How we spent our Christmas vacation

Here's hoping you had a splendid Christmas holiday!

We enjoyed the Zoom Christmas program put on by London Grove Friends Meeting, with carols, a story and Scripture readings. Marlborough Friends Meeting's customary Carol Sing also went online, with a podcast featuring music, songs and Bible verses. The latter ended with the hope that God willing, we will be able to meet in person in 2021.

For the past several Christmas Eves we've had the pleasure of going to a laid-back open house in Embreeville, and we did it by Zoom this year. The toddler son of the hosts stole the show. He and his father were assembling a toy John Deere tractor that had many, many parts, one of which just wouldn't fit.

The youth carefully studied the situation.

"I see the problem!" he announced to his father triumphantly.

We had a short Zoom meeting on Christmas Day with family members. We listened to "The Nutcracker Suite" and hours-long YouTube Christmas carol playlists. We watched "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation," the original animated Grinch movie (the only one worth watching), and the 1951 Alistair Sim version of "Scrooge." 

And we particularly enjoyed watching "The Prince and the Carrot," the Pantomime (this year a virtual one) produced by the Kennett Amateur Theatrical Society. We got to sing the Silly Song and greet the Dame, just like it was a normal year and we were at the Kennett High School auditorium! The Panto is online at KATS British Panto | Kennett Amateur Theatrical Society | Inc. (callkats.org) and is highly recommended.

And oh, did we feast! On Christmas Eve we ate our free Giant ham (well, a tiny fraction thereof) along with macaroni and cheese and peas. And on Christmas Day we had breakfast-as-dinner: Kodiak pancakes and a spectacular omelet made with eggs from a friend's hens and cheese from one of those holiday food parcel gifts, this one from the electrician.

Imagine my amazement to find I hadn't gained any weight despite all those deliciously rich Christmas cookies. I'm not at all sure how that happened.

Godspeed, Bill Landmesser

My friend Bill Landmesser died on Dec. 16 at the age of 89. What a nice man he was! I worked with Bill on a local volunteer board for several years. When difficulties arose -- and we faced our share of them -- he took an analytical approach, gathering reams of data and synthesizing it methodically. Bill spent his career working in employee relations for large companies, so naturally, he took the lead when it came to things like personnel evaluations for the staff. 

It was hard to rankle Bill. I never heard him raise his voice, and the worst thing I ever heard him say about someone was that he really wasn't acting very sensibly. "D'ya think he might have some kind of a chip on his shoulder?" I remember him asking, with a baffled chuckle, when our board had to deal with a particularly cranky individual.

Bill was eager to learn and was fascinated with technology. He'd see me doing something on the computer, maybe working on a newsletter, and he'd sit down next to me and ask endless questions about what I was doing. He also spent a lot of time volunteering with service groups, in particular SCORE, a group of retirees who help young people who want to start their own businesses. 

Bill unplugged completely in the summer, heading north to his cabin in the Adirondacks, where mail arrived irregularly, via boat. 

A widower, Bill leaves behind three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. 

He will be greatly missed.

Stinking up the joint

There's an exact type of gym top that I like to wear when I'm exercising, and it's tough to find because (just my luck) the manufacturer, Athleta, has moved on to other styles. Don't they know who I am?! So I keep an eye on eBay and whenever one pops up in my size, I bid on it. 

So I purchased one a few weeks ago, and when it arrived it was in fine shape, except for a foul odor. It wasn't the usual locker-room funk. No, I think it was an overdose of some kind of fabric softener or clothing deodorizer. The stench was almost overwhelming. 

I tried low-tech remedies, like hanging it out on the clothesline in the wind and rain, laundering it repeatedly, and soaking it in vinegar and baking soda. The odor may have lessened slightly, but I still had to quarantine it from my other clothes so they didn't become contaminated.

A friend recommended hydrogen peroxide, which she uses to get skunk smell out of one of her mishap-prone dogs. I didn't really want to try that, as the garment tag said not to use bleach.

So I went online and discovered that smelly secondhand purchases are common and troublesome to resolve; it seems the offending chemicals are often stubbornly adherent to the fabric. A smell-lifting "laundry enhancer" made by a Florida company called Enviroklenz received universally positive reviews, even from people with chemical sensitivities, so I've ordered some. It hasn't yet arrived, but I did receive a call from their customer service people thanking me for my order. I'm inclined to like this company. I'll let you know how the laundry product works!

A churlish opinion piece

I've been thinking a lot about the word "churlish" recently. "Rude in a mean-spirited or surly way," says the dictionary. I think of it more as going out of your way to be unpleasant when you don't need to.

The first time I encountered it was in John Fowles's novel "Daniel Martin." The titular character was flying back to England from California and had run into an old friend on the plane. When they landed at Heathrow in the wee hours, the friend offered to give him a ride home. Daniel didn't want to accept, but "it seemed churlish to refuse." (As an aside, Daniel clearly had his antennae up; the old friend was having an affair with his secretary, Daniel's daughter.)

Churlish behavior seems to be increasingly common, even from people who should know better. In a recent "Wall Street Journal" opinion piece, Joseph Epstein encouraged our incoming First Lady, Jill Biden, not to use the title "Dr.," even though she has earned a Ph.D. He considers it pretentious; he thinks only medical doctors should call themselves "Dr." He used the word "kiddo" when he was addressing Mrs. Biden, as if he was being avuncular. 

Churlish. Exhibit A.

Why, WHY, would you do such a thing? Why would you write such a nasty, unnecessary piece? Surely there are plenty of other pretentions he could have highlighted that are far worse and far more timely. 

As you might expect, the reaction to the op-ed was furious (and not only from academics) and in many cases involved a lot of F-words. Two wrongs don't make a right, but he kind of asked for it.

 

Obeying the rules

I take my recycling over to the SECCRA landfill every few weeks. I enjoy it; it's very satisfying coming home with fewer items in your car rather than more. Today I had lots of newspapers to drop off, along with various-sized cardboard boxes from Amazon deliveries, half-gallon milk jugs, a large vanilla extract bottle, soda bottles and lots of plastic "clamshell" packaging from blueberries.

Two other vehicles were parked in the recycling area in front of me. I watched as two ladies took a big plastic bucket from the back of their CRV, hauled it over to the dumpster and emptied it. One then picked up a black plastic garbage bag and took it over to the dumpster.

Oh no, thought I: Don't they know that you can't recycle plastic bags?!

Well, they did know. The woman dumped the contents of the bag in the dumpster and then even went so far as to pick up a stray plastic bag by the dumpster. She stuffed it in the empty bag and put both back in the bucket.

I was impressed. I also noticed what an immaculately tidy CRV they had. In contrast to, ummm, Tilda's. 

Tilda learns to love pho

One of the Dearest Partner's most endearing qualities is his openness to new things. A few months ago, seemingly out of the blue, he had a hankering to try the Vietnamese soup called pho. We watched videos to learn the correct way to pronounce it ("fah") and to ingest it (with chopsticks and a spoon/ladle combo). Slurping, we learned, is acceptable.
I went on social media to look for restaurant recommendations, and it turns out there is a place called Pho Now fairly close by, between Coatesville and Downingtown on Business Route 30, in the Caln Village Shopping Center. Between COVID lockdowns 1 and 2, we visited twice for dinner and had terrific meals. 

Pho is a mixture of rich broth, rice noodles, green onions and cilantro, along with your choice of very thinly sliced meat or fish. They give you a plate full of bean sprouts, basil sprigs, lime wedges and hot peppers to mix in to your liking, as well as a spicy dark sauce. It's fragrant and pungent, but you can control the spiciness. The bowls are big enough that you can take home fully half the soup as a doggy bag.

While eating, we noticed that the place was doing a pretty good takeout business. One fellow came into the restaurant and the owner looked up and said, "Brian? Takeout?" The man was baffled: yes, his name was Brian, but he hadn't even ordered yet. A few minutes later the real Brian came in to pick up his order and they laughed about the mix-up.

Pho Now also offers an extensive menu of dishes and beverages we haven't tried but will. The owner is welcoming and delightful and grateful for the business in this tough business climate. It was close to the freezing mark when we visited for dinner the second time, and I told him that pho was a perfect meal for a chilly night.

He corrected me: "Pho perfect every night!"

Pho Now is at 3911 West Lincoln Highway, Downingtown. The menu and contact information are on Facebook.

Our COVID Christmas tree

Our quest for a Christmas tree on Saturday did not go as planned -- but, really, what has in this topsy-turvy year? 

First we visited the annual Boy Scout Troop 53 tree sale outside the New Garden Giant -- but it wasn't there. I don't know if they had sold all their trees or if COVID had discouraged them. (Fortunately, we were able to support the Cub Scouts a few weeks earlier, buying wreaths from their stand at Barnard's Orchards.)

I'd driven past the Avon Grove Lions tree sale in Jennersville, so that was our next stop. Again: no trees, no Lions (we discovered later they had sold all their trees; good for them!).

Time to reboot and fortify ourselves with McRib sandwiches in the car while watching the sun setting over Jenner's Pond (they were meh at best, but we were curious to learn what all the fuss was about; kind of like eating fried Oreos at the Cecil County Fair). I had seen people online talking about Clark's Tree Farm, and it was close by (on Pusey Mill Road in Cochranville), so we headed over there. Almost unbelievably, we saw two friends in the parking lot -- worth a mention in these days of social distancing!

We went into the gift shop and Dearest Partner asked about the procedure for finding and buying a tree, and the employee filled us in. So we headed out to the tree field and after some debate selected a tree that was perfect in shape, fullness and height. I stood there while D.P. fetched an employee with a saw. We carried the tree to the "corral," where it was measured (they charge by the foot), and then we paid inside the gift shop. 

The guy who seemed to be in charge told us a funny story about some customers earlier in the day who purchased a towering 18-foot-high tree and hauled it off in a Ford F150 pickup, well strapped down. He was tickled that they later sent him a photo showing the tree inside the house.

We were fortunate to have an unseasonably warm day to buy and set up the tree -- usually it's freezing!