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

Front door making a snow angel

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Brrrr, it’s below 30 degrees this morning.

This winter has been a very long time coming. But — hello, furnace, your summer vacation just ended!

The snow in this picture? Not here yet, that photo’s from February. Just my little hint to the weather gods for a white Christmas.

So, this year i ran out of flour on Thanksgiving morning.

Eeee! as the clock ticks toward guest arrival time, and you start to make biscuit-crust pie, not to mention gravy, flour is not just necessary, it is nnnnnnnneeeeeeeeeeeded!

After a brief search for substitutes, during which we considered pancake mix, corn starch, and a forgotten box of Bisquik that had expired in 2004, the girls headed off, both laughing, to Sarah’s Market, blessedly open even on Thanksgiving morning.

Last year, my Thanksgiving goof was burnt stinky popcorn. And who knows what craziness will befall us next year?

I’m thankful that shared happiness survives imperfection.

Some more Thanksgiving memories making me smile tonight…
• 2003: “Oh, Lord, you know I don’t know how to cook this ugly bird…”
• 2004: Aunt Mary and the missing gravy
• And for extra podcasty Thanksgiving spirit, Tony Kahn’s Hollywood blacklist Thanksgiving story

From my email inbox this morning–thanks, Aunt Billie!

Peaceful freedom on a field of blue

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Look at that peaceful bird, riding his tropical breeze toward the island of home.

Dear reader, I thank you for your patience with the occasional outages here at this blog. I pledge to keep bringing you stuff that I think you’ll enjoy–sometimes wonderful wonders, like this chance image from the Galapagos when I went swimming with seals.

And other times, political stuff like the truly ugly photo I’m about to post next, so please forgive me!

Found poetry, from the Yahoo Time-Capsule project, New Orleans schoolteacher’s message to the future:

In related news, some born-again atheists are out crusading against all the rival dogmas competing with theirs.

I’m skeptical about the existence of God, but I’m way more skeptical about evangelizing a worldwide monoculture of all the ideas most cleverly put forward on this exact Friday morning in October.

My own sincere religious belief is that Ms. Vinny is doing much more good on this needy planet.

…I’m one of many new people exploring Second Life.

This twilight scene comes from the garden store of Julia Hathor, who creates fascinating stuff with pale textures like waterfalls and (for Halloween) a little ghost-generator. Want one in your garden?

My favorite spot so far, however is Robin Wood’s store, not because I want to buy pink hair or a crystal ball but because she generously provides a free tutorial “temple” and a small garden full of lovely birdsound.

I bought the wings you see here from Robin Wood. How could I resist them? And really, I bought the wings for her.

Manhattan, city of contrasts

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

Do the owners of these two shops ever have lunch together?

I’m in New York City–what a wild ride, and I don’t just mean bouncing around lower Manhattan on top of the Gray Line’s giant red tour bus.

Just got home from renting a UHaul van–how many times in my life have I driven around in one of those orange-and-white truck-monsters, schlepping my furniture from place to place or (all these years later) my daughters’ furniture…

There’s just something about boosting myself way up into the driver’s seat, turning down the air conditioner’s mighty fan (at rental time, they set it to “nuclear blast strength”)…

I release the parking brake–loud, satisfying thunk! Suddenly, I’m younger than springtime and ten feet tall.

The cup holders are new, but I like them. They fit right in. Four cup holders, though the van seats just two people. And each one is wide and deep enough to hold one of those really, really huge drinks that nobody finishes. Milkshakes for giants, coffee for narcoleptics who’ll drive until dawn.

Something about those cup holders has made me nostalgic tonight for the road, for the many cross-continent road trips our family took in the eighties and nineties–gators and craters and dinosaur bones–the Meramec Caverns (Missouri), the world’s largest hand-dug well (middle of Kansas), the Terre Haute Historical Society (Indiana), and “Questions people ask about Harold Warp” (Nebraska)…

Surely I could go all those places right now if I just filled up four cup holders with Dunkin coffee and drove all night….

Walt Whitman would have loved UHaul, and those cup holders.

… he placed Friday with the Alpbacher technology discussions under proof, i.e. as a singer in the mini opera “Atom and Eve”.

Thus the first public review of Frank’s opera debut, at least in the fine words of Google language tools. Marc Abrahams adds that people can now see the entire opera online–not that I’ve managed that, with my current elderly-Mac-on-NH-cafe-wifi. Maybe when I get home… Looking on the bright side, I did get to see the real happening.

Alpine cemetery glows at night from candles lit on each grave

Originally uploaded by betsythedevine.

The village churchyard of Alpbach, Austria, which recycles its limited graves so that monuments name only those most recently buried.

Frank brought me here by midnight candelight to see the grave of Erwin Schrödinger, who has been exempted from the recycling.

Is Schrödinger’s cat buried here?

Please! We’re still not sure if Schrödinger’s cat is dead.

p.s. The village of Alpbach now gets most of its income from tourism–how does it preserve its rural quality and family farms?

Intelligent planning by the Austrian government! You cannot buy real estate in the village of Alpbach unless you personally will live there six months of the year. Therefore–no grand hotels, no vacation MacMansions.

Can the Alpbachians enforce such a law? They can and do. In several cases, people lost title to new purchases when their garbage collectors or mailmen reported their houses standing empty for months at a time.