"Just the facts, ma'am"

This morning, I was reminded of that signature phrase by Dragnet's Joe Friday from the days of black and white television, which will ring a bell for anyone over fifty.

It was a beautiful, sunny, cold morning and a good chance to leave the treadmills indoors to get some fresh air for my morning walk/run. I went to the local township cross-country track to enjoy the birds, the scenery, and to say hello to the Yellow Labs who were walking their owners and reading their "nose paper". 
 

 
In the hours before noon, when there aren't a lot of people present,  I tend to walk the part of the track nearest the parking lot and the street beside it. I wait until over six or eight people are present before heading to the back of the track. Ten or fifteen minutes after I arrived, only three other people were present and a car entered, parked a space away from my car, and no one got out. As much as I enjoy that outdoor track, I am always on alert which takes away from the enjoyment a bit.

For the remainder of the hour that I was walking and running, I could see a man sitting in the car but he didn't get out to walk the track. I felt that was suspicious behavior. It reminded me of a story that was in our local news recently about restaurant parking lots where cars were burgularized while patrons were eating in the restaurants.

It is tempting to embellish this story at the track, but I am fairly certain that there was a perfectly good explanation for his ill-considered behavior. Maybe he works from his car like Mickey Haller, The Lincoln Lawyer (the movie opens this week) created by Michael Connelly, but perhaps he should consider that it sets off alarm bells for observers who see him just sitting in his car. In the morning hours, the track has housewives, retirees and a few dogs, so anyone up to no good would find vulnerable pickings. I like to give the benefit of the doubt, while being prepared for the worst. My students used to say, "Don't you trust me?" To which I liked to reply, "Of course, right after I remove this temptation." 

I always have my I.D., my cell phone, and my keys in my pockets when I go to the track. I lock my car, but I suspect some people don't. Some may leave things visible in cars while thinking they are close to home and are safe in their own community. Because I had my cell phone with me, I thought I would take a few pictures of the track and, oh gee, the parking lot just happened to be in the background. I made a production of the fact that I was taking a lot of pictures of the area from various angles. I never felt enough comfort to head to the back of the track out of sight of the parking lot today.

 

So I finished my walking and fearless fool that I am, I walked back to my car in a path that took me straight toward his car. I took a close look at his face, and memorized his license plate. I could describe the car perfectly, and I jumped into my car, locked it and wrote down the info. I left and he stayed, so if I ever need that information, I've got your number pal. I'm ready if Joe Friday needs me.

Mary's Friendship Gift

I don't often bake this decadent, guilty bite of self-indulgent pleasure. Hubby's birthday was the appropriate occasion and it is a favorite at my house. Supermarkets sell pound cakes, but this one is special.

Many years ago, as I was growing up, one of my earliest memories was about a friend of my mother. The lady was named Mary. She seemed to like little children and had four of her own. She was the Sunday school teacher for the youngest children and had a talent for bringing out the best in all of them. She had a gift for listening to children, looking into the eyes of a little child, and making the child think they were the most important person in the world. She was my favorite person in the town where I grew up. She would often visit my family and we would visit her and her family.

Mary was a very hard worker and a good role model. Her yard was filled with fantastic gardens of flowers that she tended and kept beautiful for all the warm months of the year. Memories of her gardens formed in me a love of gardens that continues today. She was a mother of the fifties and sixties: homemaker supreme, extraordinary cook, enthusiastic neighbor and friend. Her ability to bring out the best in other people was a rare gift. She made people want to be better people because no one wanted to disappoint Mary.

 

Every Christmas, my family would receive a pound cake from her as a gift to the family. It was a special occasion when Mary's friendship cake was delivered. When I moved away from the area, I asked her for her cake recipe and this is Mary's Friendship Gift. She has long since departed this plane but her memory is always fresh when I bake her pound cake.

POUND CAKE

From – Mary, My Childhood Idol

3 sticks softened butter, (or three-fourths of a pound, or a cup and a half)

1 lb. box confectioners powdered sugar

1 ½ tsp. lemon extract

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 ½ cups all-purpose flour (sifted)

Dash of salt

6 eggs

In large electric mixer bowl, cream together butter, sugar, salt, lemon, and vanilla.  Slowly add flour, alternating with the eggs.  Increase the speed of the mixer as needed when the batter gets thicker. Mix until fluffy.

Grease a tube cake pan with softened butter and dust with flour.

Gently transfer the cake batter to the tube pan and lightly, level the top.

Bake at 350˚ in a preheated oven at center of oven for 1 hr, 20 minutes. Add time as needed until cake is golden brown in appearance. Depending on the oven, it may take an hour and a half or an hour and 40 minutes. Cool about 10 minutes before turning upside down on a plate. Transfer to a cake dish so that cake is sliced in an upright setting. The top has a nice, golden brown crust. This cake makes a good gift item.

The Golden Hour

The Golden Hour

The Golden Hour,
or two or three,
comes before dawn
on the feet of insomnia.

I can't sleep.
There are things
that need to be worried about,
and only I can do the job justice.

Words niggle.
Phrases nag.
A pen begs for attention.
Beds are for the lazy.

A glowing computer screen,
A cup of coffee, a dark room.
The best thoughts of my day
flow from the muse of my subconscious.

I close my eyes
and a world never seen
flows from my fingertips
and into cyberspace at times.

In the hours before the day intrudes,
My thoughts seem so fresh and original.
By ten o'clock, the best of my golden hour,
lies discarded on the floor of reality.

Those who sleep and those who dream,
Don't have time to waste.
The Golden Hour before dawn can gift one
with immortality.

"Where's Mine?" -- The Great Equalizer Top Twenty

I'm a big fan of entertainment as a great way to survive the long, cold, snowy winters. I resort to certain television shows to provide a great escape and I prefer programs with a great plot,  like in the novels I prefer. The shows I tend to enjoy begin with a cast of characters with interesting traits and great comradery,  who encounter a problem and solve it within the hour program. The programs I like seem to have a common theme of "balance of power" among the various strata of society. Like the novels I enjoy, the programs I seek have great conflict, and interesting problems for the cast to solve that show we are all the same as humans regardless of our circumstances.  

Fairly Legal shows the ultimate balance of power with a main character whose job as a mediator/lawyer has a challenge to bring opposing parties to a resolution of their differences with a "win-win" solution to their conflict.

Harry's Law is a new program with Kathy Bates playing a rich patent lawyer who gives up boring comfort for exciting satisfaction. She helps the powerless in a bad neighborhood to use the law to better their circumstances and claim their equality. She shows great humor and balance in solutions to help those less fortunate. One unfortunate, elderly client asks the gritty, basic question that hovers over human conflict, "Where's mine?"

Royal Pains features a doctor who loses his city trauma center job because he chooses to save the life of a boy who comes from the "wrong side of the tracks" instead of a rich, important man. He finds a new life in the Hamptons caring for the medical issues of the rich and famous who deal with as much unhappiness and pain as the poorest person back in the city. His billionaire benefactor, Boris (dramatically played by Campbell Scott, son of George C. Scott), has a rare, incurable, genetic disease and struggles with his girlfriend over her pregnancy. She wants a family and he wants to end the disease forever and let it die with him. He has more money than God but lives with a disease the money can't control. It isn't a soap opera, but weekly, the cast of "Hank Med" encounters unhappiness and great pain among the people who live the enviable lives of the very rich. Those less financially endowed might envy those people, but alas, they suffer misfortunes just like the poorest among us. Money doesn't always buy good health.

Merlin has been a surprising hit in my house. It comes "from the land of make-believe" where the powerless resort to magic to equal the playing field while trying to keep it a secret from the powerful rulers who want to put all things "magic" in a lock box forever to maintain their own power. From the days of King Arthur, the scenery is beautiful and the plots make one wish magic was really possible to make our lives equal

Southland grabbed me from the first show because the haunting intro is worthy of a few awards. The sepia stills and the forlorn music draws me to see what the weekly disaster will be in south Los Angeles. It isn't just another cop show and there is pathos and drama equal to the headlines of the city's newspapers.
 
Here is a further list of highly interesting dramas of human conflict that never fail to deliver a good hour of entertainment in the quest to corral the guilty or improve the quality of life of the unfortunates, and offer a good dose of "my piece of the pie." 

Castle
White Collar
Hawaii Five-O
Mentalist
House
NCIS-LA
NCIS
Chicago Code
Justified
Blue Bloods
Detroit 1-8-7



Notable Mention-currently off season:

Human Target
The Closer
Burn Notice
Lie to Me

Making Memories

Considering that many people have grandchildren, and grandparents are more than a little proud of their own grandchildren, it seems superfluous to indulge in a little grandmotherly pride about my own two little sweethearts. I like to take pictures and videos of their antics when they visit Nana and Papa. I don't need a picture to remind me of the sight or feeling when my two-year-old grandson has to leave to go home after a day of playing with the grandparents. He is told fifteen minutes early that they have to leave soon, but when the time comes, he sits down on a rug near the front door, puts his little face into his hands and sobs. What a moment! The little tyke is so adorable. Naturally, he gets tons of hugs and promises that he can come to visit Nana and Papa again soon. He has no concept of time, but when he arrives at the front door to begin a visit, the happy grin on his face is worth its weight in gold. My grandchildren lead a charmed life and could ask no more of their environment than two doting parents and doting grandparents, but they love to visit grandma's house to play with toys different from the ones at their house. I kept many of their father's toys which they play with now. I don't know who treasures those visits more, the grandchildren, or the grandparents. It is such a special relationship between grandparents and their grandchildren.

I have fond memories of my grandson playing with a tiny wooden train given to his father by his grandma in 1976. It lives on top of the TV in the family room so when my grandson visits, he knows where to find it. The little cars are connected by hooks and one came apart from the others as he played with it. I told him to get Papa to fix it for him so they went to my office to get the computer repair tools and they fixed it with the pliers. They put the tools back into the zippered case, closed it, and returned it to the shelf where it stays. Later that day, another car released, so he took the train back to my office, took down the tool case and pretended to repair it. It was more than his tiny fingers could manage, but he knows when he gets frustrated with something that Papa can fix it. 

 

Both my grandson and my five-year-old granddaughter like to play "office." When they visit, both can be found in different rooms in front of computers with a telephone(old portables they play with), their pencils, writing pads, and their cups of water. They take notes, answer the phone and play with the computer. Then they sip the water, take a deep breath and give a big sigh as though they just engineered a difficult merger. My son sometimes works from home and has a toddler helper setting up shop near his desk with his own tools and the two-year-old "works" too. When they get him on the payroll too, the family is in business. My grandson will imitate anything he sees an adult doing.  My five-year-old granddaughter likes to play with my computer when she visits. She prefers to use the headphones when she plays games on nickjr.com. We sit with them at the computers and help them when they need it. They learn like little sponges and we talk about what they are doing on the sites. Letters, numbers and keyboarding come easily to toddlers with computers.

I sometimes wonder why I don't remember all of the adorable things that I'm sure my son did when he was a toddler but I was too busy to fully appreciate every time his three-year-old eyes would light up and he would throw out his arms while running to tackle my knees and exclaim "Mommie". I do remember those greetings of the days after preschool. Sometimes I pull out my photo albums to look at his youth and remember that he was just as adorable as his children. I wish I had spent more time writing about his moments to treasure. It is so easy to take the day-to-day activities with our children for granted and I am sure all of the bloggers who chronicle the early years of their children will thank themselves later when they have such detailed memories of their babies and toddlers.  

I can state without doubt that this is one of the best moments life has to offer. When my grandson has worn out from playing, I treasure these moments when I have the opportunity to sway and soothe him on my shoulder while he sleeps. I managed to stretch this session over 30 minutes while he snoozed. My arms were almost frozen in place, but I didn't  want to end it until he woke up.

 

Requiem

As our world changes faster and faster, one of the things I will miss will be inventive bookmarks.
I'm afraid that as e-readers become more and more predominate, the printed word will become the electronic word, which will make bookmarks obsolete along with antique record album covers, Kodachrome film, book covers, slide rules, typewriters, and other relics of the past.

I pause to wonder what the museums of the future will display as the great writings of the past  as they now display copies of the original Declaration of Independence, The Book of Kells, The Constitution, or The Magna Carta. Maybe all museums will be online and we won't be able to see the historical past except electronically. The Ancient Library of Alexandria has been replaced by a replica with exhibits showing reproductions of papyrus scrolls.

I'm greatly impressed by the mission of the Library of Congress to preserve the many antiquities of our country and the many generations of media that have come and gone. 

I've always loved interesting bookmarks with beautiful pictures and fabulous quotes. When I was a librarian, even the high school students enjoyed getting a free bookmark appropriate to their interests. The elementary school students competed for bookmarks as rewards for outstanding contributions in the library whether it was for reading a lot of books or sitting quietly during story time.

The possibilities for projects to produce original bookmarks is endless and promotion of bookstores, specific books, or other causes lend themselves very well to bookmark production. However, no one will need them if we stop printing paper books. I hope that is not too soon because there is something nostalgic about holding a print book in my hands. Availability of e-books for new releases isn't 100%, so we still have time before everything can be downloaded to an electronic reader. Even so, for a small fee, one can join huge metropolitan public libraries online and download mass numbers of e-books to a Nook for free. It is getting very tempting.

As I borrow more and more books from public libraries, I like to use bookmarks to avoid creasing pages and damaging the book for future patrons, nor would I write corrections in margins of a public property book. With no more space to store more books in my home, I share books with others at the public library and remind myself not to fold pages, eat over books or drop drinks on them. I don't like to damage my own books and I don't like to deface public property library books. I try to be considerate of other patrons. I haven't yet joined the legions of e-reader fans, but it's on the horizon for all of us. I'm waiting a little longer to jump on that speeding train.