HIDDEN GEM IN THE BUCKET

Two good friends had been telling me for a while about a small, hidden bar and restaurant buried deep in my  own neighborhood. Finally, they pushed the issue  withan invitation--we will pick you up at  6PM on Friday and take you there.
So we drove the three blocks to a  tiny corner  bar with a sign to tell us we were at the HERITAGE TAP.
walking into the cheerful small bright and clean space, we took a booth and within minutes had a cold pilsner set  before me. I was  one happy camper.  Then came the delicious  fish and  double baked  potato and cole slaw and peach and  rhubarb pie. All fresh, all made  there and all delicious.and in my neighborhood. Only a few blocks from my house, but I was unaware of its existence.  We all agreed that we will be back--our goal to eat our way rhough the menu. This type of evening  is the best of Pawtucket--people doing great things every day with no fanfare--  no sense that  this was unusual--just solid home cooking.

sometimes it's perfect in the Bucket

I ended my last post  with the mention of going to Spumoni's for dinner with our good neighbors. I have been to Spumon'is many times-- some times it is good--sometimes it is just okay--it is never bad. But that night it was perfect.
Every aspect of the meal was jsut right--in fact I turned to my friend Doris, and said  "I feel that I have finally ordered the right thing here--it is so perfect."
What did I order?  I ordered one of the specials that night  Whole belly fried clams With them I  chose the salad  and the mixed vegetable option.
Let me say that the clams were sweet and clean and not at all greasy. They were tender and carried still the freshness of the sea.  The mixed vegetables were brightly colored and still on the edge of crispness and were  more blanched than boiled. Again the medley of the  summer squash and the  carrots and brocolli tasted  perfect for the season.
After much urging by my companions, I agreed to share the cheesecake with strawberries. It was a revelation --so creamy but not heavy and the sweetness that came through was of the strawsberries.
Sometimes surveys about Rhode Island  claim that people here are unhappy.  One thing that they cannot be unhappy about is the food.  If they are,  I would bet that they have never lived outside  Rhode ISland and they have come to take the excellent range and price of foods for granted.  Do you have any idea  how many  years you can live in a place and neve have a meal as good as the one that I enjoyed at Spumoni's--well I can tell you that in 26 years in Cincinnati, I  could not duplicate that experience.  Most places that are not coastal simply do not have the  ingredients or the taste  to make such a meal.
Also I must add tha tthe service was great: Of course, my friends are regulars, and the waiter knew and greeted them but he was a bright and  witty person who in the famous Pawtucket style extended himself to joke and comment with us  about local and sports news.
So  a perfect meal in the BUCKET--go for it!!

A Change of Status--Hospice

Four years and four months ago-- that is when  I got the call in 2009 -- that my Aunt had been found after a fall and a heart attack left her with very little heart muscle and  heard the words of the ICU  nurse  from Rhode Island telling me in Ohio that they did not think she would last the night. Well, Anna proved them wrong, and she recovered in the next year --it seems like a long time-- but the time to begin hospice for my aunt is here.
After a terrible bout of respiratory  distress, she spent over a week in the ICU at Rhode Island Hospital. It seems that she has some serious lung damage. The doctors asked about smoking, but she has never smoked even one cigarette. What this deep and old lung damage probably does reflect are the 40 years that Anna worked at Corning Glass Works in Central Falls, inspecting the glasses as they came out of the furnace. When she came home in the summers in those sweltering July days in the 50s, she would sit on the porch while my mother used a fine tooth comb to  get the glass particles out of her hair. She literally sparkled in the sun. One can only imagine what she breathed in of these  glass fine particles. The fact that  Anna cannot breathe  has caused her blood oxygen to decrease and  this has  put a burden on her weakened heart.  I could not bear to see her confused and frightened and yet, I feared that hospice was a kind of  admission that she was in an endgame. And I was not sure of that.
After meeting  and talking over her situation with doctors and nurses, I was convinced that she would get better care  if she had hospice at the nursing faciluty. Yesterday after much thought and prayer, I signed the papers to change her status.  As soon as I got back to the  little house in Pawtucket, I felt a surge of relief and a kind of quiet certainty that I had made the choice that would give my aunt more comfort, more care and more peace.
My good neighbors often go  out for dinner and I called and asked if we could go together. My husband and I drove the other couple to their favorite place, Spumonis--and  I  suddenly felt the relaxation of  having some strain removed, and  I  knew that I had done the right thing. for  my Aunt.

An extraordinary woman Anne Hutchinson

Today I went to a dedication ceremony at an idyllic woodland site  --Founder's Brook in Postsmouth, RI.
Marking the 375th annniversary of the founding of a new colonial community by a woman. And what a woman-- a mid wife and a free thinker, Anne insisted that women could read and preach the   Bible.  Anne had already been found guilty of  heresy and  expelled from the Bay Colony.   Folnowing the heroic example of Roger Williams, Anne and her husband and many children moved to Portsmouth.
The event today marked the first  prominent   memorial to her and was  the occasion for the dedication of three  stone benches inscribed with her words. The event was organized  by the Friends of Anne Hutchinson and  wuth the help  and support of  Foss Media, an organization devoted to helping to bring history alive and dedicated  to the idea of  freedom. Using the slogan of the Woonsocket Patriot, an abolitionist newspaper published from Woonsocket with the  rousing slogan--We Chronicle Freedom.

A Gift at the Grist Mill

Unexpected Pleasure at the Grist Mill


Yesterday I went to the Grist Mill in Seekonk to meet  up with my reunion class from Saint Xavier's Academy.  A small group meets every month --weather permitting. This was supposed to be  on the last day of February, but when I appeared there at Noon I was told there was no reservation for the group.

 I sat  alone for a  minute and then asked whether they had been there the day before and the hostess said yes. So -- They said the last day of February-- and I wrote  29 down because of Leap Year  but they met on the 28th.  I stood to depart and then I stopped.

I f you don't know it the Grist Mill is perched on a lovely spot, a  small falls of the Runnins River. It has been there a long time and on this day we were having a little snow. The grey tone of the sky, the water, the arching bridge, the stone walls, the gulls, the geese and the two immense swans were creating a  picture of  unmixed harmonies of  white, grey,  charcoal,  silver, and black that Whistler would have delighted in.

 So I thought  why rush out--this is a gift of a solitary lunch in a   perfect place. I  asked for and was seated by the window bedside the falls. The sound and motion of the water danced  outside the window and inside the aroma of cooking and the wood smoke from the  stone hearth fireplace  made a delicious contrast.

I went home and wrote this the  first day of March and I did  not post it. As my readers may know the Grist Mill has been destroyed by a passing  truck and an explosion. I cannot even look when I drive  by now. How I hope that something beautiful and appropriate will be erected there.

AND THIS HOPE CAME TRUE!

WHILE WE LIVE, WE SING

DUM VIVO CANO

Last year  I went to the Mowry family reunion held in Woonsocket. My family has close ties to Woonsocket..  I have  often gone to Oak Hill cemetery when I was  a child, brought there by my  father's sister, my Aunt Grace. She was extremely faithful in  decorating and caring for the graves of her family.  My father's mother was Ida Mowry and her grave is in a small cemetery in Cumberland on  Dexter Street .  It was my Aunt Grace, who died in  2000 at the age of 90, and her Aunt Almira Barlow  who did the research on all the Union soldiers buried there and convinced the town of Cumberland that they should at least mow the grass and  keep the grave sites accessible to those of us who still want to honor our dead.  
Aunt Grace and Auntie Barlow won a large victory, and I was impressed by her determination and her  insistence on doing the right thing.  She was a person of high standards, and much as I try to imitate her, I always feel that she was always light years ahead of me in so many ways.  

I only wish that I had known about them and gone to Mowry reunions with my Aunt Grace, but I did get to go with another dear and faithful family member, my cousin Louise,  her grandfather was the brother of my grandmother Ida.

One of the great things that I learned at the reunion is that the Mowry family motto is the Latin tag  DUM VIVO, CANO which is translated--"While I live, I sing." 

This  motto moved me because it speaks to my desire to express myself more fully and more creatively before I die. An  Irish   friend once said to me "You must fiddle the tune that is in you."  And  that is  another way of saying that we all have something to say and we have the right even the duty to ourselves to give expression to the unique message that only we with out unique DNA  have brought to the earth.

I find this  insistence that we are all creative to be very comforting and stirring. I have often spent much energy and intelligence and creativity interpreting the  writings of others--that's what it means to  be a person who professes literature. But  I always  felt  a longing to express myself more directly.  I guess that is the  reason for this blog also   Finally, as of 30 November 2012--I am no longer teaching. It took me that long To actually reach the state of being fully retired, I was pressured by  the fact of my own declining health; that is what made me  finally understand  how limited and unpredictable our life on earth is.

I would like to spend some time before I die discerning and expressing as fully and clearly as I  can  the unique  message that the Creator placed in me.
  Just as he placed a message in each of you, dear reader. That is what is new about each of us and what we are here  to discover and share.  Let's get on with the show--while we live we can sing. 

A 200 dollar night in Pawtucket

We had heard so much about the wonders of the Gamm Theater in downtown Pawtucket. Finally, we  booked two tickets to go to see their revival of an earlier production of Shakespeare's HAMLET.  We went with two old friends and planned a  dinner date before the show.  The restaurant chosen is on Hope Street almost on the Pawtucket line. We went and ordered from a pricey menu. Each of us had a drink to start and two of us had  desert to finish.  The grand total for  us was over one hundred dollars. PLUS TIP!! My husband could not believe  that was the cost, and he kept examining the bill--but there was no mistake.

We hustled out into the cold night and drove the few miles to the Gamm  next to Tolman High School  and the old armory building. After parking, we went in and sat down. We   paid  80 dollars for our  two seats. My husband turned to me and said--I cannot believe that we are spending 200 dollars for a night out in Pawtucket--we might as well  bus down to Manhattan.

Then the show began, and when the final lines were spoken in that great scene of destruction that ends the tragedy--we decided that we had more than gotten our money's wroth.

The Polonius was a revelation.  I am glad that I  saw  that performance. Both my husband and I are specialists  in dramatic literature--my husband has published  five books on Shakespeare. So this was not our first HAMLET.  But I can say with no  hint of   exaggeration that this was the best Polomius I have seen. The  actor who played the  old politico is himself an old man, and his  ways of showing the aging and capturing the  complexities of the old man were a source of delight and wonder.
Thank you Gamm Theater.