How Time Flys or Tempus Fidgets

So, yes, it's been a very long time since I had anything to say here. As I start typing I am thinking that this will be a short one but who knows once I get started.

There are a variety major events that fall into lives and mark beginnings or endings. Birth, of course.  I don't remember anything about mine but without it there wouldn't be any blog at all, now would there? Not all events are universal. The first one I have a clear memory of occurred on April, 9, 1947. Yes, I'm that old, what did you think? I was about 2 1/2 weeks shy of my 5th birthday. (Now you know exactly how old.) It was before severe weather forecasting, before anyone we knew had a TV, and before tornado sirens. It blew a fair amount of Woodward, Oklahoma, my hometown, away including the roof of our house on Webster St which came off as Dad, holding my hand, and Mom, carrying my baby sister, crossed the front porch trying to reach what Dad hoped was the safety of a depression in the vacant lot across the street. I think that storm blew away any memories I had before that because that's where it all starts for me. There were minor events over the following years but graduating from High School, a first marriage, the births of two great children, the job that became a career, a divorce, second marriage (finally got it right) that came with another great kid and the birth of the last child all were the kind of milestones you think of as major life events. Those were followed by the deaths within two consecutive years of my first son and my parents. Those were hard to deal with for a long time. That pain was somewhat eased because my sisters and I decided to keep the country house and 95 acres that our folks retired to because for twenty five years it had been the one place the family gathered. We did it usually for a week in the Spring and at the Fourth of July and for Thanksgiving. After they were gone we kept the house as it was and kept gathering there for another about seventeen years.

As we aged care and maintenance became more difficult so that the decision was made that we would have to sell. We emptied out the house, divided things up, and the place sold a week ago last Wednesday. I am grieving. The whole process has been difficult for me. I knew it would be but what I didn't expect was that the largest component of that grief is a sense of abandoning my parents. I know that doesn't make much sense but, there it is. As long as I could go to that house, sit at that table, play cards in that game room, I felt connected. Now I'm adrift and think that, for me, the only way I will ever get back to something remotely approximating stable is going to be to write about it. After all that's the way I deal with things. I will also try to get back to the other blog to write about writing but it may be a few more days before I can manage that.

THE Cookbook Among Many

            I had the very best intentions when I started blogging but we know what road those pave. After a couple of years and dozens of intentions I believe I'll give it another try. What started this was this morning, Isabel, the spice of my life, wanted pancakes for breakfast. I always aim to please but it had been a while since I had made some so I pulled out the Fannie Farmer cook book to check some proportions. That reminded me of the recent death of the person who had, in my mind, become Fannie Farmer. Marion Cunningham (no, not Ritchie's mother, silly!) who had an amazing career in food was, of course, the editor of the twelfth edition of Fannie Farmer and, really, the writer/creator of the thirteenth. Even so, I always thought of "checking with Fannie" not "checking with Marion."

             My realization that I should do something to commemorate her passing struck when I commented to Isabel that of all my cookbooks, somewhere around 400 I would think, Fannie Farmer was the least interesting and the most useful of them all. The least interesting because I tend to look for those books that include historical or regional information, family stories, or connect to people real or fictional that I am interested in. For instance, I have a cookbook based on the meals described in the Nero Wolfe novels of Rex Stout. At any rate, if I have a question about a recipe, about a technique, or about an ingredient it's straight to Fannie Farmer I go.

            Having read more about her since her death I believe I will try to begin to think or speak of consulting Marion instead of Fannie. Either would be a good resource for anyone wanting the basics of cooking. Yes, there are techniques that have been refined beyond what either would recognize but my statement stands. If you can have only one book, one teacher, they were the ones to go to.

            Fannie was partially paralyzed by a stroke at age 16, missed several years of formal education but learned to cook in that time in her mother's kitchen. She later opened the family home as a boarding house which became famous for the meals served. In 1887, at 30, she entered the Boston Cooking School and remained there as an assistant until she was chosen as the principal in 1891. In spite of a limp left from the stroke and continuing ill health she was a tireless teacher, lecturer, and advocate for good cooking and good eating. Her book was not called Fannie Farmer, it was the Boston Cooking-School Cookbook. It's basics still exist in the form given it by her successor.

            Marion Cunningham was an agoraphobic. She was mostly a mother and homemaker until age 50 when she took a cooking class with the great James Beard. Then she became his assistant and for many years toured the country teaching both on her own and with Beard. Beard recommended her to rewrite Fannie Farmer for modern audiences (there had been a few changes in language, foods available and technique since 1918) and she did that. Her revisions were published first in 1976 then in 1990.

            Even though the modern Fannie Farmer Cookbook is a straightforward recipe and method book with very little personal in it, the passion for good, healthy food still comes through if you listen hard enough as you read.

On New Year's Eve

Well, Christmas is over and I had a great time. Some of my presents were a little strange but still fun. One of them was just a piece of news (more on that in a few weeks) and one was the opportunity to go to Austin and cook and clean house for my daughter who lives there and had surgery on her ankle a week ago. She had lived for a few days on whatever her teenage boys brought her (“I never want to see another Hot Pocket as long as I live!”) So we not only got a lot of time to visit, laugh, and reflect. I got to be a hero for eggs over medium, grilled cheese sandwiches, and hamburger soup. I was a hero to the boys too since they got a chance to get out and do some “teenager” things for a couple of days during their Christmas vacation.

Here we are on the doorstep of a new year and all these things are making me pensive. We have calm excitement on all fronts. From the simple prospect of New Year’s Eve with friends pickin’ and singin’ and makin’ music to the peace, possibly temporary, of having the election over, things seem good. Family stuff is on good tracks, the youngest and her spouse have just about finished remodeling the house they bought a couple of blocks from us, the son seems happy in his job and life, the oldest daughter, in spite of the serious ankle surgery and after many years of struggle to raise her boys and keep things together will graduate from college in May. These things make me happy.

I’m not one for making New Year’s resolutions. That’s mostly because I’m a quick learner. After not keeping them a few times I figured out that the solution for that problem was to not make any more. I’m going to say that this new decision I’m making is not a NYR, just a plan that happened to occur to me on December 31.

I have been letting age creep up on me and I have determined to stop that. Oh, I don’t think I can stop getting older. I’ve announced several times that I was having no more birthdays. That doesn’t work. The arthritis isn’t going away or the blood pressure meds or the ringing in my ears. What I intend to get rid of is thinking of myself as being old. I may have to get rid of all the mirrors in the house but I will if I have to. Just a general warning for those of you who have to put up with me, this will almost certainly mean that I will act sillier than most of my recent behavior. And ladies, any flirting is harmless and not intended to lead anywhere. In spite of the old saying about being as young as you feel, I’ll try to keep my hands to myself.

I hope you all have a great new year and “May the road rise to meet you , may the wind be always at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall soft upon your fields and, until we meet again, may God hold you in the hollow of his hand"

"I Told You So?" Let's Not Do That.

All kinds of new things are happening or getting ready to happen. The new year is uncomfortable close. The Episcopal Church in the area of Fort Worth and westward is going through changes. The U.S. will soon have a new president with a completely new administration. I’ve spent a lot of time reading and thinking about these changes. Oh, not much about the new year. I’ve seen a lot of those. I don’t know that they are getting any better for me although perhaps they’re some simpler. No, it’s the stuff happening to my church and my country that is holding my attention.

As far as the Fort Worth Diocese of the Episcopal Church is concerned, that is working itself out in the only way it could. There are now two Anglican related entities in this area and I still don’t see any likelihood that we can end things peacefully among ourselves. I think the civil courts (how’s that for an oxymoron?) will have to eventually decide who owns the property and belongs in the church buildings. It’s hard for me to see it as a case where, as long as you can get a majority vote you can leave the organization behind and take the property with you. Anyway, I didn’t intend to get into that part of it again.

What I do think needs some reflection is how we’re going to treat each other after all these changes take place. I’ve been reading some blogs and forums on both the situation in the Episcopal Church and our national government. What I find way too prevalent in both are those who chortle as they predict doom for either the other side, or for the whole organization because of who “won.” You know, that may be the root of the problem, this whole idea of “winning” or “losing.” If I choose the cannoli does that mean the strawberry cheesecake loses? No, it just means it wasn’t chosen. It happens all the time. Life is a series of choices. We make them and, yes, we then have to live with them.
We won’t know how those things work out for a while. Maybe you’re right, the country, with Barak Obama as president, will go to hell in a hand basket and, possibly, I’ll go to hell individually for believing that we can all worship together whether we agree on all theological issues or not. Obviously, I didn’t think so or I wouldn’t have turned my hand in the ways that I did.

What I am sure of is that we will all survive no matter how it turns out. The country will not be destroyed by the election of Barak Obama. We’ve weathered the administrations of some pretty poor presidents. God’s church will not be destroyed by division. After all, the divisions were already well along in New Testament times and have continued at a pretty steady pace. The point (ah, ha, he’s finally getting to the point!) is that instead of wishing for the worst possible outcome for those who don’t agree with us, we need to be praying with our spiritual being and with our hands for all of us to succeed. It’s not a matter of winning or losing, it’s a matter of success or failure for all of us. I’ll tell you who’s really in the wrong here; it’s the ones who are hoping for the things to fall apart in abject failure just so they can say to those who disagreed with them, “I told you so.”

Thoughts on Love and The Fort Worth Diocese of the Episcopal Church

It's interesting the Spice of My Life insisted that she had to have firewood before winter rolled in. I argued that in the past we've not used enough to make it worthwhile to buy a rick of wood but she's more comfortable knowing that she can...well, send me out to the wood pile so she can sit by a nice toasty fire. I might be right, she concedes, that it doesn't save any money in the long run but that's not the point. We do disagree about this and over the last 30+ years we've disagreed on a lot of things. We didn't always agree on child raising techniques, certainly not on money matters, seldom on what to watch on TV, never on putting catsup on scrambled eggs (yuck.) So why are we still together? A question worth pondering in this week running up to the diocesan convention of the Fort Worth Diocese of the Episcopal Church.



Ok, I've pondered and I can't see it. Why are so many people happy to be running away from the rest of us because we don't all agree? It's really true that I am convinced that God calls women to be priests just as he calls men and that He expects us to let Him do the sorting out of who is worthy and who is not to join us at the communion table and it is my belief that love is love and it's not for me to say who you should or should not love. Do they think that my convictions, which I firmly believe but always know as a human that, I might be wrong, do they really think my brain waves will contaminate theirs? Am I and those who think like me Typhoid Marys that could infect their thinking and make them sick? I don't think so. I promise, if She Who Must and I could be happy being together, it ought to be a snap for church folks.



The point is, I don't understand but I'm quite sure that the vote at convention will pass the second resolution for the diocese as a whole to pull out, isolate themselves from germy people like me and become a part of the Province of the Southern Cone. Well, they will think of it as the diocese leaving, those of us who are not willing to go along with that will wish them well with great sadness and go about God's work here as the Diocese of Fort Worth of the Episcopal Church. We'll choose a new bishop, reorganize and get back to what we know we need to do. Will there be issues maybe law suits over buildings and property? I'm sure there will, I don't see how it could be otherwise. We think they're ours and they think they're theirs. That is the saddest thing about all this. Oh, not the property or the certainty of legal battles. No, it's the fact that we have come to the point that it's about "them" and "us." It shouldn't be that way for Christians. I can't help coming back to that 30+ years with my sweetie. If you love each other enough, it's not necessary to break up your home. That's what will happen this week and I don't see anything to do about it. I am sad.

Bits Found in the Bottom of My Pockets

Well, this is me. This is all you get when you come here. Just little bits of fuzz collected from the pockets I keep words in. From time to time you may find a poem I'm working on, a story idea that's percolating, or just a rant about something that has aggravated or inspired me. You may find me going on about music (I think I'm in love with Susan Tedeschi) or guitars (I'm crazy about my Guild but my Aerie [www.aerieguitars.com] is the coolest thing I've ever played) or complaining about how my writing projects are going or about what's happening in the Fort Worth Diocese of the Episcopal Church or politics or the idiot who cut me off on the freeway last night or, I don't know, the number of slices of bread you get in a loaf.

Perhaps, occasionally, we'll get to something serious. Don't hold your breath. I hope to get an occasional response from someone even if it scorches a little. I'm a writer, for me that means communication, contact with someone who read what I wrote. That's the joy of doing book signings or poetry readings, meeting folks who are interested in what you do. I'm hoping for a similar experience here. I would love to get discussions started about writing, Ted Kooser, blues, Susan Tedeschi, Episcopal Church polity, guitars, bread slices or something that hasn't occurred to me yet.