Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Painted steel.

MLM: Their Blood For Christ

When I was a kid our grandmother lived with us. She had a wooden box that held glass slides that fascinated me. I remembered that there were some slides showing the mysterious brotherhood of Los Penitentes reenacting the Crucifixion of Jesus.

For years I wanted to see the Penitentes again and to see what other slides were in that box. Mom was sure that they were still in the house since she had a letter where she asked Grandma what things she left behind when she moved to Kansas that she wanted. The slides were listed but Grandma indicated that she didn't want them. Dad said that whenever we found them that I could have them.

For years we searched everywhere but couldn't find them.

Then the Crapture happened. My sisters cleared out the 50-some years' accumulation of stuff under Mom's house. The box of slides was found in a box in a box in a crate. Mom was so thrilled that they'd been found that she called me at work to give the the news.

I happened to have a week that didn't have any events planned and work was in a transitional period so I had the opportunity to travel to Los Alamos and help Mom move more stuff from the old family estate to her new home. And to relive the mythical glass slides.

There were only two slides of Penitentes. One slide showing the Penitentes is basically a halftone picture postcard. Its detail is lost in all the dots that make up the image.

The other is a picture of a morada, the building the Penitentes conduct their business.
I had thought that there had been a series of pictures showing more of the Crucifixion reenactment. I guess I got that impression because the box of slides held a fragment of a newspaper article (apparently from 1937) about the Penitentes' Holy Week activities.
Other slides in the box are:

• scenes from around the world from The National Geographic Society
• other picture postcards published by Candelario Curio, Santa Fe
• holiday snapshots taken in 1934 in Frijoles and Taos including a picture of a woman with Indian children labeled "Penny" (our great aunt?)
• snapshots of Pecos ruins
• undated snapshots around Santa Fe
• snapshots of Wagon Mound dated 1910
• snapshots of Santa Fe and pueblos of Northern New Mexico dated in the early 1920s

I'll get around to scanning these slides some day.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

The front doorbell button.

MLM: Such a cutup!

Did you hear about the new DIY surgery supplies chain? It's called "Suture Self."

You may remember a long time ago I posted a How To that told how you can see the backside of the word "Dial" on a bar of soap. In a comment to that post, Bobbers said that she had been unable to use Ivory soap for years because she had eaten a sliver of Ivory that came from a soap carving. (She thought it was pie crust dough.) She accused Peggy of making the soap sculpture but I was the culprit. We were studying Alaska (home of that great patriot Sarah Palin) and had to make a soap sculpture of something Alaskan. I made a totem pole.

I remember that I had to sit in the other fifth grade class and work on my soap while the rest of my class was at the high school swimming pool learning how to swim. I couldn't join them because I had stitches in my arm.

I had cut my arm rather deeply when I was playing with Johnny Showalter at his house. While he was in the bathroom I decided I'd hide from him. I ducked under his bed. When he came back to his room I looked back towards the foot of the bed to see if he had figured out where I went and noticed an odd bulge on my arm. I crawled out and there was a nasty gash. It hadn't hurt and scarcely bled. I have no idea what I might have caught it on.

His father hustled me home and I was taken to the emergency room. I got twelve stitches!

Being a somewhat odd child, when it came time to get the stitches taken out I asked the doctor if I could keep them. He put them on a piece of gauze and put it in a little box. I cut a hole in the box's lid and made a window out of Saran wrap.

I still have the stitches.
As consolation (or to keep us from suing him?), Johnny's father got me one of those newfangled Super Balls (they were compressed under 50,000 pounds of pressure!). They got banned from Mountain School's playground after they went through several windows. They were a great toy.

But I'd rather have not been cut.

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

Wooden box holding knickknacks.

Meet Minnie

I was feeling a little down a few weeks ago after Jerry bought his MacBook Air. How nice it is for him to have a computer that doesn't have a noisy fan. And is light. And runs for more than 20 minutes without being plugged in. And doesn't roast his naughty bits.

I continued surfing the web and blogging under the weight (all eight pounds of it!) of my 17" laptop. And stuck with it in my recliner because the battery doesn't last long after it's unplugged.

Just a few days after he got his Mac, I got an email from Dell announcing their new Inspiron Mini 9. The "9" is a reference to its width. It doesn't have a hard drive. It's light. It goes anywhere. I had to get one.

It came today! It took extra time to build because it doesn't do Windows! I got mine with Linux! Open source! "Super Geek! Super Geek! He's such a geeky boy!"

Its solid state "hard drive" is small by today's standards. It's only 16GB. But that should be big enough.

The screen is small. Its resolution is 1200 by 600. The 1200 pixel width is fine. It's the 600 pixel height that will take some getting used to. I found the button to push to maximize the browser and remove all of the toolbars, tabs and other "chrome." So I'm getting used to the tiny screen.

Here is a self portrait it took. It's got a camera built into the lid just their above the screen.


The thing that will take the longest to get used to is the keyboard. They crammed the keys into a smallish space and rearranged some of them. Two things are annoying the heck out of me. They ran out of room on the "home row" and moved the key with the apostrophe and quotation mark to the bottom row of keys. So when I try to type an apostrophe I hit the Return key instead. That can cause embarrassment if the return submits a form prematurely.

Another annoyance is the touchpad is very sensitive and very close to the space bar. So when I press the space bar the cursor often goes flying to the far reaches of the window and I'm typing where I don't want to. This will take some getting used to. But I'll manage.

I just don't think that typing an apostrophe will come naturally.

But it's nice to have a light (only two and a quarter pounds) computer. And one that doesn't run Windows!

MLM: Memory Lane Monday, First Edition

Back on The Saddest Day, I said that I had found some souvenirs from my youth that, like it or not, I will be sharing with you. Later, I posted some memories of some nice ladies I didn't marry who told me "I Love You!*" and that reminded P-Doobie of the nice Jamaican woman I didn't marry who has Two Lovely Pairs of Eyes. In a comment to that post Colleen suggested that I could have a regular feature where I post these remembrances of things past.

So I am embarking on a stroll down that old memory lane. Like Ina's stroll down the Santa Fe Trail, this can't be done in one, uninterrupted stretch. We need to take this slow and easy. Once a week should be enough.

This First Edition of Memory Lane Monday is really a cop-out. It's a follow-up to an earlier post where I remembered being embarrassed by a shop project where I made a comedy mask and the teacher wondered where the tragedy mask was. I didn't know that they were supposed to be a set. I just wanted to make the happy mask.

During The Crapture, Izzy found the mask in the shed. Mom had found it a few months ago and told me that she had put it up there. I figured she'd send it to me when she had something else coming my way or that she'd hold onto it till I made another trek to New Mexico. Izzy took it home with her and sent it to me. So I was probably the last one of the family to see my long-lost treasure. For those of you not present at The Crapture, here's my comedy mask!


I traced the pattern from the mask that was hanging on the shop class wall. I didn't come up with its hair (or is it horns?) on my own. The thing looks sinister to me.

On the back I wrote my name. I also wrote the name I've always know "Izzy" as. Did I give it to Izzy as a present? Is it really hers? Do I need to give it back?

Under pressure!

We've had an old-fashioned WearEver pressure cooker for some time (the date stamped on the bottom is 6-94). It's the kind with a vent in the lid that you put the weight on to regulate the pressure. When it gets up to pressure the weight wobbles and lets out some of the steam. We then have to fuss with the burner to make the weight wobble every few seconds. You don't want it to constantly wobble because that would mean it's too hot and you don't want long pauses between wobbles because that would mean it's not hot enough inside. You have to hang around to make sure the burner is at the right setting.

The last few times that Jerry made us beans in the pressure cooker the weight decided not to wobble at all. It just got stuck open and let out a constant, high-pressure steam jet. That seemed to be worse than constant or infrequent wobbling. And it was scary.

Jerry got fed up with this old technology.

We decided to go with the high-tech approach to pressure cooking. We got the Cuisinart Electric Pressure Cooker. It minds the temperature and pressure for us so all we have to do is fill it with the ingredients and tell it how long it is supposed to cook under pressure. And tell it whether we want low or high pressure. It adjusts the temperature to maintain the proper pressure and we just sit around waiting for food.

Tonight we used it for the first time. We had Pasta e Fagioli.

Pasta e Fagioli

This device isn't just a pressure cooker. It did all the cooking steps for the soup. It has a sauté setting. Jerry put in the olive oil, onions, carrots, celery, garlic, and Italian herbs and sautéed away. Then added the water and dry beans, put on the cover and set it on high pressure for 35 minutes. When it got up to pressure the timer started counting down. When it got to zero it beeped and started cooling. Once the pressure was down (about 25 minutes later) it let us open it and he added the vegetable stock, tomatoes, and more Italian herbs and pushed the "Brown" button. That brought it to a boil. In went the pasta and it boiled for ten minutes.

Then we ate. Yum.

The recipe was for the full capacity of the machine. We have a lot of leftovers.

I'd have thought that we wouldn't be getting too many new kitchen gadgets. But we have another gadget planned already. I need to do some more research on that one. I'll keep you posted.

Two lovely pairs of eyes

In the sixth grade we studied the countries of Central America and the Caribbean. We each were assigned one of the countries to write a report about. Part of the assignment included trying to get a pen pal from the country we were writing our report on. I was assigned Jamaica.

Our teacher, Mrs. Burchill (rhymes with Churchill), suggested that we write a letter that told a little about ourselves and send it to the postmaster in one of the cities in our country with instructions to deliver it to somebody in town. We were supposed to tell the postmaster what sort of person we wanted to communicate with. I apparently didn't write a lot about myself in the letter to the potential pen pal and the letter to the postmaster said what age the person I wanted to write to should be. I was almost twelve at the time so that's probably the age I suggested.

It seems that the postmaster delivered the letter to The Daily Gleaner, Jamaica's national newspaper. My letter was published in the "pen pals wanted" section of the newspaper. The information in the letter to the postmaster might not have been included. I think that Mrs. Burchill said it would be interesting for boys to ask for girl pen pals and girls to ask for boys. Being the obedient child, I seem to have done that. That part seems to have been printed.

A man asking to communicate with women is obviously looking for a wife. And women in Jamaica are more than eager to move to the United States. I got more than a hundred responses to my letter.

The letters were filled with lengthy biographies and stories of Jamaica's history and culture. A lot of the letters were folded in an elaborate, origamilike way. Many suggested that after we get to know each other through letters that they could travel to the U.S. to meet me. One came right out and said that she could come and be my wife.

One woman, Audrey Rose, included a picture of herself. In her letter she gave me her dimensions and said that "I have two lovely pairs of eyes a very beautiful charming smile along with beautiful teeth & dimples & am very romantic, loving, and understanding & always try to be kind." She went on to say "I have been told quite often that I am an attractive girl. I do hope you may find me to be. (smile)" She said that she didn't have a good photograph of herself and had enclosed a little funny one (smile).

Funny Audrey Rose

Her letter makes her sound like a very nice person. But she was a little too old for me (she was almost twice my age). (And she had two kids!) I hope she has had a good life since writing to me. The Office of the Registrar of Companies, Jamaica, lists "Audrey Rose Dress Shop." I wonder if it's the same Audrey Rose.

Mom wrote a letter to the Gleaner asking them to publish an explaination that I was a 12 year old kid and that their readers who might have written to me should understand that I wasn't what they were hoping for. I'll never know if that letter got printed.

Bobbie wrote to the youngest girl for a while. I think she was about Bobbie's age. Most were much older.

Here's Audrey's letter. It seems to have been rained on a bit. (I hope this isn't imposing on her privacy too much.)


Did you know that Jamaica is a leading producer of bauxite, the most important aluminum ore? Back then it might have been the leading producer.

False Crapture

Years ago, inspired, I think, by the Cerro Grande fire, we made a feeble stab at Crapture. We dragged stuff out from under Mom's house with the plan that we were going to get rid of stuff. We searched the piles of stuff very carefully to make sure that nothing of value would be tossed.

Nothing was tossed.

We found lots of valuable things. We found the box that my old Dennis the Menace doll came in. I would never have seen value in that piece of cardboard but it went for something like $40 on eBay.

The most valuable thing I found was the ducky planter that I got on a trip to Kansas in the early '60s.

The only thing I remember growing in the ducky was a chili pepper as part of a fourth grade project. It amazes me that the pepper grew...the ducky has little room for soil and no drainage.

I don't remember the story of who made my ducky. Was it a relative? A family friend? Where did we go to get it?

I think that we each got to get a piece from the artist. There was the money bowl. What did everybody else come home with?

Turtle Tchotchke Tuesday

A Yixing teapot.