30/30

If this were a movie, Harry Dean Stanton (or Donald Sutherland) would be a slightly off-beat, middle-class editor planning a 30th anniversary trip to Chicago with his artsy-craftsy wife, Sissy Spacek (or Mary McDonough), who wants it to be really special.

Just for fun, let's say they met in Chicago some time during the previous century, and to mark the occasion they plan to revisit some of their old haunts after all these years of tying the knot, going back to school, finding jobs, having babies, moving, going back to school again, moving again, putting kids through school, changing jobs, buying a house in the suburbs, blah blah blah.

In this totally fictional movie, the somewhat happy couple is still in the process of making their big romantic anniversary plans during the winter holidays, as they put up a tree, decorate, shop, and cook in their stylishly funky old brick house in Peninsula, Ohio. There they spend Christmas/Solstice with their urbane and bookish adult daughter, Catherine Heigl (or Drew Barrymore), while their punk cartoonist son, Heath Ledger (or Edward Norton), spends the holidays with his anarchist housemates in New York. Anyone see a plausible plot in this?

In the foreground of the unfolding narrative is a hard-working and supportive, if oddball, family who observes the traditional holiday rituals of sitting down to dinner with ethnic foods - lutefisk, lefse, rum and OJ - lighting candles, offering ecumenical blessings to light and darkness, children and families, and opening gifts beside a fresh-cut Noble fir tree, the whole nine yards.

Timely phone calls to and from the prodigal son in Brooklyn and an exchange of FedEx packages of presents - his carefully wrapped in cartoon paper - keep Heath/Edward included in the festivities. But it is Catherine/Drew who provides the glue in this conglomerate celebration of fragmentation and faith. She helps to cook dinner, says the right thing when stress mounts, holds her rapier tongue when Dad says something stupid, and gives amazing and creative gifts of art prints and books to her proud and grateful parents.

In the background, it is apparent that this family's issues have issues. Sissy/Mary is concerned about Heath, who in the recessionary economy has lost his retail bookstore job, which he didn't like much anyway, and is on his own for the holidays, eating take-out sushi on Christmas Eve with his housemates, Kevin Smith and Zoey Deschanel. He is fine, Catherine/Drew assures them, he just isn't sure what he wants to do next, although he's thinking about going to electrician school or raising goats.

To complicate matters further, Edward/Heath has chosen not to join his girlfriend, Parker Posey (or Jeneane Garafalo) in Connecticut for the holidays with her parents, Christopher Reeve and Isabella Rosselini. Donald is experiencing some anxiety at a distance about Parker and Edward's relationship, but Harry knows they'll do what they have to do.

No Capulets and Montegues, no Sharks and Jets, just a typical American family drama. Or comedy, I'm not sure yet. By the way, this is totally fictional, and any resemblance to real persons, past or present, is wholly coincidental.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, Mary/Sissy spends most of her time knitting and watching "House" while Harry/Donald is content to kill time stacking firewood and reading the New York Times, if he could only remember where he put his glasses. As Christmas passes peacefully, they count their blessings during visits with their old friends, English professor Kevin Kline and art teacher Emma Thompson, who come over for the evening with their college-age kids, summa cum laude GIS cartographer Cate Blanchett and sophomore environmental filmmaker Paul Dano.

Anticipation builds for their trip, and both Harry and Sissy have contradictory feelings, knowing neither they nor Chicago will be the same as they were December 30, 1978. Departure from Peninsula occurs more or less on schedule, but Harry is always uptight prior to a trip, so Sissy humors him. They quickly fall into their travel mode, talking about what a cool movie their trip would make and what actors could play which characters, depending on whether it is a comedy with dramatic moments or a drama with comedic moments, and whether they work with a slick Hollywood studio or an independent outfit - Woody Allen or John Sayles - and how confusing will it be to the audience if different actors play the same character in different scenes? They agree that if it's too fragmented, audiences will be confused as well as bored - too much like real life and not enough like a movie.

As soon as rural Indiana disappears in the rear-view mirror, their conversation turns to what it would be like to move back to Chicago after all these years, but for now, Mary and Donald are caught up in the details of getting where they are going. He is easily distracted, and she has no sense of direction, so navigating is a trip in itself. Somehow they find the Arlington International Hostel in Lincoln Park with no missed exits and no wrong turns.

The near north side close to the lake is an appealing neighborhood, but they doubt whether they could afford the cost of a condo. The hostel is plain but clean and welcoming. Most of the lodgers are younger, and about half speak English with an accent, but somehow they don't feel out of place. Harry Dean goes out to find a place to park the car and can't locate the street suggested by the desk clerk, finally finding a space on a street a few blocks away with ambiguous signage.

It's getting colder, must be the wind-chill, but it's not as late as it seems, must be the change to central time. Donald and Sissy get dressed and go out, looking good if I may say so. They buy two-day CTA passes and catch the El train north to their old neighborhood of Rogers Park. From the Morse station they follow their noses to the Heartland Cafe, still there after all these years.

In fact, Sissy immediately recognized one of the owners, Gary Busey, standing just inside the entrance. When they had found a table, she went to speak to him, and he alerted the other owner, Lily Tomlin, and the three of them had a small reunion remembering working together, creating a community-oriented business, running a marathon, and more recently helping to elect a president.

It took the waiter an eternity to bring the wine, and when Harry had finally taken a sip and toasted their anniversary, he said he had a question, got down on one knee, and asked Mary if she would spend another 30 years with him. She really liked the sparkly ring with tiny diamonds set in a gold six-peteled lotus on a silver band, and she said yes.

Mary and Harry reminisced at length while eating Mexican food and drinking red wine, enjoying espresso with dessert, and paying the bill. On the way out they perused the little general store next door for memorabilia, like T-shirts that said HELP WANTED: REVOLUTIONARIES or Athletes United for Peace. They walked back to the El and the hostel leaning into a fierce north wind.



Next morning there was snow on the ground. Donald and Mary found a great breakfast place, Frances' Deli, around the corner on Clark Street. Excellent challah French toast, decent veggie omelet, superb home fries, and bottomless cups of coffee. A couple of family groups, also eating breakfast, provided a start to an outstanding day of people watching, and they speculated about other people's stories while enacting their own.

After breakfast, walking down the block with the wind, they stopped at a bike shop just as a young guy rode up to unlock the front door. Harry and Mary looked at bikes, and the guy answered their questions about the comparable quality of Trek and Specialized (not much different). Lincoln Park is growing on me. It's like the East Village but 20 pounds heavier. We walked to the Fullerton station to catch the red line to the Loop.

Almost like we knew what we were doing, we got to the Art Institute just in time for a noon talk about Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" in the second-floor gallery it shares with more "modern" paintings. I think the questions raised by the guide - are these characters trapped, complicit, alienated, touching, or just a composition in complementary colors - got our minds and eyes aroused for the next two hours of looking at twentieth-century American painting. I didn't bring a pen or a camera, so I don't recall much except seeing a lot of Columbus's own George Bellows, which was captivating, and learning a little bit about what I like and don't like about Georgia O'Keefe's landscapes (the amazing fluid movement) and figures (bones and flowers, love and death).

We needed a break, so we grabbed our coats and found a Starbuck's at Wabash and Adams to refuel on coffee and cake. Two strangers sitting at the angular counter reminded me of "Nighthawks," so I took a picture, but guess what, it just wasn't the same. Back inside the museum, Donald and Mary headed for the Asian art wing, which seemed to go on and on. If you go straight back from the lobby, you can walk through several thousand years of Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture with mostly Hindu and Buddhist themes. Off to the right is room after room with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ceramics, bronzes, ink paintings, and woodblock prints. Time passes. At the far end is another modern American gallery with a hilarious David Hockney painting of California collectors. It's closing time.

Harry and Mary stopped for a quick swing through the gift shop. Every El station on the way back evoked memories of people and places they once knew like the back of their hands. Heath called while they were getting ready to go out to dinner, and he sounded great. He and Parker were dressing up as dinosaurs in preparation for the New Year's Eve party at his house in Brooklyn. Nine bands were going to play, one of them dressed as cavement, and the grand finale at midnight would be a papier mache volcano erupting in confetti.

Our New Year's Eve would be a little more sedate: a nice dinner followed by a band at the Heartland. Without a dinner reservation, Donald didn't know whether they could get a table at the Basil Leaf, up the street at Clark and Arlington, but they were in luck. There was only a short wait, just enough time for a drink at the bar, and from the bread and wine to the smoked salmon over fettucini, the food was spectacular. By the time they had taken their boxed leftovers back to the hostel, Harry and Sissy were a little too tired and tipsy to get back on the train and head north for music and dancing, so they called it a night.

New Year's morning was an absolutely clear blue sky as we walked to Starbuck's on Clark Street with a front-row seat to watch Lincoln Park runners, cyclists, workers, and dog-walkers take on 2009. Speaking for myself, Harry Dean Stanton felt right at home among the young, old, rich, poor, loud, studious, rough, and sophisticated Chicagoans starting their engines with a hot cup of joe.

Harry and Sissy had no plans except brunch in the suburbs with their friends Tim Robbins and Kyra Sedgwick, who recently moved to Chicago from Cleveland. It's a quick drive out I-90 past O'Hare to Mt. Prospect, the tidy, tree-lined community where Tim is the new minister at the American Baptist Church.

Kyra chopped garlic and cooked fritata while we caught up on their move, the history and challenges of their new congregation, and the many things they love about their new place. They caught up on our Chicago adventure and the ongoing adventures of Edward/Heath and Drew/Catherine, whom Kyra has known since they were in preschool. They showed us around their house, then took us across the street to the beautiful little Greek-revival church.

We still had six hours to drive, so it was time to go. Sorry that we couldn't have touched base with more people in about 48 hours, we hit the road with a full head of steam and didn't really get tired until somewhere around Lafayette, Indiana, the site of another would-be movie, seemingly in another lifetime and involving other characters. Luckily my Starbuck's gift card still had some value on it, and a little more caffeine kept us driving and making up stories, like the completely imaginary one above, all the way home.

Received

Books: Roger-Pol Droit, Astonish Yourself! 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (Penguin); Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Penguin); Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings (Taschen); Hans Christian Adam, Karl Blossfeldt: The Complete Published Work (Taschen); plus a gift card at Half-Price Books. I've read a bit into the the Bruegel book and the OED book, and it's pretty funny; my new favorite word is futilitarian.

CDs: Warren Zevon, The Love Songs (Artemis); Joan Osborne, Little Wild One (Plum); Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits (Geffen); John Coltrane, Coltrane for Lovers (Verve). I'm becoming a Joan Osborne fan and expect to listen to this disc many times.

Baking pans: one ceramic and one flexible nonstick silicone. I tried them out, and they work great.

Weather X radio-flashlight with siren. Go ahead, envy me. Don't you wish you had a flashlight with a built-in siren?

Two shirts. They fit.

Bodum French-press coffee maker with instructions in English, Dansk, Espanol, Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Nederlander, Svensk, Portugues, Polska, Greco, Russe, Arabic, and Japanese; a pound of whole-bean Gorilla brand coffee (Ethiopian Harar) and D'Amico coffee (Red Hook Blend).

Hand-knitted, felted bag, purple and blue-green striped, heavy-weight and large enough for a laptop. It's dusty in the den, and this will protect my Toshiba beautifully.

Given

Smartwool socks, heavy-duty for work.

Smartwool slippers, ankle-high with flexible, cushy soles.

More Smartwool socks, calf-length for warmth.

BikeSource gift card - accessorize!

Stemless wine glasses, shee-shee, German-made.

Two skeins of nice wool yarn.

50 trees planted in your name by Oxfam.

free...firewood

Co-worker P came to my desk on Tuesday to ask if I would be interested in some free firewood. Now picture my eyes getting real big. My two favorite words in the English language are free and firewood.

Are you kidding, of course I'm interested in some free firewood. I mean, it's free...firewood!

P had hired professional tree workers to cut down a big old oak in his yard, and they charge a lot less if they don't have to haul away and dispose of the wood. Which is a sweet deal for me, since what I really like to do is dispose of free...firewood.

So on Friday, my day off, I drove Hank the Ranger over to his house and loaded up the 40 pieces I could carry, and in the process got a workout or two - or four. First there's carrying from the stack to the truck. Then there's unloading at the back gate at Om Shanty and stacking by the back fence to cure for a year so I can split it. Eat lunch, take a break, repeat. Then loosen your boots and enjoy a refreshing Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald porter.

For me that's half the fun. It allows suburban office worker types like me to put on work gloves, move heavy objects, put the pickup truck to good use, and indulge - if only for an afternoon - in the fiction that I'm directly engaged in the primal act of providing the means of someone's survival.

Yeah right. It's probably not as much fun for the billions of people for whom this is an everyday reality, not a game and not a form of entertainment. Some privileged suburbanites go deer hunting or bass fishing for sport. I do firewood.

It's been a bountiful week in the realm of free...firewood. On Sunday I stopped on the way home from church to ask the man standing in his driveway on Lewis Center Road about the logs lying in the ditch. He said take what you want, so I did - just the few pieces that I could lift - and left the one's I couldn't lift. I didn't want the next passerby to see me lying in the ditch, so I quit while I was ahead.

Then on Monday co-worker B offered me four humungous ash logs that he had in the back of his van. More free...firewood! Although observers from the nearby office building might have mistaken this innocent exchange in the parking lot for an illicit trade in black-market goods, I swear it was nothing of the sort. By day's end those babies were nestled by the back gate curing until their time comes, probably next fall.

By Sunday I was looking to extend my lucky streak by taking down a couple of dead or dying trees in the back yard of co-worker D, but alas the stars did not align. Patience, grasshopper. Don't be greedy. I know that out there, somewhere, there is more free...firewood.

farewell kiss, you dog

"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog!" Muntader al-Zaidi, a reporter with the al-Baghdadia television network, shouted as he threw the first shoe. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" Zaidi said as he threw his other shoe.

Great Moments in Cheese

What makes the holidays so special? Is it the heartwarming Christmas music? The greenery adorning hearth and home, lobby and cubicle? Or is it the brilliant displays of colorful lights illuminating every residential street, public building, and suburban parking lot? Maybe it's the festive green and red clothing everyone wears with their parka and boots and mittens. Or the cards from Aunt Marion, Cousin Joan, and the friendly neighborhood car insurance agent.

While all those things, as well as the incessant blare of popular seasonal songs from every radio station and muzak source, add something really special to the whole holiday vibe, it's something else that truly sets this season apart all all others, making it extra extra special.

It's the Holiday Cheeseball that best embodies the spirit of the season.

In fact, I feel better just saying the words holiday cheeseball. In honor of that sacred trust (I mean really, if you can't depend on your annual cheeseball, what can you depend on?) it is only fitting and proper to observe some Great Moments in the History of Cheese.

The origin of cheese appears to be lost in the mists of time. There are, however, records of the Sumerians making and consuming cheese that date to about 3500 B.C. Homer's 9th century B.C. epic, the Odyssey, describes a scene with the Cyclops Polyphemus making cheese and pressing it into wicker baskets. (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1951/how-did-cheese-originate)

Thistle flowers and green fig juice were used by Romans as rennet. In many abbeys, the monks, who were clergymen as well as writers and graziers and cookers ... and jolly fellows, perfected the munster (munster comes from "monasterium", i.e. "monsastery") Saint Paulin and Maroilles ripening technique, which soon spread throughout European countries.

1952 - President Charles de Gaulle declares, "The French will only be united under the threat of danger. Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese."

Now repeat after me: HOLIDAY CHEESEBALL... Don't you feel kinda festive?

The future is in boxes

A commodity to keep your eye on is cardboard.

You heard it here first: as cardboard goes, so goes the nation. If the wood-products industry is doing well, that means distributors of other goods - phones, computers, TVs, shoes, underwear, oranges - are shipping a lot of stuff by UPS, which means money is circulating. When more money is moving around, there is more of it available for more people to buy phones, computers, underwear, and oranges - in boxes!

The beauty of this circle of commerce is manifested in our friend, the renewable resource of paper. As everyone knows, the paper in which those value-added products are packaged can be recycled and reconstituted as the next generation of paper products, such as the cardboard boxes going in and out of stores and UPS trucks. In some cases, the package is worth more than the contents.

Again, to belabor the obvious, when shoes and socks and books are boxed and delivered in their cardboard containers, that creates demand for more boxes (as well as for more books and socks) making it more profitable to recycle the box, the Xerox, the envelope, or the newspaper than to throw it away. No demand for new boxes, no incentive to recycle the old one.

Do not throw it away. Do not sentence that shoebox to an eternity in the landfill, where the most it will accomplish in its present karmic incarnation would be to compost down into carbon atoms, perhaps eventually feeding some photosynthesizing weed and recombining with water to form a sugar molecule. Everything gets recycled eventually, but randomness is way too inefficient. That box can contribute more productively to Amerika's economic recovery by transmigrating its cellulose soul into stationery, newsprint, or another box.

What I'm suggesting goes against the core economic wisdom that made Amerika great, but consider the possibility that more new stuff manufactured from more new material isn't the best deal. Consider instead that finding new uses for existing stuff might work better. Don't think outside the box, and don't think inside the box. Think about the box.

Post-Thanksgiving Gumbo

1. Boil segments of turkey carcass in large pot until meat falls off bones. Remove bones. Let pot sit in unheated workshop (away from varmints) for a week.

2. Skim off layer of fat, place in cast-iron Dutch oven, and fry 100 sliced baby carrots, six stalks of celery, five cayenne peppers, four Hungarian peppers, three sweet red peppers, two large chopped onions, and a parsnip (in a pear tree).

3. Reheat the pot of turkey, pour off the juice into the Dutch oven with the fried vegetables, and cook over low heat; add two large cans of diced tomatoes, a bunch of green beans, lots of okra (if you can find any okra in central swingstate), and whatever else is in the fridge; simmer. Use the meat for sandwiches, turkey salad, etc.

4. Soak a few handfuls of dried black (turtle) beans; bring to a boil and cook for two hours or until they form their own dark purple sauce; add beans to the soup, and simmer for another two hours.

5. Serve with brown rice and a Great Lakes Christmas Ale.

6. Say 'Oofdah!'

Post-Thanksgiving Grumble

(Sigh)

Now that the first big holiday of the Big Holiday Season has come and gone, we can settle back into the normal chaos of everyday life as we know it.

Our out-of-town company has come and gone, and the house is quiet again, save for the old cat's usual complaints first thing in the morning and last thing at night. Our guests, bless them, graciously fit right into the rhythms, routines, and standards of Om Shanty - the house rules, you might say - as we did our best to raise the bar just a bit to accommodate our guests.

And now we can be slobs again. We don't have company, so we can let the laundry pile up on the floor, the mail sit unopened on the table, the sink fill up with dishes, and catalogs lie strewn on every surface of every room. I think I'll do some dishes, do some laundry, and pick up a bit. I know I won't get around to the real projects on my to-do list.

(Sigh)

Kin Aesthetic

Our little house on the prairie was the scene of quite a family gathering this week. Despite my extreme familiarity with some of this cast of characters, I'm still amazed, sometimes delighted and occasionally chagrined, at their quirks, their tastes, and their humor. Three generations of Gollys and a few of their friends gathered at Om Shanty for Thanksgiving, and they all got along reasonably well, or at least survived the encounter by adapting and being good sports.

The kitchen is a key element in this most kitchen-centric of holidays, and our kitchen had an important upgrade this week. My student-friend Ja and his handyman-friend Rick swooped in with the suitable materials, tools, and skills just in time to install our new dishwasher two days before Thanksgiving. For considerably less than what professional plumbers, electricians, and carpenters would have charged, they connected the waterline and drainpipe, ran a power line from the breaker box, moved a cabinet, and placed a new countertop. Nice work, guys, and that's enough drama for one week.

Jessi's plane came in that night from Providence, and he looked like he had stepped right out of the cranberry bog, which he had. Alas he did not come bearing copious quantities of cranberries like last year. They had a bumper crop at the Mann family farm in Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, and they worked right up to the last day, so I guess he was so preoccupied with harvesting, screening, packaging, and shipping berries - and making on-again, off-again travel arrangements with his sweetie - that he didn't box another year's worth of berries for the folks in the heartland. I think we'll live.

The good news is that Jessi's sweetheart Alexandra joined us for the holiday. I was so happy when Jessi initially told us she was coming, then afraid she would have second thoughts when our plans expanded to include a raft of additional out-of-town relatives, and then crushed when it looked like she wouldn't make it. But they worked it out, and she bravely flew into Port Columbus International from LaGuardia on Wednesday, forsaking the safety of New York to risk all in a houseful of rough, holiday-reveling Midwesterners. Her timing couldn't have been better, as the four of us had a quiet evening to settle in before the rest of the rowdy clan arrived.

That handsome dude on the far left (wearing a tie) is my Dad, with a few close friends at the C & D, the year Jo Jo was born.

And arrive they did, all three of them, late Wednesday evening, bearing pies and other good things to eat and drink, as well as the whole kit and kaboodle for making lefse, which, as everyone knows, is a tender Norwegian flat bread made with potatoes, traditionally eaten at the winter holidays, and a kind of sacrament not to be missed. So when sister Jo Jo Golly and parents Chas and Helen Golly arrived, armed with ingredients, equipment, and a small traveling bar, the wild rumpus could officially begin.

Grandma Helen had an agenda. Besides making lefse, she was determined to settle the matter of preserving some old photos and newspaper clippings she had recently unearthed from her personal records. She was pleased and relieved when we were able to photocopy and scan them into our computer for posterity. Passing the photos around also gave Grandpa Chas an opening to tell stories about life in Spring Grove just after the War, working in the C & D Cafe with my Uncle Chuck, running the grocery store for Helen's Uncle Freddie Anderson, and related tales that spin off from one another like sparks from the fire.

That's Great-Grandpa Anderson on the far left, next to Fjelstad (?) in full regalia, including wooden shoes.

Our den Thursday evening looked like an arts and crafts convention. Most of the females clustered in our den had knitting or some other handwork to do while talking about this and that. A few had a crossword puzzle or sudoku to occupy their eyes, hands, and left brain. The age range spanned those in their 80s who were born in the 20s and those in their 20s who were born in the 80s. The floor was dark green tile, the ceiling was cedar. The soundtrack included Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli, Bela Fleck, and Joe Cocker, but it was strictly background to the fiber art, word play, conversation, and storytelling around the woodstove. The dog claimed a warm piece of floor with her belly toward the stove. The cat favored the rocking chair to the side of the stove, and woe to any human who usurps Isabel's chair.

But the ultimate art form, let's be honest, is food. At Thanksgiving, the meal is the thing, and ours was abundant if not elaborate. The bird itself was a beauty, and around it were assembled a mountain of Zelda's garlic mashed potatoes, gravy whipped up at the last minute, Gven's rendition of our friend Gorm's Irish-Italian upstate sausage stuffing, Zelda's friend Bernard's Belgian cranberry sauce, Jo Jo's green bean casserole, spinach salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing, and sourdough rolls, oh ya.

I must say the table looked fabulous. Candles were lit, wine glasses were filled, and Grandpa said grace. According to our tradition, we went around the table and each person made note of something they were thankful for, some heavy and some light. We took our time getting around to the coffee and pie - pumpkin, apple, cherry, and a deep-dish Dutch apple that was to die for. Everybody contributed to the meal, and everybody helped clean up.

Friday afternoon we piled into three cars for an outing at Franklin Park Conservatory, where there's a surprise around every corner. Every time I go there I'm reminded of what a gem it is to have in our town. The toucans in the rain forest room get your attention right away. The overstuffed chair upholstered in cacti, appropriately titled "Sticky Buns," and the warm, dry air in the desert room is refreshing in a way unlike central swingstate. David Byrne's magnetic poetry in the shape of a tree was fun, and the architecture of the palm house was as riveting as the trees.

We wandered upstairs to an exhibit by Dorothy Gill Barnes, an artist from Worthington who does wild things with wood that is already marked by natural forces. We also ran into Gwen, the horticulturist and former taiji student, who poured out information about orchids, and Mark, our former minister.

About this time Jessi and Alex took off to meet up with Andy, Jessi's friend from high school. The older generations needed to restore our strength, so we repaired to La Chatelaine for a light supper. It's right across the street from Half-Price Books, so we perused the shelves until Zelda, Jessi, Alex, and Andy returned from their dinner-break together, then we proceeded to disturb the bookish customers briefly by congregating in the friendly confines of Zelda's store, which was kind of special for the older folks to see one of the younger folks in her work milieu.

It's getting to be a long day, but we still hadn't made lefse. The folks had brought along their special rolling board and board cover, rolling pin and pin cover, lefse grill and magic turning stick, dontchaknow. It takes a trained team of three experienced Norwegians to roll out dough until thin, heat briefly at 450, turn and cool slowly (under a towel) so they stay nice and soft. That mission accomplished, we could relax in the den again and watch Isabel and Helen compete for the rocking chair.

By Saturday morning, I think everybody agreed it was time to go home. Jo Jo, Helen, and Chas left for Tennessee after breakfast. Jessi and Alex had a plane to catch at one. Gven and I were ready for a normal weekend of doing laundry, baking bread, and reading the paper, reassured that we are so very related.

But is it art?

The yard has so many things wrong with it, I never know where to start, because I'll never finish anything in the allotted time frame of a weekend. Two maple trees in the back and one in the front are way overdue for radical cutbacks, especially now that the leaves have fallen, but that can only be done in certain kinds of weather, not too cold and not too windy. All the windfall wood from Hurricane Ike has been cut up, split, and stacked to dry, so a certain sense of order prevails with about two cords in the shed. I found time to edge a section of walkway with a couple of hefty 8-foot 4x6 timbers, which should keep the brick pavers in place for a while. I still need to nail the remaining cedar shakes to the back of the house, and I only have enough shakes for one more row. Then what? It's a challenging process working with found materials.

The house presents a different set of problems. My lack of skill and resourcefulness turns any small task into a minifiasco of time-consuming, labor-intensive futility. After several tries, I succeeded in securing with long (4-inch) screws the footboard of a badly designed Ikea bed frame that has been pulling apart for years where the pegs and glue refused to hold weak joints together. Don't ask how many drill bits it took to predrill the hole and how many tries it took to screw up this simple project. Onward to the dining room trim, which isn't straight, nailed to the door frame, which isn't square, next to the ancient plaster wall, which isn't flush. After that it will be something else. With any luck, the tentative good news is that maybe it looks perhaps like we might have a working dishwasher, possibly in time for Thanksgiving, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. But don't bet the farm on it.

The conversation began as a benign inquiry like "How are you?" and developed into a species of negotiation qua information over some undefined exchange of time or money or property. Zelda is all too familiar with how my mind works (either a or b; if a, then c; if b, then d; in short, e) in a linear fashion, so she structures her communication thusly, and after a certain amount of pointed questioning, leaving no stone unturned and most contingencies covered, I have some information I can work with. In this case, there's no need to switch bed frames because all our out-of-town guests have a place to sleep.

The meal consisted of a simple split pea soup heavily laced with carrots, onions, turnips (or were they parsnips?), and a few cayenne peppers, mixed with brown rice for balance, and a slice of freshly baked sourdough bread. Highly adequate!

The workout begins as a simple stretch to relieve the overuse of something, often the lower back, and underuse of something else, probably the abs. Usually I'm taking a break from sitting at my desk, or moving stuff around in the yard, sweeping the leaves off the sidewalk, bringing in wood or giving the fire a poke, and my lumbar spine is talking to me in an insistent tone of voice that I know enough to heed. Finally I put on a hat and gloves and retreat to a sacred space outside to tune the instrument. Feet touching earth, head touching sky, it seems to achieve the desired effect, and now I'll sleep soundly.

Cards on the table

Let us be thankful for those family dramas that make bad TV morality tales unnecessary. Who needs the Disney channel when you've got the Golly household? As Thanksgiving, arguably my favorite holiday, approaches, a number of conflicting forces are converging on my pself-absorbed psyche (psic), and I'm going to need all the healing qi I can find, and maybe a little healing Bacardi and tonic.

There are the usual logistical preparations to be made for a houseful of beloved guests: places to sleep for Grandma and Grandpa Golly, Aunt Jo Jo, Jessi and Alex; getting the kitchen and dining room in working order to feed a small throng, which will also include Zelda and her friend Bernard. There is the small matter of a large turkey, choosing and executing the right stuffing recipe, the all-important garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, perhaps a batch of sourdough rolls, the indispensable green bean casserole, and, of course, pies, pies, and more pies.

That would be challenging enough. It's the other anxieties, which are just as real even though they exist primarily in my head, as three generations come together in the seasonal warmth and glow of well-learned Nordic dysfunctionality. And there's also the very old cat who likes to pee on the floor. But it's the humans misbehaving that worries me.

Although everyone, of course, will do their level best to be polite and say the right thing, there is something about family holidays that expose the issues you would (meaning I would) most like to forget, ignore, or deny. Somewhere between "I'm so happy to meet you" and "Have a safe trip back" will come an inevitable moment of truth when the things I least want to know about myself and my family - to myself and my family - will be revealed in the full light of Thanksgiving day.

My enlightened daughter Zelda tells me not to worry. Everything will be fine, and obsessing over the Transgressions of Christmas Past will only make things worse. Be part of the solution, not part of the problem, this 24-year-old voice of reason intones, and don't bring about your own worst-case scenario. Her mother agrees with her; it's a conspiracy.

[Later that week]

I always function better if I have an itinerary, even a loose one, and that false sense of security is coming together nicely. I ordered a turkey today from the Coop, and I'll pick it up Sunday, which will give it a couple of days to thaw. I'll do some baking on Monday. My friend Ja and his friend Rick are coming over Tuesday to hook up the new/used dishwasher Gven and I bought this week. When those tasks are done, I will be better able to relax and allow things to take their natural course (takes a deep breath), remembering that this will be a group effort, and there will be plenty of good food, and it's only a couple of days. We have plenty of firewood and enough chairs to go around, and we all (meaning I) might live through this.

Jessi is set to arrive from Providence, the nearest airport to the cranberry farm, Tuesday evening by himself; Alex is coming from New York on Wednesday, having accepted an invitation to a little family holiday that quickly grew into the Norwegian Inquisition. Jo Jo and the folks are due to arrive Wednesday afternoon from Tennessee. Zelda will be working late most days, which means there might be a very strange entourage visiting her store when she least expects it.

This should be interesting.