I'm Blessed

Marge and I are truly blessed.  We have four married children who, with their spouses, live in towns contained within a ten mile circle.  You might ask, what’s so blessed about that? I say blessed because they have remained truly family.  They’re friends, they socialize together, they vacation together, and they actually like each other.  That is not always the case with so many families. New friends are developed, family is put aside and, while not forgotten, drift apart from each other.  We end up knowing very little about their lives and contact is only made at funerals and an occasional wedding.

In my case uncles, aunts and cousins became strangers to me on both sides of the family my Father’s and Mother’s.  One such cousin on my Father’s side became one of the forgotten ones.  Unfortunate because we were close to each other in age and she was a very nice person. In reality Roberta was never forgotten, but was kind of put on the back burner so to speak. I need to happily advise you that our relationship has been rekindled thanks to the internet.  I’m not quite sure why, but I had reason to email her and we once again became real cousins.

Several years ago she and her son John moved to the Town of Guilford where it appears she quickly grew attached to.  Like many other retired people, myself included, we are unable really retire.  While our bodies might want to retire, our brains won’t let us and it is impossible for us to just sit back, relax and read a book. Having a restless brain is not always a good thing.  Roberta like myself never learned the word no and we sometimes end up being more involved than we planned for.  I know that’s been a problem for me at times.

Roberta saying yes has turned into a good thing for the Town of Guilford. She has become deeply involved with a new a new endeavor for the Town:  Guilford Performing Arts Festival.  The multi-day biennial event was introduced last fall and will take place again in September 2019. The Festival showcases the work of Connecticut professionals and amateurs from a variety of performing arts-music, dance, theater, etc.  Last year 3,700 people attended to enjoy 44 free performances and workshops at various venues throughout Guilford.  More information as the day approaches.  Want to know more:  

Roberta Flannery

Guilford Performing Arts Festival

Rwf36@comcast.net

My morning thoughts

                                            A typical grocery from the 40's and 50's
Notice all the light stuff on the top shelf.  It was fun to watch the clerks use a long pole with a claw attached which was used to grip the item and drag it down to the counter for packing.

I was sitting at the table this morning making up a grocery shopping list.  Today’s ritual included a review of the weekly Price Chopper flyer.  While turning pages revealing hundreds of items supposedly on special I started thinking of the thousands of other items on the lengthy shelves of today’s supermarkets.  I’m old enough to remember all the little mom and pop grocery stores of the 40’s and 50’s scattered throughout out the fair city of New Britain.  Most families only had one car. You needed a store close by because you had to carry those bags to your house.  One reason so many trips to the store were on everyone's schedules. You could fit hundreds of these small grocery stores inside one of today’s markets and yet they miraculously were able to take care of just about all of our family’s needs.  Of course the product choices available to us now would blow our minds at that time.  Just imagine having only a couple brands of chips State Line, Wise and maybe some pretzels as your snack food choice.  Today an entire lengthy aisle takes care of our insatiable desire to consume snack food calories.  Even dog and cat food consume an aisle. You had minimal choices for that bowl of cereal:  corn flakes, Quaker oats, maybe some puffed rice and a few I don’t remember.  No prepackaged meats.  You told the guy behind the counter what you wanted and he went in the cooler, brought the slab of beef out and cut it to order.  I don’t even remember seeing any fish in the store other than cans of tuna and sardines.

The difference between then and now is so dramatic our younger generation probably wouldn’t believe the huge number of things we were deprived of in those days.  Deprived is not a good word since these little stores actually provided us with all our basic needs.  You may note that we constantly hear the words “those were simple times”.  They were simple, but in so many situations limiting our choices made lives less stressful and more enjoyable.  It makes me think of watching women and also men standing in today's supermarket aisles shaking their heads trying to figure which brand of an item to buy (men hoping they made the right choice so they wouldn’t hear it from their wives).

We are very fortunate to be living in this American land of plenty, but so many times we are also in the land of “overkill”.  Retreating back a little to some of those simpler day’s might just make us a little happier and more relaxed.

 

Here I am, back again

I know, I know.  I promised something every week, but as they say promises are made to be broken and I for one don’t want to mess up the prophecy.  I have no real excuse, but this year has been a little strange.  Weather-wise it has been very poor.  Winter was miserable.  It seems we had snow or freezing rain on a regular basis.  We had no spring, it was the same as winter, only slightly milder.  The terrible spring turned right into a lousy summer.  Hot, humid and frequent rain that turned this area into Seattle, Washington.  When we started to look at the so-called summer good times, even the 4^th of July Holiday escaped us weather-wise.  Then a summer arrived that began to make the outdoors feel like a South American rain forest.

Add to that I had my dental experience this summer having six teeth extracted and getting used to new dentures.  Timing for this new adventure couldn’t have been worse.  We had a family cruise schedule a few days after slapping in those new pearly whites.  First day of this great trip had a dinner in Montreal scheduled.   Where was it scheduled?  Naturally, a steakhouse.  Here’s a guy who can only comfortably handle a diet of mashed potatoes and is handed a menu that only offered steak or chicken.  Thank heaven with a little sad persuasion I was able to get a piece of fish from the chef.  (hooray, it was very good and I was able to nourish myself).

The cruise except, for my culinary experiences, turned out to be great. Weather was splendid. Not anything like the wet humid sauna Connecticut was experiencing at the same tie.  Canadian Provinces were wonderful stops.  Marge and I went on our first ever sailboat ride, a 42 foot schooner on one of Quebec’s largest lakes.  Saw Alexander Graham Bell’s home along with great views of bald eagles.  As I was writing about the weather I thought I heard it raining again.  Went up from the cellar and looked out at the most savage downpour you could imagine.  Well here it goes again, time to let more water out of the pool.  It seems to never end.  The only plus is the change from brown to green grass again.  Almost like overnight.

Oh, be the way, now that I’ve adjusted a little to the teeth situation we’ve begun our annual lobster roll excursions.  This year I started off by making my own.  Two nice size lobsters steamed at Price Chopper, picked by yours truly,  saute’d in butter and lemon and filled in a buttered and grilled hot dog roll proved a fine start to our lobster season.  We topped that off with Close Harbor’s rendition the other day…equally delicious especially when accompanied with parmesan cheese coated French fries.

Well, I’ll close now and go to seek some more exciting bitches.