Betsy Devine: Funny ha-ha and/or funny peculiar

Barbara Martin’s Sweet Potato Casserole.

5 or 6 large sweet potatoes
3 T butter
fresh orange juice to soften
1/4 tsp each nutmeg, clove, ginger
1/2 tsp cinnamon.
brown sugar to taste (1/4 to 1/2 cup)
Drizzles of maple syrup or pale molasses

Boil and peel sweet potatoes. Mash with other ingredients, mixing well.
Put into buttered casserole. Hatch top with fork, drizzle molasses or maple syrup over the top.
Bake at 350 for 45 minutes to an hour.

I’ve been cook-cook-cooking and getting ready for Easter. I always enjoyed that sentimental song “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.” For those of us who wear the badge of “Mother”, we’ll be home for every holiday–because wherever we are we’ll be making some place into home for the people we love.

I got this recipe from my neighbor Barbara–now I live hundreds of miles from that neighborhood, and Barbara died of cancer not long after I moved away. But cooking the foods we shared is one of the ways we keep track of lost friends.

I miss my friend Barbara. I miss her courage. I miss her wit. I miss her enthusiasm. Barbara and I were “Early Birds” together. In Princeton, NJ, the Early Birds are an almost-religious cult. Devotees get up early and drive or walk to the YWCA to exercise every morning at 8 a.m. Barbara had been an Early Bird for 20 years before I met her, and we carpooled there together for 10 years more.

Barbara started going to Early Birds when it was a tiny group meeting in a basement at the Princeton Seminary. As a group, Early Birds predated aerobics, jazzercise, Pilates, and jogging. Before there was Earth Day. Before cars had seat belts. Before VCRs, before Xerox, back when the transistor radio was a novelty and that weighed more than a 5 lb. sack of sugar–Way, way back then, there were Early Birds and Barbara was Early-Birding.

Barbara wanted to keep her figure and her agility, and she kept them. I have a photo my daughter took of Barbara sitting on the floor, leaning forward and gripping the soles of her feet. I couldn’t do that! And she looked darn good in a leotard while she was doing it.

Barbara was a person who set high standards for herself. I think most of us do, but Barbara was of the generation that set high standards and then met them–whatever it took. I’ve heard it called the Greatest Generation because they lived through the Depression and World War II. I missed those events. I think of them as the Early Bird generation. They knew what they had to do and they did it. They didn’t expect to talk their way out of it.

More about my friend Barbara

Do you still have mental images of “book people” you loved when you were a child? Many of my own favorites come from the work of Garth Williams. Stuart Little yearning for Margalo. Fern Arable “up at dawn to rid the world of injustice.” Little Bear planning a trip to the moon. All these images still give me great pleasure.
The most magical, in every sense, are his full-color images of elves and fairies in a huge mass-marketed “Golden” picture book. (Jane Werener Watson, The Golden Books’ Treasury of Elves and Fairies, Golden Books, 1951, reprinted 1999.)

Some other books illustrated by Garth Williams:

• E.B.White, Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web.
• Laura Ingalls Wilder, “Little House on the Prairie” books.
• Russell Hoban, the “Frances” books.
• George Selden, Cricket in Times Square.
• Margery Sharp, The Rescuers.

Up the aery mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go ahunting
for fear of little men;
Wee folk, good folk,
Trooping all together;
Green jacket, Red cap
And white owl’s feather….

(Poem by William Allingham,1824-1889)

This morning I got up and put on my mithril sweater. It isn’t metallic or even colored silver–it’s a big, blue, Irish woolly thing, cable knit. My mother wore it for warmth and comfort on winter days like today. And when I put it on, I feel completely safe.

Could scientists study the magic of favorite clothes? Clothes magic is private magic, quirky and secret.

When I was little I needed two kinds of magic. I had rough-tough-roaming magic shoes and shirts that made me strong in the world of tree-climbing and mudfights. I also had pretty-party-magic dresses that made me feel light and lovely and ready for fun surprises. Even today, when I see white polka-dots on pale sky-blue, I think of my favorite silk sixth-grade party dress.

Grown up now, my fears and ambitions need different magic. I do have a couple of pairs of far-walking shoes for ambitiously long days of exploration. But my most magical garment now, my elven cloak, is an old London Fog black silky raincoat. It was almost free because I bought it in the wrong season for raincoats (how can there be a wrong season for raincoats?) and it was on “deep remainder.” The hood keeps off rain, the pockets are huge, and the cut is so simple I feel deliciously invisible when I wear it.

Now, warmly girded in my mithril sweater, I’m off to struggle with my book again.

In my blog, I tend to write about:

• Funny stuff I can’t resist and hope you can’t resist either.
• Struggles with writing a book of nerdy humor, and studies of people who write funnier stuff than I do.
• Political good versus evil, with occasional shades of gray.

I grew up in NH, my nose in a book when I wasn’t building treehouses (summer) or giant snow forts (winter). We lived in a real neighborhood–I don’t think many families owned a house key. There were about 10 elderly* women in the 5-block radius I roamed who would offer me orange juice, bathroom privileges, and a comfy chair to sit reading kids books from the 1920s. I’d like to say thank you here to Miss Alice Colgan, who lived with a sister she hadn’t spoken to in 20 years. Both of them were delighted to see me or my siblings knock on the door.

The blogging world takes me back to those days of roaming. I like knocking at the door of your blog and finding out what’s on your mind today. Better than orange juice!

My husband and I live with our 20 year-old cat, our 15 year-old dog, and a little snake we’re baby-sitting for one of our daughters. Our two 20-something daughters–one college, one grad school–are a big part of our lives but don’t actually live here.

I am a nerd, and even bigger fan of nerds than I am a nerd myself. I used to spend a lot more time programming than I do now. I’ve coauthored a couple of books, both now out of print, but if you look up “Betsy Devine” at Amazon you can read some really nice reader reviews. The book I’m writing now is a collection of nerd humor, science humor, funny pictures, interviews with funny nerds–working title “Hell of a Good Universe.”

* The word “elderly” was one my grandmother liked–and one that the women I’m talking about would have liked. I thought of people as “elderly” once they got past 30 or so. I looked forward to getting there myself, and now–woo hoo–I surely have!

Thanks to Blog Sisters for much-needed advice and support writing this bio!

So which fairy tale archetype are you? Hmm??
made by Michelle at EmptySpace.