...there are so many things...

...I want for myself in 2012, but I am scared to hope for them. I will reach for them, but the fear of disappointment (yet again) is so great.

...I suddenly remembered...

...I'm not a dried-up old hag (yet).

So I'm sportin' a manicure/pedicure with Chanel's "Vamp".

Here's to the old new me.

...Home is for the holidays...

...unless, of course, you work for some big retailers like Target, WalMart and others.

Back when dinosaurs ruled the earth – circa 1975 – Thanksgiving day was a wonder at my house. As a Southern belle, my mother was genetically engineered to be a fabulous cook, and Thanksgiving was her canvas as surely Michelangelo’s was the Sistine Chapel.

Where he worked in paints and marble, my mother worked in sweet potatoes, cranberries and pound cake. She would start early in the morning before my brother and I were out of bed. I could hear heavy pots being lifted onto the stove, and baking pans being rattled in the cabinets under the kitchen counters. There was cornbread to be made, eggs to be boiled, gravy to be simmered and “if I find out who has been in the marshmallows I bought for the Ambrosia salad, I will skin him or her alive!”

Items that were usually relegated to the “seen and not touched” category (also known as the “touch and be murdered” division) suddenly were within reach. Her wedding china, silver and crystal – Cherokee Rose by Tiffin – came out of the cabinets where the spent the other 364 days of the year in silent array. Creamy linen tablecloths edged in hand-embroidered cutwork were beautifully draped over the dining room table, and matching napkins were folded onto the dinner plates. Crisp diagonally-cut stalks of celery were placed in a cut-glass dish that was made for that sole purpose, and the cranberry jelly slid onto pale-pink carnival glass that complimented the quivering deep-red roll.

The only thing more exciting than the preparation was the final product. A perfectly browned turkey, with giblet gravy. Collard greens cooked with pork that left an iridescent shimmer to the pot liquor. Sweet potatoes with brown sugar and pecans. The aforementioned Ambrosia – with most of the marshmallows intact – elegantly served in crystal parfait glasses. Cranberry jelly, celery, olives and tiny little sweet gherkin pickles. The dreaded (at least to me; it’s never been a favorite) green bean casserole. Dressing (this was the south, after all), home made biscuits and could you please pass the red pepper jelly? For dessert – home made sour-cream pound cake, Mrs Riley's cinnamon chocolate cake and if you were really lucky, vanilla wafer cake (email me for the recipes).

And afterwards? Bliss. Over-stuffed, sugar-intoxicated, down home bliss.

Once one was semi-mobile again, the kitchen was duly cleaned, leftovers stored, and precious pieces of glass and silver were returned to their posts. I imagine there was something on television to watch; I seem to remember “The Wizard of Oz” always being on around that time. I would read, my brother would annoy me and my dad would do whatever it was dads did back them. Mom would start addressing Christmas cards, and make phone calls to family members.

But wait! Something is missing! What is it…what could it be? Oh – I know! No rushing to the mall! No marking sale items in the latest MegaLoMart circular! No pre-battle mapping of parking spaces, back roads and “secret” mall entrances! And yet – God knows how – Christmas came, and most everything on our carefully printed wish lists managed to find its way under the tree.

Today, as if that revolting concept of “Black Friday” is not enough, Target, Macy’s, Best Buy and Kohl’s will be opening at midnight, and WalMart (gah!) will be opening at 10PM Thanksgiving evening. Apparently, the idea of hordes of slavering people at 4AM Friday was not enough. Now it’s required that retail employees (one of which I have been more than once during my lifetime) give up part of their Thanksgiving day in order to get in some sleep before being assaulted by brainwashed consumers eager to buy whatever foreign-made crap that can’t wait until a decent hour to be purchased.

Brian Dunn, the chief executive of Best Buy, said that the midnight opening “became an operating imperative for us” after competitors moved their openings back. “I feel terrible,” he said.

Mr Dunn – here’s a suggestion. If you feel so gosh-darned “bad” about the situation, howzabout oh...NOT JOINING IN?!?! Please realize that “Christmas Creep” is just that…creepy. Take a cue from Nordstrom and stop all this nonsense. One holiday at time, please.

Here, Brian…have a piece of vanilla wafer cake, take off your shoes, loosen your belt a notch and slow down. But if you break a piece of my mom’s china, you’ll wish you were on a cashier stand at 10PM.

...I read a lot...

...you can erase...

...your posts about me, but it will take longer to erase me from your heart.

...today...

...I will try not to commit suicide with food.

It won't be easy. It will be uncomfortable, and scary, and frustrating at times.
Feeling our true feelings can be truly overwhelming after so many years of
eating them away instead. When we eat to fill our heart, we become numb. Numb to
what it and we, ourselves, really need. Deaf to what it's saying and blind to
what it's showing us. Once we begin to patiently ask our hearts what it needs
from us, we begin to learn that it's most definitely not food.


Today is a day I need to talk gently and listen carefully to my heart as it's
been trying to tell me something.


I am listening, little heart and I promise not to try and shut you up with food.

...no catchy title...

I'm withdrawing for a while.

I'm just really tired.

UT

Sunday morning...

...on Spring Garden Street.

A quiet Sunday morning, the air still heavy with the lingering humidity of the current heat wave.

Yet there is some small activity:

your blogger meets a new fuzzy friend...



and catches a tree valiantly providing shade to the Bixler-Laubach mansion.



#206 Spring Garden offers some colorful hospitality...





and the gate at the Colonel McKean house on the corner of Spring Garden and Sitgreaves hangs closed in a futile attempt to keep out the oppressive weather.

Where have you gone, Floyd R Turbo?

Well, from what I can tell, Floyd - or I should say his evil, extracted at birth and severed at the brain twin is alive and well in the Lehigh Valley.

I am from a middle-class background in Florida. I was raised by good people; my parents instilled a lot of positive things in me, I think. I have had a lot of advantages in my life. My former SO made an extremely good living, and although we were not rich by a long shot, we lived a very comfortable life. All that disappeared when my relationship ended in a very nasty and very cruel manner - something I've been trying to recover from emotionally and financially for close to 7 years altogether.

I recognize that there are a lot of dirtbags in the world. I'm not naive, I'm not Pollyanna. But I also believe that you cannot predetermine someone's motives or ambitions (or lack thereof) based solely on their skin color or their ethnicity or from what city they migrated from. I prefer to wait until someone actually *is* an asshat in a visible, clearly distinguished manner before I start flinging mud.

Since I have been blogging and writing online, I've also been commenting on news stories - mostly from the Express Times and the Morning Call here in the Lehigh Valley area. I know from past experience with online forums that forums are a microcosm of the larger "real" world, and that a lot of people use the anonymity of the internet to say things they would never say in real life.

But I get the creepiest feeling that for the most part, people like the ones who commented on this story:
The New House On The Block are as serious as a heart attack.

And that really, really, scares me.

...I fought the mice...

...and I think I won.

A week after stuffing steel wool in the cracks I think the varmints are using as a revolving door, there is no sign of meeces.

I'm cautiously optimistic.

Tombler's Home Bakery destroyed by fire

I've never had a Tombler's pie, and from what I've read, that's my great loss.

The bakery,located on Industrial Drive in Glendon, is a total loss. It was started in the kitchen of the late Margaret Tombler to raise money to fight the expansion of the Chrin Brothers landfill.

I don't live in Easton, but I visit there almost every weekend. I have no bone to pick with the Chrin Brother (I may be the only person in Northampton County who can say that!), but I like the idea that this business was started to make a difference and then grew into something of an institution.

If you'd like to help the Drake family, please drop a donation off at the Easton Farmers' Market in Centre Square on Saturdays, or any day of the week at 35 S Third Street. Checks can be made payable to the Easton Farmers' Market, with "for the Tombler family" on the memo line.

...once upon a time - in Phillipsburg...

Most fairy tales begin with “Once upon a time…”, and since this is ultimately a Hollywood fairy tale, let’s start it off the same way.

Once upon a time…on a spring day in 1933, a little girl named Vera was born in Phillipsburg, NJ. Her father was an up-and-coming young attorney in practice with Robert Meyner, who would become governor of NJ in 1954. Her mother was a teacher from Pen Argyl, who like most women of that era, was transformed into stay-at-home mom.

Unfortunately, like a lot of fairy tales, this one has a tragic turn. In what would eventually prove to be a grim foreshadowing of things to come, the little girl’s father died of a heart attack while driving a car in which his wife and daughter were passengers. The little girl who was only 3 grew up wanting to be – more than anything – a movie star. And as so often happens in fairy tales, her wish came true. Vera Jayne Palmer grew up to become Jayne Mansfield, secondly only, perhaps, to Marilyn Monroe as a blonde, iconic bombshell of the 1950s.

iconic Jayne

Jayne, her father, Herbert William Palmer, and her mother, Vera Jeffrey Palmer, lived in this lovely Dutch colonial home in the Hillcrest section of Phillipsburg. It was purchased from the Phillipsburg Building & Loan Association No. 7 in June of 1935. Just 32 when he died in 1936, Herbert Palmer must have thought this home would be an ideal place for a lawyer on the rise to raise a pretty little daughter. His career was on an upward trajectory; he was also a member of the NJ State Assembly during this time.

Jayne's childhood home in Phillipsburg, NJ


After Herbert’s death, Jayne and her mother returned to Pen Argyl, most likely to the tidy Victorian house on North Schanck Avenue that was the Jeffrey family home. Her mother returned to teaching, and sold the Phillipsburg house in November of 1939. In 1940, Jayne’s mother married Harry Peers and the new family moved to Texas.

Jeffrey home - Pen Argyl, PA

The Phillipsburg house is currently listed for sale, and the realtor, Patrice Michel of ReMax Supreme has lived in the Hillcrest area for 35 years. She recalls that her former next-door-neighbor, Arla Senor, was little Vera Jayne’s babysitter during their short stay on Frost Avenue. Even Jayne’s babysitter had legal connections; Ms Senor’s uncle was District Court Judge William P. Tallman.

the interior of the house as it is today


This beautiful story-book home is a far cry from Jayne’s most famous home. 10100 Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills was most commonly known as “the Pink Palace”. The home was originally built for crooner Rudy Vallee, and when Jayne & her 2nd husband, muscleman Mickey Hargitay bought the property, they immediately began to put their own touches on it. Pink was Jayne’s favorite color, and the color was used on every available surface. Mickey was very handy, and built a lot of the out-structures, including the barbecue, a grotto, and the famous heart-shaped pool, with “I love you Jaynie” inscribed on the bottom. It was later sold to singer Englebert Humperdink, and sadly, was demolished in 2002.


the "Pink Palace"

living room of the Pink Palace


one of the many bathrooms (this one complete with Jayne!) in the Pink Palace

Jayne & Mickey at the pool of the Pink Palace




Even more sadly, our fairy tale ends with the death of Jayne Mansfield in a car accident in 1967 at the age of 34 – she lived to be just two years older than her father. Jayne is buried in Fairview Cemetery in Pen Argyl, PA. Fittingly, the woman who loved pink and who was a loving and beloved mother to five children (including actress Mariska Hargitay) is memorialized with a heart-shaped, pink granite gravestone.

Jayne with Mickey Hargitay, their children Zoltan, Miklos, Jr. and Maria Magdolna (Mariska) and Jayne's oldest child - daughter Jayne Marie Mansfield


Jayne with daughter Mariska and youngest child - son Tony Cimber

Jayne's gravesite in Pen Argyl, PA

one of my favorite photos of Jayne - on the set of "Point Blank" - 1964






Many thanks to Patrice Michel and her clients, who were gracious enough to invite me into their beautiful home; Frank Ferruccio – author of “Did Success Spoil Jayne Mansfield? Her Life in Pictures and Text”, and to the lovely ladies of the recorder of deeds office at the Warren County Courthouse in Belvidere.

...I hate meeces...

...to pieces - Part Deux.

Alright. It's war. Poison bait was put out Sunday night, and I just finished cramming steel wool into where I think the little basta...darlings are sneaking in.

I'm patient - I can win this battle (I hope)

Women of Distinction

Geraldine Stutz
1924 - 2005

Ms Stutz became president of then-failing luxury retailer Henri Bendel in 1957, and remained in that position until 1986. While becoming president of a multi-million dollar business at the age of 33 is pretty common-place today, in 1957, most women in retail were relegated to sales positions. If they were lucky, they fought their way to being a buyer.

Ms Stutz is credited with inventing the "shop within a shop" sales method we all know today; small boutiques of separate designers within a large department store.

She started as a shoe editor at Glamour and is credited with launching Andy Warhol's career.

QUOTE:

"What is the difference between mere fashion and true style? Fashion says 'Me too', and style says 'Only me'."

...Let your 21st century technology,,,

...take you back in time this weekend!




Love historic houses?

Got a SmartPhone?

There’s an app for that!

The Historic Easton SmarTour launches on Heritage Day, Sunday, July 10th.

The SmarTour is a self-guided path through downtown Easton. Start at the Bachmann Publick House (169 Northampton Street) and wander through historic Easton. Among the sites you’ll find are the Frank Lawall mansion, Library Hall, and the Chipman mansion. Don’t forget to stop at my favorite, the Howard Riegel mansion on Spring Garden Street.

A map will be available at the information booths for the Chamber of Commerce and the Main Street Initiative, or they can be printed out at any of the websites listed below. There is a QR code on the map; just point your SmartPhone at the code and you can access an index that has a link to the history of each building.

Come enjoy the past history of Easton this weekend – with a little help from the present!



The Historic Easton SmarTour is a collaborative effort between:

* Laini’s Little Pocket Guides
* Don Spencer
* Local historian Richard F. Hope
* Realtor Ellen Shaughnessy

...Architectural Eye Catchers...

...Don't Fence Me In Edition...

Gate to nowhere - southbound 611


Fences make good neighbors, or so the saying goes – although Robert Frost advised further thought in his poem “Mending Wall”:

"…before I build a wall, I’d ask to know what I was walling in or walling out…"


It seems these Easton fences and gates are studies in contradictions. Their primary purpose may be to keep strangers at bay, but their intricacies and details (and in one instance, their hollyhocks!) compel closer examination.

amazing grape fence - 4th & Ferry


detail of grape fence

community garden's black hollyhocks - 5th & Ferry near Spruce


As for the stairs that lead to nowhere…they add yet another layer to the mystery of the House on Bushkill Hill.

stairs to nowhere - Steckel estate

...I hate meeces...

...to pieces!

I keep a very clean house. No, really. I come from a long line of women who clean the house BEFORE the cleaning lady comes. My food is stored properly, dishes are cleaned promptly, and I don't eat all over the house.

I live in a small house that is perfect for me & Cody, The World's Least Scary German Shepherd. It's in a semi-rural area on 3 acres, and I love it. In the 15 years I've been in the NE, I've always lived on acreage in the woods, so I am used to "critters".

I understand odd pre-winter mouse sighting. I do not leap up on chairs and lift my skirts and scream. I don't mind frogs. I do mind snakes, but I deal.

I believe some major construction work to a house about 1/4 mile down the lane from me has resulted in a troubling invasion of mice.

Nothing, so far, has stopped them. I have tried:

HavAHart traps loaded with peanut butter. They're apparently making cold sesame noodle dishes somewhere, because the peanut butter is eaten, but the traps don't work.

Sticky traps. I think they're doing conga lines around the sticky traps. I accidentally got one stuck to my fingers and it was like a Laurel and Hardy routine to get it un-stuck, so I am certain that if a meece actually crossed the thing, it would stick.

I've located where they might be coming in (a crack in the cabinet floor under the sink) and have filled the crevice with the intarwebs-recommended steel wool.

I've also invested in Bounce fabric softener sheets. Do you have any idea how much those farkers cost? Allegedly, mice hate the smell, but I think the research on this is archaic, because now, there are about eleventy thousand Bounce scents. Which one is it that they don't like? Spring Breeze? Perhaps it's Renewing Rain or Paradise Thrill (what, exactly, is a Paradise Thrill, and how the fark do they know what it would smell like?) I searched for Mouse Death Vaporizer scent, but came up Bounce-less. I decided on Outdoor Fresh, hoping this will give the varmints a clue.

My next course of action will be mint leaves and essential oil of lemon. If all else fails, I'll add bourbon and drink it from a silver cup and I won't give a rat's (er...mouse's) ass about any of this.





After that, well...see below. It won't be pretty.

My dog...

...is a huge pest.


Cody – aka The World’s Least Scary German Shepherd – bugs me in a big way.

He molts fur at every change of season; brushing only seems to encourage the shedding. If I could, I’d wear tweed clothes 12 months a year. I could be a millionaire 2 times over with the money I’ve spent on lint rollers and dog hair removers.

He will eat ANYTHING (except grapes for some reason) and that includes alien organic matter that has been moldering in the woods for God knows how long, as well as the usual gross things that dogs will eat should they be given the chance.

I guess it’s moot to mention the dragon breath that can accompany these feasts?

He follows me *everywhere*. The laundry room – check. The kitchen – double check (there’s the potential of a treat hanging in the balance, so he likes to cover his bases). The bathroom, the bedroom, the dining room – check, check, and checkity-check. Did I mention that if he strategically places himself in my house, he can see me in just about every one of these venues without even moving his paws?

He is an inveterate “arm flipper”. You know what I mean. You’re sitting at the dinner table, enjoying a lovely glass of wine, or perhaps you’re in that early-morning haze that is half-sleep, half-awareness, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a big furry tank head jacks your arm up and either (A) sends your wine spraying across the table setting, or (B) rudely wakes you up at 6AM on a Sunday morning. There is rarely an emergency involved; it usually means he’d like a head scratchy please – and right now.

He eats like the Green Bay Packers during summer training camp.

Even though there is never, ever a remote chance in hell that he’ll catch one (and really, as I ask him repeatedly – what would he do if he ever actually *did* catch one?), he barks at deer like they are Tatars and he’s Ghengis Khan.

I have to employ a dog sitter, as I have a job that entails a 100-mile daily round-trip commute. Staying overnight anywhere, or God forbid – planning an entire week’s vacation – become nightmares of logistics and budgets.

He engages in what I fondly term “recreational barking”. This usually occurs during the spring/summer/early fall months, when the house windows are opened. Informal statistics indicate that the average time of occurrence would be 3:17 AM on a weekday morning. He has an uncanny ability to know exactly when you’ve just reached the REM stage of sleep, and will issue one sharp, loud bark. This will jolt you bolt upright and awake, at which time he will fall asleep and start snoring, while you try to fall back asleep for the remaining 2 hours until your alarm will go off.

If the weather is bad – raining, snowing, sleeting, humid, plague of locusts – it will take him 48 minutes to “take care of business”. If it’s a crisp, sunny fall day, or a temperate summer afternoon, it will only take him 3.5 minutes.

In short, he’s an expensive, time-consuming, shedding, logistical annoyance – and I love him so much.

But even on his absolute worst days… or on *my* absolute worst days, there is not a chance in Hell that I’d do to Cody what this waste of human flesh did do his German shepherd:

http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-poconos-dog-shot-cruelty-20110621,0,2130631.story

Cody has done this exactly *once* in the entire 9 years I have had him, and that was because he was violently sick while I was out grocery shopping. Every dog I have ever had – ever – has always made their need to go out very plainly and very vocally known. Even if they had relieved themselves in my house…I just can’t even begin to understand the psychopathic personality required to do this to an animal.

I called the arresting agency – the Pocono Mountain Regional Police Department – and asked when they planned on getting around to charging Mister Wonderful here with some sort of crime, and I was told “well…the officer hasn’t gotten around to completing the report”. Fabulous! You know, I’m no tree-hugging bleeding heart Liberal, but aren’t they concerned that the next time Senor Charming here picks up a gun, it might be aimed at a human? God forbid he should be around children being potty-trained.

If you’d like to voice your opinion to the PMRPD – here’s the phone number – 570.895.2400. Please be polite to the nice lady who answers the phone; I imagine she’s going to have a rough few days.

Oh – and Cody, the World’s Least Scary German Shepherd would love to have the opportunity to demonstrate to Mr Daniel Stevens of Coolbaugh Township, PA, exactly how much of an act that Least Scary thing really is. Let us know when you’re free, and when you aren’t hiding behind a firearm.

...a house (and a blogger) turns 50...

I turned 50 yesterday (eek!)

My childhood home is actually two years older. My parents moved from Wilmington NC to Jacksonville FL in 1959 when the Seaboard Coastline Railroad transferred its headquarters “down south”.

They bought this 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch home for about $10,000 if I remember correctly. As you can see in these photos, it boasted a pretty standard, pretty barren suburban front (and back) yard. That wouldn’t last very long. My father had the gift of a green thumb. Not just a pale minty green, but the deep rich green of collards and fig leaves and honeysuckle vines – all of which came to grow on that tract yard with a controlled abandon.



Our front yard boasted a ligustrum hedge, the shape of which was maintained to within an inch of its life with a plumb level and a pair of hedge trimmers you could probably have used to cut diamonds. On the side of the house grew enormous poinsettia hedges at least 14 feet high. For people in Northern climates who only see poinsettias at Giant around Christmas time, this would have been a revelation. They were a vivid red that matched the PF Flyer sneakers I wore to tear around the yards.



The front yard also had crape myrtles with their dark pink flowers, an azalea hedge (also dark pink) along the front porch, forsythia bushes en mass along the far side of the house (they matched the color of paint chosen for the home), a huge magnolia tree (I remember the lemony-scented blossoms drooping in the hot summer sun), and a paw paw palm tree. It was the perfect yard for hide-and-seek.



The back yard was not neglected either; more crape myrtles, a back hedge of ligustrum (perfect for hiding away from a pesky younger brother), alocasia (elephant ears), a banana tree (that actually bore bananas!) and a fig tree. The most astounding area, though, was under my parents’ bedroom window. Here were planted honeysuckle, night-blooming jasmine, mock orange, gardenias and camellias. It was truly an allergy-sufferer’s idea of Hell on earth, but my mother adored it. When the windows were open on a summer night, the smell was lush and voluptuous.



We also had a vegetable garden where my dad grew collards and tomatoes and cucumbers and runner beans and the hot peppers he loved. There was a box turtle in residence as well; we saved her from certain death trying to cross Old Kings Road.

I have only a few photos of the landscaping during the time I lived in the house, but the vivid colors and scents of the trees and flowering plants are alive and still flourish in my memory.

My father and I were never close. He had a volatile temper and never really wanted children. My mother, who wasn’t able to have children, wanted them desperately. So in 1961 and 1963, respectively, my parents adopted me and my brother. When my mother died in 1976, my father was left “holding the bag”, so to speak, and his Prussian methods of discipline soon slid into abuse, which I escaped when I left for the University of Florida on my 18th birthday.

He did give me my love of gardening and all things green. No matter where I’ve lived, I’ve always had something green and alive around me. There is nothing more relaxing or renewing than the smell of good soil and when it’s combined with the sharp scent of herbs or the funny nose-wrinkling odor of tomato plants, it’s just my idea of total Nirvana. That part of my father will always be with me, and I am glad that it overshadows the negative.

I visited my old home when I was back in Florida in 2009 for my 30 year class high school reunion. The subsequent owners (my dad moved from there in the late 1980s) have more or less decimated the landscaping to where it almost looks like 1961 again, and although the ligustrum hedge is gone, the memory of a suburban childhood spent in the good company of nature and a yard of wonder will remain with me forever.



Happy Birthday, house.

...a blogger looks at 50...

...and bravely says "Bring it on".





(while the little voice inside says "I wish I was 14 again")

...Thank you, God!

Nick Lowe has a new album - "The Old Magic" - coming out in September on YepRoc Records.

Nick's "Lately I've Let Things Slide" inspired the name of this blog, and this is fabulous news! Yay!

Architectural Eye-Catchers...

...P'burg edition.


Does anyone know if P'burg needs a copy editor for their historical plaques? ("grandeous"...really?) Although I see someone took the Wite-Out to the ill-advised apostrophe in "its"

Mister Ed & the Free Bridge Sign

So, of course I *had* to ask the DRJTBC drone if there was a sudden plague of horses in Northampton county - such that would necessitate a sign like this at the "free bridge" that connects Easton PA with Phillipsburg, NJ.

His toe-the-bureaucratic-line answer? "Well, we really did have to put these at other bridges that were more rural, so they just decided to put them at *all* the bridges". Our tax dollars at work, although I'm glad they also alert the horses to the fact that the bridge might be slippery, too.

Mister Ed thanks you.