Friday Plans

Today Bram and I will take thirty-seven more stuffed animals to the Pacolet Senior Center to add to the first batch of seventeen I took last week. Then we'll party with my new old friends there. There won't be a Santa, and I've heard the widow women will be disappointed. I need to start shopping for a Santa suit now for next year.

From Wednesday

The waterworks from The Whitney Mill, which was powered in part by hydro-electrics.


Bram's playdough ammonite.


The pink elephant: Someone rents it and has it put in your yard the parking lot where you work when you turn 40 or 50 or 60 or...there's just news you want to share. I can't imagine a single Czech finding this kind of advertising appealing.

There's No Place Like Home

Since Tuesday, I have been awash in homesickness for Brno. I am especially feeling the lack of the serenity I felt at Smidkova, in the little dining room where I used to study, write, and say my prayers. I felt close to God there, where the eastern light slashed through the high windows to light the tiny cross I had made one fidgety morning from an olive twig brought from Tunisia. When I lifted my head from my work, I could calculate the weather by the number and colors of the rising chimney smoke against the sky. I knew that if I stood up, and the day were cold enough, I could see that haunting Dormitory where Nazis tortured and executed Jews and other enemies of the Reich, jailed behind the pale gray bars of smoke and time. It isn't a threatening place now, though it will always loom.
In my sanctuary, I could anticipate the upstairs mid-morning coffee routine and track the sounds of wooden chairs scraping lightly across the ceramic floor, the muffle of conversation, and hearing these things, feel safe and comfortable, at peace and unalone.
This is all in contrast to the peace and security I now lack. I am betrayed and heartsick, longing to click my heels like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, of returning to a better time and better place, both literally and figuratively. There' no place like home...there's no place like home...

Hedonistic Saturday (Požitkářský Sobota)

Our son has been dreaming of today all week because today is going according to his plan. I know it's indulgent of Thomas and me, but we like to give Bram the chance to have just the kind of day he wants every now and then. So, today's plan is to spend all day in bed. Who among us hasn't dreamt of such a day when the alarm had gone off? Our shifts as butler have been scheduled so that no one gets taken advantage of; whoever is butler is to be called "Jeeves", and the means of summoning the butler has been determined (Bram taps his lamp; Thomas and I yell "ding ding!") Bram has set the tone for interactions with Jeeves, and it's extremely polite, so for now, we're all laughing our heads off every time Jeeves is summoned. I've had my coffee and a corndog for breakfast, my computer, books, iPod, and telephone beside me, so I'm enjoying it. I know how ridiculously silly and self-indulgent this is of us, but as there's no harm in it, why not just enjoy it? After all, we have permission to lie on the bed rather than in it, and to fetch things for ourselves if we want, to even get dressed. Now if we could just get snow on Christmas... .

Our Thanksgiving

For the first time in a very long time, I cooked the entire Thanksgiving feast myself, and we stayed at home. We had turkey, gravy, dressing (stuffing), cranberry sauce, green beans, corn, collard greens, congealed salad, sweet potato souffle, cherry pie, and oatmeal cookies. I was a little worried I had forgotten what to cook and was out of practice, but it turned out just fine. Thomas helped a lot ahead of time and even said the blessing! Now for the first time ever, we might even go get our Christmas tree this week. Either I am over my culture shock or I have caved to the pressures of American consumerism.

Thanksgiving Already Creeping Away

I should have known something was up when I walked into Wal-Mart the day before Halloween and had to veer around the huge Christmas tree the employees were putting up. There was Halloween candy on the shelves to the left and right of the tree, and the Halloween aisle, well, half of the Halloween aisle(this would be about one tram long) was still overflowing with jack-o-lanterns and hundreds of costumes. Did everybody go for the homemade costumes this year? Is poor costume sales some reliable indicator about consumer faith in the economy? But I digress. The other half of the aisle was already filled with Christmas candy. Red and green, orange and black and purple. It makes me cringe to think about it.
So, today, I went in search of a little something, well, with a turkey or a horn of plenty on it---a tea towel or fingertip towel or a dish sponge to send to a friend. About half of the Halloween stuff is still there, and there didn't seem to be any more Christmas decorations up, at least. But there was no sign of Thanksgiving! No turkey dish towels, no horns of plenty centerpieces, no turkey cups or napkins or paper plates, not even a turkey platter. I have kind of gotten used to those tacky platters as harbingers of the feast. (I even own one and like it LOL)
If stores begin Halloween in August (so much for fresh candy), and Christmas at Halloween, and then just skip Thanksgiving, what is that? Not holiday creep. Holiday leap? Holiday warp? Whatever it is, I really ought to just hush since I am always kvetching about the over-commercialism of holidays. It's just that it would have been nice to have seen at least a cardboard turkey or a couple of pilgrims or indians with feathers or something like that stuck around. Thanksgiving is still a week away.

White Horse in the River

One or two or three times a week, I drive a bit under twenty kilometers to Pacolet, SC, where I spend time with the folks at the Pacolet Senior Center. I always have a pleasant time there, talking to the seniors, listening to them, playing games or doing little artsy projects that I bring. I am happy for the company, and unlike so many of my friends these days, they aren't too busy or sick of me yet to not enjoy mine. On Thursday, I was encouraged to follow one of them down the road a little ways to see some Christmas decorations for sale that a local millionaire dying of cancer donated to her church. The decorations were the kind of high-end stuff that's available in malls, and they were quite nice, but the real treat for me was not in being offered a chance to preview what was to be sold last Saturday and to choose some things first, but in getting to see Pacolet Mills. It is a stunningly beautiful old mill town. In addition to a large variety of well-cared-for mill houses on gently curving streets, there's this white horse on a pylon in the middle of the river and a riverside amphitheatre to rival ones I know in Verona and Rome. Because it was raining, I didn't walk down to take a good photo of the amphitheatre or of the houses, but I hope to soon have some to share with you.

Free on Election Day

Of course, we're free; it's America! And we aren't all that was free today. We got free coffee from Starbucks, a free waffle (the Belgian type, not those nifty wafer-like ones you can get from Czech spas)from Waffle House, a free doughnut from Krispy Kreme (I'm sorry I can't explain Krispy Kreme donuts to you, but when you visit, I'll buy you some-I promise), and my favorite, a free chicken sandwich from
Chic-Fil-A. We aren't interested in any kind of government handouts, but hey, we would be fools not to take handouts from big business. After a busy day of chasing down the freebies, we are watching the election returns. Because of Thomas's tremendous election excitment, I have been saved from having to cook, and we are feasting on junk food for dinner. I am even being treated to a bottle of my favorite Yellow Tail red wine. It ain't Christmas, but it's damned close. If Obama wins, it will be like Santa came early. And if not, I am going to need more wine, lots and lots more wine.

Happy Hallow-GREEN?

This year, the usual things happened for Halloween: Wal-Mart and the other merchants put out the Halloween decorations and candy some time around Labor Day, a full two months before October 31st. There was, once again, enough Halloween candy, decorations, and costumes to fill at least two trams, plus even more Halloween underwear, this time for men and women, than last year (though I still gave the thongs a miss). Not everything is about the same. For one thing, for the first time in more than twenty years, I didn't carve a jack-o-lantern for Halloween, and putting a small wreath on the door and an electric artificial jack-o-lantern in the window was the extent of my decorating.
Bram was as amenable as ever about having a homemade costume, and this year we made it completely with recyclables and things left over from previous years' costumes. He really wanted his costume to make a statement about the environment, so he went as the endangered American Crocodile. We used some of the fabric I bought at Goodwill nine(!) years ago, cardboard from the box his trampoline came in, leftover paint, duck tape from 9/11. For the eyes we used earplugs we got from one of the airlines.
Bram's school has embraced "Going Green" with such enthusiasm that they had every student and teacher make costumes from recyclables and items that were headed for the landfill. On Friday, they staged a New Orleans style parade around the quarter-mile running track. It was the first Halloween Parade I had ever heard of. It was cute, and it reminded me how much Halloween has changed since I was a child. Halloween used to be only about dressing up and going door to door to get candy. Sometimes there was a Halloween Carnival, though we rarely went. (Remember: for us, it was all about the free candy). Halloween was very much a children's celebration. These days, however, there are just as many, if not more adult costumes in the stores and adult activities in the community. It seems that visiting haunted houses--really scary haunted houses-- and going through corn mazes at midnight are overshadowing Trick-or-Treating as the primary ritual for the day. I find this change interesting because it seems not so much a new invention in ritual as a reversion to the original focus of Halloween rituals: messing around with the really scary spirits of the dead. But I still get the biggest kick out of seeing young children in costumes at my door, shouting "Trick-or-Treat!" and then craning their little necks so they can see what they got. It's like magic, isn't it? Say three words and you get candy from stangers.

Beach Companion

I moved from my spot at the shoreline and into the sand dunes to get away from the breeze that kept blowing the pages of the book I was reading only to be constantly and happily distracted by the activity of this Ghost Crab.


And this the marsh I bike pass to and from the beach. Every time I go by here, alone or not, I say, "I want to go kayaking in the marshes."

Dreams Do Come True

I spent most of the day reading Milan Kundera and George Singleton and thinking about the chores I should have been doing, like cleaning the front porch. I weighed the merits of just leaving the dust and spider webs along with the good sense of saving the fifteen dollars or so I would likely spend for pumpkins, and for now I am thinking about just hunting down some plastic spiders to toss into the webs with the current eight-legged residents and calling it decorated. Of course, we all know I won't be able to forego the pumpkin carving. We hiked to a florist to buy a pumpkin and I made Thomas haul a giant fifty pound gourd back to our apartment when we lived in Brno; it's clear that I am incapable of living without carving a jack-o-lantern for Halloween.
This past weekend was fall break for Thomas and Bram, so we headed south to celebrate Columbus Day with my parents. I'm sorry that I don't have any interesting descriptions of the rituals and activities about tradtional celebrations for this holiday. Like a lot of our government holidays, Columbus Day has become just another excuse for merchants to have sales and for the residents of the most wasteful country in the world to spend money that many of us don't really have on things we don't really need. But I digress.
So, we drove (sigh) the five and half hours to the beach. Along the way, we were treated to fields of cultivated wildflowers in the medians and along the sides of the highway. We owe this unexpected beauty to Lady Bird Johnson, First Lady of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.
So, it was most satisfying to see such useless loveliness. Truly, it isn't necessary for roadsides to be pretty to look at, but isn't it nice that Lady Bird's dream to beautify the highways and byways of America has come true, at least along some roadways. The flowers are some kind of Cosmos which grow an impressive five and half feet tall with blossoms the width of a man's hand. You can see their solid patches of color from more than a mile away..
On Saturday, we drove up to Lumber City, where my mother is buying the house she has dreamed of living in since she was seven years old. Even though we teased her about being the only person in America actually buying a house in this economy, I was heartened by her ability to make this dream come true. It makes me happy to think about her as a little girl stopping in front of the house on her way to school, wishing she could go inside, could have such a fine place, and that now, more than sixty years later, it's hers. Although it will need a little work, it's going to make a comfortable happy getaway for her and my father.

Dangerous Chocolate Cake

I got an email from my mother today with "Dangerous Chocolate Cake" in the subject line, and in spite of my trepidation at the possibility of learning that chocolate cake is now some form of terroristic threat, I opened it anyway. Then I spent the next ten or fifteen minutes making this.>
It's chocolate cake that you can make really fast with basic ingredients and the microwave. Here is the recipe:

4 tablespoons (60ml)flour (use self-rising or add 1/2 tsp pracek do peciva)
4 tablespoons(60ml)sugar
2 tablespoons(30ml)cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons(45ml)milk
3 tablespoons(45ml)oil
3 tablespoons(45ml)chocolate chips (optional)
A small splash of vanilla extract
1 large coffee mug

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly.
Pour in the milk and oil and mix well.
Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla extract, and mix again.
Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes at 1000 watts.
The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed!
Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired.

I opted to tip it out onto a plate and slice it. It didn't turn out as sweet as I would have liked, so I microwaved a little butter, cocoa, powdered sugar and milk in a mug for about a minute and poured it over the top. It is in fact, quite enough for two or maybe even three people, especially if you served it with ice cream. (What's in the photo is about half of the cake) Of course, to self-medicate after a bad day, you could always just stick a knife handle into the cake while it's in the mug and fill the hole up with chocolate syrup and eat it all yourself. Bad, bad World! Poor, poor me.

This Place is a Dump

But it's called a landfill because the great huge (about 600 thousand) tons of garbage that go into it daily fill giant multi-acre pits, level the valleys and build small mountains. And on top there are inocuous-looking pipes, somtimes topped with tiny turbines that vent the methane gas from the rotting trash below.
Our guide pointed out the area that marks the approximate spot that is at least partially filled with the diapers from the children born ten years ago; a few of the fifth graders gasped immediately, and those who didn't, stared open-mouthed and wide-eyed when they heard that it takes hundreds of years (some say 500 or more) for those diapers to decompose. I now have new respect for my friends who chose cloth diapers over disposable, and I'm sorry I didn't.
We drove by a big pile of discarded metal things and saw in there several children's bicycles. I remembered the bike that I learned to ride without training wheels: it was one that my father had rescued from the county dump and refurbished for me. He painted it gold, put new tires and chain on it, bought a 'banana seat' and hand grips to match in red glittery vinyl that sparkled like those red shoes in The Wizard of Oz. I loved that bike as much as my brother loved the classic chopper bike my father found and restored for him. His was green with great chrome forks,a black seat. It was painted green with a very cool black smoke effect on it. It isn't that we were so poor that my parents couldn't or wouldn't have bought us new bikes. Rescuing mechanical things and restoring them to a state of usefulness has always been a hobby for my father. I think he likes the feeling of accomplishment he gets from improving something, and I know it makes him happy if his efforts make someone else glad, too. He still saves a bike from time to time, though there are few children around who care for a bike, especially a used one, and he gives them to the local animal shelter which auctions them off to buy food and supplies for the animals there.
After seeing all of those green grass covered hills, with trash lurking beneath them, producing methane, which will eventually be used to fuel a local industrial plant, and percolating some awful liquifaction that we can only hope won't taint the groundwater, all I could think was what a shamefully wasteful culture we have here. I started using those t-shirt bags I made for shopping, so with very few exceptions, I haven't brought anymore of those plastic store bags home since April. We recycle everything that we can and try to reuse at least a time or two the containers that don't recycle before we commit them to the trash. I think now I'll start avoiding as much plastic packaging as I can, which may mean learning to make yogurt since those yogurt cups don't recycle, and can't be used for anything else. I hear it isn't hard to do. One thing is for sure, I have got to do more.

Something to do on a Saturday

My new and only reason to like Diet Coke. There's just something about men in lab coats and goggles in synchronisation that makes me smile. Or maybe it's all the wasted soda.

The Bringing of Food

In the American South, it has long been the custom to bring food to someone whenever there is a family emergency or event that disturbs the most basic household routines. The illness or death of a family member, and even the happy occasion of a new baby is very likely to elicit the bringing of food to the home. This is not an activity reserved for family members or close friends, but one which is often embraced by thoughtful co-workers or neighbors, some of whom barely know your name. It's just another of those things that we do here.

When I was pregnant with Bram, even one of my former students, a dear Japanese woman, brought me sushi when I couldn't eat a thing. Miraculously, I ate the entire dish in one sitting and felt stronger and better. When my son was born, my neighbor baked muffins from scratch for us. And when my father-in-law was in the hospital, friends, family, neighbors, and people who barely knew my in-laws delivered food on a daily basis. Even after the funeral, the food continued to come, because, well, grieving families need comforting.

The food is always someone's idea of comfort food; for Southerners this is fried chicken, potatoes, macaroni and cheese, chicken and dumplings, ham and something with gravy, some kind of casserole or fruit cobbler, cake, pies, trays of fresh fruit or veggies or even sweet tea and coffee. Now that our society has changed and so few of us live with or even near extended family, it isn't unusual for people to bring paper plates and disposable utensils, so there is less worry about cleaning up.

While my father was in the hospital this past week, my friend Gloria, a generous and thoughtful soul, brought us food: chicken, peas and cornbread, corn on the cob, and black eye pea salad. Even when things are going well, Gloria's cooking is a special treat, and because we were all a bit stressed, her offer of food was a delight. Bringing food is one of those gestures that we Southerners understand, like saying the name of an ailing stranger in church, or having prayers said for us, that gives us comfort and makes us all feel better. It's doing something for a fellow human being with no expectation of an immediate return. And THAT is another thing I love about the South.

Nejsem Tady (I'm not here!)

Ahoj, Darlings. I hope you will forgive my absence from the blog for the last month. I have been a bit busy with my other writing and preparations for our trip. Now, I am happy to tell you that I am now back in the Czech Republic, home, among Czechs, and that I have been commissioned to write a column about my Czech travels for a newspaper in South Carolina. My editor says that I am to "sell the Czech Republic." I hope I can do you and your lovely little country justice.
I won't be posting here very often, if at all, but on the Czech Summer blog. You can find it by clicking on the link in the column on the right.
Tak, mej se hesky!

Shark Song

We went to the beach today to get a little color. There were sharks (small ones, about 2-4 feet long) swimming up to the shallows. I think they were either dogfish or nurse sharks. I didn't really get a good look. What does one do when one sees such a thing here? I stood around to try to get a photo, of course, and the locals, well they sang the Baby Shark song, which apparently everyone but us had heard of and knew. and danced around until they got the silly giggles.
We walked along the beach and found whelk egg casings (photo above), lots more Cannonball Jellies, seaweed and one dead puffer fish. Here's the photo. I'm too tired to be thoughtful.

Natural Rhythm

One of the best things about living in a place, or going to it very frequently, is the pleasure of learning it. It is cliche to say that all places have their own rhythms, but it's true. We are on St Simons Island now, where the rhythms of all things here are tied to the moon and the tides that are dictated by it. It's nearly June, a bit early for the mating and migratory seasons of the crabs and rays and stinging jellies, so the pier is not so full as it will be in another few weeks, and there are more swimmers than we'll see in August, when the wind-shoved waters and tides become filled with jellyfish as hurricane season really kicks in. Yesterday we walked to the village and went out on the pier to watch the creatures that the fishermen were hauling in, and while we were there, a man caught a nearly five foot Bullnose ray. We didn't see any other rays (their migration from their breeding areas isn't due for another eight weeks), and I was surprised to see how our attitude about catching them changes in relation to how abundant they are. I began to understand in a way that I hadn't before, the conservationist's heart. And since we have been spending a lot of time lately at Hobcaw Barony, the value of conservation has been on our minds. All three of us said our silent prayers that the ray would get loose; we crossed our fingers, held our thumbs. We knew that the fisherman would haul it up and chop it to bits for shark bait, and that would be just the wrong fate for such a graceful creature. (Bram would argue that it would be a sorry demise for two graceful creatures.) As the ray slipped loose and swam away, we all smiled.
There were a few people crabbing, with little success, and most of what was being caught by those not yet fishing for sharks were mostly small spade fish. We walked the beach and saw only a few hermit crabs (I guess it isn't time for them yet,either), some conch shell casings, millions of sea roaches (ugh) and a positively irridescent glass snake. It isn't actually a snake, but a legless lizard, or Eastern Glass Lizard so I don't have to add it to my official snake count. And we came across one big fat Cannonball Jelly about the size of a four year old's head. Mercifully, the Canonball isn't a stinging jelly. This photo was actually taken on Huntington Beach, NC.

Natural Order

Here is the last photo that I took of the little robins. As you can see, they had grown more feathers and opened their eyes. We made multiple trips to the bathroom window to watch the mother bird feed them and began to notice that she was not so fat as when she was sitting on the eggs. It reminded me a bit of my own first months as a mother, when my son was so frequently at the breast that I sometimes felt he was more of an appendage, albeit a lovely one, than a child. Even so, there is something very satisfying about watching mothers feeding their babies, however they do it. So perhaps, naturally, I felt some connection to this bird, though now I feel a bit silly saying such a thing.
Thomas and Bram and I had been counting the days, wondering how many more it would be before the nestlings wings would be feathered out and strong enough for flight. The view into that nest had become a real source of entertainment, and dare I say it, joy for us. It gave us all a sense that everything was as it should be, at least for this little nest hinged in the shrub branches: for here, for the moment.

Until yesterday. After our walk, Thomas went back to peek at the birds again before he started work. When I heard him cry out, I assumed that the birds had fallen out of their nest. I was prepared to tell him that it was no big deal, that we would just gather them up and put them back in. It isn't true that mother birds will kill their young if humans touch them. But when I got to the window, I saw the snake swallowing the last of three little robins while the mother bird and some cardinals flitted from tree to shrub making distressed peeping noises. Thomas and I are heartbroken for the mother bird. She was so very thin looking from working so hard to be a good mother, and now some awful, heartless creature had just taken all of her nestlings. We both wanted to cry.
It's the natural order of things, I know, and I am one to admonish others in their upset over such things. But this time, we had some of our own emotions invested the welfare of these common little robins, and well, it hurts. It reminds me rather painfully of a former colleague whose daughter, a dear sweet girl, was gunned down in the street a few months before she was to graduate with honors with a pre-med degree. Is that the natural order for humans, too? Am I wrong to expect our natural order to be less fraught with senseless violence? To think that good mothering should be rewarded somehow with the safety of our offspring? We haven't told Bram about the birds. He has such a great fondness for little things. Maybe he will forget about the nest. Or maybe he has already looked and seen it empty and knows the fate of the birds was not a good one. Right now, I am not sure which is sadder.

Baby Robins : Day 7

Anybody want to suggest some names for these guys? Click the post title and then "comments", prossim. One velke pivo in Brno or Prague pub of your choice per winning name recommendation.

It's My Birthday, Too

At least one of these little robins was born yesterday, on my birthday, and if I count that as one of my birthday presents, then I am officially spoiled. I think that birthdays are a bigger deal for Americans than for Czechs (and maybe most Europeans). We celebrate every birthday, not just the round anniversaries. The car washes here give birthday discounts on washes and oil changes, my bank and insurance agent send me birthday cards. The drug store sent me a coupon for three dollars to spend on anything I want, and I don't even take any medicines, so it isn't as if I'm a good customer. Many restaurants will bring you a free dessert with your meal if you or someone at your table tells them that it's your birthday. There is of course one small catch: when they bring your dessert, several of the servers sing loudly and clap all the way to your table so that everyone in the place knows it's your birthday.
At lunch I told the waitress that it was my birthday, and that if she wanted to bring me a dessert, I wouldn't mind it at all if she and her associates didn't sing. I was lucky and she served it alone, with a smile and a quiet "Happy Birthday". At the Mexican restaurant later, however, Bram played the part of informer, so I had to wear a silly tourist sombrero while the servers sang to me.
One year when Bram was small, we went around to various places just to see how much free stuff I could get. It's a silly thing to do, I know, but well, I am what I am.
It's no wonder that Americans have the reputation for being like children. We chew our gum (even bubble gum sometimes); we are boisterous and naive. We smile too often and too big, and we love to play. We are hopeless dreamers. It is said that we believe that the difficult we will do now; the impossible will take a little longer. It is one of the things which I like most about being an American: we believe that nothing is really impossible and we are willing to work to prove it. Maybe we are a bunch of big children, but I figure what's the point of threatening as a child to do whatever you want when you grow up, if you don't make good on it--at least every now and then. Now where is my Play Doh?

Sunday Surprise

There's a Robin's nest outside our bathroom window, so we are all excited about watching the mama bird and the babies when they emerge. These eggs seem bluer than the ones I remember from my childhood. Oh, and the ants are still here. They've just moved to the other side of the kitchen. Ants don't like cinnamon. Indeed. I'm laughing.

Would You Spit on Me

if I were on fire? I heard this expression from my mother, who was telling me some story that she heard from one of her sisters. When my mother asked her about the unkindness of some woman they know, my aunt’s response was, “No way she’d help. She’s so hateful she wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire.” They went on to discuss the sheer selfishness of this woman, her unwillingness to be kind when it cost her nothing, and her inability to be more than angry and jealous about any good thing that might happen to someone else. Sadly, I know this person. Well, not this exact one, but several of her ilk. I suspect that her life is so devoid of things to make her happy that she hasn’t enough experience with that feeling to be able to enjoy even a vicarious experience of it by being glad for someone else.
I was a bit shocked, thinking how harsh it was that someone might care so little for you that they wouldn’t cross the street to help you, or, even worse, would have too much contempt to spit on a person even if you were on fire. The expression conveys a diffidence which may be worse than contempt, don’t you think?

Recently, I came across quite the opposite the phrase “pay it forward” and an example of what this means. Basically, it’s just doing a kindness for someone for no reason without expecting something in return. I think it is a part of what some religions call karma and what cultural anthropologists term, “generalized reciprocity”. My brother laughs at me because before I learned these terms, I called it “cosmic quid pro quo”. Whatever it is called, I really like the idea of being nice for no reason. I like to give little presents to people and to do nice things for them, especially when I get to see them happy about it. And I like to think about them paying it forward by doing something unexpectedly nice for someone else. Today, I am going to do a little paying it forward and say something nice, do something helpful, give something away. We'll see if that improves my mood.

Crabby [krab-ee] grouchy, in a bad mood

Saturday: Up early, coffee, reading for a couple of hours, interrupted by Bram's complaints of boredom, which bore me to the point of anger. Breakfast of toast and egg yolk. Yeah, I know it's the unhealthy part, but it's the part of the egg I like. Plans for a trip to the street festival downtown, the library and to the Greenville Zoo ditched because of the weather forecast. I just have no energy for enduring even the possibility of driving in another nasty storm. So, we went to Wal Mart where I noticed that the mean SPF of sunscreen is now more than 50. There is also quite a lot of lotion with SPF 70. Jeez, have we screwed up the ozone so thoroughly that we really need SPF 70? When I was a kid, SPF 15 was marketed for former skin cancer victims and people with sun allergies. Now we don't spend time in the sun without at least 15, and usually it's higher than that. I skipped the sunscreen and got a tiny kite (10cm) and a floppy flying disk.

We went to Toys R Us and did that parent thing that kids never seem to catch onto where one parent "goes to the restroom" and in fact is buying what the kid picked out and putting it into the car, while the other parent stands around feigning interest in as many things as possible. Then to the bookstore to use gift cards from Christmas. Bram refused to hang out with me because, as he puts it, I "read only murder and death books" and am interested only in books with dead bodies in them, which is sheer rubbish . The fact that only one of the last eleven books I read was about death and dismemberment aside, at the time he said this to me, I was looking at blank books. Don't think it didn't cross my mind to write a story about a killing just then. I sent him back to his father and briefly considered spending his college savings on a new sports car. I hate his complaining. I have zero patience for it after all I do to be the kinder, gentler parent. There are times when I would dearly love to slap him, just once. Heck, maybe a bunch of times. I will start dinner soon, and if Bram is wise, he will have listened to his father's entreaties to not mess with the cook. They'll get nothing or English peas, beets and burnt toast if they tick me off. So you see I haven't the perfect child and I am far from being the perfect wife and mother. But as hard as I try, I figure at the least I am owed not having to listen to complaints about my reading tastes or my cooking.

The Ant Experiments: Trial 1

Those of you who were hoping to see a nice photo of me and Bram tormenting ants are going to be disappointed. We didn't want to kill the ants, merely discourage them from continuing their annual march through my kitchen. I had hoped to have a photo of an ant for you, but the first experiment with a natural ant repellent is going so well that I don't have any ants to photograph. Every April, ants migrate through my kitchen for about a week. They go from one end of the counter to the other, down the wall and out the door and disappear. Another foot to the north and they would be going through the garage instead of my kitchen, but what could I do? I have tried all kinds of things to get rid of them in the past. I even tried insecticide once, but then stayed up all night worrying about poison in the kitchen. The ants don't get into the food (though it is a bit disheartening to see them when I am preparing meals (I use the other counter when they're here), but I would still like them gone. So this year, I tried an extremely simple natural remedy: ground cinnamon sprinkled along the ant trail. In a matter of hours, the number of ants decreased. Yesterday I saw fewer than fifty and today, only four! Ants don't like cinnamon. I wonder why.

Roses are Blooming

I wish I could take some credit for these, but I can't. All I do is cut the bush down a couple of times a year and toss a little fertilizer on it, if I remember.

BAD Snake

My brother says that the only good snake is a dead snake. I always argue with him, remind him of the benefits of the good (nonvenomous) snakes, like king, rat, and garden snakes, who keep down the rodent population; king snakes even prey on venomous snakes, doing two good deeds for us humans. I am always the one to argue that he should just leave the snakes be. Even the venomous Eastern Diamondback rattler offers some serious benefits to humans: it's an excellent rodent hunter and its venom is used, not only as an anti venom for rattlesnake bites, but to treat stroke and to prevent the growth of some cancerous tumors. This is the one I am most familiar with, having grown up in Middle Georgia and spent a good bit of time in southeastern Georgia, where my parents have property. Really, it's probably the main reason that every woman in my family knows how to manage at least a shotgun. The men, of course, all know because besides being expected to defend the womenfolk against snakes and whatever else they may see as a threat, they also tend to like to hunt. But I digress.
This morning, as I looked out into the yard, I thought I saw the head of yesterday's snake peeking out of the cross tie again. Jujuu, photo time! By the time I got to the sand pile, I saw this snake.
I was immediately anxious. First, his markings are all wrong for a good snake. Second he didn't slither out his tongue and try to get away from me. His head had the triangular shape of a viper. And his pupils, instead of being all nice and round and innocent looking, were tiny black vertical lines. It didn't move when I moved. It just sat there, as Thomas says, like a Nazi. A quick call to my mother and search on the Internet confirmed my suspicion: Copperhead Moccasin.
Copperheads bite more people per year than any other U.S. snake though their venom is less potent than that of most species. Almost no one dies of copperhead bites. But, and you know there is one, this snake was in my sonny boy's sand pile, where he often plays, and this sand pile is in our yard where we have all been playing Frisbee for the past several days. And, well, we got a shovel and chopped the snake's head off! No way I'm going to let something threaten my child. Maybe it's an Irish thing: Mess with me and mine, and well... . My father says, "It's a GOOD snake now."

Waiting for the Snake

This is the black rat (milk?) snake which I have been seeing about once a year for the last few years. It is condsiderably larger than it was the first time I saw it when it was just a tiny thing curled in the top of one of the shrubs in the front yard. It is now more than a meter and half in length. Today it slithered across the sand pile and into the little herb plot. I startled it with the camera, then spent nearly an hour playing peek-a-boo with it as it tried to re-merge from the railroad crosstie and I tried to video it. I like this snake and the fact that it chooses to live in our yard. Maybe it likes it that we don't use fertilizers or pesticides in the lawn.

Am I Spoiling Him?

Ivan asks if I might be spoiling my sonny boy, and has even suggested that my parenting may in some way make my son weak. Don’t worry, I am fond enough of Ivan to not be offended by his questions about my mothering. But for Ivan, and the rest of you who think I’m spoiling the sonny boy, here is my official response.

The very worst of America is that the greedy, grasping, me-first individualism which used to be frowned upon by people with good sense is what is advertised, packaged and fed to us by just about everything in our culture now. It is, I think, capitalism untempered by human sympathy. It’s hard knocks and me-first gone terribly awry. Individualism isn’t an approachable ideal without a learned respect for the thoughts and feelings of others, and a democracy cannot flourish without individualism. Having spent some time abroad, I have had opportunity to think about what it means and what it should mean to be an American, a good American, the best American. To have some idea of what this is, I had to think about what it means to be a good citizen and a good person, to rear a child who will be these things at home and abroad.

I parent my son with two ideas in mind. One: Like every human he has needs which if not met in childhood will manifest themselves as unhealthy appetites and anti-social behaviors in his adulthood. (This is a part of attachment parenting). Two: The best way to teach him a respect for others is to show respect for him. And so far, it seems to be working. Though he has a tendency to ‘get his Irish up” in the presence of any perceived injustice (he has after all, quite a lot of Irish blood in him), he is almost unfailingly polite, thoughtful and considerate of others. From his first experience in preschool, we have gotten regular reports from teachers and other parents about his sympathetic nature, his willingness to share what he has, to protect the weak, to do the right thing. Will he grow up to be a ruthless lawyer, politician or businessman or greedy someone about whom people will say, “he wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire”? I doubt it.
So, often enough, and in the estimation of some folk, I am rather indulgent with him: a little Pat a Mat on a tired morning, singing him awake on his birthday, a trip to the candy store from time to time, listening to him complain about his problems, hugging and holding him when he seems overwhelmed by his troubles. And in return, he tells us that he loves us, will put a blanket on his father or me if we are napping, will offer to hug and hold us when we need it, and he will share his last piece of candy with anyone who hasn’t any.
As for whether I am making him tough enough to go away from home or to fight when necessary, I don’t think I need to worry. I know my boy. He has enough Irish in him that I don’t need to give that part of his nature any nurturing, only a bit of discipline. I hope I am helping him to live up to what we have told him since he was very young: Be the better man.

The Bag Thing

Here are the results of the latest test of the shirt bags. Twelve kilograms in one bag and five kilograms in the other. The bags stayed where I put them in the trunk of the car, and nothing slid out into the trunk while I drove home even though I didn't tie the tops of the bags. Yes, I drive like a maniac, so this may not be an issue for the less sanguine driver.

Now if I could just convince the bagboy that I don't want any of those stupid plastic store bags, and that's the reason I bring my own. The bagboy is the person who puts our groceries into the bags after the cashier rings up our purchases. "Bagboy" is probably no longer the correct name for this person; it's probably "bagger" or "packer" some similar gender and age neutral term. Or maybe something as outrageous as "customer service facilitator" or "endline packing engineer". Very few American stores expect the customers to bag their own purchases, though ringing up and bagging one's own items is a possibility at the "self-check stations" of some of the bigger stores.

Eco Bags: Test Run

I finally got around to making some of these T-shirt bags yesterday that I learned about from Gwen . I made a few changes in the basic instructions just for the heck of it. I added a strap from the long sleeves I cut off so that one bag will go over the shoulder and across the chest like a messenger bag. I used the little belt from one shirt to make a shoulder strap for it, and put a pocket on one. I really don't care much for toting things in my hands because I am too likely to set them down and forget where I put them. I made one little draw string bag without straps, and five or six of the 'basic' bags. This morning I used three of my t-shirt bags at the grocery store. The bags worked great and were a lot more pleasant to hold on to than the usual plastic ones or my canvas bags. I liked the stretchy striped one the best; it will expand to hold a lot and then shrink back small when it's empty. The cashiers at the store liked the bags, too. Bram rather likes this idea since it means he can now use his favorite dinosaur shirt as a bag and save it from the yard sale or the rag bag.

Tuesday/Wednesday

Tuesday: We payed the mechanic and picked up our van. $2855. I don't know how many koruny that is. The less I think about the cost of the new engine, etc, the better. I've already figured how many trips to Brno that amounts to. The mechanic seems like a very nice guy, honest, and genuinely interested in his work, something that is a real rarity in any profession these days. I took the van to a self serve carwash and gave it a good cleaning inside and out; I even shampooed the carpets.
Wednesday: This was how I spent my day.
Up at 6:30am
Got Bram ready for school. He was having a hard time wanting to go, so we watched a little Pat a Mat, which improved our moods.
Had two cups of coffee and checked my email.
Called my mother.
Called the insurance company about the van (no, they aren't paying for anything).
Started watching Kolya.
Stopped watching the movie to make a cake.
Went to lunch with Thomas at Five Spices, the Indian restaurant, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of our first date. I confess, this was Thomas's idea. I'm afraid I'm not even good at planning special activities for our wedding anniversary, but Thomas always remembers such things.
Bought new windshield wipers for the Toyota.
Took a nap with Thomas (We're practicing for retirement).
Checked my email.
Took burritos from Taco Bell to Bram's art lessons.
Came home and watched a little more of Kolya.
Put the icing on the cake (strawberry in the middle, cream cheese on the outside).
Washed dishes.
Picked Bram up from art lessons.
Had a piece of the cake.
Started dinner (Vegetarian chili).
Poured a glass of wine and finished watching Kolya.
Dinner.
Watched the Obama/Clinton debate.
Pondered, as usual, the predicament of me and the other Yellow Dogs

The ONLY Sensible Thing

We went to the video store yesterday to check out a little entertainment only to find that our beloved source of movies is going out of business. We have been paying about $15 a month for what amounts to a subscription for the privilege of checking out unlimited DVDs (3 at a time, we chose the cheapest plan). It was cheaper, by two thirds than basic cable TV and the quality is a million times better. So, it isn't a happy thing for us. I insisted that we do the only sensible thing; drive straight to the grocery store to buy ice cream! A half gallon (about 2 litres) of all natural butter pecan for me, and birthday cake flavor for Bram. Thomas opted to just share ours. I had to try Bram's since I am such a big fan of birthday cake (Really. I insist on it at least 3 times a year). Birthday cake ice cream... . Well, I am happier now. To be honest, though, I have to admit that my having a happiness may have more to do with our coming to Brno than with the ice cream. Can you say, "non-refundable flight tickets"?

Is Your Mailbox Lonely?

Or is it just quite crowded with mail you don't want? We've successfully stopped just about all of the junk mail that used to fill up our mailbox, and now except utilites (gas, electricity, water), and cable internet and insurance, we hardly even get any bills anymore. As enamoured as I am of the internet and the ability to stay in constant contact with many of my friends, I rather miss 'real' mail now that I get only about a half dozen letters a year. There is something very gratifying about getting a handwritten letter from someone. Holding the paper and seeing the ink of feelings and thoughts from one heart and mind to another makes the whole communication more intimate and somehow more real. It's quite gratifying to hold in my hands a missive from a friend. And when I get a card or letter, I get the added pleasure of deciding whether to delay that gratification. Should I choose to set it aside, I can revel in the anticipation of opening and reading it. It assumes the status of a gift. And who doesn't love presents, right?
At postcrossing.com, you can sign up to send and receive postcards from random 'postcrossers' from all over the world. It isn't the same as getting a letter from a friend but it beats spam in your email and junk mail in your mailbox. And maybe it will appeal just a little to the romantic in you, the idea of a card chosen for and written and addressed to you from a stranger a quarter or a half way 'round the world. Even if it doesn't, the cards are nice and the stamps jsou hustá.

Easter Monday

I was a little unhappy to have missed the things I wanted to do on Easter, but Lenka came into the kitchen Monday morning to ask if I wanted to color eggs. "An Easter do-over?" I asked. She reminded me that Czechs celebrate on Easter Monday. I began to cheer up a little, and after I realized I hadn't missed my chance to get my Easter beatings, I cheered up a lot. So, here is the photo of the eggs that Lenka showed me how to color and decorate with onion skins and leaves, and to shine with a piece of bacon. And after dinner, we got our Easter beatings with the pomlasky.

For all of you non-Czechs, pomlaksy are braided switches which the Czech menfolk use to beat their women on Easter Monday. Don't gasp. It makes them healthy and beautiful all year (and apparently, excellent cooks).

Angels

I have been thinking about how much the responses of the people who helped us reflected their own perceptions of our situation. A couple, a woman and two children stranded by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere (Okay, so it wasn't nowhere, just 30 km to the nearest town) to most is just a spectacle, to some, an annoyance, an unwanted view from their front window. But to a few it is a sign that something needs remedying. Janet stopped to offer help. One couple out of a few hundred stopped to ask if we needed anything. Three (or more) patrol officers came to help, made calls and arrangements. And in the same spirit, this couple,

John and Gail Rose, of Oakwood Grove Baptist Church, requested the use of their church van and insisted on driving us ALL THE WAY HOME, to Spartanburg, to our house. They refused payment and offers of dinner. We learned that this is something that the Roses often do for stranded motorists. Sometimes--often, they arrange transportation for the people who are left after a car accident. Those without the friend or loved one they started the journey with, sad people, grieving people, broken people. John and Gail are people who see where help is needed and provide it, kindly, generously, asking nothing in return.
Now, I wonder, how many fewer hurt or broken people there would be in the world, how many fewer fights and wars there would be if our better nature ruled as it does in all of those who did their bit to help us?

Knights in Shining Armour

Okay, so maybe I am being a bit dramatic here, but how can I resist calling these North Carolina Highway Patrol Officers anything less heroic? Trooper McLeod arrived smiling and apologetic, though the fault of his late arrival was mine, not his, and quite happy to help us get out of our dilemma. He began to arrange transportation for us and for our vehicle. The tow truck that came was the one up in the rotation, not his personal choice (I asked). He called his boss, Sergeant Ledford who also came to help carry our bags and all of us, and while we waited around, Officer McLeod provided pleasant, interesting company.
At the Patrol Station in Clyde, we met Trooper Feinberg, who was equally kind and good-natured, and who had also arranged for us to be taken to the Asheville Airport to rent a car to get home, but when our ride arrived, we got a wonderful surprise.
It may be that it is just a part of their duties to be solicitous and polite to stranded motorists, to do more than just stare as they drive slowly past, to do more than throw up their hands and say, "It's Sunday," but I doubt it. Whether it is good breeding for which I should thank their mothers or good training for which I should thank their teachers, I was grateful for it. They represented both their state and my country well, I think. Lenka was impressed, too, I think. I know I was.

Good Samaritan

Of the many cars who went by us, only this woman and one other young couple in a hot blue Mustang did more than just slow down to stare. This woman (Her name was Janet, no kidding) stopped, asked if she could help, made phone calls to try to help, and once our help was finally under way, she stopped back by to ask if we were okay. It was clear from her behavior that what she saw was clearly a group of people in need of some assistance, and her breeding or her natural inclination, or both, was to try to help.

Not a Part of the Plan

The engine is blown. The only help offered by the people residing at the house we ended up in front of was to tell us to move our car and to inform us that we wouldn't be able to get any help on a Sunday. Oh, during the more than two hours we were stranded, he and his kids and wife did take a little time out to stand around and stare at us. Did they think we did this on purpose or for fun? Were they too Yankee to have been bred well enough to be kind? Have they had so many motorists stranded in the road in front of them that they've gone quite tired of helping them?

The tow truck driver charged us $250 to tow the van to the dealership, and though we all felt that this was a bit extreme, we paid it. There were other things, by other people, which made it not so bad.
On a positive note, Lenka's daughter and my son behaved exceptionally well; they were calm in the car, entertained themselves entirely, and though they must have been as tired as we were of sitting by the road, they didn't complain even once.

The Plan and What Went Right

First, take the kids to meet the Easter Bunny and to go egg hunting at the university: This went well enough. They examined the hiding field, discussed their mutual goals, planned their strategy, found 40 plus eggs, and divided them fairly without so much as a frown of disagreement (and people say only children are spoiled and don't know how to share).

Next, get on the Blue Ridge Parkway and see fabulous mountain views like this one
And this waterfall.

Next, find a nice hotel with balconies and flowing water in Cherokee, North Carolina. Visit the Cherokee Museum and the Oconaluftee Indian village. Oconaluftee was closed for the season. But the Museum of the Cherokee Indian was very good, with enough reading and visuals and artifacts to be informative and interesting. Please note that this museum, built, maintained and operated entirely by Cherokee, is NOT called the "Museum of the Cherokee Native American."

Day Trip One

Here, it is said that a friend will help you move, but a good friend will help you move a body. When we had the very excellent dinner that Lenka cooked for us last night, Thomas and I decided that a friend will buy you lunch. A good friend will cook for you. An excellent friend will travel 5000 miles to cook for you in your own home. Seriously, eating Czech food makes me feel happy and loved, and having someone prepare Czech cuisine for me makes me feel very special indeed.
Today, I took the girls to Chimney Rock in North Carolina for the day. We had the delicious lunch that Lenka had packed for us, which included sandwiches made with some of the pork roast that she had cooked for us last night. We took the Outcroppings Trail, about a 30 minute hike plus some few (hundred? thousand?) stairs up to the top of the Chimney, and back down again. We hiked the Skylane Trail (about an hour and a half) to the top of Hickory Nut Falls, which as you can see from the photo, is way higher than the Chimney, with both fantastic and a few scary (for me) views from near the very top of the mountain. The weather was cool and very windy, for the most part a good day for hiking. There wasn't the excitement of our previous trip, and I think that we were all glad for that.
What was especially nice for me were the conversations that Lenka and I had in the car and while we were hiking. In fact, I am sure that this was my favorite part of the trip. It's rare, for me at least, to find someone so open, funny, and sympathetic who isn't afraid of laughing at herself or at me, whose response to my sharing something is to share something of her own.

They're Here!

Lenka and Anicka arrived from Brno a week ago. Since they got here, I have been very busy showing them things. Shortly after this photo was taken in front of the oldest residence in Athens, Ga, we headed farther south to St Simons. What is normally about a 6 hour trip by car, (the only way to go, of course, for those of us who don't have horses or planes) took us 12 hours! After running into a huge rain storm outside of Commerce, we found ourselves trying to escape bad weather as we went. From store fronts darkened by a power outage, we drove through traffic lights swinging nearly horizontal in the wind to Athens. We finished up our chili dogs and chili steaks at the world's largest drive-in, The Varsity, just as skies began to darken. We stopped in Bishop to look around at some funky sculptures. As you can see, Lenka took a particular liking to the big dinosaur. We passed through Madison, where the ground was white with small hailstones and stopped in Milledgeville for a quick walk through the campus of my alma mater, Georgia College and State University. The skies were the least threatening ones we had seen all day: the sun was even shining, the flowers and tea olive were blooming on campus. Nothing gave us warning of what happened ten minutes later.
As we left Milledgeville, it began to rain again, then to hail. Small hailstones quickly got larger, until finally, my poor little car was being pelted with baseball-sized hail. I phoned my mother to ask her to check the weather radar. She very calmly said, "You're in a tornado. They've already evacuated the college. Move south as soon as you can." I must say that both Anicka and Lenka were very brave about it. And my brave little Toyota now has a good many new dimples.
Once we were at the beach, the weather was wonderful, though a little bit windy. Lenka and Anicka spent their days at the beach and biking around while I rested. And on Tuesday, we all went to Jekyll Island to Driftwood Beach.
We toured the buildings and grounds at Hofwyl Broadfield Plantation and headed back home, this time without free samples of some of the worst weather that the South has to offer.