This Week

New pot of succulents joins my cactus.
I’m sharing this and other things in my life with the Sunday Salon at Readerbuzz.

Watched the Olympics Opening Ceremony

Olympics in our living room…yes to Paris in July! A favorite moment: when they tolled the bells of Notre Dame for the first time since the catastrophic fire.

The bridge was decorated with new murals to celebrate the Olympics.
80 boats carried the Olympic Athletes for a 4-mile trip down the Seine River to the Eiffel Tower
for the final march with the flags of all nations. Best ever opening ceremony!

The torch is lit.

We watched the entire 4-hour ceremony.

Family Visit July 18-23

Miriam finds interesting critters on her run. Time for Eileen’s critters.

We made our traditional pilgrimage to DQ for blizzards.

A fabulous seafood dinner.

One last breakfast before their 9-hour drive.

Time to say goodbye!

What I’m Reading This Week

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store is a satisfying book. It’s funny and serious at the same time. The main characters are wonderful and memorable (but I'm not going to describe them). Just one example: this description of a very minor character:

“Bernice was also the proud mother of, at last count, eight children, all of whom looked more or less like Bernice in varying degrees of skin color from light-skinned to dark. That was not a bad thing. Nor was it a good thing. Everybody knew Bernice had the kind of face that would make a man wire home for money. The question was, who was the man and where was the money?” (p. 94)

In this novel, good people mostly end up with good things happening to them. Quite a few bad people end up not so happy, maybe even satisfyingly dead. Good individuals from several mistreated or unlucky groups are often rewarded — Jews, blacks, Italians, other immigrants, disabled people, poor people, people who can’t read, people with a secret past, and more. But nobody is a stereotype. 

What saves this book from being a cloying mess of well-meaning fake optimism? It’s hard to say how the author manages, but somehow the evil doers get their just deserts, the survivors don’t gloat, and there is exactly enough revenge on the bad ones and rewards for the good ones.

Vivid writing also is absolutely a key to why this is such a lovable book. Like this description of the sounds heard in a hideously cruel home for mentally and physically disabled people: “moanings, groanings, coos, burps, sighs, growls, yells, chirps, yelps, chortles, cacklings, farts, chatterings, and howlings …” (p. 266)

The NPR reviewer described the writing thus: “McBride's roving narrator is, by turns, astute, withering, giddy, damning and jubilant. He has a fine appreciation for the human comedy: in particular, the surreal situation of African Americans and immigrant Jews in a early-to-mid-20th-century America that celebrates itself as a color-blind, welcoming Land of Liberty.” (source)

The New York Times reviewer describes The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store as:  “a murder mystery locked inside a Great American Novel.” (source) From The Atlantic: “In McBride’s work, digging deep into the tangled roots of complicated communities is the antidote to misplaced blame and false history.” (source)

I enjoyed reading this Great American Novel. Totally. I’m grateful to my sister who gave it to me as a gift.

Blog post © 2024 mae sander

So far this weekend…

 Family tradition: we went to Dairy Queen.

Alice and Evelyn came for a slightly long weekend.

A few more activities in a quiet visit.

The artisan market was fun, but the art work wasn’t great.

Alice cooked dinner Saturday night.

Mediterranean meatballs, pesto, zucchini, and other great dishes.

We bought some local rhubarb and Evelyn made a pie.
The little guy is Be-Bop a Re-Bob.

Two Evenings, Two Classic Movies

Breakfast time and new flowers

Tea and coffee to share with Elizabeth's blog party.

New geraniums from the garden center where we shopped yesterday.

Herb garden. We have been cooking with all of these.

Another new pot of flowers in the front garden.

UPDATE: A walk along the river

Sharing this mural on the public restroom…

For Sami’s Monday Murals.

Blog post © 2023 mae sander

Is it Spring Yet? We are on Daylight Savings Time.

The local Dairy Queen has opened for the season. Snow? Yes. Near-freezing temps? Yes. Shorts? Yes.

First DQ of Spring! A small one. I'd be afraid to order a Blizzard.

Is the Detroit River thawed out? No.

Is ice fishing season over? No, this photo was taken Friday at Erie Metropark.

In nearby Ypsilanti: a maybe-springlike mural near City Hall.

Fourth of July Foods of the Day

Noon: Watermelon after the spontaneous Burns Park neighborhood parade.

2:00 PM: Dairy Queen with Red White and Blue Sprinkles; Girl Scout Tagalong blizzard
(after lunch -- hot dogs, no photos)

3:00: Dinner prelude: Jason's Imam Bayildi -- Turkish stuffed eggplants
(followed by a canoe and rowboat interlude on the lake)

5:30: Nat making ribs: the piece d'resistance!

Dinner sides: Kaywin's fruit salad; Nat's cornbread with fennel, raisins, and cranberries; Carol's vegetable salad with goat cheese, hearts of palm, and more; Mae's Jello and potato salad

7:00: S'mores for dessert

Spring is Here

The Dexter Dairy Queen is now dwarfed by a big brick building next door, and the whole town is redefining its identity as new housing tracts fill in so much former farmland. The funny plastic shingles of the DQ roof and the little windows where you can order your gourmet treats are unchanging.
On our way from a walk in the park, we stopped here for a mint Oreo Blizzard and a French Silk Blizzard. We ate them at the picnic table outside. The sun shone on us and on our Blizzards.

The choice was challenging: we could have had a donut from the Dexter Bakery.

Bad Side Good Side

1. Bad side of globalized fast food: everyone knows the burgers and fries are high in all fat, especially in bad fat; low in fiber and vitamins; and made in a way that's bad for the global environment. Everyone knows the bad side of soft drinks. Good side of American hamburger chains: clean public rest rooms. Don't forget the original good side: when you go to a chain fast-food place anywhere in the world, you know exactly what you will get.
   
   
2. Bad side of grocery stores: over-processed foods are so much cheaper than the good choices. Good side: cheap food means fewer people are starving. In fact, starvation is such a distant memory it's no longer relevant in discussions of most of US culture. Bad side of this: hard to empathize with African famines or to keep a focus on whether we can help. Yet another side of cheap groceries: unions for a while ensured a decent wage for grocery store workers, but this is in jeopardy.
   
   
3. Bad side of supermarket shopping: we hear so much about the over-processed that we often forget the good choices one can make: fresh fruit, vegetables, dairy products, and meat -- some even "natural" or organic. Also reasonably healthy bread and whole oats; even some packaged cereal and so on. Perfectly reasonable consumers get swamped, discouraged and don't see this good side.
   For much more from the other side of the grocery store, here's an unexpected blog: that of the owner of my favorite supermarket, Hiller's in Ann Arbor: Jim Hiller's blog
   
   
4. Bad side of Italian food: pizza has A LOT of calories, too much carbo, fat, too few vegetables even with that good tomato sauce. Similar problems with pasta, ante-pasto... Olive Garden: all you can eat of greasy bread and oily salad? Did you think you were getting the advantages of the old-line Mediterranean diet? If you want them, you have to cook yourself, and if you do, that's the good side.
   
   
5. Bad side of Dairy Queen, Ben & Jerry's, Baskin-Robbins, etc.: no nutritional value.
   Good side: on a summer night, you can sit at a picnic table at our local DQ facing the firehouse and slowly spoon up your Blizzard or lick the softly melting surface of your ice cream cone and you might feel better about world politics or your job or the housing bubble. And the people at the next table, and the people pulling their cars into the lot, and the ones at the table in front might all feel better too.
   
   
6. Bad side of Chinese food: lots of fried things. Think of sweet-and-sour pork -- salt, sugar, MSG. And sometimes even the potentially healthy stir fried foods are really fat-laden. Dim sum: nice high calorie snack. Good side of Chinese food: if you make it yourself, and eat the high-nutritional parts with rice and lots of vegetables, it can be healthy.
   
   
7. Bad side of TV chefs: many set unrealistic expectations or they make food seem like a game. Celebrity for its own sake: what could be good about that? Just make viewers feel bad. But maybe they influence some people to be more interested in the basics of cooking.Who knows?
   
   
8. Bad side of Japanese food: tempura is deep fried; high salt content in many other dishes. Good side: sushi teaches us to eat fish. Bad side of fish: the environmental challenge of overfishing everywhere.
   
   
9. Fine dining fortunately doesn't affect most people, except when they occasionally read an article about it or hear something on TV. I expect the silly fad for making flavors into some kind of industrial-edible foam will trickle down to neighborhood restaurants soon. I've lost my heros like Julia Child (perfectly captured in her posthumously published My Life in France) and like the old time chefs who spent their lives in the kitchen of one restaurant creating excellent dinners, never got rich or very famous.
   
   
10. Bad side of organic food: small-scale demonstrations show that it's good for consumers, for the environment, for farmers. Attempts to produce organic food on a larger scale have gone badly for consumers (labling standards corrupted), for the environment (the organic cows on a large-scale farm don't get a better life), for farm workers (large scale agriculture can exploit them whatever). This is well-documented. For example: The Omnivore's Dilemma and recent food issue in The Nation.