About thirty years ago, my mother discovered bread machines. It was a happy discovery for her – she was so thrilled with hers that she bought one for each of her six children as a way of sharing the joy. We promptly named ours “R2-D2” (Artoo-Detoo) for obvious reasons.
Mom also instructed us in the liturgy of the machine. There was a recipe for chocolate chip bread in the accompanying recipe booklet which instructed you to wait until the machine gave out a number of beeps after the second mixing, your cue to put in the chocolate chips. I don’t think Mom ever actually made the chocolate chip bread, but every time the machine uttered its programmed beeps, she would crow, “TIME TO PUT IN THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!” Yes, just like that in all caps. Soon, we were all saying it in a very liturgical manner:
“Beep beep beep beep beep” “TIME TO PUT IN THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!”
We enjoyed our bread making robot and tried a lot of the recipes (probably even the chocolate chip bread because why not?). But the day came when one little loaf was not enough to feed our growing army of boys. I learned how to make five loaves of whole wheat bread at a time and we retired our beeping friend to the storeroom in the basement where it sat uncomplainingly while gathering dust.
We ran out of bread recently and I haven’t had time to make any. Today, my husband remembered R2-D2 and brought it back to a place of usefulness. It had not forgotten how to bake a tolerably good loaf of bread, and when the beeps started in, I blurted out “TIME TO PUT IN THE CHOCOLATE CHIPS!”
When we were traveling in the Southwest, I discovered that my camera has various effects, so I did a little experimenting. The one I enjoyed the most is called “vivid.” I used it a lot at the Grand Canyon (of which I have not posted yet). It definitely feels like cheating, but is it? I’ll let you ponder the philosophical gravity of that question on your own.
Here’s one photo I took of the evening sky by our house recently, plain and unadorned by fancy camera effects.
Here it is in “vivid” mode.
It’s fakey looking, but quite striking, no? I took a few more before retiring the camera that night.
The next morning, I came out early and the grass was all dewy and alight with the sun. No special effects from my camera were needed.
Behold, how good and pleasant it is For brethren to dwell together in unity! …It is like the dew of Hermon, descending upon the mountains of Zion; For there the LORD commanded the blessing – Life forevermore.
But not blog forevermore; it’s gone as the dew dries up in the morning.
(To start at the beginning: Adventures in Italy Part 1) Also, hallelujah – what was lost has been found: our digital photos from this trip! So, no more pictures of photos in a book. Phew!
Church in Genova, then to Camogli – August 2016
We’re sitting on a train that will take us to Bordighera, so I have a chance to catch up my travel journal for yesterday. Make yourselves comfortable! I never make a long story short, as you know – it always goes the other way. Someday I will be boring all our grandchildren to death when they ask a simple question and I launch into a 30-minute answer that includes what time I got up, what I had for breakfast, and how my bones and joints feel that day.
We found an English-speaking Anglican church in Genova called “Church of the Holy Ghost.” We set out on foot for the 15-minute uphill walk and although we took one false turn still managed to get there on time. It was a beautiful old building, built in the late 1800’s.
The street on which we lived – time to walk to church!Church of the Holy Ghost
We were greeted by an older lady named Liz in the British accent that never fails to charm. She seemed so very pleased to see us and asked us if we were the type to join heartily and loudly in the singing. Looking around at the sparse attendance, I could understand why this might be important. She explained to us that they wouldn’t have a priest that day. She also told us not to be alarmed if the service didn’t start right at 10:30 – “we’re on African time!” It turns out that about half of their members are from Africa and tend to meander in at different times after the service starts.
We met a fellow named John who was visiting that day also, having been on a cruise ship that stopped in at the Genova port for the day. There were no hymnals, just words printed in the bulletin, so sitting by John ended up being a key part of being able to sing along. He knew the tunes and sang loudly and confidently in a wonderful baritone voice. I thanked him afterwards for “leading” the singing. The service itself was liturgical and in that sense was very familiar to us. The woman who led the liturgy got a little off course occasionally and the order of service went somewhat cattywampus, but we all managed to figure out where she was eventually. Instead of a pianist, they had a violinist who played beautifully. Halfway through the service a little boy (3 years old?) came running up the center aisle and went over to say hello to her. It was a sweet moment that made us all smile. The father followed closely behind to retrieve the little escapee.
We were invited to stay for wine and cake after the service, so we stayed briefly and chatted with a few people. We met a fellow named “Mondey” who was from Nigeria and had been in Italy for a year and 4 months and was still waiting for documents that would allow him to work. It’s hard to imagine how discouraging that would be!
We walked back to Il Borga di Genova (our B&B) and had some down time. It was already very hot outside so we turned on our room air conditioner and did some reading and writing. We didn’t have a firm plan for the day so we decided to go back out and walk over to the super marcato (super market) to see what it was like. It was smaller than most American ones but other than that, not very different.
The front door of our “home” in Genova
My only goal for the day was to do a lot less walking. Our host, Giovanni, had told us that we might enjoy a trip to Camogli (CAM-oh-lee) just up the coast to the east, which would involve a train trip. We really were longing for more than a glimpse of the sea (didn’t see much at the Genova port) so rather than spend more time walking aimlessly around Genova, we took the leap and went to go find a train to Camogli. We are getting better at reading the train schedules and navigating our way around the train stations by now, so it wasn’t long before we had found a train going that way and settled in for the 30-minute trip. Almost as soon as we were east of Genova we began to see the wide blue expanse of the Mediterranean. What is it about being by bodies of water that is so soul filling? The view was occasionally obscured by tunnels and trees, but was a thrill each time it broke through.
We got off in Camogli, made a quick phone call to Sam (3:30 our time, 8:30 a.m. at home) and then set off to get close to the water.
First glimpse of the beach at Camogli
Kris’s instincts did not fail us and within a few minutes we had walked down steep flights of stairs and were sitting at table beachside, ordering salads for lunch. We have steadfastly tried to use the Italian we learned on Duo Lingo, but most people answer us in broken English that is better than our broken Italian.
After lunch we strolled to the Cremaria next door so I could get my daily gelato fix. I’m still supposed to be avoiding dairy and eggs, but on this trip I have entered an alternate universe in which those things are allowed, my own deus ex machina.
Did we go down to the beach? Did we go swimming? Stay tuned for the next installment. Adventures in Italy Part 12
This daily blogato fix will melt away in the morning.
Hello, friends! You may recall that my husband and I have decided to visit one Minnesota attraction per month in 2024. We didn’t think of the plan until February, so January was a bust. In February we went to the Spam Museum and in March we went to the Bell Museum of Natural History. So far, so good!
We traveled to our nation’s Southwest in April and visited 6 national parks while we were there, which will have to take the place of our Minnesota Meanderings for April. I’ve been slowly posting our travel adventures at those parks under the title of “The Wanderers.”
And now we come to May. Or rather, May is behind us now, but we did, in fact, squeeze in a Minnesota Meandering at the end of May: Como Park Zoo and Conservatory in St. Paul.
Como Park has been around for over 100 years and countless parents have brought their children there over the years. Both Kris and I remember being brought there when we were young; I couldn’t find our family photo there, but do have this charming one of little Kris wandering in the conservatory.
However, neither of us remember going there since then, and to our shame, we never brought our children there when they were growing up in Minnesota. We should have our heads examined. For one thing, the park is FREE. Yes, you read that right. There’s a suggested donation of $4 for adults and $2 for children (that’s so cheap now that it’s hard to imagine what it was 50-60 years ago when we were young). This is how we remember the cages looking way back then:
These aren’t used anymore
Como Park Z&C is owned by the city of St. Paul and operated by its Parks and Rec department. It’s been around as a destination since around 1900, the 300-acre property having been purchased by the city in 1873. In addition to the zoo and conservatory, there’s an amusement park, carousel, Lake Como, a golf course and more.
The conservatory was renamed “Marjorie McNeely Conservatory” in 2002 after her husband, Donald, donated $7 million (she had died in 1998 and was apparently an avid gardener). As an aside, good old Donald McNeely was one of the original investors in the Minnesota Vikings!
Okay, that’s enough history. The day of our visit was absolutely perfect, weather wise. We went through the zoo first, skipping the show at the aquatic animals area. I happily engaged my camera in the excessive manner to which I am accustomed, so I will prune through my photos and share some of the better ones here, but there will be lots, even so. I got quite distracted at the gorilla exhibit and could have stayed there for hours. Anyway, buckle up!
The polar bear wasn’t feeling sociable
After we had sated ourselves with the animal viewings, we made our way to the conservatory. Oy, was it hot and humid in the first part (ferns and such). Don’t expect a lot of learned discussion about the plants, but do expect more photos.
Oh, I should share a story I read when doing research for this post. In 1963 a rare Agave American plant unexpectedly bloomed – this caused quite a stir at the time. One of the shoots from the plant grew up to 35 feet, requiring the removal of one of the roof panels! The stalk bloomed into over 300 flowers. I suppose it’s possible I got a photo of this plant – who knows? I’m fairly lazy about identifying things; I just take photos of the things that delight and interest me, including my husband.
I’ve come to the end of another busy day with not enough time to write a proper post (whatever that is). So I’ll reach into the File of Languishing Photos again and see what comes forth.
Fluffy puffy stuffy clouds. Cotton balls in a sea of blue. Cheerful denizens of the sky, unlike their nefarious cousins, the storm clouds.
The mustard and ketchup flower. The blushing sunshine flower. The tulip with outstretched arms and a welcoming nature.
And to finish off this random bit of writing, a haiku.
Puffy stuffy clouds, Blushing tulips glow below; Will they ever meet?
Tiptoeing through the tulips with feet that delete.
I’m still doing rough drafts of the poinciana tree and feel like I’m getting to know it better. Here’s the first and second rough drafts side by side, followed by the original photo. I drew the second one from a photograph of a different perspective, so the trunk is different.
My sense is that when I begin to do the watercolor painting, it will be loose, rather than super detailed. We shall see.
Looking through old files today, I ran across a series that I started through the gospel of Mark in 2015, another one of my grand ideas that sort of petered out. Is it too late to say that I only intended to go from Mark 9 through Mark 12?
Thou hast seen all that I have for today. A blessing on all your heads.
Can this blog be saved from deletion in the morning?
(To start at the beginning: Adventures in Italy Part 1) (crappy photo alert: still can’t find those original digital photos from our trip!)
Genoa, Italy – August 2016
It was by now getting to be close to 6:00, so we had to decide whether or not to pursue the 3rd attraction that we had a ticket for, which was a tour of some towers over by the Christopher Columbus house. Well, why not – in for a penny, in for a pound. By the time we got there (another 20 minute walk), it was almost 6:15 and we couldn’t find any open door around the whole area of the towers. Is it possible they only opened at 6:00 and if you weren’t there, closed up again? We could think of no explanation that made sense, but didn’t care enough about it to ask any of the nearby people about it. C’est la vie.
Time to start thinking about supper. Giovanni had recommended a couple places, one of which was very near where we were, so we walked down the narrow street to get to the entrance: Rosmarino Trattoria. We went in and found out that they didn’t open again for dinner (cena) until 7:30, which is typical in Italy, probably in much of Europe actually. Should we find a nice place to sit and wait or go back to the B&B (another 20 minute walk) to freshen up? In spite of the fact that we were both fairly tired, the allure of having a quick refreshing shower won us over and we hoofed it back to Il Borga Di Genova, home sweet home. This way, Kris posited, we could also put on some “glad rags” before going back to the restaurant. Gotta love a guy that uses the phrase “glad rags.”
Feeling amazingly refreshed and dressed in our aforementioned glad rags, we got back to Rosmarino Trattoria at exactly 7:30 and were the first customers there, so we got our pick of the tables. This time, the woman who seated us gave us an iPad with the menu in English (oh happy day!) to look over. Much of the food here in this port city is seafood based and although I’m not a big fan of seafood, I wanted to be open to trying something new. “I wonder what dolphin tastes like?” I mused out loud. Kris thought it was probably a lot like mahi mahi and that made me wary of it being served raw or sushimi style. The menu also had beef tartare, another type of raw meat that I wasn’t terribly eager to try. One of the selections, even in “English” was mysterious, something like vitetto tonnoto with crispy something. I asked the waiter what it was, and although he spoke English, his accent was such that I still couldn’t understand. “I’ll have that,” I said, throwing caution to the wind. Kris ordered the pork belly with figs and we both ordered another pasta pesto again for our first course. The pesto pasta was different than the one we’d had the night before, but still so very tasty. The main meals arrived, beautifully presented.
I tucked into mine and discovered that it was a cold tuna salad, stuffed with spinach leaves and topped with some sort of thin crispy bread. This was a surprise, but not an unpleasant one. Kris said his pork belly and figs was excellent. The reddish stuff on his plate appeared to be some sort of sautéed sweet onions – yummy (he gave me a taste). We both chose tiramisu for dessert. The restaurant had filled up rapidly after we got there and every seat was taken; the staff was quite busy running around filling wine bottles, bringing food in, etc. We thought they’d be eager to empty our table but after we finished eating, the check did not appear. We speculated that at Italian restaurants, you come at 7:30 and stay for a couple hours, after which the restaurant closes. After waiting 15 or so minutes, Kris finally asked for the check so we could get our weary bodies back home (remember, we still had a 20 minute walk ahead of us). It was around 9:00 by the time we left.
Piazza de Ferrari at night
It looks like we walked around 12 miles and really got to know the town well in the process, so it’s all good. We may take a train today to a nearby coastal town – not sure yet. My legs are still aching from yesterday so I don’t want to do as much walking! I’m feeling my age…
We have one tulip that comes up around our back fountain every year, for the almost twenty years that we’ve lived here. We’ve tried all sort of plants around that fountain over the years, mostly annuals that come and go. But that tulip, which we did not plant, is about as dependable as they come.
It is a herald of spring. It is a lone sentry calling out “who goes there?” to creatures great and small. It is a fashion model providing color culture after the long winter. It is a banner, proudly resisting the wind.
The voice of the LORD makes the tulip to bloom. And in the His temple, everything says, “Glory!”
My mother loved paper dolls. She had many fond memories of making her own paper dolls as a child and encouraged us girls to do the same in our house growing up. There was sort of an elemental pleasure in playing with either our own homemade versions or the store bought ones, even though it was kind of irritating that it was so hard to keep their clothes on with those little tabs.
When Mom died, we discovered that she had a whole box of paper dolls, apparently finding them irresistible all through her life. Some are in boxes, already cut out and ready to play with; others are still new and uncut. But does anyone play with these anymore? It seems like a hopelessly old fashioned “toy” in these days of computer games and smart toys.
I decided to bring a set with us the last time we visited our children and grandchildren to see how it would go with our little granddaughter. She was surprisingly interested and engaged for a time. We set everything out and figured out which clothes should go with which doll and then tried to put the clothes on them. As I remembered, the clothing only barely stayed on and that only if you put it on the dolls and left them alone. Gee, there must be a way to fix that problem.
It was a journey into the past. I think I’ll do it again sometime with her just to keep the tradition alive.
I had a suggestion to embellish a mushroom with a gnome sitting in its shade.
That’s a really tiny gnome or a really huge mushroom – take your pick.
I wanted to paint some fish for a card, but didn’t really like either of my efforts that much, so I ended up doing a drawing and coloring with pencils (as above). I might share the final result at some point, but here are the ones I rejected.
The Rejects – I might still do something with these
A friend asked me if I’d do a painting of the beautiful poinciana tree that grows in her neighborhood. I’m used to painting in small dimensions, so this would be quite a challenge! I decided to start with a sketch from the original photo.
As you can see, the perspective is a little off – I need to make the trunk and branches skinnier with a canopy that size. And the canopy needs to be a little wider. Back to the literal drawing board! I’ll do a bunch of sketches before attempting to paint this.
Last and least, I’m still plugging away at the book of drawing lessons that I received for Christmas (50 Ways to Draw Your Beautiful Ordinary Life).
The wicker chair looks really odd to me, but that’s pretty close to the original in the book. I’m still determined to do all the lessons and hoping I’ll get better along the way.
I wish I could see all the things that you are working on: gardening, sewing, knitting, decorating, furniture making or refurbishing, baking… Everyone has a workshop of sorts!
Time to go nap under a mushroom and dream about deleting this in the morning.
Genoa, Italy – August 2016 (a note about the bad quality of the photos with these Italy posts thus far: I have been unable to find the digital originals from this trip, so I’m taking photos of the photo book I had made. Ugh! The hunt for the photos in the labyrinth of old hard drives continues.)
We walked on, admiring the beauty of the architecture and reminded of how young the United States is by looking at an ancient city.
At some point we had wanted to go up to a higher part of the city to a scenic overlook, so we found a shady spot to get a fix on where we were and where we needed to go next. We depended on the combined use of the map on my phone (with that handy pulsating blue dot that tells you where you are) and the map we had gotten from Giovanni. We discovered that we had wandered much farther west than we needed to and had to backtrack in order to find the place where we could catch a funicular up the hill. The street signs in Italy are not placed right in the intersections as they are in the U.S., so it requires a little bit of hunting each time you come to an intersection to find the building on which the small sign is placed.
As you walk down each street, you pass many little side streets that are exceedingly narrow and dark; I found them somewhat intimidating looking, but still rather quaint. Every block or so, we’d stop in a shady spot, get out the phone and the map, and check to see if we were still headed in the right direction. It looks so simple on a map, but the reality is less clear, especially since there are so many piazzas with roundabouts and multiple streets funneling in and out of them.
We finally came to a very busy street where the funicular station was supposed to be, but couldn’t see anything that looked like the right thing. Hmmm…. We crossed the street, hoping for the best. I was feeling very determined not to walk up that steep hill! I saw a little shop on the corner and went in, hoping to get help. “Scusi, non parlo Italiano,” I started off, thinking it best to get the facts out on the table right away. “Dov’e funicular?” The young woman behind the counter responded with friendly enthusiasm, apologizing for her poor English, which was of course many times better than our Italian. “It is by toonel,” she started out. Kris understood that this meant “tunnel,” which helped (I was still trying to work that one out – toonel?). “You go left, is two shops from toonel.” Perfetto! We said our “grazie’s” and walked over there, a very small and understated entrance – no wonder we hadn’t seen it. We were confronted by a machine to buy the tickets and this is definitely Kris’s domain, so I stood back while he figured it out: three euros for a round trip that gave you 100 minutes up at the top. We had to wait a few minutes for the funicular to start its trip up the hill and there was another one at the top waiting to come down. They started up simultaneously and although it appeared that there was only one track, it split in the middle, allowing the funicular cars to pass each other. Here’s a photo of how it looks:
I grew up singing the song, “Funiculi, Funicula,” so I couldn’t help but think of that as we rode the Funicular. “Some think the world is made for fun and frolic..and so do I, and so do I…”
At the bottom looking upAt the top looking down
Once at the top, we were feeling the need for a little cold liquid refreshment (did I mention how hot it was?) and stopped in at an outdoor ristorante for a birra and an aqua naturale. Ahh… Now, to find the panoramic vista! Well, that turned out to be easier said than done. I think we both figured that once we got up there, we’d see a sign and a bunch of tourists with cameras. The view was obscured by buildings and trees where we were so we walked for a bit in one direction but the elusive panoramic vista did not appear before us and it seemed we were getting father away from the action, so we turned around and pursued the other direction. It always seemed just beyond where we were. I was beginning to lose heart, but Kris spurred us on with the thought that we should persevere and it would be worth it. We walked on and eventually did find a place that gave a beautiful view of the area further up the hill and a better partial view of the rest of the city below. Good enough for me!
We turned around and headed back, still well within our 100 minute limit, and boarded the funicular to go back down the hill. Here we are, waiting to go down again:
Lynniebeemuseoday 