Rosemary Christmas trees! What a perfect idea, I thought when I first saw the nicely trimmed little “trees” at Whole Foods. 

Ah, the perfume of my rosemary when I spritzed it with a little water, admiring the lights and the ornaments. Ah, snip a few wildly growing strands and add them to apple-chicken sausages. Ah, finally, a Christmas tree that would last until Christmas, no more pine trees that scatter their needles and die. 

After all, rosemary looks like greasewood, and up at the ranch, greasewood thrives in drought-cracked, white alkaline soil. 

But alas. Rosemary isn’t greasewood.

My Christmas rosemary died when I let 2 and 1/4 days pass without watering it. 

I snipped a few surviving sprigs, buried the corpse down the trash chute, and draped the lights on a piece of Navaho folk art that my sister-in-law gave me many years ago, which will survive.

A family story goes that before their marriage, Grammy’s mother warned Grandfather that he’d have trouble getting her out of bed in the morning. That didn’t mean she was sleeping.

I used to watch my grandmother, sitting up in her bed late in the morning, wearing a lacey Neiman Marcus bed jacket, writing to her friends all around the world, her stationery and pens spread out on a shiny white bed table. Stacked next to her were piles of clipped recipes, articles, and photos. Her phone was on the table by the bed. Grammy had been on the National Girl Scout Board, and she was still active. Maybe she was writing suggestions for expanding troops or organizing troop activities.

Now I sit up in my bed, late in the morning, warming my lap with my MacBook, writing to friends around the world, sending them articles and blogging. I don’t send recipes, but I send suggestions to teacher-friends whose students are working on iEARN  projects. (iEARN, like Girl Scouts, is all about students taking action to make the world a better place. 

Sometimes, when my fingers have passed warp speed, I think: “Acorns don’t fall far from the oak tree,” and I’m glad.

But here’s a difference: I don’t wear a bed jacket. I wear an old cotton gown given to me by a friend from iEARN Bulgaria. And I never ever turn on my web cam in the morning.

 Is Wyoming the Reddest State? Or Just One of the Palest?

11/10/2008

By Rone Tempest

“… A closer look at the election statistics shows that the absence of minority voters also contributed to Wyoming’s lopsided election results. 

“ Wyoming’s white voters, in fact, supported Obama to a much greater degree than white voters in many other states, including Texas and most of the American South. The difference was that those states all had bigger minority populations to offset the white vote.

  ”Despite his abysmal numbers in Wyoming, Obama actually outpolled John Kerry’s 2004 run. Obama pulled in 33 percent of Wyoming’s electorate, but Kerry scored only 29 percent…” 

The color caught my eye, pinkish orange piled midst khakis. Fresh as sorbert. A happy color. MY color. Desire blocked experience. I ignored the label that said: “100% cotton.” “Cool,” I thought. The slacks looked delicious with the 100% matching argyll sleeveless top.

I ignored the fact that the slacks hung so low on my hips that my bikini panties showed if I lifted my arms, and oh, by the way, the stride (as we women say) was too short. No problem, Soo at Lee’s Tailoring will make a miracle with inches of material she chops off the hem, I thought, distracted by the continuing surprise of being relatively short. I was the tallest girl in my class by 7th grade. 

Soo sewed a miracle. I felt so J Crew in my cute pinkish-orange, out to watch the Nationals in their new stadium with childhood friend, Judy Van and her nephew, G, visiting from Monterey, where pinkish-orange wool is the standard summer defense against the cold, coastal fog.

Here in DC, my cotton slacks loved their new freedom. The fibers breathed deeply of the hot humidity. By the time we returned home, my slacks were a tent. Chau, baby. Back to spandex blends,