During my growing-up years, “lettuce” meant “iceberg lettuce,” although occasionally my mother would show up at the house with a strange, leathery substance known as “romaine.” While we grew many fruits and vegetables on the place, lettuce was apparently not among them. When a head of iceberg lettuce came into the house, there were three […]
Category: From Powhatan to Alaska: Cosmic Connections
For when I happen across a parallel between life in my two favorite places
Sunburn
When she was in her early twenties, my sister Mary fell asleep on Myrtle Beach (South Carolina). I am quite fair-skinned; Mary (and Laura too) might be even paler than I am. Anyway, when Mary woke up, she was badly burned (notice I don’t say “sunburned” because somehow that phrase seems to take the sting […]
Mosquitos across time and space
Some years ago, my husband and I took a trip to Panama, and of course we visited the canal. Of particular interest to me was finding my great-uncle James (nickname Jinks) Jervey’s name, as he had been an engineer on the canal building project in about 1903. Sure enough, the list of names in the […]
In which the foxglove goes head to head with the pushki
Consider these two flowers. The white flowers grow on a plant that is indigenous to Prince of Wales Island and surrounding areas. It is known variously as pushki, Indian celery, and cow parsnip. The purple, on the other hand, is foxglove, which is apparently a stranger in these parts. Some would call it invasive. I […]
Adventures in pyrotechnics
Of course, it’s a fairly common occurrence for conditions to be too dry for fireworks. Here in Southeast Alaska, though, it sometimes gets too wet for fireworks. This happens when the ground is so saturated with rain that you can’t find a stable spot to put things down. In conditions like this, you might light […]
In which Gretel gets a makeover
One Christmas my sisters and I got Sound of Music dolls. As the youngest, I got Gretel. When Gretel came out of the box, her hair was braided and coiled around her ears (think Princess Leia). My first order of business was to take her hair down to brush it—and that was the end of […]
Adventures in making toast
When I was a kid we had this old propane stove that worked fine, albeit without the benefit of pilot lights. Starting the burners was no big deal; you just held a match alongside while turning on the gas. The oven/broiler was a horse of a different color. You had to open the broiler drawer, […]
To wave or not to wave
Being polite, walking that shifting line that is somewhere between standoffish and slightly weird, is a tricky business. When I was a teenager, I worked at the local gas station/convenience store for a while. My co-worker Rosetta often entertained the rest of us with stories. One time she told us about her nephew Shelley, who […]
The weather gods have a sense of humor
Well, sometimes it does snow in Southeast Alaska, despite what I have been saying these many years. I went out this morning to dig out my mother-in-law’s van, scraping wet-cement-style snow, until my nephew, as kind as he is strong, came from down the street to help. I was scraping as loudly as possible, so […]