Sylvia's Journal

I traded the meditative and silent experience of Quaker Meeting for a morning of elaborate cooking that culminated in a brunch for all six of us with quiche, falafel, salmon/spinach pies and an upside down German apple pancake. After having lived in hotels for several weeks I have this urge to cook. In the evening I cooked again something rather convoluted and complex that got even more convoluted and complex when Tessa and Axel started to insert their own directions (too many cooks in the kitchen) and we ended up with a variation on a Mongolian hotpot that will serve us for the rest of the week. There was also a craving for vegetables.

Sita had brought her own, slightly bigger, ukulele, and after brunch we played together and I had a few more lessons. I am starting to remember the one and two finger chords and my playing is beginning to sound like something although the chord transitions leave much to be desired.

It was a gorgeous day and we joined hundreds of other dog owners and dogs on Singing Beach for a long walk; everyone was enjoying the balmy weather with its temperatures in the 40s before it sank down again in the 20s this morning.

I had a long conversation with my sister Ankie who travels a lot, for fun, not for work. She just returned from Mali. I had enjoyed her pictures on facebook – she has seen a part of Mali that I have not yet seen, le pays des Dogons; it is on my wish list but I have never made time for it on my frequent visits to that country. We are planning a trip to China sometime in the near future, with our daughters, girls only.

In the afternoon Jacek came by with a bag full of camellias that grow in his living room/greenhouse that, long ago, was grampie Magnuson’s greenhouse. Aside from camellias, Jacek also always brings along a bag full of stories. Yesterday’s were stories of his grandfather because a book about him will be published soon, in Polish, in Poland. They are stories from another world. It’s actually a miracle that Jacek even exists. His father, a young officer in the Ukrainian czarist army at the time of the Bolshevik revolution, fled over the steppes with a handcar stacked with bags of flour and salt, a more tradable commodity at the time than money. He was also the first pilot to graduate from the Polish pilot academy, flew bombing mission on the Eastern Front and was, 80 years ago, president of LOT Polish Airlines.