Monthly Archives: December 2013

Quick, Read This Before It’s Obsolete

Among traditions hurtling into oblivion – if not already there – like sit-down dinner parties and landline telephones is the once-reliable and occasionally awful Christmas letter. I’ve been writing one since 1973. That year, the “n” key on the typewriter broke midway through the writing, forcing me to hand-letter the offending consonant the rest of the way. It was probably a sign that I should have heeded. Instead, I barreled on year upon year, imagining that friends and relatives really cared for an update on our family’s doings. Some of them became enablers, writing on their own cards “Sure looking forward to your Christmas letter” just as I was thinking “Maybe this is the year to abandon this practice.” So I’d throw something together, include copies with the cards and get them into the mail, often late (“Hey, it’s the holiday season, close enough.”).

Last year’s letter began “Still boycotting Facebook…” which was a continuation on a theme from the previous year when I suggested that once a year was more than enough “self-absorbed bloviating” and the reason why I was not participating in the social media phenomenon. “If you were on Facebook I could send you pictures of my grandchildren (and my dog and my cat).” I tell them I know how to open e-mailed pictures. “But if you were on Facebook I could send you lots of pictures.” Ah yes, and perhaps that’s another reason to be a non-participant. “Edit, people,” I want to say as I go through cards and letters. “Pick the best picture of your grandchild – or dog or cat – or two if you can’t bear to choose.” That way, the pictures will be large enough for my aging eyes to discern the subjects, rather than a montage of teeny-tiny representations.

But I’m a grump, and for all I know my annual letter is received by groans: “Oh God, here’s that horrible thing again. When is she ever going to quit?”

I try to be reasonably concise, although those early letters did go on a bit. Perhaps I have learned a little something along the way, but maybe not. I frequently have the need to continue on the reverse side of the page. But that’s okay because it leaves me room to scrawl a personal note to the recipient if there’s time. Usually these things are done at the last minute with the postal service’s admonishing “last date to assure delivery” looming. Yes, I know. If I were doing it online, I could wait till Christmas Eve. When there’s nothing else to do.

I also try to be relatively cheerful, even though sometimes I have to convey sad news as in someone’s death or serious illness but I try to use a light hand, reminding myself that people will be reading the letter in the midst of what should be a happy time.

On the other hand, the older I get the less likely I am to refrain from a political jab or two. My rationalization is that people residing in their own particular bubbles should know what people in my particular bubble think. Besides, it’s fun to poke at bubbles. Even at Christmas.

Originating as my husband and I did from opposite sides of the country, there was always one set of grandparents or one branch of the family tree especially in need of an annual update. How many ballet classes is one daughter up to? Which musical instrument has the other switched to? Who’s in Brownies? The high school band?  The Nutcracker?” Forty years of Christmas letters provide a running history of our little nuclear family. Mentioned are Ed’s and my activities and those of our children but also every dog and cat that passed through our household.

Leafing through the letters which I’d thought had been faithfully saved, I find gaps.  I’m sure I never skipped sending Christmas cards.  Were the letters lost in one of our five cross-country moves? What happened between 1975 and 1979?  And where is 1981?  Those were years when we were involved with making a big old wreck of a house somewhat habitable.  Did we give up on letters then? In 1982 I switched to smaller paper, probably due to a particularly demanding new job, but then five years later was back to large sheets, an indication of what? A relaxed new lifestyle? Hardly. Most letters begin with a promise of brevity because there’s so little to report and then go on to fill a page and a half.

Now, however, I’ve given in and am adding my contribution to the cyberclutter. Along with everyone else on the planet, I have a blog (on patnieder.com). Look here next year. Happy Holidays!

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

nelson mandelaThe world is celebrating the life of Nelson Mandela, who died at age 95 in South Africa, and I am remembering a wonderful week I had in Cape Town in 2009. It was June – autumn in that part of the globe – and the choppy water in Table Bay caused cancellation again and again of the scheduled boat to Robben Island. It took four tries, but on the last day before my departure, I was able to get there and stand in the same prison cell where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years’ incarceration.

This was my second trip to Africa with my cousin, Dorothy Woodson, who is curator of the African Collection at Yale University Library. In 1994, she had been a Fulbright Fellow in Cape Town, charged with sorting through and archiving voluminous boxes of written materials of Mandela and other political prisoners from Robben Island. She described the experience this week in the Yale News as follows:

“What a heady task this was. Reading messages written on little pieces of toilet paper that the members of the African National Congress ‘High Command’ wrote to each other, revealed rich insights into the daily lives of this most unusual gathering of men…(Mandela’s) leadership, even under prison conditions and restrictions, was clearly evident as he encouraged his colleagues to pursue further education in the form of correspondence courses and guided their political education by the reading of scholarly works. ‘Robben Island University’, as it was called, created a new cadre of intellectuals subscribing to Mandela’s goal of creating a non-racial South Africa.”

In the course of her project, Dorothy had spent great deal of time on the island or traveling back and forth between the island and the mainland. It was understandable that she had no interest this time in accompanying me on my one and only visit there. Besides, she was in Cape Town to attend a book fair. I tagged along with her to several sessions there and elsewhere, including several social occasions where her large circle of friends and associates were anxious to see and entertain her.

Everywhere I went I marveled at the diverse mixture of people and thought how well Mandela’s hopes were being realized. It is a work in progress of course, and I was not brave enough to face a visit to any of the all black townships where people still live in poverty. I glimpsed a vast expanse of slums with their shacks and shanties from the roadway, and while a tour such as the guidebook suggested would bring needed funds to the area, I could not do it. I did, however, buy intricate beadwork done by women in the townships and sold for them by a non-profit organization. One piece, of which I bought several, was a magnetized portrait of Barack Obama. Afterward, I entered a nearby shop where the shopkeeper announced almost immediately, “I LOVE your President!” “Yes,” I said, “so do a great many of us. Also his wife, Michelle.” “Oh, I don’t care about her,” she said. “But him I love.” I laughed and showed her my bead portraits, one of which remains on our refrigerator door.

Both the President and Mrs. Obama will be in South Africa for Mandela’s funeral services. I hope that shopkeeper gets a glimpse of them, if only on TV.

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[Photos: top –  plus.google.com; bottom – Mr. Apartheid Puppet created by a German anti-apartheid organization, on display at Nelson Mandela Gateway to Robben Island]

Happy Centennial, Mallomars®

“What’s a Mallomar®mallomars? Did we ever have them in the house?”

“Never for very long,” I replied. “The girls and I would devour them pretty quickly.”

Ed was reading about the 100th birthday of the chocolate-marshmallow cookie being celebrated this year by Kraft’s Nabisco division and the cookie’s devotees. I’m sure we would have offered him one and been happy when he turned it down. Each box contained only eighteen cookies after all. The thin dark chocolate shell encases a soft marshmallow and the cookie it sits upon. Some sources say it’s a vanilla cookie, others a Graham cracker; it requires further research. In the meantime, I learn that Mallomars® are seasonal, arriving on supermarket shelves in the fall and disappearing in the warm weather, even though refrigerated trucks no longer necessitate this precaution. It just adds to the cookie’s cachet.

But poor, deprived Ed grew up ignorant of snack food delicacies like Mallomars®.  Also Hostess cupcakes and Sno Balls®, Devil Dogs®, Twinkies®, Ring Dings®, Ding Dongs®, Yodels® and the rest, not to mention the entire panoply of candy bars. “We didn’t have those things in my parents’ house,” he says. Well, we didn’t have them in my parents’ house when I was growing up either, but somehow I became aware of them and developed a lifelong sweet tooth. Also a mouthful of fillings. Ed, with his near-perfect teeth grew up in Colorado where fluoride occurs naturally in the water, and is not much interested in sweets. I, on the other hand, grew up drinking pre-fluoride New Jersey tap water and only stopped getting cavities when there was no longer any undefiled tooth surface. Life is not fair.

There was consternation earlier this year among those of us aficionados of snack cakes when Hostess went out of business. The company made those wonderful chocolate cupcakes with cream fillings topped with dark chocolate frosting and the readily recognizable white icing squiggle. For me, an even bigger loss was going to be the company’s Sno Balls®, cream-filled chocolate cake surrounded by marshmallow icing covered in shredded coconut. They came in a variety of colors depending on the season but a person in the New York area with a birthday on St. Patrick’s Day could pretty much always count on getting Sno Balls® in green. Thankfully, another company purchased Hostess, and the cakes continue.

My daughters do occasionally remember to indulge their mother’s addiction. On one significant round-number birthday, we threw a big party and invited many friends. There was a decorated cake from a bakery for the guests, but also a special snack cake pyramid for me: Hostess cupcakes, Ring Dings® and Sno Balls® artfully stacked on a crystal cake plate. My foodie friends looked in horror at the masterpiece. “You don’t actually like that stuff, do you?” they said.

Yup and had a wonderful time all the next week working my way through the largess.

(Photo: npr.org)