All your ghosts are welcome

Nearly every year since 1995 my son and daughter-in-law have hosted a gathering they call "The J. Peter Adler Memorial Wake and Weenie Roast."

J. Peter, a college friend of theirs, was killed in a traffic accident two hours after submitting his thesis for a master's in theater. Only a few of the college friends were able to attend his memorial service. Later that summer, my son organized the first "Wake and Weenie Roast," for San Francisco friends who had not been to the East Coast memorial.

When my son and his wife moved to Seattle, the Weenie Roast came too. Now the gathering consists mostly of people who never met J. Peter, but who are happy to gather in his memory and bring their own ghosts to remember and celebrate.

A proper wake offers good food, good drink, and good talk. When so many at the gathering are theater people, the talk is even better. J. Peter's mother and step-father, who live on the East Coast, provide good Scotch (J. Peter's favorite libation) and always call sometime during the party.

And the ghosts come out to dance. Tonight we toasted a grandmother who taught her grandson to laugh; high school friends who died twenty, thirty or fifty years ago; a friend who flirted with the EMTs in the ambulance carrying her to what turned out to be her last hospital visit.

We also celebrated Bucky, a four-point point buck mortally injured in a Vashon Island road accident. On a night of pouring rain, three people who had never before field-dressed an animal helped to send Bucky humanely on his way, then, after hanging the body under a deck, successfully gutted, skinned and butchered him.

A minister described a memorial service for John, a parishoner who died after many years of living with HIV. Because he had overseen church flowers and decor, he left specific instructions about flowers for the service, and asked a friend to make sure a favorite piece of red silk was used in a certain part of the church.

Although it wasn't strictly necessary, both ministers decided to wear their robes and red stoles. But when all four pallbearers, the reader and the communion assistant turned up in outfits accented with red, John's favorite color, the minister telling the story said, "I knew he was there, coordinating everything."

It was a Day of the Dead celebration, with food and drink and tears and laughter. I look forward to it every year, and cherish the people (and the ghosts) that I meet.

Black Cat Month

I don't know if this is something dreamed up to add to Halloween hype, but I found it - where else? - on the Internet.

Depending on your outlook, black cats can be bad luck or good luck. When not associated with witches and witchcraft, they are favorites of designers and advertisers, who have used them to sell all kinds of products. Years ago I found a book called The Black Cat Made Me Do It, filled with old advertising, like this:


So, as the temperature drops outside and leaves begin to turn, consider offering your favorite black cat a place of honor in front of the fireplace (or on your bed.)

And don't forget a small treat - some fromage, perhaps?

A good week for magpies...

No, I don't have unusual new birds visiting the deck or carrying on in the big maple.

But if magpies, known for their attraction to all things bright and shiny, could see what has been catching the eyes of internet users, they would be perching on my shoulders to see for themselves.

This is what is getting the most play - an amazing hoard of gold sword hilts and horse harness, thought to be battle trophies.

I prefer the collection in the picture - jewelry found in the grave of a Saxon princess, in NE England. Check it out here.

Anniversaries of all kinds

1939 was a big year.

I wasn't around, but as soon as I could read (probably even before) I knew that year brought major changes everywhere.

Just past: the 70th anniversary of the beginning of WWII. (For my family, that led to a move from B.C. to Saskatchewan, which led to an after-the-war move to Idaho, very likely the reason I'm in Seattle today. Not to mention some hairy war stories from my mother's cousins, who toughed it out in SE England.)

And then there's "The Wizard of Oz," which celebrates its 70th very soon.

I have never seen the movie. That probably puts me in the bottom 2% of the entire population of the planet.

Furthermore, I never took children to see the movie, which means I'm in the top 2% of bad mommies. (They have survived nicely, and I don't know to this day if they ever saw the movie - does that move me up to the top 1%?)

I read all the Oz books (some of them in those colorful early editions, enticingly shelved in a garret-like bedroom in a wonderful old cabin in Snoqualmie Pass.) And in about 1948 I was taken to see a stage version, at what was then Washington State College. (In the last scene, Dorothy disappeared off-stage on a wheeled dolly, after clicking her heels three times. It was, after all, a student production.)

My husband and his cousin, both serious Judy Garland fans, were aghast that I had missed this seminal experience. Reminding them that I grew up in a small town, where the movie may have shown up once then disappeared forever, didn't get me off the hook.

TV clips didn't help. Perhaps it was the closeups of Judy Garland, stuffed into a too-small gingham dress to disguise her budding adolescence.

Or the Munchkins. Even in a brief clip it was possible to cry and to cringe, all at the same time. Didn't anyone think, "exploitation?"

Perhaps I just didn't want to surrender the pictures in my mind to the ones on the screen.

This morning on NPR Scott Simon interviewed the president of the international fan club - and one of the last surviving actors, a 92-year old who played the Munchkin coroner.

He sounded like a wonderful person, and I'm glad he has survived to bask in the fame of the film.

But I still don't want to see it.

"Everything that rises..."

Last night I saw a fascinating, almost mesmerizing movie.

Called "Seraphine," it is based on the life of Seraphine de Senlis, a reclusive, highly-talented but unschooled painter whose work came to light in the 1920's thanks to a German art historian and dealer.

Seraphine worked endless menial jobs, living close to the bone to finance her obsessive desire to paint. Using her own formulas to make brilliant, intense colors, she painted flowers, leaves, insects, grasses and trees, creating dense compositions that all seemed to rise toward the top of her large canvases. An article about her work suggests her original inspiration may have been the stained-glass windows in the cathedral of Senlis. Her continuing inspiration came from the fields and woods all around her.

The film features Yolande Moreau, a Belgian actress who has worked as a clown, traveled with a couple of her own one-woman shows, and appeared in a number of films. Here she gives an almost silent performance that is marvelously eloquent in conveying Seraphine's intelligence, persistence, weariness, and elusive charm. Eventually the artist's visions lead her over the edge, but not before her paintings have brought her a significant amount of comfort and recognition.

The movie moves slowly, in no hurry to finish its story, and features long, ravishing sweeps of green French countryside or endless leafy woods. The director incorporated a great deal of natural sound into the film, which adds to the authenticity of the period setting.

Don't forget the bumbershoot(s)

After the longest, hottest, driest summer ever, it was almost inevitable that Bumbershoot, the annual end-of-summer festival, would be soggy. As soon as everyone is safely back at work or school, the sun will come out again, for a while, but in the meantime it feels as if we have gone from summer to winter in a couple of weeks.

Coming up: choir, committee things, playing flute again. Now that the cast is off my wrist, all that hand motion is good rehab. Long past when the doctor said it was OK to drive, I avoided my car's stiff 5-speed shift, but last Friday it was time to get out of the garage and back on the road.

I made it as far as a long line of cars waiting for the Fremont Bridge to close. When traffic began to move again, I turned on the ignition - and got steady, ominous clicking. I was able to get the car out of the way, and the Triple A rescue truck came promptly - but by the time the car was fitted with a new battery, I was ready to start the day over.

Always listen to the wise neighbor who suggests trying out the car before you need to take it somewhere. (But your mishap will give her such a good laugh!)

Thinking about Julia

Last night a friend and I went to see "Julie and Julia," a thoroughly enjoyable movie.

On the way home, I told her the story of the copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking that came my way in 1966. My husband's aunt, a savvy devotee of rummage sales, found it for $2 in Decatur, Illinois - in mint condition except for a missing title page.

"I think someone got it for a wedding present and got scared!" she wrote.

Tonight I took the book off the kitchen shelf for the first time in ages. It falls open to recipes I used to cook - quiche, cheese soufflé, Carbonnade Flammande, Boeuf en Daube, Coquilles St. Jacques (I even owned a set of scallop shells for serving.)

It has been a long time since I made any of those dishes, and I have no desire to emulate Julie Powell's year-long slog through the book. Still, after an hour or so paging through it, I started thinking about dinner parties, wondering if I still have the right pots & pans...

Go see the movie - but be sure to eat before you do!