Mrs. Teabody Greets the Day

"Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es." - Anthelme Brillat-Savarin  Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, in Physiologie du Gout, ou Meditations de Gastronomie Transcendante, 1826: "Dis-moi ce que tu manges, je te dirai ce que tu es."   This translates to "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." Or as we have come to phrase it:  You are what you eat Five days after Thanksgiving 2017 many of us are still going around feeling like stuffed turkeys--bodies too big for our legs, woefully ill-prepared for flight or sudden movement, and quite willing to follow blindly those of our kind without considering consequences. Garbage in, garbage out "In computer science, garbage in, garbage out (GIGO) is where flawed, or nonsense input data produces nonsense output or "garbage". The principle also applies more generally to all analysis and logic, in that arguments are unsound if their premises are flawed."...

In just a few hours our house will be filled with friends and relatives just like houses all across America and, God willing, we will all sit around a table enjoying our iconic menu with noteworthy variations. Taking center stage will be the bird, of course. It may be brined, naked, ready to carve or served ready to eat. Stuffing. Mash. Gravy. Noodles. You know the drill. Theme and variations.  At our house when we sit down at the table, we will all join hands and in that circle of Thanksgiving, we will share at least one thing we are grateful for and we will note the absence of so many we have loved and still love and remember.  A good thing. There's one little family story that inevitably crops up--a story about my mother and her indomitable cheerful spirit. It goes like this: My mother Dorothy lived in a world of hard work interspersed with short spurts of coffee drinking and conviviality. She had the warmest personality and a ready and loud laugh. A few decad...

From the "funny if not so pathetic" file:  Keyless Ignition and the Big Purse -- one woman's tale.  It had to happen. Inevitability was written all over it. The day that "Ted" at Antrim Honda handed me the "key" to my new car and told me I had keyless ignition is burned into my brain. I was incredulous when I was told I could enter my locked car by standing near it, that I could start my car without having the key in my hand. Conceding all that, I also knew in that instant that this “innovation” came with its own set of problems. After all, I am of THAT generation of women. I carry the Big Purse. I and women just like me never leave our houses without everything we may need in the course of our day. Yes, I do admire those of you who tuck your credit card into your flip flops and the world is your oyster. Not so much for those of us carrying all the requisites for any and all transactions. These include but are not limited to:  French wal...

"Time is a wheel in constant motion always rolling us along  Tell me who wants to look back on their years and wonder where those years have gone." -- Lee Ann Womack Pre-dawn and Venus and Jupiter are passing each other quietly; a friend sends a text from half a world away letting me know that Prague is as beautiful as he'd hoped. A pile of clothing on my nicely-made bed awaits only some toiletries and in less than an hour I'll meet up with a friend I have known since I was a little, little girl and the two of us will be off on one of our adventures. God willing we will  be safe in our travels--she driving, me as navigator. The world IS a wide and wonderful place, you know. By the standards of some folks I travel too much. By the standards of some other folks, I have a very narrow range for my wanderings. When it comes to how far anyone ventures away from the known, travel becomes a personal choice. There's a moment -- sometimes several moment...