Tag Archives: NaBloPoMo2017

Gaining momentum

I was early to pick Poppy up from her classes last week, so I took the opportunity to visit a new art gallery that a friend’s family recently opened. I don’t go to art galleries all that often, but I think maybe I should. It was a lovely space, and being there was pretty soothing.

A lot of the artists at Momentum Gallery are local or have some kind of local connection, and I recognized a few of the artists who had work on display there. Hoss Haley, for example, makes large metal sculptures that I’ve seen around town before. They kind of looked like balled-up pieces of paper, and if I had a lot more money than I have I’d buy one for my yard. I’d also buy his “Blocks No. 2,” but that would require a lot of money and some larger walls.

The more I looked at it, the more off-kilter it made me feel, like I was Alice about to tumble into another wackadoodle adventure.

"Blocks No. 2" by Hoss Haley
“Blocks No. 2” by Hoss Haley

My favorite piece at Momentum was Mariella Bisson’s “Waterfall in Three Parts,” which would also require a lot of money — $24,000, to be exact — and a ginormous wall were I to make it mine.

Her paintings are really textural, and from a distance they look like you could step straight into them.

"Waterfall in Three Parts" by Mariella Bisson
“Waterfall in Three Parts” by Mariella Bisson

They also had a good number of Andy Farkas Prints. He does a lot of paintings that feature woodland creatures in anthropomorphized situations, which you may not be shocked to learn is right up my alley. Happily, his work is much more affordable than Bisson’s, and I am going to have some of his trash pandas on my wall in the near future.

If you’re in or around Asheville NC and you’re looking for something unique to grace your walls, you should stop by Momentum (24 N. Lexington). They have some really interesting work, and the people who run the place are both nice and local.

The Green Bean Incident

My grandparents got divorced when my dad was really young, and Dad never had much of a relationship with his father. When I was born, though, my mom thought my grandfather and his wife deserved the pleasure of my company. So until I was about 7, my mom tried her best to make sure my brother and I had a relationship with our paternal grandfather.

But here’s the thing: I don’t remember spending much time with him at all.

I do remember spending time with his wife, Betty. I remember lying in the living room floor in front of her recliner, watching “Savannah Smiles” on their giant square television. I remember being fascinated by the gold lamp in the corner with its cage of lugubrious bars encasing a glamorous lady. I remember the drawers upon drawers filled with colored pencils and crayons in her craft room.

But most of all, I remember the Green Bean Incident.

Why is it that we remember our lowest, most embarrassing moments so clearly?

My other grandparents were either working or hundreds of miles away, I guess, so Grandma Betty was my designated grandparent that day for Grandparents Day at school. I proudly showed her around my first-grade classroom, and I introduced her to Ms. Opal, whose eyes behind her thick glasses were alarmingly large.

The Grandparents joined us in the cafeteria that afternoon, and I helped Grandma Betty find our trays and get in line. The food line at my elementary school stretched into the horizon for miles, and Grandma Betty and I slide along it obediently, saying “Yes Please” to the baked chicken and rice and “No Thank You” to the Salisbury steak. Or maybe it was the other way around. It’s tough to reach three decades back in search of my chosen cuisine of the day.

I do, however, remember that I did not eat the green beans.

After sliding our trays down the line for what seemed like hours, we reached the Sides.

“Green beans?” The lunch lady asked.

“Yes,” Grandma Betty said, and the next 30 seconds unfolded in excruciating slow motion.

The lunch lady scooped up a spoonful of those hateful grayish-green tubes and started them on a certain trajectory with my plate.

“Noooooooo,” I whined. “I don’t want greeeeeeen beeeeeaaaaaaans.”

And I pulled my tray away just in the knick of time.

The green beans hit the floor with a squelch, and my tray flew across the room, the chicken and rice or Salisbury steak and potatoes spraying the floor and the first-grade and the grandparents in a typhoon of school nutrition before the tray, the plate and all the silverware crashed to the floor.

Grandma Betty shrieked, and then a terrible silence fell over the cafeteria.

“Clean it up,” Grandma Betty broke the silence. “Pick up those beans!”

She was clearly furious. And I, being a very spoiled kid, had never been told quite so brusquely to address any sort of mess.

So naturally I wailed.

“You. Are. Embarrassing. Me,” Grandma Betty growled. “Pick. Up. The. Beans.”

Did I pick up the beans? Did scary, skinny Ms. Opal come to my rescue? Did I ever apologize?

I have no idea.

But I can still go right back to that vast cafeteria and feel Grandma Betty’s fury about those beans.

Obviously Grandma Betty and I were not at our best on that particular Grandparents Day. I don’t remember her raising her voice at me any other time, and that’s probably why that one stuck. I’ve never seen anyone get so angry about green beans before, either.

So the lessons I took from the Green Bean Incident are as follows:

  • Let the lunch lady put the green beans on your tray. Just because they’re there doesn’t mean you have to eat them.
  • Sometimes kids do dopey, embarrassing things. Try not to overreact, though, because if you yell at them in the school cafeteria you just might scar them for life.

  • The arc of the internet is long and it bends toward NaBloPoMo

    It’s November again, and we all know what that means. Raking leaves, eating candy left over from Halloween and reading and writing a whole passel of drivel here at Butterscotch Sundae Dot Com.

    I wasn’t sure whether or not I was going to participate in National Blog Posting Month this year, because my laptop was stolen and with it my ability to write away from the corner of the living room where people are always looking over my shoulder or asking me if they can please, please have just one more piece of Halloween candy. But then I read something by someone who writes often and well (The Wordliest Time of the Year by Vikki Reich) and I figured I’ve NaBloPoMo’d for so many years now I might as well do it again this year — which is also, coincidentally, the reason this whole website still exists.

    So anyway, Vikki’s inspirational post and the tides of history came together in one magnificent crash of motivation and I said to myself: “Let’s just start writing and see what falls out.”

    And so I did, and here’s what’s fallen out thus far.

    Happy November, friends. I’m glad to be hear and I hope you are, too.