Author Archives: Kathleen Fox

Sniffing Out a Good Book

Posted on March 25, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Kindles. Nooks. As the marketing experts who came up with them would be very pleased to know, the names alone tend to make you want to curl up in a cozy corner by the fireplace with a good book.

I don't have an ereader yet, not because I don't want one, but because I haven't quite managed to decide which one to get. In the meantime, I've been reading some of the discussions for, against, and about ereaders and ebooks in general.

Some readers are passionate advocates for ebooks, some are lukewarm about the new technology, and some vow they will give up their paper books only when their last well-worn copy of "Twilight" is pried from their cold, dead fingers.

One aspect of those discussions baffles me. There are plenty of people who say one of the reasons they enjoy paper books is the way they smell (the books, not the readers). My daughter, who admits to being one of these people, says it's the glue. I suppose I should be grateful that book-binding glue is the only kind she sniffs.

I don't get it. It isn't that I'm olfactorily challenged. I savor all sorts of favorite smells—not to mention being sensitive to all sorts of smells that make me sneeze. But I don't sniff books. I don't think of them in terms of odor. I'll walk into a flower shop, a bakery, or a leather shop, inhale, and say to myself, "Ummm, it smells so good in here." I only do that with bookstores if they have coffee shops in them.

Of course, I don't get the thrill of that famous new car smell, either. Once, when my late husband's construction company had just bought a brand-new crew cab pickup, we drove it up into the hills for a family picnic. By the time we got there, I had a headache and the three kids in the back seat (including my daughter the book-sniffer) were all getting sick from the smell. Maybe the new car smell is more appealing in a luxury SUV with leather seats. Or maybe I've just never learned to appreciate it because I've never bought a new car.

Maybe that's my problem with books, as well. I don't appreciate the aroma because I don't buy a lot of new ones. Sometimes I browse in second-hand bookstores, which do have a distinctive smell, just like second-hand clothing and furniture stores do. It's easy to identify but hard to describe—a combination of musty basements, dusty attics, and closed-off rooms that haven't been aired out in a long time. Add accents of stale cigarette smoke and old perfume, and you have a definite aura that says, "other people's old stuff."

Mostly I get books from the library, and I have to admit a few of them have odors of their own. Cigarette smoke, sometimes, or coffee, or perfume. Once in a while it's strong enough to bother me, but usually I don’t pay much attention.

Apparently I don't care if a book smells like new paper, someone else's attic, or even new electronics. What I do care about is the smells, sounds, tastes, and emotions that skilled authors create. Smell the paper? Never mind. I'm too busy sniffing out the story.

Categories: Just For Fun, Living Consciously | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Luck of the Pot

Posted on March 18, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

It was a near-crisis. The situation was unprecedented as well as acutely embarrassing. The president had to open a public event by making a humiliating announcement.

She had the courage to be blunt. "I hate to say this, but we just barely have enough food to go around, so please don't help yourselves too liberally."

The public event was last month's regular potluck dinner of an organization we belong to. For the first time in institutional memory, the members had failed to bring an abundance of food. The president showed her leadership skills, though, both in her public announcement and in her resource management. As she explained after the meal, "The only dessert was one pie, so I just moved a couple of Jell-O salads to that end of the table."

Fortunately, such an occurrence is rare. Whether it's a church supper, a club's regular meeting, or a get-together with friends, potlucks are an easy way to feed a group. Everybody shares the work, everybody shares the cost, those on special diets can bring something they know they can eat, and most of the leftovers—and the dirty dishes they came in—go home with the ones who brought them.

Of course, inviting people to a potluck without giving them any suggestions about what to bring does have certain risks. Sometimes meals are heavy on breads. Sometimes casseroles rule the table. I remember one occasion when everyone brought desserts and we had to order pizza just to have a little protein. And, of course, a discerning shopper can often tell what foods are currently on special at Safeway.

Sometimes a meal can inadvertently develop a theme. There was the corn-fed dinner where we had corn chowder, cornbread, corn salad, and homegrown sweet corn. We could have either filmed an episode of "Hee Haw" or opened our own ethanol plant.

Potlucks may not be elegant dinner parties a la Emily Post or Martha Stewart, but they do have their own etiquette. It's considered good manners to take a little of most things but not too much of anything. Eating your own food is optional. You are, however, expected to take home your own leftovers. Exceptions do sometimes occur, as when the person who brought that oh-so-rich dessert ruthlessly sneaks out the door and leaves it in the refrigerator of the dieting hostess.

Good manners and etiquette do have their common-sense limits, of course. To illustrate, here is a potluck logic problem. Suppose a hypothetical person whose resemblance to the writer of this column is strictly coincidental hosts a potluck dinner at her house. Guests have brought three desserts: cupcakes, chocolate chip cookies, and carrot cake (which of course doesn't count because everyone knows carrots are vegetables.)

The hostess eats one of each. She tells herself she is just going out of her way not to hurt the feelings of any of the cooks. Is she really being:
A. Polite and gracious?
B. Co-dependent?
C. Self-sacrificing?
D. Self-indulgent?
E. Just plain greedy?

All answers will be kept strictly confidential—especially by the hostess.

Categories: Food and Drink, Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , , | 1 Comment

In The Bag

Posted on March 11, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

What on earth do people carry around in those things? Laptops? Library books? Walking shoes? Gym clothes? Small children? Litters of newborn puppies?

I know, I know—since I have to ask, I obviously don't get it. I don't understand the current style trend for huge purses. Maybe it's my lack of fashion sense. Or maybe it's my naïve belief that if you have something called a "handbag" you should be able to actually carry it, rather than needing to haul it behind you in a little red wagon.

These purses remind me of the magic carpet bag from which Mary Poppins extracted a series of improbable belongings, including a coat rack and a tall plant. (By the way, an Internet search for "Mary Poppins carpet bag," comes up with several places where you can buy a replica of her bag to use as—you guessed it—a purse. Sigh.)

I might have used a more contemporary reference and said these bags remind me of the magic bag carried by Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I. It contains, among other things, a tent the size of a three-bedroom house, complete with furnishings. But Hermione, being a sensible young woman as well as a skilled magician, was wise enough to condense all her camping necessities into a tiny evening purse.

I just don't get why these bulky bags are so popular. I suppose one might come in handy for defending yourself against a potential mugger. Provided, that is, you could manage to swing it high enough to knock him out with it.

My only other theory is a diabolical marketing scheme by a powerful cartel of chiropractors. There has to be a lot of money to be made from treating back and shoulder ailments of all the women who are hauling around half their worldly possessions in gigantic bags.

Most of these purses, besides being huge, are hugely over-decorated. They're covered with the initials of famous designers, or loaded with shiny buckles, chains, studs, and plastic ruffles or flower-like thingies. One day I noticed an elderly woman lugging one of these bags that had a big round design on the side. I couldn't quite figure out what it was until I got closer to her.

It was a clock. A working clock, with a traditional round face about four inches in diameter. It was covered with clear plastic to protect it, of course, which was a good thing since its slender owner was dragging it across the parking lot through the slush.

Okay, I suppose it might be convenient to be able to tell the time by glancing at your purse. You'd think it would be easier just to check her cell phone like everyone else. But of course she couldn't. She probably hadn't been able to find her phone in weeks. It was lost somewhere in the bottom of that enormous purse.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

Crying Fowl

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

This was too much.

At the bird feeder, we've welcomed blue jays, tolerated an oversized yellow-shafted flicker, and succumbed to the overstuffed charm of a persistent squirrel who is even now probably eating for three or four. But today was beyond what even the most generous sunflower-seed provider should have to put up with.

In the middle of the afternoon, I heard thumping outside the window of my office. It sounded as if a heavy body had plunked itself down in one of the metal chairs out there on the deck.

Someone had landed in one of the chairs, all right, but only to use it as a launching pad onto the railing of the deck. There the uninvited visitor was, perched in front of the bird feeder, helping itself. Okay, okay, I do realize that having birds come and eat at the bird feeder is sort of the general idea.

Except that this was a turkey. A relic of the Jurassic Age that had no business inviting its large, awkward, and ugly self onto our deck. It was busy gobbling food intended for birds that were much smaller, much needier, and, let's face it, much better looking.

I charged outside, broom in hand just in case my yelling needed any emphasis. It didn't. The invader scrambled off the deck, landed in the snow, and made turkey tracks. It hasn't been back—so far.

But this was the last straw. Or the last turkey in the straw. If it shows up again, I may have to replace my broom with a slingshot or a pellet gun and teach it an important lesson about manners and the English language.

There is more than one way to interpret the phrase, "stopping by our house for dinner."

Categories: Wild Things | Tags: , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Making the Lady Look Good

Posted on February 25, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

A cold, snowy Saturday night. Dinnertime. Decision time. Did we want to settle in for the evening with our respective murder mysteries or go to the dance?

Dancing won—just barely. After we finished eating and did the dishes, we had 45 minutes before leaving the house at the agreed-upon time of 7:25. We went off in our separate ways to get ready.

His preparation (phase one):
1. Sit down in the recliner with his book.

My preparation:
1. Meditate for some moments in front of the open closet door to decide what to wear. Choose a denim skirt, purple tee shirt, and black corduroy jacket.
2. Heat iron and press shirt.
3. Take off jeans and sweater, put on pantyhose, skirt, tee shirt, and jacket.
4. Decide purple shirt is too dark. Select pink lacy tee shirt instead. Take off freshly-ironed purple shirt and toss it onto the bed. Put on pink shirt. Put jacket back on.
5. Decide texture of corduroy jacket clashes with texture of lacy shirt. Take off corduroy jacket and toss it onto the bed. Put on black blazer instead.
6. Select necklace and put it on. It's too long for neckline of pink shirt. Replace it with a different one. It's too large and doesn't look right against lacy shirt. Replace it with third necklace. Like Baby Bear's chair, it's just right. Add matching earrings.
7. Get out curling iron and turn it on to heat.
8. Touch up eyeliner and apply eye shadow and mascara.
9. Curl hair.
10. Put on dancing shoes and buckle them.
11. Check mirror. Pass self-inspection. Check clock. It's 7:23.
12. Put on coat, get purse.

Total time to prepare to leave the house: 44 minutes.

Meanwhile, back at the recliner, he has been contentedly reading for 43½ minutes. He moves on to phase two of his preparation:
1. Put bookmark in book, set book aside.
2. Get up from chair.
3. Put on coat.

Total time to prepare to leave the house (not counting reading several chapters): one minute and a half.

LeRoy Olesen, a long-time local dance instructor who is personally responsible for helping hundreds of couples master the foxtrot and the waltz, frequently reminds the men in his classes: "Your job is to make the lady look good."

It's only fair for the gentleman to have that responsibility when the couple is out on the floor. The lady, after all, puts in all her effort toward looking good before they leave the house.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

All the News That’s Fit to Print

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Last fall we visited the New Mexico Museum of Space History in Alamogordo. A few of the exhibits got a bit technical on the engineering details of rocketry and were, if you'll pardon the expression, somewhat over my head.

But many of the exhibits were fascinating. One that particularly caught my attention was a replica of Sputnik. About the size of a beach ball, with antennae poking out in various directions, it was a surprisingly tiny and simple device to have such an important place in world history. As I looked up at it, I realized, "I remember reading about this in the Weekly Reader."

Well, maybe I didn't actually read a whole lot about it. When Sputnik beeped its way into history in October of 1957, I was six. The Weekly Reader probably didn't have a lot of in-depth text in its first-grade edition. I do, however, clearly remember seeing a picture of Sputnik on the front page.

The Weekly Reader was a student newspaper that showed up every week at our five-pupil rural school. It had a different edition for each grade, which in our case meant a different edition for each student. I don't remember whether we had any formal lessons based on the Weekly Reader, but I definitely read every one of my issues and probably my older sister's copy as well.

I learned about the Russians sending the dog Laika into space and worried about whether it was able to get back to Earth. I read about space pioneers Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard. Learning that John Glenn, orbiting the Earth, saw more than one sunrise and sunset in just a few hours gave me my first real understanding of how our orbit around the sun gave us our days and nights. 

Reading about the election of John Kennedy, I pondered how odd it seemed to say "President Kennedy" when the only President I remembered in my whole nine years of life was Eisenhower. I'm sure the Weekly Reader had full coverage of President Kennedy's assassination three years later, but I don't remember it that well. By then I had other sources of news, having begun reading more than just the comics in the Sioux City Journal.

Years later, when my own kids were in school, at least one of them was also a Weekly Reader fan. In about fourth grade, my son kept each issue carefully organized in a three-ring binder.

The Weekly Reader, I was glad to discover, is still alive and well. It's in full color now, but it still has weekly editions for each grade level. Best of all, it still comes out in print. It does, of course, have a website with videos and interactive online lessons—not to mention a presence on Facebook and Twitter. Its mission of delivering the news to kids is still the same; only the methods of delivering the news have changed.

And no doubt they will continue to change. I can imagine one of my grandkids, many years from now, talking to one of his or her grandkids about it. "I remember getting the Weekly Reader when it was still printed on paper. Back then, in the days of the old Internet, computers were so primitive we had to type in commands on something called a "keyboard." And remember that funny little device called a "mouse" that you saw in the technology museum? I actually used one of those. Everything was so slow, that sometimes we didn't get the news until hours or even a whole day after it happened."

The Weekly Reader. Its technology will change; it might even become the Daily Reader. But I hope it stays in business for a long, long time.

Categories: Remembering When | Tags: , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Wrestlers and the Resurrected Raccoon

Posted on February 11, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Why would you put a dead raccoon into the luggage compartment of the bus in the first place? The brief item in our local paper didn't explain, but inquiring minds would like to know.

True, the passengers on this particular bus were high school boys, which may be all the answer inquiring minds need. I could understand their interest—purely scientific, undoubtedly—in a dead critter. What I didn't understand was how the raccoon ended up stashed with the luggage. To me this implied a certain amount of official collaboration, since presumably only the coach or the bus driver could open the storage compartment.

The person who shares my morning newspaper suggested I might be underestimating the ability of a group of teenaged boys both to sneak a dead critter past their adult supervisors and to surreptitiously open the electronic latch to the luggage compartment door. Having been a teenaged boy himself, he ought to know. He claimed he wouldn't have put a dead critter on a bus himself, but would have abetted such a project.

Not satisfied with this explanation, I did further research. (Yes, I know. Certain people have occasionally implied I don't have enough to do.)

I found that the raccoon caper was sanctioned, however unwisely, by at least one adult. Furthermore, it involved raccoon-bashing as well as raccoon-stashing. On a Friday evening, the high school wrestling team from Carrington, North Dakota, was on a bus headed for a regional tournament in Grafton. They spotted a raccoon and the coach stopped the bus. Several wrestlers got off, hit the raccoon with a pail, picked it up, and stuck it in the baggage compartment under the bus.

Presumably, this whole operation seemed like a good idea at the time.

But apparently a pail (plastic, do you suppose?) isn't a very effective murder weapon. The next morning, when somebody opened the compartment, the "dead" raccoon hopped out and trotted away.

The poor critter must have been confused. First it had been knocked unconscious with a pail and shoved into a cold metal compartment among luggage filled with wrestler's uniforms and socks (freshly laundered, one can only hope). Then it escaped, only to find itself in a strange place miles from home.

Maybe its near-death experience has led to a spiritual awakening, and it will spend the rest of its life ministering to homeless critters in the parks and alleys of Grafton. Or maybe it will sell its story ("Captured by aliens and left for dead in subzero weather!") to the National Inquirer and retire to a cozy home well out of sight of the highway.

Meanwhile, back at the bus, the wrestlers and their coach were having an awakening of their own. Because some of the boys had handled a wild animal and therefore might have been exposed to rabies, the whole team was deemed a health risk and barred from the tournament.

As far as I know, none of the wrestlers have come down with any mysterious diseases. But there's a rumor that several of them have developed an unusual urge to wash all their food before they eat it.

Categories: Just For Fun, Wild Things | Tags: , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Blessing of a Different Kind

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

One of my friends, who grew up a long way south of South Dakota, maintains that people here speak with a South Dakota accent. He claims that when he first moved here more than 30 years ago he could hear the accent, but by now, having adopted it himself, he doesn't notice it any more.

Well, duh. Of course he doesn't notice it. That's because we don't have an accent. Everybody (well, at least everybody from this part of the country) knows that. People from Georgia have accents. People from North Carolina do. People from Oklahoma. Even transplanted Texans like my friend have accents.

One of the regional idioms my friend finds amusing is "kind of different." It's a classic piece of understatement, perhaps arising from the German, Norwegian, and Swedish roots so many of us have. It's a useful shorthand for describing anyone who is, well, different.

"He's kind of different" can cover those who commit fashion blunders like wearing their jeans tucked into their cowboy boots. It can describe social nonconformists with six lip piercings. It can condemn serious misbehavior like not paying your property taxes or bullying your wife. It can poke holes in grand ideas like a belief that raising ostriches in South Dakota is a great way to get rich quick. It can even stretch to cover cases of genuine mental disturbance—the guy who sees jet trails as evidence of the government's plot to control the weather comes to mind.

Southerners accomplish a similar purpose with a different phrase (said with an accent, of course): "Bless her heart."

True, sometimes this is said with love and means exactly what it says. As in, "Bless her heart, she's going through a hard time these days."

But there's also a more nuanced version. "He must be proud of the tops of those cowboy boots, bless his heart." Or, "Bless her heart, with all those piercings I hope she never tries to drink out of a straw." "Or, "He really believes in those ostriches, bless his heart."

Even if their origins and accents may be different, these phrases have one thing in common. They are both delicately non-judgmental ways of expressing a strong judgment without actually having to say anything rude. Presumably, the ultimate graceful put-down would be to transcend geographic and linguistic boundaries and combine the two expressions. "Yep, she's kind of different—bless her heart."

Categories: Words for Nerds | 2 Comments

The Final Decorating Frontier

Posted on January 28, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

On my way through the living room the other day, I happened to notice that the mantelpiece was bare. No, a burglar hadn't come down the chimney and grabbed the heirloom Sevres porcelain. Nor had the butler taken the silver candlesticks away to be cleaned. We had, in fact, cleared off the mantel over a month ago to put up Christmas decorations.

Our design scheme included hanging ornaments from the antlers of the deer skull that hangs above the fireplace. (No duct tape was used, however.) The look may not have worked for Martha Stewart, but I bet Red Green would have loved it.

We took down those decorations a few days after Christmas. A week or so after that we went out of town for a week. We've been back for a while now, and it took me this long to realize the space above the fireplace was still empty.

Several of my friends would have already decorated that tempting six-foot bare expanse. They would have arranged some color-coordinated combination of ornamental objects in an elegant display that might even enhance the antlers. Then, a few weeks from now, they would take that stuff down and replace it with something equally attractive and tasteful.

Not me. True, as a person with a college major in art, I do claim to have some esthetic sense. I have never owned a painting of Elvis on velvet, bought a couch pillow in fluorescent green, or worn plaids with stripes.

And I do recognize bad decorating when I see it. For example, take—please take, preferably as far away as possible—the Wisconsin motel that my late husband and I once stayed in. On a last-minute impulse, we had flown to the huge air show at Oshkosh. The closest available room we found was in a small town some 150 miles away. It shall remain anonymous, partly to protect the guilty but mostly because I have blotted its name from my memory.

The motel, called something like the Fantasy Inn, was apparently intended to attract honeymooners and those in search of romantic weekend getaways, licit or otherwise. Each room, the clerk informed us, was decorated around a different theme—a jungle room, an Arabian Nights room, an Egyptian room, and so on. You get the idea.

Either because we were Star Trek fans or because it was the only one left, we ended up in the "outer space" room. It turned out to be less than stellar.

Imagine a set for a zero-budget elementary school play about landing on the moon—on the dark side. The hot tub sat amid fake boulders intended to look like moon rocks. The walls and ceiling were black and ornamented with a faint scattering of amateurish painted stars and planets. There were a couple of dim lamps, plus a 20-watt light bulb over the bathroom sink. Applying eyeliner in the dark could make anyone look like an alien. Big round eyes or not, there was no way ET could have found a telephone in that room so he could phone home.

The focus of the décor was a round waterbed inside a structure designed to look like the nose cone of a space ship. To complete the futuristic theme, a video game screen was built into the inside of the "space capsule." Apparently this was the backup plan in case that whole romantic weekend thing didn't quite work out.

Compared to an esthetic disaster of such galactic scale, the potential for even a decorator-challenged type like me to mess up a simple fireplace mantel is minimal. It's just too bad the geologist in residence doesn't have any moon rocks.

Categories: Just For Fun | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

Late-Breaking News Flash

Posted on January 21, 2011 by Kathleen Fox

Hold on! News flash! Stop the presses!

Oh, wait, this is the Internet. Never mind the presses.

But make room, anyhow, for an important piece of late-breaking news that came in just at this week's publication deadline. Mackenna Marie has arrived.

She was born at 5:11 a.m. on January 21, weighing in at eight pounds, one ounce. When a lady is brand new, everybody wants to know how much she weighs. It's only later—after she's old enough to talk, maybe—that it's nobody's business but her own.

My morning started with a phone call letting me know Mackenna was here, a beautiful baby with all her fingers and toes and everything in perfect working order (including her lungs—I could hear her over the phone).

After a second cup of tea to celebrate, I went off to Curves for my usual Friday workout. Of course, I shared the good news. I'm sure the breathlessness of my account was due strictly to excitement rather than exertion as I huffed and puffed around the circuit.

Since all the other women working out were also grandmothers, it was the perfect place to celebrate. We agreed that grandchildren are wonderful and graciously allowed each other to take turns recounting the virtues of our own. We were jointly pleased at the shared hands-on parenting of today's young fathers. We appreciated the blessings of becoming good friends with grown daughters. It was an exercise in enjoying families as much as fitness.

By the time I got home, Mackenna's picture was already up on Facebook. She is, of course, beautiful, and no, she doesn't look anything like Winston Churchill.

Stop the Internet for a nanosecond and take note, everyone. Mackenna just joined the extended family of the World Wide Web.

Categories: Family, Living Consciously | Tags: , , | 1 Comment

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