To Holiday Letter or Not?

December 11, 2020Holidays, Uncategorizedwinter holidaysbetty.belanus@gmail.com

Well, it’s that time of year again when I debate whether it’s worth it to send out holiday cards and also to include some sort of holiday letter. I did compile one of these, and I hate for it to go to waste. And, I do appreciate reading the (more concise) versions sent by my friends.

But our printer has been giving me trouble, from non-connectivity to low ink reserves, and I hate to keep bothering my poor husband (and resident Tech Support Person) with these problems. (For one thing, he likes to recycle the ink cartridges himself and this usually results in pools or smears of various colors from magenta to cyan all over the dining room table, and his fingers, and anything else within striking distance.)

I used to send out photos of our darling daughter when she was younger, necessitating getting her to pose in some vaguely holiday themed way next to a pine tree or something, and then getting the photos printed (remember printed photos?) by whatever arcane means we had back when she was a child. This was before cell phone cameras or even separate digital cameras were prevalent (and she isn’t even 30 yet!).

Then I went to a family newsletter sort of thing, invariably criticized by husband and daughter about which photos I had chosen and what I said about their activities. Everyone’s a critic!

So, this year, having decided that I will send out cards to those people who are still on my card exchange list, do I just write nice handwritten notes to everyone, and if they really want to know more, suggest they connect to my blog? This works for the more computer savvy among them, but not that handful of Luddites or older folks who don’t do computers. Or just don’t like blogs.

I think I will just attach my letter thing here and hope for the best. If you want to go the extra mile and download it, please give that a try. If not, don’t. Apologies to those who don’t read my blog and to those who don’t want to click on the link as it’s the only way I could figure to add it. But since you are not reading this, I will have to apologize to you via written note. I am pretty familiar with that technology!

NOTE ON FEATURED IMAGE: We finally got to view the holiday lights at the Mormon Temple last year, which were very cool! Happy holidays to all!

2020-Holiday-letter-thingee Download

Thanksgivings Past and Future

November 25, 2020ThanksgivingThanksgivingbetty.belanus@gmail.com

I’ve been scrolling through my digital photos and reminiscing about the the changing cast of characters, packed around our table on Thanksgivings past. Our usual dining room table, that is, augmented by one or two additional, impromptu addendums to accommodate the crowd. Everyone smiling over the “groaning board” of turkey, trimmings and potluck contributions.

For many years, we joined our friends Nancy and Steve and their family and friends in Upper Marlboro, Maryland for Thanksgiving. After they moved to Delaware we were still invited but decided it was just a bit too far to travel for the day. So we honored the “friends and family” tradition by hosting our own feast with anyone who wasn’t already committed elsewhere. Interns, far from home. People whose families lived too far away for just a long weekend visit. A cousin or two who live nearby.

This year many of us are paring and/or hunkering down, Zooming with family and friends, cooking alternative menus. We are going to make some Indian-inspired dishes and put the turkey off till next week, when we have finished quarantining from our daughter who is visiting from California, luckily for an extended stay through the remaining holidays.

It will be a memorable day and year, one way or the other. Hopefully the story we tell in the future will start like this: “Remember that one Thanksgiving when we all had to stay home because of the pandemic…”

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Ah, remember when we could just stand near each other and talk…

This was probably our “critical mass” of about 16 guests a few years ago. It has averaged at about 8-10 since then.

Also remember when you could sit around the table after dinner and play silly games like this one where you pass around phrases and draw pictures to illustrate them?

This was a tradition dating from our trips to Nancy and Steve’s feast. Our daughter always baked a chocolate cake because she didn’t like pie. The sentiment is timeless.

Friends and Food: Comfort in Spite of Distance

November 13, 2020foodcomfort foods, food and friendsbetty.belanus@gmail.com

This past week, I had two food encounters with friends – one in person, one over the miles via Zoom – that were fun and meaningful despite the distance between us. It’s possible, it just takes a fair amount of planning.

The first was a tea in honor of my friend Debi’s recent birthday. Usually, we go out for tea somewhere within a two-hour drive or less from our homes. We’ve been doing this for so many years to mark her birthday in October and mine in February, sometimes twice a year but other years somewhere in between as a combination treat. If we’d actually kept notes, we could have by now written a “Guide to Tea Around DC.” Instead, we tend to try to test our memories every year by discussing the places we’ve been.

We tend to recall places by some memorable decor, type of tea, theme of the offerings, or in some cases an event. The latter includes recalling the time at Beans in the Belfry in Brunswick, MD when the waitress slipped and dumped all the little sandwiches into my open purse, or the time we arrived for a relaxing tea experience at Sweet Simplici-Tea in Sykesville, MD only to find a full-on beer festival happening on the same street.

This year, instead of braving a tea room in the time of COVID-19, I planned a socially-distanced tea for Debi at my house. This involved thinking about what we usually have at the teas we’ve liked best (a full menu including soup and salad along with the usual tea savories and sweets and of course scones and a selection of teas), finding recipes, and then actually baking, cooking, and making a really big mess in the kitchen. Next, getting out some nice china, tea cups and saucers, cloth napkins, and etc. I got a whole new appreciation for tea rooms, and will never scoff at the $25-$30 they charge per person for full afternoon teas.

The second food experience stemmed from the fact that some of my folklore women friends missed our usual food adventures when we meet in person for the annual American Folklore Society meetings. We decided to cook and eat and talk together one evening.

We chose to make gnocchi from scratch, something that none of us had ever attempted. Not just normal/simple gnocchi, but a recipe for sweet potato gnocchi with sage butter sauce which sounded totally awesome (and was).

It was deeply satisfying to knead and shape the dough, watch the little pillows come to the top of the boiling water, then to brown nicely in the bubbling browned butter. We had some laughs when our friend Lucy lost the flour she had measured, “which was here a minute ago,” and other little silly things along the way.

We then all sat down and ate (in my case, way too much of) the finished product, talked, laughed some more, and got a little weepy that we weren’t able to meet together. But somehow, the fluffy little balls of potato pasta eased the sadness. And the miles between Cathy and I in the DC area, Sue in Northern Indiana and Lucy in Northern Ohio melted away with each mouthful.

Debi contemplates a tea a few years back in a commercial tea room.

Debi sits at one end of our long table for tea at our house last week. So much for the intimate tea experience.

Tea goodies in progress. The kitchen was a disaster area after all that baking! How do they do it at tea rooms??

Sweet potato gnocchi served up with friends on Zoom.

I’m still eating this days later and every time I have some, I think about my friends and how much fun we had preparing and eating together even at a distance.

Industrial Echoes

November 1, 2020#Pennsylvania State Parks, industrial heritage, travel#PennsylvaniaStateParks, industrial heritagebetty.belanus@gmail.com

A trip to one of Pennsylvania’s 111 State Parks is as likely to uncover some of the state’s industrial past as it is to introduce you to natural wonders. Case in point, our visit yesterday to Canoe Creek State Park in Hollidaysburg.

In this case, it is the state’s once-thriving limestone industry that we learned a bit about. I say “a bit” because although you can view what is left of the two historic lime kilns (see photos below), the interpretation consists of three pretty worn interpretive signs, and the small museum/interpretation area at the park office was closed. (Double bad luck for us as we were hoping to get our recently acquired Pennsylvania State Park Passport stamped!)

One of the signs reminded the reader to think about how this quiet, seemingly bucolic parkland was once teeming with sound, sights, and smells. My imagination ran even further into the senses, speculating that you could probably have even tasted industry in the air as smokestacks belched, engines sent fumes billowing, and sweat poured off laborers.

Now, all we could hear was our own footfalls, a few distant crows calling, a woodpecker drilling for insects, and – when our trail skirted a scattering of homes on the outskirts of the park – a tinkle of wind chimes in the distance. The air was fresh in the mid-40s degree weather, and the dappled sun illuminated what was left of the autumn leaves in the tall maples, tulip poplars and oaks.

Ghosts and echoes of industry past, fitting for a Halloween hike.

What’s left of the Blair group of lime kilns stand like sentinels to a more industrious past.

View from the top. Steve attempts to glean helpful info from the park brochure. Or perhaps starts mapping our course on the notoriously unhelpful trail map.

Limestone, limestone everywhere. The trees which have grown up in the hundred or so years since the limestone industry thrived here cling tenaciously to it.

The second kiln site is more ghostly, half hidden in the overgrown woods.

A portion of the trail follows the old road bed of the railroad which carried the processed lime to market. Traces of the crumbling railroad ties are underfoot.

Sensing Fall

October 25, 2020#Pennsylvania State Parks, Central Pennsylvania, fallfall, sensesbetty.belanus@gmail.com

Wait, how did it get to be not only fall already, but close to the end of October? Is time speeding up? Maybe.

Last week was the most perfect of fall weather in South Central Pennsylvania. Sunny and into the 70s each day, with the colors, smells and sounds of the season fully awakening the senses.

Sound: The katydids, which had stopped their call and response at night during an earlier cold spell, started up again during the warmer nights. I love to leave the bedroom window open to the cool evening and let them sing me to sleep. Walking in the woods creates the shush-shush-shush of plowing through inches of crispy dry fallen leaves.

Shuffling through the fall leaves.

Smell: We purloined ripe red apples from the park’s small and totally untended orchard. No one cares, but you have to watch out for the wicked big hornets who also enjoy the fruit. Shaking the branches brings down a rain of apples; as they hit the ground they let off their sweet and tangy scent. They are not the prettiest of apples, with black spots, nicks from their tumble, and an occasion worm hole (sometimes with the occupant still inside), but they smell perfect. Apple sauce and apple cake planned in the near future!

Sight: Maybe not the reddest of years, but the oranges and yellows of the maples was intense enough. And the red oaks added their deep tones to the mix. Earth tones of the dried grasses, corn and soybeans contrasted with the bright leaves. We made the trek up to the overlook at Cowan’s Gap State Park to get the full effect from above. I always feel virtuous after this two-mile climb up the mountain and back down.

More sights in this group of pictures. Enjoy what’s left of fall and let it take your mind off everything else. I don’t think I need to elaborate on what “everything else” is right now.

A walk in Waynesboro, PA at that time of evening when the sun makes everything look even more intense than it is already.

A person in foreground at overlook over a fall landscape of small lake and mountains with fall colors. — The fall colors look good at least. Me, well, not so much.

Lake Affects 2: Loony Tunes on the Pond

September 13, 2020Adirondacks, memories, travel, Uncategorized#adirondacks, #loons, #rollinspond, campingbetty.belanus@gmail.com

During the second part of my vacation, I joined my old high school buddies, Debi, Debbie and Chris on an Adirondack adventure. (Not that this was really “roughing it”, but tent camping in your 60s is an adventure in and of itself. No matter how soft your camp mattress is, you wake up stiff and fold yourself out of the cocoon of the sleeping bag slowly and ungracefully. Groaning.) Lots of fresh air and space for distancing, especially after Labor Day.

We met up at lovely Rollins Pond. Why are some of the innumerable bodies of water up there are called ponds and some lakes? Apparently it has to do with the depth. But anyhow, Rollins is a pretty big pond and most camping sites are situated a short distance from the shore. Perfect for kayaking or taking a swim right from your “back door.”

Water-based activities by day, roaring campfire by night. This was our “routine” for three days.

The first full day there we set off in kayaks after breakfast and encountered one of the famous northern loons and her chick swimming placidly along. I regret the decision not to bring my phone with me to snap some shots, because I got close enough to stare into the mom’s beady red eye and to scare the chick into keeping close by her side. During various parts of the day, especially around dusk and dawn, we heard their haunting call.

I was hoping to see another loon or two when we took a sunset paddle, but alas we only crossed paths with a large group of hooded mergansers. I was prepared with my camera this time, though.

After dinner, Chris chopped a couple of humongous logs into oblivion, and the dry wood Debi and I had purchased along the way kept the stockpile going. Toasted on our front sides and chilled on the back sides, mesmerized by the glowing coals, we sipped wine and gossiped for hours about our acquaintances.

Our family always took camping trips when I was a kid, so this form of vacation always brings back childhood memories. I recalled how my mom would save up waxed half gallon milk cartons for the trips, and each night when bedtime approached, she would bring them out, one for me and one for my sister. She set them on the back of the fire pit and set them on fire. When they had burned down to ashes, we had to go to bed, no whining or cajoling for more time in front of the warm campfire allowed!

We didn’t have any such time restrictions on this trip, but by ten p.m. we were ready to call it a night and climb into our cocoons, lungs full of fresh pine-scented air, lulled to sleep by the loons.

Home away from home. (That was the name of our pop-up camper when we were kids by the way; Debbie and Chris have not named their small RV.)

The merganser group takes in the sunset.

Even a non-spectacular sunset is worth a paddle. Can’t complain about the one we got.

Second day paddle started in Rollins, through a stream to Floodwater Pond and through more channels like this one ending eventually in Fish Creek Pond.

Lake Affects I: Misery (Bay) Loves Company

September 13, 2020#Pennsylvania State Parks, Presque Isle, travel#eriepennsylvania, #lakeerie, #presqueislebetty.belanus@gmail.com

After a spring and summer of way too much time on screens, I took a week and half off for a two-part vacation offering lots of water views. First destination to celebrate my husband’s birthday: Erie, Pennsylvania.

After a meandering trip through the back roads and small towns of western PA, we arrived in Erie just in time to catch a great sunset at Erie Bluffs State Park. After that we hunkered down in our semi-rustic cabin near Elk Creek.

The next day was our “discover Presque Isle” day. Presque Isle (“almost an island” in French) is a name shared with places in Maine and Michigan, so it will sound familiar to many. The Pennsylvania version is a peninsula, called aptly, The Penisula by the locals, jutting out between the bay and the open waters of Lake Erie. Erie is the next-to-smallest of the Great Lakes, but is still pretty darned impressive in size and scope. The Peninsula is entirely taken up by a state park with lots to offer for a day around, on or in the lake.

First stop was Misery Bay and the Perry Monument. I was thinking, Perry the Arctic Explorer and wondering what the heck the connection was. How wrong! We’re talking Admiral Oliver Hazard Perry, the War of 1812 hero here. Through the extensive series of historic markers flanking the obelisk honoring Perry and his brave men, we learned that after their grand defeat of the British navy, they wintered-over in this bay.

On a warm and calm late summer day, the bay near the memorial looks inviting and benign. Not so in the winter of 1813-14. And maybe in any other winter for that matter. It’s name, Misery Bay, stems from the freezing temperatures and sickness that killed off a dozen men that season, and made the rest of them, well, miserable.

Luckily for me, the winds were behaving and the air was fresh. I embarked on the Lady Kate, a sight-seeing boat which, with social distancing and everyone wearing masks (including our narrator, who regaled us with information for 90 minutes straight) took us on a trip across the bay into the open waters of the lake.

After the boat ride, we had a picnic, explored Horseshoe Pond with its ring of over twenty houseboats, and viewed the picaresque black and white channel marker from the shore. I dipped my toes into the cool waters at one of the beaches before we left in late afternoon.

The next day we did a bit of a walk-around in downtown Erie, parking on the edge of Perry Park which features a looming statue of the hero. “We have met the enemy and he is ours” is his famous quotation. For our part, we met Erie, PA and now it is ours in memory and pictures.

Sunset on Lake Erie from Lake Erie Bluffs

The sky kept getting more impressive after the sun set. Birthday Boy documents.

The Lady Kate awaits passengers near the Perry monument.

Channel marker which looks like a mini-lighthouse, is as photogenic from shore as from the water view. There’s also a “real” lighthouse which is also much photographed.

The Man Himself presiding over downtown monument in Perry Park.

Nature of the Neighborhood

August 29, 2020Uncategorizedbetty.belanus@gmail.com

We’ve been spending the majority of our time during the pandemic and work from home experience in south central Pennsylvania, but occasionally we do need to dip back into our usual domain of Arlington, Virginia. One one of these occasions a couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a “walk on the wild side” on the Windy Run Trail.

This trail is only a short distance from our home, but offers a semi-wilderness-like tangle of trees and underbrush arrayed along a babbling stream (Windy Run, obviously). Although as you progress toward my usual goal, a dramatic bluff over-looking the Potomac River, the rushing sound of the stream gives way to the steam of rush-hour on the George Washington Memorial Parkway, which you cross under.

The day I sojourned along the trail, there were few other people astir, just a few dog walkers on close to the trail head. As I went deeper into the woods and up and down the steep portions on this muggy day, the air felt heavy and instead of feeling energized by the nature all around me, I began to feel slightly uneasy. I came for a short escape to nature, but the trees and the atmosphere started pressing down on me.

When I reached the underpass, the feeling accelerated. Graffiti referencing the killing of George Floyd was writ large along the metal beams. I caught my own breath as the full weight of the message “I can’t breathe” brought me back to the reality of our troubled country.

There is no escaping the news, the angry division of people, the fear and uncertainty. Nor should there be. It is the time and space we live in and must all confront daily. We live side by side with nature and human history, both at times beautiful but often ugly and disheartening.

I passed under the bridge with the traffic roaring above me and got to the other side. I stood on the high bluff gazing at the muddy waters of the Potomac. I felt a mix of emotions – awe at how untamed nature can still appear but cognizant of the fact that humans still fight so hard to control it, and each other.

Roll on, mighty river. Bring us some hope for better days.

The intersection of nature and human construction.

A view perhaps similar to what the early Patawomeks, on whose land I stood, might have encountered?

Creative COVID Content

August 8, 2020Uncategorizedbetty.belanus@gmail.com

Getting creative is necessary in our “new normal.” Connecting creatively. Cooking creatively. Protesting creatively.

Along those lines, I have dusted off the sewing machine, tried new recipes, and – maybe most fun of all – started collaging with my friend Martha. I will admit, when Martha asked me if I wanted to “collage with her” via Skype, I said, “Huh?”

Collage seemed like something that went out with macrame (though I hear that is coming back, too?). But, since there are many old magazines around our premises just begging to be cut up and then recycled, I agreed to give it a try.

So, every couple of weeks, we call each other and chat while gluing little pieces of cut up magazines and other paper and even maybe fabric scraps onto pieces of paper to create some kind of artistic thing. The last two times I made cards, which to me seemed more useful than a potential wall hanging.

I am practical-minded, obviously, but the product is not the point. Its the companionship, the chat we have about whatever comes to mind or happened that day or week, which comes simultaneously with the art-making, that is the real exchange here.

In other creative endeavors, I have made some face masks out of old sewing projects for family and friends. I realized that some of the material in my scrap drawer is over 30 years old, but fabric doesn’t expire and it’s good to work it into something everyone is using everyday now (or should be use, but that is another story we won’t get into here).

As for cooking creatively, this can mean using whatever is in your pantry, or even engaging in a little friendly competition. My buddies (who I used to eat lunch with in the office) and I decided to stage a “pie baking competition” over July 4 weekend. Their’s were a lot prettier and more creatively crusted than mine, but we declared everyone a winner anyhow.

I just wish we had been able to share the pies with one another. Some day soon, we can all still hope. Meanwhile, we do what we can to stay connected.

Rainbow card collage. I sent it to my mom who likes rainbows.

Sort of a sunrise or sunset type of feel. It’s all in the interpretation, right?

Masks for my mom and sister. I can’t even recall what I originally made out of these cotton fabrics !

One crust pie with bumpy orange surface decorated with orange flowers on either side. — Sweet potato pie which I tried to make prettier by photographing with day lilies! It tasted good at least even if it wasn’t really that pretty!

Bagpipes and Big Wet Rodents: Expect the Unexpected at Cowans Gap

July 19, 2020#Pennsylvania State Parks, memoriesbagpipes, Cowans Gap State Park, memoriesbetty.belanus@gmail.com

As I pulled up to the parking lot nearest the tiny beach of Cowans Gap Lake for an evening swim, I thought I heard bagpipes. In nearly thirty years of coming to the lake to walk, swim, boat, surreptitiously pick apples, and otherwise commune with nature, that was a first.

Cowans Gap is our default Pennsylvania State Park. Located about six miles from our cabin atop Tuscarora Summit, it offers year-round recreation. Sandy beach without jellyfish and sharks – though maybe a few stray Canada geese – boat launch and rental, and, most used of all by our family, a one-mile trail circumnavigating the lake.

We started coming to the park when visiting my (then boyfriend, now husband’s) friend John Small, who lived nearby. I recall, though he doesn’t, talking about our future on the one occasion I talked him into renting a paddle boat. (He’s not a boat person, and I now know it must have only been true love which drove him to acquiesce.)

Several years later, we introduced our baby daughter to the joys of walking around the lake on a cold February day. Not sure she was convinced then, but when she got older and we had built our cabin, many more weekends included a walk around the lake. We formed a ritual which included: 1. Always turn right from the parking lot and walk across the dam first. 2. Pitch a good sized rock off the dam aiming at the stream below. 3. Stop to walk out on the small fishing pier to look for fish or other wild life (salamanders, newts, etc.) 4. Skip stones at the shallow spot near the island. 5. Have a stick race at the bridge.

Over the years, we encountered many wonders walking around the lake. The eerie sound of ice cracking in a spring thaw. Exploring the contours of the lake bed the year they drained it for dredging. And once, while walking around the lake after dark (which they don’t let you do anymore now), a perfect luna moth glowing green in the moonlight.

But, I had never heard anyone playing the bagpipes before, and thought I might be imagining those faint but distinct notes of Scotland the Brave and Amazing Grace. To make sure I wasn’t going crazy, I asked some other beach-goers, and they heard it too. The music brought back memories of my one and only trip to Scotland in 1988, and another bagpiper playing the same tunes when we visited Loch Ness.

When I got home, I looked up the events page of the park to see if they had scheduled a program of bagpipe playing that evening. But all I found was an upcoming program celebrating Big Wet Rodent Day. The wonders of Cowans Gap never cease.

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