A wine-tasting weekend in southwest Michigan

Seven women in my family were planning a girls weekend to celebrate my sister Nancy’s 60th birthday. We rented an Airbnb for three nights in St. Joseph, Michigan, the heart of southwest Michigan’s wine country. Togetherness was the point of the weekend, but as long as we’d be going to wine tastings, I figured I should learn something about wine.

Feminism hasn’t lessened the importance of looks

So many women are getting manicures that it almost feels ill-groomed to have unpolished nails. Facial treatments abound — chemical peels, dermabrasion, Botox injections, laser resurfacing, cryofacials, microneedling, the list goes on. Younger women pay for bikini waxes, and African American women for lash extensions.

You would expect the beauty practices that women perform and men don’t would be a feminist issue. Women have fought against inequality on numerous fronts. Feminism brought more women into public office. Females now outnumber males on college campuses. Yet women are spending more time, money, and effort on beauty care than ever.

End of an era for “Prison City”

My hometown could have had a reputation for its limestone, from which buildings around the country were constructed; or the nation’s first junior college; or big names like George Mikan and Mercedes McCambridge. But Joliet became best known for the Joliet and Stateville Correctional Centers long before John Belushi’s fictional “Joliet Jake” was released from the former.

The Joliet Correctional Center — better known as the Old Joliet Prison — closed in 2002. Now the state has proposed demolishing maximum-security Stateville, which is actually in next-door Crest Hill, with a facility focusing on rehabilitation and reentry, and moving downstate Logan’s women’s prison alongside it.

Coming late to new technology

Technology has made everyday tasks easier and simpler. But some of the old ways of doing things were fine too. 

Right now I’m thinking about toothbrushes. I was late coming to electric toothbrushes, as with most technology. I wasn’t purposely holding out, but I found manual toothbrushes fine and had a large collection of them from the dentist. Hygienists never told me I was doing a bad job of brushing.

I decided to give an electric toothbrush a try after asking the dentist for suggestions for spending an insurance benefit. 

Novelized or abridged, Old Testament is still a challenge

Former Slate editor David Plotz blogged about reading the Old Testament from beginning to end. He said that although he was still an agnostic when he finished, “I’ve become a full-on Bible thumper. Everyone should read it — all of it!”

In The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, coauthor E. D. Hirsch Jr. said that no one can be considered culturally literate without a basic knowledge of the Bible.

So even if you’re not a believer, maybe you’ll bear with me as I tell about my dip into the Old Testament (aka Hebrew Bible, First Testament). 

How do you feel about aging?

I was surprised about feeling wiped out from a mere cold. At least that’s what I thought a runny nose, a cough, and a slight fever amounted to. Sleeping nine to ten hours a night wasn’t enough; in the afternoons I’d doze off on the couch while watching TV.

This is another indication of age-related decline, I grumbled. Our immune systems weaken. We get sicker than in our younger days.

Why visit ethnic museums?

My dad told us his maternal grandparents were German. They said so themselves when US Census takers came around.

John and Barbara Fritz were actually Luxembourger. 

Identifying as German was typical of 19th-century immigrants from their homeland. I read why at the Luxembourg American Cultural Society’s Roots and Leaves Museum in Belgium, Wisconsin, about 40 minutes north of Milwaukee.

How about salt in your tea?

“Tempest in a teapot” . . . “In hot water” . . . “Stirred the pot” . . . “Getting salty over tea” 

Headline writers had a field day with the British response to Steeped: The Chemistry of Tea, published January 24. Author Michelle Francl, a professor of chemistry at Bryn Mawr College, wrote that a pinch of salt improves the taste of tea. Francl looked into that tip from an eighth-century Chinese manuscript and found that salt blocks tongue receptors for bitterness. 

To my secret well-wisher

Dear person who sent me an unsigned Valentine’s Day card,

Did you expect I’d be feeling a bit down on Valentine’s Day? I was in one of those low moods that I can’t put a finger on when I found your card in the mailbox. I don’t remember the last time I got a Valentine’s Day card in the US mail. My late mother used to send them, but that was years ago, before her mental decline.

In a do-over life, I’d study music

Do you have to understand classical music and opera to enjoy them? My friends without musical training say no. They judge a performance by how it makes them feel, not whether they can analyze it. I’m not sure that works for me.

I once described myself to a music aficionado as “a musical illiterate.” I never had music lessons and didn’t grow up in a household that listened to music. 

I can’t say that I dislike classical music, but I don’t really hear it so don’t get much from it. In contrast, I usually find folk, rock, and country music accessible, maybe because of simple melodies and meaningful lyrics.

Choose a reading chair that’s good for your back

With today’s attention to ergonomic work stations, most of us know the importance of a proper desk chair. But when furnishing our living rooms, we’re more likely to focus on cushiness and style than on how a chair affects our bodies.

I’m going to stop suggesting “should reads” to my book group

Should book groups read sure bets or challenging books they may not love?

The seven members of my fiction-reading group are open to challenging novels, but I still hope that everyone likes the books I suggest. Fortunately, we have a process that makes the whole group ultimately responsible for the choice. The person whose turn it is proposes a few, usually three, titles from which the rest of us pick. 

The word “like” doesn’t fit our last choice suggested by me, N. Scott Momaday’s House Made of Dawn. We all thought the 1969 Pulitzer Prizer winner, about a Native American who feels alienated on both the reservation and in urban society, was an arduous read, with its dense, poetic language, nonlinear plot, and inscrutable main character. 

Reminders that COVID is still around

I thought COVID was behind me for this season when I finished five days of isolation and five more days of masking after testing positive in late November. It wasn’t.

No, I didn’t test positive again, but my niece Alex did on Christmas Eve when I was at her family’s home. It was back to checking Center for Disease Control and Prevention protocols.