This Is New

 

We had two guests this Thanksgiving, one familiar and one brand new.  For eleven years, Blackberry the cat has been quite enthusiastic about sharing some turkey, for which he is quite thankful (you can tell by the purrs).  In her new Bumbo chair (above) 5 1/2 month old granddaughter Lucielle sat perched on the table, about to enjoy some of her first big people food, mashed sweet potatoes, like her a local, organic product.

 At first she rolled it around in her mouth, warily checking it out,  followed quickly by wide open eyes and a big grin.  More, please!  She ate the whole little bowlful, then eyed all the other dishes on the table:  "Okay, what's next?"  Someday, she and Blackberry might be competing for that turkey.

Having a fast-developing baby around has been quite a change.  Corners have filled up with child furniture and equipage, including a stroller that we still have only half figured out.  The Bumbo chair and changing table/crib combo are huge improvements on the cheap, clanky things we had when her father was little.  

Lucy's changing and growing at an astonishing pace.  Where a few weeks ago her hands were swinging around randomly, she can now spy my sweatshirt zipper pull looking up sideways, go for and grab it accurately on the first try.  

We're looking forward to more Thanksgivings, as well as other occasions and milestones, with this happy little sweet potato eater.

    

Olio*

 

It's time once again to clear out the attic here at "Just Sayin'."  So, here are three sort-of blog ideas, apropos of nothing:

Going Medieval

The list of very old places in Europe I want to see keeps growing.  Just found about the "Ruelle des Chats" -- Cats' Alley -- in Troyes, France. It is about seven feet wide, and the house tops lean into each other.  Guess there wasn't good urban zoning in place back in the Thirteenth Century.  They did, however, place stones along the bases of the buildings so people could get up out of the way of horses.  The structures you see today are reconstructions after the great fire of 1524,  but certainly look old and odd enough for those of us who like this sort of thing.

What If?

What if we had accepted the 1954 election in Vietnam, which chose Ho Chi Minh as president as the French closed up shop?  Would anything have turned out substantially different if we had not decided on twenty years of war instead?  The result was the same, except maybe Laos and Cambodia might have gone a different, much less miserable and violent, way.  

What if the French (maybe we do have a blog theme here) had not tried to claim and conquer the Ohio Country in order to link up their colonies in Canada and Louisiana?  Losing the latter to either the British or Americans later was probable, but they may have kept Canada more or less along its present borders and not have instigated the French and Indian War, which certainly contributed to the beginning of the American Revolution.  Several French Canadian officials did see and express that they did not nearly have the resources or manpower to make the Ohio expeditions turn out favorably.  But the 1789 Revolution and Napoleonic wars would have resulted in Canada's loss in any case.

The Big List

I was thinking about favorite books yesterday; here are mine.  What would you add or subtract?

The Story of Mankind (Van Loon), History of Greece (Bury), The Great Game (Hopkirk), The King Must Die (Renault), Memoirs of Hadrian (Yourcenar), Studs Lonigan (Farrell), In Our Time and For Whom the Bell Tolls (Hemingway), Dubliners (Joyce), On the Road (Kerouac), A Small Town in Germany (Le Carre), Voyage of the Beagle (Darwin), The Wind in the Willows (Grahame), Death Comes to the Archbishop (Cather), Rome Across the Euphrates (Stark), Translations and Selected Poems (Pound), The March of Folly (Tuchman), Translations from the Chinese (Waley), Iberia (Michener), South Wind (Douglas), Raintree County (Lockridge), Treasure Island and The Black Arrow (Stevenson), The Golden Bough (Frazer), Julian (Vidal), Caesar (McCullough), August 1914 (Solzhenitsyn), The Farfarers (Mowat), The Alexandria Quartet (Durrell), The Fatal Shore (Hughes), The End of the Road (Barth), and Circe (Miller).  

________________

*Olio = miscellany.  A very useful crossword puzzle word.

Your Fourth-Quarter Game

 

It may not seem so when you are looking at it in your future, but retirement doesn't mean you get off the train and sit on a bench.  Change doesn't stop and planning, adaptation and decision making are challenges you must, not might, deal with.   For example, grandchildren:  our home is now crowded with new baby furniture after all these years!  And all that landscaping that you ambitiously planted over time?  Now it's huge and not the weekend outdoors entertainment it used to be.

Many relocate, especially to a latitude without winter or to a lower cost of living area. We researched and visited, but with all the pros and cons (the latter often not clear early on), it would have worked out about the same. If we had to shovel the snow, that would outweigh things like mosquito-borne disease -- but not hurricanes.  We pay our association fee and do not worry about blizzards or Category IV storms.

Social Security and Medicare (you know, those dangerous slides into Socialism) made the modern idea of retirement possible.  Before, if you did not possess wealth, you got to work yourself to an early death or move in with the children.  If you were just on your own and lived too long, well, you were on your own and not in any kind of good way.  When our grandfather was working as a young man in the early 20th century, it was 10 - 12 hours a day six and often seven days a week.  He did survive until the 40-hour week (opposed as socialist, of course) came to be and finally enjoyed a retirement with a pension.  He was smart, but lucky too.

Life can be slower and simpler in retirement; you can finally embrace Thoreau's advice.  If you cling to status and have not eliminated debt completely, either you can afford it or it sinks you.  What would the bill be for replacing this roof?

Not dealing with commuting traffic or overpaid co-workers who do very little work or not having to schedule a few vacation days twelve months in advance?  Yes, please.

Except... that big fresh breeze of freedom often will be counterbalanced with the chill wind of increasing health problems.  It's always something.   That rule of this  life is not one of those things that change. 

Still, it's a good deal and I'll take it.