There are a number of ways in which I take after my grandmother Della.  I’ve always had a fascination with girly stuff like perfume and make-up.  I wear a lot of black.  And I have a deep and abiding fondness wallets, purses and multi-purpose pouches. I spent many years pilfering my grandma’s stash before slowly beginning to accumulate my own.  When I inherited apartment 2024, I also acquired what was left of her store of small leather goods.

Yesterday afternoon, my visiting sister mentioned that she was in the market for a new wallet.  Later that evening I pulled out the collection for her to rummage through.  She was overwhelmed by the amount of stuff and after her first pass through, asked me to take most of it away, as she couldn’t deal with the number of options.  She evaluated the narrowed down options, checking out the different slots and pockets that each of the wallets had to offer.

I was focused on my computer screen when I heard her say, “Whoa.”  I looked over and she was holding our grandmother’s last wallet, the one she had used up until her death, along with a pink packet of Sweet ‘N Low that she had just found in one of the folds of the wallet.  Who knows how long it had been tucked inside there.  It was a tangible reminder of the kind of woman she had been, one who always kept a spare pack of artificial sweetener in reserve, just in case it wasn’t available and she wanted a cup of coffee or a glass of iced tea.

My mom wrote a poem about her mother’s affection for leather goods and here it is.

Handbag
By Leana McClellan

Mom had a thing for good handbags
(and wallets and glasses cases and credit card folios)
all in quality Italian leather,
precisely stitched and classically styled.
Mom kept her sister, my three cousins,
my two daughters and every domestic worker
she ever employed in fine leather goods.
I haven’t bought a handbag in 30 years.

Today another arrived, sent by my daughter
from mom’s still-going-strong post-mortem stockpile.
Opening the box, the familiar smell of my mother
submerges me in an ocean of missing and memory.
It is the scent of leather cured with
Shalimar perfume, hair spray,
mint Lifesavers, money and hand lotion.

I shake out this handbag, the little assembly
of lint and unexplained silt that collect in
purse bottoms, then open it wide and put
my whole face deep inside.  In the fragrant darkness
I see my mother sitting by me on the couch,
absently stroking my hand as we read

Throughout the circles in which I move, I am known for making some pretty good salad dressing.  One year I auctioned off four bottles of homemade dressing at the UU church service auction.  The price got pretty darn high (not that I’m bragging or anything).

So it goes without saying that when we went looking for quick fork topic, we hit on doing a salad dressing episode.  We were further encouraged in that direction when one night, at Albert’s birthday party, Tony and Anne mentioned that they were uncertain about how to make a good vinagrette.  Thus a podcast was born.  Watch it and go forth and vinagrette.

In other Fork You news, we completed our new theme song tonight.  Raina wrote most of it, although I did some of the lyrics.  Scott just stood around and looked pretty (it is what he does best).   Through the magic of Garageband Raina was able to record a take directly into her computer and burn it to CD for Scott to do with as he pleases.  Watch for it in an upcoming episode.

When I got into my car yesterday, something didn’t look right.  There was a rapidly blackening banana on the dashboard.  A full cup of coffee was in the cup holder.  There was a box of Frosted Flakes in the back seat and a bright orange parking ticket behind the driver’s seat.  I paused as I got in and looked around to make sure that I had in fact gotten into the correct car.  In a flash, I remembered.  I hadn’t driven my car since my sister had had it for three days.  Suddenly it all made sense. 

Raina didn’t leave the long pink couch in my living room yesterday for more than the hour combined yesterday.  She slept late, ate several bowls of cereal and watched multiple movies on demand.  And I just love having her there. 

She got some awesome news yesterday too.  For the last couple of years she has attended the Kerrville Folk Festival in Kerrville, TX.  Each year she has entered their New Folk Competition.  This year they got over 800 applications and picked 32 finalists.  Raina is one of them.  It is pretty darn cool. 

I was nearly 21 years old before I learned that you could roast asparagus. There was a lot of asparagus in my life leading up to that point, but I had only encountered it steamed or boiled. It was one of my grandma Bunny’s go-to veggies and made many an appearance at holiday meals. She always blanched it and served it with faux hollandaise sauce. At home, my parents further simplified the eating of it and just dipped it in puddle of mayonnaise.

I spent the spring semester of college (January-May 2000) living in the Queen Village section of Philadelphia. This was the first time in my life beyond my parents’ house that I had lived in an apartment with ready access to a kitchen and I took full advantage the opportunity. I made soup from scratch for the first time in my life and learned how to light the pilot light on the oven when it went out (which it was always doing).

One afternoon I was walking home from my internship at the Independence Seaport Museum, I passed a man selling produce off the back of his truck (which was rigged specifically for this). He was parked someplace on 4th Street, in the heart of Fabric Row. He had some nice looking asparagus and so I approached him and asked how much. Somehow I ended up in a conversation about asparagus preparation and he confessed that he liked it best roasted. I asked for more detail and he told me it was as simple as could be. Just cut off the ends, toss it with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast at 400 degrees until it yields to the tines of a fork. I was an instant convert.

Back in Walla Walla for my senior year of college, now living in a house with a couple of friends off campus and doing regular grocery shopping, I discovered that in the spring time asparagus was dirt cheap at our local natural foods store. They grow it in the fields around Whitman and so for a few select weeks, I could get it for $.39 a pound. I lived on it for as long it was available, buying five and six pounds each time I went to the store and switching between roasting and steaming.

These days I still basically follow the same instructions that the produce man gave me more than seven years ago. I’ve added some freshly chopped garlic to the mix, which I love because it softens and becomes sweet and translucent under the layer of asparagus. It is one of my very favorite vegetables.

Well, as much as a folk singer can rock. Which in Raina’s case is a quite substantial amount of rockage. About 25 people showed up, which was nice considering it’s raining torrentially here in Philadelphia. The chapel was the perfect space for the show, as it is wood-lined and small, which makes for some seriously lovely acoustics. She played a whole lot of the old stuff, along with a few songs that have yet to make it onto an album. I think my favorite of the new stuff is Blind Cyrus.

We did a little practicing earlier this afternoon and I sang John Prine’s Angel from Montgomery with her. I was nervous, as I don’t sing in public often, but I think I carried it off pretty well. Cindy has the presence of mind to leap up and grab my camera, so that the moment was captured.

Now she’s going to spend the next three days lazing on my couch and catching up on her sleep. It will be nice to have her around for a little bit of time.

My sister is in town and is performing a much-awaited (at least by me) show tonight at 5 pm at the First Unitarian Church (2125 Chestnut St.). Tickets are $10 or $5 for students/kids and are available at the door. Please don’t let the nasty weather keep you away, as she’s amazing and the space she’ll be playing in is intimate and beautiful.

Set your pod/tunes/digital music player a’shufflin’ and post the first ten songs it spits out. No skipping, omitting, concealing or justifying permitted. Embrace your ecletic nature.

1. So Cruel, U2 (Achtung Baby)
2. Younger Genergation, Lovin’ Spoonful (Lovin’ Spoonful Anthology)
3. Whatever, Imogen Heap (I Megaphone)
4. Gatsby’s Restaurant, June Carter Cash (Press On)
5. Naked As We Come, Iron & Wine (Our Endless Numbered Days)
6. Last Boat to America, David Gray (A New Day at Midnight)
7. Stripped, Depeche Mode (Say Anything)
8. Teach Me Tonight, Phoebe Snow (The Best of Phoebe Snow)
9. Go Where You Wanna Go, The Mamas and the Papas (If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears)
10. Some Humans Ain’t Human, John Prine (Fair & Square)

Favorite Song: Go Where You Wanna Go. I was someplace in my early teens when I discovered the Mamas and the Papas and fell hard in love with them. Their harmonies were so tight and perfect that I wanted to live inside of them. Plus, how can you not love Mama Cass?

Favorite Album: John Prine’s Fair & Square. I’ve come to the conclusion that John Prine is an underappreciated genius. I realize that people make proclamations like that fairly regularly, but he really is. His lyrics are so clever. He tells a story or makes a subversive statement with every song, and because of my dad, that’s a thing I will never stop appreciating in an artist.

The rest of the FRT family:

Ben
Brian
Howard
Jeff
Lauren

If you are still struggling with how to use up the last of those multi-colored hard boiled eggs that are languishing on the bottom shelf of your fridge, check out this episode for tips on how to make a basic egg salad and then spice it up.

My sister ate the last of it for breakfast this morning (along with half a pound of roasted brussel sprouts) and pronounced it yum-my.

Saturday afternoon, I was walking home from Reading Terminal Market, after having seen a Film Festival movie and lunch at Cafe Spice with friends. Cindy and I hit the market after lunch, although the thought of buying food after eating so much made our stomachs revolt slightly. We parted ways after our joint grocery shopping, planning to meet up later in the evening to go see Caroline, or Change.

As I walked past Macy’s (I still want to say Lord & Taylor’s), a homeless man called out to me from his spot on the pavement, “Honey, can you spare dollar?” I smiled at him, made eye contact and said, “No, I’m sorry, I can’t.”

He grinned at me, flapped his hand and said, “That’s okay, cause I love ya. I do, I love ya.” His response was so genuine and delightful that I couldn’t help but have a huge smile break out on my face. I was a couple steps in beyond him by this point, and I looked back at him. He caught me looking, waved and said it again, “You go on, pretty girl. I love ya.”

I smiled the whole way home, wondering who he was. An angel? A man who has an impossibly good spirit about being homeless? Or just someone who recognized that my appreciation and respect for his humanity was intact, despite my inability to give him a dollar. (I told this story to my mom later and she said, “That response was worth a buck. You should go back sometime and see if he’s still there).

There’s no date on this picture, but the one in the middle, the only one really looking at the camera, is my dad. My guess is that they are standing outside of their grandparents’ garage, at the house on West Price Street (for you Phila folks, that’s just off Wissahickon) in Germantown.

When I see pictures like this, I wish fervently to have the ability to crawl into the scene as an invisible observer. I don’t have any desire to change things or shift the path that history took. I just want the scene to brighten into color and have the people starting talking, unfrozen and alive in that moment.

I want to know who was behind the camera. Was it Bunny, taking a picture of her boys for her in-laws, or was it her father? I want to know what their voices sounded like and how they expressed affection for one another. I want to know if Bill later pushed my dad off the bike or if he was able to ride around unmolested (as the youngest, my dad got beaten on quite a fair amount).