LENT IS WAITING FOR SPRING

I haven’t written anything since just after Christmas….Epiphany to be precise. My inspiration seems to have something to do with the church year. I meant to write about the joys of being able to hibernate in a beautiful (and warm) Victorian house, but I was hibernating.

Ash Wednesday has come and gone, so for me the time of hibernating is over, and Spring begins to feel like a real possibility. A couple of weeks ago, Rudy cut forsythia from our house in Gloucester and forced them to bloom inside. This past weekend he brought in more, and yellow twigged dogwood, and the white daffodil bulbs which he planted last fall in pots and put in our greenhouse are now upstairs and starting to bloom. The scent of daffodils is such an harbinger of spring. There are bouquets of tulips and daffodils in the market, I try to buy a bunch when I get the groceries and put them in a vase on the kitchen table. Asparagus and strawberries are cheaper and grown closer to home than Chile or South Africa. I went outside yesterday with a sweater and a winter coat and I was hot. Outdoors.

My oldest daughter was born in a blizzard on February 11, and almost every year on her birthday (she’s 48 now), there’s a blizzard. And one after that, so rationally, why would I be thinking of spring? you ask. I guess it’s because the days are so much longer and there’s something in the air. I remember one year that we had more than a week of below zero temperatures at the beginning of the month…it was bitter and there were feet of snow. I was singing a lot with a wonderful conductor named Larry Hill, who founded the Pro Arte Orchestra in Boston. We had a joke about Larry’s concerts….that the weather was always wonderful on the day of the concert, no matter what went on before. He was conducting a Valentine’s Day concert at Church of the Covenant in Boston on a Sunday afternoon around 4:00. When we went into the church it was about zero and when we emerged it was 40 degrees Fahrenheit….and it was the beginning of spring, the temperature never went down again that year! He died twenty-some years ago on Valentine’s Day, devastating for those of us who loved him. His memorial service was at Memorial Church at Harvard, where he had been a chaplain. The day was awful, everything possible coming down from the sky….snow, sleet, ice in great quantities. An hour before the service the church was packed…SRO and even people on the steps. During the service the Brahms Requiem was performed. The last movement of the Requiem has the text “Selig sind die Tod” (“Blessed are the Dead”). At the first line the sun came out and shone on the roof of Memorial Hall and Sanders Theatre where he had performed so often. It stayed out for the entire piece, and when it was over, went back behind the clouds and the storm continued. I have never forgotten that moment, for me it was a glance into another dimension, one in which Larry somehow existed.

Rudy and I sometimes go out to Laughlin, Nevada (don’t ask), for the International UFO Convention…or we do when Rudy is asked to speak. It’s really an excuse to go someplace warm, and then go to Flagstaff, only a couple of hours away to visit my younger daughter, who was born at the spring equinox. Getting off the plane in Las Vegas is such a nice experience…it’s warm enough! One year I went out into the desert with some friends to see the ancient petroglyphs not far from Laughlin. There had been an unusual amount of rain, and the entire floor of the desert was covered with yellow and pink flowers. In Flagstaff, spring is just beginning. By the time we get back, it’s March and yellow and pink flowers are not very far behind in New England.

The real hope for the beginning of spring for us though, is the New England Flower Show. It’s held every year in March (it used to be the third week) in a large convention center and the exhibits are amazing. Every nursery and grower and solar greenhouse maker are erecting elaborate garden exhibits hoping to win ribbons and attract customers. One walks in the door and the smell of peat moss and blooming plants is a magic passageway to either last year’s garden, or the one that will come up in May. Every year I buy a new citrus tree and a rosemary bush to replace the one which invariably succumbs to something or other in January. Last year, because of the awful economic crisis, there wasn’t a Flower Show, but this year, it’s back! It will be held in a new convention center and a week later, which means I can be sure to get the plants home without their getting too cold. I won’t buy citrus trees this time, because I have learned to grow my own from the seeds of fruit from the ones I have. My Meyer Lemon had a first blooming two years ago which produced only one lemon, but it was huge. We had lemonade from the juice, and dried peels from the outside, and I planted the seeds. Last January I gave one of the teenaged plants to my friend Ed for his housewarming, and I have another teenager blooming right now. The original tree is not much larger than it was when I got it, but it has 9 lemons. I’ve also got babies from grapefruit seeds from organic grapefruit, a Satsuma orange found in a bargain bin at Home Depot , covered with oranges, a Calamondim orange tree which always has either flowers or small oranges, and a Kaffir Lime in the kitchen, which has never bloomed, but one uses the leaves for seasoning, particularly in Thai cooking. I used to have a book called After Dinner Gardening, or something like that, I’ll have to find it again and try out some new things. Potatoes and sweet potatoes are easy. I’ve never been able to successfully grow avocado plants from pits, but maybe I’ll try again, and a pineapple from rooting its top.

Interesting, isn’t it, that Lent is about going into the darkness at the very point when the light is returning?

EPIPHANY: FEAST OF THE THREE KINGS

Last evening was Epiphany and Heidi and I went to sing at church. I love evening services at St. John’s because it’s so gorgeous when it’s dark outside and all the candles are lit and the gold stuff gleaming in the candlelight. The music was gorgeous and even though the service is formal (being High Church), it felt like a family gathering, with all our quirks and wonder. We all know each other very well after years of creating this community.

It does occur to me at moments like these that I’m something of a beauty junkie. I’m very visual and when I pay attention I can really see colors and texture and light. I thought of the time Rudy and I went to Richard’s house before Thanksgiving this year to a Cherokee ritual. We had met many of the people this last summer at the wonderful Gathering of the Elders in Vermont, but didn’t really know what would go on in a ceremony with ten people assembled in Richard’s dining room. He had a friend doing the ceremony with him, and they each had a large basket. Out of each basket came sage and crystals, small colorful rugs and rich yards of material, bowls, feathers and candles. The rugs were spread with the material like a tablecloth on the floor, the pungent sage was lit in a bowl, the artifacts were spread out and the candles were lit. It was so simple and so lovely. You can carry the materials of beauty around with you in a basket.

We take the Christmas tree down tonight. Our living room looked so amazing over the Christmas season. I usually decorate the tree with small white lights, gold and red ornaments , red velvet and gold ribbons. We’ve got a ton of gold angels which live in the room throughout the year, and we bought an amazing candle lamp at a yard sale in Chicago when we were there for $2, which would probably look ridiculous in any room but this one. I have such conflicted feelings about Christmas, that I’m actually glad if we can get the tree down and out in the street without a big to-do, and start playing with our forced bulbs and the really serious business of waiting for spring. (Oh yes, it is a long way away, but there are seed catalogues!) I think if it were up to Rudy, he’d keep the tree up until August, he really loves Christmas.

Over the Christmas break, we had our 19 year old grandson Alex with us, and he turns out to be a great guy. (We don’t see him often, so we didn’t really know.) We all went to church on Christmas Eve and had a great meal afterwards…a potluck feast. On Christmas Day we had friends for dinner, and on Boxing Day went to Ben Zander’s house for his Boxing Day party, where I sang Schubert with him….such a treat, I felt good for days! Alex and Heidi wanted to go see Avatar so we headed out to Waltham to see the film, which surprisingly, I liked very much. On New Year’s Eve we went to Lessons and Carols at Church of the Advent…really gorgeous and we saw lots of old friends, and then to dinner at Pierrot where we had an amazing meal. Definitely something to do next year again. But the real joy of that evening was that it had snowed for most of the day, but slowly enough so that things were plowed and cleared out, and the weather had turned warmer. The snow lay on the ground, and on the trees and gates and houses on Beacon Hill and Charles Street like something in a Victorian postcard. We walked over the Hill, I very slowly because I had to look in everyone’s windows.





I’m still behind on my holiday knitting(!) I did finish Sylvia’s red sweater and sent it to her but I doubt that she got it in time for the arrival of the Kings. But it is the best one yet, and now my sister wants to have one. I’m still working on Heidi’s sweater and a scarf, which I planned to give to Alex, but he’s not a scarf guy, so I think I might give it to Heidi’s friend Nick. (My friend too).

Making things to give to people, gold and candlelight, snow and music, singing Schubert and old friends and family...it seems a very good life for which I am very thankful.

May this decade bring us all a new vision of how to live together without compromising the earth, a good comprehensive health plan for everyone in the USA, young people running for office who have a genuine interest in the welfare of all people, and less of an interest in the "morals" of everyone else. Amen.

A CHRISTMAS CHALLENGE

I’ve wanted to do something about Christmas for years, and have simply never had the guts to do it…and this year is no exception. But I have a plan, and maybe….I’ll do it next year….maybe.

I’ve written earlier about my revulsion to the whole commercial scene around Christmas. I hate seeing tinsel and Santa Claus in October. I hate hearing canned Christmas schmaltz every time I have to make a transaction on the phone and I’m put on hold. I can’t imagine even venturing out of my house on Black Friday for all the “deals”.

My way of dealing with my dislike of all this in recent years has been to try to make as many gifts as I can. I knit (and this year, I’m way behind, some of the gifts will be for Epiphany, Groundhog Day and even Valentine’s Day). I make candy and pesto. This year Heidi and I are planning to make up a recipe for Shaker Convenience Mix, and put it in jars with recipes included for biscuits or pancakes or cookies. I learned to bead this year, and that is fun. We put up our tree around Dec 20th and leave it up until Twelfth Night…decorations for the gates and door are a little earlier. I haven’t been to a mall in years, my savior being the Internet. Things bought, wrapped, packaged and sent with a gift card. “Not very personal”, my inner I’ve Bought Into The System says, but really what’s so personal about driving to a crowded mall, not really knowing if the giver will love it or hate it, getting frustrated, tired and discouraged? One has to keep in mind that apparently the busiest days of the year after Christmas for stores are the hordes of people returning gifts they don’t want, or worse yet, forcing the giver to return them.

I love the season of Advent…the four Sundays before Christmas. I usually have an Advent wreath on the kitchen table. It has four candles on it….three purple and one rose, and a grand gold pillar in the middle. The third Sunday of Advent is the rose one…a little break in the mildly penitential season of Advent represented by purple. On Christmas Eve the big pillar is lighted and white candles substituted for the purple and rose ones. Advent is the season of waiting, of preparing. I have a friend who grew up with the tradition of thoroughly cleaning your house to prepare for the baby Jesus. What a lovely idea, instead of preparing it for a large flat-screen TV. I take my friend Ed out to Wilson Farms to get greens for the church and get supplies of a wreath and some candles for myself. I bake, and so do Rudy and Heidi….cookies, coffee bread, Weihnachtstollen. Back in the day when I was performing a lot, there were lots of concerts between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I loved singing in them.

On Christmas Eve, I go to church in the morning to help with the flowers and greenery, then in the early evening Heidi and I go to choir rehearsal bearing our contributions to the feast which follows the evening service. Rudy (and this year, our grandson Alex) arrive in time for the service. The music is special and wonderful, the service beautiful with candles and greenery and incense and hope, and the feast amazing. The next day in the late afternoon, we have a dinner party at home with relatives and friends. We open presents throughout the day, but frankly, this is the part I could do without. Not because I am cheap, either, but because every family has its most dysfunctional time around the issue of what was given and received at Christmas pasts, and the memories are usually not pleasant.

So here is my plan for next year, if I’m not too chicken to actually do it:

We will give presents on Epiphany. We will really celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas.

I’ll do Advent in force. I’ll knit and bead and bake and light candles. I’ll make tree ornaments and wreaths, put out the little carolers on the table in the hall. I’ll bake for church and make special breakfast stuff for Christmas morning. I’ll help with flowers at church and sing and enjoy the feast. Then I will go home to bed, and on Christmas morning we’ll have a grand special breakfast. We will then head out to a tree lot and pick out the largest tree…for free… and put it up and decorate it. If we’re invited somewhere for dinner, good, if not, I’ll roast a chicken. On Boxing Day, or a day or so later we’ll head out to get some fancy ornaments for almost nothing, and to find presents and ribbon for a considerable saving. (I’ve started wrapping stuff in pretty fabric, saves trees and cuts way down on the amount of stuff I have to carry out to the barn in the cold for the rubbish people). On Epiphany, or the closest Sunday to it, I’ll invite everyone for a wonderful dinner party. It makes Christmas into a religious holiday, and the gift-giving comes with the Three Kings. Or if you’re not into religious traditions, I’d bet that it would be a LOT less expensive and a lot less pressurized.

Anyone want to take the pledge and join me?

Meanwhile, here are two recipes:


Shaker Convenience Mix (from Best of Shaker Cooking by Amy Bess Miller and Persis Fuller)


9C sifted flour
1 TBS salt
1/3C baking powder
1 1/2-2C shortening
Combine dry ingredients in a large bowl. Cut in the shortening as for pastry. When thoroughly blended store in a canister or glass jar in the refrigerator. It should keep for two months, but check to be on the safe side.

BISCUITS: 2c mix, 1 large egg, ½ C milk, cream or sour cream. Mix together, form into biscuits and bake @400⁰ for 12-15 minutes

MUFFINS: 3C mix, 1 large egg, ¼ C sugar, 1 C milk. Mix together and spoon into buttered muffin tins. Bake @425⁰ for 20 minutes. You can add berries, or fruit or extra sugar if you like. 1 ½ C cranberries are good too. Stir, not beat the batter. For Jam Muffins, after 10 minutes put 1 tsp jam on to center of each muffin and finish baking.

PANCAKES: 1 ½ C mix, 1 TBS sugar, ½ C milk, 2 large eggs. Apples or blueberries are nice too.

WEIHNACHTSTOLLEN

This is a Struss/Schild Christmas tradition. I got the recipe from an old out-of-print cookbook called Luchow’s, which was a German restaurant in NYC, and made the first batch in 1960, when Morgan was a very tiny baby. Ever since, I make it every year. I usually make it the night before Christmas Eve, since I sing on Christmas Eve. I let the loaves cool, frost them, then wrap them in plastic wrap with pretty ribbons.

11c sifted flour
2c milk
1 ¼ c melted butter (2 ½ sticks) I use unsalted butter.
6 eggs
1c sugar
2 oz yeast, proofed (put dry yeast in 1/2c warm water with a little sugar, let rise a little)
½ tsp salt, more if using unsalted butter (maybe 1 tsp)
½ tsp grated nutmeg
½ tsp mace
1 TBS cognac
1 TBS grated lemon peel
Get a huge bowl and put in flour. Make a hole in the middle and add the other ingredients. Mix as much as you can (start with a spoon, and then use your hands). Turn out on to a floured surface and knead. Then add one at a time, and kneading after each addition:
1 lb seedless raisins
1 lb currants
¼ blanched almonds, chopped
½ c citron
(I also add dried cranberries, or other dried fruit, and sometimes walnut pieces. If, like my daughter, Sylvia, you hate citron, you could leave it out and use other dried chopped fruits)

Clean and grease the bowl, put the dough back in it, cover with a towel and let rise in a warm place for some hours, until doubled in size. Punch down, form into loaves like this: Form 3 large balls, and roll or pat them until they are about 2 inches thick and flat. Then fold one side over the other and put on greased baking sheets. Let rise again, until doubled. Don’t let this go on for hours, or you will have huge, unwieldy, odd-tasting loaves.

Bake at 350 for one hour.

TOPPING
¼ c melted butter (1/2 stick)
2 TBS cognac
½ c confectioner’s sugar

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

I HATE….hate, hate, what “the market” has done to the holiday season in the US. Maybe it’s true in other countries too, but I live here, so don’t really know. It all starts at the end of October, and I have come to dread the onslaught. It begins even earlier, really. When is it, August? ….when the catalogues start arriving with the pumpkins and witches and pointy black things, followed briefly by turkeys and pies, then directly on to Christmas, sometimes simultaneously with the other two holidays. The past couple of years have added the guilty spectre of what will happen to the US, and then the world economy if one doesn’t buy enough stuff before, during, and after the Christmas season. Does the US economy really run on Christmas tree lights and plastic Christmas trees? My granddaughter, Heidi went to our local pharmacy cum everything else on Halloween to buy fake plastic spider webbing to decorate for a party (there’s one in every family!), only to find that they were already on the way to the dumpster to make way for Christmas things, and the jingle bells were hung and White Christmas was blasting through the store. (Do not, do NOT, get me started on that subject, I go completely nuts.)

I’ve already written about Halloween, but now let it be known that I actually love Thanksgiving. It’s all about feeding one’s family and friends, about getting together around the dinner table with good food, and good wine and good feelings.

Most years I order a good large chicken, or pork roast, or roast beef from Whole Foods, and I and the rest of whatever gang is going to be here get together to plan the rest of the feast. (Notice the absence of “turkey” in the last sentence, I’m not a turkey lover. I think that they don’t have much taste, which is why there are so many seasonings in the stuffing). We have lots of vegetable dishes both because there are so many lovely and varied recipes for things like squash and sweet potatoes and Brussels sprouts, and beans and mashed potatoes….the list does go on. We also have lots of vegetable dishes because we have many vegetarian friends. We also have lovely appetizers. I read a book by Anne Tyler recently, where the family has only appetizers for Thanksgiving because they love appetizers, and they love making them. I understand this completely, I love appetizers as well. We have hot cider simmering on the stove with spices, making the house smell delicious. We have sherry and wine for those who consider sherry “zu süss”. We have amazing desserts…both I and my granddaughter love to bake, and Rudy makes a mean pie crust. We bring out all the china and tablecloths and napkins and flatware and glassware, we buy flowers for the table. We gather in our students who aren’t going home for the holidays because their families are in China or Bulgaria or Oregon. We have a ball, and I don’t care how many pounds I might have gained for that day. For me it’s all about giving thanks that we have such an abundance of everything, and I’m damned if I’m going to ruin everyone’s day by not eating their stuff because I think it has too many calories.

“But”, you might say, “it costs so much”. Not really. I usually buy the roast whatever because, lucky us, we’re not particularly hurting for money. The baking doesn’t cost that much, and it’s such a fun thing to do. Some people bring their specialities and others bring wine. We’ve already got the dishes and other stuff, accumulated little by little for years and years, from yard sales and auctions and EBay.

Years ago, when I started going to St. John’s, the director of the feeding program there, which we sponsored for many years, asked the congregation if we could supply pies for Thanksgiving. Rudy and I stayed up late on Thanksgiving evening and made four pies….two for us and two for them. We brought them to the church on Thanksgiving morning. So did everyone else in the congregation. They had so many pies that they ended up freezing many of them and using them for months afterwards. That’s what Thanksgiving is like for me….. and this peculiarly American holiday is the best of America, I think.

Here are two vegetable recipes from my friend Stirling. I hope that Tracy still makes them.

STIRLING’S BROCCOLI CASSEROLE ( It also works brilliantly with Brussels sprouts)
(This makes 4-6 servings, double it for a big dinner)
4 c broccoli 1 can cream of chicken soup (cream of mushroom will work just as well) 1 c mayonnaise (use real mayonnaise, please, this is a FEAST day) 1 tsp curry (use 1 ½ tsps if you’re doubling, not 2) 2 TBS butter 1 tsp lemon juice
Steam the broccoli and arrange in a casserole dish. Mix up the other ingredients and pour it over the broccoli.
Sprinkle over this:
1 c grated sharp cheese I c corn flake crumbs (put the corn flakes in a Ziploc bag and smash them with something)
Bake at 350® for 25-30 minutes

STIRLING’S YAM AND APPLESAUCE CASSEROLE
4-6 servings, double if necessary
Bake 4 yams, peel and slice
3 apples, sliced (core them, but leave the peels) golden raisins to cover
Arrange in buttered casserole dish
Mix together:
2c boiling water ¾ c brown sugar 4 TBS cornstarch 1 stick butter ½ can frozen orange juice concentrate
Pour over yams and apples and bake @ 350® for about an hour

So simple. So yummy.

MORE KNITTING

The finished mauve sweater described a few days ago. It’s hard to see in this picture the gorgeous silver buttons which I managed to find in my huge box of mostly utilitarian buttons. It took some sifting to find five exactly alike, but they were there. The sweater was intended originally for my Flagstaff daughter, but it’s actually too small. Shame on me for not knitting a swatch! The Rowan pattern called for Rowan Big Wool and size 19 needles. I’ve never even seen size 19 needles, and the woman at the yarn store where we bought the pattern and yarn for the original sweater said that size 13 needles were the way to go, and it all worked out beautifully. The yarn for this new sweater could be called Biggish Wool, I guess. It’s a soft, very soft, mohair, wool and acrylic blend…..2 stitches/1 inch with US 13 needles. Anyway, large turned out to be medium, so the sweater will go to my oldest niece, who will love it I think, and hope. It’s a funny thing about knitted gifts…the recipient either loves whatever it is and wears, or uses it constantly, or they would much rather have a gift certificate to The Gap. In which case, it often ends up in a thrift shop. I know this because last year I bought the most exquisite blue hand-knit sweater with the “knitted for you by____” sewn into it, at a local, pretty upscale thrift store for $15.00. Near my home in Cambridge is a wonderful Irish store which sells a lot of fabulous hand-knit stuff from Ireland as well as yarn from an Irish mill. My daughter and I always go there to buy yarn when she’s here on one of her fall trips from Arizona. I was wearing the blue sweater and the owner asked me if I had knitted it. I explained that I do knit, but that I had bought this one in a thrift shop for $15 bucks. The look on his face was priceless. “I could sell that for $350” he said…and this was last October when the Great Recession was at its gloomiest. I replied that I thought that maybe I was in the wrong profession and should knit things for a living. But when we figured out the cost of the yarn and the hours put into it, it comes out to about $4 an hour…definitely below the poverty line, and I make a lot more teaching voice.

Years ago, I went to the Orkney Isles to visit my friend, the composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, (name-dropping here)and while I was there, I bought a lovely sweater in one of the several stores which sell hand-knit stuff made by local people, women mostly. I had this idyllic vision of the long cold winters with women sitting beside the fire in one of the many charming cottages on the islands, happily knitting out the long cold days. The truth is a lot more prosaic. The days are long…it’s pretty far north, but not particularly cold by Boston standards. It’s very beautiful, but hard to reach, remote and rural, and I don’t think that life is easy. You’d have to knit a great number of sweaters to make a living, and I know what my shoulders and hands feel like when I overdo it. How, I wonder, does anyone make a living knitting?

SOMETHING DIFFERENT

Spacewalk by Ralph Hamilton Collection of Rudy Schild and Jane Struss

My husband, Rudy, is an astrophysicist, and also an open-minded scientist who has become something of a hero to many people because he is willing to listen to the stories of those who are “experiencers.” That is, they have had the experience of being abducted by extra-terrestrials, usually more than once. He got into doing this through his collaboration with the late, great John Mack. Back in the day, this was pretty shocking unbelievable stuff, made worse by the fact that the experiencers really couldn’t talk about it, or process it in any way. They were very mad at scientists who put them down without really looking at the evidence, or listening to them.

Granted, this is a pretty tough call. Hard science depends on verifiable and reproducible evidence, and if there are indeed UFO’s on the earth, they seem to do a very good job of controlling their garbage output. And the government evidence is presently classified, no matter what it is, so no one can get a look at it to check out what reality is and what isn’t in this area. And researchers disagree on what they do know. One claims that there really are no “UFO’s”, they should be more accurately called “IFO’s” (Identified Flying Objects), because what is seen is actually stuff being built by our own government. Others claim that there’s a government conspiracy to cover up the fact that the planet is teeming with ETs. All this leads to unending conspiracy theories on both sides, and a huge amount of misinformation all around.

I’m not an experiencer, neither is Rudy, but our friends who are, on the whole, are sane, articulate, and to a man or woman committed to making life better for others on this planet. To me, that speaks volumes. The abduction event, (or events) have transformed their lives….and drawn a real line in the sand for them. Everything is either “Before” or “Since”.

I was at an event this weekend which brought together 30 people, experiencers of various kinds, not just alien encounters but of other kinds of psychic and spiritual encounters which changed their lives (and by the way, the Native Americans don’t call them “aliens”, but “star relatives”). The agenda of the group evolved to be about listening, and trying to make connections between the “normal” experiences of people, and paranormal, or not-so-normal experiences of other people and how they might grow to understand each other, and learn from each other.

A few weeks ago, in response to the Vatican’s welcoming disaffected Anglicans into their ranks, James Carroll wrote in his column for the Boston Globe about the “large and urgent challenge facing every religion and every religious person, which is how to positively reconcile tradition with the massive changes in awareness, knowledge, and communication that come with the scientific and technological breakthroughs that daily alter the meaning of existence.” I couldn’t agree more with him, and it occurred to me that this group of such disparate people was embarking on a conversation about how to do this, and that it’s very urgent.

After the meeting, a number of us went to dinner at a restaurant in Harvard Square. A good friend asked me about my own church, which is St John the Evangelist, Bowdoin St in Boston. She wanted to know that if, since it was so High Church (“smells and bells” as we affectionately call it), had we gone over to the Anglican position. “Oh, no”, I replied, “we were the first church in the Diocese of Massachusetts to openly welcome gays and lesbians and to have a healing ministry during the time when HIV/AIDS was a big crisis, and when people who were gay, and especially those with AIDS were excluded from having a religious home. We did a good job, almost all Episcopal churches are open and welcoming in that way, and so we need to be involved in something new now, in welcoming other groups of people”. “Oh yeah?” said the experiencer across the table, “would I be welcome?”

And I didn’t know how to answer that.

PARTIES

Last Night we had a concert presented by two of my best voice students and my friend Bonnie, who is a wonderful accompanist. We set up our double parlor to accommodate thirty people. We had the piano tuned. My students worked very hard on a program of Mozart concert arias, Russian and French songs, and duets by Brahms. It was a beautiful night with no belting rain or high winds. And it all went fabulously….with an invited musical audience of friends and families of the performers, as well as some of mine and Rudy’s friends. Rudy connected with a guy he hadn’t seen for twenty-five years, I met the husband of another student (and neighbor) with whom I’ve spoken on the phone for years but never met before, my granddaughter Heidi met some young people her own age. In short, a good time was had by all.

When I do these concerts, I always include food afterwards. It’s a big house, with lots of room, and a kitchen which (as it turns out) accommodates thirty people. There’s some preparation involved, which got me to thinking about the nature of parties.

The truth is, I don’t usually much like parties with that many people, unless it’s in my own house, or all people that I know well. The first problem is the noise level. I don’t hear enough with a lot of noise going on around me when I’m trying to have a conversation with someone, or I hear too much. Music in the background only makes this much worse. And then there are the people. They are probably amazing fascinating people whom I really ought to meet, but I don’t know how to go about it. Or, really, I know how but I don’t want to. I have a friend who is an Episcopal priest, who always seems to know how to talk to people and get them to talk to her, who once told me that she’s really very shy and hates walking into a roomful of people, but knows that she must, so she goes ahead and does what she knows how to do. But she faces the same feeling every time. It’s like the fifteen minutes (or half, hour, or hour, or day) before a performance when one thinks “what am I doing?” (My nightmare is that I’m onstage in an opera and suddenly realize that I’m in an opera that I’ve never even heard and have to make everything up).

The concert/party events at our home really do get everyone talking to everyone else, and we’ve got the whole thing down to a science, and I will tell you how. There is a caveat however….you’ve got to have enough space so that people can either hang out together with drinks and talk, or sit down with their food somewhere besides where it’s being served, and there’s somewhere they could go to get away from the noise of a lot of people talking all at once. That would probably be a large living room, another room where people could go, and a small place for intimate conversation. A large kitchen is not required, though it makes things easier. If you do not have these conditions do not, I repeat, do not try this out at home. Instead, you could give a dinner party for six, with five familiar people and one fascinating stranger, which is God’s great gift to the world after creation…and I will tell you how to do that another day.

It’s a good idea to plan the party when you have some time free the day of, though with good planning you can do it without the extra time. It’s also a very good idea to be able to have the next day off.

What you do is this, and in the order given:

First you enlist a helper. Granddaughter (or son) is best, followed by: daughter, husband, roommate, friend, someone off the street…you must have a helper. If you think you can skip this part and do it all yourself, you are a true masochist and need to get some counseling.

Next ( a couple of days in advance, before you’re feeling desparate) you go to someplace like Trader Joe’s which will have everything you need. For thirty people you get:

3 boxes stoned wheat thins, or whatever crackers you like
6 packages of cheese, or 3 wheels of cheese
a lot of grapes
3 containers of paté (get some you like in case you have leftovers)
8 bottles of wine(red and white) six bottles sparking soda (I like grapefruit, blood orange, exotic stuff like that)
good bakery stuff, if you don’t bake yourself If you do bake, get whatever you need
A potted plant, nothing expensive, maybe a mum, or a poinsettia if it’s Christmas, or some daffodils if it’s February.

If you don’t have 30 wineglasses, plates and silverware, you’ll need to go to a party store, or someplace like IKEA and get plastic wineglasses, pretty paper napkins, plain paper plates, plastic forks and maybe some plastic knives (there are recyclable ones around, I hope you’ll get those). If you do have all this stuff in glass and china and silver, you probably have a dishwasher….even if you don’t, you’ve got your helper.

If you bake, make a sheet cake and some brownies, or cookies. You can do this a day or two ahead. If you’re really feeling ambitious, you can make some scones the afternoon of the party (I really love the King Arthur scone mixes), but you don’t really need to do this. Also, a day or two ahead, clean your house up reasonably. This could be anything from a cleaning service to just getting the books and magazines off the tables and chairs. (I bribe Dina to come the day the event of instead of her regular day, thank God for her)! If you have to do the cleaning yourself, I recommend having the party at night, with dim atmospheric lighting. But do be sure the bathroom or rooms are really clean with plenty of toilet paper and soap and towels. Also be sure that the table, or counters, or whatever you’re going to serve the food on are cleared off.

In the morning, put a pretty tablecloth, or piece of material on your table. Get out all of your candlesticks, or votives and arrange them so that you like the way it all looks. Put your napkins and serving pieces on the table as well as your plant. Arrange the utensils in cups or other containers. Put the wine bottles on a tray, or trays, with the glasses. Find the bottle opener. Put the white wine and the cold drinks in the fridge. Make ice if you’ll need it. If you can persuade your helper to come early, get him or her to help. If you baked the night before, they can wash the dishes. If you’re planning to make scones, do it in the afternoon, and get your helper to wash the dishes, or do a load in the dishwasher.

Take a nap. Get your nails done. Have a bubble bath. Do what you need to do to look as fabulous as possible. Look around and get the cat beds and water dishes out of the way. You and your helper can now put out the cheese and crackers and paté and grapes and whatever other goodies you’ve acquired. Light the candles and dim the lights. Let your friends in the door and have a ball! Do not start cleaning up until everyone is gone (except your helper, to whom you now owe some major favors). Put away all the lovely leftovers to eat whenever you like in the next few days. Try to wash up anything encrusted with anything before you go to bed so that you don’t have to use paint remover in the morning to get it off.

Having a crash day the next day is very helpful. I like to eat a breakfast with any leftover scones and do the crossword, and later knit and nap, or read a good book, or take a walk.

If you’re the type who keeps track of repaying your social obligations, you’ve probably done it, and don’t need to do anything similar for a good long time. If like me, you only really like your own parties (with some notable exceptions), maybe you’d like to do more just for the love of it.