Mrs. Teabody Greets the Day

March marches on, doesn't it? Last week at this time Mother Nature was showing us here in Pennsylvania much of what she knows about creating havoc with wind. Needless to say, we were impressed. Perhaps distressed. Definitely stressed. I like calm. I like electricity. I was glad when the storm was over, but the storm and subsequent power outage reminded me of the forces of Nature of our planet and our place on it.  Of course many things about the world are outside our control; that being said, we still make deliberate choices about our behavior and our interaction with the world and the other humans whose paths we cross. Some of these choices are not wise. Face it: we often CREATE problems for ourselves. We overindulge in food; we push our bodies too hard or not hard enough; we abuse our organs with excesses of all kinds and we abuse our bones with our awkwardness,  our lack of care or  by pushing  our physical boundaries. And we do every bit as much da...

"Where would we be without our tea?"  Hello, March!  Do you hold your breath every morning wondering what surprises the weather will bring? After the most erratic February in memory, you might indeed  have just cause. But here we are at the front door of March and we are going to be hopeful. Today we are all about tea and posies--blooms if you will. The past two days have been busy at Tickle Your Fancy as parcel after parcel arrived-- all delivered by the charming  and popular UPS gentleman who was persuaded to have a freshly-baked scone yesterday. At least once a month we try to add to the already extensive menu of teas available at  TYF. Just five short years ago, we first heard the name Pu-erh. This fermented tea is pronounced Pooh-air , and one of its descriptors is "warm hay in a barn." Oh, my! How perfectly odd we thought at the time. However, we now carry at least three versions of Pu-erh in loose form. Mrs. Teabody rather enjoys this savory...

I vividly recall the first time I stood on the shoreline in Margate, New Jersey (39th parallel North-- same as McConnellsburg, PA) and contemplated the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean.  I'd studied geography in school, watched my teachers pull maps of the world down in front of the blackboard, memorized a thing or fifty about the world. There wasn't a school library in my past that didn't feature a globe and it set my brain cells on fire to spin it and think how we all lived on an oblate spheroid floating in space and that we spun, too. Dizzying concept for a child. One of the thoughts I contemplated as I stood there was that if I could walk in a straight line across the Atlantic Ocean, I'd come to Europe. Hopefully, I'd end up in some charming town in England near the Beatles. Near Paul.  This morning's research of the 39th parallel North tells me we share our latitude with the Island of Ibiza (Spain), Island of Sardinia (Italy) then Greece, Turkey, Iran, U...

How clear, how lovely bright, How beautiful to sight     Those beams of morning play; How heaven laughs out with glee Where, like a bird set free, Up from the eastern sea     Soars the delightful day. To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong,     Shall squander life no more; Days lost, I know not how, I shall retrieve them now; Now I shall keep the vow     I never kept before. Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies     Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground     Falls the remorseful day. - A.E. Housman Good Morning from our icy-aired, snow-covered mountain--a perfect sendoff weather-wise for  the final day of the year, don't you agree? My advanced years mean a less than perfect memory but photographs spur thoughts and it never hurts to take stock, don't you agree, if for no other reason t...

"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...