I just watched an interview with a couple of authors who have both written about the myth of choice in our country. This is a subject I haven't necessarily studied at great length, but I've spent a good deal of my life thinking in terms of my own choices...or non-choices.
I remember vividly in my late 20's suddenly coming to the realization that there were some major life choices I didn't really make consciously. That is, I didn't know there were other options.
An example: I don't remember making the conscious choice about whether or not to marry. I made choices about when and who and where, just not ever making the choice to not stay single. Or, having children. I remember deciding how many kids I would have and when I would have them, but I don't remember making the choice to have them or not.
Don't get me wrong...I think I would have made the same choices anyway, and with the same result. I'm just not sure one can call it a "choice" if you don't see any other options.
The guy author, whose book is "The Myth of Choice", pointed out that perhaps we have far too many choices in our culture. Not the big ones, but the small ones. We expend way too much time and energy and capital on making choices that aren't earthshaking. It takes me far too long to do my grocery shopping, as an example, because there's like 300 different types of coffee on the shelves, with 200 different prices and 100 different ecological ramifications. It would take me far less time to complete my shopping list if there were only 10. Or 8.
In college, in a sociology class, I remember reading that we think we have choices in this country for our life mate, but really, we are so hemmed in by societal strictures about which race would be an appropriate husband material, and age and socio-economic status and education level and geographical location and...the list is endless which limits our "choice" of even whom to date, let alone whom to marry.
A man I met and dated in high school came to my college my freshman year and proposed marriage to me. Yet he was enrolled in another college located a state away and I couldn't see how a long-distance relationship would work. So, despite the fact that I loved him greatly, I sadly had to say no.
But back to the coffee analogy, maybe we are better off not having 150 million men to choose from. How would we EVER make a choice? Would we all die single and alone if we had to choose one life mate out of all the men in the world?
Not to get too political, but the Anti-Abortion folks think that, given a "choice", pregnant women would ALWAYS choose abortion over adoption or keeping the baby. They haven't a clue that sometimes, there is no other choice. If the father is absent and not wanting to be involved, if the woman is compromised by her health, if the fetus is no longer viable...the list is endless about why abortion would be a sad choice. If you do away with abortion altogether (an impossibility, but that's what they think) and one's only "option" is to carry the baby to term, regardless of the baby's health, that's really not a choice.
Or the anti-abortion folks who had a choice themselves, they just don't trust anyone else to make the "moral" choice they did. Sarah Palin once famously said (I'm paraphrasing here) that she had made the difficult choice to carry her Down's Syndrome baby and she was glad she had. Reading between the lines, she made a conscious decision to have her baby, but other women wouldn't have the same courage to make that choice as well. Ergo, they shouldn't have a choice.
I heard somewhere that we make an average of 70 choices per day. Now, most of those are trivia: what should I wear to work, should I go out to lunch or carry it, what will I have for dinner? But some of them are life-changing. Sometimes our "choices" are the result of dithering and not making a choice, which is in itself a choice.
This week's Time Magazine has an article about people who choose not to have children. I remember leaving my kids' with a childless couple up my street while on a work-related trip. When I returned home, Terry confided in me that they saw this as an opportunity to decide for good whether or not to have children and they had confirmed their latent desire to remain childless.
I was horrified, thinking that the boys had been so bad, they had perhaps pushed Terry and Dan over the childless edge. No, she hastened to reassure me, they hadn't been bad. It was just that they had taken so much time from her home-based business. She had had no idea that she couldn't just park my kids in front of a TV and go about her business.
Many childless couples receive the label of "selfish" when they say that they have chosen to be childless. Sympathies abound for those sad couples who don't choose to be childless but who nevertheless are. But perish the thought that some couples choose for whatever reason to not have kids. They are truly being selfless, not bringing a baby into this world, overpopulated as it is, to a family that doesn't want them, or wants them just to keep Grandma happy or due to societal pressure or because all their friends are doing it. (We all remember our mothers' answer to that excuse. Some variation of "If all your friends jump off a cliff...")
I moved to North Carolina on a split second decision, thinking as I did so that many of my life-changing decisions, made with a lot of thought and prayer, turned out to be so abysmal, so I should try making a life-changing decision on a whim.
I haven't yet decided whether this post makes any sense, so I'll just post it anyway. Maybe all of us should make decisions with the clear understanding that we really don't have unlimited choices and sometimes, it's a mere choice between two evils. And never, ever judge anyone else's choice.
Thursday, December 26, 2013
Monday, July 15, 2013
Snooty Foodies
I'm watching Food Network and I honestly just heard Giada claim that she learned this mah-velous trick at cooking school in Paris. Sooner or later, you hear every chef subtly slip in phrase like this. "When I was in Paris last time" or "I'm 'classically trained'" or "When I was studying under Chef Georges in the south of France" which is code for "I spent a butt-load of money going to Paris to study under other snooty chefs who have inflated egos and it gave me an ego the size of Detroit."
You know, Giada, who makes pasta every other episode, who uses lemon zest in everything and who lives on the beach in California. Which viewers know because the intro footage features Giada walking on the beach with her oh-so-handsome husband and her so-cute daughter. (Except she has a pseudo-Italian pronunciation for everything Italian and she refers to it as "pa'-stuh" and not "pah-stuh'" like the rest of us.) . Giada, the one where the cameras are always focused on her cleavage.
She actually told viewers last week that allspice comes from the Med, and "exotic" spice. You mean allspice? That berry that grows on spice bushes all over the Ozarks and probably northern Arkansas??? What a snob!
So the trick that was shared by a top chef in Paris was: removing the tomato seeds from the meat of the tomato doesn't water down the dish as much.
Really? You mean that trick that I learned from my Detroit-raised mother at the tender age of four? You mean that trick that I thought everyone knew and we didn't have to go to Paris, France to learn it? That trick?
Honestly, as a wanna-be foodie, I watch a lot of cooking shows and I'm amazed at how truly stupid these great chefs think the rest of us are.
The latest episode of Food Network Star touts that during the last episode, America gets to vote for the winner. Wow! Like, we haven't tasted a single dish these contestants are offering and we have to take the Judges' word for it that their dish was the best they've ever had or tasted like dog food or whatever.
Judges on these competitions tend to have very elevated views of their own palates...as in, they alone have the trained taste buds to discern the grain of cinnamon the contestant used in her ice cream and of course, they alone know that cinnamon doesn't EVER, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES belong in ice cream. Or that he doesn't think raw onions belong in ANY dish, EVER. Snooty, I must say.
At least Ina, the Barefoot Contessa, while she has a lot of very good reasons for being snooty, isn't the snootiest. She lives in the Hamptons, for Chrissake, and her husband has a very well-paying job in the City, so she can afford to serve lobster at a beach party or not one but two ducks for her little dinner party of 30. (I couldn't fit 10 people in my dining room, let alone 30) The reason she isn't as snooty is, she explains things, not in a knowing, "I learned this in Parie" attitude, but in a straightforward, educating tone of voice. And she explains that for years she did something one way and then she learned another way which is much easier. As in, it wasn't wrong, it is just a better way to do it.
These TV chefs have an unnamed butcher and fish monger and baker in their hip pocket that they frequent (I know this because, they frequently say things like "Have your fishmonger do thus and so" or "your butcher should be able to find you a side of Argentian bison" or "my deli carries a rare, soft cheese made only in the mountains of Peru from llama milk").
What they don't tell you is the cheese is $50/ounce and the fish is only available to select customers on alternating Wednesday which are even not odd. In large cities, where you don't have a job outside of TV Land, so you have a whole day to wander around the City, looking in shops and having the fishmonger fillet your fish and the butcher butterfly your chicken. I imagine me trying to find a butcher anywhere in Food Lion and demand that he butterfly my chicken. That would go over real well.
They also make gobs and gobs of whatever dish they are preparing. As a single person household, even if I prepared a dish as practice (because you should never try a new dish on company, a sad fact I learned the hard way), I would be eating it for 3 months. And then you don't need a whole bottle of wine to deglaze the pan, you just need 2 tablespoons and what are you going to do with the rest of the $60 bottle?
I do appreciate it when they say, "If you can't find xyz, you can substitute abc." At least, I think that's what they are saying. Maybe, just maybe, they are saying "If you are too poor to buy this wild cod caught off the shores of Borneo, then you can cheap out and serve white fish."
I well remember the first time I ever tasted caviar. It wasn't exactly a staple on my family's table, what with having 5 kids and my dad's professor's salary. So I was an adult before I ever tasted it. It seemed to me at the time that it was the ultimate in sophistication, the epitome of glamour and suave-i-tay. (see how I made up a French word) I took one very sophisticated small bite and then had to delicately spit it into my napkin, the way Mrs. Morehead taught us in Manners class. I don't think her example was for caviar, I think it had something to do with "what if you ever put a too-soft berry in your mouth" or something.
Anyway, I had to gulp some champagne to wash the rotten fish/salty taste out of my mouth. The taste was reminiscent of the docks down in Houston where we would go to buy shrimp. Not the shrimp, the actual dock water. And this is what goes for $100/pound, I thought to myself. Some things are obviously an acquired taste and some things are just downright inedible. Some fishmonger, with too much roe on his hands, saw them coming and made it out to be the latest and greatest in epicureanism.
Snooty, I'd say.
You know, Giada, who makes pasta every other episode, who uses lemon zest in everything and who lives on the beach in California. Which viewers know because the intro footage features Giada walking on the beach with her oh-so-handsome husband and her so-cute daughter. (Except she has a pseudo-Italian pronunciation for everything Italian and she refers to it as "pa'-stuh" and not "pah-stuh'" like the rest of us.) . Giada, the one where the cameras are always focused on her cleavage.
She actually told viewers last week that allspice comes from the Med, and "exotic" spice. You mean allspice? That berry that grows on spice bushes all over the Ozarks and probably northern Arkansas??? What a snob!
So the trick that was shared by a top chef in Paris was: removing the tomato seeds from the meat of the tomato doesn't water down the dish as much.
Really? You mean that trick that I learned from my Detroit-raised mother at the tender age of four? You mean that trick that I thought everyone knew and we didn't have to go to Paris, France to learn it? That trick?
Honestly, as a wanna-be foodie, I watch a lot of cooking shows and I'm amazed at how truly stupid these great chefs think the rest of us are.
The latest episode of Food Network Star touts that during the last episode, America gets to vote for the winner. Wow! Like, we haven't tasted a single dish these contestants are offering and we have to take the Judges' word for it that their dish was the best they've ever had or tasted like dog food or whatever.
Judges on these competitions tend to have very elevated views of their own palates...as in, they alone have the trained taste buds to discern the grain of cinnamon the contestant used in her ice cream and of course, they alone know that cinnamon doesn't EVER, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES belong in ice cream. Or that he doesn't think raw onions belong in ANY dish, EVER. Snooty, I must say.
At least Ina, the Barefoot Contessa, while she has a lot of very good reasons for being snooty, isn't the snootiest. She lives in the Hamptons, for Chrissake, and her husband has a very well-paying job in the City, so she can afford to serve lobster at a beach party or not one but two ducks for her little dinner party of 30. (I couldn't fit 10 people in my dining room, let alone 30) The reason she isn't as snooty is, she explains things, not in a knowing, "I learned this in Parie" attitude, but in a straightforward, educating tone of voice. And she explains that for years she did something one way and then she learned another way which is much easier. As in, it wasn't wrong, it is just a better way to do it.
These TV chefs have an unnamed butcher and fish monger and baker in their hip pocket that they frequent (I know this because, they frequently say things like "Have your fishmonger do thus and so" or "your butcher should be able to find you a side of Argentian bison" or "my deli carries a rare, soft cheese made only in the mountains of Peru from llama milk").
What they don't tell you is the cheese is $50/ounce and the fish is only available to select customers on alternating Wednesday which are even not odd. In large cities, where you don't have a job outside of TV Land, so you have a whole day to wander around the City, looking in shops and having the fishmonger fillet your fish and the butcher butterfly your chicken. I imagine me trying to find a butcher anywhere in Food Lion and demand that he butterfly my chicken. That would go over real well.
They also make gobs and gobs of whatever dish they are preparing. As a single person household, even if I prepared a dish as practice (because you should never try a new dish on company, a sad fact I learned the hard way), I would be eating it for 3 months. And then you don't need a whole bottle of wine to deglaze the pan, you just need 2 tablespoons and what are you going to do with the rest of the $60 bottle?
I do appreciate it when they say, "If you can't find xyz, you can substitute abc." At least, I think that's what they are saying. Maybe, just maybe, they are saying "If you are too poor to buy this wild cod caught off the shores of Borneo, then you can cheap out and serve white fish."
I well remember the first time I ever tasted caviar. It wasn't exactly a staple on my family's table, what with having 5 kids and my dad's professor's salary. So I was an adult before I ever tasted it. It seemed to me at the time that it was the ultimate in sophistication, the epitome of glamour and suave-i-tay. (see how I made up a French word) I took one very sophisticated small bite and then had to delicately spit it into my napkin, the way Mrs. Morehead taught us in Manners class. I don't think her example was for caviar, I think it had something to do with "what if you ever put a too-soft berry in your mouth" or something.
Anyway, I had to gulp some champagne to wash the rotten fish/salty taste out of my mouth. The taste was reminiscent of the docks down in Houston where we would go to buy shrimp. Not the shrimp, the actual dock water. And this is what goes for $100/pound, I thought to myself. Some things are obviously an acquired taste and some things are just downright inedible. Some fishmonger, with too much roe on his hands, saw them coming and made it out to be the latest and greatest in epicureanism.
Snooty, I'd say.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
She Got Grit(s)
My favorite niece (I'm calling her that in order to get the other favorite nieces' attention) recently posted the fact that she was in South Carolina eating shrimp and grits. And here I thought she was a very sophisticated, cultured and intelligent person. Guess I was wrong if she's actually admitting to eating Grits!
Now, I've done time ('scuse me, spent time) in the South and I know they love their grits. The thing is...I can't abide them. I've eaten wall paper paste with more flavor. Which might explain why I never, ever felt at home in the South. The rest of my family thinks of it as their home, but the Southern inoculation never took on me. I am unrepentantly a Yankee. I fully expect to be struck off a few Facebook pages because of this statement. Whenever a die-hard Southerner hears me say that I hate grits, they assure me I just haven't had them prepared properly. (gag)
Because aside from the flavorless, colorless blah gritty texture (at least they are aptly named), it's the preparation that puts me off. Grits, for the uninformed, are made from hominy. And hominy is made from corn kernels that have been soaked like 52 years in lye. You heard me. Lye.
The same stuff which is poisonous when ingested. The same stuff that you don't dare handle with bare hands, on account of it eats your skin off. You know, LYE.
And since grits are so colorless and flavorless, all the cooking shows are adding flavor and color like crazy in order to make the crap palatable. Evidently grits are the new sushi...I've discussed at length in a prior blog how I feel about raw fish. The hoity-toity chefs, proving that they are all about slumming it these days, prepare grits a hundred different ways. They add tons of butter, they add milk (gives all that grit at least some creaminess, purportedly), they add shrimp, they add peppers, they add cheese. A waste of good cheese and shrimp if you ask me.
If a food has so little flavor that it requires Herculean efforts to give it taste, why not take some shrimp and cheese and peppers and just make a dish out of that? Why ruin good food with grits?
The South is all about claiming grits as their staple food. Georgia (as in the State of) has declared grits to be their "state prepared food". (Don't get me started on states, including mine, having a State this and State that and State the other. Not content with just a State flower, they have State amphibians and insects and autumn trees and spring trees and dogs and microbe.)
Trouble is, the Native Americans were the first to manufacture the stuff and it was their dish, not the South's. Yet another contribution Native Americans have given European culture that goes unacknowledged.
So, while I know I will offend quite a few of my Southern friends and family with this unmasking of the unholy origin of grits, maybe there are others out there, like me, who can't stand the stuff and have been too embarrassed or shy or polite to say so. Never let it be said that I was too polite to say I hate grits. I say we start a support group.
Now, I've done time ('scuse me, spent time) in the South and I know they love their grits. The thing is...I can't abide them. I've eaten wall paper paste with more flavor. Which might explain why I never, ever felt at home in the South. The rest of my family thinks of it as their home, but the Southern inoculation never took on me. I am unrepentantly a Yankee. I fully expect to be struck off a few Facebook pages because of this statement. Whenever a die-hard Southerner hears me say that I hate grits, they assure me I just haven't had them prepared properly. (gag)
Because aside from the flavorless, colorless blah gritty texture (at least they are aptly named), it's the preparation that puts me off. Grits, for the uninformed, are made from hominy. And hominy is made from corn kernels that have been soaked like 52 years in lye. You heard me. Lye.
The same stuff which is poisonous when ingested. The same stuff that you don't dare handle with bare hands, on account of it eats your skin off. You know, LYE.
And since grits are so colorless and flavorless, all the cooking shows are adding flavor and color like crazy in order to make the crap palatable. Evidently grits are the new sushi...I've discussed at length in a prior blog how I feel about raw fish. The hoity-toity chefs, proving that they are all about slumming it these days, prepare grits a hundred different ways. They add tons of butter, they add milk (gives all that grit at least some creaminess, purportedly), they add shrimp, they add peppers, they add cheese. A waste of good cheese and shrimp if you ask me.
If a food has so little flavor that it requires Herculean efforts to give it taste, why not take some shrimp and cheese and peppers and just make a dish out of that? Why ruin good food with grits?
The South is all about claiming grits as their staple food. Georgia (as in the State of) has declared grits to be their "state prepared food". (Don't get me started on states, including mine, having a State this and State that and State the other. Not content with just a State flower, they have State amphibians and insects and autumn trees and spring trees and dogs and microbe.)
Trouble is, the Native Americans were the first to manufacture the stuff and it was their dish, not the South's. Yet another contribution Native Americans have given European culture that goes unacknowledged.
So, while I know I will offend quite a few of my Southern friends and family with this unmasking of the unholy origin of grits, maybe there are others out there, like me, who can't stand the stuff and have been too embarrassed or shy or polite to say so. Never let it be said that I was too polite to say I hate grits. I say we start a support group.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Yar-Dart (Or "Is that a Flamingo in Your Garden?")
The title of this blog comes from the summer I interned at Powell Gardens in Kansas City. The highly trained horticulturalists there came from several different schools of Hort but they all agreed that there is a difference between garden chatchkas (flamingos, outlines of a cowboy leaning on a tree, a wooden cut-out of a fat lady's bloomers showing...you get the idea) and garden statuary. The former they termed "yard art" but pronounced it "yar-dart."
I must confess, I have both the highly esoteric garden statuary (St. Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners; a laughing Buddha; a gargoyle reading a book; a wistful garden fairy, a cardinal {not the guys in Rome, but the bird}). And then there are the more low-brow items (metal sculptures of a very large ant and a mosquito; a lightening rod taken from an old farmhouse, complete with China blue ceramic insulator; a blue reflecting ball; a trio of stylized cattails).
This diverse collection just about sums up my eclectic tastes. I love the Buddha, who smilingly watches over the vegetable garden. Last year, he was at the top of the stair on the front porch when an unfortunate accident with a dog straining at a leash resulted in Buddha doing a full gainer down the stairs and losing part of his nose. He's much safer in the veggie garden.
The reading gargoyle seems particularly appropriate, due to my love of Medieval architecture and reading. He greets visitors at the front stair to the porch. St. Fiacre once stood there, but he is so contemplative that he's happier in the side yard shade garden, which is quiet and peaceful.
Most of my yar-dart has been given over the years by my kids. My step-daughter was the one to find the lightening rod. My son relates to frogs, so he is the one who gave me both the gargoyle and the very self-satisfied looking frog. He also found the St. Fiacre...you wouldn't believe how many garden centers there are selling St. Francis as St. Fiacre. Sacrilege! The big difference is, St. Francis has birds lighting on his outstretched hands, while St. Fiacre cradles a plant with exposed roots and a small shovel. He obviously is in the process of transplanting the delicate shrub.
Each one means something very special to me. I got the metal bugs ('scuse me, "insects") while married to a entomologist. THAT was a big mistake, but the insects aren't. Every few years, I spray paint them to match my mood and the garden they are going to that year. This year, the ant is a lovely day-glo pink and the mosquito a fire-engine red. I used to have a bumble bee as well, until he got lost in the bowels of my shed. Also from that era, I gained a sprinkler sculpted as a preying mantis from a dear friend.
And yes, they move around, depending on where I think they might show the best. They sometimes change colors, 'tho some of them just get a clear coat to protect them from weather.
And that's not even counting the number of whirly-gigs, wind socks, pinwheels and wind chimes I have in the vegetable garden. I call them "scare-rabbits" because the crows seem to mind not at all that they are there, but the rabbits don't chow down on my lettuce, peas and tender beans with that much movement and sound in the garden.
I must confess, I have both the highly esoteric garden statuary (St. Fiacre, the patron saint of gardeners; a laughing Buddha; a gargoyle reading a book; a wistful garden fairy, a cardinal {not the guys in Rome, but the bird}). And then there are the more low-brow items (metal sculptures of a very large ant and a mosquito; a lightening rod taken from an old farmhouse, complete with China blue ceramic insulator; a blue reflecting ball; a trio of stylized cattails).
This diverse collection just about sums up my eclectic tastes. I love the Buddha, who smilingly watches over the vegetable garden. Last year, he was at the top of the stair on the front porch when an unfortunate accident with a dog straining at a leash resulted in Buddha doing a full gainer down the stairs and losing part of his nose. He's much safer in the veggie garden.
The reading gargoyle seems particularly appropriate, due to my love of Medieval architecture and reading. He greets visitors at the front stair to the porch. St. Fiacre once stood there, but he is so contemplative that he's happier in the side yard shade garden, which is quiet and peaceful.
Most of my yar-dart has been given over the years by my kids. My step-daughter was the one to find the lightening rod. My son relates to frogs, so he is the one who gave me both the gargoyle and the very self-satisfied looking frog. He also found the St. Fiacre...you wouldn't believe how many garden centers there are selling St. Francis as St. Fiacre. Sacrilege! The big difference is, St. Francis has birds lighting on his outstretched hands, while St. Fiacre cradles a plant with exposed roots and a small shovel. He obviously is in the process of transplanting the delicate shrub.
Each one means something very special to me. I got the metal bugs ('scuse me, "insects") while married to a entomologist. THAT was a big mistake, but the insects aren't. Every few years, I spray paint them to match my mood and the garden they are going to that year. This year, the ant is a lovely day-glo pink and the mosquito a fire-engine red. I used to have a bumble bee as well, until he got lost in the bowels of my shed. Also from that era, I gained a sprinkler sculpted as a preying mantis from a dear friend.And yes, they move around, depending on where I think they might show the best. They sometimes change colors, 'tho some of them just get a clear coat to protect them from weather.
The very esoteric gazing globe sits on a truck spring, which was a dern sight cheaper than some of the structures they have to put a globe on in the garden stores. And I like the whimsey of the light and airy globe contrasting to the industrial weight of the spring.
And that's not even counting the number of whirly-gigs, wind socks, pinwheels and wind chimes I have in the vegetable garden. I call them "scare-rabbits" because the crows seem to mind not at all that they are there, but the rabbits don't chow down on my lettuce, peas and tender beans with that much movement and sound in the garden.
Every few years, I add to the collection and I have to renew the pinwheels in particular because the hops vine seems to want to eat them. I don't think they're actually designed for outdoor use.
I'm thinking next year, I'll get some pink flamingoes, but I don't want just a pair, I want a whole flock. Which might make it difficult for my son, who mows, trims and blows my yard, to maneuver his riding mower around.
Maybe I need a garden gnome.
I'm thinking next year, I'll get some pink flamingoes, but I don't want just a pair, I want a whole flock. Which might make it difficult for my son, who mows, trims and blows my yard, to maneuver his riding mower around.
Maybe I need a garden gnome.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Cardinal is His Color
"Cardinal is her color,
Jewell is her name.
High upon a hill she stands
And we will fight to keep her fame.
Loyalty, allegiance
Alma mater true.
We will love thee, serve thee forever.
William Jewell."
-William Jewell College anthem
My dad and I shared a common alma mater, unlike the 5 other members of our family, who graduated from Ouachita Baptist University (then college). Four of my siblings are alums of OBU and my mom went back to school after the last of us started kindergarten and got both her BA and MA from there. Home for the holidays during my college years, we would "honor" the rest of the family with a duet of the above song. Back then, I even had a decent singing voice.
The cardinal was the school mascot as it was the St. Louis MLB team, where Daddy grew up and where I graduated from high school. I have always loved the Cardinals, the WJC Cardinals and the bird. While the male is a vibrant red (and I think that's where the Catholic cardinals got their name, with their brilliant red robes) while the female cardinal is a beautiful tawny browny/light green with orange accents. She too is beautiful...while not as flashy as her hubby, she has an understated elegance.
Daddy was just a little guy when he started going to St. Louis Card games in the 1920's. He and his friends, not having much in the way of pocket money, used to travel by trolley car to the stadium and hang out outside the tall wooden fence, watching the game through the knotholes in the planks.
Sooner or later, the Cardinal marketing folks got the clever idea of starting a club called "the Knothole Gang". For a fraction of the price of regular seats (and presumably wherever there were empty seats going begging), St. Louis youngsters would be admitted to the stadium and see the whole game, not just a 2-inch view. Thus, Daddy became a founding member of the "Knothole Gang" with all the rights and privileges thereto.
Years later, somehow, the St. Louis organization tracked him down in Arkansas and honored him as a founding member, and as they were moving stadiums, with an etched brick in the concourse around the stadium. He got a plaque and everything.
So for his entire life, Daddy was the ultimate Cardinal fan, both for his hometeam and for his college team.
The St. Louis Cardinals made the playoffs while I was a student in high school there and played the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. The PA system was sync'd with the radio commentary and we would mightily strive to concentrate on Honors English or World Civ as we listened with one ear to the game. If you took your ticket stubs to the office, you could even get an excused absence, which was a BIG DEAL. Unfortunately, the Tigers were ultimately victorious, although I have always claimed that it was rigged...we were robbed, robbed I tell you.
For years, Daddy had a statue of a cardinal in his garden and I inherited it, along with a graceful mourning dove. To this day, the cardinal watches over my shade garden. So it was with a great deal of pleasure that I had cardinal gangs all winter and they hung around through the spring. Cardinals are very territorial during mating season, but during the winter, they 'gang' together for protection and warmth.
I once got a cardinal stuck in my house. He flew frantically around, banging against the skylights in my great room, seeing sky and not able to get through to it. I have a little device designed for birders which has birdcalls on it. I opened all the windows and doors, stood outside and hit the button for "cardinal call". He came out in a hurry, sure that an interloper had come to scavage his territory.
When I'm gardening, I sometimes talk to Daddy. He was a fabulous gardener and until his later years when he wasn't able to garden anymore, his garden was the talk of the town. There were people at his funeral who said, "I used to drive out of my way to drive by Carl's garden." So today, as I was sitting on my deck and missing my Daddy, I whispered to the male cardinal who lit a mere 10 feet from me, "Are you my Daddy?" His reply was to hop another 2 feet towards me.
I am blessed.
Jewell is her name.
High upon a hill she stands
And we will fight to keep her fame.
Loyalty, allegiance
Alma mater true.
We will love thee, serve thee forever.
William Jewell."
-William Jewell College anthem
My dad and I shared a common alma mater, unlike the 5 other members of our family, who graduated from Ouachita Baptist University (then college). Four of my siblings are alums of OBU and my mom went back to school after the last of us started kindergarten and got both her BA and MA from there. Home for the holidays during my college years, we would "honor" the rest of the family with a duet of the above song. Back then, I even had a decent singing voice.
The cardinal was the school mascot as it was the St. Louis MLB team, where Daddy grew up and where I graduated from high school. I have always loved the Cardinals, the WJC Cardinals and the bird. While the male is a vibrant red (and I think that's where the Catholic cardinals got their name, with their brilliant red robes) while the female cardinal is a beautiful tawny browny/light green with orange accents. She too is beautiful...while not as flashy as her hubby, she has an understated elegance.
Daddy was just a little guy when he started going to St. Louis Card games in the 1920's. He and his friends, not having much in the way of pocket money, used to travel by trolley car to the stadium and hang out outside the tall wooden fence, watching the game through the knotholes in the planks.
Years later, somehow, the St. Louis organization tracked him down in Arkansas and honored him as a founding member, and as they were moving stadiums, with an etched brick in the concourse around the stadium. He got a plaque and everything.
So for his entire life, Daddy was the ultimate Cardinal fan, both for his hometeam and for his college team.
The St. Louis Cardinals made the playoffs while I was a student in high school there and played the Detroit Tigers in the World Series. The PA system was sync'd with the radio commentary and we would mightily strive to concentrate on Honors English or World Civ as we listened with one ear to the game. If you took your ticket stubs to the office, you could even get an excused absence, which was a BIG DEAL. Unfortunately, the Tigers were ultimately victorious, although I have always claimed that it was rigged...we were robbed, robbed I tell you.
For years, Daddy had a statue of a cardinal in his garden and I inherited it, along with a graceful mourning dove. To this day, the cardinal watches over my shade garden. So it was with a great deal of pleasure that I had cardinal gangs all winter and they hung around through the spring. Cardinals are very territorial during mating season, but during the winter, they 'gang' together for protection and warmth.
I once got a cardinal stuck in my house. He flew frantically around, banging against the skylights in my great room, seeing sky and not able to get through to it. I have a little device designed for birders which has birdcalls on it. I opened all the windows and doors, stood outside and hit the button for "cardinal call". He came out in a hurry, sure that an interloper had come to scavage his territory.
When I'm gardening, I sometimes talk to Daddy. He was a fabulous gardener and until his later years when he wasn't able to garden anymore, his garden was the talk of the town. There were people at his funeral who said, "I used to drive out of my way to drive by Carl's garden." So today, as I was sitting on my deck and missing my Daddy, I whispered to the male cardinal who lit a mere 10 feet from me, "Are you my Daddy?" His reply was to hop another 2 feet towards me.
I am blessed.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Blood is Thicker Than Water, Part B
I'm continually amazed, being the cynical-yet-naive optimist that I am, when I hear references to Barack Obama's race.
The man, unlike many African-Americans, is truly one half African and one half "white". (I used to wonder about this designation when I was a kid because I'm not "white", I'm pinky-tanny-freckledy. Most "black" people I know are not "black", they are toasty brown.) Anyway, so what if Obama is one half "black"...he's also one half "white". Rejected by his African father, he was raised by a white mother and white grandparents. I think they did pretty well by him, raising-wise.
Which is to say, those same white people who hate him for being black, must hate themselves in equal parts. We all came from the same woman, found buried in sub-Saharan Africa. Anthropologists call her "Eve" because she is literally the mother of us all. Undoubtedly, she must be somewhat black, since the sun in that part of the world caused that evolutionary adaptation.
Blood should mean nothing to any of us. Half my nieces and nephews are adopted and they are every shade of the rainbow except "yellow", that skin-tone representated by Asians. Sadly, we have no Asians in my family. But our family is enriched by the niece who is half Hispanic/half white who has two children who are half Black/one quarter Hispanic/one quarter white. And the half black/half white nephew. And the three-quarter Native American/one quarter white niece. And the "who knows what" niece, who is the most loving, funniest, prettiest niece you'd ever want to have.
And yet, they are my Blood.
I'm reminded of the climax on the musical "Showboat"...a "mulatto" lady who is one 16th black is accused of being married to a white guy. (Inter-racial marriage being a big no-no in that time and place.) In the presence of several witnesses, the husband pricks her finger, sucks the blood and later, when the sheriff comes to call, he swears, along with witnesses, that he has "Negro" blood in him as well.
Blood is blood is blood. Black people's bodies don't reject donor's blood from someome white. Red blood cells, plasma, white blood cells, all are the same regardless of the race. White people who need kidney transplants (I hope) don't refuse a kidney donation simply because it comes from a Hispanic.
I think, in another several generations, we'll all be a nice tanny/toasty brown. And won't it be grand!
The man, unlike many African-Americans, is truly one half African and one half "white". (I used to wonder about this designation when I was a kid because I'm not "white", I'm pinky-tanny-freckledy. Most "black" people I know are not "black", they are toasty brown.) Anyway, so what if Obama is one half "black"...he's also one half "white". Rejected by his African father, he was raised by a white mother and white grandparents. I think they did pretty well by him, raising-wise.
Which is to say, those same white people who hate him for being black, must hate themselves in equal parts. We all came from the same woman, found buried in sub-Saharan Africa. Anthropologists call her "Eve" because she is literally the mother of us all. Undoubtedly, she must be somewhat black, since the sun in that part of the world caused that evolutionary adaptation.
Blood should mean nothing to any of us. Half my nieces and nephews are adopted and they are every shade of the rainbow except "yellow", that skin-tone representated by Asians. Sadly, we have no Asians in my family. But our family is enriched by the niece who is half Hispanic/half white who has two children who are half Black/one quarter Hispanic/one quarter white. And the half black/half white nephew. And the three-quarter Native American/one quarter white niece. And the "who knows what" niece, who is the most loving, funniest, prettiest niece you'd ever want to have.
And yet, they are my Blood.
I'm reminded of the climax on the musical "Showboat"...a "mulatto" lady who is one 16th black is accused of being married to a white guy. (Inter-racial marriage being a big no-no in that time and place.) In the presence of several witnesses, the husband pricks her finger, sucks the blood and later, when the sheriff comes to call, he swears, along with witnesses, that he has "Negro" blood in him as well.
Blood is blood is blood. Black people's bodies don't reject donor's blood from someome white. Red blood cells, plasma, white blood cells, all are the same regardless of the race. White people who need kidney transplants (I hope) don't refuse a kidney donation simply because it comes from a Hispanic.
I think, in another several generations, we'll all be a nice tanny/toasty brown. And won't it be grand!
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