Things once old are new again - Richmonds Main Street Station

During the first half of the 20th century, great trains with splendid names made stops at Richmond's Main Street Station. The Silver Meteor, the Fast,Flying Virginian, the George Washington and the Orange Blossom Special all arrived and departed from here. Trains carried upwards of one million passengers per year through this station. In 1975 travel here ceased.

On October 7,1983 this lovely 5 story Beaux-Arts architectural gem nearly was destroyed by fire. The fire was one of Richmond's largest, a 6 alarm behemoth, requiring the services of a dozen engine companies, seven ladder companies and more than 110 firefighters to get the blaze under control. During the firefight, Ronald Lewis the Fire Chief had to be dissuaded from pulling down the large 4 faced clock tower crowning the building. He feared that extensive fire damage might cause the tower to collapse onto the nearby elevated interstate highway.

Restored with insurance proceeds, Main Street Station's second life as an outlet specialty mall was brief, lasting 2 years from 1985 to 1987. Next it housed the offices of the Virginia Dept. of Health.
In 2000 the city of Richmond completed negotiations with the Commonwealth of Virginia  and purchased the Main Street Station property. By 2003 passenger train service returned. Plans for the future will entail full build-out of the rail system with 38 trains rolling through on a daily basis.





I departed from this grand old station en route to New York City's Penn Station. Amtrak currently has one East Coast corridor train arriving and departing daily. It is a 7 hour trip, but provides a good deal more leg room and ability to move around than an airline flight. There are laptop plugins and wi-fi service. The food is a step up from airline grade and while Amtrak apparently will perform random passenger searches, I never had to take off my shoes, go through a metal detector or be X-ray scanned.






Amtrak is an attractive travel option.

Carina

Trifecta

Today, February 12 is a personal trifecta, okay not in the strictest dictionary definition of the word, not a bet on the ponies, but a day of triple celebration. The obvious ones that I share with many people being Lincoln's birthday and Mardi Gras. The celebration shared with my husband is our third wedding anniversary.

I guess after living together for 25 years, we thought the relationship might last and we tied the knot. In actuality, it was his urgent need for health insurance that played a significant part in the timing of the decision.






Just think, had there been universal healthcare we would probably still be living in sin.

Carina

A Deli Lady and the Public Library to the Rescue

What's a woman to do? Sometimes it takes complex problem solving skills and the nerves of a bomb squad technician to work around the current post office set-up.

The dilemma
 a large envelope that must be weighed to ascertain correct postage  And a work schedule that is the same as post office hours. My usual solution is to mail packages on Saturday mornings, but last Saturday morning had other priorities. Last time I checked, there was a scale in the post office lobby that could be used after window hours.


Guess What? 

The self service postal scales have been removed from the lobby. I really wanted to mail the envelope out this weekend, it contained not only  W-2's for the daughter, but also a handmade Valentine postcard that was too textured to travel well outside an envelope.

Next stop in my afternoon errands was the pharmacy. Thinking they weigh things, I brought the envelope in. It was a No Go there. It seems their scale is set up to weigh such light things they would need to recalibrate their scale to accommodate me.

Stop three the grocery. The Deli lady was happy to help me out. My envelope weighed .13 pounds, bringing me one step closer to a solution. Groceries loaded into the car, the next destination was the library.

Why? 

The library has public access computers. I generally use the library one town over and that is where my card is, so I had to register as a guest. The librarian warned me that they were closing soon and I only had minutes to complete my task. Logging on, there were 2 minutes and 35 seconds to work with. First the easy conversion of .13 pounds to  2.08 ounces. Next step was finding correct the table of current postage rates. This proved slightly more challenging. The first table was too complex and lengthy for the time available to
  scan and extract needed information. A different link took me to a simpler table. This envelope required $1.32 to reach Richmond. I closed the computer with 40 seconds to spare, feeling a little like a bomb squad technician.

Lastly, a few stamps and a quick trip to the post office and my envelope was headed to Richmond.

 
Carina 

 
 

Three Fridays

Three Fridays in a row,

we've had more than a little snow.

Dust of Snow

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

Robert Frost

 

Fortunately the forecast for next Friday reads as follows:

Clouds giving way to sun . Highs in the mid 40s and lows in the low 30s. 

No snow!

Carina

Resolved

The resolution is simpler blog posts written more frequently.

Over time my posts have become longer and more complex. That in itself is a sign of growth in my ability to compose a post, but it has led to seeing the task as daunting and fewer posts are the result.

The original intent of this blog was to be a letter to friends and family complete with a few photos and less postage. My plan is a return to that intent, mixing simple and spontaneous photos and text with some of the more involved constructions that have become my norm.

Photographed above is the best dessert I ate over the past holiday season. It was served at Fig in Asheville, NC and consists of a lime and lemongrass panna cotta topped with a Thai chilli and raspberry sorbet, a tiny bit of chamomile syrup and accompanied with a square of cashew brittle.

I ate lots of yummy things over the holidays, but this one was hands down the very best.

Carina

Possibly the best cut-out Gingerbread cookies

Pepparkakor

Story of a family recipe found, lost and found again

 

The Recipe

Ingredients

1/2 lb butter (2 sticks)
1 and 1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoons molasses
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 egg
3 and 1/4 cup flour
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon cloves
Juice and zest of 1 orange







Cream the butter,sugar and molasses until well mixed. Add the egg. Mix again. Add the zest grated off the orange and the juice you squeezed out of it.

Mix the dry ingredients and add to the butter mixture. Combine thoroughly.

Wrap or put bowl in the refrigerator until chilled through and stiff.
Roll out dough on a floured surface. Use cookie cutters to cut out cute shapes. Transfer onto a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees until light browning is seen at the edges, about 10 to 12 minutes.





The Story

And I've been a witness to the tale and will retell it here.Mom got the recipe through the Vasa Lodge about 1967 or 1968, maybe a few years before then. The Vasa Lodge is a benefit fraternal organization for Swedish immigrants to which my parents to belonged.The only person that can argue or more accurately pinpoint the date is my brother and I am relatively certain he does not actively read my blog.
 After my mother Ingeborg first baked these cookies, they immediately became one of our Christmas standards. Inga had other pepparkakor recipes, but we just loved the extra dimension made by adding orange to the dough.

Sadly, one Christmas many years later, maybe after she moved from the house on Wauwatosa Road to the one in Cedarburg, the handwritten 3 x 5 recipe card had disappeared. It no longer lived in the green rosemaling-decorated, metal recipe box. Old Swedish friends were called and research was done at the local library to no avail. No one had a copy of the recipe.

Christmas went on, but with different pepparkakor. Cookies that were adequate, but not quite as delicious.

Then, the cookies showed up at my mother-in-laws! My all dutch-all the time mother-in-law had the recipe. I had passed the recipe along years before and forgotten about doing so.

To make sure this recipe did not disappear again, I purchased an 8 x 10 framed picture at the thrift store. Took the picture out and replaced it with a drawing and the recipe. That picture now hangs at my nephews house. One holiday, when I could not easily find the recipe, I asked him to photograph the framed recipe and post it to facebook. Now it will also live on my blog.

Hope you find these cookies to your liking.

Carina

Martin Creed - Deep Purple

This exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art could be your worst nightmare if you are allergic to latex or claustrophobic. For the rest of us it is a unique and enchanting experience.  The exhibit features 27,000 purple balloons piled 8 feet deep in a room with mostly glass walls.

This installation is the work of British artist and musician Martin Creed. Entitled Half the Air in a Given Space, this concept was first created in 1998 with white balloons and has been reenacted several times since in different colors and configurations.

As the name suggests, half a room's entire volume is filled with air-inflated balloons and then visitors are encouraged to walk through. “It is important to me,” says Creed, “that the situation is normal, that, as usual, the space is full of air; it’s just that half of it [is] inside the balloons.”

Meant to evoke a sense of celebration and remembrance of childhood, the installation is almost guaranteed to leave everyone giggling or with a smile on their face. As you can see here one of the major challenges for exhibit staff is to get people in and out without loosing large quantities of balloons in the process.

Only 10 people were allowed in at a time and you flattened yourself as close to the glass as possible and slid in .

Staff picked up and stuffed stray balloons back in.

Because this is a room with 16 foot ceilings, the balloons were 8 feet deep and once inside you were enveloped in a purple landscape. You heard rather than saw other people in the room unless they were extremely close. For me, initial navigation stayed along the perimeter until the situation grew more familiar and then I braved the depths of room central.

It was a bright sunny day and taking pictures of the view through balloons proved entertaining. A cloudy day would likely yield a different experience.

And I found it hard to resist a little self portraiture in hard reflective surfaces.

If you want to encounter this phenomenon yourself,  get a move on to the Cleveland Museum of Art. The exhibit closes November 25,2012 or you'll have to wait for another incarnation somewhere. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vWOIPsO_Rg

The link above takes you to the installation at the Rennie Gallery in Vancouver 2011. Watching it reminds me of the effect the balloons had on my hair. Having relatively straight and slick hair I thought dreadlocks were an impossibility for me. The balloons altered that idea. 

If you watch the video, notice how much these adults are laughing.

Go see this, if you have the opportunity.

And if you are not allergic to latex or claustrophobic.

Carina