Laissez le bon temps rouler!

With the exception of beignets, there is nothing that competes with the sweet deliciousness of King Cake on Mardi Gras.

It was only after meeting a native Louisianan, that I learned of this special coffee cake. As if a layer of purple, green, and gold icing were not enough, the cake's calling card is not its sugar-laden top but rather the figurine baked into the dough.

If you are lucky enough to find the small plastic baby in your slice of cake, prosperity is said to be yours for the remainder of the year.

So, as Marie Antoinette is rumored to have said.....

"Let them eat (King .... or perhaps Queen?) cake."

Yesterday was the fifty anniversary of the release of Carole King's masterpiece Tapestry.

Carole made her way from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, eventually settling in Laurel Canyon. Surrounded my like-minded souls, the release of Tapestry launched her into the singer-songwriter stratosphere. It garnered her four Grammy Awards that year, including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year (for You've Got A Friend), and Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female.

The album cover shows Carole and her cat Telemachus perched next to a window in her Laurel Canyon home. Oh to have been a fly on the wall during those magical and heady days....

"Ask anyone in America where the craziest people live and they'll tell you California. Ask anyone in California where the craziest people live and they'll say Los Angeles. Ask anyone in Los Angeles where the craziest people live and they'll say Hollywood. Ask anyone in Hollywood where the craziest people live and they'll say Laurel Canyon. Ask anyone in Laurel Canyon where the craziest people live and they'll say Lookout Mountain. So I bought a house on Lookout Mountain." – Joni Mitchell

Yesterday when I wandered down to the water's edge, I came upon four snowmen.

They appeared the day after our most recent snowstorm. Raised up from the flakes that had fallen on M Street beach.

After enduring a night of snapping wind and plummeting temperatures, I must say they looked a bit bedraggled. And yet, they held their ground. Silent stanchions looking out to the choppy waves of Boston Harbor.

Eventually warmer temps will erase them from the landscape. Gone perhaps, but not forgotten....

"Life is like a blanket of snow. Be careful how you step on it. Every step will show." – Unknown

The National Portrait Gallery is one of my favorite DC haunts. First opened to the public in 1968, it remains a "must stop" every time I venture to our country's capitol.

During my last visit, I went to see the newly installed portraits of the Obamas. Artist Amy Sherald, nine years Michelle's junior, captured the former First Lady. Kehinde Wiley, originally from Los Angeles, centered the former President amidst a leafy background, creating both a striking and original composition.

It's hard to capture what having the Obamas in the White House has meant to our nation's zeitgeist. Art is often the only medium up to the task......

"If you could say it with words, there would be no reason to paint." – Edward Hopper

I was never much of a card player. I know a few basic childhood games; Go Fish, Crazy Eights, and of course the kingpin of them all - Old Maid.

When I got older someone taught me Gin Rummy and Cribbage. But somehow I never progressed beyond that. Which makes my love for playing cards even more improbable.

I have a deck of the blue and red Bicycle cards, the industry standard since 1885. I have an old pack of TWA cards, with the airline insignia in the top lefthand corner. But my favorite set I bought at Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, each showcasing a different country music star.

Shuffle 'em up. It's time for Dolly, Willie, Hank, and Loretta. Hearts, clubs, spades, and a diamond.....

"Everyone should be able to do one card trick, tell two jokes, and recite three poems, in case they are ever trapped in an elevator." - Daniel Handler

The road that runs along the ocean in South Boston ends at Sully's, a venerable shack that's served tourists and townies alike for the past 70 years. 

When you belly up to the counter you can get your fill of fried clam strips, hot dog rolls stuffed with lobster, and scoops of ice cream. It is summer made manifest. 

But my favorite factoid about Sully's has nothing to do with their menu. If you want to know when they close for the season, don't bother checking the website. They're on "seagull time." That is to say when the owners look out into the parking lot and see more seagulls than people, they know it's time to pack up and head to Florida.....

"Eagles are seagulls with a good hairdo." – Douglas Coupland

One of the icons of the Civil Rights movement, Rosa Parks was born 108 years ago today.

There has been a lot written about Rosa's refusal to give up her seat on that Montgomery bus. She knew the driver (James Blake), someone with whom she had a previous altercation. For twelve years she avoided any bus he was driving. But on December 1, 1955 she failed to notice who was sitting in the driver's seat as she entered. The result?

7053.

Parks was not the first African-American woman to be arrested for refusing to yield her seat, only the most famous. She followed in the footsteps of four others, hoping we would do the same....

“There were times when it would have been easy to fall apart or to go in the opposite direction, but somehow I felt that if I took one more step, someone would come along to join me.” – Rosa Parks

On Sunday mornings, after church, my family would divvy up the newspaper.

My brother swiped the comics. My Dad took the front page. My mother made a beeline for the crossword. I grabbed the sports section.

Over the course of the day we would trade portions back and forth. By late afternoon, the ink-smeared pages found their way back together again, haphazardly piled at one end of the couch after everyone had had their turn.

Metro. Obits. World News. Opinion. Lifestyle. Real Estate. T.V. Listings. Home and Garden. Automotive. Business and Finance. Classifieds. Editorials. Travel and Leisure. Society. Front Page. And of course, sports. I read them all.......

“People don’t actually read newspapers. They step into them every morning like a hot bath.” – Marshall McLuhan

Today's forecast for the Boston area calls for close to two feet of snow. Thank goodness yesterday was National Hot Chocolate Day.

I was in the car this weekend, listening to the radio, when I heard news of this delicious holiday. Apparently hot chocolate is the preferred beverage for the winter season (made with milk not water, and don't scrip on the marshmallows).

The trivia lesson also went on to point out that 39 degrees is considered to be the ideal winter temperature. And finally, that children like winter more than adults. No surprise there.

Never mind the rest, they had me at marshmallows......

"The superiority of hot chocolate, both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain." – Thomas Jefferson

Today is Kansas Day, the anniversary of the admission of Kansas into the Union in 1861.

Kansas has never been a destination for me, but I have driven across its liminal landscape on plenty of occasions. Like an infinity pool, the plains of Kansas go on for as far as the eye can see. It's as mesmerizing as it is disorienting.

“You can never really escape. It goes with you, wherever you go. Somehow, the prairie dust gets in your blood, and flows through your veins until it becomes a part of you. The vast stretches of empty fields, the flat horizons of treeless plains. The simplicity of the people—good, earnest people. All that—it’s etched into your soul and it colors the way you see everything and becomes part of you. When you leave, everything you experience outside of Kansas will be measured against all you know here." – P.S. Baber, Cassie Draws the Universe

I don't know why, but I've never had much luck with kites.

My Dad bought us a box kite when my brother and I were kids. The design certainly didn't inspire confidence in its aerodynamic potential. Too much empty space and not enough fabric it seemed to me.

Our attempts to launch our kit-assembled prototype were most often met with short-lived flights followed by death-spiral crashes. It was all very ........ humbling.

Perhaps the point was to learn more from the crash than the launch.

"Children are like kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you are both breathless. They crash. You add a longer tail. You patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You assure them that someday they will fly.

Finally, they are airborne. They need more string, and you keep letting it out. They tug, and with each twist of the twine, there is a sadness along with the joy. The kite becomes more distant and you know it won't be long before that beautiful creature will snap the lifeline that binds you together and they will soar as they are meant to soar...free and alone. Only then do you know you have done your job." – Erma Bombeck

As the challenges of the pandemic continue, seemingly unabated, I have found solace in the unlikeliest of places. Watching old reruns of The Amazing Race.

It's not so much the frazzled pairs; leaving their comfort zones, sorting out their relationships, or facing their fear of heights. It's the beautiful surroundings that form the backdrop.

The windmills of Holland, the congestion of Mumbai, the rugged peaks of Peru. It is all there and so much more.

Travel is a feast for the eyes. But more than anything, the immersive experience that travel offers changes us in a way nothing else can....

"You cannot understand the otherness of places you have not encountered. Travel is a set of corrective lenses that helps focus the planet's blurred reality." – Conde Nast Traveler

Yellow fire hydrants. The industry standard, or so I thought.....

Much to my surprise, I recently discovered hydrants are color-coded. Yellow denotes the water comes from a public water source. Violet indicates the flow traces back to a lake or pond. Red, orange, green, and blue reveal the corresponding water pressure (from <500 gallons per minute to >1,500 gallons per minute).

For years I was blithely unaware of this hydrant hierarchy, perhaps because the fire plugs in my old neighborhood had designs painted on them. One boasted a Boston Bruins logo. Another offered a teddy bear motif. On a particularly vibrant corner, the hydrant was awash in the colors of the rainbow.

There are also more pragmatic variances. As an example, the hydrants in my neck of the woods often sport a long orange stick that extends an additional three feet in the air, in case a passing plow inadvertently buries them in snow.

Out of sight perhaps, but never out of mind.

"I used to work in a fire hydrant factory. You couldn't park anywhere near the place." – Steven Wright

On the southern coast of Maine is a wildlife reserve named after famed biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson.

In her seminal work, Silent Spring, she warns of the lingering effects of using DDT, particularly on the migratory bird population. Application of such pesticides, under the guise of boosting agricultural harvests, she feared would decimate the avian population, rendering our world silent of their warbles, caws, and chirps.

The land that bears her name is filled with salt marshes, estuaries, barrier beaches, and forest. Deliciously silent of everything but the sound of the rushing tide, the birds, and the joyous heartbeats of those lucky enough to wander through......

"For as the shore configuration changes in the flow of time, the pattern of life changes, never states, never quite the same from year to year." – Rachel Carson

I'm a Skippy kind of girl. Spread evenly on white bread. Smooth not chunky.

Lest you take me for a Puritan, I always left the crust on and jazzed up the finished product with a sheen of red raspberry jam. That combo was considered pretty avant-garde in the neighborhood in which I was raised. Most of the other kids' sandwiches boasted a large dollop of Fluffernutter. Or grape jelly. Never jam with seeds.

It's funny how these staples from long ago still appeal, as if something as pedestrian as peanut butter could capture the essence of one's childhood. And yet that's exactly what happens, with just the bite of a peanut butter sandwich, the yank of a yoyo string, or the sight of a lightning bug in the mid-summer dusk....

"I would like a magical palm tree that had a lot of shade, and instead of coconuts, there would just be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Cheetos underneath." – Channing Tatum

In honor of Inauguration Day, a time of pomp and ceremonial flourish, it seems fitting to focus on our nation's capitol. Every four years the hopes and dreams of America hover over the candidate taking office. In the process, our democracy is again renewed.

Some who watch cast their votes for the winner. Some not. But in that moment, with the world watching, the burden and aspirations of all of us are laid on the shoulders of the new president.

Inaugurations are a spectacle. But presidencies, more often than not, are made and lost in the quiet moments, far away from the camera's watchful eye. As our first president reminds us.....

“The turning points of lives are not the great moments. The real crises are often concealed in occurrences so trivial in appearance that they pass unobserved.”

― President George Washington

Dr. King was many things, but among them, he was a preacher.

Raised in the shadow of his father's pulpit and the recipient of a doctorate in systematic theology from Boston University, King was perhaps best known for his erudite and evocative prose. Homiletic flourishes aside, King acted as the conscience of our nation, starting with his beloved church...

"If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority." – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

O'ahu.

The thought of it conjures up images of Waikiki beach, rows of pineapple plants, the craggy face of Diamond Head, and the swells of the Banzai Pipeline.

I have been fortunate to see the thundering waves of O'ahu twice in my life. Oddly enough I heard the wall of crashing water before I saw it. Such is the power of the O'ahu surf.

Lifeguards leapt from their chairs when we dared venture down to the sand. Even standing well away from the tide line didn't mean you were safe. Here where a rogue wave could swoop in before you had time to turn and flee.

During a time when errant waves seem more common than not, my experience of the Pipeline acts as a reminder not to focus on the surge, but to hang on to the board.

"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." – Hawaiian Proverb

The world headquarters of Converse is just a few miles from my home. It's located on Boston's Freedom Trail in a space that occupies over 214,000 square feet spread over ten floors. This glass behemoth overlooks the harbor, enjoying stunning views in every direction.

I never had a thing for Chuck Taylors. I am more of a New Balance kind of a girl. But every time my wife drives over the Zakim Bridge and passes the gleaming monolith she looks out at the building and audibly sighs "ah, heaven......." Her devotion to Converse is both fulsome and longstanding.

What many folks don't know is that hanging in the lobby of this same building is a one-of-a-kind chandelier. With bulbs that shine through translucent soles, it is comprised of 200 Converse sneakers dangling from a towering canopy. If that isn't heavenly, I don't know what is.

"I always wore sneakers when I wanted to. It was always about being comfortable and being myself." – Whoopi Goldberg