When does a daughter become an adult?

When my daughter got her driver's license, I didn't feel like she was an adult. I just felt nervous.

When she turned twenty one, I didn't feel like she was an adult. I just figured she could buy booze without being sneaky.

But today my daughter ran 13.1 miles in the Nike Women's Half Marathon, which she started training for last April. You have to decide to do that yourself, and stick to it on your own. 


Now, I know, my daughter is an adult.

E & K Family Book Review: Surgeon, Turned Musician, Turned Private I: A Free Man of Color, By Barbara Hambly

E & K Family Book Review: Surgeon, Turned Musician, Turned Private I: A Free Man of Color, By Barbara Hambly

Steve Jobs: Heroes and Heroines

I took the pedestrian time portal over to the downtown Palo Alto Apple Store yesterday. It's a nice walk past the library and park fields on a long path of trees that runs alongside the Caltrain railroad track.  At the end of the path, I cross San Francisquito Creek a time portal that has occasionally taken me back to visit with a local Ohlone tribe, back before 1769 when the Spaniards arrived. 


Yesterday, however, I continued past the temptation to drop back a few centuries and gather fall berries with a few of my early California sisters, and headed out along Alma Street on the path to more recent times.  


No matter what time of day I've walked past, since Steve Jobs death, there's been a crowd of people gathered at the window of the downtown apple store, writing postits, dropping off flowers, taking photos, or simply reading the notes that others have left. I found at least six different languages yesterday, two of whose origin I couldn't even make a guess.


We all need heroes and heroines so that we can go forth with a touch more heroism ourselves.

Digital Quilting:Global Warming, The Norwegian Block

The first block in my Digital Global Warming Quilt.


This is a surprisingly challenging quilt to design.


Who ARE these Americans who are denying Global Warming? Here's one article that gave me some ideas. "Why Americans Deny are in Denial".

Quilting Mission Style: San Juan Bautista

Click on the illustration above for improved time portal access

My friend Marilyn and I took a field trip back through time last Friday, and drove down to Mission San Juan Bautista. The California missions are garden spots filled with architectural charm, but in their heyday they spelled the destruction of culture for native people, not to mention being decidely unhealthy environments. It's tempting when visiting the California missions to see what turns up in the way of time portals. After all this may be our big chance to do a little historical rewriting.

Or maybe we can pretend these are just pretty buildings with lovely gardens?


Born here or not, we're Californians. Our history includes all the people who passed through this mission. Every one of those folks are our ancestors. Like a mission-style quilt, we're all pieced together  whether  our great grandma came from Orio Spain, Ohio, or an Ohlone village.



 

Traveling Through Time into the Commyne Place

I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person out there who's running on sensory overload when it comes to hoarding digital photos, recipes, great quotes, patterns and lists of library books I'm definitely going to read within the next year. Too much technology makes it kind of easy to hold onto too much.

So I was glad to read that even 400 years ago, Elizabethans were overdoing things when it came to collecting the wisdom of the ages too. Apparently  Common Place books , a repository for all the things you mean to get around to, memorize, read and pass onto your friends were the latest thing. Gee.... this sure reminds me of something I do on my computer. Now gee, what could it be?

Isn't old Will the best playwright ever? Quick before you forget, go ahead and write down those quips about asses and wise fathers, that made you laugh so hard you almost bust your stay laces. What better place then your new Common Place book to keep them from getting lost.

Did you finally score the world's best receipt for grouse pastry puffs? Into the Common Place book it goes.

Managed to sneak in a detailed description of the perfect knot garden when your hosts weren't looking? Slip that drawing in your Common Place book.

Found a wonderful new method for poisoning rats? Tuck it in.

The idea, of course, is that you'll know right where to go when you next  tie on your pastry apron or slip on your rat-taming, gardening gloves. Oh you bet.

Now we know why somebody invented the search key.

A fun blog entry with great detailed info about common place books (and other fun reads as well).

Time Traveling Forward to Fall

Just this morning I was listening to a BBC History Magazine podcast, time traveling back to World War II. But tonight I'm going forward, just a few weeks really. Fall officially starts on September 23, 5:05 a.m., according to  The Old Farmer's Almanac.

I'm thinking fall now because I just put a batch of applesauce spice muffins in the oven for the resident geologist to take out in the field. I made them with the apples I raked up and sauced from our runty little apple tree in the driveway. They are the ones the squirrels kick down, after chewing them and deciding they aren't reall….llly ripe. They also don't make the world's best apple sauce, because they are kind of green and they aren't cooking apples. But they make fine muffins PLUS the added benefit that if I don't leave them under the tree, Mr. Rat and his clan don't come a' callin' (at least not in the driveway).

Yup, it all just puts me in a very seasonal mood- the fall harvest, the squirrels and the jolly little rats. Here's my recipe, or receipt, as us time travelers like to say.

Applesauce Spice Muffins

A creation of The Simple Romantic

350 degrees, until baked/fork clean - depends on your muffin tin

Get out a Large Bowl 

Put in dry ingredients and mix 'em

Make a well in the dry stuff

 Beat one egg up in the well

Add in rest of wet ingredients. 

Put in muffin tins. 

Bake

Dry Ingredients

1 ¾ cup flour – type you like

½ cup regular oatmeal (NOT quick cooking type)

½ cup brown sugar

A whole bunch of black raisins (maybe ¾ of a cup?)

1 teaspoon baking soda (I run it through a sieve)

1 t ground cinnamon

¼ t nutmeg

(I also like the following spices in addition to the above – Resident geologist does not – though he eats them anyway – they are quite good either way)

½ t ground cloves

½ t ground allspice

Wet Ingredients

-   1 egg

-   ¼ cup corn oil (or butter if you like that)

-   ¼ cup buttermilk

-   1 cup applesauce –(preferably made from the culls that fall in my driveway)