Happy Birthday to Charles Dickens

** The New York Times has an article to be published this Sunday, February 12, 2012 in the Magazine on a reporter's visit to Dickens World. Don't miss it! It has great photos. **


Today Charles Dickens would be 200 years old, if he had cut out the raw eggs in champagne and gotten lots more sleep, not to mention the various injections that now keep women looking taut and uncomfortable. While most serious news outlets and bloggers are probably going on and on about this great Victorian writer, I say let's let it go for now, right here, because I am big on reminding people that there were 50,000 novels published in the Victorian period, and to elevate Dickens to his pedestal might be a bit excessive and exclusionary. Moreover, I would also like to remind people out there not to take him too seriously because in many instances, he didn't take himself too seriously sometimes, either. We can see the humor in the texts, as well as how he dashed off the novels in serial form (most notably in his earlier works, but less so for his later, greater novels).

One way that he showed his seriously not-so-serious side was by his live performances where he dramatized readings from his novels. I would say that this is a way for an author to connect with an audience at a very different level than the analytical, literary one that the physical novel often presents. To this end, it seems that we have some folks out there who have taken up this slightly ridiculous side and created Dickens World. That's right -- an amusement park dedicated to Charles Dickens! Believe me, if I could make the last eleven words quiver and blink with flashing lights, I would.


Since it opened a few years ago, I will admit that I have been dying to go to Kent, England to visit this place. I have no true love of amusement parks, but this one just screams out to be seen just for a few minutes. Sure, it looks like a funny stage or TV set, but it promises to be kitschy cute. I wonder if it also features appropriate smells, like the kind provided by the thoughtful people at the Jorvik Viking Centre at York, England. The Dickens World people have taken care to inform potential visitors that their restrooms are at least modern-day sanitary, not Victorian-style sanitary, so the smells are sure to be few if any. Don't forget: Dickens started Bleak House with a picture of London streets filled with mud and mire, while Our Mutual Friend has the dustheaps centrally located as the source of mystery, wealth, and salvation. Mud, mire, dust -- these all scream "smells!"

TripAdvisor.com offers useful information and photos for those who are adventurous and willing to report back to me. Some of these photos are interesting but I wonder how small everything is in reality. I know that folks have not been terribly enthusiastic about the place in their TripAdvisor reviews, and it is hard to dismiss the good work of TripAdvisors online, but that makes Dickens World even more interesting, like a slow motion train wreck.

Happy birthday, Chuckie! Be sure to hoist a pint for me at the Porters Restaurant in your amusement park! I know you'd be chatting up the barmaid if you could, you sly one.

The queue for the haunted house.
(Tripadvisor.com)

Oliver Twist gets chased through a place like this.
(Tripadvisor.com)

Yoga Sanctuary at Mid-Winter

We're supposed to be in the depths of winter, though we are lucky enough not to have the piles of snow that we had last year. The days aren't always sunny, and the warm air has yet to really settle down with us again. These are the days that create Vitamin D deficiencies in New Englanders. Luckily Florentina has a safe haven that has a kind of sunniness that warms up everything for the rest of the day. For the last six months or so, Yoga Sanctuary on the top floor of Thorne's Marketplace on Main Street, Northampton, has been this place for Florentina. 

Before moving to Florence, Florentina's yoga practice had fallen off. That's about five years of no yoga, after a number of years where yoga and long-distance biking had been really central to what made the world work. Now we're getting back to where mind and body are working together again in a great space with great teachers (such as Anna and Brandt) and classmates. This is where Florentina met her yoga buddy, Jeff, and through him, her sushi buddy, Lori.

Thorne's Marketplace.
First hour of parking is free.

A class in the big studio, painted with the colors of a mango.
(from Yoga Sanctuary's Facebook Page)

There is no photo available to show you how the individuals doing downward dog in the photo above would be facing a gigantic window looking across the street to old brick buildings and blue sky. In fact, this window is sometimes too bright during practice, threatening to blind Florentina while doing tree pose. 

Anusara yoga is the style practiced and promoted at Yoga Sanctuary. Its continual interest in alignment comes out in many ways. During the poses, physical alignment of body parts, muscles, and other anatomical details, receives detailed descriptions such that it's often incredible how much the teachers know about the body and its ability to make small adjustments with ease. There is also a kind of emotional alignment that happens, too, as practice causes the body work with the heart, and whatever is going on inside, so that those things can start to get sorted out. Bad habits of physical and emotional posture are involved every time.

The winter will be made shorter now that we are in possession of the Shri Card from Yoga Sanctuary. It's a swipe card that allows Florentina unlimited yoga for $99 per month. This could pay off; this summer it was possible to hit eight classes in a month's time, and that wasn't even a serious effort. 

The Snowy Path Less Taken

The covered bridge where all bicyclists
must dismount and Yaktrax are attached to boots.  

It's a moody day today, after a small snowfall last night.We have had two small snowfalls in the past week, and the inches of white stuff are adding up slowly, with an icy crust between some of them. (Think of Morbier cheese, with that layer of grapeleaf ash between the morning milk and the evening milk.) Today it was not only snowy but actually warm enough to take a long walk with the dog. Joey's dad and I took Joey out to Look Park where it appeared that few dogwalkers had made their appearance this morning. This is a popular spot for dogwalking and dogwatching, where you can make lots of new friends very quickly if you're a dog. Because I didn't quite trust the paved surfaces this morning, I tried to walk exclusively on the snowy sections. This proved quite easy, as I just followed Joey and his dad in the snow. Along the way I could see where the squirrels and rabbits had already tracked through the snow earlier in the morning.

The field was a huge sheet of untouched snow.

This photo is not upside down.

I was bundled up quite well, and even well padded because of my new red parka from Land's End. After many years of living in Wisconsin, I still love walking in the snow. But after slipping once, it was declared imperative to put on my Yaktrax. At the covered bridge we found a dry space where Joey's dad helped me pull them onto my winter boots, which already had very deep treads. But ice is nobody's friend, so it's always better to get some traction whenever possible, especially when the temperature is just warm enough to create a little melting of snow and ice. While this temperature is great if you want to get some ice skating practice, it's not so wonderful if you're just out for a walk. Here is a photo of my boots post-Yaktrax. 

Aaah...

Florentina, Flu Fighter and Knitter

Hi everyone, happy new year! Sorry I've been away, but there's a good reason. I hope you all were at least conscious for the holidays, as I was barely aware of them passing by. The flu had me in its grip, and just when it seemed to be loosening its hold, a ferocious sinus infection came along, happy to take advantage of an extra-lowered immune system. A round of antibiotics and some cough syrup laced with codeine help in these cases. Even with their help I'm only just coming back to the world. There are a number of things that I honestly don't remember from the last month because I was so ill and out of it. Even the fact it is a new year seems weird to me, as I didn't go through the normal passage of time, it seems. If we can count the passage of time in terms of boxes of Kleenex, then I might be better suited to recognize it's the new year.

A big part of bringing me back to the world has been my old hobby, knitting. I have been knitting since I was a little girl, and I don't even remember when I first learned it. All I know is that I practiced the two stitches for a long time, and put it away for years. In 2005, I came back to it again as a stress relief, and learned how to put a sweater together. Now I try to produce a sweater, a scarf, or a hat from time to time, so if you're in the market for a knitted item, let me know. I always wish I could be knitting for someone else, as I can't envision making all those knitted things for myself and filling a closet full of them --it seems a bit selfish. During my illness, I've been working on a couple of hats, and it's kept my brain functioning at some vaguely decent level.

Don't be fooled. It's a yarn paradise inside.

Northampton is a knitter's mecca in the Northeast because of Webs, America's Yarn Store. It's located in an unassuming place near the highway, and doesn't look like much from the outside, as seen on the left.

But when a knitter walks in the door, the yarn craziness descends. It's an explosion of color, which is especially welcome in the New England winter, and the salespeople are really very friendly. Unfortunately the lovely photo below doesn't show any of the salespeople who are always available to talk about yarn and knitting, as well as other related fiber crafts (weaving, spinning, crocheting, for example). I was greeted so nicely when I walked through the door yesterday, on my first day of decent health in about three weeks.

View from seating area (for non-yarn folks and dogs).

The yarn craziness usually pulls me into the warehouse in the back where bargains abound. Luckily I usually go into Webs with a specific project or need in hand, so I'm buying only enough to do that work. Otherwise I would be in really huge trouble in the warehouse (photo below), where some of the nicest yarns are sometimes discounted. Savvy shoppers keep their eyes on their twitter feed or their blog for more specials.

Hard core yarnage here. I have been known to lose it here.

A number of years ago, Florentina took her mom to a yarn store in Connecticut. This part of Connecticut where Florentina's mom still lives is rather wealthy, and the yarn store had her fuming. If you added up the cost of those fancy yarns, and the emotional cost of having to sit there with leisured women who don't have to work and stress out about their leisure time, a sweater would cost well over $200.00. Webs presents the sane alternative for a hobby that was originally meant to help cut costs, at least in my family. These days it also provides some comfort, as I can go in there with places where I'm stuck with my knitting, or just need to talk to someone about our love of knitting. I'm scheduled to take a class in sock knitting in April, and I can't wait!

Florentina's Christmas Shopping in New York City

**A quick adjustment below for accuracy!**
You've all seen those movies and television shows where you see New York City all decked out in Christmas gear from Thanksgiving to New Year's. This year I cut it a bit close in terms of time, and have just returned from visiting Joey's Dad in Brooklyn, so that shopping might get done in a big way in Manhattan. But things don't always turn out as hoped.

Last Friday I took the train out of Brooklyn to Midtown. The problem was that, unbeknownst to me, I was really under the weather and shouldn't have been traveling at all, not even on the subway. (The MTA does warn you of this, as they ask people not to get on the subway cars if there's a chance of feeling ill.) I discovered this was true of me because I kept getting on the wrong train and getting off at the wrong stops. Luckily I was never in danger of ending up somewhere really far off from where I needed to go, but I found myself going uptown when I wanted to go downtown, or headed to the West Side when I needed to be on the East Side. Some of you will notice this is a real change from the last time I had a subway marathon, when it was Florentina's NY Nosh Week.

Even so, Florentina did her best to do NYC at Christmas. Here's the list of places and things Christmasy that I encountered.

• The excited crowd waiting to get into Radio City Music Hall for the Christmas Spectacular.
• Walked past Rockefeller Center very quickly.
• Mario Badescu salon on E. 52nd Street to buy gifts.
• A sushi Bar to recruit strength (three Japanese places on E. 52nd Street!).
• Bloomingdales on 59th Street: here I was ambushed by the Clarins cosmetics woman, and later spent a few meditative moments with the Hermes perfume guy, talking about the androgynous scents offered. Pretty windows.
• The Container Store. Bought a few little gifts here.
• Williams-Sonoma.

In reality this turned out to be a bust of a shopping day and I gave up at the end when I realized I couldn't find the last address I wanted to hit. That said to me it was time to go home to Brooklyn and Joey's Dad.

We made up for it the next day with Florentina's Spa Day. Admittedly it was a low-key spa day, but it was still a spa day because of:

• European Facial at O Spa.
• Haircut at Charles Elias Salon.

My face actually looked different when I walked out of the facial. I had no idea such a thing could be possible! Together with the new haircut made up for the previous blah day of shopping.

While Manhattan lights were not happening for Florentina, Brooklyn had plenty of them in store. Here is what greeted us on the way to Grand Szechuan House:

The day was topped by a visit to Grand Szechuan House near 86th Street. For the record, this is a terrific place for Chinese food, and we've had some terrific meals here. Some of us (whose name begins with an "F") need to be better aware of our tolerance for ma-la Szechuan peppercorns. Florentina's no wimp when it comes to food and being adventurous, but let it be known that the Chengdu Spicy and Aromatic Fish in Hot Wok nearly did her in. Sorry, El Señor, that's a first in Chinese food for Florentina. I passed by Hinsch's Confectionery and wished I could have had a burger instead, because I was in pain. I know I'll have better luck next time in NYC!

Pottery Shards on the Mill River

A few days ago we went for a walk along the Mill River in Leeds, just under two miles from where I live in Florence. There is a converted trolley track going through the woods with a beautiful view of the river below. At various points in the walk we were able to go down to the water. Joey was especially excited, as we could tell when we got down to the little beach. He raced around excitedly as if to say, "Hey, it's a beach! It's just great here! Awesome!" Because it was such a cold day, none of us encouraged him to try wading into the water. But as we stood there on the little beach, I noticed the pebbles were a little unusual. Joey's dad pointed out that they weren't ordinary pebbles at all but shattered pieces of pottery and porcelain from the days when factories lined the Mill River. Factories made textiles as well as pottery, buttons, and bricks.

Pieces of pottery and porcelain found on the beach. Center is a
piece of brick worn away by the water. Two of the pieces are also below.

Top:you can still see the petal pattern from a plate.
Bottom: milky glass. 

In May 1874, the Hampshire Reservoir north of Leeds collapsed, rapidly flooding Williamsburg and Leeds. Before this disaster hit, Leeds had been a thriving little village. A number of the buildings still show where the businesses used to be, and a Catholic church still stands, though no longer holding services. It is possible to see some of the photographs taken of the flood's devastation, housed at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. When you drop a mug or a dinner plate on the floor, think of all the pieces that come out of that mess. Multiply that by a couple hundred, and that's what we have along the Mill River, where it is still possible to pick up a brick lying in the water after all these years.

Leeds has never quite been the same since the big flood, which is described by Jim Parsons for the Leeds Civic Association in more detail, including the way it was once divided up into different sections according to ethnicity or named for a natural landmark, such as "Crow Hill." Because this village and its residents were primarily working-class people, the notion of memorializing this history came a bit later to Leeds, but you can find it today if you look. Historian Elizabeth M. Sharpe has written about this event and its context In the Shadow of the Dam: The Aftermath of the Mill River Flood of 1874 (2007), and you can also see a monument dedicated to the 51 Leeds residents who were caught in the floodwaters.

A bonus factoid dug up by Jim Parsons in his mini-history says that the first man to play Charlie Chan in the movies, Werner Oland, lived across the street from what is now the ChartPak factory in Leeds. However, Wikipedia does not mention Leeds, naming Southborough, MA as his primary residence at his time of death. The Charlie Chan Family Home website shows this tombstone, and gives fleeting hints about Leeds. If anyone can show me proof of his residence, I'll be very willing to post it on this blog in the future. Let me know!

Pine-Scented Turkey

Aaah, 'tis the season for the turkey. I am not always called upon to cook the turkey, though I have done so in the past. Most notably, I made Thanksgiving dinner with a big turkey when living in England one year. I had to lug the frozen turkey in my backpack home from the supermarket. I can't remember anything about cranberry sauce or stuffing, but it met the Thanksgiving needs of the three Americans at the table, and satisfied the Thanksgiving curiosity of the three British women at the table.

I went to visit my parents in Connecticut for Thanksgiving. Little Joey the dog came along. It's hard to know what he thinks of the holidays and the dinners since he may not have had the most stable home life before coming to live with me, but he was rewarded with a juicy piece of turkey on Thanksgiving night. We all, that is, Joey's Dad and the extended family give thanks that Joey has come to live with us and become a part of our lives!

The Christmas tree part of the store.
 Notice the blow-up Santa in front. 

It's rare for me to visit my parents without paying a visit to the "World's Largest Dairy Store." (Excuse me, while I scoff. But I can't scoff too long, since Ripley's Believe It or Not gave them this designation a long time ago -- it's on their neon sign.) I grew up near this place when it was still a small barn and the little farm out front still looked more like a hobby farm. As kids, we used to lug their colorful plastic bags for schoolbags, since no one ever bought a backpack back then. I was really shocked recently to learn that my cousin from California had put down a visit to Stew Leonard's on his "must-do" list of tourist sites. Excess and kitschy farm imagery help bring people into the store, though we have always liked the freshness of many items offered. It's the Disneyland of Milk, and they have the same animatronic animal figures to prove it. The milk is definitely a big draw, though they have stopped processing the milk at this facility. Nowadays the display of milk cartons going around the conveyor belt is just for show, and you can tell when you look closely at it.

At different times of the year the Stew Leonard's complex features a garden store, or a holiday store. On the day after Thanksgiving, Florentina's approach to the store was greeted with the huge smell of pine trees. Christmas is on its way.