tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33681588317863622982024-02-07T08:32:42.980-05:00Eat Here EateryA restaurant of ideas and imagination.
Pull up a chair.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.comBlogger193125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-86616205214573810112018-06-03T18:01:00.000-04:002018-06-03T18:21:06.911-04:00Farewell Diana, Goddess of the Moon<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The new moon, the almanac will tell you, is a time for planting. In our family circle this means literally planting the nasturtium seeds, gently filed and soaked to help germination, during the first new moon of late winter, when danger of freezing has passed. It means figuratively planting the seeds of our hopes and dreams and all new beginnings we hold in our hearts. It is a profound kind of prayer, sometimes shared, sometimes offered up in solitude. At the full moon, we hope these will come to fruition. The full moon in May of 2018 has also been called a flower moon, and "a time for letting go" by those who know far more of these things than I do. But those of us who loved her can attest that this was the full moon, this aptly named Flower Moon, which marked our time for letting go of Diana Smith. It marked a time for Diana to step into its light and the light of the universe for eternity.</span><br />
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Diana touched many, many lives and there will be many stories told about the ways in which she did and the differences she made. Her family has shared, and doubtless will continue to share their own stories and memories. I expect her many friends will do the same. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For my part Diana did not only touch my life. Looking backward, </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Diana changed my life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The long-form blog has given way to shorter formats, or become a platform for voices of more public interest than this one, voices that talk of politics and current events with courage and cowardice, with beauty and ugliness. But this seems the best place for me to share my heart on the topic of a woman whose friendship I'll honor for the rest of my life. Come and walk along a bit with me, and remember.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Arguably, The Booksmith was one of the best-entrepreneurial gifts given to the St. Augustine that existed before the internet, mobile phones, far too many people and far too much Disneyland. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(There is also the Flagler College Bookstore, with its own interesting tale I hope someone will tell, but another time.) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Though it began life on St. George Street (another story for another day, my dears) The Booksmith soon moved to the space we all remember, right across from the Plaza. Its nearest neighbors were the common corner it shared with The Trade Winds Tropical Lounge, and, punctuating the other end of the block, the Cathedral Basilica of St. Augustine. The front door was a very heavy bronze surety against intruders, beautifully worked, which was opened at 10:00 every morning. The glass swinging door inside that opened to the desk, and a familiar scent of paper and ink, dust and magic, and most days, to Diana's smiling welcome.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My life has been blessed by the presence of many astonishing, varied, smart, talented, funny, sacred, profane, gifted women, almost all sisters in one way or another. If I had a superpower, it might be the ability to cross their paths, or find them or have them bestowed on me. Only as a very small child had I one "best friend"; before I was a teenager the notion of friendship evolved to be one of circles. The earliest such circle began with my friend O'Hare, whose notion of friendship was similarly becoming one of a circle of sisters, of which she was a center until her death at 45. This circle of sisters O'Hare has loosely held together even during the years of her absence.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The notion of an organic circle of sisters came naturally to me, but I think it was harder for Diana. After we had been friends for some years, I referred to her as a "sister of my heart". Startled, she said, "Do you really mean that?" </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Of course I did, and while the time we spent together in person changed over the years as our circumstances did (children, aging parents, retirement, travel, jobs, and so on) she remained a sister of my heart.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Diana was very close to me when I became pregnant. Even though my husband and I had married, at least partially, out of my conventional desire to be married before having children, I was deeply frightened at the prospect of a baby once pregnancy made having one a virtual certainty. I told Diana I thought I might have made an awful mistake; I wasn't ready; WE weren't ready; what on earth had I been thinking?, and lots more in that vein. Diana, always sensible, said, "If you wait for the right time, it will never come. There's never a perfect time to do anything, especially have a baby. It will all work out, you'll see; everything will take care of itself." And as I shall say often in this post, Diana was right. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Meanwhile my circle grew, thanks to the Booksmith and to Diana's mild but always-honest influence. Along came Su Landry, whose voice was also always honest, lightened with humor, and spiritually confident, perhaps in part from her work with hospice, but certainly from an internal wellspring that was purely Su. Marilyn Bailey, who conspired with Diana to deliver to us a set of Desert Rose Franciscan-ware, estate-sale bought and at that time far beyond my means. Marilyn would later tie to a different part of the circle through her affectionate maternal relationship with my friend Miss Inga. Lauren, who worked for another unique local business called Old Favorites, with which The Booksmith maintained a friendly cross-referential connection - those who searched for books often also searched for music. I would see Lauren riding uptown to Old Favorites with her young son on her bike, his curls blowing in the wind behind her own. Connie, who would write several books following her brilliant debut, <i>Sugar Cage</i>, and would tell me that I had, myself, The Power of the Word, and would change me in ways I could never have foreseen. And Katie, deeply beloved sister of my heart whose life would entwine with mine, whose family would be connected to my own, in a roses-and-English-ivy way, never to be disentangled. (If you haven't been called out, my sisters, forgive me the lapse; I love you no less.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There were men in the circle, too, albeit with a different, more distant sort of membership, but how could I mention this topic without thinking of Ernie Mickler, whose <i>White Trash Cooking</i> would preserve Palm Valley in my mind before its identity was subsumed forever by local development? ("Dear Angie, I know you are pure White Trash and proud! Love, Ernie".) And perhaps most memorable of all, though I knew him through my family and in other settings than the Booksmith, Gamble Rogers. I will always see him, coming in that swinging door, turning his whole body to the right to make eye contact (fused discs in his neck preventing him from turning just his head) and saying in his Southern-gentlemanly way, "Aaa-ngie", by way of gallant acknowledgement. There was even the exquisitely polite, and by this time, exquisitely fragile, Norton Baskin, who had married Marjorie Rawlings at the St. Johns County Courthouse (today the Casa Monica hotel) and was still interested in current fiction. Irene Allemano, one of the most elegant, graceful women I have known about whom I've written in this blog, brought her artistry and fascinating family into my life through the Booksmith.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But most of all, it was Diana. She taught, by example, straightforward direction, and intuition, how to hand-sell books, an art you will not find in chain bookstores, but to which you may be treated in the great independents that still exist (Chamblin's Bookmine in Jacksonville, Florida. E Shaver Books in Savannah. Powell's, in Portland, Oregon...you can fill in the blanks for yourself, especially if you live in a college town or a big market like New York). She taught this art so well that people would go into the Booksmith with any one of a million tales of woe like this one: "I was in the middle of it. I can't remember the title. No, can't tell you who wrote it. It was purple. What? Oh, it was about a sort of crazy guy who lived in New Orleans with his mother...", and have in hand before the tale of woe was complete, a copy of John Kennedy O'Toole's <i>A Confederacy of Dunces</i>. Happy customers. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Diana was a designer by nature, I think now, though I didn't see it so clearly back then, and she was a master of a taxonomy that might have started out in her head, but which we all learned. She was the daughter of an architect, and her mother, Hortense (called Hortie by all), whom I knew for a few years before her death, had been her husband's partner in business, in which he designed the houses, and she designed the interiors. You could see this heritage in the store, though. Books were shelved and arranged in what Diana described as a complicated puzzle, each shown to best advantage, each placed in the match-made company of books that belonged together. There were rough "sections" of the store, labeled things like "Travel" and (our favorite) "Self Help". In the latter, you would not find "The 12-Volt Bible" or "Spiritual Midwifery", although the store was never without a copy of either.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">According to Hortie, who told me many tales the veracity of which Diana might have questioned, young American Jewish women of German extraction (and perhaps of a certain class, though I didn't ask) were often sent to Germany in search of suitable husbands. This was true for Hortie, whose father was a doctor in Harlem, which was a relatively rural part of New York at the turn of the 20th century. Hortie was consequently sent to Germany, met and married the father of her two daughters (one of whom would arrive much later), and joined him in his business. He designed many a house, and this is when she began to serve as the interior designer. Their elder daughter Eleanor was born there. Along with this small daughter, the Wormanns departed Germany in 1933, taking with them few belongings and almost no money, before the ports were closed by Hitler so that Jews could no longer leave the country. They settled in New York, and some 20 years after Eleanor's birth, welcomed Diana. Educated in a Steiner school, Diana developed strong artistic sensibilities, including an intriguing handwriting, which would serve the Booksmith well. Following her retirement, she would find additional artistic outlets, but before she retired she and her husband built a beautiful house on the marsh in St. Augustine. These stories, their details and beauties, leave with those to whom they belong for the real telling. There are so many of them. Most of them aren't mine, or aren't wholly mine. </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I share them only to remind you, my dears, of the magic of the Booksmith, though some of you surely know this magic better than I do.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So how did Diana Smith change my life? She either taught wholesale, or strongly underscored, these lessons.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">*Stay married. It takes patience, and love and a willingness to give more than your fair share of 100% some of the time. Sometimes you give 120%, when your partner isn't able to meet you. But more often, you give and take: you give more when you're stronger and flip the equation when your partner does. But don't give up, because it WILL be worth it. As we approach the celebration of 30 years married this year, I will think of Diana more than I can say.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">*Don't peg your children. Don't say, This is the smart one, this one is the artist, this one is the athlete. You can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let them be what they will. And in these past years, Diana's own children have proven this wisdom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">*You have the gift of the Word. While this message would come to me from others (Connie, Katie and perhaps affecting the future most directly, Lauren) Diana was the one who made me believe it. She was the one who removed the doubt in my heart, and helped me embrace this as part of my forward path. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Thank you, my friend, and sister of my heart. The words of the Nunc Dimittis you might laugh at, sensibly secular as you were. I will miss you, however rarely we might have seen each other, for your constancy and unsentimental, always reliable affection, for the rest of my life. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nunc dimittis (from the Latin)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Lord, lettest now thy servant depart in peace according to thy Word,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For mine eyes have seen thy salvation</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Carl Hiaassen and Diana; mid 1980s</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4h17QCL-YLD6OHpVeHU-3QuyR4YoihxGqpykmEpOwgudlb1iLJEv9bpjCIuiRy4oYwRvsNYK4Pkbt-TOHlVaTb6grCgqn84swmVkfd00Ch8MURBMsjayLWYxKf0o8E9HOBabImYuI_V5/s1600/Diana%252BCarlHiaassen1987.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiE4h17QCL-YLD6OHpVeHU-3QuyR4YoihxGqpykmEpOwgudlb1iLJEv9bpjCIuiRy4oYwRvsNYK4Pkbt-TOHlVaTb6grCgqn84swmVkfd00Ch8MURBMsjayLWYxKf0o8E9HOBabImYuI_V5/s320/Diana%252BCarlHiaassen1987.JPG" width="240" /></a> </span>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Angie and Hortie, baby shower, late 1989</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD339luBEUZ2B-xLG_XbzPpnxcZPv_s5pDbtdJSYS7uHJyhPb9vYFtW29vNq0mAqhX9uhIVITKPcqqo_3r6JTdK_wdnl4SmgEnFPI6rcW77ebKUPofar5cGm6JshLNX_L2PsfcViVSnSja/s1600/AngieHortie_1189.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD339luBEUZ2B-xLG_XbzPpnxcZPv_s5pDbtdJSYS7uHJyhPb9vYFtW29vNq0mAqhX9uhIVITKPcqqo_3r6JTdK_wdnl4SmgEnFPI6rcW77ebKUPofar5cGm6JshLNX_L2PsfcViVSnSja/s320/AngieHortie_1189.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Quick glimpse of Diana in the foreground at Mac's baptism. Background left: John Winsor; background right: Fr. Tom Walsh</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfIhZVai-riOAuW2p1ht7EUZc8VDUqnf8PxzT0eEZYjCAA694UAs6s6G8f5lIQIixWTaQmdGBa9nWzSlCkA9q_UnWx9ZJgQsQBnceej1zxuAxhFQEyyylXABemOo2an9iK_TPA6VI6ZOnk/s1600/MacBaptism_Diana_FrTom.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="480" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfIhZVai-riOAuW2p1ht7EUZc8VDUqnf8PxzT0eEZYjCAA694UAs6s6G8f5lIQIixWTaQmdGBa9nWzSlCkA9q_UnWx9ZJgQsQBnceej1zxuAxhFQEyyylXABemOo2an9iK_TPA6VI6ZOnk/s320/MacBaptism_Diana_FrTom.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: start;">(C) Angela Christensen Please note: This edition is is published without benefit of its usual proofreader and editor, Dylan Christensen. All errors, factual and typographical, are my own. Omissions are also my own, mostly in consideration of space. </span></div>
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-12690319855476194492015-08-02T20:46:00.000-04:002015-08-02T20:46:08.560-04:00Starlight, Star Bright 2: another writer's view<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjft4BGZRversoFJJIk9MEe5-sKAFPldyLcYeR-75996wQNgq46v5VfzT7Bok6A4QfEvYveKPlc0wzfXce1KvPOD3Yt-Z2K1X_mA-1Gc_-HCxwP2nC5_DNkWDGTI3O4ZKRo1iei-UV5a_wU/s1600/WaynePowell_July2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjft4BGZRversoFJJIk9MEe5-sKAFPldyLcYeR-75996wQNgq46v5VfzT7Bok6A4QfEvYveKPlc0wzfXce1KvPOD3Yt-Z2K1X_mA-1Gc_-HCxwP2nC5_DNkWDGTI3O4ZKRo1iei-UV5a_wU/s320/WaynePowell_July2015.jpg" width="239" /></span></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's a terrible image, a photo of a the program for his funeral, taken by my plain old iPhone 4. The photo quality doesn't matter. The simple honest face, the smile of a person almost incapable of assuming anything other than positive intent: this is what I wanted to share with you. This is the face of kindness, the face of guilelessness, the face of someone who almost certainly saw you in your best light, all the time, even when you didn't, or couldn't. Perhaps he wasn't able to see himself the way he saw the rest of us. Perhaps we did not try quite hard enough to reflect him while he was with us. Perhaps it would have made no difference in the end. But certainly there is a lesson, in the words of its author, "a lesson/about how we spend our time". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The name at the top, poorly captured, is "Phillip Wayne Powell". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Grateful thanks to Amakeda Ponds for permission to reprint.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A friend told me,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">yup, heard the news today.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If only I could take it back,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here's what I'd say,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">never sweat the small stuff,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">it's all small stuff anyway.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Just one longer conversation,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">just a bit more than, "hey",</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">just a few comforting words</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">may have changed your fate. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We may never know the reason</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or understand why,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">but know this is a lesson</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">about how we spend our time. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Someone once told me,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">be mindful how you deal with others </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">you never know what they are going through.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So fitting now</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">when thinking of you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hope this is a lesson</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to everyone you knew</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The thought that just a few more comforting words could've saved you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a lesson in your struggle,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">though some will never learn,</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">there's power</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">in the spoken word.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May you rest in peace.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">--Amakeda Ponds, (c)2015</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">from an original Facebook post by the same author</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All Rights Reserved</span>Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-68619147020992909372015-07-08T17:09:00.000-04:002015-07-08T17:09:31.543-04:00Starlight, star bright<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Citi where I work lost a star yesterday. A quiet, steady, constant star by which we steered; a star without whose presence we are quite lost.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wayne Powell was far more than met the eye. To the eye, in fact, he looked like just any average guy. The statistics, on the face of it, would have born that out. He was 47, married, with four kids, a hard worker, kinda paunchy and slightly balding. He went to church. He loved to fish and hunt and go to his kids' soccer games. But look at him more closely, my heroes. Look more closely with me.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wayne and I and many of our colleagues attended a regular meeting at which we discussed our work and because we work for a big company these meetings would often feature arcane acronyms, often so arcane that people had an idea what they meant, but no clear recollection of what they actually stood for. One of these was ORC. Every time it came up in a meeting, I made one of several silly jokes taken from Peter Jackson's movie version of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and every time I made one, Wayne and I would laugh. Somehow or another, I began to tease him about actually being an orc, and because he was incredibly good-natured and humble, he would laugh with me. One day I got an email from Wayne which contained a typo, a missing word that changed the meaning of the email, and his intention. There were a million people on it, so I emailed just Wayne and said something like, Hey, you might want to correct that...I know it's just a typo but it might cause confusion. He responded with an email that said, more or less, "Typing is difficult when you have the short, chubby fingers of an orc. If I had the long, slender fingers of an Elf, I would make less typos..." and thanked me for calling out the mistake.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But it was such a fortuitous mistake. It gave rise to an ongoing, conversational joke that leavened many of our days at the office. Our Resident Expert on All Things Elvish and the rest of the gang conspired to give him a hobbit name, and an Elvish name, and finally we gave him his own, Powgolas. Various parts of the real estate around us will always carry a hint of the Shire, and his own desk will always be right in the middle of Rivendell for me, despite the email joke created by our Resident Expert, below. Laughter was one of the things Powgolas made </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">very easy for us all, as diverse and different as we are.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><img class="CToWUd" height="275" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=d888680739&view=fimg&th=14e6f3bbb5f69e67&attid=0.1&disp=emb&attbid=ANGjdJ-G2xKGdoleut9ypNsKzYvFesx4HAadsluRxLNpX2YTYHyClsnZRy0NrlQdtcQmgfqWPNAdvNdpTvxg9xSs-CSxdkHknE5gJhsjhbP3t6jN_qW9h-zFJR3egr4&sz=w400-h550&ats=1436385330238&rm=14e6f3bbb5f69e67&zw&atsh=1" style="color: #1f497d; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;" width="200" /><br />
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<span lang="EN" style="font-family: 'Tekton Pro'; font-size: 16pt;">“The Age of Men is over. The Time of the Orc has come.” -Gothmog</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But we knew he was no orc. He sent me a note once after we'd "promoted" him to Elf-hood. It said, "You are an Elf, too. But almost, a Wizard." He thought I was more than I am. He made me better than I was.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">More than kindness, there was a deep abiding loyalty and truest love in him. His wife, rather famously, is a wonderful baker, so admired for her cakes that they sell at fundraising events for astonishing sums. Birthdays at the office are most commonly celebrated with grocery store bakery cakes. These could not, out of loyalty to his beloved wife, be eaten by Wayne, though his figure (like my own) betrayed how much he loved cake. She was the light of his life, and I know this as well as any of my colleagues, though I never met her. He didn't say much about her at the office, but he had only to mention her name and you knew that she was his completion, in a more profound sense than the trite "my other half" sometimes used to try and capture that feeling. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">His children lit him from inside just as much as that beloved wife, and much of what he did was centered on them. We knew their names, how things were going in school, who was having surgery, who had a tournament on the weekend. He wasn't a guy who bragged about his kids. He lived and breathed and shared about them because they were his life and breath. You only had to stop by his desk and see the range of pictures to know the source of that inner light. We saw those faces every day, through his affectionate eyes. </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And we knew Wayne to be the truest of friends, the guy who really cared whether his absence might make more work for you, who genuinely sought opinions and expertise of others, who found the gentlest ways of broaching difficult or uncomfortable conversations. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Wayne and I shared a love of the outdoors. He loved to hunt and fish. Some of his fish stories established laughter that went on for weeks, as in the time he entered a charity fishing tournament, caught a big black drum that he thought would win the tournament, and then DID win the tournament...because there were no other entrants. Some guys would have been annoyed or been ruffled around about the ego. Not Wayne. He laughed and laughed, mostly because he'd almost - but not quite - taken himself too seriously. He loved to hunt in a Wildlife Management Area which is under the care of the Research Reserve at which I'm an active volunteer. At first he was, I think, careful about letting me know he was a hunter, perhaps uncertain whether I would understand or even be offended. Once he knew I'd grown up with the traditions of hundreds of years of local northeast Florida families, where venison is welcome at the table, he would tell me hunting stories. Most these were typically self-effacing and involved him standing in muddy semi-darkness, being attacked by mosquitos. But there was always a laugh and sometimes a wonder: something spotted in the wild, a moment of perfect stillness, some treasure or other that not everyone might understand. Here again, he might have talked of religion, but he never did. He just modeled it with kindness in every single exchange. One of my dear colleagues said to me recently, "I actually sometimes think to myself, before I say something possibly ill-advised, WWWPD?" And he meant no disrespect to people for whom the basis of that phrase means something different. He meant that you could always use Wayne as a yardstick - a guy who seemed so average - you could use him as a yardstick to figure out what was the balanced thing, what was the ethical thing, what was the RIGHT thing to do. I knew just what he meant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On Monday, I was cleaning out some papers in the office. I found a nomination that had been written for Wayne and had come across my desk before I knew him but when I was serving as a champion on our team for Recognition. The nomination was two pages long, an accounting of what made Wayne so special to his team, why he was so valued. At the time, I'd had about 30 such nominations to read and rank, and I had put his nomination at the top of the list, because it made such an impression on me. It had been written in 2008. I took it over to his desk. He happened to be working from home, so I left it there for him to find. He will not find it now.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But he can see it, from his dwelling in the great wondrous universe. He made us better than we were without him. He will continue to make us better, because we are not the same as we were before he touched our lives. We will continue to be better than we were, in his memory: so say we all. You have, perhaps, your own Wayne Powells; indeed, I hope and pray that you do. These gentle marvels who light our way in dark places without our even knowing it, these guides we do not miss until they go ahead of us; I hope you have been blessed with someone like Wayne.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Look up at the sky tonight, my heroes, and think of this great-hearted, humble man, who made people different and BETTER through his simple and genuine presence in their lives. Know that this was a man who did not need to be told or taught to assume the most positive intent from everyone he met, for he was molded in that fashion. Perhaps the Citi where I work lost a star yesterday. But last night, the wondrous universe welcomed that star to the Heavens, there to shimmer down on us, his inner beauty wholly and finally visible. Look up at the sky. There is our star.</span><br />
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<br />Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-65779841276565281362015-03-19T21:16:00.001-04:002015-03-19T21:19:21.595-04:00World without end. Amen. Amen.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLaz_9VIWHxjOMZGY2PCexqB5PWIhPFa-YyOh5zX1E6dxPXS1MG1VkilrRp3G0DSHRaIZj_ZYhq3aZdUGTP_l2DilfsJNSL1_mx9xvRfps5d72SiRTXFKHvmXdw6kUiQOpSMMwvuyx5j1-/s1600/violets_2015.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLaz_9VIWHxjOMZGY2PCexqB5PWIhPFa-YyOh5zX1E6dxPXS1MG1VkilrRp3G0DSHRaIZj_ZYhq3aZdUGTP_l2DilfsJNSL1_mx9xvRfps5d72SiRTXFKHvmXdw6kUiQOpSMMwvuyx5j1-/s320/violets_2015.JPG" /></a> A consecrated priest cannot be unmade. This is my profoundly untutored understanding of Roman Catholic canon law. It may be wrong. But when I was a cantor at the Cathedral of St. Augustine, I would sometimes lead congregations in song in this response: "You are a priest forever/In the line of Melchizedech". There are so many objections one can make: How can this be, given revelations of abuse and horror these past few years? How can this be, given women are excluded? How can this be, how can this be? But as spring rises amongst us with tender fig leaves and wild violets blooming and the Lenten season provides time for reflection and contemplation, it is resonant with me. And it has nothing to do with priests. It has everything to do with consecration. <br> <br>
My Dear Old Person and I were talking about our treasured beach walks not long ago. He said something along the lines of, I need to start to focus on photography on the beach; I won't always be able to swing a metal detector. And it's true. As much as he loves looking for lost or forgotten treasures he knows he'll have to use a different toolkit in the next few years. He is not the invincible man I married so long ago. We often talk about how things have changed in the course of his chronic illness, how frustrating it is for him to be unable to do things he took for granted just a few years ago. <br> <br>
Did you know him then? Do you remember when there was nothing he could not fix? Whether it was a motor vehicle of any kind or a light fixture or an irrigation system or a computer, he could fix it. Friends used to joke-but-not-joke that he could lay hands on anything mechanical and from its state of refusal or injury or wounded-ness he could call it back amongst the living. Did you know him then? Because it was true. It wasn't smoke and mirrors. At his core was a diagnostic ability sometimes found and revered in medicine, an almost mystical ability to dial in on underlying causes and invisible connections between systems that cause stutters or even abject failure. His mind made synaptic leaps and so-true connections that other minds - really smart ones - weren't able to make. Even for a mechanical and mathematical underachiever like me it was easy to see. And it's still there, of course. It's hidden behind some medical and chemical dysfunction which are normal parts of his prognosis. It's just harder to see, harder to trust. Unless maybe...did you know him then? He was the one who, back in the mid-90s, thought it would be a good idea to spend nearly $2500 on a PC with a hard drive barely sufficient to host today's operating systems. He was the one who took it apart. He added hard drive space, added RAM, added video cards...belief in the future that ultimately positioned me for a career of surprise and delight. Did you know him then? If not you might have to stretch to see all that today. And sometimes he will say, This isn't fair to you. You should find a person who...But I can still see him. I knew him them. I know him now. And he is consecrated to me, as I am to him. <br> <br>
Consecration cannot be unmade. The promise cannot be unmade. In some cases the consecration cannot be made "officially" - I think about gay friends who are not free to consecrate their commitments publicly. Still, people bravely make these promises and they are as sacred as any promise consecrated in any church or mosque or synagogue. Consecration, by my definition, doesn't mean some specific imprimatur of this or that religion. It is a sacrament, which we must each define by our own lights. <br> <br>
I'm not suggesting that there aren't very good reasons for humans to end relationships, to move forward as is right for each of us. I do not presume to judge what's right for anyone, for we must all make our own lives and our own joy. We must all make things right for ourselves, our hearts, our beloved ones - none can judge. But consecration is for always. You can pull up the plants but you cannot unplant the seeds. They will give rise to plants you may or may not choose to harvest and this is as it should be for each of us. For me and my Dear Old Person, I am thankful to the notion of consecration: as constant as a garden. It turns with the rhythm of the planets, and brings forth its own rewards. <br> <br>
May the blessings of wisdom, kindness, forgiveness and love be upon us all.
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-6469668224143603582014-05-19T19:34:00.000-04:002014-05-19T19:34:57.148-04:00Go in PeaceWhen they are grown, when all those moments you meant to remember and cherish for all time are in the past and their edges are softening, you and I can see our children: enormous and tiny. They are at once too big and too small, as though we've turned the telescope of time backward. And sometimes they are perfectly captured, frozen snapshots of memories, as lustrous and perfect as the tiniest insects preserved in amber. We see them sleeping in bed alongside us, in their white cribs, in those superhero toddler beds we put together when the crib was outgrown. We walk with them, carrying them like precious gems, balancing them on jutted-out hips, small fingers caught in our own, arms draped around their narrow shoulders, and when they tower over us, with our arms snaked around their waists. We see an endless series of discrete moments in like progressions marking the unique growth and shaping of each child, unique and unrepeatable. A shadow of grief may touch us when we put to bed in the evening one small, busy person only to be greeted in the morning by a wholly new small person, subtly but surely changed; such is the nature of growth. Such is the lot of parents, whose universal reality is that we must always, always let go. When they sleep in their own beds, we let them go. When they stop nursing in favor of food, we let them go. When we drop our fingers to rejoice in their first tottery steps, we let them go. When we take them to the door of their first school and watch them go inside, we let them go. In a million ways and with an equally endless combination of emotions, we let them go.<br><br>
This weekend was one of particularly stunning spring weather in northeastern Florida, those last few days of mid-70s temps with warm Atlantic water, streaks of high bright clouds and almost no humidity; the days we welcome with open windows and billowing curtains. We walked a long way on a falling-tide beach, kept company by more people than usual for the time of year, likely sharing a recovery from the lingering winter, their faces upturned like sunflowers. Kids slid along the surf on skim boards and rolled in on boogie boards. I could see porpoises beyond the sandbar, and I thought of whales moving through the warm water to cooler environs and sea turtles, readying themselves to follow their inborn compasses to lay eggs on these beaches.<br><br>
One of my sons sent a message. Had I heard about the tragic death of one of the kids he'd spent years with in Little League? I had not. Memories. Snapshots. The face of this kid - and the face of his dad, who coached and umpired - called those captured moments to mind. All the years our boys played baseball, before they went off to high school and all its attractions and distractions, we spent countless hours with other families with whom we had varying degrees of connection. There were hours of practices, games, tournaments, scorekeeping...no matter how poetic or prosaic it might have been, no matter how personally connected we felt or didn't feel, we spent a LOT of time together. And now this athletic, smart-alecky, funny, competitive, challenging and interesting kid was gone, the victim of a tragic accident. <br><br>
As I walked, I heard a kid shout behind me, "Dad! Hey! Dad! Can you help with this?" Behind me were two kids, presumably brother and sister, working on some kind of sand sculpture or game. The parents were comfortably perched in chairs under an expansive umbrella. They glanced at each other, smiling, and waved the kids off: You're fine; go ahead; we're comfortable. I very nearly turned back to look at the dad, to say, Go. Go and go and go every time one of them calls for you. You will never know - none of us will ever know - what time is allotted to us, to them, to this existence on this Earth, in this life. Go! Their childhood may be all you're thinking of, but the letting go may be SO MUCH more permanent than you expect...Go! <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4UQf1OVsr1Ta_FgmdzpfjeT9hBi4ZwG0N811rLxltVL0w4XAIUTQRd7uancSCXxg3Og3hQywPaqkBuJBZ1Pr-ao3r4LmP4rc0DAm-yA0jZ5_FW9R2NdrOLWwrxj5uiN9PsHDqGaWDoHLZ/s1600/FourBoys_final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4UQf1OVsr1Ta_FgmdzpfjeT9hBi4ZwG0N811rLxltVL0w4XAIUTQRd7uancSCXxg3Og3hQywPaqkBuJBZ1Pr-ao3r4LmP4rc0DAm-yA0jZ5_FW9R2NdrOLWwrxj5uiN9PsHDqGaWDoHLZ/s320/FourBoys_final.jpg" /></a> These are not the same boys, but they are the faces of children who remind me that there is no time but now. We see them backward; we imagine them forward. But there is no real time but now.<br><br>
I did not turn back. I walked forward, thinking about Brandon Young Bush, thinking about how he touched my life. Thinking about how his dad touched my life, thinking how they both challenged me to be better, stronger and maybe even a little smarter. Thinking: All we do is let them go. Thinking, Go in peace, Brandon Young Bush. Go in peace, and may peace find and comfort the hearts of those who loved you so much that you will be with them always. Shifting, ephemeral, timeless as the ocean; present and yet gone, for they have Let You Go, sorely though it has broken their hearts. So go in peace, young friend, to love and serve the Lord as an angel in the firmament of the Heavens.<br><br>
Brandon Young Bush<br><br>
1990-2014<br><br>
Requiescat in pace <br><br>
Note: This post is written without the editorial skills of Dylan Christensen; any and all errors are my own.
Photo credit (c)Rodney Christensen
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-85459489732164975262014-03-30T21:13:00.000-04:002014-03-30T21:13:01.061-04:00The people we know, the people we don't know, and how we cross that divide today<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgEOFGLHIDyM8QRMbYgOcGibu_BXSw7v7cApYSweiLGpEN_Mo24qSxh5GBpqieVQu85SxPtrDONA-alqfs1jcI6hB4zzVZJGObMJgi9eBrR5K3Rdeuq0HfJGxb8LBM1iZSPuRMI0Yslz_m/s1600/FigLeaves_March2014.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgEOFGLHIDyM8QRMbYgOcGibu_BXSw7v7cApYSweiLGpEN_Mo24qSxh5GBpqieVQu85SxPtrDONA-alqfs1jcI6hB4zzVZJGObMJgi9eBrR5K3Rdeuq0HfJGxb8LBM1iZSPuRMI0Yslz_m/s320/FigLeaves_March2014.JPG" /></a></div> Today someone asked me, "So do you think you'll post to your blog again?" in the nicest possible way, and I thought about how not writing it kills some teensy part of me, and how writing it takes time and care and the willingness to look at a screen for more hours than I do on a regular work day, and here I am. Having weighed those two considerations against one another, factored in another Rather Important Something I wanted to do today, I find I have Done Math. And as frightening as that news is to serious mathematicians everywhere, the resulting equation has led me to this result. I am writing a post this evening. It's also only fair to mention, for a couple of reasons, that I'm reading P. G. Wodehouse. Reasons: he's funny in all the best ways; he reflects all the ways in which it has been possible to cross the social divide expressed in my title, and - most importantly - he was so good at his business that no one ever minded if he told the same story more than once.<br><br>
The long-form blog you're now enjoying was abandoned by me a couple of years ago, in favor of one or two of its snappier cousins of the micro-blog form, including the ubiquitous Facebook, the more elusive but fascinating Instagram and the lurid, not-for-the-fainthearted Twitter. There's more reliance on images to convey ideas and less room for blather. Twitter being the Land of the Free Celebrity and the Home of the Brave Troll and Heckler, Instagram offered a certain promise. Not so much of your mother's high school NHS pals; not so many inappropriately public celebrity battles between family members. I liked Instagram. There was a developing community of common interests, some banding of citizen photographers with similar subject matter, and some figuring out of how to make, or more often, supplement, a living by leveraging those micro-connections. Doubtless there are trolls, but it's been quiet on that front for me so far. I connected with people who liked books, with people who took gorgeous shots of their gardens, or their backdrops while on their morning runs in Sydney or on the Isle of Man, or of moths or old houses. I found people who were Boxer fosters. I was found by people who live near an altogether different Ponte Vedra than the one in northern Florida. There are old friends, and local folks I've never met but with whom I share an acquaintance or two. There are people whose interests skim close to my own, and include the preservation of a nearly-lost Florida. Which is where it got interesting today.<br><br>
On a yearlong challenge to visit all the state parks in Florida and having driven from Tampa (roughly) through the terrifying roadways of Orlando, http://thatfloridalifepress.blogspot.com/ stood atop the northernmost beach access walkover at the GTM Research Reserve with my dear old person and me this afternoon. They had thoughtful questions. They took notes. They cared about things like North Atlantic right whales and sea turtle nesting and kayaking and water levels and salinity. They had quite a lovely dog, who is not a Boxer, but is a rescue with a great deal of dignity, and a new appreciation for stairs. They plan to spend another day or so, exploring the #gtmreserve and visiting some of the state parks in northeastern Florida. Just yesterday we thought they were People We Didn't Know. Today, they're People We Know, and people we want to know even better. And just as I was thanking my lucky micro-blogging stars for the connection, I happened to read the blog roll of @ThatFloridaLifePress. It features @BlessOurHearts. I can only hope that my taletelling is sufficient unto the day, and that my generous readers, like those of the sainted P.G. Wodehouse, will hardly mind at all the telling of the same fine story, many times more than once.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBv1cRgJOksP-v3QUAanIAL35so3Fdw24DEdgInmg-EQ-vk4EGaL2N9eajYq8nLMBqi_lIugEJWBmPa5d0ivMH7FWUuG9NYuh1Kf2LqlC1By8EvWv1509vYO01Rxcir_s5ewumdkaxECBw/s1600/GTMReserve_NWalkover032014.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBv1cRgJOksP-v3QUAanIAL35so3Fdw24DEdgInmg-EQ-vk4EGaL2N9eajYq8nLMBqi_lIugEJWBmPa5d0ivMH7FWUuG9NYuh1Kf2LqlC1By8EvWv1509vYO01Rxcir_s5ewumdkaxECBw/s320/GTMReserve_NWalkover032014.JPG" /></a></div><br><br>
Note: This post appears without the editorial oversight of Dylan Christensen, whose presence is sorely missed by this blog.
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-48717010129278222502013-07-05T21:08:00.000-04:002013-07-06T18:29:48.074-04:00The stuff we're born with, and (maybe) the stuff we're notLately I've been thinking about What We Come With: What qualities, what personality traits, are pre-loaded for us before we're aware? Before we're born? Before, even, the joining of our parents' genetic codes begin to describe us? What defines me as a lodestone for some people? What makes other people into celestial bodies around which I am compelled to orbit? Fair warning: it's a very me-me-me blog post; this is your chance to get out quickly.<br><br>
People are coming and going so quickly in my own life right now. My father, from whom I've been quietly distant for long years, is facing the very serious illness of his wife. My Dear Old Person just suffered the loss of a nephew who, through an odd happenstance of timing, was more a brother than a dweller in the next generation. Other losses have already been touched upon in this forum. My mother's sister, whose kindness to me was profound, died just months ago; again, because of gentle estrangement, I didn't know about it. And some amazing re-connections have offered themselves to me in recent months, wrapped in grief and happy memory in almost equal measure, as though there were some great balancing scale by which the taking and the giving were measured.br><br>
Thoughts of my father are stepping stones to memories of my mother. Those overlaid recollections take me to music, straight as angels. My mother had known my father for some time before she married him, apparently on the rebound from a teenage romance. If she fell in love with him, according to her sister, it was during the singing of music in the church choir; it was in the blending of her unaffected alto with his sweet light baritone. It may not have been romantic love that saw them married, the sister of my mother said to me. It might have been the romance of music, the power of blended voices, that connected them and brief time, produced me. If I did not know the power of the romance of music as well as I do, I might not believe it. But I do. I do, because I can't remember a time at which I couldn't hear harmony in my head. I don't remember not knowing how to hear a third or a fourth above or below a melody line, though I had no words for any of those things. Since before I can remember, I've sung in configurations of voices in which I was always an alto. Was I born, thanks to my mother's warm alto or my father's sweet baritone, to have this voice? Was I born to wrap a melody in harmonies in my heart, whether or not anyone else could hear it? Did it come from them? Did it come from some ancestral power or benediction? It seems a silly cliche to ask whether the power of music might have some from my Scotch-Irish ancestors. And yet...consider my cousin Susan, whose mother is my father's sister. Susan is a Dade on her mother's side of the family, as I am on my father's side. And as I am an Irish McCaffrey on my mother' side, so is Susan an Irish McConnell. I was eleven years old when my mother died. Before then, my mother exposed me to classical music, to bluegrass, to country, but most of all, to the American folk music of her time, with its blood relationship to the broadside ballads of England and Ireland laid bare. I took in the interpretations of Joan Baez before I could read. What did Susan hear? And what does it mean?<br><br>
I asked my older son whether he could recall a time when, as a child, he could not hear harmony in his head.He said, more or less, "It's funny you ask that. Someone asked me about it recently, and I was surprised to realize that it's not possible for everyone else to filter out other parts. I can hear the melody, or the melody and one part, or all the parts...I can filter them out as I want. And I'd never realized that not everyone can do that."<br><br>
Yeah, me neither.<br><br>
But as our venerated teacher of music and musical director used to tell all of us who came through her choir always reminded us, there was learning, too. There was practice. There was the plain fact that when we were paid to spend an hour or so singing at a wedding or a funeral, we weren't being paid for that hour. We were paid for every practice, every lesson, every rehearsal, every moment spent singing the difficult sections in our heads; in fact, we were paid for every time we dreamt about the intricacies of a triplet or the defiant near-impossibilty of the 16-notes so beloved of Handel. So what did we bring to her, as students? And what did we take away from her? It's a tiny example, I know, but what do we bring into this world that is wholly our own, undiluted or enhanced by experience?<br><br>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMUPKzEM62kErPK6-RIGcDK3UmpIWBAtX55dKwoYb33FS9gl8YSsAdrfDiyloGnaTHNrp1BJb4Ix4_-wZ69GiuPkVZYQJafLP7d20SDA5vKGBFDl3i0xUdwnXJU0S5cx3um76QxHlblnwA/s1600/July2013_redwhiteblue_dessert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMUPKzEM62kErPK6-RIGcDK3UmpIWBAtX55dKwoYb33FS9gl8YSsAdrfDiyloGnaTHNrp1BJb4Ix4_-wZ69GiuPkVZYQJafLP7d20SDA5vKGBFDl3i0xUdwnXJU0S5cx3um76QxHlblnwA/s400/July2013_redwhiteblue_dessert.jpg" /></a></div>Since I like to share some food before sleeping I'll leave you with a reference to the image I posted last night to Istagram and Facebook, unless you can see this one. As a July Fourth finish, I made the James Beard cream biscuits of which we've often spoken here, recounted affectionately in the Fannie Farmer Cookbook by Marion Cunningham. This time they had fresh blueberries tucked inside. These were topped with a mixture of mashed sweetened strawberries and plain strawberries and blueberries, finished with gently sweetened fresh whipped cream. The cream biscuit recipe is simple and beautiful, and nothing's better in all the summer than fresh berries. So. If you need to know how to make the biscuits let me know. Or just ease back into your chair, think interesting thoughts, read something wonderful and bask in the opportunity summer offers us all to macerate our ideas together before we dream about the stuff we might be born with, once and always our own, and the stuff we might re-imagine, making richer with experience: the stuff that must inevitably define us?
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-31027120137669144342013-05-26T17:41:00.001-04:002013-05-26T17:54:40.772-04:00Rescued, in ladybug milesIf your heart is in a garden - any garden, anywhere, including that one in your imagination that you're going to create one of these days - you almost certainly welcome the sight of a ladybug. Unless you're an aphid. If you're an aphid, you may be less likely to feel that same lift of the heart. If you're anyone else, though, you look closely at those tiny black spots on their field of bright orange-red and marvel at how different they always seem to be. You put your finger in the path of the ladybug, and are delighted when the ladybug treats it like a stalk of grass and marches aboard. And if you're walking on the beach and see a ladybug clinging to a piece of debris, you may be inclined to rescue: would not a ladybug stand more chance of finding food and shelter within the waving dune grasses and wildflowers and prickly pear than down by the breaing surf? Inspired by this little hero of all gardens, and by a tale of rescue recently heard I scooped ladybug, sand and all, and walked westward from the breaking surf to the dune line, placing it carefully within reach of waving sawgrass and sea oats. I crossed the distance in perhaps 25 or 30 steps. To what do those amount, I wondered, in ladybug miles? Had I saved the ladybug an exhausting trek across vast terrain? Would her wings have let her cross the distance easily, even in a strong eastern wind? Was it a momentary and certainly transigent rescue? It was no more than the projection of my own thoughts about rescue, a theme peculiarly resonant in my own life just now, illustrated simply in an exchange of stories in a parking lot not an hour earlier. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg6rUOF4B0vhO2L1CPuLOR3pzsPcb3ajsOMmclA5lw6jLQ0DTKFB9bzhVo-sKZj_zrxF3t3wgqseo0t28lTTazcoronuTblJvopaZ5p0jeQVvyIeT-yDxY3-eGP5QEb2V5qlZ8WKHKsbt8/s1600/May2013_BeachLadybug.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg6rUOF4B0vhO2L1CPuLOR3pzsPcb3ajsOMmclA5lw6jLQ0DTKFB9bzhVo-sKZj_zrxF3t3wgqseo0t28lTTazcoronuTblJvopaZ5p0jeQVvyIeT-yDxY3-eGP5QEb2V5qlZ8WKHKsbt8/s1600/May2013_BeachLadybug.jpg" ya="true" /></a><br><br>
The tale of rescue, shared by a couple of perfect - and perfectly delightful - strangers just before our walk, ran along these lines, more or less. Two dogs were surrendered to the shelter together, their owners given a painful choice by their landlord to get rid of them or move out. After they took the dogs to the local shelter, they continued to visit. The older dog was a tranquil, sweet-natured red pit bull, bearing no small resemblance to Cesar Millan's avuncular canine assistant, Daddy. The younger was a small dog, a mix of excitable breeds: part Jack Russell, perhaps, maybe some Pomeranian? The pit bull's calm demeanor acted as tonic on his more excitable sidekick so the staff boarded the two together and nicknamed them Rocky and Bullwinkle. When the prospective adopters arrived to take the pair to their new home, they found the surrendering family had come for a visit. They spent a few awkward moments in conversation - here they were, after all, to take away the obviously well-loved dogs, and here were people who clearly didn't want to say good-bye forever. Everyone did their best. Rocky, the original dog-mom said, was a great dog. What about Bullwinkle?, the new dog-parents wanted to know; what could they learn about him that would help? "Bullwinkle?" First Mom asked, eyebrows raised. "This dog's name is NOT Bullwinkle," she said emphatically. "This dog is named Kevin." She eyed New Mom thoughtfully. "Or Devil Dog. But mostly Kevin."<br><br>
Rescued: one Zen-like red pit bull, with a white mark above his shoulders that looks just like the Loch Ness monster, rising from cold Caledonian waters. Name? Loch.<br><br>
Rescued: one slightly hyperactive terrier mix, with a plume of a tail and a quick bark. Name? Kevin. Or Devil Dog. But mostly Kevin.<br><br>
Rescued: three ladybugs, carried from surf to vegetation.<br><br>
Equivalent in ladybug miles: unknown but worthy of consideration. Do we ever know the truth of our rescues?
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Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-13950876291556750392013-04-20T20:30:00.000-04:002013-04-20T22:20:07.206-04:00Irene Alice Prentice Allemano: Good-bye, and Hello<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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Mrs. Allemano died, and was bid farewell by friends and family this week in a memorial service. She touched the lives of each of The MadriGals over the course of several decades of her extraordinary life, and I find I cannot put this week away without catching some few of the bits of magic here, for remembrance.<br />
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Death separates us in the most profound and absolute way. The person who has died may be continuing life of another kind, in another plane, may be experiencing an existence so unlike what we know as to defy description. Indeed, many of us are so confident in an afterlife of some kind that it is an article of faith, holy to us and unquestionable. And yet, truly, the person whose death we are mourning is gone from us in this life, not to return. What we truly mourn is cloth woven of many threads, but some of those are undeniably selfish, because we dread the lack of the presence of the person who has died. Certainly Irene believed in continued existence, a belief Reverend Elizabeth Clare likened to the caterpillar whose cocoon or chrysalis seems to be the end, and whose continued existence we celebrate as the birth of a butterfly. This was a particularly apt illustration, as Irene was graceful, elegant, and stunningly beautiful, and seemed to move from flower to fascinating flower, somehow making each one seem more beautiful by her very presence, throughout the course of her life. Still, we are separated forever, and this grieves us sorely.<br />
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But when we choose to join each other in celebration of a life, two things happen that seem positively magical when viewed in hindsight: our picture of the person who has died becomes more textured, more whole, in our minds; and we are brought, across miles and years and the strongest of feelings, together.<br />
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Diverse images of the person, each seen from one individual perspective, begin to overlay one another. As Irene's son Eric spoke of his parents, a picture of their marriage emerged. He and his brothers, he said, never heard a cross word pass between their parents, both of them only children accustomed to quiet and perhaps unprepared for the chaos that usually attends the growing of siblings. One evening, he recalled, he and his brother Ralph heard, alarmed, their parents shouting at one another. Alarmed, the boys ran into their parents' room, crying, "Stop it! Stop yelling at each other!" Their parents, their mission accomplished, replied, "See? This is what it's like for us when the two of you shout," and the lesson was learned. Eric shared much more about his mother, talking of her exploration of the spiritual, her resumption of the pursuit of art after her children were nearly grown, of her life traveling with his father, living in many Latin American countries, absorbing and reflecting back the cultures of each. He mentioned her volunteer work, including time spent in maternity wards helping deliver babies, welcoming each to this new world. Another piece fell into place for me, another friendship illuminated. When Irene's contributions to the cultural life of St. Augustine (she was a founder, with Frieda Bringmann and others, of E.M.M.A, a group responsible for bringing classical and other performers to our small city and enriching us enormously), I saw her as the practical philanthropist she was: donations Irene made weren't just monetary. They were made precious by her own investment of time and talent, and lasting by her determination and commitment. When her granddaughters spoke, I saw the bright shimmer of Irene all around them. Quite strongly individual, they are nearly identical in their intelligence, their abilit to articulate, their powerful presence and self-awareness and the promise of their future. When their own mother spoke, I could see Irene as a mother and mother-in-law, making welcome to her family this lovely Englishwoman his son had married. In the early days, she said, her mother-in-law had three signatures to each note or letter: one for Ralph and one for the children, and finally, for her, "Irene". Over time, the signature become one for the whole family, "Mama" as it is pronounced in Spanish-speaking families, with the accent on the second syllable. There was Irene to life, making a beautiful whole of precious but separate parts. Some things were not told aloud; had we all told our stories we'd have stayed the night and into the day. Later, Judy emailed me that she had known Irene in the mid-70s, when Irene's husband and Mrs. Bringmann's were both patients of the doctor for whom Judy worked. They were both kind and generous enough to a young nurse that she recalled them both clearly and with fondness. The beloved Booksmiths, Bob and Diana, sat just in front of us, and their stories didn't have to be told to me, for I knew some of them myself: Irene was an eclectic and inveterate reader and lover of literature. Her son Ralph's family came to St. Augustine every summer, and the Booksmith may have been a highlight for them, but it was no less a bright spot for us as she gracefully ushered the British branch of her family among us and we were charmed by the delightful little girls who have clearly grown into women their grandmother helped shape into spirits of intelligence and grace. <br />
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And there were so many other voices, quiet in that room, but audible in my ears. Friends present, and friends not able to join us: you can see some of them in this picture, but there are so many, each with a story of Irene or a hundred stories of her. Her son Ralph gave us a memorable glimpse of her impish humor, so vividly present in him, even to the creases of laughter around his eyes. And so, in a brief hour or so, Irene emerged, far more detailed and finely drawn than I've told in these few words for I have left out much. But she was so visible, so, as Reverend Elizabeth said, so positively present with us in that room. And she had brought us all together. The MadriGals sang Simple Gifts, a Shaker hymn dear to me for the memory of JoAnn Kirby Nance giving it beautiful voice at my own wedding. We sang, "...if love is lord of Heaven and Earth, how can I keep from singing?", a hymn beloved of Judy and me, and a true expression of the occasion. As Irene was a devoted and loving gardener, we sang "For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies..." And less to honor Irene than to give voice to those she loved, we finished with Amazing Grace. Lis played guitar until we came round to finish, repeating the familiar first verse sotto voce, when she stopped playing and we finihsed a capella. The voices of Irene's family and friends called back to me, so that tears came into my eyes and voice. It was simply beautiful, like Irene herself. Good-bye, dear Mrs. Allemano, and hello, dear Irene. You will be with us always. Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-54793031079417816462013-04-14T22:10:00.003-04:002013-04-14T22:10:45.933-04:00Peace Be upon You, Irene AllemanoThis is likely to be repetitive, even dull, for those of you who stop by here for a read now and then, so I apologize in advance. Some things, especially when they rest upon the floor joists of our lives, are worth saying over and over again. With a bit of writers' luck, the less dull ones will make their way here.<br />
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Often and often - and indeed, quite recently - have I written of the power and grace of girls and women in my life. It is no surprise, as Miss Katie says. The need was in me, a deep chasm opened by my mother's death when I was eleven. The need was common, of course; many of us search for guidance, insight, approval, affirmation. Some of us find these at the hands and hearts of women we love. I might be no different than anyone else. Or I might been brushed by some psychic magnet, the echo of which continues to draw me into the orbit of astonishing women and girls who gift me with glimpses of their unique magic and then go or stay. Who knows the right of it?<br />
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No matter what, The Booksmith was surely a vector: a point of intersection science cannot explain, where the power of women to change our little lives and our tiny world was visible and undeniable. Through this brass-clad door came Mrs. Detmold, whose ordering of the Oxford English Dictionary, Unabridged, surely changed St. Augustine and left no Booksmith denizen unmoved. Here, too, dwelt Diana (ah! what I owe to Diana for my present self!) and Su, Maggie and Katie: diverse readers untethered by syllabi, whose minds left no word, no phrase, unturned or unconsidered. Here was Eileen Ronan, whose gift and dedication of Southern Sideboards changed my cooking - and writing - life permanently. Here: Marilyn Bailey. Books and reading bled over into personal lives, which you can't have missed if you've looked at a single dish photographed for this blog on a Desert Rose Franciscanware plate. Writers crossed into this dimension: those who were gone, like Zora Neale Hurston, those whose contemporary connections kept them alive and present to us, like Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the irrepressibly live Tasha Tudor, and those whose vibrant voices and insistent heartbeats could simply not be ignored, like Connie May Fowler. <br />
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They are too many to describe; they are legion. Some of them have found themselves painted into the pages of this blog. And of course there's a natural tendency to seek the wisdom of those walking life's path just a few steps ahead; one imagines this to be not much different for men. For women, it seems the simplest path to insight to ask someone whose baby is a year old what you, pregnant, might expect during childbirth. We pass through windows within a few years of which our sisters are pairing off, becoming couples, marrying, considering or having babies, finding methods and managing tradeoffs of raising children while maintaining work, creativity, education. These years sometimes create a tendency to telescope down, to focus on those of our sisters whose progress on the path mirrors our own.<br />
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But there are our younger sisters, awaiting the wisdom we're acquiring. And there, ahead of us, are our older sisters, our mothers and grandmothers, awaiting the moments when we will ask for the wisdom they themselves have amassed like so much treasure. (Is that *your* mother? Is she standing on the path so she can annoy you with opinions about the age at which you ought to have a baby (if YOU EVER ARE going to) or the relative merits of nursing, or....dammit, is that your mother? Look down, look down; don't make eye contact....) Children aside, your own mother's place along your path notwithstanding, our older sisters stand ahead of us, waiting with patience and ineffeable kindness to make small offerings from their hearts to ease our ways.<br />
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Mrs. Allemano was enough older than I was. In my ignorance, this prevented me from immediately recognizing her as one of my older sisters, as one of the many sisters or mothers whose generosity would help light my way. She seemed far too elegant and her view far too loftily focused to take any notice of me, or even to remember my name.<br />
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Irene Allemano was tall and gracefully built, along lines that might have suited her for haute couture modeling, perhaps 30 years ago, perhaps the day before yesterday. <br />
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She walked into The Booksmith one day with her head held as high as though she were accustomed to carry on it every day a library from Plato to Pliny the Elder to Petrarch and beyond. Her dress was a brightly colored, beautifully draped thing that seemed at once distinctly modern and vaguely African. I would not have been shocked to find it required the attention necessary to properly drape a Roman senator's toga. At her wrists and around her neck, she wore a necklace of unambigous avante garde design, in chunky semiprecious stones exactly matched to her beautiful dress. She was introduced to me as "Mrs. Allemano". I believe we discussed the Times bestseller list and some other reviews of things we wanted to be sure not to miss, but I do not remember one single word of that conversation. I only remember the certainty that I'd been in the presence of some sort of royalty. Despite her easy conversation and complete lack of self-consciousness, her understated erudition and the pleasure she clearly took in books and the realm of the mind, she was someone apart. It would be years before I would understand her as an older sister, an emotional signpost pointing me toward my future. Today, it's hard to imagine that Mrs. Allemano would not have invested her considerable powers of philosophical consideration and influence on her younger sisters. I just didn't know it at the time. Ah, the wisdom from which we are screened by youth.<br />
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Years went by, with their inevitable changes.Holiday voices were reconfigured into the MadriGalz and on one unforgettable occasion, The Cafe Alzacar and the MadriGalz were graced by Mrs. Allemano, her two breathtaking sons, their wives, and best of all, the children of that fascinating family. We sang to them, we were awed by them, they were gracious to us, and from that day to this, carols echo faintly in my mind's ear when I think of Mrs. Allemano. I would not see her again in this life, and yet for so many reasons I'm grateful to say that I hope to hear her voice, guiding me through the voices of those we both loved, and in the still small voice I sometimes forget to heed. <br />
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Peace be unto you, Mrs. Allemano. I believe your children and your children's children will rise up and call you blessed. And upon reflection: So say we all.<br />
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Photo (c) 2012 Christina diEnoAngela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-91385814591886546502013-04-13T22:20:00.000-04:002013-04-14T01:10:36.545-04:00Wedding Day Blessings: Jessie & VergilWhen we saw them together, we all knew. It wasn't that one or the other of them brightened when the other entered a room, the excitement typical of young couples. It was as though some immutable law of physics was invoked when each passed within a certain degree of the other's orbital space, and sub-atomic particles collided or whatever it is that they do so that light was produced. Light did not encircle Jessie and Vergil so that they were set apart from the rest of us in a bubble of their own. Rather, light suffused any space in which we were all present with them, and lit us all as if from within. Standing within that circle, the light seemed expansive enough to contain the world and we shared a gentle feeling of blessing, most of us humbled and grateful.<br />
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Knotted in a warm little kitchen circle together, Ms. Moon told us about Jessie calling and saying, I've Met Someone. We were gathered, our extended circle of family, best and oldest friends, our most trusted and treasured, as we've gathered for many years. We catch up with each other, we cook for each other, we make music, we circle around a companionable fire. The children of those we love toddle, then walk, then wander through. Some of them begin to play instruments; some raise their voices in harmonies.<br />
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When we saw Jessie and Vergil together, I think we may all have been reminded of saying those words ourselves, yesterday or last year or many long years gone by: I've. Met. Someone. Maybe there were some quiet moments that afternoon while we lost ourselves in recollection. But mostly, I think, we considered the power of love, reaching and touching us all in the simple, non-negotiable way that sunsets touch skylines. We went back to chopping collards and washing whatever had come in from the garden to be made into salad for dinner. We hugged. We caught hands while we washed dishes. We frosted mint bars and grated carrots. We smiled at each other, and we smiled little inside smiles.<br />
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It may seem trite. It may read like a sentimental story; it may raise a cynical eyebrow. But look at them together, daughter and mother, caught in a prosaic working moment in the very kitchen that tonight produces the food for Jessie's wedding. The first-person unvarnished picture is most true in <a href="http://www.blessourhearts.net/2013/04/in-no-particular-order.html" target="_blank">Ms. Moon's voice</a>, which she shares in flashes of captured moments leading up to the wedding. Ms. Moon is known in blogging circles for her plain-spoken unwillingness to tolerate bullshit and her deep, profound capacity for love. Between them, she and Mr. Moon and their beautiful children, their extended circle of family and the friends who inhabit some of the spaces even closer than family have set Jessie's roots deeply in rich soil of love and trust, fidelity and laughter, music and faith, and all those other ineluctable precious things where commitment can thrive as long as life.<br />
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You are richly blessed, darling children. You are perhaps more richly endowed than most people even now. Right now. Before you are ever married, before you truly cleave to one another and make yourselves into a new, green, life-filled offshoot of your own families, you are blessed; I know you both know this. Here's what may be most important to remember: not everyone IS blessed in this way. Embrace each other, and embrace those whose paths cross yours. Those whose lives have not been kissed and gilded by love, shown its many faces; those whose spirits may be poorer for this? Your love may be a light you never even know you've shared. Your love may flicker unexpected illumination into darknesses you do not imagine. Thanks to your parents, your godparents, your sisters and brothers and so many others, your love will brighten lives, and change them as a result. May this be the gift of your love, dear ones: light into dark places wherever your feet take you, a sharing of the blessings that have been poured out upon you, a benediction for as long as life. May your common gift for enriching others continue to grow and be shared, from your own hearts to ours, and to those as yet unknown.<br />
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<br />Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-79863973393496907872013-04-06T00:12:00.000-04:002013-04-06T00:12:34.204-04:00Rescued: me. Also? Lemon Cake.<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">
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Rescue. I've spoken before about one of the underlying foundations of my own life, which is the role girls and women have played and continue to play in rescue, resurrection, joy and far more than those words can convey.</div>
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So then: Rescue for me. Many people are fortunate to have friends who help them through crisis and leaven their day-to-day lives. Something else has happened to me. I was rescued matter-of-factly and with no apparent thought in the years after my mother died by a group of girls. As women, they rescued me again when one of them, Carrie, was lost to us through the predations of Inflammatory Breast Cancer. As a young woman, one of them, Vicki, and her family rescued me from a broken heart and great uncertainty. For Vicki, here will follow the Lemon Cake recipe. Because she asked for it. Because it's the least thing I can do for someone who truly did rescue me. And because her family rescued me twice, without the right sort of appreciation articulated by me at the time.</div>
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Beyond childhood and my life as a young woman, there were too many rescuers to list here.I must mention that I was sometimes rescued, but more importantly today, I continue to have my life and consciousness sustained and enlivened by those who can only be described as sisters. Is this true for everyone? I'm not sure. I can only say that the benediction these sisters bring in the most prosaic and humble forms, as well as those poetic and lofty forms, constitute blessings that make life inexpressibly vibrant for me. True for you? I hope so.</div>
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So, for Vicki, here the cake recipe, or rather, the combination of a couple of recipes. At our house, this is based on the embarassing abundance of Meyer lemons our tree bears every year, but if you live in a less sub-tropical climate, you can do this with regular lemons or limes, or even with oranges. It blends a standard cake recipe from our Cake Hero Susan Purdy with a recipe for lemon curd I adapted from a Southern Living recipe. So you have to make two things: the lemon curd (make it first) and then the cake.</div>
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For Lemon Curd - and this is easier than it sounds.</div>
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Grate zest from about 6 lemons (less if you have a Meyer lemon tree in your yard - they're bigger) to about 2 tablespoons, and then sqeeze the juice to yield about a cup of juice.</div>
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In your KitchenAid mixer, or using a hand mixer, blend 1/2 cup softened butter with 2 cups of sugar til blended, then add 4 eggs one at a time, blending well. Add lemon juice, blend. Add the zest at the very end. The whole thing will look kinda curdled but this is okay. Put this into a microwave safe bowl and zap on high for 5 minutes, stirring at regular intervals, until the mixture coats the back of a spoon. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for several hours or until the lemon curd is firm. set aside.</div>
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For the cake - this is also easier than it sounds, and you can use this recipe for a ton of things. Do yourself a favor and buy a copy of "A Piece of Cake" by Susan Purdy; she makes it all clear. This uses her Swedish Butter Cake recipe, more or less.</div>
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Back to your blender: Blend 1 cup lightly salted butter (room temp) with 1-1/2 cups of sugar until well blended. Add, one by one, 2 large eggs. Combine dry ingredients 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour (always use King Arthur flour) with 1 teaspoon of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Also set aside 3/4 cup of milk, and add to it a teaspoon of vanilla extract (or in my case, Kahlua or limoncello if I have either on hand - you can also use almond flavoring).</div>
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To the butter/sugar mixture, add the dry and wet ingredients, beginning and ending with flour; mixing well between each addition.</div>
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Place 1/3 of the cake mixture in a greased, floured tube pan. Add lemon curd; top with more cake mix; layer as you like but end with cake mix. Bake in middle of oven at 325 - 350 for 55 - 65 minutes depending on your oven. Cool on rack for 5 or 10 minutes, then invert and remove. Dust with powdered sugar. Top with fresh berries (blueberries, you Jersey girls; spring strawberries for us Plant City-ish locals.)</div>
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Sound good? Get together with your sisters. Or take a slice to that sister you love, but don't see often enough. Or serve it to anyone you love and remind them how much you love them.</div>
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Content (C) 2013 Angela Christensen<br />
Stealing gives you herpes<br />
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-58111331282185322322012-11-12T19:20:00.001-05:002012-11-12T19:20:52.445-05:00Happy November 13, to the Man Who Reads All the Cards<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy9s6OGcIIQQp1zJ-LbbArVK-F8IgZXHe6BsE_J0VKXYmsKXXEyARQgFO2rS2_wFtuQMr7lyMotnIjgwXMKUoTeEuEJ5BW1FuhGU5EeaIgERlGi1xoIIXTO2nFrwNawkYph8tT3f24HzeN/s1600/June2010_Rod_Smile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy9s6OGcIIQQp1zJ-LbbArVK-F8IgZXHe6BsE_J0VKXYmsKXXEyARQgFO2rS2_wFtuQMr7lyMotnIjgwXMKUoTeEuEJ5BW1FuhGU5EeaIgERlGi1xoIIXTO2nFrwNawkYph8tT3f24HzeN/s320/June2010_Rod_Smile.jpg" /></a> He's a hard man with whom to shop for greeting cards. He reads the words inside every card. When our children were small and the time was upon them to find a Birthday Mother's Day Anniversary something something card, they were relieved to get home. <i>--Mom he reads them all I mean every word it's the most annoying--</i> <br><br>
He reads them all. One of the smartest people I know, his native intelligence is immediately visible in its mechanical manifestation. People whose cars and trucks have been made to work by him, as if by magic, still stop him to offer thanks when their paths cross, in some cases years later. You might say that words aren't his strength, but that wouldn't quite match the fact that he really reads all the cards for the occasion, looking for the precise match, the writer whose words reflect the ones in his head, the words he'd have put to paper if he could have. <br><br>
This is a birthday greeting to the man who reads all the cards, who has always told me that I could, has loved me no matter what I looked like, who contributed the best half to my children. This is a card that says, I know you. I know what trials you've passed through, and what pains you walk through every day. I know the ghosts that haunt you and the lights that shine through your eyes unfailing. I know you, as you know me, and I will love you always. For better, for worse; in health. In sickness. Under the oak trees and on the beaches. Happy November 13, my Dear Old Person, this year, and every year we may be given. Happy birthday, Rodney.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-18777590990935018082012-11-10T21:30:00.000-05:002012-11-12T17:44:04.724-05:00Chicken tacos. No more, no less.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM_YuHLwRJHnmDrOi4fN8ZMQMOEdQDkYCsMxCYjpAP7faaxiGvbA4AVJS6FDYvgawLMtaiBrsKIo1zK_PEVRJpeTnoKzrsQcM12JK40Yuc_P3GJtPMGh3U4pOE8jgBDkJbzGaGKFc_flej/s1600/November2012_Dinner3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="166" width="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhM_YuHLwRJHnmDrOi4fN8ZMQMOEdQDkYCsMxCYjpAP7faaxiGvbA4AVJS6FDYvgawLMtaiBrsKIo1zK_PEVRJpeTnoKzrsQcM12JK40Yuc_P3GJtPMGh3U4pOE8jgBDkJbzGaGKFc_flej/s320/November2012_Dinner3.jpg" /></a>
Writing a blog is a funny thing. You start out with a solid idea, a central notion, and draft the thing in your head before you get close to your laptop or your iPad or whatever...and then the writer's equivalent of a mote of dust in a sunbeam passes across the room or some haiku fragment arrives unbidden or whatever and that clear notion disappears abruptly in favor of a shiny new topic. Chicken tacos, in my case. Yeah, yeah, I know.<br><br>
The Slow Food movement makes my heart sing in many ways, but it also raises the spectre of so many meals provided in the fastest possible way, and all the attendant consequences. When my boys played baseball and my Dear Old Person worked at night while I worked days and the boys were in school, and all those other distracted realities you know as well as I do, there were more people handing us food through windows than I like to recall. This uneasy guilt is compounded by the fact that I LOVE to cook; I love meals around the table; I love seeing the faces of my dear ones over the plates my grandmother used to serve her meals. On the other hand: conflict. that's a good story without it, anyway?<br><br>
Earlier this week the northernmost third of Florida was reminded of clear and perfectly aquamarine skies and the fact that we should have stacked firewood already by a quick brush of chilly days, to which I responded by making chicken and rice. You might have put a pot of chili on to simmer, or made a good homemade soup. Chicken and rice begins with about three boneless skinless chicken breasts, quickly browned in a cast iron skillet in a bit of olive oil. The chicken is set aside and mirepoix added to cook until softened, which takes about 5 minutes. (Don't look up "mirepoix" and don't think you missed something if you don't know the term. It's basically diced onion, celery and carrots, and there are a million ways to do it. At EatHere, it's a convenient collective noun.) Skillet gets deglazed with a splash of whatever white wine I'm drinking (because if it ain't good enough to drink, it ain't good enough to cook with) and some broth (vegetable or chicken). Two cups of rice are added (I use a half-and-half mix of brown and basmati rice), about 5 cups of liquid (broth, if you have it, or water or some combination of both) and the chicken breasts placed on top. I cover, and then cook until the rice is done, 30 or 40 minutes, turning occasionally and VERY gently. Two days later, a boy says, "By the way, you make some DAMN good chicken and rice", and I think how easy it is, really, and how small the investment of time, and how I wish he weren't running out the door to work, but was sitting down across the table, eating from his great-grandmother's plates, talking about his day and his dreams and his laundry.<br><br>
All this is by way of telling you that the very same scraping-the-bottom pot of chicken and rice was elevated tonight, it chicken leftovers finely chopped and some simple salsa added to simmer into the rice, into chicken tacos that would have made you ask me again why Eat Here Eatery lives only in our imaginations. We used some cheese and a choice of corn or flour tortillas, a kiss of sour cream and the lettuce on hand (though spring lettuces from our garden would have been betterAnd the guac - I told you about that, right? No? Okay, it's quick and you'll thank m later.
Scoop the yummy part out of two ripe avocadoes and mash them up. ("I don't like it. I didn't like it as a kid so I still don't eat it." Yeah, I know, but trust me when I tell you that your palate doesn't need to be all that sophisticated. You'll love this.) Mash them with a good squeeze of lime juice. Chop a quarter of a good onion very finely and add a chopped tomato. (The tomato should never have seen the inside of a refrigerator, at least not on your watch.) Add a handful of finely chopped fresh cilantro. Mix all the veggies together, and add a teaspoon of kosher salt and some hot sauce. I use Texas Pete. Mix all this beautiful color together, cover and refrigrate for an hour or so before you eat to ensure a happy marriage of all the disparate flavors.<br><br>
Then you can assemble something that's pretty close to Slow Food, even though, like me, you probably took some shortcuts along the way. I, for instance, didn't come close to making tortillas by hand. But I still got this.
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And if by a similar process, you also came to the end of the writing of your blog post, during which no Dread Editorial Gorgon demanded you meet a deadline, and find that you also have an interesting subplot or family tale or reminiscence, you may find you've written quite a good post. For me this evening, the plate will be all the subtext required. Later, as my friend Suldog famously says, With more better stuff.
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-74263182826214543892012-10-27T21:31:00.000-04:002012-10-27T21:34:16.209-04:00The Oxford English Dictionary: the Digitalia ComethThe last page turned, the cover closed: the book has ended. I think, 'I love this book. I am never getting rid of this book. Seriously. I have to remember not to lend it out and lose track of it, not to donate it...I am NEVER getting rid of this book.'
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To those whose inner landscape is built on a foundation of reading, of books, of connections that emerge from and depend on the magic of language, the feeling will be at least familiar. So rapidly have we moved from the 600 year old concept of all learning being available through the power of print to the ditigal landscape that we're still catching up with ourselves. And I'm a fan. I live and breathe and make my living in the digital space; I will ultimately share this with you using digital media. Most of my friends are people making at least part of their livings using the media, mindset and tools of...well, digitalia. And yet many of us share a connection to older media too profound to be characterized as nostalgia. And so, my loves, here is a small remembrance of the beauty of pre-digitalia and its resonance in the present. <br><br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Hmcn5E0RuHVpih9dH_kj8MWUAr158i9rNJ7-ogwmnJkIjnn206o51fH4XK-RfUFgQL1I208SzVWGDyBnhVvz893K0e0u26XWH7_XhKCfKVgDnfUpKjsqbmcV2v429Fh5HHyyunvhtmLA/s1600/October2012_RodBkSmth_LongAgo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="166" width="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1Hmcn5E0RuHVpih9dH_kj8MWUAr158i9rNJ7-ogwmnJkIjnn206o51fH4XK-RfUFgQL1I208SzVWGDyBnhVvz893K0e0u26XWH7_XhKCfKVgDnfUpKjsqbmcV2v429Fh5HHyyunvhtmLA/s320/October2012_RodBkSmth_LongAgo.jpg" /></a> Here is my Dear Old Person (who was undeniably my Dear Much Younger Person in those days) popping his head into the door of the Booksmith, saying hello. I include it to show you a glimpse of a local independent bookstore. I include it because you see the old brass plate on the door, and the way it opened inward so that our endless stream of friends, customers, visitors, malingerers and characters had to pretty much step into the sales counter to announce their arrival. I include it so you can see the Front Door of An Independent Bookseller's Life, which is not AT ALL the same thing as working in a bookstore. For those of you fortunate enough to live in markets where independent bookstores still live - or, bless 'em, actually thrive - it may not seem important. And if you've adapted wholly to digital media, barely missing the tactile connection with the physically printed word, printed photographs or artwork, good on ya. Enjoy your evening. <br><br>
When Booksmith friend and patron Mrs. Detmold called us to order a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary people were still caught, uncertain, between the non-digital and its emerging alternatives. For Mrs. Detmold, however, there was no such uncertainty. She and her scholarly husband were firmly grounded in the 20th century even as it faded and we raced toward the 21st. Some of her own manners seemed to date to the previous century, including her quaint telephone manners. We had lots of regular customers whose loyalty drove them to visit the new Barnes & Nobles beginning to dot the Southeast, leaving with wish lists they called in to us, rather than buying on sight. Mrs. Detmold was one of these. Her phone calls began with her soft, sweet voice, announcing her name and enumerating her list, and ended when she simply hung up. When she was finished with her call, she didn't say, "Well, thanks - talk to you later," or "Bye bye, dear," or anything signature-like at all. When the list had been dictated, the order placed, she simply hung up. This all would have passed with little notice, except for the day she called to order that copy of the OED.<br><br>
There was no computer in the Booksmith. We had a microfiche reader, and respectably tattered copied of Books in Print. We used these to locate things our customers requested, and the hardware tools were supplemented by our personal knowledge and networks. The tools we had, primitive as they seem now, generally provided at least ballpark estimates of pricing. When I found the version of the OED Mrs. Detmmold seemed to be reqesting, I was astonished. "Are you sure you don't want me to look for an abridged version of the dictionary?" I asked Mrs. Detmold. No, thank you, she said. I stammered out the price. Was she certain? The new OED, recently updated and unabridged, running to nearly 20 volumes, was about $2500.00, a sum that approached the limits of my imagination. Really? Was she really certain? <br><br>
Yes, dear, she said, and hung up.<br><br>
The order was placed with much seriousness and attention, and when the heavy boxes arrived, they were picked up with much the same feeling. And then, like the ending of a phone call with Mrs. Detmold, there was silence. A couple of months passed before she called to place an order. When she did, it was impossible not to ask: Were they satisfied with the order? Did they like it? (I know: it seemed the most ridiculous thing to ask about the venerable Oxford English Dictionary, but there it was.) Did they (timdly, this last was ventured), well, did they get much use from the Dictionary? There was a moment of silence, but not the stilted I'm-not-sure-about-this-telephone-business silence to which we'd all gotten accustomed. This was a puzzled silence, a moment in which Mrs. Detmold may have considered us the Oldest City's nicest Philistines, but Philistines, no less. Finally she said, "Oh, yes, dear. We use it all the time. Someone will mention a word, and off we go to the library to look it up. We just love it." She paused, and then added, "Every time we have company, I find someone or other in the library, curled up with one volume or another, just...well, you know, just READING it."<br><br>
I set the phone down and returned to the tasks at hand: matchmaking between books and people, welcoming the unbelievably diverse Booksmith clientele, thinking about novels by Isabel Allende, collections of Ansel Adams and Georgia O'Keeffe and books like <i>The 12-Volt Bible</i>, and the history section where Dr. Michael Gannon made his home, and the historical fiction of local interest, where Eugenia Price's <i>Maria</i> and Patrick Smith's <i>A Land Remembered </i>were staples. New writers like Connie Fowler and Ernie Mickler and Carl Hiaasen were being hand-sold because our staff loved them. And yet, The Oxford English Dictionary had found its way to someone's libary, here in provincial little St. Augustine. Someone valued the pure possession of a beloved book, printed on paper, spanning many volumes, holding the accumulated and evolving secrets of the English language over time passing human understanding. <br><br>
*The book is <i>The Red Chamber</i>, by Pauline A. Chen (Knopf, New York, 2012). It's a beautiful re-imagining of Cao Xuequin's "The Dream of the Red Chamber", itself, according to Chen, "...the eighteenth century novel widely considered the most important work of fiction in the Chinese literary tradition....largely unknown to western audiences...", a book I'd read and loved 20 years ago or more. Ironically, one of its themes is the careless certainty we have in our youth that everything is within reach, and the awareness that comes ever so slowly as we age that every choice leads inexorably to that which cannot be undone. It is beautifully told. Thank you, Pauline Chen.<br><br>
Photo(c) Angela Christensen 2012
All rights reservedAngela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-23310658709618634672012-10-08T15:47:00.002-04:002012-10-08T16:17:31.238-04:00White Bean Chili, or The Art of the Lost Jalapeno<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_pyHjJrwnMK3Ix8VZYi0a8Wz2SJNpdBXkY8DfzDbUAV2gCzJc_VJUqTDV4ATjilM9dLyOaRgXnO0-KRBHsJeVkIHJCXk7IL7agwcMFy8nZef2hl8ldo9r5cS6Klr3_Qn52xmKjUVTgCSj/s1600/WhiteChili_trinity1" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_pyHjJrwnMK3Ix8VZYi0a8Wz2SJNpdBXkY8DfzDbUAV2gCzJc_VJUqTDV4ATjilM9dLyOaRgXnO0-KRBHsJeVkIHJCXk7IL7agwcMFy8nZef2hl8ldo9r5cS6Klr3_Qn52xmKjUVTgCSj/s320/WhiteChili_trinity1" /></a> The jalapeno was simply gone. It was with me when I left the store, and undeniably Not There when its fateful moment came and it was time to be finely minced and welcomed to the pot. I was working on a Chicken and White Bean Chili, after the fashion of the fabulous Susan Brown and completely without benefit of any recipe. Following my usual theory that cooking is more art than science except when baking is involved, I figured I could use Susan's delicious example as an inspiration and make most of it up as I went along. This often works well, but at its heart is a sort of experimental approach to cooking, with hypotheses, one or two of which are bound to end up on the lab, er, kitchen floor now and then. But I digress. <br><br>
Without said jalapeno, I considered the datil peppers in the garden. Datils are small peppers, well known in northeastern Florida for their excellent flavor and heat. When datils are added outright to food (often in things like purlo - we can debate the spelling later - or chowders and soups) one or two of the peppers are dropped intact into the pot and removed before serving, with the amount dictated by the desired degree of heat and corresponding flavor and the quantity in the cook's pot. Considered. Rejected. The peppers on my plants are small, and I was worried I might leave a pepper for some unsuspecting palate to experience in one fateful bite. I soldiered on, pepper-less. <br><br>
I chopped sweet peppers and onions and sauteed them in olive oil with chopped garlic. Boneless skinless chicken breasts were dredged in seasoned flour and pan fried in a mixture of olive and vegetable oil, following my usual recipe. Oh, except without that jalapeno, I thought, I'd better compensate with a little more cayenne pepper than usual. (This is dangerous. I know this. I only mention it here because of the price I'd have to pay later; you know, as a sort of cautionary note. Eat Here Eatery and all that.) Out came the crisp, lovely chicken, and into the skillet went a bit of the seasoned flour to brown and make a roux. When that was a rich velvet brown color, I deglazed the skillet with some white wine and added chicken broth and a can of that staple of Southern cooking, Ro-tel tomatoes, which are chopped tomatoes and green chiles, thinking about Julia Child and cast iron skillets. And then, as the whole aromatic thing married and simmered, I tasted it for the first time. I should mention that some of The people who eat at Eat Here enjoy the occasional spicy morsel or dish. The general fare, however, allows for the addition of Texas Pete or datil pepper vinegar AFTER cooking is complete, but has a milder nature. This delicious concoction, however, was NOT in the "milder nature" category at ALL. It brought a tear to my eye, immediately followed by the thought that Chicken and White Bean Chili was about to become a much larger batch of Chicken and White Bean Something, almost certainly Soup.<br><br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhG84lxUivVhVeDZfFQQpkMU3mkZppIZxwjAalokruR4QEbDv_VdOgARsZrZLKQ8RJUcsLZoECEGshKJJLEMGg0ZQYDVuQSsE6nEH2qb25iBd96okhzXUy_J14b3xMbrAG7CShQcVdCQFZ/s1600/WhiteChilinGuac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="166" width="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhG84lxUivVhVeDZfFQQpkMU3mkZppIZxwjAalokruR4QEbDv_VdOgARsZrZLKQ8RJUcsLZoECEGshKJJLEMGg0ZQYDVuQSsE6nEH2qb25iBd96okhzXUy_J14b3xMbrAG7CShQcVdCQFZ/s320/WhiteChilinGuac.jpg" /></a>
Considerably more broth was added until that was gone and desperation drove me to add a can of cream of chicken soup. After a long simmer, tender chunks of pan-friend chicken, white beans and even some diced potatoes went into the pot. My Dear Old Person suggested the serving solution and poured over brown and white basmati rice, the whole thing was perfectly delicious. Not glamorous, I know, but delicious with a salad of fresh guacamole on the side. All in all, I thought, a successful experiment, even without benefit of the lost jalapeno. <br><br>
After a nice beach walk this morning, I threw a load of clothes into the washing machine, and rescued the load that had been left in the dryer the night before. This was mostly a load of towels that needed folding, but I'd thrown in some of our reusable grocery bags, as well. They can get smelly and even become rather bacteria-laden if you don't remember to wash them now and then. Besides, you never know: you may reach into the dryer and pull out a slightly bruised jalapeno,completely clean and ready for your pot of White Bean Chili.
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-47731937975345423752012-10-07T16:46:00.002-04:002012-10-07T16:48:19.886-04:00Fallen flowers and fruit, rising October<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGRJ5shIpi8A3sIMf-s_zUEOSZ-gnpkIWi1QZc8GKPCSiv3mlQBNDvx78vu0A_gA0Hi79Z3FmkqT2bloXh0pSGxgKfakJWJ0mzPkNyRz8bOD3B1bRwzxSA7HdUXnLU_94crTsGJ16ZLizR/s1600/100712_2" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="320" width="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGRJ5shIpi8A3sIMf-s_zUEOSZ-gnpkIWi1QZc8GKPCSiv3mlQBNDvx78vu0A_gA0Hi79Z3FmkqT2bloXh0pSGxgKfakJWJ0mzPkNyRz8bOD3B1bRwzxSA7HdUXnLU_94crTsGJ16ZLizR/s320/100712_2" /></a>Detritus of the convergence of summer's slow end the promise of October: the periwinkle purple-blue of a bruised flower from the top of the climbing thunbergia, and maybe-green-maybe-yellow Meyer lemon, likewise fallen from its home. Soon enough, the beautiful purple of the vine's flowers will stand out against the bright golden hickory leaves of the tree that's served as its host these many years. Later still, the lemons will stay the course of citrus in northeastern Florida and come ripe around Christmastime. Tree and vine, fruit and flower: they have their own stories and thus their own shorthand in our visual vocabulary. <br><br>
Meyer lemons have a subtle flavor, prized by chefs and cooks for their unique influence on recipes. My Dear Old Person and I will use as many as well can, consider the various and creative ways in which they might be used to good effect, and finally then press the lemons on our friends before finally taking big bags to the office to share. It may not be necessary to say that there has long been slight variance amongst our hoursehold in interpretation of "good effect". To me this implies some of the happy places in which our lemons have found themselves: honored ingredients in brine for holiday turkeys, infusing simple syrup with sharp citrus zest to step up Grownup Lemonade, sharing the billing with lavender in a favorite Meyer Lemon Cake with Lavender Cream. Sons and husbands interpret the definition to incude pitching, flinging, throwing, tossing and hurling lemons at targets, teams, trees, squirrels and each other. Philosophically I always win (about-to-be-thrown-lemons are quickly hidden when I appear); realistically, I hesitate to say how many lemon trees have sprung up around the perimeter of our yard, and how many heartlessly lopped off. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7xyEvGHBZaEn0FpBF1jSp6as5sNX61HzrQb-Zdo4NZNfnHgJqDe2ZMVRjQbYGbpzHTYMA3IfL1bOycxbxGJan_yU7XYjYbSXxEmrSJl074tJcynmRDYLNG7uVfYbibUyOMDAcQ9cFbuyh/s1600/100712_5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="166" width="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7xyEvGHBZaEn0FpBF1jSp6as5sNX61HzrQb-Zdo4NZNfnHgJqDe2ZMVRjQbYGbpzHTYMA3IfL1bOycxbxGJan_yU7XYjYbSXxEmrSJl074tJcynmRDYLNG7uVfYbibUyOMDAcQ9cFbuyh/s320/100712_5.jpg" /></a> And you can kinda see why. This picture shows the branches that have begun to droop, but doesn't give you a sense of the real size; the tree must be 20 feet tall. Most years we haven't a prayer of harvesting all of them. But its history is precious to us, as it was rescued from a 19th century citrus grove years ago, before the county turned the groves into the lovely Alpine Groves Park where it stands on a bluff overlooking at St. Johns River. Our lemon tree connects us to more than a century of citrus farming and a lifestyle whose echoes are still dear to us today. <br><br>
The simple and abundant flowers of the thunbergia vine, which begins each spring threading its way up the brown stalks of its previous incarnation leftover from the previous winter's freeze, reaches even higher to the top of its hickory tree. It began life in a five gallon nursery can, a birthday gift from my friend Miss Inga. Its persistent efforts at flowering every year are an allegory for a friendship which has passed through the stresses and changes of every season of every year.
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO9VlTHVSGCQovTWVqqI66cVFPFkuoMP-sWFSD9xVbYqIKeRTw8zm-586loijoeHdxxLtlgcwxMxOzuYE1u-Pq8QtSR8MTKe4yyCjhLJXUcawoFmqYkFl7OThAbYE8WfjCdNiQydQmgMFR/s1600/100712_3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="166" width="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO9VlTHVSGCQovTWVqqI66cVFPFkuoMP-sWFSD9xVbYqIKeRTw8zm-586loijoeHdxxLtlgcwxMxOzuYE1u-Pq8QtSR8MTKe4yyCjhLJXUcawoFmqYkFl7OThAbYE8WfjCdNiQydQmgMFR/s320/100712_3.jpg" /></a> It's part of the reason I do what I do today for a living; it's part of the reason I think the way I do; it has shaped the person I've grown into. It's a friendship that was dented and scarred by the banal evil and uncertain sanity of a boss and a workplace that was so much fun it was just possible to ignore the fundamental flaws of the business model and the responsible party. It's a friendship still precious to me, based more than ever on truth as we can see it, and generosity as we can share it. We've passed through the trials of caring for aging parents. We are passing through the soaring joys and heartaches of a new generation of children, issues of family rising with degrees of irony for both of us. And every year, there are those elegant little periwinkle-colored flowers to remind me, stretching for the blue October sky, contrasting against the golds of the leaves and the light.
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-76549860597186303832012-09-30T18:28:00.000-04:002012-09-30T18:28:59.302-04:00But tell us what you *really* think<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj43-k1lcm6oOlVcaF-ZUNcHgOwz95z9ZeQH3_5Z_8yDUGK_ghFiIFFDerFXf4SYJ_QROEdexq454TgH_XyZ2SR19KXEqBEG-tnlFp6n9zLDHmYjS6fQhGFad3e7UfyNrhS45ubP7y4gVK/s1600/_1011297.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="240" width="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj43-k1lcm6oOlVcaF-ZUNcHgOwz95z9ZeQH3_5Z_8yDUGK_ghFiIFFDerFXf4SYJ_QROEdexq454TgH_XyZ2SR19KXEqBEG-tnlFp6n9zLDHmYjS6fQhGFad3e7UfyNrhS45ubP7y4gVK/s320/_1011297.JPG" /></a> This hearkens back to spring, in honor of the just-passed autmun equinox and the winter solstice toward which time now seems to fly. And it sweetens the point of my beginning, lest you prefer to leave now and return to read on another topic. For while Eat Here Eatery is mostly content to leave matters of politics and public affairs to finer minds and more articulate voices, today's post will be a simple expression of the editor's view and yet likely to find a range of reception. So start off with a view of a spring birdbath, and finish with a bite of dessert. In the middle, with apologies to those who may be offended, here is this.<br><br>
At the age of 45, Carrie O'Hare Hogan died of breast cancer. In her 50s, Helen Baker Christensen died of cancer. Vince Jeffs, far, far too young, died not long ago of cancer. You yourself almost certainly know someone whose potrait could be equally briefly sketched here. Even among our small circle of readers, surely the list would be too much for any of us to face without grief, and joy, memories and tales as plentiful and lovely as blades of grass. You will almost certainly remember the pain, from the smallest indignities to the agonies passing most human understanding. You will remember the bargains you would have been willing to make with God or the Goddess or the Universe or anyone to relieve the pain - some or all - or to take it onto yourself if even for a moment.<br><br>
Perhaps you also know someone who lives or has lived, with a painful disorder for which there is a life sentence, no cure, and only a range of hopeful treatments.
These can range from inconvenient side effects to horribly debilitating reactions. Perhaps fibromyalgia, MS, neuropathy...these and many other disorders or diseases may occur in the company of other troubles: diabetes, chemotherapy, organ failure; they may also occur on their own, idiopathically, as medical people say, meaning, We have no idea what causes this. And you will know that medical practitioners, bless their hearts, will try an endless list of possible remedies. They will combine and re-combine the best (and often breathtakingly expensive) offerings from pharmaceutical companies; they will fall back to older classes of drugs; they will try to get their hands on the newest things the FDA will let them use. (In our own family, we worked as advocates and partners with our dedicated family doctor to alleviate the symptoms of Alzheimers my father-in-law suffered. Because Medicare offered no prescription coverage at that time, our doctor often provided medications through the pharmaceutical companies themselves and for a time, there was some degree of relief.) In these situations, too, you may find yourself willing to make some of those same unthinkable bargains with the holy and the not-so-holy: couldn't I just be the one in pain for an hour, in her place? Could he have one day to run and work and laugh without the pain - I will take it for myself; please? Could she spend half her day without the sluggish fog this medication exacts in return for the relief of her pain? What if her illness were lifted for a day, an hour, a few moments? - to remove the heavy sadness and depression of this bleak prognosis? What if I might be able to prevent her temptation to consider suicide as she faces the rest of her life with this unalloyed pain? But the answer is always the same.<br><br>
And now for the divisive opinion of which I warned at the beginning. If you've experienced any of those things, or if you've loved or cared about anyone who has, you must consider this. What if there were a way to make those little bargains of love? What if there were a way to, if not remove, at least relieve the feelings of pain, stress, anxiety and depression that accompany chronic illness and pain? What if the bargain was completely natural, simple, inexpensive and could be gathered as easily as the tomatoes and zinnias and nasturtiums you grow in your garden or on your deck to brighten summer tables? What it it could be ground finely and baked into zucchini chocolate cake to tempt even those appetites made reluctant by medication? What if it could be enjoyed with a cup of tea, and 45 minutes later followed an hour of peace, a smile blessedly untouched by lines of pain? You hear the expression "happy pill", as though your local pharmacist could just hand one over. There's no such thing, of course. But there is something that can bring such relief of symptoms and side effects that it might be called "happy", or called by any of a range of snide and silly other names, easy to tumble from the mouths of those who've never suffered hand-in-hand with a loved one. There is a simple, natural way to help. Why on earth would we withhold this? What puritanical ethos drives us to prevent or even temporarily relieve the suffering of our sisters and brothers?<br><br>
Oversimplification? Deliberate blindness to the bafflingly complex legal ins and outs, the mafia, drug cartels, the regulation, the confusion, the taxation...all the things I'm pretending to be too obtuse to grasp? Maybe. But at every turn there's an obstacle. Don't ask, don't tell? In this state if you take legitimately prescribed narcotic medications, you're subject to testing. There's no possibility of "Don't ask, don't tell". There's hope in the voice of the people, as long as they speak. There's hope in the collective voice of the medical profession, should it continue to say, We have a medicine. It is not a drug. It is not the product of a laboratory. It can be grown in a corner of the herb garden, and it can be ingested as safely as the rows of lettuces and pots of tomatoes and nasturtium flowers you bring in from your own garden. It can. And for the life of me, I can't understand why we're not bringing it in from the garden.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-30428514908473700322012-09-27T20:27:00.000-04:002012-09-28T18:15:28.574-04:00Thing One and Thing Two: A Brief Tale of Friendship and Math<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQU-jHeD7OuhsqQCf8jANsduPahpPVLCIIiDdRCPq1NciKtDcOioFcaD6sITM1cWHpVw5cedkPkqooiXC_jLaCW0rcMw3OBXYQhEvPt2IzZp1nntDA2GOrszVJrHjaAhAc5_oGUd2ZTVhv/s1600/September2012_sunset_Rod.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:right; float:right; margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="166" width="221" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQU-jHeD7OuhsqQCf8jANsduPahpPVLCIIiDdRCPq1NciKtDcOioFcaD6sITM1cWHpVw5cedkPkqooiXC_jLaCW0rcMw3OBXYQhEvPt2IzZp1nntDA2GOrszVJrHjaAhAc5_oGUd2ZTVhv/s320/September2012_sunset_Rod.jpg" /></a> Friendships are as different as leaves or snowflakes. Each has its own rhythm, its own balance, its own customs and rules, overtly or tacitly agreed to immediately or with the passage of time. Each is entered into differently, and each beginning is unique, even when familiar patterns provide framework. <br><br>
None of these notions crossed my mind when I recently opened friendship negotiations with Amy.* We liked each other on sight. In fairness, I think Amy likes most people on sight; she is as bright and open and curious as anyone I know. Still, we did like each other right away. I could tell, because within a matter of an hour, she asked me one of those fundamental questions of friendship, "What's your favorite color?" Her tone was one of overture, of exploration. She was friendly, but not too friendly, you know? The way you are when you think you might like somebody, but are wary in case they turn out to be a complete nerd and you get stuck with them because you've been too nice. I should probably note here that Amy is not yet ten years old. I'm much older, of course, but this is one of those familiar framework things even I could see at a distance. I considered. "Hmm," I said, reflecting. "I love blues and purples; there are so many great colors, you know? But I probably have to say green. I think green's my favorite."<br><br>
"Mine, too!" She nodded enthusiastically, her curly hair boucing on her shoulders, her hazel eyes wide and sparkly, her face lit by her smile. Some months prior I'd sent Amy's family a gift of a field guide to birds, and from her mother I knew that Amy's the family birder. So her next question seemed perfectly natural to me, though her tone told me it was a more significant question. She leaned forward. "What's your favorite bird?" This one, I thought, was a bit of a test. I considered again, struggling. "That's a hard one," I said. "I love all the songbirds, all the passerines. But I love the raptors, too...", and Amy came to the rescue, words tumbling out. "I love cardinals," she said, "And the owls and those big white water birds, and..." By now she was turning the pages of the book I'd sent to her family as well as amuch larger coffee table book filled with bird images. Her mother said, "Don't forget the penguins," and Amy said, "Oh, yes! I love penguins!" So we talked about penguins and puffins and the relative loveable merits of more birds than I can remember. Eventually we moved on, and Amy's serious, scientific mind brought her to a probing question about favorite insects (we both love dragonflies) and onward toward reptiles (mutual favorites include lizards, frogs and toads). And then, finally, the offhand question neither of us thought much about at the time. Amy's nonverbal cue was telegraphed by her and read by me in a millisecond. "Like math?" she asked. "Ewww," I said. And it was done. We were friends.<br><br>
But it was wrong, of course. She's a girl. She's a smart girl. Her brain is wired for science; she wants to be an oceanographer, a marine biologist, a researcher, a solver of the problems of the natural world. Math is critical. And I'd dismissed it because I wanted her to like me. I was ashamed of myself. It kept me up nights. And then I knew what I needed to tell her: it was what I wished someone had told me - and made me wrap my head around - when I was ten years old, hated math, and couldn't for the LIFE of me figure out its value. Thing One? Math is a Language. Thing Two? Math is Good for Your Brain.<br><br>
Thing One: Math is a language, as surely as English or French. But its building blocks come to us later than those of the native languages we speak; its alphabet is numbers. Its sophisticated sentences and paragraphs are dependent on things we must take on faith. Equations depend on memorized multiplication tables. Math depends on symbols that are quite distant from those of mother tongues. As a language it poses challenges like those encountered by linguistic students tackling a new alphabet, cuneiform or Cyrillic characters. Babies are sung to in their mother tongues before they're even born. Math? You have to learn the basics after you have command of that mother tongue. And yet math is the language of complete specificity. To be a scientist you have to be able to communicate with your colleagues in specific terms. If you're counting sea turtle nests, you must be able to say, There are 50 sea turtle nests here, and 50 more there, for a total of 100 sea turtle nests this year. I know you know this, dear and gentle reader. But did you know it when you were ten years old?<br><br>
Thing Two: Math is like a discipline of physical exercise for your brain. The mere act of calculation, however simple or complex, works your brain so that it becomes nimble, supple, muscular; it becomes stronger and more fully developed. It develops capacity it wouldn't have had otherwise. It's like learning Latin. You don't do it because you have a burning need to be conversant in a dead language, but if you do it, you develop parts of your brain that might otherwise never be awakened. Math is good for your brain. Don't love it? That's okay. Do it anyway, for the same reason you eat an apple when you're thinking about a cookie; for the same reason you go for a walk when a nap might be nicer; for the same reason you read a book instead of watching videos on YouTube. It's GOOD for you. And here again, I know you know this. But if you didn't have a native facility for math when you were ten years old, would you have seen the benefits on your own? Yeah. Me neither.<br><br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj_aWjjdcjw1t6uEe4MNEYLHCCZ4T4LdUIHK0LxGpHhsK5n02bzV9-KiwgiLMR5UDsTlwsrihRQMuLiwIoGqQCwb_dFEjcxJ7vUDf8GPt3wFUnpP2mYeSDbMfDk-qUhHcOHbf328zHxV7C/s1600/September2012_CreamBiscuitsStrawb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear:left; float:left;margin-right:1em; margin-bottom:1em"><img border="0" height="166" width="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj_aWjjdcjw1t6uEe4MNEYLHCCZ4T4LdUIHK0LxGpHhsK5n02bzV9-KiwgiLMR5UDsTlwsrihRQMuLiwIoGqQCwb_dFEjcxJ7vUDf8GPt3wFUnpP2mYeSDbMfDk-qUhHcOHbf328zHxV7C/s320/September2012_CreamBiscuitsStrawb.jpg" /></a> We had dessert; we talked about it. I told Amy I'd thought about it, and sketched out my notions of Thing One and Thing Two. I told her I was sorry for not telling her the truth, and I told her I'd said it because I'd wanted to be her friend. And I told her that real friends tell each other the truth. Which matters. Because Amy's truth and her future are big stuff. She'll need all the languages she can learn, so she can open her big thoughts to the whole, wide world.<br><br>
*Not her real name<br><br>
Photo credit: Angela Christensen
Cooking credit: Umm, that was me, too. Those are Cream Biscuits from the Fannie Farmer Cookbook, by the late and very much lamented Marion Cunningham (by way of James Beard) with fresh strawberries and raspberries and homemade whipped cream. It sweetened the regrets considerably.<br><br>
A tip of the hat to Dr. Seuss for the notions of Thing One and Thing Two.
Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-21736074806175542262012-08-12T16:12:00.015-04:002012-08-12T17:20:43.744-04:00For the beauty of the earth<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxRLuR-WcNJAW4XfG85xFI4uyNQlL-8_yuAP95oTEEDM3hGdPW9o6HtiqLRwerKanRAj7Y0vgNDOVJZ3JNpCZhtmjFzSbGymdaaBx8U3V3HhydZbu0k_QjrsRUt2a5k3KOSrXkxLjXiGAp/s1600/Aug2012_N77_HatchedOut"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxRLuR-WcNJAW4XfG85xFI4uyNQlL-8_yuAP95oTEEDM3hGdPW9o6HtiqLRwerKanRAj7Y0vgNDOVJZ3JNpCZhtmjFzSbGymdaaBx8U3V3HhydZbu0k_QjrsRUt2a5k3KOSrXkxLjXiGAp/s320/Aug2012_N77_HatchedOut" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5775885088761159362" /></a> This morning's beach walk was highlighted by a view of our adopted nest: N77 has hatched out, its content of baby sea turtles gone from the safety of the warm sand, launched on their journey to the sea. There's been a lot of this lately, as the nests of spring and summer hatch out under the watchful eyes of the scientists and staff and volunteers of the GTM Reserve. <br /><br /><br />This photo <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjlTIXPyucbA3GP_NB4xwLw7eBO0BWbK7SOchTZJoclTSBNzTWKjE6RlyhRFjUy6TKRCkXvc5-4Aunm5XYrSmZ-UiyRYCO4AOjw1BqTNmirVi-B5bZjZ0yY2yrXuZw9XSofGoM9sTNllD7/s1600/Aug2012_Emergence.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 226px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjlTIXPyucbA3GP_NB4xwLw7eBO0BWbK7SOchTZJoclTSBNzTWKjE6RlyhRFjUy6TKRCkXvc5-4Aunm5XYrSmZ-UiyRYCO4AOjw1BqTNmirVi-B5bZjZ0yY2yrXuZw9XSofGoM9sTNllD7/s320/Aug2012_Emergence.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5775889183237447890" /></a> was shared with us by the team at the Reserve and shows a clutch of babies emerging from their nest just a few days ago. I imagine this is what the residents of N77 looked like: scrambling out of the sand, tiny front flippers frantically rowing in the motion that will keep them alive if they manage to reach the relative safety of the ocean. Of one thing I'm certain: we'll <a href="http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07e66xoijraf5c856a&llr=8px5tmeab">adopt a nest</a> again next year. It's easy, inexpensive and more gratifying than I can say, knowing the dollars are going directly to the support of these very turtle babies, research to help them survive and stewardship of the location to which the geographic fidelity of their species will drive them to nest for untold generations.<br /><br />There was another touch of magic in the day for us, as well, my dear old person and me, which came in the form of a memory, or maybe a prayer or a message. In the long summer days and evenings of his childhood when they were spent on these same miles of sand, his mother Helen, like us, combed the beach for the simple treasures of great Mother Ocean. Her favorites, he recalls, were the perfect spirals of the shells called cats' eyes, smooth and glossy as pearls to the touch of your fingers. These days, when we find one we exchange a fond glance and think or sometimes speak of our mothers. This morning as we walked along the surfline we passed a small family: mother, father, and small bright girl. "Hello," the dad hailed us, "Found anything today?" We waved and smiled, "Nothing today, but it's a nice day for it," and walked on. A few minutes passed before the small, bright girl caught up to us again. Her hair, strung with sea water and twinkling with sand,was fair as sunshine, her eyes a startling blue. She held out her hand to me and said very clearly, "I'd like to give this to you." She gave me a beautiful fragment of a cats' eye, her face solemn as church. "Well, thank you," I said, completely surprised. "Maybe I could give you one of my shark teeth, in trade? Would you like...?" She nodded and I gave her one of the small teeth I'd found. With a quick smile, she turned to catch up with her family. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtAgjPbydkpwgms4a8g2o31kOd6WafbWpHmjsC2__8L8MtTLKWV_YjjpyDf1z0a95ui1AMRw39WVZP-837cR9OLhuza-7XPdgR8X5BIwWvSZxzOZgkpaBfTJQJzhI7_25zq8xFGv2oZHmC/s1600/Aug2012_CatsEyeFamily.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 221px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtAgjPbydkpwgms4a8g2o31kOd6WafbWpHmjsC2__8L8MtTLKWV_YjjpyDf1z0a95ui1AMRw39WVZP-837cR9OLhuza-7XPdgR8X5BIwWvSZxzOZgkpaBfTJQJzhI7_25zq8xFGv2oZHmC/s320/Aug2012_CatsEyeFamily.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5775898062986070402" /></a> For a long moment, my dear old person and I looked at each other, thinking the same thoughts, saying nothing. I was thinking it felt like a tiny blessing, a reminder: We are present, children; all will be well. And I was thinking, "For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies; for the love which from our birth over and around us lies..." <br /><br />I do hope your day has been touched in some way by the benediction of the beauty of the earth.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-28288625454819824932012-07-23T18:46:00.011-04:002012-07-23T19:49:15.291-04:00There comes a time<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBdgzGFFJ2wIyYQ2j9sZAnfvq-glNjSMgA7nL4OndkpB3NFp3ykpFiPyC1UPJwFWdlX_nh5GwNK2aesm_iGDFE6u7sq5i8CRCNefAUUiSWjoXclXzJBs4ncybOnqRKmn9L2L4LMXg-2KxA/s1600/July2012_Starfish.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 124px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBdgzGFFJ2wIyYQ2j9sZAnfvq-glNjSMgA7nL4OndkpB3NFp3ykpFiPyC1UPJwFWdlX_nh5GwNK2aesm_iGDFE6u7sq5i8CRCNefAUUiSWjoXclXzJBs4ncybOnqRKmn9L2L4LMXg-2KxA/s320/July2012_Starfish.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5768501379512628994" /></a><br />Politics are not the purview of this blog. There are so many voices, far more educated, erudite and articulate, better informed, better suited and in short, better qualified to discuss politics and political issues. But as a very clear-minded person said today, and will say again publicly this evening, There comes a time when doing the right thing is more important than convenience. Eat Here Eatery generally concerns itself with people and food, recipes and gardens, flowers and birds. But, you know, there comes a time.<br /><br />There comes a time when we realize that some things we've done aren't right. They may have been fun; they may have been thoughtless; they may have been done in youthful exuberance and innocent ignorance. In the days of Mad Men, our pregnant mothers and grandmothers sat chattering together around bridge or cocktail or picnic tables, martini in one hand, cigarette in the other. Many of our parents and their generation had loud and brightly lit parties on beaches til all hours; some even harvested sea turtle eggs for the richest, most delicious cakes any of them remember tasting. My girlhood was punctuated with family outings during which we rode dune buggies or other four-wheel drive vehicles through the high dunes of the beaches in northeastern Florida, heedless of nesting birds or native plantlife, which were raising chicks or holding the dune lines together. We don't do any of those things anymore, because we KNOW BETTER NOW. We don't go whaling. We don't hunt to extinction species of birds because we value certain feathers for our hats. We don't shoot buffalo in their thousands, simply because we see them standing placidly alongside our railroads. (Well, maybe there are variations on this theme - rhino horn, anyone? - but we'll leave those for another day.) We don't do these things anymore, because we've matured as a species, ourselves, and because we've begun to see ourselves in the holistic context of our small blue planet, and we simply KNOW BETTER.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZt8-VrPMlXk57fJhMi_RkNkWKQ2hsnw4ZClnVMwU216QC_ouHUIF8OhYnuk-QHwLhSEsHstpWEjJW5_-xU8D2dpiB624iXfTb4bsFSrvHHqJuCdPVRgCkKAUgOdDT1-Hi9efVThFEOTL1/s1600/July2012_NewMoonTide.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 221px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZt8-VrPMlXk57fJhMi_RkNkWKQ2hsnw4ZClnVMwU216QC_ouHUIF8OhYnuk-QHwLhSEsHstpWEjJW5_-xU8D2dpiB624iXfTb4bsFSrvHHqJuCdPVRgCkKAUgOdDT1-Hi9efVThFEOTL1/s320/July2012_NewMoonTide.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5768505564039507122" /></a> And so it is with driving on the beaches on land adjacent to the Fort Matanzas National Monument and the southern portion of the GTM Research Reserve. Tonight and tomorrow night, there will be public meetings in discussion of the National Monument's draft management plan. The most divisive issue under discussion is likely to be that of Driving on the Beach. There's a very vocal group who advocate for this, despite the dangers it poses to one of the most pristine, delicate ecosystems in our area, which will absolutely suffer negative impacts should the practice be continued. Both meetings begin at 6 pm and take place at Lohman Auditorium at the Whitney Labs in Marineland. Many false claims have been made in the past, and those same claims are likely to be made tonight and tomorrow night. Here are the facts:<br /><br />There are already miles of beach with safe driving access and even ADA-compliant ramps in our county.<br /><br />There are ADA-compliant ramps to access the beaches adjacent to the parking lots at the National Park.<br /><br />There is no need to drive on all beaches to continue access for fishing, boating, walking the dog, playing with the kids, or simply sitting quietly in profound admiration for the rich marine and estuarine heritage with which we're blessed.<br /><br />There comes a time when we put away childish things. And here we are again, outside the purview of this blog, quoting Biblical references. But this is exactly the heart of my view. I believe that we are learning to be good stewards of what we have. Someone said to me, of the riches of northeastern Florida, "We live in paradise", and it may very well be true. But I recall being young and reckless and thoughtless about what my children might see of this paradise; I didn't HAVE children; it didn't matter so much to me when I was twenty. When you put away childish things, you're not putting away fun. You're not putting the values of your family or your heritage. You're not putting away The Way We Used to Do Things. You're simply stepping into mature and responsible stewardship of your riches, whatever form they may take.<br /><br />As a species, as a collective of sentient beings living on the Earth, we have - mostly - put away hunting white birds for their feathers. We have put away - or have tried to put away - hatred of people simply because they're different. We have put away senseless slaughter of buffalo, senseless disregard for the habits of nesting sea turtles, senseless destruction of delicate habitats. We should simply put away the notion of driving our cars on our most precious beaches. We should recognize that it was fun when we didn't know any better, that many of us will always treasure memories of whistling down the beach in an old Scout or pickup truck, that there are shoeboxes in all our closets filled with snapshots marked "Aug 58" or "June 61".<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBvBsmajPtiAXQAb0XpyHAZJOCyt55YC9THSnbgZBRJwOKK1I5DOskKUUgDHkrTKxNCpkFLadPZ2YXuZ87uSoubRI4jzGTiNDGb2fOlgglIV4hvRiA4kJnxAIrNcUorZo-kRO6nuw-eTI3/s1600/July2012_Nest77.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 221px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBvBsmajPtiAXQAb0XpyHAZJOCyt55YC9THSnbgZBRJwOKK1I5DOskKUUgDHkrTKxNCpkFLadPZ2YXuZ87uSoubRI4jzGTiNDGb2fOlgglIV4hvRiA4kJnxAIrNcUorZo-kRO6nuw-eTI3/s320/July2012_Nest77.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5768511733406825538" /></a><br />But as Chris Rich put it so beautifully today, There comes a time. We don't need to drive on these precious beaches anymore. Today is that time. <br /><br /><br /><br />Editorial note: Chris Rich is the President of the Friends of the GTM Reserve. In the interest of full disclosure, I'm honored to serve on that board with her, and to serve with all the Friends and volunteers whose mission it is to educate, support research and perhaps most critically of all, ensure stewardship of this breathtaking resource.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-18212021437181626672012-06-17T20:27:00.009-04:002012-06-22T22:23:10.418-04:00Without a map<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6F5buPS-Iy8BrFGOkVdgCiYt74dkYtVO3-QWbgvUbwGhjbKobcaoF1ceOq9Ychzubimj592KTdxxVPvKDqGzpdl9PYhvJinoySR7CI6P_5D_B8nqfnGOncGK-xj2nTpY3pW0OnLht7XvF/s1600/FathersDay12_01"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 214px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5755173294747773874" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6F5buPS-Iy8BrFGOkVdgCiYt74dkYtVO3-QWbgvUbwGhjbKobcaoF1ceOq9Ychzubimj592KTdxxVPvKDqGzpdl9PYhvJinoySR7CI6P_5D_B8nqfnGOncGK-xj2nTpY3pW0OnLht7XvF/s320/FathersDay12_01" /></a> Today marks the 21st anniversary of the very first Fathers' Day celebrated by my Dear Old Person. One of our dear sons was born in the fall of 1989, and the other in the summer of 1991. Neither I nor my Dear Old Person had much of an idea of how to manage either event, both of us having more or less lost our parents through various mysteries and accidents of familial history. Some of these reached, apparently, into the very antecedents of Scandinvian geneaology; the Danish history when peeled away was particularly lurid. In my own past were the shadows of Appalachia and a long exile, useless for the charting of a map into the future. Nevertheless, we joined hands and stepped off into the void, somehow managing to bring two amazing young men along with us as we sidestepped or waded right through joys and troubles, just as most people do every day.<br /><br />Joys came. Small boys creating language together, racing each other for ridiculous accomplishments, gradually emerging like sculptures with marble dust blown away in painstaking gusts to reveal completely different personalities. Large boys, making music and sports and smells, eating like Biblical plagues, teaching us, lighting the corners in ways we'd never have expected. Through these years my Dear Old Person worked quietly but constantly to make more money, to be something more than his father had been, to make his sons proud, to give them something other than what he recalled. What he recalled, in fact, he said little of, much of it seeming too strange or frightening to bring into the present. He spent as many minutes as possible with the fists of small boys pulling on his beard, with the voices of small boys crowing at him as he fixed broken tricycles or set up antique electric trains under the tree at Christmastime. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr46gxiV0N_PucUUB1YfEb0UOX144leK1yBPaKOmVxJpyqlo1OQpByFrCO1S_uvLIvezMgE77fU46yJr5KV3cpCgbLPlPrPvrxSXbw0dAsbxAJhUPFxJya9_bnK2JdWsbflv-qXSGZ0y1F/s1600/FathersDay12_02"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 214px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 320px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5755177108524028594" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjr46gxiV0N_PucUUB1YfEb0UOX144leK1yBPaKOmVxJpyqlo1OQpByFrCO1S_uvLIvezMgE77fU46yJr5KV3cpCgbLPlPrPvrxSXbw0dAsbxAJhUPFxJya9_bnK2JdWsbflv-qXSGZ0y1F/s320/FathersDay12_02" /></a><br /><br />Troubles came. Some were small and uneven, those day-by-day things every family finds its way through. The loss of his father, inch by painful inch, to Alzheimers and anger, was large and deadly, causing fractures and fault lines along which the whole family broke like waves over rocks; the aftershocks of which remain with us these 10 years later. Through all these troubles, there were these amazing boys. And there was this amazing father, who persevered through all adversity, strong and stubborn and sometimes frightening. From the Wisconsin links to the old country, I often heard the voice of Aunt Thelma: "You can always tell a Dane, but you can't tell him much." Today we work our way around a progessive neuropathy that means we dance constantly around the physicality of day-to-day living. This walking is all done without a map, for there are no directions given with such diagnoses.<br /><br />But it's not all that different from kids, really. We've had to dive into who we are, where we came from, what defined us. We've had to face things square on, or decide not to face them. We've gotten up in the morning and put on our clothes and started the days. We've laughed our heads off with our treasured friends, and cried our heads off with them. Or we've exchanged glances or hugs that transcended words, and been grateful for such blessings. Always there's a sense of the grace given to those who are long-bound, long-handfast wives, husbands, partners. We make promises of love for better or worse, richer or poorer, sickness or health. There is no map for delivery on those promises. And yet...and yet: it is possible to find your way, walking together, making best guesses, trusting each other, without a map.<br /><br />So: join me today in the celebration of Fathers' Day, recalling those who have done their best and gone on, and those who still do their best every day. Happy Fathers' Day. Blessings to us all.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEBJh-HJN9kimcJQwKAuK6H-3OEGW6nIqytdGzVH2Af3dGRKbpfJG9SKO5VKw7ukQYAh19HhgCI92Bm_b0taEdoqg9K77ZPkQaOIe1ULRFdG76-GHqSrCqYABiFAjgxowqz5zHsvWWeHMv/s1600/FathersDay12_03"/></a><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEBJh-HJN9kimcJQwKAuK6H-3OEGW6nIqytdGzVH2Af3dGRKbpfJG9SKO5VKw7ukQYAh19HhgCI92Bm_b0taEdoqg9K77ZPkQaOIe1ULRFdG76-GHqSrCqYABiFAjgxowqz5zHsvWWeHMv/s1600/FathersDay12_03"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 214px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5755183844954461074" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEBJh-HJN9kimcJQwKAuK6H-3OEGW6nIqytdGzVH2Af3dGRKbpfJG9SKO5VKw7ukQYAh19HhgCI92Bm_b0taEdoqg9K77ZPkQaOIe1ULRFdG76-GHqSrCqYABiFAjgxowqz5zHsvWWeHMv/s320/FathersDay12_03" /></a>Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-66683241429265266542012-01-22T17:54:00.006-05:002012-01-22T18:42:01.656-05:00Simple, under robin's egg blue<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLxbGqN20PXfnMkygu2qqlCGMcmSrE-R4ard3Z4Z_Qi8ZBvjHEQn1MAMLnQLE0hBglNrsgNF4weAD_R2JbIoGf-ldSC31ujmrSTzuTSlJH-7PW46coRvPcFGZG31aqTnDrPQi-ZCMNn3tv/s1600/January2012_RoastChicken"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLxbGqN20PXfnMkygu2qqlCGMcmSrE-R4ard3Z4Z_Qi8ZBvjHEQn1MAMLnQLE0hBglNrsgNF4weAD_R2JbIoGf-ldSC31ujmrSTzuTSlJH-7PW46coRvPcFGZG31aqTnDrPQi-ZCMNn3tv/s320/January2012_RoastChicken" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5700594775297587058" /></a><br />The weekend draws to a close, and in northeastern Florida it's been a wonder. Clear, comfortable days under stunning skies as blue as diamonds wish they were, full of birdsong and hope, beckoning like sirens toward Spring. Too early!, our minds say, but to our hearts and our gardeners' hands, the lure is almost irresistible. And so at our house, we've spent much of the day simply sitting under the perfect turquoise sky, watching breezes ruffle the Spanish moss, being grateful for our blessings.<br /><br />Among these, as my dear friends and readers will know, are counted simple foods. These are the foods we would all put before our families had we the time; these are the foods for which we yearn, not because they present the challenges of our favorite chefs de cuisine, but because they require little more than the investment of time, a commodity that often seems just beyond reach. As we sat tonight, watching the dusk come, listening to the last evensong of the birds, we prepared for a simple meal of roast chicken and potatoes with salad.<br /><br />Roast chicken breasts are easily prepared on a two-tiered gas grill, using whole chicken breasts with skin on. Salt and pepper, and place on the topmost rack of your grill. Cover and allow to roast until the skin is golden brown the the thickest part of the meat tests done. Using those new, delightful tiny potatoes as a compliment to the roast chicken, I toss them lightly with olive oil in a small cast iron skillet and scatter with a touch of kosher salt. The skillet can be placed under the roasting chicken after half an hour or so of roasting; chicken breasts with bone and skin will need an hour or so - perhaps a bit more - to cook while the small potatoes take 30 or 45 minutes. When they're done the small potatoes need nothing more than a touch of pepper. This evening I split them and topped with a tiny spoonful of feta cheese, but no one knows your people better than you. Feta, fine cheddar, or nothing more than pepper: simple, simple. Finally, a bag of salad (yes, I did use a bag o' salad; as I've often said here, shortcuts have their places!), added fresh watermelon and croutons and supper was ready. The bright sky, which had verged on a bright robin's egg blue all day long, darkened until the silhouettes of trees and moss were backlit by shadow.<br /><br />We moved indoors to simple food and company, and wish you all the joys of your own.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-74595987358004908012012-01-15T17:23:00.005-05:002012-01-15T18:23:23.638-05:00Wisconsin<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO3lFYuT-IDb0pqJPOyVCIDVzFZrii0e9Zg-RGi_4vugcSRvI_NhFrh97fVPZTp-6rTuoiNUjOn6JU2Bfd6jDQem2VyF9mTcJhW-vdA1cn9GhwIOLdrZQ-N80RSQ5sMf0lJnCbb9g1niD8/s1600/popNavy.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhO3lFYuT-IDb0pqJPOyVCIDVzFZrii0e9Zg-RGi_4vugcSRvI_NhFrh97fVPZTp-6rTuoiNUjOn6JU2Bfd6jDQem2VyF9mTcJhW-vdA1cn9GhwIOLdrZQ-N80RSQ5sMf0lJnCbb9g1niD8/s320/popNavy.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5698002125291082690" /></a> We inherited the Green Bay Packers from my father-in-law. He was born in 1920 in the curiously-named Poy Sippi, Wisconsin to Danish parents who still spoke Danish at home. His early years were spent farming in rural Wisconsin. In young adulthood he lived in Beloit and found his way to Chicago and eventually far to the south through the changing fortunes of the War. In old age he was afflicted by Alzheimers and was variously cranky, difficult and downright mean. In some ways it might be fair to say that parts of our family were destroyed on the rocks of his personal shipwreck, but that's a story for another time, my dears. This evening, we're thinking of one tiny connection that has successfully persisted as we watch the NFL playoffs and rally, as always, around the Pack. <br /><br />This morning we happened upon an old movie on TCM. It was a typical Margaret O'Brien movie of the mid-40s, sentimental and simple, yet resonant thanks to a cast that included Edward G. Robinson and a screenplay by Dalton Trumbo. Our Vines Have Tender Grapes, it was called. Set in Wisconsin among Norwegian farmers, it had faint echoes of Pop's childhood, seen through the eyes of Hollywood, of course, but no less unmistakable.<br /><br />A year or so before we were married - and many years before the perceptible effects of Alzheimers - we traveled to WIsconsin to visit Pop's family and see the places he'd known as a young man. It's a beautiful place with its great spaces caught in boreal forests that must have reminded all those Scandinavian emigrants of the snow-bounded and blue-skied lands of coastal and inland waters they'd left behind. And though the geography and some of the cultural fine points seemed foreign or even exotic, there was - and is - a common sense of warmth and openness between those of the south and those of the midwest as though they are cousins of cultural etiquette. Certainly they're cousins of the table; there was never a more abundant, homely, delicious board than the one we shared with Pop's sisters and their families. They were kind, generous and unfailingly polite, their pronounced northern midwestern accents shaped by nearly-forgetten Danish and Norwegian cadences. One of these aunts and her husband would, some years hence, travel to Florida for Pop's funeral at considerable inconvenience simply because it was the right thing to do, and for the love his sister always kept for him.<br /><br />Long years later, we cheer faithfully for the Packers in memory of Pop, letting the sharp, jagged memories of recent years recede into the distance. It's still good to recall the words of Aunt Thelma, a Norwegian girl married into the family and often-uttered where Pop was concerned. "Well, you can always tell a Dane," she would say. "But you can't tell him much."<br /><br />Go, Pack, go.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3368158831786362298.post-13555604489544831002012-01-01T17:47:00.007-05:002012-01-01T19:23:12.096-05:00The robins are coming, the robins are coming<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq9VQvs1wiPUcPiyfOHgCtKvx5_Vnzvtaom0ny7JF_WMw9joXsCdlU0gV0Iy8QZ8Zi5Z0xKCrHT5mDN41hVQSc5KC5ydJC4flblT1SYK5m83HNGlKyuQ8qrhgc6djlTDA-YT51zYRWmtJ1/s1600/January2012_NewYearsRobins.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 221px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq9VQvs1wiPUcPiyfOHgCtKvx5_Vnzvtaom0ny7JF_WMw9joXsCdlU0gV0Iy8QZ8Zi5Z0xKCrHT5mDN41hVQSc5KC5ydJC4flblT1SYK5m83HNGlKyuQ8qrhgc6djlTDA-YT51zYRWmtJ1/s320/January2012_NewYearsRobins.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5692808469181863394" /></a> Out with the old and in with the new, or perhaps: Let us put by that which we've outgrown or outworn or simply need no more, and let us take up and celebrate that which brings us learning, growth or most emphatically, peace. And let us remember to cherish what lies between. It can be so dangerously easy to envision only The Old and The New, without consideration for all that copious territory describing the rest of our lives. And most of that doesn't need to be thrown away, or embraced for the sake of its novelty. Most of that wide expanse simply needs to be tended. <br /><br />Important things for tending: Robins. Beautifully plump red-breasted American robins arrive here every year, but the time of their coming can vary widely. We caught our first glimpse this winter just before Christmas, about December 23. It was a small flock, and they disappeared too quickly to be caught in photographs. Just a few days later, on December 30, the trees were suddenly filled with their voices (which really DO sound oddly like something a Victorian writer might have described as "chirrup-ing"), and their curious explorations on the ground, characterized by a good deal more hopping than flying. So much hopping and interrogation of the ground do they do that they provide excellent subjects for photos. In the photo at the top, here, there's at least one robin, but I defy you to find it. This is partly because I am a woefully inadequate photographer, and partly because I seldom listen to the wisdom of my dear old person on this, even when he stands at my elbow with a much better camera than my phone could ever offer. But it's there. And in spite of the general gloom of the landscape and the date on the calendar, that virtually invisible little bird spans the continuum of The Old and The New with a simple reminder. Spring will come.<br /><br />As the chilly days wind along and we wait for more immediate proof of the spring for which mid-winter is the harbinger, we observe with familiar markers. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ybQb7yK9HoqA11f83DGiWKkffCHQmVVQGQuLNN1qkPct-eqobW7jS4-Xh29LomEH0N4tBXmc2OySTkEVCudqQJHcaOyNde0xbB8ASYwwaMGrBHj478LhpI2ocBeS5gDVeA5xP8yXOm33/s1600/January2012_NewYearsPlate.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 221px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8ybQb7yK9HoqA11f83DGiWKkffCHQmVVQGQuLNN1qkPct-eqobW7jS4-Xh29LomEH0N4tBXmc2OySTkEVCudqQJHcaOyNde0xbB8ASYwwaMGrBHj478LhpI2ocBeS5gDVeA5xP8yXOm33/s320/January2012_NewYearsPlate.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5692810993336995954" /></a> Often the markers, the reminders, take the form of food. Here in the south, we mark the arrival and passing of the New Year with a plate like this one. Some people call it Hoppin' John; when I was growing up it was just "peas and rice", and everybody knew the peas in question were black-eyed peas cooked with ham and served over rice. Everybody also knew, or seemed to know, that the foods symbolized something, each with its unique significance. These symbols are lost to me personally; I only know that it's good luck to have this meal on New Year's Day, and that the whole thing turned out especially well this year. I thought I might talk about old and new by sharing the "how" of the cooking here. Standard apologies to my vegetarian friends.<br /><br />This whole undertaking is made easier if you cooked a ham for Christmas. If you did, you have a ham bone and/or some pieces of ham you can cut up and use to season most of the meal. If you didn't, and you want to approach the meal from a traditional standpoint you'll have to face down the mysteries of ham hocks on your own. Good luck. For our purposes let's assume you DID cook that ham, or that you're adjusting for vegetarianism as you go along. So: there are, in our family, four main components to prepare. <br /><br />Black-eyed peas must be bought dried and prepared according to package instructions. At my house this means simmered until done with the ham bone, some kosher salt and some Texas Pete. <br />Cornbread is prepared according to your own lights. At my house, this one has one of the shortcuts I advocate as a cook and a relatively sane person (readers will know that I believe cooks should identify and embrace those shortcuts with which they can live, and should heartily reject those with which they cannot). I use a Martha White cornbread mix shortcut, with the caveat that one cannot add sugar to cornbread. There it is, and I stand by it. Gather ye cornbreads how ye may.<br />Rice is critically important. In my kitchen we use a half-and-half combination of organic brown and basmati rices, both of which you can get at the grocery store. Simmered together, they fill the kitchen with a delicate aroma that takes its part in the whole of the meal's experience.<br />Greens are different every time I cook them, but this year they're splendid. I prefer collards for the mild flavor and one of the shortcuts I can abide is the purchase of them pre-cleaned and more or less ready to cook. This year I coated a cast iron skillet with olive oil and added very finely chopped onion, just enough to make a layer in the skillet. As the onion cooked to translucence I added about a teaspoon of kosher salt, a couple of teaspoons of sugar and several dashes of white wine vinegar. I thought something delicate like pear-infused vinegar would have been lovely, but no such luxury lay to hand. I also thought some red pepper would be a good addition. I was out, but in the top of my pantry was a small packet from a local pizza joint, enought for a slice of pizza. Perfect. A quarter cup or so of water de-glazed the skillet and the greens were added slowly to allow them to cook down. A pound of collard greens, when cooked down in a 10-inch cast iron skillet, results in about enough to serve 4 or 5 people, but it takes awhile. This cooked most of the afternoon, and when finished looked more or less like this photo. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb0V1Pnb_v_U04FwOMcUW75E3r-2zOXhydRq3ZOTlZjm2xOekqFSAG4cXT5_Mo9rfxB_o9VoOVNnUhSCXBSczWADSjp2V9wbhcRYXs6l4ifCeO6gtV6EGDkTu1ZiVMOKzavFm8JTHICd1M/s1600/January2012_NewYearsPlate2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 124px; height: 166px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb0V1Pnb_v_U04FwOMcUW75E3r-2zOXhydRq3ZOTlZjm2xOekqFSAG4cXT5_Mo9rfxB_o9VoOVNnUhSCXBSczWADSjp2V9wbhcRYXs6l4ifCeO6gtV6EGDkTu1ZiVMOKzavFm8JTHICd1M/s320/January2012_NewYearsPlate2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5692818497033374338" /></a><br /><br />Happy New Year and thank you for continuing to return to read, despite the erratic occurence of posts. As 2012 begins, one of my goals is to meet you here more often, for I am grateful to find myself learning and growing with each interaction. For now, peas and rice are on the table. Let's eat.Angela Christensenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00629271379912565894noreply@blogger.com3