Dessert and a Floor Show

Here's a picture recipe geared for young cooks,  particularly my grandson, Eeny.   No doubt it looks familiar since there's a Hershey bar variation usually completed outdoors on a campfire. (Don't need to say the S word, do we?)   I like this version because I don't have to wait for summer or set a fire but mostly because I get a giggle watching marshmallows puff up to three times their normal size.  Seeing the "show" is as much fun as eating this quick treat.

Nuke it for 15 seconds then "put the lid on it".
OF COURSE you can add chocolate on the bottom or peanut butter to the top...

  

...if you're not a marshmallow purist like me! 

I do think chocolate graham crackers would be right tasty, too,

but I haven't passed the thrill of honey-made and cinnamon yet.

So many delights, so little time!

True Vacationland

  An old biblical proverb declares that a prophet hath no honor in his own home.  A minor modern variant surely postulates that a tourist shuns vacations in her own state; until visitors come round and get the wheels rolling, anyway. The last week of July (2017), my three sisters arrived mid-afternoon in a driving rain storm.  We met up at When Pigs Fly, York, ME, to eat pizza then take home five different loaves  of their exceptional bread. We chose chocolate, orange  cranberry,  New York rye, apple cinnamon, and jalapeño olive.   I was having car troubles, so we pulled off at the rest stop between Route 1 and I-95.  A handsome black man  also stopped and offered his assistance to us four old biddies parked  in two aged cars under the dripping pine trees.  Interestingly, his name is Mr. Bible, and he works from Atlanta as a visiting nurse.  He helped me rig my fender and wheelwell back together  with dental floss and a rubber band, which, if you're wondering, did get me home  45 miles away.   That auspicious beginning launched us  to Benny's, Reny's, and Marden's--seafood, "a Maine Adventure,"  and our governor's former employer--among other places.
  A favorite was Temple Heights in Northport, a 19th century Spiritualist camp on a mountain by the sea facing Islesboro, only $45 per room per night and all the peace, healing, and relaxation you can stand.   We indulged ourselves in private readings, group message circles, and making smudge pots  under the auspices of two very competent mediums (media? I never know the correct plural in this odd case!).  One sister discovered a past life as Sarah Ruth McAllister, a missionary's daughter  who married into the Ojibways along the Dakato/Canada border in he early 1800's.  I, sorry to say, had been hanged  for something I didn't do as a slave somewhere in time.  My other sisters were waiting respectively for "William" or "Williams" and "Thomas" to enter their lives.   Sure enough, L's best friend is a Williams, and Shertle  started reading Thomas Merton to her delight when we returned home!  Besides our psychics, the Nickawa Lodge staff deserves mention for their kindness and friendliness.  And they all recommended The Whale's Tooth restaurant in Lincolnville for dinner,  where Shertle sampled her "Best Meal Ever!"--scallops and 'shrooms over linguine with a side of puréed butternut squash.  How did I miss that place when my son brought us all to Point Lookout cabins/resort in 2011?  No staff suggestions, presumably.  Whereas. it was Matt, our Temple Heights manager, who also recommended Bar Harbor over Boothbay for our whale watch adventure Sunday. And you can read how great THAT was on my other blog, Sandy's Shift.  Maybe, though, the proof is in the pictures.

 

  

       

  

SA gave me this last Wednesday

Read as little as possible of literary criticism - such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened and empty of life, or else they are just clever word-games, in which one view wins today, and tomorrow the opposite view. Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach is so useless as criticism. Only love can hold and touch and be fair to them....Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to argumentations, discussions,or introductions of that sort; if it turns out that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is a gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist: in understanding as in creating.

In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it only comes to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for: patience is everything.

Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke, translated and with forword by Stephen Mitchell, Vintage Books, NY, 1984, pp. 22-25

Letter Three (23 April 1903)

Time flies..

so I guess I'm having fun, for the most part. I've been visiting my grandsons frequently; they get more and more handsome to Gragoo, certainly, and I love to see the growth in them from visit to visit. School is going very well, and I'm working on my health issues. Mostly I wanted to post a new picture of the little guys today, so here it is.

Thank you, MLTI!

I am so excited--through a grant, all high school teachers in our state are given new iMacs, and I received mine Thursday. Shows we are serious about learning and passing on information literacy, combined with the freshmen computer program and our computer labs as well as our district staff training programs. I am having a great time getting to know this machine's capabilities and will use it constantly in my work. Favs so far: I finally checked out Google Earth and saw, among other places, where my sisters were vacationing without me last week at North Carolina's Outer Banks. My iGoogle account is getting more of a workout. Boston's Museum of Fine Arts has some podcasts and movie clips I'll be showing next week to my students. The very best, to me, is the built in camera and Photobooth. I just love digital photography and the fast, fun edit programs brought you the pictures I posted today. It's just me and my backyard,and I did NOT edit the landscape color. Gotta love the Northeast in autumn. And Go Red Sox.

Babies everywhere!

Our Alex had an outpatient eye surgery yesterday to correct his slight left cross eye so he will see better. Say a little prayer for him, please. His daddy says the nurses thought he was cute as a button, and he's definitely a tough little guy. Did I tell you he lost a front tooth 3 weeks ago? Lost his balance and struck it on his favorite toy, the star keyboard, then had to have it pulled next day by the dentist. Daddy also said he's getting very tall and staying thin, though he eats like a trooper--or maybe like Rocky Balboa! All told, with the tall, the thin, the snaggle toothed grin, and the red eye, he looks like quite a fighter, I hear.
More news: My mid-Western grand-nephews, Nic and Nino, turned blonde after their Italian brunette start. I discovered that when I visited their Geegy and Mommy over Labor Day weekend, watching our two-year old twins play choo-choo in circles around each other. Cute little engines, but they were darling dark haired cuddle bears when them last time in June, 2006.
My brother's first grandchild, Coley, is a tow-head who loves to swim and who also wears glasses, like Alex. My other sister's newest grandson is a plump little cutie, like his cousin, Ian, but his hair is light, too, as is his sisters. So of this new generation, dark hair is staying in my line. Blondes are dominating the family.
Grandchildren are definitely poppin' up all over. My schoolroom custodian's daughter gave birth to a son this past weekend, too, so life changes for another family. Can't wait to see a picture, Ms. L!

Essential Questions a decade later

This post originally figured as work related, a teacher's assignment a decade ago.  Now essential questions must be personal. And what I think mostly about them is that they feel too personal to post publicly or perhaps even to formulate for my own conscious consideration.   Fearful things, are they?   Since I shy away from sharing them with others or even myself, I'd say that's fearful.   I might for example stumble into saying that I haven't seen my darling grandsons in a year exactly and have no idea when I'll see them again.  Such a briar patch!  I don't want to state the particulars of a family rupture that is all too commonplace in our world.  8-4-17

The boys are 10 years old in these photos I took in August, 2016, except for the last one taken June, 2017, by their dad.