MUSINGS BY JOAN #33

No, I wasn’t at DisneyWorld with Donald & Daisy, but it was a magical morning! I was actually volunteering with Hands On Miami this morning and my job was to help paint an outdoor mural on the grounds of the Robert King High government housing for senior citizens.

Who knew that the event was co-sponsored by Disney and would turn into an incredible mix of literally hundreds of very youthful volunteers who were there to clean up the riverfront and plant a vegetable garden? Also on hand: a slew of uber-efficient black T-shirted Disney organizers, several bands playing loud Latin music, huge bunches of colored balloons, paparazzi galore to capture the moment as Dade County Mayor, Carlos Alvarez welcomed Disney and the volunteers, and TV crews from both Spanish language and regular morning news shows. The popular Spanish morning show, “Despierta America” actually filmed their entire morning segment on the grounds overlooking the Miami River.

I went with a friend from my art class, Patt Soto, who whispered to me at one point, “I think we’re the oldest volunteers here.” Patt is all of 61. Duh.

I believe the moment she noted that fact was when all the volunteers were asked to put on their Mickey Mouse ears, jump up and down and wave wildly to the TV cameras. Did I mention that the temperature was in the 90’s by this time and we were standing out in full sunlight? Yes, we waved. No, I didn’t jump up and down. Give me a break, guys.

The ears came in a very nice black canvas tote bag packed with all kinds of goodies that was handed to each volunteer as we entered the area at 7am. (We left the house at 6:30 in the pitch dark.) The bag contained among other things a bright turquoise T-shirt we were asked to wear while we worked, the black cap (yarmulke?) with giant ears, and a baseball mitt sized white glove with four fingers ala Mickey himself. I think it will go well with the outfit I am planning to wear to my 80th birthday dinner party.

Patt was a better sport than I. She wore her ears all morning as she painted. I graciously donated mine, as soon as possible, to Lexi, the little daughter of Serge Toussaint, the Haitian-born artist who created our mural. Serge had painted the outlines for two murals of sea scenes on free standing concrete block walls and we were to apply the color under his direction. As Patt put it, I was the good guy splashing on white paint. . .she was the bad guy, following up with black. I soon graduated to purple for the big fish’s gorgeous serrated fin. Please note the beauty of my art work in the accompanying photo.

About 15 of us painted without stopping from 8 to 10:30 when Serge pronounced the murals complete. It was a learning experience and great fun, not to mention the satisfaction of knowing that you have contributed something to your community.

I loved every minute of it, even if I was the oldest volunteer there. If you come to Miami I’ll be glad to run you over to admire our work.
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Photo captions: Daisy, Donald , Patt & Joan with artist Serge Toussaint.
The volunteer artist at work

MUSINGS FROM JOAN #32


Frank Bruni, the former N.Y. Times restaurant critic, wrote a fascinating article on the Huffington Post today about “memoirs and memories”. Basically he wrote about how selective our memories are, and how sometimes we discuss something that we remember so vividly with someone who shared the moment, and we find that they remember it totally differently. Other times, someone will talk about an important memory and you will have absolutely no recollection of the event..

This happens frequently with my sister and me. Sometimes I wonder how we grew up in the same household and remember things so differently. My favorite memory difference is the question of who was our father’s favorite. I know it was me. She insists it was her. I guess that was his genius as a father, we both are positive that our memory is the correct one..

I had a long time friend, we grew up together from the age of 12, who stopped talking to me several years ago because of an incident that she claims occurred that obviously pissed her off big time. I have absolutely no recollection of the incident which apparently involves my leaving her dinner party early to watch a Dolphin playoff game, The fact that I didn’t remember anything about it, made her even madder, and she still isn’t talking to me. My feeling to this day is that Dolphin playoff games don’t happen that often. You have to have priorities..

My daughter Andrea and I sometimes remember things differently. Just the other day she told me she remembers walking our dog Eloise with her father and on returning home seeing flames shooting out the kitchen window. I admit that I burned down two kitchen stoves during that marriage,. . once I decided to take a shower and apparently neglected to return, the other time I was entertaining guests in the living room and got carried away with the conversation. . . but the stove was nowhere near the window and besides the kitchen was in the back of the house and couldn’t be seen from the street. She is adamant about her memory and I’m too unfamilar with stoves of any kind these days to argue. Speaking of memories, I lost the instruction book on the convection oven here in my condo and can't remember how to turn it on. ( OK, Andrea. . so I've never turned it on. . .I can remember that.)

It’s nice to have one friend who shared your growing up years and does remember important times and places exactly as you do. Judy and I walked to school together every day of our high school years, we lived in the same apartment house, and we can still remember vividly what we wore on what important date, where we went and what we did. We borrowed each other’s clothes, giggled a lot, majored in boys and were not exactly deep. I learned to drink straight shots of rye followed by ginger ale and used to sneak out my bedroom window after my parents went to sleep. Luckily we lived on the first floor. At sixteen, it’s hard to imagine you would someday turn 8o. Actually, it’s pretty hard to imagine at 79 and 11/12ths. Judy reached that milestone in May. I love her attitude about it. . .she’s still not sure whether she’s going to accept the number.

I’m not sure either. I’ll let you know in 27 days.
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Photo caption: Memories of a great stone crab dinner. I may not cook, but I sure can serve!

*Haiku - According to Google: a form of Japanese poetry, consisting of 17 moras (I think that means syllables), in three metrical phrases of 5, 7, and 5 moras respectively. (Don't count mine. . I'm a little off, moras-wise.)









MUSINGS BY JOAN #31

I have never written a haiku* in my life, but I was moved to write one in honor of last Friday night’s dinner. I’m not sure if haikus are allowed to have titles, but mine does. My apologies to any haiku purists in the group.

THE SAGA OF BENARD’S
BOEUF ALA BOURGUIGNONNE

Julia’s recipe
Three hours on feet in kitchen
Beef stew

We never should have gone to see that movie. Ever since, Chef Benardo, aka the significant other, has been determined to make this very fancy dish whose recipe actually takes four pages in Julia Child’s “Art of French Cooking”. I admit the results were totally delicious. It’s the first beef stew I ever ate that could give you a buzz due to the entire bottle of Merlot wine that went into the pot along with the longest list of ingredients you can possibly imagine, including a few items I never heard of before.

The recipe requirements for this “simple but delicious French dish” ( can’t you just hear Julia warbling that sentence?) are so extensive that Benard decided to make it the day before the scheduled dinner party. It was a good thing he did. He was so exhausted when it was finally done that he was forced to take a long nap immediately afterward.

For the actual dinner, he donned his authentic white chef’s jacket with his name embroidered over the pocket. It was a gift some time back from our friend Pamela and the dinner party was in honor of her birthday. I grabbed my camera to memorialize the moment as he ceremoniously tasted his simmering culinary creation. I’m pretty sure he’s not planning to make it again. Not in this lifetime, at least.

For the foodies out there, we started out with champagne and crudités before moving to the dining table where Chef Benardo served his triumph accompanied by buttered noodles and fresh asparagus. Does anyone know how to say yummy in French???

I set the table, of course. The napkins looked truly elegant. I’ll send you my recipe if you’re interested.
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Photo caption: Chef Benardo taste-testing his Boeuf ala Bourguignonne.

MUSINGS BY JOAN #30

In this morning’s Miami Herald there is a full page article about a rescue cat named Nora who is making a fortune for her owners by playing the piano. According to the article, she plays in perfect rhythm and on key. (This is a cat we’re talking about folks.)

Nora has several million hits on her website where she can be seen in various videos playing away with both paws and keeping perfect time. She has done the talk (meow?) show circuit, has a fast selling line of T-shirts, gets endless requests for her "pawtograph", and has had a “Catcerto” written especially for her by a famous Lithuanian conductor (I am not making this up) by the name of Mindaugus Piecaitus. When the Maestro premiered his epic work with the Klaipeda Chamber Orchestra in June, Nora performed her solo purrfectly, and was seen via a full size video screen set up in the concert hall.

I bring this to your attention not because I wish to further publicize Nora and her astounding musical ability, but to complain bitterly about my two totally useless cats who are sleeping on my desk as I write. After reading the article in bed this morning, I actually had a long chat with Wasabi on the subject of any latent talent on his part. He licked my nose twice and went back to sleep. I don’t think there is much of a market on You Tube for that sort of work.

Ginger, my girl cat, is a lost cause talent-wise. She couldn’t sit still long enough to play a chorus of Chop Sticks, much less allow anyone to video her doing it. Besides, which, I don’t own a piano at the moment so the whole project is out of the question. It never occurred to me to ask the Stray Aid people three years ago whether they had any rescue cats with musical talent. Or any talent at all for that matter, other than sleeping. I don’t think the fact that Wasabi is a notoriously picky eater has any potential either. Moneymaking? Hell no. If anything, they cost money. I’ll know better next time.

Obviously, there are people out there raking in the money by figuring out how to work the internet to their benefit. I just haven’t figured out how as yet, or who exactly my market would be. There seems to be a limit to how many almost-80-year-olds are sitting at their computers playing video games and thinking up Face Book pages that might go viral within 24 hours. Actually, most of the people I know who heard the word viral would ask the doctor for an antibiotic and take to bed. (In all fairness, I must admit that my sister and I play Farkle on line regularly. That’s Facebook’s highly addictive video dice game, if you're not a player. Currently, she’s beating me, but don’t count me out.)

If anybody has any great ideas, I’m open to suggestions. Be glad to cut you into the profits, or better still, I’ll send you one of my do-nothing kitties. Maybe you can teach them how to play for pay!

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Photo caption: Nora, ready for her next solo. Check out her technique.