I salute you, oh Spring

My mother and her mother called these spring flowers flags--a name you don't hear much anymore used for Iris. They, along with peonies (do you say pe-o-nee or pe-ony?), would make up the flowers carried in a 3-pound coffee can to place in the flower boxes at the graveyards on every Memorial Day I can remember. On the few early springs in Idaho, there might be a few tender lilacs tucked in too.

So, when I was driving along one day and turned onto a street appropriately named 'Rustic Road' there stood this battalion of flags at attention. I thought they deserved some recognition @ Today's Flowers.

yum! sugar!

Today's Ruby Tuesday's special prompt is a glimpse of the red books in our collection. Eclectic, red and random, here's just a few.
And because I have trouble reading [any] directions, I am including the following that I'd already posted for Ruby Tuesday. I like to think of it as a bonus, or creative posting or just plain, I didn't get that e-mail. Did I? I don't know. Where was I. . .?


To my mind, it wouldn't be the holidays without a panettone. I don't make them myself but spend an equal amount of time searching for the best one. This was easy in Chicago where you could find an Italian deli on practically every corner. Up here in the northwoods I'm tempted by all the outrageously delicious Scandinavian delicacies and it just takes a little more searching for the Italian variety of sugared goodness. So, it is with rosy Italian cheeks that I say I bought this at CVS in the after Christmas half-off extravaganza and it was so wonderful I bought another. Made in Brazil, imported from Italy and delivered straight to the Midwest it brought new meaning to the adage that its a small world after all!



I found this vintage sugar sack at a North Saint Paul antique emporium recommended by my library pal, Mona. It has extra meaning to me having grown up in southern Idaho in the heart of potato and sugar beet farms. U & I (Utah & Idaho) was all we had for years until C & H appeared from the more exotic regions of California and Hawaii. A nice pillow perhaps. . .?

All this fun comes to you compliments of Mary's meme, Ruby Tuesday where red is the color of the day!

the whole truth

In 1988 I moved back and forth from my hometown in Idaho for the last time. Dave, our two elementary aged girls and I were moving to Pennsylvania. Our journey would take us on to Chicago and Minnesota, but I never went back to Idaho except for the two funerals of my parents. Despite the years of neglect and abuse in my childhood a quasi-relationship existed with my parents, no spoken apologies on their part and a lot of therapy still to do on my part to live a healthy 'rest of my life.'
In the early hours on the morning we were leaving, my mom and dad were waiting for us when we arrived at the airport to catch our flight. This in itself was an omen because they had to drive the 50 miles in the pre-dawn to see us off. My dad was teary eyed and my mom smoked a lot while we waited. Then she put out her cigarette, reached in her pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of tissue paper. Unwrapped I found three Christmas ornaments from my childhood in the 1950's. They were my favorites; ones I helped put on that special place on the tree each year and she wanted me to have them. A peace offering?
Only two remain thanks to what seems like endless moving in my life. Knowing that the holidays rearrange our feelings of nostalgia and longing for those weeks in December every year, I still can't help smiling when I find these in the decoration boxes. This year they seem especially dear to me, enough to have their own photo taken. Can you see me in the one where some of the color has rubbed off? A metaphor for the sweetness of life?

The truth is that life is delicious, horrible, charming,

frightful, sweet, bitter, and that is everything.
Anatole France

Love in the Library with Andy Carnegie

1909 view of the Carnegie Library, Pocatello, Idaho

The Carnegie Library In the early 1900s, steel industrialist Andrew Carnegie began a program to encourage education by financing community libraries across the United States. Carnegie was an immigrant from Scotland who had little education but who realized the importance of education, especially for the stream of immigrants who lacked sufficient education to compete in the American job market. His public program furnished libraries for thousands of communities across the country.

My first experience with a library was when I was learning to read and my dad and I climbed the many stairs of this imposing building on the corner of West Center and East Garfield. This Carnegie Library, built around 1907 from a 1906 grant, was one of ten in our state and cost $12,000 to build at that time. In the late 1950's it was vacated for a larger, more modern building on the east side of town. The newer building was only three blocks from St. Anthony School where I attended elementary and once a week I was one of the few bookish types who could walk there and back alone, loaded with books. Thus began my life long love affair with books and libraries. Returning to Idaho on occasion I've re-visited the new, even larger library that was built in 1994 on the original site, attached to the original Carnegie Library. It still smells the same to me.

[photos & facts from Idaho Museum of Natural History]

Many years later I am still a user and browser and haunter of libraries in every city I've lived in or visited. There's the massive urban library I'd visit in Chicago and the tiny Village Library in Jacobus, Pennsylvania where I read for story time. Once smitten, I'm always able to sniff out a library wherever I go. So I tip my hat to Andrew Carnegie!

Today's letter for ABC Wednesday is 'L' --for me it spells l-i-b-r-a-r-y.

Phantoms & Shadows

You said, ‘She’s got the map of Japan all over her face.’
But when I looked up at her I only saw skin.

My welted, wet face reminded you of a big, fat Indian squaw.

I thought we were Italians.

Shineola, blue gums, Sambo?

They’re only shoe polish, Halloween teeth and pancakes to me.

Like watermelon seeds, you spit out ‘Those kraut bastards!’

cleverly confusing your wife’s blond hair and blue eyes

with the sauerkraut barrel.

Filthy gypsies, no-good Greeks, yellow Chinks:
Your mother taught you that people are mean.
In embracing her, even to the grave,
You set this legacy spinning into the next generation’s fragile orbit.

If you could see how hard I’ve tried to dispel these lies,
your ideas like an unopened gift left behind
Would you be proud of me?

You can rest now in the gathered satin of your apathy

knowing I have slowly untangled the knots that were once given to you.
But at what price?

~~~

After the past campaign, my living in south Chicago for fourteen years, and finally in seeing history being made at last week's inauguration, I have jotted down these few thoughts. Presumably the are submitted to Sunday Scribblings--late again--but more importantly as a note to my daughters and future members of our family: I didn't get here overnight!

[collage photos from Bannock County archives
of Asians in Idaho in the 20th century,
when my dad was growing up]

You can go home again!

ABC Wednesday zips ahead to the letter 'P' this week. And I am choosing my hometown of Pocatello, Idaho to highlight that letter. It is a small town in southeastern Idaho that came into being to serve an advancing railroad in the 1880's. Sitting on a prehistoric Lake Bonneville the area's rich volcanic soil is famous for growing potatoes. My grandfather came there from Italy in the 1890's opening several grocery stores--Vito Cuoio & Sons--to serve the railroad trade. It sits on the Oregon Trail and is near Fort Hall, an early fur trading station and later the Shoshone Bannock Indian Reservation. It is a conservative religious community that is somewhat diluted by being home to Idaho State University, a school Dave and I both attended.
Pocatello is surrounded by mountains with alluvial fan formations on several 'benches'--a fisherman or geologist's dream. Most people are employed by the railroads. It has doubled in size from when I was young--to about 50,000. Elevation there is a whopping 4400 feet above sea level.

early Pocatello view

historic downtown todayhome of Idaho State University
Visit more P letter posts at ABC Wednesday.

First you put the mallow on the graham. . .

Happy New Year, friends, near and far!

Ahhh, the holidays, when a great time was had by all at our house and it was said more than once that we were all very glad to be together again. Erica was home from school but was ill with a bad cold for 8 of her 9 day stay. Audrey's stay was 4 days too short as well. Pashka-dog lived to see another Christmas too. Blessed we are!

So, a couple of days before Christmas I had a little angina/heart palpitation thing happen while I was walking on the track. Erica forced me to go to see a doctor the next day. . .long story short. . . involving a couple of EKGs and a trip to the emergency room. I was placed in a large room in case of heart attack and had the usual blood work, missed veins, waiting for tests, etc. before I was released 3 hours later with no signs of a heart attack but scout's honor that a visit to the cardiologist about my irregular heartbeat was in my future. Oh goody!

While I'm waiting to be discharged, I see the boots and overcoat of a firefighter pass in front on the curtain to my room. Then lots of feet flew by, the 'code blue' alarm sounded and emergency procedures could be heard in the room next to me. I lost count of how many times I heard the code blue alarm go off and the voice of one person in particular repeating, "Come back, John. I don't want to lose you. John, stay with me. We're not ready to let you go-- stay with us!" This unnerving and frantic litany continued while I signed my own discharge papers, had all the machines disconnected and gathered my belongings to leave. I was elated that I didn't have to spend the night, that my blood levels showed no residue of recent heart damage, that the day was still young. . .and I was alive. Right next door someone was fighting for his life. When I walked out of the emergency room I saw a burly EMT guy filling out a report and policemen pacing up and down the hallway. The irony of this situation stopped me in my tracks.

I told this story because I want to remember how unpredictable and fragile life is, even if the old saws about life being like a flame seem trite, they are exceedingly true. My goal is to try to remember that 'this is it' for now and be grateful for what I do have. Being a little lazy, I'm sure I'll lapse but I have a lot of images to remind me.

Now for the fun part!
red lights for Erica

our favorite candy bars from 'back home'

yummy 'smores
my very own copy of Ratatouille


and you know the rest!