Hey Queenie! Have Fun!

Dear Queenie,

Have fun in fokkin' Italy...and don't let any wandering gnomes pinch your bottom!

Hugs and kisses from Nigel

PS For more "Gnome in Venice" shots, click here.

The Company of Friends

TRENDSETTERS: Cupcakes are everywhere! Even at Crate&Barrel these days...

I'm a very blessed woman: surrounded by a family who loves me and dear friends all around (whether here or there or everywhere). This birthday I was especially spoiled and my pile of gifts looked like something I might have found under the Christmas tree as a child (well, except there was no dollhouse or Easy Bake Oven in there...but close!). PHOTO: Peaches could be a professional shopper: she always finds just the right thing, like this tea towel with a reproduction print of a WWII Victory Garden era poster.

It's not that I need a gift (or that I need anything, really) but it is always so nice to be remembered and even better when someone gives you just the right thing. Like Edie sent me a cookbook and that's rather like sending a cake to a baker, I suppose! I mean, I must have 8,000 cookbooks (ok, maybe 1,000, give or take). Most are in boxes, some used more than others, some so old that I don't dare to read them. But this cookbook is from Weight Watchers® and it arrived during a several day stretch when I was scratching my head, trying not to plan heavy "comfort" meals in this fall weather and needing a good infusion of healthy, easy meals to plan for those harder holiday and winter months. So this cookbook is perfect and will be well-used, especially as my "no fat" "low fat" and "healthy" cookbooks are all in a box somewhere.


Bertha sent the chicken pitcher along (from Queenie's parents' house) and the adorable little salt and pepper. The book is a Penguin reprint that I look forward to tucking in with soon. And headaches? Around here?

Meanwhile, Peaches and Bertha were up to their usual tricks and kindnesses, even though they knew that Nigel was somewhere in the woods hiding down here from Della. It just shows you how nice friends can be, even in the midst of turmoil and deception. America's Kitchens is worth its own blog entry sometime soon. Just amazing images and text and I used to work for the organization, Historic New England, that published it (and now I know why they weren't as forthcoming with archival image use when I was working on The Pantry!). This is a great addition to my architectural and domestic history library. [FYI: The traveling exhibit for the book is presently in Concord, New Hampshire at the New Hampshire Historical Society until January 17, 2010 (it will be back in New England in 2011).]

So a big virtual shout out "THANK YOU" to my dear Cupcake home gals...I miss you and love you!

Catherine


Queenie, Della and Peaches listen patiently to a Tupperware schpeel!


This Tupperware® photo is a fold-out at the back of America's Kitchens and I can identify about ten things on that table that my mother bought in the early 1970s (that's also worthy of its own blog entry)! So, it just begs the question, too: are book groups the new Tupperware® parties?

Queenie Takes to her Bed

It's a world of cold and flu out there, but thanks to the homeopathic remedy, Oscillococcinum (Oh-sill″-oh-cox-see′-num), and a laptop computer, I am really just using this as an excuse to catch up on two favorite activities: reading and writing. In bed.

Usually I know when I'm going to come down with something. If my sister, Bridget, had been around the other night she would have asked me if I weren't overdoing it, just a bit. And I've been on a huge exercise jag. That's really not like me; I should have known just from that that I was getting sick.

Bridget, who adores pointing out our genetic inadequacies, insists that I am even more manic than our brother, Mark, an ardent climber who is on a first-name basis with many a Sherpa but can't find his way around a grocery store. And never mind keeping in touch with his bevy of sisters. Mark has been married three times which I think qualifies him for the first prize, but a brother gets all the slack in our family of mostly women.

Truth be told, there is an exhilaration to illness that I sometimes really enjoy, though only in small doses (like a day or two before boredom sets in). Sleeping and waking, odd dreams and then the feverishness -- I like that creative energy. Plus there's all that time to leaf through the stacks of books beside the bed and take notes, pen a letter, write a blog and take another nap. Heavenly!

I've been reading through travel essays thoughtfully provided by Peaches in the form of Houghton-Mifflin's 2007 edition of The Best American Travel Writing edited by Susan Orlean, whose work I really enjoy. In her introduction she writes about her travels to Bhutan in a wonderfully self-revealing way that just makes us love her all the more. Oy, the mistakes we've made in love and in travel. And Oh, the fun of reading about some one else's.

I think I picked up this anthology because I remembered Ian Frazier's contribution, A Kielbasa Too Far, in which he writes about illness while traveling. In my fantasy mind, powered by a slight fever (and perhaps too much caffeine mixed with the homeopathics), I like to pretend I'm actually off in some exotic location. The truth is, of course, I don't really want to be in Russia while not feeling well. I am just as glad to be at home in New Hampshire, being nursed by a small and loving dog who knows just how to lie down on my feet to warm them.

Jonathan Stern's piece from the New Yorker, A Lonely Planet Guide to My Apartment is hilarious. There is also a very poignant piece included in this collection about Steve Vaught, Fat Man Walking, I can't believe I didn't know about this man's journey to walk across America! This I attribute to not having a television and just living in a world of too much information in general. Steve refers to himself at one point as Forrest Lump. He was depressed and miserable in his life, and yet beholden to the many people who felt inspired by his quest. I can't help but think he and Doris Haddock, Granny D, should get together to discuss their walks across America.

The Cupcakes are familiar with Elizabeth Gilbert, though I think mostly we talked about that off-line (I can hear Bridget now, "Maggie, keep your mouth shut."). Gilbert's essay about eating (and drinking, a lot) while walking the Grande Randonnée in the South of France was a lot of fun to read. I also enjoyed her bio, which is much, much longer than most of the others.

Okay, I'm a writer and I am sick, so I counted. 177 words to, say, 18 for Ian Parker, who cuts right to the chase. He is a staff writer for The New Yorker. He's British. Enough said! My favorite line in Elizabeth Gilbert's bio: "Much of her writing has been optioned by Hollywood." Is that supposed to be a good thing? Julia Roberts will star in Eat, Pray, Love. I'm probably just sore because Hollywood did such a lousy job with Susan Orlean's book, The Orchid Thief. Maybe I live on my own planet. Maybe it's the Lonely Planet for a good reason!

Ann Patchett's bio, by the way, is a very well-balanced 33 words. It was reading her piece between naps this morning that made me realize I should write a quick Cupcake blog. She's contributed quite a bit to Gourmet Magazine where this essay, Do Not Disturb, appeared. It's all about hiding out at the Hotel Bel-Air in LA to try to get some work done. How Cupcake is that?

"But sometimes it is the wonderful life, the life of abundant friends and extended family and true love that makes you want to run screaming for the hills." -- Ann Patchett

It's the Marriott Syndrome. Really it occurs to me that I can get the kind of time and space I need to read and write without going to the trouble of getting sick. It's as simple as checking into a Marriott or some other hotel from time to time, with a big stack of books and some legal pads. Maybe a splurge on some fancy Post-Its just to live it up a bit. Could I actually be missing hotel life after all those years of business travel?

Here at home there are no worries about a team of maids trying to clean my room. Okay, I want that; bring them on. I do have an adoring dog at my feet, but I could use a vacation from the barking and letting out and in again. And while I know room service is usually over-rated, it's still fun. I wouldn't want to be sick while traveling, but a checking in for a well-visit may well be in my future. Lest I go screaming for the hills.

The Help

Cupcakes, I am looking forward to reading The Help and it is likely a long overdue novel in the sociological sense of things. I remember the tail end of this era well from growing up in the affluent Akron suburbs and look forward to reading how the author, Kathryn Stockett, has shaped the era from her own experiences in the 1960s and 70s, while raised in a more turbulent South. The novel has caught my interest for the past few months and it wasn't until I got it as a recent birthday present from my friend Diane, that it really popped as a Cupcake possibility.

For their first few years and for much of their childhood, also in Akron, my father and aunt were raised by an African-American woman, a grandchild of freed slaves, named Katie Jones. [As with most of us from that era, in my childhood I heard "blacks," "the blacks," and "Negroes" to describe African-Americans.] I have many wonderful memories of Katie and I will share them--and some photographs--before the month is through. I always had an odd, uncomfortable sense of boundaries--not from Katie herself or our relationship with her, but from the greater sense of social order that was around me. It will be interesting to see how Stockett has interpreted these nuances in her life, as well as the "behind the scenes" domestic aspects of Southern households--something that has always held my interest of any home in any era.

I have endless impressions and memories of my early childhood in the 1960s and early 1970s. A regular highlight was visiting my grandparents' "big house" where they entertained and had much help of their own--both live-in and for special events--while my mother managed her own small, post-war home without help (and only the occasional babysitter) on the other side of town. It was an unusual dichotomy and kept me both grounded and yet feeling rather grand at times, in that childlike way. But thankfully, I was always able to keep things in perspective and, while my upbringing somewhat flirted on the fringes of racism, I did not succumb to those sentiments in any way. I attribute that to my Grandpa and mother, most of all, and to being largely innocent and protected from the larger societal events in our nation.

Already in the first chapter of The Help, I applauded when one of the Junior League ladies came in and chatted in the kitchen with Aibileen, much to her employer's distress. [My mother used to do the same thing in my grandparents' kitchen, much to her mother-in-law's upset--she also refused to join the Junior League. Just imagine!] At first the dialect and cadence were hard to get into and I was concerned I might find it cloying after a while--but so far so good. I imagine it is very hard to write from a black woman's voice and perspective, especially in natural dialect, when you are a white woman writer. But then again, to deny that would be to deny the essence and possibility of the fictional voice.

Cupcakes, I am so happy to be on track again with our wonderful little trio. The Help is also about a trio of friends and it will be interesting to see how their lives unfold.

NOTE: Photographs, except for book jacket cover, are from this website which features an article entitled, The Marginalizing Intersection of Race, Gender and Class: Black Women and Domestic Space. (And the kitchen in the second photograph looks so much like my grandparents' 1923 kitchen in Akron, Ohio.)

Book Choices Looming

It's been a busy fall for the Cupcakes, individually and as a group, and we're still finding our way in the virtual mode as we bridge physical distances. Mostly this means more bang for our buck when we do get together, with a lot of blogging and e-mails in-between.

We like to keep it casual, but we have decided that we do want to read the same books in the same months and keep going with the Chronicles whenever and however we may fancy (and we do fancy the fancy, generally speaking).

But how to choose with so many books, so little time -- and each of us with piles and piles of books on the bedside table, beside the couch, at the kitchen counter? It's a book, book world. We all have multiple reading going at the same time (Short Attention Span Theater), and there are new distractions every day.

And so it's assignment time! For the month of November, Catherine has chosen a book by Kathryn Stockett, The Help. And we have our December book already: Bright-Sided, by Barbara Ehrenreich. I'm really looking forward to reading both of these books with the Cupcakes as we go through the holiday season.

Meanwhile, can we all do a bedside documentary or a book list? I love the ones we've put up in the past and it's fun to track those over time. Mine is eclectic but very Italy-focused right now as we get ready for our trip. I'll put something up soon.

And let's not forget Annie Lamott. Maybe in addition to Forster's "Only Connect," we can have "Bird by Bird" as a Talking Cupcake motto. We're all getting there, bird by bird. And what's the point? Well, only to connect.

NaNoWriMo

Cupcakes, is this what we've been waiting for? I just heard about this from a writer "Friend" on Facebook and who knew? In fact, I just had yet another "novel idea" while driving in the car today. [And 1,666 words a day is a no-brainer for this blathery Betty. Their goal is length, not substance, so even the pressure to write well is off.]

Check the details out here at the National Novel Writing Month website.

And hey, maybe I could even read 1,666 words a day, too, in a sustained progressive form? Speaking of which, any ideas of what's on tap for Cupcakes in November or who's tapping? Should we regroup in January or just bounce out Della on her arse?

Lots of love and HAPPY HALLOWEEN,

Yours,

Catherine

Put a Light in the Window, Ida!

I'll be there after dark. Maker's Mark will do just fine. Peaches says bless your little pea pickin' heart and she'll be sending you a big ol' stollen in December. Whooee! I can't wait to get home!