Milestone day for the Burtons

 

Tonight, as I write, Jacob is at his first prom—the Nolan High School Junior/Senior prom. He and two friends left for Keller (a northern suburb) at 3:30, which I found astounding. I had thought they were leaving at 5:30, so about four I reminded Christian pictures would be nice, but I’d like a quick, in-person glimpse. He replied that I was already too late—they left while I was napping. Doubt I can get Jacob to model the tux again, so I will settle for the pictures.

But I guess there was picture taking in Keller, followed by a dinner, followed by the prom which was somewhere in Keller rather than at the school in East Fort Worth. Then there was to be an after-party back in Fort Worth, not far from here. Big excitement, several trips to the tux rental store, etc. I asked his parents and finally Jacob about the girl who invited him and was rewarded with “She’s a girl I know.” Glad it’s not a stranger! The only other comment he offered was, “I’m really excited about it.” I’m anxious to hear a

report tomorrow, though I don’t know that he’ll be any more loquacious.

By serendipity I was reading some old blogs tonight and of course Jacob was prominent in many of them—the New Year’s Eves we shared, dinners that were memorable and/or disasters, storms we weathered. In one, I came across this picture of him ready for his first Cotillion. If he ever sees I’ve posted it, he will undoubtedly not be pleased. It’s easier for me to accept that my other grands have grown and changed, because I didn’t see as much of them when they were younger. Jacob I saw every day, so the change was gradual but when I contrast today with six, seven or eight years ago, it’s pretty dramatic—and calls up a bit of nostalgia.

Otherwise, it’s been a quiet day—I wrote a book review of All Stirred Up, by Brianne Moore, a culinary novel set in Edinburgh and involving a tangled romantic relationship but much more—Edinburgh daily life, the high-end restaurant scene, and lots of food. A really good read. I answered emails, sent some out, corresponded with an editor—nothing remarkable.

Tonight, I was planning to have a leftover salmon burger for supper, having already had one for lunch. Then I decided I really had a taste for barbecue, but Jordan and Christian were going out. So then I decided I wanted spinach and scrambled eggs—in the interest of efficiency, I tried to bake them together. An awful experiment. One of my worst—and I’d put so much good butter into it. My dinner, after a few bites of that, was cheese toast and salted caramels.

My new word for the day: frumious. It means very angry and when I saw it online it was used in the context of someone who is always frumious. Comes, not unexpectedly, from Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky.” I can’t wait to ask someone, “Why are you always so frumious?”

Happy Saturday night. I’m off to read Mastering the Art of French Murder.

The adventures of Irene, the diva chef

Balancing this week of sad news and heavy worries, I have good news—at least from my point of view. I spent the week proofreading Finding Florence, the third Irene in Chicago Culinary Mystery. And I’m glad to report that Irene will be back in Chicago July 5^th, providing Chance’s jet brings her as planned. I may be delighted to report this, but Henny is frantic. Here’s a taste of what Irene’s up to this time:

Irene is obsessed. And Henny’s life is a mess.

Irene has flown to Chicago from France in high style – the private jet owned by her longtime, on again-off again-on again amour, the handsome but mysterious billionaire Chance Charpentier. Her infamous “voices” have told her that something is horribly amiss with a person dear to her.  When she arrives, she learns that a death notice for Florence Sherman, her sometime friend, previous neighbor, and member of an historic Chicago family, has been published in the Sun-Times. Once Irene discovers her friend’s body is missing, the diva chef refuses to leave Chicago until she solves the mysterious disappearance. But, with Irene in Chicago, Henny’s successful “From My Mother’s Kitchen” TV cooking show and her precious time with Patrick, husband of her dreams, are seriously compromised by Irene’s insistence that finding Florence trumps any other concerns. So Henny struggles to balance Irene’s demands with the rest of her life and to find Florence, dead or alive, so Irene will go back to France.

Irene’s certainty that the past holds the key to Florence’s disappearance brings in a bit of Chicago history, and food references season the text. An appendix of recipes from both Irene and Henny’s mom is attached.

 I’ve had a lot of fun with Irene, Henny, and their friends and lovers. In these difficult times, they provide a real contrast, letting me escape to an easier world. In fact, they let me escape to the neighborhood of my childhood—Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side, where everything is different from my days there but in many way still the same. Henny’s world is contemporary but pre-pandemic and politics just isn’t a subject.

Food is a big subject, ranging from Irene’s faux French (she does cook French dishes, but she just doesn’t have the Cordon Bleu background she claims) to Henny’s recipes from her mom’s Texas kitchen. With the latest book, you can cook anything from Coq au Vin to King Ranch Casserole.

Love is a big subject too. After two installments, this third book finds Henny deliriously happily married to the man of her dreams. Patrick not only loves her, he curbs what are sometimes her wildest instincts and her even wilder tongue. And Irene? The domineering diva is a woman in love—just look at her on the cover. The object of her affections is Chance Charpentier, the billionaire with whom she had a daughter twenty years earlier. Like Patrick, Chance is a balance for Irene. You’ll fall in love with him, as I have.

Cooking as a career is front and center in Irene’s stories, as told by Henny. Irene now runs a small café in a small French town near Aix-en-Provence. It is the kind of place where the old men go to drink wine, eat a hearty gibbolet with duck, and tell tales—until Irene calls their wives to come get them. Henny, on the other hand, has a TV show with a national network, “Recipes from my mom’s kitchen.” She works hard and sees her star rising—until Irene comes into town and demands her attention.

The Irene/Henny adventures, which Henny tells in her own, slightly snarky, slightly insecure voice, began in Saving Irene, when Henny was gofer for Irene’s cooking show—and ended, with Patrick, saving Irene’s spoiled daughter, Gabrielle, from a kidnapper. Irene subsequently decamped for France, but in Irene in Danger, she came back to Chicago for Henny and Patrick’s wedding—and nearly caused the cancellation of the wedding by getting involved with some unsavory characters.

I had so much fun with these stories that I already know the fourth one—Irene simply has to go to Texas. Can’t you see the clash of cultures? And the cover art? Irene in a Stetson! That’s another thing—I love the cover art of these books. For the first one, I knew what I wanted—Irene front and center, in a toque, with a background of typical apartment dwellings in Hyde Park. Having Irene as a central figure worked so well that we put her against the gilt of the Palmer House Hotel in the second book. And now for the third—don’t you think she looks like a woman in love? And of course that’s the wonderful skyline of Chicago’s North Shore. Thanks to designer Amy Balamut for the covers and the formatting.

Watch for Finding Florence July 5^th on Amazon!

Out and about, and the story behind a novel

 

A banner day—I went to the hardware store with Jordan and then to lunch with Subie and Phil. Our neighborhood is blessed with an Ace Hardware store—good-sized with a fairly recent huge expansion but still so much smaller than Home Depot or Loew’s. At Westcliff Hardware, you’re liable to have an older gentleman, retired from who knows what career, help you, and oh my, are they knowledgeable. Today one of them replaced the inoperative pull chain on the bankers’ light on my desk and replaced the batteries in our key fobs. We bought Christmas lights, canning jars (I swear I’m making cranberry for friends), mailed a book (yes, there’s a USPS substation), and impulsively bought an artificial table-top Christmas tree to replace the beaten, raggedy one that I’ve had for several years. We left untouched a huge department of kitchen and cooking goods, including every gadget you can think of for a Big Green Egg. I am so grateful to have this friendly, welcoming store near us The son of a friend worked there in high school and learned an amazing amount. I suggested it to Jacob, but he said no thank you!

We barely got home in time for Subie and Phil to pick me up for lunch. We went to a favorite spot, recently redecorated. My choice because the place Subie recommended apparently doesn’t serve lunch anymore. The Tavern was good, but….in redecorating they have paid no attention to acoustics, and sound bounces off hard surfaces everywhere, from a wonderfully old-fashioned tile floor to wooden ceilings. Phil declared this was his second time, and he’s never going back again. Usually, Phil can hear better than I can, but not today. I liked some things about the décor, others not so much. I suggested the noise level was partly deliberate to turn tables, and Phil said data shows (we loved that phrase) that people drink more in a noisy environment. Having had lamb last night and knowing I’d have leftovers tonight, I chose a small bowl of tomato/basil soup and a small Caesar salad. Both excellent. They serve a wonderful meatloaf which, with redecorating, migrated from a once-a-week special to the regular menu, and I will go back for that, noise and all.

Sophie is still having a hard go of it with the time change. She seems to have an accurate inner clock that has not adjusted, so whereas she was sleeping until 8:30, she now gets me up at 7:30. And promptly at four she begins to ask for her dinner. I try to explain that we’re all going to have to adjust to this new time, but she’s having none of it. Consequently, the change is as hard on me as it is on her. Left to myself, I’d adjust pretty quickly.

My funny story for the day. I read that a small California town, Oroville, has declared itself a “constitutional republic,” no longer subject to the rules of the federal or state government. It reminded me of the novel I wrote way back in the eighties, Luke and the Van Zandt War. Post-Civil War, when Sherman oversaw Texas, Van Zandt County in East Texas withdrew from the state and the country. Sherman would not stand for it and sent troops marching up the road to quell the rebellion. But they marched in proper military fashion, two abreast, in the middle of the road. The farmers of Van Zandt County hid in the trees—East Texas had not yet been plowed and planted and was pretty much untamed forest. Anyway, the farmers took potshots at the soldiers, who were forced to retreat.

The farmers went into the county seat, Canton, and celebrated with a huge bonfire and much passing of the little brown jug. As the evening wore on, the soldiers slipped through the trees, surrounded the town, and arrested most of the men. Those arrested spent a long, cold winter in a hastily-built stockade. When spring came, the rains loosened the logs of the stockade enough that they could be parted, and one by one the men of Van Zandt County slipped into the night.

I loved that story and put two teenagers in the middle of it for the novel. It was named Best Juvenile of the Year by the Texas Institute of Letters. At the awards ceremony, the emcee said something to the effect that the person who always won this award wasn’t eligible that year and so the award went to me. The literary life has its little ironies. Fun to recall the novel, the story behind it, and the half-hearted award.

I wish the people of Oroville a better outcome. The rebellion apparently has to do with Covid restrictions, so I'm not terribly sympathetic. 

Sweet dreams, everyone.

Another cold day—and a tale for Texas secessionists

 

Our house on the second day of snowmageddon

So many are in so much worse condition than I am that I wouldn’t think of complaining. I have power and water—cold, but not hot. But I have devised a dish-washing method—heating water in the electric kettle and using my mixing bowl as a dishpan. Cold rinses are a shock; so is brushing my teeth and washing my hands; a shampoo is out of the question, and I am beginning to feel as bedraggled as I did after six days in the hospital.

My house is cold in the mornings—50 this morning, which was seven degrees better than yesterday. But the space heaters bring it up to the recommended 68. Of course, I turn them off at night. And I worry about Sophie—she won’t sleep on the bed next to me. Last night I found her curled into a cold little ball on the sofa. Tonight, she was cuddled closer to the space heater than I was comfortable with. I had soup tonight—a thick, rich white bean and sausage soup in my freezer, given by a friend some time ago. I thought it was thawed, but when I went to spoon it out, it obviously was not—a big spoonful flew onto the floor. Sophie loved it, and I loved the hot bowl I had.

I’ve never seen rescue measures in Texas like we are seeing tonight—warming shelters, the convention center and several churches open for overnight guests, the Presbyterian Night Shelter flooded (I hope) with donated pbj sandwiches, Jeep owners ready to rescue stranded people. In a crunch like this, the good in people comes out, and it’s really heartening. In my little neighborhood, people are running errands for each other, offering to shovel snow, loaning a desperately need shop vac. They find all kinds of ways to help.

I am angrily amused at the right-wingers who blame Texas troubles on Biden and his green energy plan. Do they read? Do they think? Biden has been in office three weeks, give or take, and no energy bill has been presented, let alone accepted and acted upon. Yet they are sure that he has targeted Texas for special pain. Texas, the state that has proposed legislation to withdraw from the union. In truth, when Governor Abbott, who eschews Federal aid in Medicare, etc., asked for FEMA relief, Biden immediately granted it. He didn’t care that Texas voted red; he did care that people were suffering and in danger of dying. He is a president for all the people, not just those who voted for him.

Speaking of secession, if Texas did, God forbid, act on that legislation, it wouldn’t be the first time. In 1867, during Reconstruction, Van Zandt County in East Texas seceded and drew up a document similar to the Declaration of Independence. General Phil Sheridan sent troops to quell the rebellion, but while Sheridan’s troops marched in orderly file up the road, the men of Van Zandt County hid in the trees and picked off the soldiers with well-aimed shots. The troops retreated, and the Van Zandt County men went into town to celebrate victory with a huge bonfire and more than one jug of whiskey. After a while, the troops came back, quietly surrounded and arrested them. Many of the rebels spent a long, cold winter in a stockade. When spring rains came, the logs of the stockade could easily be pushed apart in the mud, and one by one the men of Van Zandt disappeared into the night. Some never returned to the county; none were prosecuted.

I’m not sure if this is an object lesson for today’s Texans or not, but I can’t resist a bit of blatant self-promotion. One of my early novels was about that war—Luke and the Van Zandt County War. Recently I wrote about spending time at a guest ranch in East Texas—it was in Van Zandt County. Love these odd bits of history.

 

Being busy

No profound thoughts tonight, though the news and picture coming out of Baltimore continue to interest--like the line of black men who stationed themselves in front of the police to protect them or the young boy who offered bottles of water to the police in riot gear. And that wonderful mom who beat her boy until he went home--she wanted him safe, but she has mixed thoughts (at best) about what she did. The number of people who rioted is such a small proportion of Baltimore's citizens.
Meanwhile I've been productive and am loving it--sent my Chicago manuscript off to an editor yesterday. it's long--100,000 words--and it's a historical, not a mystery. It's a book I've worked on at least ten years, and Chicago history is a subject dear to my heart. Chicago had its own glittery gilded age in the late nineteenth century, and this is about on prominent society woman during that time--Cissy Palmer, the first to combine the idea of wealth with social obligation. It culminates with the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Yes, I'm a little bit excited about this one.
Also arranged to send another of my 1990s historicals about women of the West for ebook conversion--this Jessie: A Novel of the Life of Jessie Benton Fremont. Don't know who she was? You'll have to read it!
And I drafted a newsletter, talked with my web designer about a logo, and have just generally been busy building my so-called career. It's been fun, but somehow this is the longest week--I'm quite sure today should have been Friday and it's only Wednesday.
And now, at eight o'clock at night, I'm sleepy. Need that second burst of energy.