutria nibble on water weeds; woodpeckers hunt for grubs. Dabbling ducks paddle with their dandelion babies in the spring. Herons stalk the shallows, striking yoga poses of stealthy severity.

Once Amy and I noticed a lakeside bush trembling, alone among its fellows. As we watched in bemusement it tipped slowly sideways, still quaking, and began sneaking off through the underbrush, stage right.  Once it reached open water we could see the determined beaver jerking it along, and then were charmed when a little head poked up from the water behind a fallen log and a pint-sized beaver offspring joined its parent in reducing the bush to a leafless toothpick.

So the terrier and I like to come poke around the wetland to see what’s happening. She mostly sniffs and occasionally tastes things; I mostly look (binocs optional, though tricky with a leash in the other hand) and listen. Last week, though, we were both on alert from the moment we entered campus. Not far off, among the dormitories and towering maples, a tremendous din was happening. It roared featurelessly in the distance until we rounded the corner of the path heading to the lake, whereupon a mad cacophony enveloped us — an absolutely over-the-top ruckus: imagine, say, a truck full of heavy-metal cicadas, blowing shofars and hitting the jack brakes.

It was a maelstrom of crows.  Raucous, furious, screaming crows. A great mass of them, at least a hundred, diving and seething around a huge  sweet gum tree right next to the path.

The terrier and I had opposite impulses. Being bigger, I won. Once I’d reeled her in and tucked her, scrabbling, under my arm, I headed for the sweet gum tree. The crows veered and gibbered deafeningly in the branches above us and I couldn’t help but duck down.  I tried to mention something reassuring to the terrier but no one could hear anything above the pulsing chaos of sound and she wouldn’t have believed me anyway.  The crows intended to sound pissed and dangerous, and they succeeded.

And no wonder. Standing near the sweet gum’s trunk I could peer straight up into the heart of the tree, the epicenter of the corvid storm, and there it was, the devil itself: a great horned owl! The mob of crows screamed curses, careening past the predator’s face. The owl, stoic, hunched on its branch, unblinking. The dictionary embodiment, you could say, of “unflappable.”

Drawn to the bedlam, a small crowd quickly gathered below the tree, staring up at the motionless owl. Strangers murmured to one another, marveling. Joggers removed their headphones and borrowed binoculars from the bird nerds. A man declared he had lived in Portland all his life and never before seen a great horned owl. The terrier decried the insanity but had to settle for sanctuary in my armpit. The crows carried on harassing the owl with deafening screams; the owl managed to look both resigned and dangerous.  Once it looked down at us and we all jumped.

But the poor terrier was utterly unsettled and at last I relented and led her away, across the lawns and down under the bridge to the water.  She spent the next fifteen minutes looking nervously over her shoulder before settling in to pouncing and sniffing. We circled the lake and after a while I could see that the crows had decamped and were dispersing in grumbling groups all around campus.  Rain clouds drew together and the light grew dim; soon the terrier and I were the only ones left in sight.

We made our way around the lake and back through campus past the sweet gum tree, where I paused to pay owl reverence, ducking under the lower branches for a last, hopeful look. The grand bird was still there, coin-eyed and cat-eared, steadfastly ignoring its dwindled honor guard of ten heckling crows. So I stood for a while with the last of the watchers, a tenacious woman with binoculars and good rain gear, mutually enraptured by this owl. It was something like being in the presence of a minotaur: a nervous sense of improbable, ephemeral luck in sharing the air with something so unlikely and magnificent. Then the skies opened up, and I took a last dazzled breath, and the terrier and I, soaking wet, ran for cover.

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.

invisible raccoon

The me-first terrier and I went walking at the Reed wetland yesterday.  Evidently someone else had been on the boardwalk just before us:

At first I was irritated because the wetland is supposed to be a protected wildlife area, yet people always let their off-leash dogs lollop around in the water, mashing plants and snails and leaving big muddy tracks all over the boardwalks.  But then I took a sharper look and saw the delicate fingers on these paw prints…

I’ve seen raccoon tracks in the mud here in the spring, but never had such a tantalizingly recent clue!  I froze, and while the terrier patiently nibbled at a bent stalk of grass, I looked carefully all around… but, somewhere nearby — perhaps snacking on freshwater snails — the raccoon stayed cannily hidden from view.

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© Deborah Gitlitz and Practicing Noticing, 2009.