Archive for March, 2009

The peach trees, whether ornamental or fruit-bearing, are in bloom now in Fort Worth, and so are the bluebonnets I mentioned last Friday. The peach trees are easy to see, they’re bright purple. The bluebonnets you actually could miss, they’re the small blue flowers you’ll see by the edge of the freeway.

Picking the bluebonnets, by the way, is not actually against the law, acording to Texas Department of Public Safety. However, I would discourage picking them from high-visiblility places like freeway verges, where it’s also moderately dangerous to get out of the car. The wildflowers, after all, are there for everyone to enjoy. Alongside the bluebonnets you will also see red and yellow flowers called Indian Blankets. These are the state flower of Oklahoma and are not so short of season as the bluebonnets.

I woke up this morning at about 4:40, because the baby dogs were crying. They were in their crate, and I think they were frightened by the thunder and lightning, because they were making yips and cries and I decided to take them outside. But that didn’t help. It was cold and no dog wants to ‘go’ when it’s wet and stormy, especially a basenji. So I took them back inside, my daughter showed up and we each held a wriggling, worried dog for a while. Finally we put them back in the crate and covered it with a sheet. The rain was coming down strongly on the tin-roofed back porch.

I decided to go back to sleep, though I was worried that if I did I wouldn’t be able to get up again in time for work. The rain washing down seemed to suggest I choose inactivity over getting up. I felt too tired to stay awake and it was too early for coffee, so I bundled up in the chaise lounge by the window and listened to the rain, closed my eyes, and rested. The rain coming down formed a steady thrum on the roof, cars driving by in the street splashed water, and everything was dark. I fell back asleep.

At 6:35 I got up again, woke the kids and went to make lunches. I got that done okay, but then when I went back to the bedrooms to check on them, not one kid was up.  I rewoke them, but only the oldest seemed at all ready to rise. And even he had an excuse. In his dreamlike state, he told me “Alan called me,” he told me. “He said school is cancelled because of the rain.”

I shook him again. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll get up,” he told me. “I guess it was only a dream.”

We made the switch to the local store, “City Market.” We were worried before we did this. We didn’t really do it to be patriotic, or buy local, though perhaps our sympathy for the local market and it’s far more traditional market employees tipped the balance in its favor. The real reason we stopped shopping at WalMart was we couldn’t stand it anymore.

What couldn’t I stand? Well:

1. Overcrowding. Huge carts I could hardly push, maneuvering among people shopping in groups. At our local market, most people shop alone. This is not some kind of party, people, we’re getting groceries.

2. Looking over the WalMart produce aisle, I just wasn’t sure. Had this stuff been properly checked for poisons from China or growing too near a nuclear waste dump? How would I know? This carrot with a double root end, it was a bad sign. Would WalMart care if this food were contaminated? Only to the degree that the resultant accidental death lawsuit would be costly and even worse, bad for public relations.

3. A feeling of futility in shopping for the same products, at the same prices, week after week, year after year, Cheerios, Dr. Pepper, Hormel pepperoni, Del Monte canned fruit, Kraft macaroni and cheese, where did it all come from? How many millions of boxes and cans of this stuff did our nation consume? Were there a million Walmarts? Probably not yet, but perhaps someday. Did I, as an individual human, make an iota of difference in the cosmic scheme of WalMart? I didn’t think so.

4. The checkers. Look, I don’t want to be mean, but much of the time you save by only shopping one store is used up waiting in line. The checkers are so slow. It’s not their fault; I’m firmly convinced that if any of them ever get fast, they leave and go to Albertson’s or Krogers and join the union.

You go to City Market, you get: 1) checkers who will rush through your order and yet simultaneously talk to you; 2) produce that might be local and appears to have been inspected by a produce guy; 3) local brands; 4) aisles you can navigate; 5) a “thank you” that’s heartfelt when you’re done.

We don’t really even spend any more money these days, in fact, somewhat mystically, it appears were are spending less. I have no explanation for this, but does it matter? What more could you ask? Each of us humans will only be here on this planet for a little while, so let’s not be anonymous and grasping for bargains, let’s enjoy life. Forget WalMart and shop your local market, people.

I love the botanic garden, at any time of year when the weather is fair enough to be outside, and if it’s too cold or too hot you can always go to the conservatory. When we finished eating our sandwiches, my husband and sons were going to try to play catch with a baseball, and I went to go turtle watching. I wrote the following in my journal:

Turtles on a small island in the Fort Worth Botanic Garden

“I am sitting out in the botanic garden, enjoying the spring weather with a lot of other Fort Worthians. The focus we have is the turles of the pond at the bottom of the rose garden. Red Eared Sliders. they hiberate underwater in the winter but now, in spring, they rise to the surface to bask and fraternize. Everyone, turtles and garden visitors, seems is a good mood. Voices exclaim with delight at seeing a turtle dive into the water or at counting the 16 turtles sitting on a small island in the center of the pond, with three turtles swimming around, looking for an opening so they can climb up to sun themselves.

Now husband and sons come up. They’ve been busted, they say, by park security for throwing a baseball, which is not allowed. They watch the turtles for a while too, then we all go up to the fountain at the bottom of the rose garden terrace. I give the kids — and us adults — two pennies each to throw in for two wishes. I sigh. The year ahead looks promising, at this juncture, but that could be just a trick of the light, which today seems white and gold like the light of Italy, which sits well on the Italianate rose terrace, as we throw in the pennies and hope.” Thank you City of Fort Worth, for maintaining this beautiful garden, which I love.

Today dawned clear and warm, a perfect Sunday in spring. It was now daylight savings time, and somehow no one could get out of bed for church. Around noon we decided we’d better use this beautiful day for something and so we decided to go with the children to the botanic garden. A stop at Central Market to pick up a picnic lunch seemed indicated. Such a luxury, I thought to myself, but somehow I knew that now was not the time to be close-fisted with money.

Walking into Central Market, you look around and view a store where no expense has been spared on the part of management, and no expense will be spared to the customers either. People who shop here as a rule for groceries are hereby categorized as “rich” by this blog. However, many of us who shop at simpler markets for the week’s food stop by Central Market when we feel like cutting loose. And this was the day.

I walked past huge potted plants into the main store. Shelves were piled with a cornucopia of aromatic and imported and glass-packed products. As always in this store, I was struck by a sense of wonder at the perfect cut flowers, ornately packaged soaps, balloons and ribbons and kleenex purse packs decorated with scans of famous paintings by the Impressionists, and general-gift-shop-front-of-the-store collection of Stuff Rich People Like.  To the left was the imported dry goods section, where you could get flour imported from Italy and organic barley. Straight ahead was the bulk food which includes the coffee section, about 90 different varieties to chose from from every coffee growing region of the globe. The bakery, in the back, we didn’t even look at; it was too painful to see the gorgeous bread and the perfect white cakes and not eat them all.

We went straight to the deli. Here you can get chicken a diabola and albacore tuna by the pound and garlic shrimp for only $25 a lb. displayed right next to a carved watermelon. My husband chose a simple mozzarella, tomato and basil sandwich, a kind of simplified and expanded bruchetta; my son got a clever little clear lunch box with a ham and cheese sandwich, alongside an apple and small package of raisings (2.99, the bargain of the day). I wanted a muffuletta sandwich, so I had to stand in line at the sandwich counter. When it came my turn, the guy grabbed a whole bollino and cut it in half, put some olive tapenade on then added ham, sopressatta, mortadella, provolone and I think some other cold cuts too. The sandwich was big enough to choke a cow. It looked to be about a pound of meat all together, only 6.99.

We were headed for the checkout. But we were stopped at the door by the gleaming sight of a huge counter with the gelatos inside.

Oh no, we said to eachother, holding our gourmet sandwiches and kettle chips and olives tightly, how could we have dessert, a gelato, before lunch? But as the song says, “we’re only here for a little while” and days like this perfect spring afternoon are rare. We had to spring for a gelato each, on the supposition, later confirmed, that we’d be able to eat lunch even after eating all that ice cream. I had dulce di leche, a real Italian flavor, and my husband had limone and some blood orange sherbert, also authentic. My son had blueberry. We gave the evil eye to the Bubble Gum flavor, which Dean says is never seen in Italy, and I picked up a cup of coffee on the way to the checkout.

As we walked out the door of central market, to the picnic garden with the fountain in the center, I thought: this is the life. This is the moment that I’m trying to remember when everything is so bad I can’t stand it. This is the day I’ve been waiting for.

Muffuletta from Central Market

The vegetables and shrimp in their pan, ready to be added to the pasta.

“Primavera” means “first green,” or “spring” in Italian, something I learned from my Italian-American husband a few years back. This dish is one I taught myself to cook by watching him and reading recipe books, but since that time I’ve forgotten where in our cook’s library it is written down. Pasta Prima Vera takes about an hour if you work consistently, including the time used to cut up vegetables. I have a tendency to cut up all the vegetables a few hours ahead, though, because I get tired at the end of the day. If you do that, the dish is almost effortless to cook at dinner time.

Start by filling a dutch oven 3/4 full of water, adding 1 tsp salt , and putting it on the stove to boil. Plan to use 1 to 1.5 lbs pasta for this recipe. We often use mini-shells or farfalle (bowties) but it’s really up to you. You could even use spaghetti, but it would make eating the dish difficult to eat since as you rolled the spaghetti around your fork the vegetables would tend to fall off.

Start to cut up the vegetables. First, cut up 1 to 1/2 bell peppers, any color. You may add to this a couple of celery stalks and a carrot, chopped well, if you like. Heat a generous amount of olive oil (1/4 cup would not be too much) and saute’ the vegetables in a large skillet.

Chop up one large or 2 medium onions and three or more cloves garlic. Add to the skillet after 2 or three minutes of cooking the peppers. I have to tell you the truth, I cut up all the vegetables before frying anything, then leave them in small bowls, ordering them from longest to shortest cooking.

After you’ve cooked those for two to three minutes, you can add a chopped up zuchini and a chopped up yellow crook neck squash. Cook that for a few more minutes, when they begin to look done, you can add, if you like, a couple of chopped up tomatoes and some sliced mushrooms. Cook just enough to soften a bit and remove from heat.

You can add vegetables if you like, as long as you know about how long they cook and when to add them in the cooking sequence. You can remove vegetables as well; the critical ones would be onions and garlic, though personally I would probably not try this recipe without at least those two plus peppers and squash.

The skillet should be pretty full of vegetables at this point. Add 1 lb. shrimp, fork size, pre-cooked and stir together with vegetables. Now put the pasta in the boiling water. When it’s cooked, drain and add the vegetables and shrimp. Pour another generous helping of olive oil, salt and pepper over the entire dish and stir in. Serve with grated dry Italian cheese such as Romano, Parmasano or Grana Padano. Enjoy!

Texas bluebonnets

It’s warmer now and there are real, current signs of spring’s arrival:

1. People have stopped carrying coats with them “just in case” this week.

2. Our chickens laid their first egg of the new year.

3. The ornamental peach is in bloom.

All this means it’s time to watch for Texas bluebonnets. Don’t blink, or they will have bloomed and gone until next spring.

Bluebonnets were born in Texas before statehood and before settlement. It is said Texas is the only place these unique, small blue flower of the lupine variety grow.  There is a lovely Commanche Indian myth about the creation of the bluebonnet. Spanish missionaries planted them around the missions in colonial days.

In 1901 the bluebonnet won over the cactus flower and the cotton boll to be the Texas State flower, and subsequently there was some hot politicing about whether it was the Lupinus subcarnosus, which grows on coastal plains, or the larger, showier Lupinus texensis which was the  True Blue Texas Bluebonnet. In 1971 the Legislature solved the problem by effectively saying any bluebonnet is a representation of the Texas State flower.

The Texas Bluebonnet actually has five separate known varieties, and among these are wild and commercially planted sub-types. In Fort Worth, the plant appears every spring in meadows and beside freeway on-ramps, in the planters of fancy hotels and in everyday people’s yards.

Is it too late to plant? It’s best to plant bluebonnets in the fall, but new, improved seeds now germinate in as little as ten days. Because bluebonnets are actually legumes, like clover, alfalfa, and beans, growing them actually improves instead of depletes soil. Read more about growing bluebonnets, in addition to a careful account of the politial events that led to their becoming the state flower, in information on Texas bluebonnets and guidelines for growing them from Texas A&M University.

Photo credit: Charles and Clint

This morning I went to an event hosted by my mother’s favorite women’s club, the Fort Worth Women’s Policy Forum.  It’s a group of professional and/or socially active women who get together to try to work on social issues in the city such as my mother’s favorite, health care for the indigent.

The Celebrity Breakfast was held at the Omni Hotel and began at 7:30 a.m. Both myself and Dean attended. We were there to hear Jane Elliot, author of the “Blue Eyes/Brown Eyes” experiment in which, in 1968, children in a 3rd grade classroom in Iowa were encouraged to discriminate on the basis of eye color in order to allow white children to see the effects of racism.

I thought this would be an interesting presentation and was interested to hear what she had to say. Elliot did not choose to share any information with us about her well-known experiment.  She is not from around here and seems to be of the opinion that since we are in Texas, our conscience needs raising. Perhaps that is the case, but I’m quite confident that hammering for over an hour on the evils of white men is not the way to do it.

She called them “tall pink people” again and again and several times implied that they were prone to playing with themselves in public. She mocked and tried to humiliate a white man she called up on the stage for a demonstration.

There is quite a bit of irony in taking this approach in a talk where she concluded it’s important to “treat people the way that they want to be treated.” Believe me, my husband did not want to be spoken of or laughed at like this. What purpose did it serve?

The idea that there might be some hypocrisy in categorizing white men negatively in a talk generally meant to be against racial bias did not seem to occur to Elliot. She did do one interesting exercise, in which she called an African American woman on stage, with a white man, and asked them how they felt about their height, their skin color, and how others treated them in general.  The fact that to be black in America is to be constantly aware of your race and to be constantly on guard against bigotry was brought home. 

Still, I don’t think we should be making negative comments about one racial or gender group in order to “empower” another. I seem to remember something about MLK suggesting that he wanted to see people judged not “on the color of their skin but the content of their character.”  Elliot’s rhetoric, on the other hand, was mean, unjust and had the potential and the intent to polarize and hurt people. It certainly did a lot of damage to my family today. I felt shell shocked after the breakfast, which lasted longer than I had expected. In fact, in a way it has lasted all day.

Women’s Policy Forum leadership, you might take note of that.

I’ve been finding it a little bit hard to update since the burglary. My mother brought me a mini-computer, an Acer, which goes on the web just fine, but it’s not a great place to compose. So this will have to be a short “yes I am alive” kind of post.

West and Clear gives thumbs up review to Paco and John’s taqueria in the Hospital District.

Pete Wann of Cowtown Chronicles writes that it’s important for a business to pay it’s subcontractors, replying to a post from Penelope Trunk telling how she paid a bunch of freelancers in stock because she didn’t have cash.

Kevin at FortWorthology writes that there’s hope of those two parking lots at the center of Sundance Square becoming a walking plaza, and that the Near Southside will hold an evening on the Green this Friday. With food and live music.

Austin at Fort Worth Real Estate blog discusses the demolition of the Black Dog Tavern, and the location of possible gas wells in the 7th street vicinity.

Ellie at Chronotopia reflects on abandoned buildings both here in Fort Worth and in Europe.

Kevin of 5ksandcabernets ran the Cowtown Marathon last weekend, coming in in 3:53 for 222nd place out of nearly 1000. But he’s not satisfied. Now he’s on to tweaking his diet. I must say, Kevin, a moment of “Yeah, I did pretty well” might be in order as well.

Guest blogger Ellie Ponti  of Chronotopia writes a bit about sending a child to boarding school:

Imagine an institute of learning where world-class facilities include top-notch science labs and music studios, impressive assembly halls and cozy classrooms. Supportive teachers with advanced degrees inspire and guide to excellence. Prominent artists and scholars come to campus to give lectures and lead workshops. Students have opportunities to spend a year abroad, participate in research, take challenging classes and play sports from field hockey to sailing. At the end, important public figures with their commencement speeches send off graduating seniors to change the world.

This is not a description of a great college. It’s a typical college preparatory boarding high school – a school that, besides superb academic resources, has residential facilities as well, giving shape to a close-knit community of teachers and students who get to know each other, work together and thrive in a supportive environment. Their goal is not just excellent preparation for college, but developing character and skill for success in life.

Students at these schools learn from each other, too, sharing their life, experiences and diverse points of view. They may be coming from the same town, from distant states or other countries. And their friendships continue for the rest of their lives, since these schools are known for their highly involved alumni. They may have gone on to prestigious colleges and started promising careers and life projects, but they feel close and stay in touch. Their support for their school ensures the generous financial aid available to talented students whose families cannot afford the high tuition, thus continuing the tradition of excellence.

Boarding schools are academically challenging, and admission is very competitive, too. What could possibly attract potential students to such an extent that would override their desire to stay close to family and current friends?

Attending has many benefits and families find different reasons to seek this kind of education for their child. For some, it’s the access to academic resources when the ones available locally are inadequate for the student’s aspirations and capabilities. For others, it’s stability, if the family expects moving elsewhere in the future. For still others, the connection to a certain school is a family tradition.

But the most important reason for applying to a boarding school should be the student’s own desire to attend. Boarding school is a great option for an independent young person, who is self-motivated about his or her studies, curious and responsible, open to new perspectives and accepting of others’ points of view.

These schools are so varied – they may be single-sex or coed, religious or with an emphasis in arts, but they all share the prerequisite of a student-driven interest. You can research different options and get more information on the website of  their association, TABS.

It is certainly not a decision to take lightly. In our case, the idea was facilitated by chance, followed by extensive deliberation. We lived in Boston before coming to Texas and my son was attending Milton Academy in his middle school years. Faced with the prospect of moving, after much thought, he decided to stay on as a boarder in high school. He already knew and liked the environment, his teachers and classmates and was ready to embark on exploration of life in a different, more independent way.

His experience has certainly made him a very independent young man, who knows how to organize his life, travel alone, and who is ready to express his opinion on any topic and pursue goals. He is mature for his age, curious, responsible and interested in the world far beyond his visible horizons.

This has come at the expense of him being at home; he is with us only during vacations. But we treasure those moments more. And I just remind myself that at his age, I wanted to live by myself away from my parents and attend a different school. If  I couldn’t make that happen, I thought, let at least him follow the desire of his heart.