Blondes Having Fun

DGF: Are we allowed to discuss the wardrobes of the ladies involved in the campaign? Is that suitable for polite conversation?

Miss Grimke: Indubitably!

DGF: Well that’s too bad because I think talking about clothes is boring.

Miss Grimke: Well shut my mouth!

DGF: Just kidding! I think talking about my clothes is boring. I think Sarah has an excellent fashion sense.

Miss Grimke: I totally agree. I think you could learn a thing or two from her.

DGF: What did I just say?

Miss Grimke: Blah blah blah. Cindy McCain I think looked better when her style was a little less, you know, like she was trying too hard.

DGF: Trying too hard! That is the Southern Lady’s worst insult!

Miss Grimke: Well, really. Bless her heart, it is such a difficult thing to do: looking good effortlessly. Sometimes it happens just by chance and sometimes you can’t pull it off no matter how hard you try.

DGF: Michelle is like Sarah. I don’t think she has hit a false note yet.

Miss Grimke: I love her in purple. But you know Cindy has one advantage the other two lack.

DGF: What’s that?

Miss Grimke: Being blond. Being blond trumps a lot.

DGF: Ain’t that the truth!

Tea Time

Miss Grimke: Is Barack Obama a Southern Lady?

DGF: Indubitably! I’d love to say that, but really, he is more of a Southern Gentleman.

Miss Grimke: I knew that, but really, he’d look good even in a dress.

DGF: It’s the slim. The slim look good in anything.

Miss Grimke: But not the really skinny. I don’t like to see bones, for heaven’s sake, except at Halloween.

DGF: Are we allowed to discuss religion or politics in polite company?

Miss Grimke: I was taught otherwise. Especially not over dinner.

DGF: Oh I’m terribly sorry. Are you hungry? I have some excellent goat cheese rolled in cracked peppercorns.

Miss Grimke: Delightful! I’d love to have some.

DGF: Specialty of the house!

Footwear for winter

New England winters can be hard on us Southern Ladies. It can be hard on anyone who doesn't have door to door car service. But hardship can bring out the best in us, and we do love the snow and an excuse to curl up next to a warm fire with a little glass of sherry or, really, a large bottle of sherry. In the event of an all-out Alberta Clipper protocol would call for Canadian whiskey, though a nice Kentucky bourbon would do in a pinch.

On a day when the sky was leaden but the Norway maples had not yet peaked, I slipped over to Elmwood for a little chit chat and I won't tell you what else.

Miss Grimke: I do love winter and yet I hate it.
DGF: Ambiguity is at the heart of it.
Miss Grimke: It's an excuse for cashmere and fur but there is absolutely nothing you can put on your feet to keep them warm and dry.
DGF: Duck boots are the only thing.
Miss Grimke: Duck boots ruin any outfit, I don't care how rustic.
DGF: I'm not meaning either to condemn or celebrate them.
Miss Grimke: Now that you are well into your sophomore year, how do you like your job?
DGF: Heavy is the burden of independence and automony.
Miss Grimke: Does it require ten thousand acts of domination per day?
DGF: No. One or two usually does the trick.
Miss Grimke: So being mistress of Harvard is nothing like trying to manage a hundred slaves while your husband is off whupping Yankees?
DGF: Of course not. It's more like trying to herd cats.
Miss Grimke: When your expertise lies in the herding of goats.
DGF: I think I've adapted.
Miss Grimke: I've never seen you in duck boots.
DGF: You've never seen me in a lot of things, and you never will.

Toad lilies, goat farms, and branding

Our dear Dr. Faust has suffered a set-back. Nothing major or serious, but truly a disappointment for her. She has had to abandon her dream of having a model goat farm at Elmwood. Even with me helping as project manager, running a dairy large enough to supply cheese for the dining hall would be too much of a distraction from her day job, especially now that the financial community is belly up in a ditch and even the World's Richest University has to sit very very still and take deep cleansing breaths.

So Drew has scaled back, for now anyway. She thinks of her goats more as pets than a demonstration of the Sustainable University. Sure we'll make a little cheese, but it'll just be for friends and family, and maybe we'll have a tasting as a fund-raiser for the Mathew Brady Memorial Darkroom.

The old 4-H-er has to get her hands dirty, so she's started a shade garden in a lovely spot at Elmwood. Her biggest delight now is tending a collection of toad lilies that surprised us by blooming a few weeks ago. We moved two plastic chairs to a spot of grass near the new flower bed and fell into what could pass for political discourse, or maybe not.

Miss Grimke: Do you consider yourself a maverick?

DGF: Perhaps. But a maverick is someone or something that has been not been branded. I'm afraid I've been branded.

Miss Grime: Branded what?

DGF: Feminist, for one thing. When I get depressed all I have to do is remember how the old boy Civil War historians got their boxers in knots over Mothers of Invention.

Miss Grimke: That cheers me up, too!

DGF: Here's what I don't understand, and I'm a highly educated individual. How can you be a maverick if you brand yourself a maverick and a maverick is unbranded?

Miss Grimke: Greater minds than ours will have to answer that question, Dr. Faust.

Time for a change, Drew!

Miss Grimke: I know what you should wear besides the suit suit suit.

DGF: Really. What.

Miss Grimke: One of those lace dresses Miuccia Prada has dreamed up. There are some very very serious dresses in that collection. In particular, a cream one with long sleeves and a turtle neck. It is very you.

DGF: How can lace ever be me?

Miss Grimke: Signora Prada, even though she is Italian and I have no idea how to pronounce her name, she knows what a serious Southern lady should wear. You should wear this.

DGF: How much does it cost?

Miss Grimke: Thousand of dollars I am sure but what's that compared with the cost of a class at the World's Greatest University? It is a serious dress!

DGF: Can a dress ever be serious?

Miss Grimke: On you, a dress would always be serious.

DGF: So I should rather buy a serious dress than bankroll a Boston public school kid who wants to take macroenomics at Harvard?

Miss Grimke: You have to wear something! You can't spend you life in those suits!

DGF: Watch me.

Beauty tips

Miss Grimke: Do you think the North is as racist as the South now?

DGF: I think the battle against racism requires constant vigilance, no matter who you are or where you are.

Miss Grimke: Can you think of a beauty routine that's like that?

DGF: I think that question trivializes a serious subject.

Miss Grimke: Well, I'm not so persnickety, and I can answer my own question.

DGF: Do tell.

Miss Grimke: I think the upkeep of the elbow is like that. You can't see your own elbows, but everybody else can. Nothing can ruin the look of a pretty summer dress from behind like the sight of gray scaly elbows. Keeping them looking pretty requires constant vigilance.

DGF: What do you do to keep your elbows looking pretty, Miss Grimke?

Miss Grimke: I cut a lemon in half and mash the pulp side onto my elbow and turn it a few times, like I'm making lemonade. It's a gentle bleaching and exfoliation. Then rinse and apply lotion. Repeat as necessary. Check my elbows in a mirror frequently.

DGF: I really don't think I'll go to all that trouble.

Miss Grimke: Why on earth not.

DGF: I don't care how my elbows look because I don't go sleeveless even in the shower anymore.

Miss Grimke: Someone famous said that.

DGF: I'm famous.

Miss Grimke: But not for saying that.

DGF: Yet.

What we did this summer

I know I know I know I have been neglecting Drew's fan base terribly, but I'm sure you will all forgive me when you hear what I've been doing--Drew made me project manager for the goat farm! I have been learning a lot, and Drew has been re-learning a lot. For example, "breeding pairs" is a bad idea. Goats are creatures of instinct, not romance. And they have a herd mentality: only one guy gets all the girls. She even had the names all picked out: Sissela and Derek; Geraldine and Tony. We kept Sissela and Derek, for obvious reasons. But Derek has to live apart from the does except for during those special times in the moon phase.
What about Tony? Here's where it gets complicated. Bucks get terribly lonely, but they can't live with other bucks. Housework would never get done! Sorry, my bad. They would fight. The solution is a wether. We couldn't name the wether Tony and Drew wouldn't let me name him Larry, so we just call him Sweetie Pie.