Important Announcement

I am not posting today because I am taking the day off to rededicate myself to my Art.

Which is to say I'm going shopping. What? You thought I meant writing? Not right now. Maybe next week.

Kate Gallison

How Not to Spend Money While Shopping

Too tight.

I went out to the stores today, looking for a long top that would cover my behind in these pants, which are nice pants but too tight through the middle for someone of my particular shape and size. With a long, baggy top, they look great. Naturally anything I bought to wear with them would have to harmonize in color and texture. Right? And be long. Tunic-length.

First thing I did was to buy a pair of chinos that fit better than these pants, so that I have something to wear with my normal shirts. These pants are made to resemble leggings. You've seen them on the young girls, no doubt. On the young girls they look fine. You've also seen them on the not so young girls, and you may have thought, why is she wearing that? She looks as if she waded in paint up to her waist and then forgot to get dressed, and furthermore she ought to lose twenty pounds. Not a flattering look. But, as I say, if one wears a long top one can sort of rock it.

I went into a small store that looked as if it might have something that would work and described my requirements to the store owner, who was sitting behind the cash register wishing somebody would come in and actually buy something.

"We haven't any tunics," he said. "Tunics are for spring."

A rack of long knitted tops caught my eye. "These are nice," I said.

"They're all cotton."

"I like cotton." I held the greeny-gray one up to these pants, and the color was wrong – that is, almost the same, neither matching nor contrasting in a good way.

The storekeeper chuckled. "I had a woman come in here last week," he said. "She was your age. Or, no, she was probably older than you. She had a book her mother had made up for her, divided in four, three months for each section. Every section had samples of material in the colors for that season. In the spring you wear this. In the fall you wear that. She hadn't updated it in sixty years. Some of those colors don't even exist anymore."

Pantone Colors for Fall 2012

As I stood there wondering how a color could cease to exist, he decribed how some faceless dictator at Pantone issued yearly edicts three years in advance – this is what color the cars will be, this is what color the clothing will be, these are the colors that will no longer exist. I was reminded of the editor in The Devil Wears Prada, who had the incredible hubris to insist that Vogue Magazine (or whatever they called it) had invented the color blue.

I liked the idea of that old lady's book. Maybe I'll make one myself and take it with me shopping. I reject the notion of obsolete colors (except, perhaps, for harvest gold refrigerators and avocado stoves). Fall is the season for brown clan plaids! When I walk into a store looking for a nice fall outfit and some clerk tells me that brown clan plaids are so last-century, I'll walk right out again, waving my little book. Think of the money I'll save.

Kate Gallison

The Price of Peaches... or... Quid Pro Quo...

(This blog is dedicated to Verlyn Klinkenborg, distinguished member of the New York Times editorial board, a Princeton Ph.D., who lives on his farm in upstate New York and writes literary meditations on rural farm life.)

Here I sit, relaxed, gazing at amber waves of grain under spacious skies…

Just kidding! I've been spending too much time with Nelson DeMille's John Corey and have picked up his bad habits!!

I'm actually chained to my non-functioning A.C. in sweltering Manhotten... while Con Ed plays games with our electricity!

But back to my bucolic VK mode… today I paid $3 bucks for 5 measly peaches! And one was already rotten by the time I got it home!

I sat on the kitchen floor and recalled another time of peaches in my life… from a plantation near Augusta, Georgia.

I was visiting the Episcopalian St. Helena sisters in Augusta and promised to help them raise funds. The next night, at dinner with the family of one of my Sewanee students, at their enormous peach plantation near Augusta, the student's father offered to donate" some" of their produce to the good sisters, being a good Episcopalian that he was.

The next day a truck pulled up at the convent with tons - yes, tons - of Georgia's finest! All hands sprang on deck. You never saw so many peaches in your life!!!

The good ladies fed every hungry mouth for miles around from that bounteous truck load. As well as filled every can and jar and pan they could find!

If I'd weighed all that fruit at my local NYC market they'd have cost, I'm sure, tons of dollars! But nothing like 5 for three $$$.

The next day I had an appointment with the manager of a big, fine department store in town. Before I met with the big guy I did some shopping on my own – a lovely evening gown, a pink raincoat and a pair of heels.

Then I went to my meeting. After several minutes of pleasant conversation he handed me a sealed envelope.

"My contribution to the dear sisters," he said, ever the charming southern gentleman.

When I gave the envelope proudly to the head nun, I imagined vast sums. After all, it was bigtime philanthropy! It was the finest store in town!

She showed me the check. It was the EXACT amount I'd spent that day at the man's store!

You want to talk about the meaning of Quid Pro Quo?????

T. J. Straw