HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SCOOTS!

When we were kids and my mother was recovering from an operation, my brother gave her the nickname "Scoots" from the way she shuffled from room to room.  The name stuck with us kids. My father called her "Peg," from the song "Peg o' my Heart."  Her birth name was (most unfortunately) "Millard." a name that supposedly honored her parents, MILdred and BernARD (get it?).  Her middle name was Harriet and that's the name she went by, although with two ts and an e:  Harriette.  To her grandkids, she was "Mimi," a name she felt more dignified than "Grandma" or "Nana" -- no one told her it sounded like a French courtesan.  Whatever her name, she would have been 91 today.

Like Kitty's mother, she was basically orphaned at a young age.  Although Kitty's mother lost both parents, my mother lost only her father, in a major gas explosion and fire when she was seven years old.  Her mother, who was a bit scatterbrained, could not cope and decided to take my mother and her baby sister to Florida to start a new life.  Her mother (Harriette's grandmother and my great-grandmother) put the kibosh on part of that plan, keeping Harriette while Mildred took the baby South.   My great-grandmother, whom I loved dearly, was a fairly strict, albeit liberated lady of the time, an educator, and one of (if not the) first female members on our local School board.  So Harriette grew up in a stable environment, loved and cared for by her grandmother, uncles, and her step-grandfather (a kind and sweet man with a vocabulary that would make a sailor blush).

She was a popular girl with a fine singing voice and a talent for the piano.  After high school, she studied nursing for a while, but gave it up when she married my father at age 19.  My father was working on a farm, and that was their home (and mine, while growing up).  She ended up with three kids -- my sister, myself, and my brother.  Between my sister and myself, she suffered three miscarriages due to incompatible Rh factors -- something that was not well-known at the time.  (I was the first Rh baby to survive in our area -- something I am very grateful of.  My younger brother was so ill that the hospital sent him home to die; the stubborn bugger fooled them all and thrived.) 

Times were hard, but never very hard.  The farm closed when I was nine and my father concentrated on his burgeoning construction business, and things got better.   My mother remained a stay-at-home housewife.

I have often criticized my mother's cooking.  Truth to tell, she could boil the hell out of everything and meat came out a uniform grayish brown and toast was often burnt.  ("Charcoal is good for your digestive system.")  But my mother was a wonder when it came to certain desserts:  her apple pies had the flakiest crust, her chocolate cake was to die for, and her sour cream cake and pineapple upside-down cake were wonders.  I never dared to get her recipes because I would have eaten myself to obesity -- not that I'm doing a bad job of that on my own.

After my father died, she was lost for quite a while.  Eventually she started seeing a friend, recently widowed, and they were together for two decades.   They ended up getting a shih-Tzu, a rat-like animal with the undignified name of Muffin, and the three of them voyaged into old age together.

My mother was not a person of the world.  She had no political views and little sense of money.  The one thing she did have was a strong sense of friendship, something that would occasionally keep her from the truth.  She believed in her friends and would form opinions based on what they said.  When the teenaged son of one of her friends killed a ten-year-old boy while speeding, her sympathy went to her friend and her son; while acknowledging the sad event, she never fully realized or appreciated that the boy's family had been destroyed.  This was a unique occurrence, however, and the majority of my mother's friends were one of her most positive assets.

She was a child of the Depression and it marked her, as it marked so many other persons in so many other ways, throughout her life.  Looking back, I see that she was fearful of the world and coped the best way that she could.  I wish that she had been more able to tap the inner strength that lay just below her surface.  I wish that she was capable of fully viewing the world the way that we -- her children -- were taught, as a place of wonder and delight and beauty.

She did a yeoman's job of raising us.  I had the independence of going my own way and I will be ever thankful to her for that.

BAD JOKE WEDNESDAY

What's the last thing that goes through a bug's mind when he hits the windshield?  His rear end.

OFF

We're off to Massachusetts to attend a memorial service for my sister later in the week, so blogging will be light for a while.  I do have a few things in the queue to take the blog through Friday, but comments and additional blogging will be very dependent on available time and internet service.

Have a great week and try to keep cool.

See you on the other side.

OVERLOOKED FILM: HORROR EXPRESS

For your edification today, we present a Spanish horror flick starring those two icons of Spanish horror:  Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.  In this 1972 near-cult classic, Senor Lee discovers a body frozen in the ice of Manchuria (a region, I believe, of Northeast Spain) which he believes to be the missing link.  Said Senor Lee take the Trans-Siberia Express to bring said link back to civilization (Costa del Sol, perhaps?).  Aboard the train is old friend Senor Cushing.  Link thaws.  Passengers die.  Senor Telly Savalas pops up.

It's no Don Quixote, but Spanish horror flicks seldom are.

Enjoy.

http://archive.org/details/horror_express_ipod

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, KANGAROO

Hard to believe, but the Kangaroo is 1 year old today.  He's been with us (that is, with Christina and her family) since he was six weeks old and should remain until October at the very least.

So much depends on state courts and the social service system and decisions seem to be made on incomplete, conflicting, and inaccurate information -- that's when decisions are not being made on sheer wish-power.  The Kangaroo's birth mother is now pregnant with her fourth child (from four different fathers) and has some legal issues to face.  There doesn't seem to be any responsible adults in any of the families involved.  The birth mother is 23 (I believe) with no marketable (legal) skills.  The chances are pretty good that she will up with custody of the Kangaroo, as well as her other children, sometime in the future.

In the meantime, the Kangaroo is still experiencing problems arising from being born drug-addicted.  His developmental path is delayed and, although he is active and engaged, he is not gaining weight the way he should.  Christina and we are working on these issues, helping him with patterning, and providing stimuli.  He has a chance of becoming a normal kid.

A chance.

No telling what the future will hold for the Kangaroo, but for the moment he is loved and safe.  I hope that he will be loved and safe for many birthdays to come, wherever he might be.

INCOMING

• David Alexander, The Murder of Whistler's Brother.  A Bart Hardin mystery.
• William Bastone, Daniel Green & Barbara Glauber, creators, The Smoking Gun.  Compilation  of documents revealed on thesmokinggun.com.
• "M. C. Beaton" (Marian Chesney), Death of a Cad, Death of a Prankster, and Death of a Snob.  Hamish Macbeth mysteries.
• "Benjamin Black" (John Banville), The Lemur.  A Quirke mystery.
• Holly Black, Ironside and Tithe.  YA fantasies.
• Ray Bradbury, Driving Blind.  Fantasy collection of 21 stories. 
• Harlan Coben, The Final Detail. Thriller.
• Philip R. Craig, Vineyard Deceit.  A J. W. Jackson mystery, first published as The Double Minded Man and now repackaged as a "Martha's Vineyard Mystery."
• Alzina Stone Dale & Barbara Sloan Hendershott , A Mystery Reader's Walking Guide:  England.  My feet hurt just thinking about this one.
• Richard Deming, Dragnet.  Television tie-in collection of eight "case histories."  This is on of those YA Whitman Authorized TV editions that were popular in the 1950s -- in this case, 1957.
• Matthew B. J. Delany, Jinn.  Supernatural thriller.
• Carole Nelson Douglas, Femme Fatale.  An Irene Adler mystery.
• Paul W. Fairman, Five Knucklebones.  YA historical adventure.  Fairman, who would write just about anything for hire, was the founding editor of If and editor of Amazing Stories, Fantastic, and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.  He may be best known today for writing the Sherlock Holmes section of Ellery Queen's A Study in Terror.
• Raymond E. Feist, A Darkness at Sethanon, Exile's Return, Magician:  Master, and Silverthorn.  Fantasies.
• [The Graphic Artists Guild], Directory of Illustration 16.  Doorstop of an art book showcasing the talents of Guild members.  976 full color glossy pages covering multitude of catagories.  Some beautiful pieces here.
• "Robin Hobb"  (Megan Lindholm), Assassin's Quest and Forest Mage.  Fantasies.
• Philip Kerr, The One from the Other.  A Bernie Gunther novel, the first since Kerr's Berlin Trilogy.
• "Pepper" Langley, I Remember:  Recollections of "Pepper" Langley -- Growing Up in Solomons.  Local history.  Langley, master carver, boat builder, boat racer, and letterer, born in 1915, recounts his life in Southern Maryland.  In 1970, he helped found the Calvert Marine Museum; 28 years later, the Museum published this book based on oral interviews with Melvin A. Conant.  This copy signed by both Langley and Conant.
• Arturo Perez-Reverte, The Seville Communion.  Mystery.
• Daniel Pool, Dickens' Fur Coat and Charlotte's Unanswered Letters:  The Rows and Romances of England's Great Victorian Novelists.  Non-fiction.  I'm a sucker for this type of snarky thing.
• Charles Stross, The Hidden Family.  SF.
• Brad Thor, The Last Patriot and The Lions of Lucerne.  Thrillers.
• Betty Webb, Terence Faherty, Nancy Baker Jacobs, and Jonathan Harrington, Desperate Journeys.  Thriller.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EILEEN!

Today would have been my mother-in-law's 90th birthday.  I'm sure she thought that she would be around to enjoy the day.  I would have bet money on the same thing; she was a tough and determined lady.  Sadly, she passed away almost ten years ago.

For the longest time she resented my marrying Kitty.  I was that "damned South Chelmsford farmer" rather than "one of those engineers from Tech."  She sincerely believed that Kitty deserved someone much better than me.  Can't say that I disagreed with that and I have been ever so thankful that Kitty did disagree.  For the last three years of her life she lived with us; we had bought a house and set up separate living quarters so she could maintain her independence.  She actually told Kitty once that I was a "pretty good guy."  She would never allow herself to say it to me, though.

Some years ago, in their infinite wisdom and desire for more money, the Hallmark people created a National Mothers-in-law Day (or some such thing).  The morning of that first day, Eileen was our doorstep demanding, "Where's my card?"

When I was dating Kitty, Eileen discovered that one of her son's friends, one of seven children with a single mother, could not afford decent underwear.  My father had a small construction business and Eileen insisted I talk my father into hiring the boy for the summer so he could have some money.   Underneath her gruff exterior, she had a good heart.  At times, she hid it well.

She was a solitary person for the most part.  Her father had been affluent but dies of a sudden heart attack.  Her mother then committed suicide when Eileen was nine.  Eileen was raised by an uncle with a gambling problem and had a financially insecure childhood.   Nonetheless she was a happy and popular teenager.  Her high school boyfriend died during the war.  Later she married Kitty's father and they had a sometimes happy, sometimes turbulent marriage.  In her last few years, Eileen blossomed, renewing old friendships and opening new ones.

For the last year of her life Eileen was on hospice, and made good friends with the workers who came to the house regularly.  Eileen passed away just after 3:00 on a Monday morning.  At 8:00 one of the hospice workers drove up, not knowing that Eileen had died.  When I told her that Eileen had passed away, the worker broke down in tears -- something that seldom happens with hospice workers.

Eileen loved a bargain.  She once saw an advertisement for a special at a Chinese restaurant and decided to treat Kitty and me.  Only one problem:  she took us to a completely different Chinese restaurant.  Our poor waiter was very confused as Eileen insisted on the meal advertised by another restaurant and at the advertised price.  As I said, Eileen was a determined woman and she got her meal and her price.  The waiter was glad to see her leave and neither he nor Eileen noticed Kitty and I slinking down and trying to hide underneath the table.

For Eileen's eightieth birthday, we ordered Chinese takeout.  Now, every year on Eileen's birthday we try to go to a Chinese restaurant in honor of the grand old lady.  Sometimes we even consider ordering from another restaurants menu.

A few times during the last years of her life, we've had to take her to the hospital.  Christina at that time was working at the hospital in the emergency room and had to explain to the nurses and the doctors that her grandmother was a difficult person in the best of times, and that these were not the best of times.   The medical staff took this in stride and actually admired Eileen.

We have the Kangaroo today while Christina packs her family for a trip to Massachusetts tomorrow.  And I'm halfway through painting the bedroom before we follow her on Tuesday or Wednesday, so we may not have a chance for Chinese today, but we will sometime this week.  And when we do, we'll be thinking of that tough woman who never wanted anyone to think that she had a soft heat.

And while we are thinking of her, I'll realize just how much I miss her.