Tags
Of head and hearts. Mixed media drawing. Julie Seyler.
Time for a glass of wine.
The Week is Over …
20 Friday Jun 2014
Posted in Art
Tag Archives: The Write Side of 50
A Short Story
19 Thursday Jun 2014
Posted in Words
Tags
Sometimes it felt as if small pockets were opening up in his brain, and his entire reservoir of memories were being drained through a sieve.
For more short shorts, click here.
Mid-Life: As Adaptable as a Dewar’s Bottle
11 Wednesday Jun 2014
Posted in Food
Tags
Food, Food52, garlic, Lois DeSocio, mortar and pestle, radishes, The New York Times, The Write Side of 50
Pestle with a punch on the inside.
We are nothing, if not adaptable, by the time we reach the middle ages. We’ve adjusted our flow meter to “just go for it!” We navigate our midlife crises with aplomb and mettle that is unique to our generation. We’ve learned to turn our heads away from ageism, and we strive to live out this chapter with vigor.
But there are some things that should not be messed with. Some things that must remain intact as foundation for our adaptability. The leave-as-is, the indefatigable. Like our lucidity; our vivacity. Our awareness of the passing of time; our confidence.
And crushed garlic. Mortar-and-pestle-crushed garlic. Garlic that is pummeled and pulverized, along with oil and other herbs until it’s pasty; its aroma sulfurous. It has a swallow so pungent, it can push your inner cheeks to your teeth.
It was the flux between adaptability and the crushed garlic called for in this Radish Salad with Anchovy Sauce from the foodie Web site Food52 that recently forced Julie and I to grab a quarter-filled bottle of Dewar’s White Label by the neck.
Just a couple of days before The New York Times ran this piece on mortars and pestles, which included the quote, “I insist on it for certain things, like garlic …” from Marc Meyer, an executive chef and restaurant owner in Manhattan, Julie and I were cooking for a party we were throwing. We were working in a kitchen that was lightly stocked. We didn’t have the basics. Or a mortar and pestle for the radish salad.
“Insist.” Like Mr. Meyer, that’s pretty much what Julie inferred when I tried to talk her into adapting the garlic – just slice it!, dice it, smoosh with a mini ricer, let’s try the immersion blender, how about a fork? (I believe I also suggested donning sneakers and stomping on it ala Lucy and the grapes.)
After all attempts failed to do what apparently only a mortar and pestle can do, we hit the bottle. Our row of alcohol on the set-up counter bar included an old bottle of Dewar’s whiskey that has been hanging around in the pantry for decades – no one ever drinks the stuff, but it is always put out at parties. It’s shaped like a big pestle.
So our pile of garlic got hammered on that bottle of whiskey.
And hence the radish salad was sublime – a riot of garlic, salt, and radish pop-and-tickle – all a result of midlife aplomb, mettle, confidence (the indefatigable), and a bottle of whiskey.
Hear Ye! Hear Ye! I Can Hear
27 Tuesday May 2014
Tags
Hearing loss, Lois DeSocio, News, Soundgram, The Center for Hearing and Communication, The Write Side of 50
I use my ears for more than hanging earrings.
It’s been brought to my attention lately by my children, and by other young people in my life, that I say “Excuse me?” or “I’m so sorry, but I didn’t catch that,” and “What?” as much as I say, “Hi!” or “I’ll have a Chardonnay.”
I have noticed that I pump up the volume to ear-splitting levels when listening to music in my car or on my phone. And my television is turned up to number 25 or more. (Uh – like the movies! I explain to other people in the room who question the volume.)
And that little voice in one ear that was urging me to get my hearing tested (I believe the last time I had a hearing test was 1980-something), went right out the other.
But apparently poo-pooing a potential compromise in hearing is not unusual. Hearing loss is among the most untreated of the age-related disabilities. It seems that for us 50-somethings, as long we can hear the human voices around us, we tend to peg any auditory decline as not in our ears, but in the soft-talkers among us and the increasingly noisy world that we live in.
But, hear ye, my skeptics – I finally heard you. I tested the ears. And I’m normal. I guess I just like loud.
I found this cool hearing test offered by The National Hearing Test. May is Better Hearing and Speech Month, so the test is free (it costs only $8 regularly). It’s done over the phone (landline only) – call 866-223-7575 – and it takes about 20 minutes. You put one ear at a time to the phone, and punch in the numbers recited by a recorded voice amid static, which rapidly increases throughout the test. At completion, you are told whether or not your hearing in each ear is in the “normal range.”
And for those of you who may know someone like me, where broaching the subject of hearing fell on deaf ears, there’s a nifty little offering from The Center for Hearing and Communication (CHC) in New York and Florida. Check out Soundgram. You record a message to your loved one, and CHC will notify them that there is a message waiting for them, along with an offer for a free hearing screening at one of their locations. Your recorded message will be played for them at their free screening.
So listen up; take heed. Take the test. Send a Soundgram. And like me, either assure yourself that frequently saying, “What?,” means that you’re annoying (or as my son said when I shouted my test results, “Then maybe you have ADD?”), not hearing-impaired, or, if the test suggests your hearing is not in the normal range, go to an audiologist for further testing and treatment.
Studies show that ignoring hearing loss can lead to Dementia and Alzheimer’s – why rush those? There’s sophisticated technology out there for the taking – for free – to ease concerns, to diagnose hearing impairment and to treat accordingly.
The Saturday Blog: Blue Skies
24 Saturday May 2014
Posted in Art
Blue skies for all this Memorial Day weekend. (Because it really is Memorial Day this Monday.) See you Tuesday.
We’re Back …
19 Monday May 2014
Sunday morning.
… expect snafus!
The “fresh look” we promised upon return after our week-long hiatus may not be evident at first glance.
That’s because the change is behind the scenes. Julie is learning the technical and administrative end of the blog, and starting today (on the 18-month anniversary of The Write Side of 50), she’ll be running the back end now, while I extend my hiatus to pursue other ventures.
And like anything new, there’s a learning curve. (And lots of laughs.)
So if you get an e-mail from us that makes no sense – like yesterday’s inadvertent Happy Memorial Day, a week early – or if a blog is posted, and then it disappears (or if the whole blog disappears), laugh with us! And stay tuned.
You may notice a dangling participle, an errant ellipsis, or (no!) a misplaced em-dash. There may be a blank space where the headline should be. But no doubt, with each accidental click (Uh-Oh – I hit publish!) or slip of a finger, as with anything that is in transition, the blog that was built over the last year and a half may very well, through brilliant mistakes, deconstruct and manifest into something better.
And know that I’m still here for my friend, Jule – just a martini, a text, a phone call, or an accidental click away.
Spring Break
12 Monday May 2014
Posted in Words
The Write Side of 50 is on vacation – just a respite; a spring break. We’ll be back soon with a fresh look.
The Saturday Blog: Contemplation
10 Saturday May 2014
Posted in Art
Amphitheatre. Pompeii, Italy.
Happy Mother’s Day
09 Friday May 2014
Posted in Art
Art by Julie Seyler.
Happy Mother’s Day to Mom and Her “…isms”
08 Thursday May 2014
Posted in Men
My brother (top), my mother, and me.
Why, when we were kids, did our mothers all seem to say the same things to us? Was there a playbook, or were they just passing on the same things their moms had said to them? Are mothers today reading from that same script, or have new momisms crept into the lexicon?
In any event, in honor of Mother’s Day, here are a few of my mom’s classic zingers:
I’d done something stupid like smashed a lamp with a baseball bat or duct-taped my little sister’s hand to the coffee table, and Mom had caught me (and crying little sister) red-handed.
“What’s this, Bobby? What did you do? You wait till your father gets home.”
Just that ominous, amorphous threat. No spanking; no banishment to my bedroom for the rest of the day (which would have been real punishment). This was the 1960s, after all, long before smartphones, computers with Internet, TV’s, and video games had turned kids’ bedrooms into electronic pleasure arcades. My bedroom was furnished with my bed, my brother’s bed, two nightstands with lamps, a dresser, and a shared electric alarm clock. That’s it – not even a radio. If you were sent to your room, you could read all day, or count the cracks in the ceiling, but little else.
For a sensitive, impressionable eight year old like me, delayed sanctions were an incredibly effective tactic. First I felt guilty because although I’d done wrong, Mom hadn’t yet punished me directly. But then the mental punishment set in. I stood in the shadows by the side of our house waiting for the endless afternoon hours to tick by, steeped in guilty thoughts and vague, free-form anxiety about the expected retribution at Dad’s hands. I wanted the time to pass, so it would be over with, but there was no relief.
When Dad finally got home I trudged into the kitchen and stood staring at my sneakers, expecting the worst. And Mom said nothing. The crime was forgotten! I looked at Mom, and she nodded knowingly at me – she hadn’t forgotten at all. This time around, my only punishment had been the agonizing anticipation of punishment, unfulfilled. We both knew that the next time I did wrong, she could make me suffer all day, and then either stay execution again, or drop the dad-hammer on me anyway. And I owed her one for this time, too. Brilliant.
Here’s another favorite: Two or three of us were fooling around, throwing sofa seat cushions at each other, and Mom shut us down.
“What’re you kids doing? Those aren’t toys. Put those cushions back right now.”
Chastened, we started gathering up the pillows, and out of nervousness or just a frivolity hangover, I started giggling uncontrollably. Mom didn’t appreciate my attitude.
“What’re you laughin’ at? You’ll be laughing out the other side of your mouth in a minute!”
What does that even mean? I thought it meant she’d smack me (“I’ll smack you one!”), thereby displacing the grin from half my face. This called to mind the incongruous image of one side of my face laughing while the other side streamed tears, which I tried to emulate by simultaneously frowning on one side and laughing archly on the other, which made me laugh even more.
Which brought on the next momism: “You better wipe that smile off your face, young man.”
Which I emulated by theatrically swiping my hand down the “laughing” side of my face, which made me laugh more still. Which resulted in Mom giving me a sharp smack across my bottom, which made me really cry with my whole face. She hadn’t hit me all that hard. I was crying more out of shame, and surprise, than pain. Which prompted the next momism:
“What’re you cryin for? Come here, I’ll give you something to cry about.”
Which finally shut me up. And one of my all time favorites, for whenever one of us couldn’t find something that was right in front of us, as in this classic case of refrigerator blindness:
“Bobby, grab the mayonnaise.”
“I can’t find it,” I mumbled, staring listlessly into the open refrigerator.
“It’s right here,” Mom snapped, brushing past me to grab the jar screaming HELLMANN’S in big blue letters, front and center on the top shelf. “If it had teeth it would’ve bit you.” My brothers and sisters around the dinner table started giggling, and failing to wipe the smiles off their faces, they were soon laughing out the other side of their mouths.
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