Canicula

Could the canicula be over? This morning we woke up minutes before 7am, unable to sleep anymore. There was definitely something different in the air. The sun was not even out yet. The cats were happy racing all over the house. William went outside to start the sprinkler. We let out the chickens and sat outside. It was blissful. Mornings are usually cool but this morning did feel a bit unusual. The breezes and the lack of humidity made it so enjoyable.

We ventured out to the farmer's market and got a few seasonal veggies, breakfast and lunch. At home we dined on the patio, still able to enjoy the cooler temperature. I broke out the Diane and took some photos. We looked for things to do outside until it did finally warm up. But when it finally did, the heat was missing it's bite. We took in one of the last Paramount films, had something to eat and then watched a documentary on Paul Bowles. We rented it when we felt we could relate to the weather in Tangiers. So much for the to-do lists and the errands and construction workers showing up mid-week. It was a relaxing day and nothing got done.

This afternoon I was able to sit outside and look at my new book on Fernando Caruncho's gardens. He is my new du jour, I love his work and philosophy on gardening, history and life. In admiring his grid patterned gardens my eyes turned to the amateur landscape in front of me. I noticed that my feathered babies were really, really happy. They were all out of their coop, even Pee Wee and Fuzztop, who had been so broody lately. For the first time in several months they were all cooing and invested in the yard. During the high temperatures they would not venture out for long in the afternoons. When they did it was only for a quick dust bath, some bugs and blades of curled grass. They would retreat to their cooled coop where frozen mango and other treats could be found.

Ducky even came up to me asking for a hug, in her chicken way. She looks up and coos and just walks around the chair, looking up at me. When picked up, she'll nestle her head into my elbow as I pet her featherfur. Silkies feel more like rabbit than bird. She is the only one out of the flock who does this. Like a cat, when she has had enough she'll wiggle away and take off. Maybe the dog days are winding down. There is something different in the breeze, the chickens are saying it too, teehee.

On the castration of Mickey Mouse

Taking the day off!

Day Trip
Originally uploaded by Tera in the Isles

Film&Fun Du Jour

Paramount Movie Series 2009
Originally uploaded by Tera in the Isles

Tonight we watched Made in USA and Shoot the Piano Player at the Paramount. Dreamy!
Made in USA, this movie is AWESOME! I would love to watch it more than once and lucky me, Criterion just released the DVD as part of it's national release. It was shown in 35 mm and Wow. I am uber happy we all made it to the screening. This is a rich, rich, highly saturated film. It's oozing with color, references, narrative strategy,politics, and Anna Karina. Film Forum has an excellent page on this film. They printed out a glossary done by Rialto pictures regarding some references in the film. Just to give you an idea, I have copied and pasted only some of it here to entice you go and watch it on DVD.

A Made in U.S.A. Concordance
Following is an attempt to identify the myriad literary, cinematic,and political references in Godard’s Made in U.S.A.

Adieu la vie, Adieu l’amour Karina is seen reading Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye by Horace McCoy (1897–1955), published in Gallimard’s famous Série Noire crime collection as Adieu la vie, Adieu l’amour in 1948. The book (filmed in 1950 with James Cagney in the starring role) follows its thoroughly ruthless criminal protagonist from chain gang escape to his return to a life of crime. McCoy is perhaps best known for his existential Depression novel They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? (1935).

As Tears Go By Pop star Marianne Faithfull sings an a cappella version of “As Tears Go By,” the first song written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones and the song that launched Faithfull’s career in 1964 at age 17. Her original record remained on the Billboard charts for 9 weeks; the song was subsequently recorded by the Stones as the B side to “19th Nervous Breakdown” in the U.K.

“Atlantic City” The location is Gallicized as Atlantic-Cité, “cité” in its contemporary sense usually referring to a housing project.

The “Ben Barka Affair”On October 30, 1965, Le Monde ran an article about the mysterious arrest of Mehdi Ben Barka, exiled leader of the left-wing Moroccan opposition. It was an arrest the police denied making. Ben Barka’s disappearance was at the center of the news for months, during which the French secret police was revealed to have conspired with the criminal underworld to deliver Ben Barka to Moroccan agents. Morocco’s interior minister was reported to have visited the hideout where Ben Barka was being held and to have tortured him to death. (Excerpted from Everything is Cinema by Richard Brody.)

Goodis, David American noir fiction writer (1917–1967), particularly popular among French directors, notably Truffaut, who adapted his novel Down There as Tirez sur le pianiste (Shoot the Piano Player, 1961).

“Hey, Philippe!” The journalist is Philippe Labro (born 1936), playing himself, a reporter for the Europe 1 radio station. Author and journalist, he had been a soldier in the Algerian war. He later became a film and TV director.

Korvo, Dr. Samuel Reference to Dr. David Korvo, a villainous hypnotist played by José Ferrer in Otto Preminger’s 1949 thriller Whirlpool.

Left, Year Zero Godard photographs the cover of the paperback edition of a 1964 political study of the French left by Marc Paillet. The title is also a reference to Rossellini’s Germania, anno zero (Germany, Year Zero, 1948).

Widmark, Paul Reference to Hollywood star Richard Widmark (1914-2008), memorable as the psycho bad guy of several film noirs of the late 40s and early 50s, most notably Kiss of Death. Widmark’s one film for director Otto Preminger, 1957’s Saint Joan, would prove to have significance in Godard’s career: it introduced his Breathless star Jean Seberg.

“You still work at Radar?” The comment finally reveals that Karina works for a sensation-seeking true crime magazine, hardly the periodical for a journalist with “principles.”

Written & compiled by Lenny Borger n Edited & with additional material by Bruce Goldstein© 2009 Rialto Pictures LLC n rialtopictures.com


Though I had seen Shoot the Piano Player before, never at the Paramount.

I really hate to see the movie series come to an end. We could watch movies here all year long. Between movie watching and Tuesday night skating fun, I think I have a weekly schedule I can stick to. But no more movie after August, wah. The skating continues and I woke up this morning wanting to just get into some quads and head for Playland. We might try and see if we can skate on Sunday's.

Oh! One thing that always makes me happy is camera porn. Check out these sexy cameras.

Summer odds and ends

Summer in Austin will soon come to an end. There are only a couple of weeks left of movies at the Paramount. Students begin to move into dorms on Friday and already the morning traffic is building as teachers return to work. The official start of fall is still a month away and hopefully the end of these triple digits. All I heard today was how the heat has sucked the energy out of everyone.

The heat doesn't let my mind wonder off into the past or the future. I can't help but be completely present whenever I am outside these days. Indoors my thoughts skip ahead to October and the idea of cooler temperatures.

I can appreciate this guy:


Warning: It is less painful to do a cartwheel on warm-hot cement than on dry, dying, frying to a crisp grass. OUCH! I swear I can smell the front lawn cooking in the mid-day sun. Smells weird and sad.

I'd really love to have an antique kranker. Good luck, me. But I would use it for good, making socks not only for myself, but everyone I know!

We've been drying clothes in the afternoon sun and it's been fun because it's amazing how fast a pair of jeans or towels dry right up. They acquire a certain freshness and crispness too. Takes less time than the dryer and it's free.

Watched Sugarland Express for the first time. Recognized parts of Del Rio and Val Verde county. That was confusing because Del Rio is no where near Sugarland. The movie was like Badlands meets Bonnie and Clyde at a party hosted by Smokey and the Bandit. It really is a very good movie and I enjoyed seeing William Atherton pre-his sleazy villian roles. I did especially like this scene:


Speaking of Del Rio, I heard that the south end of town is actually green despite being closer to the desert than Austin. I also heard a second spring was discovered around the Lake Amistad area. Half the town is connected by a canal system that has been in continuous use since they were created in the late 1800's, although some are now estimating it may have been engineered as early as the 1600's. Everyone who lives in the older part of town, along these irrigation ditches has a green lawn and trees that are in no danger of heat exhaustion. So I heard. I'll check this out myself in a few weeks. My Grandparents live along the canal system and say they are still enjoying a luscious bed of St Augustine grass under some healthy pecan trees. Grandma's houses always seem to be this way.

I have also heard that the ground has been cracking in those areas of Del Rio that are eroded and without water. Seeing cracks in the earth has always creeped me out and left me fascinated at the same time. I remember the huge cracks that would form in the area. It got worse the further west you traveled. Rocksprings had enormous, scary cracks several feet wide that inspired horror stories by campfires. I once saw a weird insect crawl out of one of those cracks and it looked like something out of some sci-fi film. Creeped me out completely, sending me screaming and freaking out into a field of cactus. It turned out to be a large velvet ant.

As I post this, the day is coming to an end. I don't know how I made it to work, through work, errands, dinner....I woke up this morning wanting to do nothing more than grab some mint tea, stay in bed in my jammies, near the window overlooking the backyard with the kitties and just browse stacks and stacks of The World of Interiors magazines. Instead I went outside before sunrise and set the hens up for the day. I actually do enjoy this part of my day very much. Then I wanted to return to the original plan but I don't have stacks and stacks of The World of Interiors.

That end of summer vacation smell is in the air. I loathed that smell when I was kid, especially if I had a week left of vacation. In fact, I still don't like it. I don't know what it is but it will smell that way the rest of the month and through September.

Whole Fools

I never found the local Whole Foods store easy to get in and out of and so I haven't been in one since 2002 or so.  Here in Austin it is located in a really congested part of town. The parking lot is a bit weird too.

When I found how John Mackey felt about health care reform, I was not surprised. I stand behind the boycott but I was already boycotting the place for other reasons. I never found the Whole Foods story cool. I had friends who worked there before it went corporate and they were never happy campers. I never had a good impression of Mackey.  I was a never a Whole Foods Austinite and use to feel guilty about that especially when it came to local shopping.  But I preferred Wheatsville Co-op. Then Whole Foods became a chain and I prefer other chains like Natural Grocer, Newflower and Sun Harvest (once owned by WF but sold to Smart&Final who returned it to Sun Harvest). Whole Foods is a philosophy and a way of life for some people. It's just a store to me and there are plenty of other stores that offer what they have with a smile and at better prices. At least in Austin there are.
Mackey quotes Margaret Thatcher...Blehk. I bet he used this website too. Probably quotes Ayn Rand as well...yerch.

Surviving

I have been telling my out of state friends how hot it has been. I'm a one note Johnny about it. So is everyone else around here, come to think of it. It is creepy to have stayed in the three digits as long as we have with few breaks.

However, the mornings can be very different. They really are pleasant. Wake up early enough and you'll find some nice temperatures. This morning was especially nice for some reason. Maybe it was because the colors in the yard stood out more. I couldn't enjoy lounging in the hammock because I had to get to work but there was time to snap some quick photos of some healthy plants in bloom.

The down pour didn't reach our house this time, but at least it cooled off the afternoon.

Could be Xanadu?

My friend Kaz and I went rollerskating tonight. I was hesitant because I sold my quads awhile back. I had only been skating on tennis courts. I was really into it that year but never made it to the rink in town. Not willing to risk tearing an acl, spraining an ankle or breaking a neck all in the name of nostalgic fun, my friends talked me out of a skating party that year. I sold the skates and had not skated since.

Playland was something out of our childhood. The musty, moldy odor from filthy air ducts and thirty years of sweat hung in the air creating a familiar atmosphere. We both thought it looked just like the rinks in our home towns. Hanging up were signs announcing new carpet. Below our feet was what reminded me of cheap, penny slot casino's in Vegas (Slots-O-Fun), loved it. Sitting on a counter at the entrance, was a tall jar filled with pieces of different colored chewed up gum, gross. $2 fine for gum chewing.

It was a mixed crowd on adult night. You had your twentysomethings and sixtysomethings and everyone in between. My first impression was that there was a bit of a NASCAR vibe. That perception disappeared when I spotted a small group of guys in a corner doing on their skates what low riders do with the hydraulicized cars. Then whizzing past us as we continued to investigate the crowd was what looked like a garden gnome on a night off: hat and suit gone, just a long beard,tee and Richard Simmons red, satin shorts. He swooshed erratically back and forth as if to celebrate some stolen moments away from a dead cluster of zinnias. He muttered the venue rules as he saw them being broken, "Don't sit on the rail, don't stand near the rail, don't hang out near the rail..." swooshswooshswoosh. He was an awesome skater and looked like an interesting person.

We got our skates, giggling the whole time, fascinated with how skating rinks stay frozen in time, amazed we made it this far and anxious to see what level we'd find ourselves on. Upon entering the rink something seemed off. Lights. The lights were on. That's not right, the lights are on. My confidence came in the dark, always did at school dances, learning to drive and ride a bike, Fun-O-Rama...turn the lights off.

We were more graceful than we thought. Kaz skated using both feet I seemed to skate more on my left leg. I think that came from years sharing a pair of skates with a friend I had in Mexico. Every summer, I got the left, she got the right and away we went, all day sometimes. I think it did permanent damage. After Kaz and I completed our first few laps around we stopped to discuss our shortcomings but at the same time surprised with our skills and balance. I had skated so fast I scared myself at one point and had to slow down a bit. Once I did, zipping past me left and right were all the fancy pants. They were all aware of my level and skillfully going around me. Actually, perhaps going right through me. My slowing down didn't phase them at all, they continued as if I wasn't even there.

We'd break and watch the beauties and the show-offs. Truly gorgeous the way these people skated. The skates were natural extensions and it was effortless. They went forwards, backwards, sideways crossing their legs, in quads or in-lines. They danced gracefully, lifted legs, held hands, spun in circles. This was their element and sanctuary. By day they could be cashiers, nurses, admin folks, professionals, business people, salespeople...whatever. In the rink they were oozing with talent and a presence not possessed by many. They were poised and detached because they were flying, eyes just about closed, content, placid faces. This was their zen. Beginners and advanced beginners filled the rink too, but the true skaters just naturally stood out because they were amazing.

Meanwhile I concentrated and bit my lip as I turned corners, finding the graceful moments everywhere except corners. Two hours later we had improved, even the corners were feeling less unyielding and more airborne. We stepped out of the rink with plans for more visits soon. As we were making future plans, out stepped one of the beauties, looking a little haggard and older than she had skating. In the rink she looked twenty but off she had aged 15 years or so. Kaz and I looked at each other. Her posture changed immediately as she emerged from the rink. What was a sublime example of delicate dexterity now clumped around boorishly with poor posture and sat completely unrefined at the edge of a table texting. The magic was gone, she was now grounded, one of us. It was a fascinating transformation. One by one as they stepped off the rink, they instantly became less enchanting. Not a bad thing, just a testament to how truly awesome they are on skates. I want to be like that.

The things that lead to hook-ups

I've told the story before on this blog: Years ago, while working at a vintage store on the weekends, this cute guy with a certain sparkle in his green eyes walked in and made me swoon. I have always loved green eyes. He just about swept me off my feet when he politely asked if I would play Freedom Suite. Then I never really saw him again.

A few years later we met up on the #5 and he asked if I would like to work on this project with him. I finally got around to uploading the video. It's choppy though-merde!



Glad I took that weekend job, it was just something to do after my Saturday errands. It was nice getting paid to hang out around vintage things. Glad my 1974 BMW 2002 had a huge exhaust manifold problem and distributor issues causing me to take the bus every morning.

Ramblings...

I have always loved the song Telstar. As a kid I would hum it when swinging and realize I'd left the ground and was soaring. I would also begin to hum it out loud when I thought I was running really, really fast. I must have picked up off the radio, am radio was awesome in the 70's. But listening to it now makes me laugh because it was my supergirl theme song, no doubt. Come to think of it, I was into quite a few 1970's instrumentals.

Speaking of Telstar, I really want to see that film one way or another. I hear it is filled with incorrect information but that's how it goes with biopics. I dig the costumes and there promises to be a lot of vintage guitars...swoon!

I saw Julie and Julia and wished there had been a biopic on just Julia Child. I loved the costumes. Brooches and pearls were prominently featured and made me want my own pieces. Those vintage shoes, from the late 40's early 1950's were awesome! Loved those early 1950's tailored dresses. Anyway, when looking for more writers on food after I had finished everything MFK Fisher had written, I came across ex-Austinite, Julie Powell. Thumbing through her book, it seemed at first interesting but I was trying to follow MFK Fisher. Julie Powell's book wasn't going to cut it.

After seeing the film, I feel inclined to check out the blog. It was a cute film. I can relate to the whole sacred Julia Child recipe reverence thing. I have only attempted one Julia Child recipe my whole life, maybe two years ago. It came out perfect so I quit while I was ahead. It was very simple but required a lot of technique.

Poulet Saute a'la Boderlaise:



This was when I still ate chicken. Hard to eat chicken after you spend a pleasant afternoon listening to one talk as she follows you around the yard. Not sure how much Julia Child had to do with the actual recipe. It was not from her book but in some Time-Life book anthology of recipes. I'll try again one day.

The Sunday Post

We took my in-laws to Eastside Cafe. For dessert we had rain. It rained while were out visiting the garden and nothing could have been more perfect. Thunder and all. Early, yesterday morning, I was in the hammock watching the parade of billowy clouds go by. They were moving fast with their edges in constant flux as if they were waving . Huge masses passed over, one after another heading northwest. Nooo....don't go, stop and make rain! The day gave way to more of the same:heat and exhaustion. This morning I went out again and found the clouds to be a bit darker and broodier and not really in motion. I had things to do so I moved along. They finally turned into a small down pour that seemed to take many by surprise.

At home we had raspberry sorbet on meringue cookies. I made them and was really very happy with how they turned out. They tasted so fresh and yummy, no guilt. I had never made meringue before, I like to read cookbooks and read meringue recipes but never made one. Feeling up to the challenge, I decided to remove this mental block. They were really quite easy and seem hard to mess up.



This weekend I also noticed that the little rose bush I have been nursing since May is really thriving. It was almost thrown out in May but it had just a tiny bit of green left so I tried to save it. I think it is all the banana peels I feed it.

It's fluffy and white today!

It's a lot of minutiae

Hanging with Kaz, we had been talking about the 80's and early nineties at the coffee shop. What happened to so-and-so, remember him, remember her. After two hours,we traded Ipods. We shared the Charlatans UK and Stone Roses, both Madchester fans.

She had The Creatures though. I have their first album on cassette. Maybe not. I couldn't remember what pile it ultimately ended up in. Mental note: get The Creatures. Then I realized I remembered all the words to Siouxsie's The Last Beat of My Heart. Siouxsie is an ongoing love affair spanning twenty five years or so. We drove off listening to Boomerang.

I had watched Unforeseen that night and saw images of old Austin. The documentary sent me to bed nostalgically recalling The Cutting Edge, Mad Dog and Beans, swimming holes, old friends. I fell asleep thinking of The Reivers and then the Throwing Muses. My thoughts turned a corner and I remembered Shivers by The Boys Next Door then thought of Nick Cave, This Mortal Coil, The Cocteau Twins and so on. My mind was a messy collage of 80's bands, 4AD used as the doorway into the early nineties.

But when I woke up this morning NPR announced the death of John Hughes. It didn't quite fit in with the mood still looming from the night before, nor did clash with it either. Growing up it was Beverly Cleary and Judy Blume books and those John Hughes films. We began with Mr Mom at the new mall movie theatre and ended with Christmas Vacation when I came home from my first semester of college. John Hughes was childhood.

It's been quite a summer.

Is it just me

or does Rick Scott look almost inhuman {shudder}? Leader of the ignorant GOP thug underworld? Or was that Bob MacGuffie who was behind all the town hall disruptions? In any case, actions like this are desperate moves from fearful people with very small brains. I didn't like how they interrupted the announcement of a new VA clinic to be built in Austin. I have nothing but respect for our veterans, the GOP however, does not, at least not in Austin,TX

Between this guy and the other clowns: Rush and Orly...oh, there it is, you hear it?Thunder and Blazes. What spectacles and the show just keeps getting more outrageous.

Damn 110

The St Edward's campus overlooks the Austin skyline. When Claudia and I arrived in 1989 to start school we would stop to look at Austin and wondered where the neighborhoods were, where the clubs were, wondered when we'd be able to really get to know the city and be in it. St Ed's seemed apart from it because of this view. It took a few weeks to make friends and get invited to go into town. Then we learned about the bus and buslines and headed out on our own adventures.

I wish I had a better camera back then. I was always snapping pictures with my 110 on bumpy bus rides, in low lit clubs. It had the weakest flash ever. The camera had worked fine for classroom shots in high school, birthdays at a friend's house but it just didn't seem able to capture everything I was taking in at the time. Not many photos came out. What little did print never made it into albums and got scattered over the years. I still find them stuck in books or among old, personal, ephemera. These attempts at photographing our Austin experience as we lived it was important because we didn't think we'd remain in town longer than three or four years.
When our first #1 bus ride kept going, because we failed to recognize our stop at The Drag and thought it best to keep riding until we saw something familiar, I pulled out the ole 110. Claudia and I saw the businesses and buildings begin to disappear and give way to nothingness. We thought the bus was headed out of town, "Oh shit!". It was only going to the transfer station but it looked like the outskirts of town. At the time, could very well have been. I wanted a picture of the vastness surrounding that station. It was like a trip, already longer than an hour and ending up in the middle of nowhere. Photos were snapped through unclean windows of places we thought were interesting and are now forever changed and not the same. What developed were pictures of a cloudy window with smugginess in perfect focus. UGH! what a shitty camera, no manual control over it at all.

I remember the Greenbelt flowing so strong one summer, I went tubing with a group and never had to get up and walk. At the time there were so many swimming holes in and around the area, I don't think I went to one twice during my first summer in Austin. The Quarry was a favorite spot too, especially at night and during a full moon. You'd hear the scampering of little animals in the brush as you'd head towards the water. Condos now sit around what was once the swimming hole and right in the middle, where Chia and I would tread water and talk about life, sits a fountain in a very small pool of water. Photos of those nights were dark and grainy at best. Damn 110.

One memory I visited recently was of Liberty Lunch. At Genuine Joes sits a piece of tiled rubble from an building. I called my friend over and asked, "Is that a piece of Liberty Lunch, you think, didn't it have that tile?". I told her how I had gone to the heap of rubble that remained and grabbed pieces of brick. I wondered if someone else had been lucky enough to get the bathroom tile, teehee. I never thought the place would ever be torn down but one day restored and protected, if for no other reason than, I guess, because I loved it so much and figured others probably did too. It wasn't loved enough. If only I had a better camera at the time, I would have had great photos of the shows and the place.
Once a friend of mine invited me to an Inspiral Carpets show at Liberty Lunch. She knew them and we met up with them before the show and then after. I never got to actually see them perform like I had wanted too. I had brought my 110 camera this time. I didn't snap photos when around them because I thought it would be way uncool. My 110 stayed in my purse. However my friend dug out from her bag this sharp, sexy, nicely outfitted Zenit and snapped a couple of shots at rapid speed throughout the night. When I got home I put the 110 in a drawer. It was a Christmas gift and still carried sentimental value but it was finished.

Broadcasting minutiae

I didn't think I was interested in tweeting. I'm not into Twitter but I thought I would connect my blog to see how that was done. I like puzzles. It was easy though, no big deal.

It's funny because as a kid I was all about broadcasting, it was all I could think about. I tried a neighborhood newspaper but it did not run after v.1:1 1979. My only subscribers were these kids next door and they moved away. I rigged up ways to transmit on a transistor FM radio using one walkie talkie my Fisher Price turntable and a Fisher Price tape recorder. My homemade ads for fake musicals coming to town, interviews and PSAs were recorded on tape. I played 45's on the turntable and it all went through a walkie talkie that was always "on" thanks to a tight band of duck tape wrapped around it (rubber bands never worked). It sat on a stack of National Geographics in my room and was propped up near the tiny turntable speaker. Outside in the backyard was the transistor radio and my prime demographic, my younger brother. He would update me on the status of my broadcast by running up to the bedroom window offering such criticisms as, "There is too much static!"

"There is this weird noise, and it's LOUD!"

"It's Spanish now so change the channel...QUICK!"

What would ruin transmission was interference from other walkie talkies used by Spanish speakers nearby, radios used by border patrolmen, planes flying overhead or my mom using any electrical kitchen appliance.

Blogging appealed to me because I could broadcast thoughts, music, video clips, ideas, musings, ponderments and general minutiae du jour to this tiny demographic that knows me. Perfect, it's my childhood summers all over again, improved.

So new blog entries will be announced on Twitter, for all those within my tiny demographic who actually use Twitter. Honestly, I have never used this service. There is only room for 140 characters. Is that enough space for a haiku? I think it's enough space for titles of new blog entries on minutiae. Minutiae announcing minutiae.

Found

Found this cleaned out, old can at Mr Gage's house. He told me to take it since he thought it was just an old can he was going to throw out and I seemed so in love with it.

DIY Dream

Our house turns 60 this year and has done well for it's age and the fact that it was a rental for many years. Poor thing. The only signs of it having had transient tenants can be found in the vintage case molding. It's been painted over so many times, the detail has started to fade under layers of paint. I chipped pieces off around the hall closet and trim to see what there: white, off white, black (geez), yellow, pearl, white, brown. Brown? This ugly, rosy tinted brown was the original color of the trim. Remember, is was a bachelor who did this back in 1949. I could have been paired with matching vintage wallpaper. I see no evidence now of there having ever been wallpaper, doesn't mean there wasn't at one time.

The case molding is rich in detail and solid wood. It is something I have wanted the house to keep but its in need of stripping. How terrible, how awful, all I could see before us was a slow moving project involving carcinogenic fumes, a huge mess and lots of hard work. Months of hard, frustrating work and fumes.

One day, looking up vintage case and crown molding, I came upon a video clip from the D.I.Y network that featured an eco-friendly product resembling cake frosting per the do-it-yourselfer. The guy smoothed this stuff over the molding with a spatula, covered it with paper that came with the product and left it for 12 hours. He then peeled back the paper and all the millions of layers of bad paint jobs came off with it. What was left behind was only the wood. He them ran a moist sponge over that and the surface was clean, back to it's original state after 150 years.

The product was never shown but after much pausing I was able to make out the name and looked it up. It's made to safely remove up to 32 layers of lead paint and not harm the wood. It is odorless, no fumes, can be thrown away in your regular trash. It can be caustic, though not toxic, so gloves and goggles are needed. I found Peel Away: 7 (for case and crown molding) just a couple of blocks away. I'm in love with this stuff.

Need Tiki?

My cousin-in-law makes these in Vegas. I was impressed.