Snow: check.

I took pictures and meant to post about last December's 18-inch-deep blizzard, but never got around to it. Then, a couple of days ago, we got 33 inches in 24 hours or so. On Thursday night, the library looked like Grand Central Station (or, to use my mother's inimitable expression about the grocery store just before the December storm, like the Post Office on April 15th). Friday afternoon was when the storm was scheduled to begin; I got home around noon-ish, feeling like it was Christmas or something. On Saturday afternoon, I finally got around to taking a few pictures:



The above is our "deck;" it's more like a balcony, and often we keep plants on it. In the summer, for instance. For your information, there are no plants on it in this picture; the snow really is up to the railings like that. Here, you can see it better in this one (those plant silhouettes are from plants on the inside of the building):



I wasn't sure if you could get the idea just from the pictures of the back, so I took a couple of pictures out the front door:





This really doesn't give you a good idea at all of how deep it is on the cars, but a photographer with a nearly-full card can only do so much. Now that I've uploaded these, I can take some more. That snow bank at the back of the parking lot, below the fir tree, is approximately as high as an SUV. No, come to think of it, actually a little higher.

I really do love the snow. Can't tell you why, other than that when I was a little girl in Idaho, I loved walking through the snow that was as deep as my thighs (remember, I was short-- also, it snowed more then) and I still kind of miss it. I especially love how bright it is.

We did have a bit of drama when my sister got sick on Saturday night and couldn't really talk and Mom got super-worried and called an ambulance (because, we were clearly NOT going to be able to just drive her to the doctor's office); she is fine now, but quite tired, and no, we have no idea what was wrong. She was going to go to her regular doctor's office today, to get checked out, but-- surprise!-- they're closed. As is the Federal Government, which means that she doesn't have to take sick leave, being sick. Blessings abound! Also, since the ambulance came with a snow-plough in tow, we have one of the few ploughed streets in the area. Which is nice. And also means that several of the folks who live down the hill from us, whose road hasn't been ploughed, chose to park in our lot rather than risk going down hill again. That's why we had SUVs randomly sitting next to the snowbank, next to the fir tree, handily giving me a basis for comparison so that I can impress you all with how deep the snow REALLY is. (Oh, and to answer the question I'm sure you will ask: Ivy is hoping to go to the doctor's office tomorrow. She has announced that, snow day or not, she isn't going back to work until she's been checked out. Most sensible of her, I say.)

Also, tomorrow we are getting another light storm, originally predicted to be 6 inches-- now they're saying 8. Ivy (my sister) and I are kind of thinking that it's possible we'll get another snow day. No telling for sure.

Now I must needs get down and help Dad again. Because of the ambulance emergency, we do have one car dug out, and (more blessings!) Mom already left for a work trip and Dad is going out to Utah for a family thing tomorrow, which means (this is the blessing part) we don't really need that much in terms of car-age. Still, it would be nice if Ivy and I didn't have to coordinate to try to get us both to and from work and, for me, school, so Dad and I are trying to get Mom's car out. Dad decided to just gamble and try to drive it over the snow which hadn't been removed yet. He lost. We're now trying to dig out under the car. Also, Ivy suggested that I might walk to the grocery store for more peanut butter chips (being good Mormons-- meaning, in this instance, that we keep enough food stored to last several months-- that's the only thing we don't have on hand for a Perfectly Delightful Winter Storm Snow-in). Wish me luck.

I can call Repentance with a song

In a household where I regularly visit lives a cat named Repentance (acquired, so I am told, at a time when the owner had a dog whose name was Faith). I am, miraculously, not allergic to this cat, which is pretty nice-- I even tried petting him the other day, which went fairly non-sneezingly.

I decided to try something that used to work on my mom's cat, and also (though I wasn't doing it intentionally) worked on the cows that live near my grandma's house: I sang to it to call it. Sure enough, it came. The first song we tried (myself and the small child who was with me) worked pretty well-- "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"-- but the second one, one of my favorites from my childhood, worked even better. The version I learned as a child was adapted for the Primary Children's songbook from a longer piece (which I learned during voice lessons I took a couple of summers ago) by Felix Mendelssohn, from his oratorio Elijah. The words go like this: "If with all your hearts, ye truly seek me, Ye shall ever surely find me, Thus saith our God. Ye shall ever surely find me; Thus saith our God.

First, the heartwarming; also, amusing

(also, happy 100th post to Cornelia Philosophene as a blog)

I was cleaning out old posts, and found that I had mostly put this one together but hadn't actually put it up, and since I still love these articles, I decided to put them up. People I talk to on the phone all the time have probably heard all of them, but do check out the hippo-tortoise video; it's pretty cool.


Heartwarming:

A woman in Texas is teaching prisoners how to run their own businesses. While the national recidivism (going back to a life of crime) rate for ex-convicts is 50-70%, the rate for her program is 5%. It's true that they are very selective about who they let in, but as far as I'm concerned, that's a sign that they're doing something right.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7839957.stm

A man in India, the sixth son of his parents, got polio when he was six months old and still sometimes has to crawl up stairs. He was selected to be in a documentary about polio in India, called The Final Inch. The heartwarming part is that his older brothers would carry him to school, sometimes on their bicycles, sometimes on their backs, and he was eventually able to complete a college education. Wow! Here's the link for the whole thing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7898858.stm



As a transition, a story which is both hilarious and heartwarming (the video doesn't show enough, but still it's pretty cool): an orphaned baby hippo who makes friends with a giant tortoise. It's true that I have a fascination with odd adoptions; I have no explanation for this, other than to say that it does seem to have some gospel foundation.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7715931.stm



Next: Two nuclear submarines collide!!!???!! Excuse me? One was British, the other was French; they both were using sonar and both were using anti-sonar cloaking. Perhaps there's such a thing as being too invisible? On the bright side, no one was seriously hurt.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7892294.stm


Also, the "mystery of Ireland's worst driver" is solved. This story just goes to show how sometimes even a little bit of foreign-language skill can go a long way.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171.stm

A Short Story that was brought to Nana's mind by a video clip that Papa found on the Purina Website

(But which now, alas and alack, cannot be found again, or at least not by yours truly. But the story is still worth telling.)

Nana's mother-- who is my only living Grandmother, so I'll call her Grandmother here-- was born in 1926, and grew up during the depths of the depression. They ate a lot of inexpensive foods, including what her older brother could shoot with his '22*.

One day, Harry shot a squirrel, but he didn't realize that it was a mama squirrel and that there was a baby still in the nest. When he realized what he had done, he brought the baby squirrel home to take care of it. The only trouble was, they had a cat, and baby squirrels are enough like mice that they were sure that the cat would eat it. They tried and tried to keep the cat and the baby squirrel separated, but finally they gave up. It was just too hard.

Well, the cat had had kittens recently, and she was still nursing them; and she let that baby squirrel come up and nurse right along side them!

The video in question was of a bunch of different odd animal adoptions, including a mama cat nursing a couple of squirrels. If anyone finds it and wants to put it in the comments, please have at!

*Evidently, Grandmother still has that gun. But, if you know Grandmother's attitudes about getting rid of things, you will be 100% not surprised by this fact. I almost wonder if it's the one that my uncle used to shoot that rattlesnake that one night, but that's a different story...

Pumpkin Soup

First, the backstory for why this pumpkin--er, I mean, recipe-- had to be done today. I mean, why I had to blog about it today.

A few years ago, I moved in to a house that my Dad had just moved out of, and to my continually increasing gratitude, I inherited the garden he had planted. Besides discovering that I LOVED Juliet tomatoes (the kind he had planted), I also discovered the joys of fresh-baked home-grown pumpkin. That fall was when I came up with this recipe, which is darn quick and easy, and eminently edible.

Which is just the kind of recipe one needs when one's mother gets a 60-lb supposed-to-be-decorative (and it was, in its past life) pumpkin from freecycle with the intent of processing and, over the course of time, consuming said pumpkin.

"I'm going to get a very big pumpkin from freecycle," she says. "I'm bringing your dad along to help carry it."

I deeply regret to tell you that I didn't get a shot of this thing when it was whole. In fact, I was thinking of calling this posting "The Slaughter of the Great Pumpkin: A Photo Essay," but that seemed to be over-promising without the "before" pictures; I hope that the ones I have here will give at least some sense of the scale of the thing.

When I came downstairs this morning, these four pieces were all that was left of the once-great pumpkin; three similarly sized pieces had already been chopped even smaller and then distributed in such a way as to take advantage of every large cooking apparatus available in our teensy kitchen: two baking trays in the oven, both two-quart cooking pots simmering on the stove, and the one-and-a-half quart crockpot on "hi" on the counter. Needless to say, the house was suffused with the smell of baking-and-boiling hard winter squash. Which, I am very thankful to report, is a very happy smell for me.

You aren't getting tired of this yet, are you?

We had discussed whether or not Dad might have to use a chainsaw or, since he doesn't personally own one (a chain saw), perhaps he might use an axe (which he does own). In the end, a trusty kitchen knife worked out just fine. The pumpkin was surprisingly soft, which isn't necessarily a good sign-- Mom ended up cutting out bits which she felt were too dodgy for non-starving humans to eat.

This last shot is for the sheer pleasure of showing off my mother's beautiful, strong, capable hand(s-- not much of the second one showing). When I was growing up, she was always the one who opened stuck jars. She had been a pianist and a clarinetist before she married, and hadn't given either of them up yet when I was small; even now, the fact that she types so much in her job means that she hasn't lost much strength. I also love the fact that her palms are slightly plump, like Yo-Yo Ma's. Being a cellist-- specifically, going to many concerts and paying close attention to where the action was-- has made me a bit of a hand conniseur. Aren't hers beautiful?

And now for the recipe section:

Pumpkin Soup (makes approximately 1/2 gallon?)

Ingredients and instructions:

1 T or so fresh slivered ginger (if you hate the recipe because you used powdered, don't blame me)
1 T or so fresh chopped OR bottled garlic
1 T or so olive oil or other preferred cooking oil

Get the oil spitting hot in a skillet, then fry the garlic and ginger until the garlic is getting brown. Remove these from the skillet and put them in the big pot you're planning to cook the soup in.

1 c (more or less, depending on taste) sliced onion
2 T or so oil

Fry the onion until it is both soft and brown; when these have been achieved, put it in the soup pot, too.

5-6 cups cooked pumpkin
1 can coconut milk
1 1/2 t nutmeg, if desired (adjust according to taste)
2 t salt (yes, you can definitely add more-- I tend to cook low sodium)
2 T sugar, according to taste
garnish of cashews or peanut butter, if desired

Dump these in the pot; heat everything through. If you have an immersion blender, you can use it, but if I were you I definitely wouldn't put it, in batches, through a regular blender. Maybe use a potato masher if you have one handy. I just used a spatula tonight. The goal of blending/mashing/sorta-chopping-with-a-spatula is to get the pumpkin in to small enough chunks that the other ingredients/flavorings have a chance to do their jobs.

A Good Halloween Costume

My sister Klari called me this morning to tell me about her seven-year-old's Halloween costume. His first choice was to be a vampire cow. I told her that a couple of his cousins, the youngest two Weathercolour boys, wanted to be a vampire cat and a vampire wolf (I think) respectively. She wondered if maybe he had been talking to them (my alternative theories include possible exposure to the Bunnicula series or else that vampires in general are so popular in our wider culture that both households have picked up on it and then simply combined it with the general young-person love of being an animal for Halloween). I thought that it was a great idea, but Klari said that she didn't have the resources to pull together a vampire cow costume in the time available. (Mrs. Weathercolour happens to have fake blood at the ready, so it was relatively easy for her.)

Klari offered her son a choice of costumes which were within her power to create. He picked to be a stoplight, just like our mother (his Nana) had years before: black garbage bag with a hole in it for your head, three construction-paper circles, and some tape to hold the circles on will do it. He walked around all day feeling very pleased with his costume, and expressed his happiness by saying numerous times that he was dee-liiigh-ted.

A Little Translation

I've noticed how the translation stage in a child's life, unlike the unrolling stage (which can strain familial relationships) can bring closeness as families work through it together. The moment of translation is an ah-hah moment, the magical event of: someone really understands me. Even if it was only for a single word, if that word was very difficult to remember or pronounce, then the understanding becomes precious.

The first time I visited Germany, a little more than a year and a half ago, was the first time I had ever set foot in any country in which English was not the primary language. I was a little bit afraid to go in to town by myself-- not that I was afraid for my safety at all, but I was afraid that no one would understand my High School German, or that I would commit some sort of huge cultural faux paux, or something would happen that was so horrible or embarrassing that I hadn't even thought to worry about it. But I took a deep breath and went in to the old town on a tram, and I sketched a little at the gate to the old town, and then I wandered around window-shopping until dusk-- it was quite pretty. I hardly talked at all, and hardly needed to, and it was just right.

Right about the time I decided to head back to my friend's apartment, I heard a small child's voice behind me. "Licht," it said. ("Light," in German.) I glanced behind me.

"Ja, Licht," said the man who was holding the child. (Yes, [that's right,] light.)

In that moment, I was pulled in to the warmth of the interaction-- and, let's be honest, it was also that time of day when the light of the setting sun makes everything glow in that certain way and (this is strange but true) I somehow find it easier to believe in the Innate Goodness of Human Nature in such a light-- but suddenly I knew, rather than just believing, that even Germans who only spoke German were as completely human as I.