I was half watching a movie on TV the other evening and the male lead had to go away, on a ferry boat of all things, apparently forever. Shortly after that scene the female lead said something like, “Saying I miss him would be too easy. Everything has simply changed.”

I know that feeling.

I was married to Martha for nearly forty years before she passed away over a year ago. She was only 59. She endured two very difficult surgeries and then she was gone. And exactly everything changed.

My adult daughter encouraged me to participate in a “grief” group that Hospice House was offering in Merrimack. I was sure the last thing I wanted to do was talk about this with strangers. But I went and, at first, reluctantly participated. By the end of six weeks I was crying along with everyone else and practicing meditation again after a lapse of many years. I was glad I had done it but unsure what it all meant.

In the mean time, I busied myself with projects on our old house that had been planned years ago. I vacuumed and cleaned and washed and cooked. I found it odd that a now wild and crazy single guy would keep his house so neat!

I helped my daughter and her family finish their long planned move to North Carolina for a better job and a new house. I traveled the long distance to be with them at holidays and important events. I thought I might retire and devote more time to my granddaughters.

What do I know a year and a half later? Only for sure that everything has changed and that I have to cope, not by designing schemes for doing wild and crazy things, not by finishing endless projects, not by waiting on granddaughters like a butler but rather by authentically continuing my life as I and only I see fit.

This link is to a number of books on grief. I’ve never actually read one but then I’m probably not a good role model. You might like to try one.

In case you haven’t heard, the city of Nashua has just installed bike racks on all of the city buses.

I am trying to be “green”, so I am riding my bike to the bus stop near where I live, and now I do not have to haul it on-board any more. The bus driver very nicely showed me (he said, “Just this once…”) how to pull the yellow handle, drop the rack into a horizontal position, and then pull the spring-loaded grip to grasp the front wheel. Having traveled twice so far, I can attest the system works, the bike is no the worse for wear, and I had more leg-room on the bus.

One other nice note, to possible bus-travelers: the schedule now has late hours (after 7 p.m.), so that you may hop on a bus, at the Transit Station, as late as 10:05 p.m. The routes after 7 p.m., are from the Transit station to the North End at the Nashua Mall and back, as well as from the Transit station to the Pheasant Lane Mall and back. So happy traveling! And saving! And good exercise if you bike!

Collard greens, kale, and Swiss chard. We all know these are good for us and have many health benefits – but when was the last time we actually sat down and ate them? Only within the last few years have I endeavored to broaden my experience with leafy greens. These were not foods that I grew up with, and I’d have never thought to make them myself. In fact, looking at these types of vegetables in the product section left me a little bewildered – what do people *do* with these? How do you prepare them?

My subscription to The Vegetarian Times Magazine has been invaluable to me. They have kindly introduced me to these nutrient-packed edibles by enticing me with mouth-watering photography and simple recipes. The Nashua Public Library has a subscription to this magazine as well. Patrons are welcome to check out past issues of this great resource located in our Stearns Room. You can also search for recipes at The Vegetarian Times’ website http://www.vegetariantimes.com/. They offer this simple advice to adding leafy greens into your diet: Just toss them into salads with yellow and red peppers, tomatoes, carrots, mandarin oranges or any citrus. Or if you prefer your veggies cooked, sauté a couple of cups of greens in some seasoned olive oil with sweet peppers, garlic and onion.

A fun and kid-friendly website for Greens is The Leafy Greens Council. This a great site with nutritional information, recipes and some fun add-ons like Leafy Green lesson plans for teachers, Cruciferous Crusaders Trading Card (like Escarole Rex, Collardile and Cabbagesaurus), brochures, coloring pages (my personal favorite is: Endivetopsia) and the stats on a list of different greens.

One quick and easy way to get more greens into your diet is the increasingly-popular green smoothie. I read about these in Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko. I also heard about them from my sister-in-law who had heard about them from her training. These green smoothies are regular smoothies (sans protein powders, sweet syrups or other additives) blended with fresh spinach or any other leafy green. A good guide is 60% fresh fruit and 40% leafy greens. You can be as daring with these as you want – stick to a conservative strawberry, banana and spinach or go for the more adventurous such as the following posted on http://www.greensmoothieblog.com/ :

½ Bunch flat leaf parsley ( you can also use curly parsley if you like)
1 Cup strawberries
2 Pears
2 Bananas
Juice 1 lime
Grate 1 lime
1 inch fresh ginger
½ cup water (optional)

Sometimes we just have to nudge our taste buds a little. I have noticed that the more I eat greens and fresh produce, the more I crave it. For me, it’s perfectly understandable that one of The Brothers Grimm’s fictional mothers-to-be said:

“If I don’t get some of that rapunzel from the garden behind our house, I’m going to die.” As night was falling ,[her husband] climbed over the wall into the garden of the enchantress, hastily pulled up a handful of rapunzel, and brought it back to his wife. She made a salad out of it right away and devoured it with a ravenous appetite. The rapunzel tasted so good, so very good, that the next day her craving for it increased threefold.

I am not pregnant, but sometimes I crave this Leafy Green something fierce. Rapunzel, also known as mache or lamb’s lettuce, is available at Trader Joe’s. Treat yourself with no risk of losing your first born to a wicked enchantress.

Here are a few books here at the Nashua Public Library which can help you put more greens into your life:
The Mediterranean Heart Diet by Helen V. Fisher

Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen by Ani Phyo

Power Food by Janette Marshall

Vegetarian Times Cooks Mediterranean from the Editors of Vegetarian Times

Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz

Sources:
Vegetarian Times 8 Foods Every Vegetarian Should Eat April 1, 2009

Leafy Greens Council Top 10 Reasons to Eat Your Greens April 1, 2009

Green Smoothie Blog Refreshing Smoothie (Parsley, Strawberry, Pear, Banana, Lime and Ginger) April 1, 2009

Annotated Brothers Grimm. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.

April is Jazz Appreciation Month and it’s fast coming to a close. Jazz is frequently described as “America’s Music”, the product of African and European ingredients simmered in the American experience for a few generations to form a musical tradition uniquely and proudly American. Jazz, like America, combines structure with creativity to constantly improvise – and improve – on what’s been done before.

I stumbled onto jazz in college. The Billy Taylor Trio used to play regularly at our school, with Dr. Taylor on piano, and bass and drums rounding out the trio. With apologies to the jazz greats primarily known for horn and sax, a jazz piano trio is all I’d need to get by on a desert island, and Billy would suit me fine. Warming up!, recorded by the Billy Taylor Trio in 1960-61 is a wonderful recording by this artist that’s available in Music, Art & Media (MAM).

Over the years I’ve come to enjoy listening to many kinds of jazz, but my “formal” education began with Ken Burns’ 19 hour documentary on the history of jazz in America, aptly titled Jazz, which is available in MAM on both DVD and VHS. Burns received some criticism for giving some artists and styles short shrift, but I found the series immensely informative and entertaining. Jazz consists of 10 episodes, structured chronologically to illustrate how this art form developed over the years.

Among the prominent jazz musicians and critics featured in this film is Wynton Marsalis. A gifted classical and jazz trumpet player from an extremely talented family, Marsalis is Artistic Director for Jazz at Lincoln Center and one of the most energetic advocates of jazz music today. To Marsalis, jazz goes far beyond a musical form. His recent book Moving to higher ground: how jazz can change your life (MAM 781.65 M) probes how jazz can lead to a deeper understanding of life and improve personal interrelationships. Wow.

Appearing around the same time was another work on the power of jazz. The Jazz ear: conversations over music by Ben Ratliff (MAM 781.65092 R), interviews 15 leading contemporary jazz musicians to reveal how jazz motivates them and directs their lives in profound ways. Of course jazz doesn’t hold a monopoly on making players and listeners feel good. See Daniel Levitin’s best-sellers This is your brain on music: the science of a human obsession (MAM 781.11 L) and The world in six songs: how the musical brain created human nature (MAM 781.11 L) for an in-depth look at how music shapes us.

The Nashua Public Library maintains a jazz CD collection of over 600 titles, featuring all the classic recordings we can find as well as a wide range of artists and styles from Sidney Bechet and early Dixieland to contemporary jazz. We’ve also collected a number of live performances on VHS and DVD for your listening AND viewing pleasure.

We also periodically host live jazz either in Music, Art and Media’s performance area or outside on the plaza in July or August. Subscribe to our Concerts@Your Library on our newsletter page to learn about upcoming events. So please peruse our catalog for your favorite artists, or stop by MAM and we’ll help you find some music to make your life a little better!

I have lived in the same house for way too many years to count. I would love to buy a new house, but failing that, I would love to redecorate the old one. I recently discovered the Home and Garden network on television and have become an avid watcher of all shows, but especially those involving home decorating with little or no money.

When I first got married, my decorating style could have been described as a cross between early relative and vintage Salvation Army. After my children were born, I was still decorating in the early and late relative style, but in addition, I added vintage yard sale. Who knew that buying a house, having two kids and living on one salary would turn me into a trendsetter!

In today's economy we are all out there looking for the best decorating buys for our dollar. Some of us may be shopping at Ethan Allen and Pottery Barn, but a lot of us will be doing our shopping at yard sale and flea market. Some of those flea market shoppers will produce rooms beautifully decorated in shabby or shoestring or flea market or vintage chic. My rooms often look messy and mismatched.

Home decorating is a skill that not all of us are born with, but all is not lost. Whether you like the look of shabby chic or your finances say you need to learn to like it, the library has some good decorating books. These books contain pictures of whole rooms to let you see what goes together and how it all could look. Bring one of these to your favorite flea market or the closest yard sale and start redecorating your house!

Easy flea market style: creative ideas and fabulous fix-ups
French country junk chic
Country living shoestring chic: extraordinary style for less
Decorating on a dime: trade secrets from a style maker
Home cheap home: a room-by-room guide to great decorating
Trade secrets from use what you have decorating