October | 2015 | mulberryshoots

noho . . .

zinnias from the farmers’ market in noho . . .

“Noho” is an affectionate nickname for Northampton, a college town in western Massachusetts. It also happens to be where one of the state’s largest yarn/knitting outlets called WEBS is located. Every Tuesday between April and November, there’s also a farmers market that opens at 1:30 – 5 pm in a courtyard in the center of town.

At Webs, I find a lichen colored tweed yarn that I exchange for some yarn that I had tried knitting with last week. It was too stark for my eye and required smaller needles (and more time) than I wanted to give to a project. Pleased with this lovely new yarn, I drive to the center of town, looking for a shady parking space and buy myself an hour and a half more time to wander about.

While waiting for the market to open, I do some window shopping and then treat myself to a light sushi lunch at the Osaka, just up the hill from the farmers market. The softshell crab tempura appetizer is a specialty there: plump, tender and crispy, dipped in a clear light broth.

Although the restaurant serves Japanese food, I’m amused to hear Mandarin spoken by the sushi chefs and by Johnny, the maitre d’ who says he remembers me from ten years ago when he was working as one of the waiters. It’s a special place that I feel most at home even though it’s located over an hour’s drive from where I live.

The vegetable sellers were setting up their tables as I passed them to do some window-shopping in Thorne’s. This is an indoor marketplace with a bookshop featuring unusual greeting cards, a shoe shop with interesting clogs, boots and heather merino knee socks and other commissaries of boutique clothing, vintage jewelry and flowers.

The second-hand bookshop on the side street around the corner featured a small outdoor display of five different volumes by the author, Henning Mankell, who died this past week. He was the mystery writer who created the Swedish series, “Wallander.” I’m a huge fan of the “Wallander” Swedish films featuring Krister Henriksson, much preferring them over the UK-produced series with Kenneth Branagh. For $3.50, I purchased a hardback (Knopf Borzoi edition) of “The Troubled Man,” Mankell’s most famous novel.

It was a dry, sunny day just on the edge of being warm and my sojourn to Noho was an enjoyable respite from my usual routine. Tomorrow, I’ll be taking another jaunt, this time to New Hampshire to visit an antique dealer friend and to have lunch together near her group shop outside of Concord, New Hampshire.

These soft days of late summer weather in the beginning of October with vibrant morning glories still in bloom on our 2nd floor landing are a gift of Mother Nature.

Soon, it will begin to chill with the first frost and we’ll batten down the hatches in preparation for colder weather. But today has been a halcyon day and fruitful besides, coming home with yarn, a book and some greeting cards with hand-painted birds decked out in finery that will come in handy when celebrating some family birthdays this weekend.

A perfect day in a perfect New England autumn.

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October 4, 2015

life is long (still) . . .

“every day is a good day,” at least that is what Juliana Koo says after turning 110 on her birthday, September 27th. 250 people celebrated along with her at the Pierre Hotel in NYC. She still plays and sometimes wins at mah-jongg three times a week.

Her second daughter, Genevieve Young, just turned 85, two days before Juliana’s birthday. (NYTimes, “Evening Hours – Fall Celebrations, Bill Cunningham” Oct. 4, 2015)

Her husband, V.K. Wellington Koo was a well-known Chinese diplomat whom I remember our family meeting at some Washington, D.C. function years ago.

Life is long, isn’t it?

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October 3, 2015

love (almost) conquers all . . .

I read a lot and am not usually patient enough to read a book as long as Hanya Yanagihara’s book, “A Little Life”. However, I found myself being lulled by the ease with which the novel progressed – the voice and long paragraphs that were more “tell” than “show.”

I found myself engaged in the voyeuristic and suspenseful plot which unfolded slowly through the novel, interspersed with the painful present-day life of the central protagonist, “Jude” (a namesake of another tragic character, “Jude the Obscure.”) Noteworthy also was the tender (that’s the only word for it) depiction of love and loyalty between men as friends and then as lovers. That the book’s author is female and Japanese, writing almost primarily about men (there are few female characters that have any development) is a marvel to behold. I don’t know how many times the words “I’m sorry” were uttered in the novel but I’ll bet there were a lot.

Only an occasional false note in the book appeared to me because I am a musician and a pianist – and that was a description of Jude playing Schumann’s Fantasy on the piano during an episode in which he is upset. That’s an amazingly difficult piece and it was already a reach earlier in the book to believe that he could play Bach Partitas at one point, but the Schumann was too far a stretch for my imagination to follow.

The story is almost unbearably painful. And the ultimate impact on me after reading it was to realize that so many of us are damaged goods walking around under seemingly okay appearances. Sometimes the hurts that we suffered from those who were supposed to be caretakers was repulsive and unforgiveable (as in this novel) or merely “normal” (benign neglect, selfishness, carelessness.) But all of us, it seems, have hidden hurts we are ashamed of and which we tell no one about.

That being said, we can have more compassion for what we don’t know about others (and might never know) that accounts for behavior that we don’t understand from those we care about. This compassion can be intellectual and abstract to help leaven judgment we might otherwise feel – and hopefully might last longer than a little while. That’s a lot to take from reading a novel but there it is.

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October 2, 2015

Pope Francis redux . . .

I was crestfallen to read about Kim Davis’s private audience with the Pope which her lawyer put out there the other day.

Now, it seems the Vatican has taken its own steps to clarify that she was among dozens of people who saw Pope Francis in Washington before he left for New York.

Nevertheless, it leaves a bad taste that a)she’s a publicity hound who will promote herself this way; and b)that that her publicity move now casts a shadow over all the other values that the Pope’s visit conveyed over the grueling six day visit that he just completed last week.