The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found

- Calvin Trillin

Items Needed to Make a Foil Dove for Holiday Dinner Leftovers:
A square piece of aluminum foil measuring, 10" by 10" or smaller if the left over is small.
A piece of red, green, or gold curly ribbon
How to Make a Foil Dove for Holiday Dinner Leftovers:
1. Place the food item in the center of the tin foil.
2. Fold the foil from the top right corner to the bottom left corner.
3. Slowly and neatly begin twisting the opposite ends and rolling the foil until it rests on the food item. This is the body of the dove. All you need to do is roll the foil in your fingers bringing the two pieces of foil together to form the body.
4. On either end of the foil begin making a feathered tail of the dove. Initially you will twist the end closest to the food item and feather out the outer portion. You can cut or simply shape the end like a feathered tail. Remember doves are short and stout, so you can fan out the dove’s tail by manipulating the foil.
5. At the other end twist off the foil closest to the food item and begin to draw out a long or short neck. Your dove, could look more like a Trumpeter Swan if you like. At the very end of the foil after you have formed the neck by manipulating the foil with your fingers, simply flatten the foil to create a face and a slight twist at the very end to form the beak. The beak is very tiny.
6. This provides a special memento of your efforts at making this a special day for everyone.

7.Toss in garbage. Your trashman will feel very special.

"All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind."

- Aristotle

There was a time when I really thought it possible to have it both ways, the career to pay the bills, the avocation to pay the soul. I realize the naivety of this now as my career consumes more and more of my time, energy and frankly saps my creative mind. I guess that's why people eventually retire from the career that has sustained them over the years, and there is always that inevitable question form one's co-workers "what are you going to do with all your spare time...."

Personally I don't think this is going to be much of a problem for me - I have such a backlog of ideas and half-begun projects that I am pretty sure I could be carried forward without a boring day well into the next century. But not everyone is like that - my parents were pretty well booked up through their retirements, but I know a lot of friends whose parents just don't seem to know how to cope. They travel for the sake of travel, not for the eagerness to learn the secrets of the Dead Sea but to have lunch on a ship-board buffet and play a hand of cards in the casino. Instead of scraping the paint off an old chair, they call Sears and have a beer while they wait.

I guess it would be wrong of me to challenge that if it is truly what someone has relished as retirement goals for years - but I have to doubt it. Who of us slogs through years of paperwork on our desks with the dream in mind of nothing more than an ottoman and re-runs of Hollywood Squares? So where does the ambition go? Do we really lose interest, do we cease to love adventure, do we forget how to strip the paint off a chair? Of course not. It's all still right there, coated over by a numb sealant left behind by years of career - like an oil slick coating the feathers of a Murre. It takes some careful cleaning to get it off, to set the wild bird free. The Murre might look bewildered at first, but the story it tells of its time in the hands of the stranger who preened it will become legend for generations. We should only be so lucky.

"Probably nothing in the world arouses more false hopes Than the first four hours of a diet."

- Samuel Beckett

Okay, so there I was at Starbucks. I've been pretty good all summer avoiding buying cookies or scones given the fact Starbucks recipes seem to have a "secret ingredient" in everything that takes it up a good 200 calories. But there I was, the red signs are up...and Eggnog Lattes are back on the menu. At about 20,000 calories a pop I know I should be avoiding them...but the richness, the smell of the nutmeg...I could not avert it, I needed a fix.

I do wish I could report that I was disappointed, that the eggnog was not as good as I remembered - but unfortunately it was. And then of course I had to order a venti, knowing that a "tall" was just not going to sate me, that I'd be wanting for more like a junkie. So I enjoyed it.

The Holidays have begun. Thanksgiving is remarkably close again this year to Halloween, which means that we have to hustle to get ready for it. I still have not taken the stuffed witch off the front porch - she may be there for Thanksgiving; maybe I can punch down the point on her hat and call her an ugly Pilgrim. She's got a green complexion, which given a full Turkey-Day repast is not far from how I generally feel by the day after. I suppose this weekend I should take the Halloween stuff back to the attic, and start thinking about the next holiday... but then there are some really cool movies out right now, and then there are those eggnog lattes...I bet we can hold off on Thanksgiving plans for another week...

"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk"

- Paul Klee

Paul Klee has always been a hero to me. He was an artist who first studied the violin, lived through a war, felt repression as an artistic "degenerate" in Europe after WWI, and who moved back to Switzerland to comment quietly against war. He painted in a dream-like state that defied any classification; he drew on satire and fantasy, and he used colors that were both discordant and harmonious.

His image of a man entering Senility makes the state look almost enviable; it is soft, warm and gentle.

He painted a lot of landscapes in his years, most riddled with blocks of color and child-like lines that imply objects; he was a master of distillation. Different from most is one that is dark and moody, probably from his later years when marked by disease he saw the world slipping into the treacherous times just before WWII. To me it shows the world waiting earnestly for what is about to come. It is somber, un-remorseful and sad.

Unfortunately we don't seem to learn from the past; we are short-memoried when it comes to giving up liberties. It is far too easy to call something we don't understand "degenerate" and to chase it away while we wave a flag. Senility?

"The foolish colonel will foam and froth at the mouth and double over with appendicitis. All that oxalic acid, in one dose, and you're dead...

...If the Wolf Peach [tomato] is too ripe and warmed by the sun, he'll be exposing himself to brain fever." - Dr. James Van Meter, Physician to Colonel Robert Gibbon Johnson, 1820.

Tomatoes got off to a bad start, it seems. For all that they are pretty much a staple now, they had to overcome quite a rap. Mary and I have had a few tomato plants over the years with moderate success, and in fact gave over the tomato bed in the back yard to raspberries a couple of years ago given the fact that the latter seemed much happier in the location and have been producing a luxurious crop ever since. That said, some of you may recall that I quietly purchased a packet of tomato seeds as well as a packet of pumpkin seeds while we were in Paris, at the flower market near Notre Dame. Having gotten off to a late start, I raised the plants in our little greenhouse, then moved them into bigger pots around the back yard to pollinate. Once the weather started to turn cold I moved them back into the greenhouse and set the heater at 80....they have been very happy since and are producing a nice little crop which although extremely late is a very welcome sign for harvest in the weeks to come. The tomatoes are small but interesting, the variety I had chosen was one that is squat and wrinkled; they are just beginning to turn color and seem to be a deep almost purplish color. Hopefully they will have a taste that is as special as their appearance...and I hope to be able to grow again next year from their seed.

The Pumpkins are coming too, we only have two small ones and they are still a dark green; at this point it is not looking like they are going to turn color, so I have put glass domes over them to incubate them a bit....hopefully they will at least producer seeds to use for next year.

All in all, the experiment is not too bad...and next spring will tell. My dream is to continue the strains of both these plantings, as a kind of perpetual memory of our visit to Paris. While tending the little plants that have now taken over the yard and greenhouse, I can't help but think about Grandpa Miller, who grew everything from seeds - he would have never bought a start, that would have simply been beneath him. Grandpa taught me a lot about plants and propagation, about capturing flyaway seeds from flowers, cross-pollinating to get the right hybrids, and about grafting fruit trees. The latter is not really all that practical unless Mary and I decide to put in an orchard, but I really am proud of the fact that I know how. It is a nice connection to growing up and spending time with Grandpa -