Quiz Show

Last night I was listening to the radio on my way to rescue my (business) partner who had locked herself out of the office and I heard a few seconds of a quiz show, I think it was "information please" on WAMU's The Big Broadcast which is at

http://www.wamu.org/programs/bb/ (click and paste, I so don't know how to hyperlink)

and the show was the July 30, 2006 show. The question was,

"Why would a Gentleman break a date with a melanochroic woman?"

The answer was, because she was dark skinned.

What?

Granted, the show was from June 7, 1938, but I was still taken aback. Even though they said "gentleman prefer blondes" was the reason, I am still surprised to hear things like this (unless it's in a Quentin Tarantino movie).

From a random dictionary site on the web:

Mel`a`no`chro´ic
a. 1. Having a dark complexion; of or pertaining to the Melanochroi.

Appalachian Grave

This is a story I wrote sometime last year. I would like to reserve all rights to this story but I hope you all enjoy it.


Appalachian Grave

by

Michael John Mullen




The Rocky Mountains are stunning, and there are those who have been to the heights and seen the soaring grandeur of the Continental Divide and think there can be nothing more beautiful. I have been afraid to take my wife there for fear she will find them so beautiful she would not want to come back to the East coast. The Appalachian mountains are not as tall, not as striking, not as new as the Rockies. Skiers disdain the Appalachians, and as a boy I felt the same. There was nothing marvelous about the green-covered hills of my home state. They were steeper than the hills of my native Iowa, but after seeing the Rockies I could never call them mountains.

Now the hills of West Virginia and Pennsylvania and all the other states that touch the Appalachian range are no less wondrous, for all their differences are not necessarily shortcomings. The West Virginia hills have a grace, a quiet dignity that belies their simple appearance. They have seen the times of rocky outcroppings and jagged peaks, and are settled into a senescence not yet yielding to senility. They remain quiet and stalwart, even with great portions strip-mined away leaving cancerous scars which bring a silent grief to the few who see them every day.

While much of the Appalachian range is covered with trees and leafmeal and green moss, there are the occasional boulders that rise from the ground like new molars. Some flat, some anvil shaped, sometimes along hills or rivers and sometimes in the middle of an otherwise level clearing. These giant castles of my childhood became the back seats of my adolescence, having no ’57 Chevy to retreat to after a dance. I still smile a secret smile when I see one of these boulders, and I can see a pale brunette girl and remember tree roots that dug into my back but didn’t diminish the pleasure of those summer nights in June.

I was hiking with my father one early fall, getting the last camping trip into the year before the weather became too cold for this to be fun, when we stopped by a stream in the shade of one of these boulders. We released the dogs- held there by my father’s stern command, never by a leash- and they bounded off to find some deeper water. We sat and drank cold water from the canteens, filled in the stream before you needed filters, and ate the camper’s lunch of pepperoni and warming Colby cheese. My father ate the trail mix of dried fruits and nuts I never quite liked and we relaxed. These were the times I felt closest to the rest of the world; when there was no one else around.

After a break of no more than five minutes- any more would be lazy- we hoisted our packs and I walked around, calling the dogs. I walked around the other side of the boulder as they came running toward me, mouths dripping with water and bits of leaves stuck to the ends of their tongues. Under the anvil-like outcropping of the boulder I saw a rough wall, about three feet high, eight feet long, and four feet wide. It was bordered on one side by the boulder, which sheltered the space inside. When I looked closer I could see a headstone, and the markings were remarkably clear. Most old headstones of this type were unreadable as the rain and wind wore them smooth, but in the lee of the stone even the wind would not erase the name. I could see clearly:

Keith Adkins
Born 1845
Murdered 1863

I didn’t know what to make of it. I called my father, and he took some pictures of the grave. I have always been fascinated by cemeteries, and this was a mystery too real for me to forget. We talked into the night by the campfire, and wondered who the young man might have been and what were the circumstances of his death. He might have been murdered by a rival or by a thief. He might have been killed in the War, and his distraught family may have considered his death murder. This was the time in West Virginia when the Northwestern 55 counties of Virginia returned to the Union they never really wanted to leave. This boy may have work Blue or Gray, and his family may have considered the opposing Army murderers, whichever side they were on.

As I drifted off to sleep I thought of the ballad of the Long Black Veil, and about the woman who expiated her sin by wandering the hills in such a veil to mourn the death of her lover, hanged for a murder he did not commit. He was in bed with this woman at the time, but she was married to his best friend. This unlucky man could not provide an alibi and went to his death seeing his lover in the crowd, who watched him hang without a tear in her eye. I thought about the old song, and wondered if this could have been the murder victim. Only as a grown man (and after the introduction of the Internet) would I learn that the story was fiction, based on the murder of a New Jersey priest and the woman who visited Rudolph Valentino’s grave in a long black veil. The song was written in 1959 by the same men who brought us the story of Big Bad John.

Family legends live on, and can acquire more reality than the true stories of those times. We have the legend of my ancestor who came over from Ireland to fight in the war, and landing in Boston, fought for the Union. He was wounded at Shiloh, and married his battlefield nurse. I was told over and over as a boy how Florence Nightingale chose her nurses from the homeliest women around, as she did not want the men to fall in love with them and take them away. I remember seeing the picture in the oval frame, the early photograph with pen lines drawn to provide clarity in those places the focus failed to give distinction, and thinking that yep, she was homely. However, she was not a nurse; this was America Ann Wallace previously Ballangee previously Lafleur, who married Andrew Wallace, another Irishman who died in a train accident. His legend was that America Ann never tried to claim any compensation for his death, as he had a habit of taking off for a month long binge every once in a while and she did not know if her husband was traveling with a ticket.

Somewhere my father may have the photographs taken that day, and I might be able to look up the county records to find the details of the young man’s death. It is even possible to find the facts without leaving my house, armed with a high speed internet connection and a credit card, but I doubt I will find anything so true to my heart as the wonder and speculation of that afternoon in the woods.

The pictures are of me in the basement of Edgar Allan Poe's house in Philadelphia where he wrote "The Black Cat" and of my sons in the front of the canoe before the wind and current blew us further downstream.

The Christmas in July newsletter is posted here. It may be amended later, but this is what I have now.



Christmas in July 2006


We had a mild winter and a lovely spring and now we are paying for it all with summer heat. Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad my heating bills were less than they could have been, and I really enjoyed waiting until mid-June to turn on the air conditioning, but I don’t like that part of the year when the heat and moisture plaster your shirt to your body in the time it takes to walk out to the car. While I can take pride in having lived in times and places where there was no A/C these days make me glad I live in this time and this place.

Our two older children survived the first year of high school and middle school, and strangely enough, so did we.

It has been the year for travel. In the late summer I made good on my promise to take us to New England during the hot weather, and we went up to Rhode Island, Maine, and then to Boston for a family wedding (Nancy’s cousin). In early fall Nancy and I went to Asheville, NC to a wonderful B&B in Biltmore Village, and took the horseback tour of the Biltmore Estate. The next weekend we went to Providence, RI to see New England again.

One of the highlights of the year was going to New York in October to see Spamalot! on Broadway. This was somewhat of a pilgrimage, as we have all of the Monty Python films and TV shows on DVD, and my kids love it as much as Nancy and I do. Seeing Tim Curry and David Hyde-Pierce on stage was wonderful, and I wonder how we understood anything as we were laughing so hard the whole time. We were able to see our friends Brendan and Tiffany and had great pizza in Brooklyn.

We went to West Virginia for Christmas, and it is strange to see how much my home town has changed. The changes are better than I would have predicted.

In February we took a day trip to Washington DC, and saw the exhibit on Polio at the Museum of American History. There was a picture of Nancy’s uncle, Frederick Robbins (Nathan’s middle name is Frederick, after him), who along with Drs. Enders and Weller discovered how to grow polio virus in culture, enabling the development of the polio vaccine. The three men won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1954 for their breakthrough discovery. After that we went the long way home and went out near Dulles where we saw the new Smithsonian Air and Space Museum where they have all the big planes- the Concorde, the Enola Gay, the Space Shuttle Enterprise (which never actually went into space but was dropped off of a 747), and many very cool aircraft and spacecraft. If you’re in the area it’s worth it to see them, but there’s not much else in the area. We went out there to see my parents, who had flown in to Dulles and were staying the night in the area before they drove home to West Virginia.

During Spring Break for Nathan he and Nancy went down to Florida to visit Suzanne, Jon, and Jack Clements. They came back longing to return to Florida. Later in April Nancy went down to Cancun with her friend, Janet Whitaker. They had a great time, and somehow when she returned my boys and I had not destroyed the house.

The rest of May we stayed put, and Nancy’s family came out for her birthday. It was great to see them all, and once again I was reminded how good it is for my sons to see their cousins.

June was spectacular. Nancy and I headed off to Spain together, while our sons went to the Outer Banks with my parents. We went to Madrid, Toledo, Granada, Seville, and Cordoba, with a day trip to Gibraltar. We drove up the Rock- no mean feat, parallel parking on a 30 degree incline in a diesel minivan with manual transmission. We saw the “rock apes”- actually Barbary macaques- and a juvenile one climbed up the wall and through the bars on the window at the restaurant. He (or she) climbed onto our table, and when he saw we weren’t going to shoo him away he grabbed a packet of mayonnaise from our basket. Then the barman did shoo him away, and he glared at us and closed the window, muttering “hmmph, el Mono.”

I have wanted to go to Spain since high school and I finally got to fulfill that dream. It was just like I felt it would be, except I didn’t know the road signs would be so confusing. The best food things for me were the Chocolate con Churros at La Olla de Chocolate (the Chocolate Pot) in Madrid and the croquetas at Las Cuevas de Luis Candelas, which is in the Arco de Cuchilleros below the Plaza Mayor in Madrid. We liked Toledo the best of all the cities, and the best hotel was the Parador San Francisco at the Alhambra palace in Granada. Also we learned that when a country’s team is playing in the World Cup there are no available taxicabs, which gave us a better understanding of the city bus system in Cordoba than we ever wanted.

This July-to-July cycle has ended up with Nancy and the boys taking a trip with our friend Janet Whitaker and daughter Alison out West, to see the Great Salt Lake, Yellowstone, the Badlands, Little Big Horn, Mount Rushmore, and other sights. Yes they saw a bear in Yellowstone, and no he did not try to get their pic-a-nic basket.

Nancy continues to be active at our Quaker meeting. She has volunteered with the local Hospice organization, and is the bereavement person for the Meeting. She continues to sing with the Easton Choral Arts Society, and was elected to the Board of Directors.

Jacob has been active in several plays with the Tread Avon Players, one of the local community theater groups. He has done sound and lights for several shows this past year, and we are quite proud he has found a niche with a group of theater people, especially as one of the youngest in the group. He has also honed his skills at video games, and at asking for new game systems. He may never forgive Nintendo for naming their new system the Nintendo Wii. He has decided to keep calling it the Revolution. Jacob survived a season on the Easton High School wrestling team, and I am so proud of his determination to stick with it, when it was clearly not his thing. I got to see him pin an opponent, and it was great to see his excitement. He maintains the website for the Quaker meeting. He can be reached at grapenutz378@gmail.com. He has been known as Grape Nuts since the first week of high school.

Sam has eased well into middle school. The year has been remarkably uneventful, and we are proud of how much he has improved on his saxophone. He is eagerly awaiting the Eragon movie, which is due in theaters December 15. Sam continues to make friends and charm teachers without trying. Someday he will learn how charming he really is, and we will all be in trouble.

Nathan is eight, and fortunately gets to still be eight. While he has had wonderful progress in piano and done very well in school this year, his main accomplishments seem to be playing outside until dark and bringing “treasures” back from the hill behind our house.

As for myself, I completed my two-year term as Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the end of June. The biggest news is the coming of another Obstetrician in our group in August, which will put me back to every third night and every third weekend call. I managed to get my boat fixed and we have had some good times on the water (finally). I have given a few homebrew demonstrations to friends, and one of them mentioned me to some people who want to put in a brewpub in St. Michael’s. I hope he was only kidding. I have been writing more, but mainly I look forward to living a more humane life with my family that deserves to see me around more (whether that be positive or not). Oh, I also have a blog, which may be found at http://trout-in-the-milk.blogspot.com. I’ll try to post this to the blog if I can.

Best Holiday Wishes to you, our friends, family, and acquaintances. We hope to hear from you- that’s why we do this in July. No one ever answers in December. I will attach a few pictures, but not too many to make it hard to e-mail.

Much love,

Mike, Nancy, Jacob, Samuel, and Nathan Mullen

Give-us-food looks from Dennis, Rosie, Ani, and Chessie




ADDENDUM

Chocolate con churros

Chocolate a la taza

2 cups milk
6 oz Baker’s Bittersweet Chocolate
1 Tbsp corn starch

Heat milk in microwave until hot (this will vary). Chop chocolate into chunks to facilitate melting. Put milk and chocolate into heavy bottomed saucepan and heat until melted while stirring constantly with a whisk. Whisk in corn starch. Simmer for two minutes or until thickened. Off heat and serve in cups.

Churros

1 cup water
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup all-purpose flour
2 eggs
Fat for deep-fat frying
Granulated sugar

In saucepan, bring water, sugar, and salt to boiling. Remove from heat. Stir in flour, all at once, and beat until smooth. Beat in eggs, one at a time, until mixture is smooth. Spoon batter into pastry bag fitted with large star point. Pipe 6 inch strips into deep fat at 375 degrees. Fry churros, a few at a time, for 3-4 minutes or until golden brown, turning as necessary. Drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with granulated sugar, or not. Makes 12.

Dunk in chocolate a la taza, and repeat until gone.