Hurricane Katrina: The Lite Version

Ten Year Anniversary. Visits from Commanders-in-Chief Present and Past.

Across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, we experienced a lite version of Katrina. We were with a few neighbors in the library of a Catholic High School a few blocks away. The then mayor was upstairs in the language lab with her Spanish teacher husband.

We were there for two (three?) days. The plumbing went out after the first day.

Several members of our group walked through streets filled with downed trees and downed wires to report back on the condition of everyone's houses. The whole area smelled like gas for a few days. No power, no phone service, and even after the streets were cleared, no gas.

Within a few days, the Red Cross came with food. We lent our neighbor, who owned a generator, a window ac unit, and he let us sit in an air-conditioned space for an hour or two a day.

The second pic is the during, the view from the library; the rest are afters. The elegant woman in the orange windbreaker is our neighbor, Ha, now 95. She still looks like  a model on all occasions. The car with the doll is the work of our wealthy neighbors. And that's our house! Luckily, it is an old house, very strong, so the trees only made a hole and did not destroy the entire house.

In a Belgrade Cemetery

Two summers ago, Mr FS and I went to Vienna, where my mother was born in 1930.  Last summer, we went to Belgrade, where my mother and her parents (and other family members) stayed (1938) before emigrating to the United States.

A most moving part of our journey: a visit to a cemetery in Belgrade.

Image courtesy of my daughter. See her Tumblr for more travel illustrations or her website for more.

Reality Show Opportunity: Not Keeping Up with the Kardashians

Backstory: We bought a house in New Orleans in Spring 2013, using a small inheritance from Mr FS's parents. The house is a rental, occupied by Frugal Son (in the tiny room with no closet) and two other fellows, one of whom does occasional work in the tv biz.

New Story: Roommate with occasional work in tv biz meets someone who does reality show featuring Amish carpenters. That someone's interest is piqued by three 20-something fellows with a big screened porch. They are thinking of building a bar on it.

Of course, I would prefer a bathroom remodel (the house needs it). Or how about....oh, zillions of things.

Frugal Son and his roomies seem a bit interested. They would hang out with the carpenters and that would be filmed too.

If an offer comes through, should Mr FS and I say OK if the fellows want to do it? Or are there a million unforeseen bad consequences I'm not thinking of?

Remember my cookbook?

Back again from our final trip of the summer to the beautiful Berkshires where I reconnected with childhood places and happy memories of my now-gone relatives from Vienna. I continued some of the questioning I began in the Balkans and got more specifics on the dangerous  journey undertaken by my grandparents, mother, and others as they escaped Vienna in the late 1930s. Truly, my very existence is a miracle.

I may depart from my blog's original purpose--to spread the gospel of frugality--and turn to more personal matters as I attempt to wrest information from the very few surviving relatives--who themselves remember very little and were greeted with silence about those terrible times.

For the moment though, I am back to frugality. After all, if we weren't frugal we couldn't go to the Balkans to ask questions of Ildi, my mother's cousin's widow. Since I am interested in a return visit, I am once again checking the food ads and making lists of necessary items to search for in thrift stores.

And it is time to make yet another pitch for the cookbook Frugal Son and i put together from Miss Em a few years ago, when she went off with a scholarship that provided a dorm room but not a board card. How to cook with limited resources, no car, a small fridge, and NO STOVE?

Thus was born our little cookbook. I have not really made an effort to market it, but copies sell now and again. And now--after all these years--a review! A good one!

Seriously, get your college student a rice cooker (very cheap), some rice (ditto) and a few other things. This will be a much-appreciated gift. I and my post-college kids (and their friends) use the book all the time. Not just for the stove-free.

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5.0 out of 5 stars This book is great! I was on a trip with a fridge ... July 10, 2014

By JEC

Verified Purchase

This book is great! I was on a trip with a fridge available for use. Needed a cheap option for cooking meals, so I searched the Kindle Store and found this book. After reading I picked up a rice cooker and made a few of these recipes. I haven't tried them all yet, but I plan to, and I did enjoy the ones I made. This is an excellent cookbook for dorm, hotel room, and at home cooking.

In case anyone is wondering

I am back from a most amazing journey. Beginning in Brussels and Paris, then on to the Balkans: Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia. I can hardly begin to process what I experienced there.

And--while overcoming the jet lag from a 30 hour return trip--I finished the final volume of Proust. That too has been a journey--more than a year of reading, more than 4000 pages.

Thanks for commenting on the posts that appeared in my absence. Much appreciated, though I could only respond in my head.

One of the places we visited...

Where are the pickers of yesteryear: Naomi

Ah, mixed feelings here. I met Naomi at a yard sale in Bloomington. I arrived on foot (since I had no car), started chatting with Naomi, a woman about 15 years my senior. She ended up giving me a ride home. In fact, she started taking me to sales with her on weekends.

It says something about me that I still remember two things I bought at that sale: a large woven bedspread and some fabric to cover the seat of a Queen Anne-style chair. I have both even now.

Naomi was radical politically. She had many left-wing bumper stickers plastered on her car, eliciting honks, wild hand gestures, and sometimes near collisions from the conservative drivers of the area. She was an eccentric personally. She was divorced. Her former husband was Greek and had taught in the law school. When democracy was restored in Greece, he returned to a government post. Even though he no longer had a legal obligation, he sent Naomi a check every month. Their kids were gone: the son was in college and the daughter was a dancer in Europe.

She also got money from her family. Her father had been a rather prominent architect in New York City. Her widowed mother was in poor health and lived in a big apartment on the Upper West Side. Her mother gave her extravagant gifts: a small Rembrandt etching, beautiful jewelry, and many objets. She would occasionally drag something to an antique dealer when she needed money.

She lived in a beautiful old house, decorated with remnants of her former life (elegant Danish modern furniture) and funked up with eccentric finds. As I recall, the living room was shiny black and red. She said "I only like junk now." She had a fabulous eye and was an excellent artist.

Her live-in boyfriend, Jim, was about my age. He was getting a PhD in astronomy. He slept all day and worked on his thesis all night. Occasionally, he would come greet us when we returned from a yard sale. He would always wear a brocade robe supplied by Naomi.

Well, Naomi was a little crazy at times and became totally obsessive about finding things to resell (which she learned about from yours truly). So obsessive was she that instead of consigning at the Eye of Osiris (where she also started working), she opened her own store. She did almost no business because she priced everything too high. She also befriended a waif, who repaid her kindness by robbing the store.

One day she turned to me in the car. She said, "All the women in my family are self-destructive. Don't be like me. You need to finish your thesis."

She was right. She was--with great kindness and perhaps even with some love--telling me to end my relationship with her. She knew I was easily distracted from my work. Our weekend jaunts ended. I got a teaching job. I never saw her again after I left that summer. I am so grateful to her: she pushed me to my true vocation.

Pickers of Yesteryear: Enemies Part 2

The other person who treated me with enmity was ER. She owned a small vintage shop with an art studio behind. I'm not sure if she produced much art.

Like PM, she was a bitter person, though perhaps happier now. I think her husband was rather countercultural and ER was a conflicted countercultural. Her relative poverty beat her down. Her husband didn't make much money and I don't think her shop did very well, since it was quite expensive compared to the Eye. It was also upstairs in a downtown building and not as well situated.

When I went into a thrift store, ER would say to her young daughter, "Uh oh. We have to hurry before SHE gets the good stuff!" I thought this was a joke, till I talked to my friend Charlotte. Charlotte's beautiful daughter Kate (for whom I babysat) was friendly with ER's daughter Emma. Charlotte said, "ER asked me why you always try to talk to her." Oh. How humiliating. I hadn't realized my very chats were unwelcome. So--in a mean-spirited way--I never spoke to her again. Not a single word.

Watching these unhappy people made me realize--though it took a while--that picking was not a permanent career for me, fun as it was. ER--in one of our few chats before I learned how much she disliked me--said "I went to the Art Institute of Chicago! I have a BFA!  I'm an artist! I should be a curator! I shouldn't be doing this!"

I had to do something with my OTHER talents. Naomi pushed me back to my vocation.

Thrift Store Treasures: Reality Check

The wonderful Hostess of the Humble Bungalow made a visit to my blog (so honored to have her). She left a comment to the effect that I must have the best thrift stores in the whole wide world. Time for a reality check.

Interestingly (and I think related, so bear with my rambling), Hostess was hit with a blog comment of the nasty kind, jeering at the lovely life she chronicles in her blog. According to the anonymous commenter, Hostess had things so easy blahblahblah. Hostess, of course, responded with the truth: that a blog leaves a lot of stuff out. In her case, she chooses to feature the beauty in everyday life. She omits a lot. The blog is not one's WHOLE life.

In a similar vein--though not, thankfully, responding to nasty comments--I have to say that the thrift store treasures I mention now and then are the highlights of many, many hours of mostly fruitless wandering. It is a wandering I find pleasurable, though I would probably go a lot less if I didn't find a lot of things needed by family and friends. Most of what I find is very workaday stuff (potholders for Frugal Son's new abode, for instance).

So here is an incomplete accounting.

I started going to thrift stores around 1980 in Bloomington, first to clothe myself and then to make a bit of money to replace my TA income. I then moved to Houston, where the thrift stores were too far from where I--carless--lived. There were incredible yard sales (I lived in a prosperous area), but Houston is full of very poor people, so the competition was tremendous. I then moved to a small town in Michigan, with a little college in the midst of a town decimated by factory closings. The thrift store was--not surprisingly--incredibly depressing. Then I moved to a small town in Indiana, with a surprisingly good thrift store (though it was the most disgusting thrift store I have ever seen). One summer, I was in a seminar in Evanston, which had probably the best thrift stores I have ever frequented (combo of  extremely affluent college students--transient population--and extremely affluent residents). And now I'm near New Orleans.

Here are the high points of my acquisition, in no particular order:

--the recent cache of Italian stuff (Pucci, Dolce, Leger, Missoni)
--a Chloe dress which amazingly fits my daughter (featured on blog a while back)
--2 vintage Gucci bags (little fabric GG ones, with stripes)
--1 alligator Mark Cross vintage bag (WHERE IS IT???)
--Hermes scarf (Feux de route)
--Hermes cashmere sweater
--Dries van Noten blazer and cashmere sweater
--numerous lesser cashmere sweaters
--a Missoni sweater that my daughter wears (she looks good in orange)
--brown Chanel loafers
--maybe 5 Hermes ties and 5 Ferragamo ties

OK, that's perhaps 40 super-amazing items. In 34 years.  One-point-something PER YEAR.

Pickers of Yesteryear: Enemies Part 1

Not all is rosy in the world of pickers. I remember seeing two women at my local Goodwill: each had hold of one end of a vintage child's rocker. They stood and stared at each other for several LONG minutes, hissing insulting comments. Finally, one let go.

So too back in Bloomington, Indiana, in the 70s and 80s. Unlike Karen and Sioux, remembered in my last post, I did not have a car and my effort was limited to the two thrift stores within walking distance. Also, unlike them, I did not have another job. Mr FS was living on his grad student teaching stipend of $300/month and, though he was willing to share with me, it was really not enough.

Off I went to hone my newfound talent (see tale of my 25 cent jacket which turned to $12 before my amazed eyes). It hardly required any investment and I started making money right away.

Two people, who no doubt have long forgotten me, were very hostile. There is enough for everyone at thrift stores, but treasures like beaded cashmere sweaters and the like are not available in abundance. So my entry into the market was, I soon realized, not welcomed by those who were already doing it.

One of the people who disliked me was PM, an older woman (if the person by her name is the one I knew, she is now 87 years old). We all thought she was crazy. Several of the women who ran the Eye of Osiris were writers and we often plotted out a mystery novel based in the vintage biz with PM either as victim or as murderer. PM was--by gossip--the ex-wife of a professor. She had had a gig as secretary in an academic department and had lost her job when she tattled on a faculty member for some misdeed.  (It's hard enough now to go against the patriarchy. Imagine then!)

PM was desperately poor or so she said. She had obviously really come down in the world and lost her status--and how to get it back in Bloomington when everyone has a PhD and is competing for the same low-end jobs? Especially then. Some said she had a son from whom she was not in frequent contact. She had a close relationship with her daughter MM. In fact, the two together reminded me of Miss Havisham and Estella from Great Expectations.

Eventually, PM got a job in a museum or agency. She had some security again, so she quit her picking activities. Even though she was quite hateful, I do hope she found some happiness. (Pic below from UK Telegraph)

Dismantling a Household: Advice Needed

Though I wrote a bit on the happy event of Frugal Son getting a job and setting up a mini-household in a tiny New Orleans apartment, I did not write about a sad event. The death--not unexpected, but devastating nonetheless--of my much-loved and esteemed father-in-law.

He lived in northern California, near his daughter, in a house full of memories and mementoes of 45 years in a big house in Pasadena. Now, in addition to the emotional issues, we have to face the issues both emotional and pragmatic of what we will take. The other children--in the same town and in Seattle--have already taken their chosen objects.

Nothing is valuable in a monetary sense. But my in-laws were great makers and collectors of objects: handmade crafts of my mother-in-law (some of whose sweaters I posted in the early days of this blog), furniture built by my father-in-law, plus collections of bells, glassware, etc etc.

And the books! My father-in-law, an English professor, had, I would say, one of the most beautiful minds I have ever encountered. He also had a house full of books: poetry, music theory, and Roman history make up the bulk of it. Do I need to mention that Mr FS shares his father's profession and love of the first two categories.

Mr FS will have to go through the process of deciding what to take and what to leave behind. Does anyone have any advice--even a reference to some good books on the topic--of how to deal with the pragmatics of moving many small and a few largish objects?

Any words of experience would be much appreciated.