A Kitchen's Progress

The kitchen, before

The kitchen in the house was a near miss. Somebody had chosen concrete counter tops and squeezed the rest of the kitchen around them, and it just looked heavy and depressing. The room was not large, but spacious enough if every inch could be judiciously planned.

I hired a contractor good-looking enough to be on HGTV (but I swear that is not how he got the job--he is a skilled carpenter and knew how to make the most of every inch.) Yes, he's easygoing and charming, and that counts, but the main thing was that he was highly recommended as reliable, creative, conscientious, competent--and he knows how to build stuff. Conferring with him I discovered I could save money by buying cabinets off the shelf at the large hardware store, and he could build open shelving above to maximize storage while giving an uncrowded look to the room.

First came the demo, which I guess is a guy thing--he and the team had ripped out everything before the end of the day I closed on the house. It's been six weeks since it looked like this, but for weeks I was in a construction zone and it felt as if I always would be.

Demo done

I had my furniture in but only a hot plate and a microwave, and the refrigerator, which would have to be replaced, sat in the dining room. It was in good working order but did not measure up for the kitchen. I had to shell out for a counter-depth one, which is probably the same size in cubic feet, but fit better into the new design. Weeks went by with me having lunch at local restaurants and camping out in the house. I could make a decent breakfast on the limited equipment, eating lunch out. Not exactly a hardship, but a disruption in routine.

I chose a quartz counter in a neutral color and my contractor and I created a tile back splash that reflected my infatuation for the Pasadena Craftsman look. I picked neutral beige subway tiles and a selection of gently-colored accent squares to be applied behind the range and at random intervals amid the subways rimming the counter.

Pasadena Craftsman look--tiles anyway!

Open shelving

The open shelves work very well. All that is left is the spice rack which will go in tomorrow, below the window next to the stove.



There is a shelf on the other side of the room for cookbooks and whatever gathers there. Since it goes above my custom built-in table where my coffee pot and toaster live, cups and breakfast items have already found their place there.

Breakfast corner

So far, the kitchen is so much fun to cook in it almost feels like it's doing the cooking and washing up itself--I've made an apple cake and have a sourdough in process for some bread in the next couple of days--it won't be long before it roasts a chicken and makes a crème brulée. Where's that soufflée dish I bought as a bride in 1960? I'm sure I unpacked it the other day--but I don't think I've made a soufflée in the last 50 years. It's about time I did another!

The kitchen, After

A Day We Can't Forget

In September, 2001, I was in a very different place for where I sit today. This is what I wrote about this date in 2006:

I was on the first real vacation I had taken in years, beginning with a trip to Northern California for the big outdoor art show in Sausalito over the Labor Day weekend. My stepdaughter Amy had a booth at the show, and I went with her and her husband Phil to stay in a sweet little inn in San Rafael. During that leg of the trip I had managed to hook up with an old boyfriend, himself also single again, in San Francisco. He took me on a wondrous tour of the nighttime city -- wandering into haunts in Chinatown, catching the music in a great jazz club, and eating cioppino at a garlicky little restaurant.

I then went for a week with a friend I had known in junior high and had not seen since. Neil and her husband Neal--yes, they share the same first name--turned out to be delightful grownups--gourmets, nonconformists, and living in the Silverlake section of Los Angeles. They only had one car and they had no television set. They had a charming little storybook cottage with no pets except for the feral cats who lived in the backyard. Neil and I had been having one of the nice catching-up visits that old friends sometimes who have been separated for years are lucky enough to experience. I was scheduled to fly back home through Pensacola on September 13.

On this morning in 2001 Neil came in to wake me up at about six A.M. L.A. time. She told me of the terrible situation in New York. Remember, we had no tv to watch; she and Neal were listening to the radio. Then their friends began calling, realizing that they didn't have a television set, and thinking that would be the only way to learn about what was happening. Neal had worked at the World Trade Center only a few years before; he was beside himself with worry about friends. Neil and I worried about our own safety, and I knew there was no way I was going to fly back home in two days. But I wanted to get out of Los Angeles as soon as I could. Even though there was the sense that all major U.S. cities were in grave danger, Neil assured me that she had a sixth sense about these things and didn't think Los Angeles was going to be hit. Never mind that, no airport felt safe; I had to get home somehow.

Someone suggested the bus. Nothing sounded safer than a Greyhound Bus to me then, the big old lumbering behemoths that used to take me from Fairhope to Mobile on a Saturday afternoon to watch a movie. I knew it was going to be a hell of a ride from Los Angeles to Lower Alabama, but I cancelled the plane tickets and went to the bus station. Neil and I looked around and the little station looked clean and all but empty. This was going to be rather nice. I'd just get off when I got weary and find a nearby motel and get on the next bus going east when I got up in the morning.

Of course the trip did not turn out to be that pat. The first bus from the clean little station took me not eastward to Mobile, but rather to the main bus terminal in Los Angeles, which was teeming with humanity, and scared humanity at that. Luckily I had lived for 14 years in Manhattan and knew how to finesse myself to the head of a line while the crowd milled around looking confused. I felt a little guilty for that, but not much. I also had known enough to pack a small carry bag with enough stuff to get me through three nights and check the big bag straight on through to Mobile. I got a decent seat and stayed on the first miserable bus for an hour or two and got off when it got dark, at a town called Blythe on the California border. I spent the night at a really cheap hotel, compounding my anxiety with a fear of the intrusion of a rapist/murderer, as if I weren't scared enough. But all went pretty well. I wasn’t accosted in the room, and even got a little sleep. I had breakfast at daybreak at a nearby McDonald's and watched a glorious sunrise on the next bus. And so it went. A tour of the Great American West, looking at sunrises and flags flying from all the roadside businesses along the way. Once a kid in uniform got on and sat next to me. I said to him "What are we going to do?" and he said, "Make a parking lot out of 'em." Bless his heart, I thought, he has no idea.

I went through Arizona and New Mexico, and then came Texas. Neil had packed a little food for me, and a bottle of water. She lent me two books to get my mind off things. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and The Liars' Club. Ya Ya worked best--it spoke of home, and supportive women, and an unrealistically competent heroine. I climbed into that book and stayed there the whole trip. I never did finish The Liars' Club, clearly a far better book but not matching my mood.

I stayed on the bus, sleeping through Texas, rather than prolonging the trip by getting off and finding a place to stay at that point. As the bus heaved into Louisiana I did enjoy seeing familiar Southern scenery--marshes, bayous, and Spanish moss. I was getting toward home. I spent the night in a nice town, had one of the best breakfasts in my life, enhanced by the comfort of a small-town diner, with people chatting and behaving for all the world as if they were going to stay together and stay the same on into time immemorial. Being in their company made me feel everything was going to be all right. America was still small towns, contented people, and love. I think the town was Lafayette, Louisiana.  Most of it was washed away a few years later in Katrina, but those people at the breakfast restaurant are still there; I know they are.

It was a sobering trip. I was glad to be home. People wonder what has changed now that everybody is saying that the world has changed. This is it: I have. The props were knocked out from under me and I am not the same person who went to that art show and heard jazz in San Francisco. Everything I do is tinged with the memory of that tragedy and knowledge that although we survived this should not have happened, and that it happened because of mistakes our leaders had made, mistakes for which our whole country is responsible.

Unfortunately, since that day the mistakes have been compounded over and over until there is little credibility for our country and its value anywhere in the world. Politically, from the first there were those who said that we need to wage more wars--do it better, stay the course--rationalizing the original error of our ways. It sometimes seems to me that there will be no way out in my lifetime, and no hysterical behavior on anybody's part is going to change a thing.

This realization led me to another phase of my life, one in which I concentrate on my own concerns. The village that raised this child had become a place I don't recognize and I have left it for good. If I can make my own space better by doing my best, I can only hope that it will have some effect on the betterment of others. That's fair enough.

Taking Care of Oscar

I have had one of these for 30-odd years, and it showed. Over time it had turned green, brown and even black in spots, and there seemed to be no way to clean it. I tried baking-soda-peroxide paste, silver polish, good old detergent and water, but the tarnish it bore was apparently there to stay.

I love the object more and more as the years go by. It wasn't an Oscar at all, but a going-away gift when I announced I would be leaving Geneva after one last bang-up production in the amateur company I had founded in the early 1980s, The Little Theater of Geneva. The bang-up production was Neil Simon's The Gingerbread Lady,  and I played Evy, an alcoholic nightclub singer just out of rehab. As time for my departure drew nearer, the Little Theater and I had a lot of laughs, and this was presented to me at the official going-away party, after which my husband and I were off for a new life in the States. The "Oscar" says at its base, To Mary Lois Adshead/From your own creation/The Little Theater of Geneva/1981- The date of demise is left blank, in the unstated hope that the group would continue forever. I understand it did last for a while, disbanding after about ten years.

Oscars are nice keepsakes, and this one certainly was a conversation piece, sitting among my books on various bookshelves, from Alabama to Hoboken. I've unpacked it here and hoped to give it a nice place in this house, even though I'd noticed it wasn't aging well. Finally I hit on a solution--I'd paint it white and put it on display as a objet d'art.

I didn't know how to go about painting it as it was composed of some very shiny plastic or something that didn't look as if it would accept paint. I asked one of my painters Friday and he said he'd sand and steel wool it until it was rough enough, then hit it with a strong primer. It became a project for a weekend.

I started using the steel wool yesterday. Smooth as Oscar is, he has a lot of corners, crevices, and cracks, and they all were pretty black. I tried fine sandpaper, and that took off another layer of paint, but there was still tarnish lingering in unattractive places. I still couldn't determine what the material I was sanding was. At last I decided to stop scratching and start painting. I applied a coat of primer and he looked quite nice, dull in color but not tarnished. When that had dried I applied a white enamel. And here he is. There are a few drips, and it's a bit messy about his feet, but I hope not all that many people who look at him will be looking at that.

I think he'll look fine in his new incarnation. Still a conversation piece, but at least now nobody will say, "Is that a real Oscar?" which always embarrassed me a bit anyway. I would counter that it was "a gag gift that wasn't really a gag," which I think is the truth. Now I can add the tale for the renovation of the little guy, and he may come to find he is at home in my new life.

Michael Jackson's Birthday

As he looked after extensive plastic surgery, but not for long.

Michael Jackson was an extraordinary artist, perhaps not appreciated as he grew from an overindulged, overprotected, overpunished, overexposed child to a man of unusual tastes and a life that appeared freakish on the outside. If he had lived, he would be 56 years old today.

I wrote this on my blog soon after he died, inspired by the documentary This Is It, filmed mostly at the dress rehearsal for his last concert:

He was an extraordinary performer, a child prodigy grown to middle age, a transformative pop culture figure who died too young. Like most of us, he was compelled to examine his legacy, and Michael Jackson did it in public with This Is It, the farewell tour concert that he didn't complete. Luckily, there was 100 hours of footage of the rehearsals, and luckily for all of us that footage has been edited and put together into a riveting film that celebrates the life of the enigmatic genius that the eternal boy had become. We see him in rehearsal, holding back a little ("I have to conserve my voice..."), being coddled and revered ("Hold the rail, Michael!" as he's being introduced to the cherrypicker), being the exacting artist and director, and then, best of all, performing. There are charming notes as when they are discussing movements with him and he says, "That's the one the stewardesses do--I love that one, I absolutely love that one!", and that ride in the cherry-picker when he's carefully told, "This is the medium one, you'll be going much higher," and he responds quietly, "You know not to say that to me."

In the film we see a magnificent performer, the consummate professional, working carefully to perfect the show that is never to be. There is something inherently tragic at the same time that the movie is triumphant: Michael Jackson onstage is all that he was ever portrayed to be, and more. He is gentle and tentative offstage as he is commanding, powerful and exciting onstage. I was in a theater with about 25 other people, scattered about all through the house, and there was spontaneous applause at many times during the show. Sometimes we made inadvertent noises--groans, hoots, and sighs. I left the theatre behind two overweight young black women, and I heard one remark to the other, "I wish I had at least met him."

I actually did meet Michael Jackson once. It was after his Jackson Five days but years before Thriller. He sported a big Afro and wore a denim leisure suit. We were at a performance by The Dance Theatre of Harlem, and he was literally hanging back against a wall at intermission. I took the program over to him and he autographed it to my daughter. He spoke very softly and seemed almost embarrassed to be asked for his autograph. I am thrilled to think of that evening now, and to know that I still own that program.

It's hard to think of what the intervening years did to him, but there he is for all to see in This Is It, busting dance moves that he invented and that caused Fred Astaire to call him "the greatest dancer of the century." He was more than a phenomenon. He literally changed the world of dance and turned the world into dancers. He will never leave us, yet he left us cruelly too soon.

If you don't believe me, rent the movie.

Searching for Walt Disney

Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson in Saving Mr. Banks

I've had a lot of experience with Walt Disney in my life. As a child, I wept for Bambi; I feared as if for my own young life when Snow White ran through the dangerous wood to escape the evil queen, guilty of nothing but being so damn beautiful. I giggled at the mice in Cinderella, and was awed by the glorious ball gown and the glass slipper. By the time Alice in Wonderland was done I was bothered by the bastardization of the original Tenniel drawings by Disney artists. I preferred the original Peter Pan, and I could not abide the cutification of Winnie the Pooh, a dignified English gentleman of a teddy bear, made into a naïve infant. I didn't bother to see his version of Mary Poppins. I had long before vowed if I ever had a child he or she would not be taken to Disneyland.

I was, I suppose, a bit like P.L. Travers. I don't think I was ever as nasty as she is portrayed in the film Saving Mr. Banks, but it was not difficult for me to empathize with her. I understood Walt Disney and saw what he was doing, but I didn't have much respect for him. I hated the way he took existing works and cheapened them by dumbing them down, making them sentimental, smoothing them out, and creating a world which was neither magical nor enchanting but false. If I had written a book about a no-nonsense English nanny who knew how to solve problems, I would have great trepidation in allowing Disney anywhere near her.

I expected Saving Mr. Banks to be a whitewash of the whole Disney operation, and to gloss over the prickly Ms. Travers, or, worse, to portray her as being converted by the so-called Disney magic. Emma Thompson as Travers is immune. Saving Mr. Banks is really a biography of P.L. Travers, pitting a tense Englishwoman against an always-amiable American. She bristles at the atmosphere of California--the constant trays of hors d'oeurve, the informality of first names, the sunny, unrealistic atmosphere surrounding the whole Disney enterprise. Walt Disney courts her, in a way, and defers to her where he can. Nothing works. She has the rights to her book and characters, and will not grant them unless he eliminates whimsy and magic from his script. Tom Hanks is a great foil for Thompson, and the conflicts between them are very convincing. But the movie is about Travers, flashing back to a childhood of enormous stress, as we see Thompson coping with memories as she defends her creation. The incessant intrusion of triviality into her hidebound, serious world, rankles her until she can no longer take it. Saving Mr. Banks presents a counterpoint of Ms. Travers' sad memories with the oblivious optimism of the crew plugging away at Walt Disney Studios.

It's a fine movie. It sent me to the Internet to search for what might be true about it (not everything, for certain) and for what Walt Disney and P.L. Travers were really like. What I learned didn't lessen my opinion of Saving Mr. Banks.  It deserves to be around for those of us who might not be in Walt Disney's corner. We might reconsider that as P.L. Travers did. In time, even I might come around a little.  

Reflections on Roger Ebert

There are movie people and there are those of us who are not. I was almost 50 years old before that dawned on me.

I met the new lady in Fairhope who was going to be in charge of an arts committee and we were having lunch. At that point there was one place out in the strip mall that had excellent soups and sandwiches that was so popular my friends referred to it as "Elaine's" after the NYC joint everybody who was anybody went to. I think that's where we were when she blithely said, "I'm not a movie person," after I brought up the latest flick I wanted to critique with her. I was stunned. I thought everybody who was alive was a movie person; the movies had defined me since as a toddler I had wept for Bambi and, a few years later hid behind the seat in the row ahead of me while Lon Chaney Jr.'s hair all over his body grew, turning him into a bona fide werewolf.

I watched all kinds of movies, from the MGM musicals where pretty people danced down streets to be greeted in song by butchers, bakers, and other townspeople--to the wrenching, soul-killing melodrama of Northern troops setting fire to Atlanta. My first husband, also a movie person, took me to Ingmar Bergman black and white dramas and the ever-so-happy Never on Sunday, which we both agreed we wanted to see for the first time again somehow. My second husband was an actor who preferred the dark European films, bloody with gruesome scenes and ambiguous outcomes as much as he did the circus phantasmagoria of Fellini. All movies mattered to me, whether I liked, loved, hated, or was confused by them. They were at once my great escape and my great medium for self analysis.

Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel were a part of the wallpaper of movies in my life for a period of some ten years. I respected their opinions and enjoyed their television back-and-forth even though I didn't always agree with both at the same time. However, if both gave a thumbs-up I was pretty sure to like the movie. If only Roger did, I usually did too. I liked his intellect. His pervasive, almost unconditional love of the movies struck home for me.

The new documentary about Roger Ebert called Life Itself tells the story of the superbright kid who grew up in Illinois and found he could write about the movies and its stars as well as just about anybody. He went on to edit the college newspaper, and from there to the movie desk at the Chicago Sun-Times, turning himself into the traditional hard-drinking raconteur Chicago newsman as depicted in some old Ben Hecht movie.  Until the night he almost killed himself, had an epiphany, and joined AA. He says that he never took a drink after his first meeting and never wanted to. That in itself is remarkable.

The movie shows interviews and testimonials from old friends, co-workers, and fans. Gene's Siskel's wife documents the testy relationship the two shared, and gives Gene's side of the story. When Roger married the brilliant attorney "Chaz" Hammelsmith, he went from a lost-lone-ranger-type movie lover to a lover of life itself, and the 20 years they had together were extraordinary. Her strength of character was put to the test when he was diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus and and salivary glands, and had to have a large portion of his face and throat removed. He went on to write eloquently of his philosophy, his thoughts about the meaning of life, and even about what it was like to live without the possibility of eating or drinking anything again. He was a truly superb writer, with a big heart and a commitment to live to the fullest extent he could, no matter the circumstances.

I was thrilled by his story, although I found it difficult to look at the grotesque distortion of his face in his last years. He could only communicate by writing and by the look in his eyes. He still loved and managed to review movies, but was ably abetted by a team of writers of his choosing, as he moved to the Internet rather than television and the lecture halls at film festivals. His courage and endurance made him an exemplary human being--larger than life in more ways than one--and his love for the movies made him that much more accessible to the rest of us movie people. Life Itself brings that home in a very real and personal way.

 

Real Estate Porn

 

Watching television makes buying a home, renovating, living in it, and selling it, easy and beautiful. There is something so seductive about the shows that inform us that a New York apartment, (probably within memory available for $400 a month or less rent, has been "updated" and now sells for a million and a half or more--or can be rented for $20,000 per month. Looking at such real estate is mesmerizing and can be expensive, if you don't keep reminding yourself that it is not really the way things are...it is the essence of television--that is to say, it is pornography for consumers.

The renovated kitchen of an apartment featured in Selling New York

There are attractive realtors and renovation experts who make the process look a breeze, even if it involves an expensive renovation and all that is left of the original property is a shell that has been deconstructed and rebuilt to retain nothing of its character. There are realtors who can find us a replacement for the home we chose years ago but whose quirks no longer charm us.

Twins Drew and Scott, one of whom (guess which) is a realtor.

There are contractors who ambush buyers at the "home improvement store" and take over the project of remodeling that they were only thinking of maybe doing eventually. There are the genuine "old house lovers" who buy and restore properties...and there are the flippers who have figured out how to monetize the crash in the housing market by buying low, making changes, and selling high. All this makes the face of "reality" on television a bit suspect, but when you're actually thinking about a move, as I was six months ago, the shows are more and more convincing and the rewards seem that much more delicious. I am a fan of houses built around the turn of the 20th century, maybe because I grew up in one, and hate to see them demolished and replaced by the pasteboard Disney version so prevalent in today's world. When I find a TV show that celebrates antiques, yard sale finds, and the restoration of a dilapidated wreck of a house, I am hooked. It doesn't hurt if the host is cute, male or female.

Nicole Curtis, hostess of Rehab Addict

Now that I'm three weeks into the renovation of the Victorian in Kingston, I've got the television set to the channels that feature these shows. I am compelled to check them out and compare notes, I know not why, as I never find one that matches what I want to achieve here. So much of my house is usable as is, and all that is being completely redone is the kitchen and the bathroom--standard for any home purchase in this day and age. I want to keep the 1890 character in both rooms although of course those are the rooms which need modernity in order to function at all. And I don't want this house to look like either "Grandma's house"--which of course it is--or a museum. I've saved bits of decor from so many homes that it's an autobiography of a house. And I'm having fun filling it with new stuff that fits and doesn't look as if it was bought by a designer. I hope.