I've got TIME. Image via Flickr user Juanedc under a Creative Commons license.
My friend Amy once said that she can’t be friends with people who don’t have at least one of the following: a job, a marriage, or kids. I joked that, as an unemployed grad student, I better hang on to my man so we could keep being friends. I guess I better keep working on my marriage, because after 6 months of unemployed grad student life, my husband and I have decided that I’m not actually going to be getting a part time job soon.
Now, I’ll be the first to admit that being able to do without a dual income is a luxury. I have a BA in English and political science, and while I often joke that this means I’m basically qualified to answer phones for a living, it’s actually mostly true. Meanwhile Jon is a doctor in a fellowship, and while his salary is not yet one of those ridiculous doctor’s salaries, he has the ability to pick up moonlighting work at an hourly wage I’d get only if I started selling my body on the street. He can make in one day on a moonlighting shift what I’d make in 10 days if I picked up a MWF gig. I still can’t believe anyone is willing to pay him that much to do anything, but I’m totally grateful that he can pick up extra work and make up for the lack of me having a steady income.
While our budget is certainly tighter than it was when I had a full time job and wasn’t in grad school, we’ve finally figured out how to live within our new means. And while right now we don’t have the money to give all the awesome causes we care about the support we wish we could, we’ve realized that I do have one very valuable thing: time. I have the ability to really give my time in ways that are more valuable than what I’d be doing if I got a p/t job: working retail for $10 an hour. I’m super excited about it.
This means I can spend entire afternoons volunteering at homeless shelters, or drive my friend McKinley to job interviews, or offer babysitting services to friends who really need it. Our church is currently dreaming of rehabbing a new space and starting an urban garden, and, with years of weed-pulling in my parents’ gardens and tons of walls’ worth of painting experience, I can totally offer my services to make those dreams a reality. I’d even love to put my experience as an administrative assistant to use with a local organization that needs some office help but can’t afford to hire a full time staffer, or lend my services as a writer to a nonprofit that would like to have a blog, for example.
So, I’m putting all this out here not because I want to brag about how I don’t have to get a job, but because I know many folks reading this have connections to local causes and organizations that might need my time. I’d love some ideas.
I’m not a vegan, but I’m very interested in eating less meat and animal products, for ethical, environmental, and humanitarian reasons. As I strive to eat more and more meat free meals each week, I’ve been perusing vegan cooking blogs and have been inspired to try my hand at vegan baking. I’ll probably never end up a vegan, but I can see myself going mostly vegetarian– I’ll never give up eggs or dairy completely, though. (Seriously, there is almost nothing in life that isn’t improved by cheese.)
This weekend, I decided to give the whole vegan baking thing a go, and I started with pumpkin muffins. True fact: there are a few things I hoard like the apocalypse is coming. It’s not anything practical, like toilet paper or something– no, I hoard butter, which I buy every time I go to the store, and canned pumpkin. You may remember a few years ago when there was a canned pumpkin shortage? Anyway, at that time, I wanted to make something pumpkin-y, but there was no pumpkin to be had. When I finally got my hands on a can of pumpkin, I held it to the sky like Scarlett O’Hara with her turnip and swore that as God is my witness, I’d never go without pumpkin again. Look in my pantry and you’ll find probably six cans of the stuff. I like pumpkin, and, though many think of it as just an October/November treat, I enjoy it as long as the weather is cold.
I looked at a few different pumpkin muffin recipes, and this is what I cobbled together.
Vegan Pumpkin Muffins
(This recipe was supposed to make 24 muffins. Mine made more like 28. Magic!)
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2cups sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground or freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 15 oz. can pureed pumpkin (Make sure it’s not pumpkin pie mix)
1 cup soy milk (almond milk would work too)
1 cup vegetable oil
3 tablespoons maple syrup
+ a few tablespoons sugar and a bit of cinnamon (I used 3 T sugar and 1 tsp cinnamon) for sprinkling on top of the muffins
Feel free to fold 2 cups of chopped nuts into the finished batter if you’d like.
Preheat the oven to 400. Lightly spray muffin tins with cooking spray. Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Whisk the pumpkin, soy milk, oil, and maple syrup together in a smaller bowl. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Fill the muffin cups 3/4 of the way full with the batter, then sprinkle each with the cinnamon/sugar mixture. Bake at 400 for 18-20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into the center of a muffin comes out clean.
Verdict: These muffins have great flavor, and I’d totally make them again. I took them to church on Sunday, and everyone loved them. They were a particular hit with the kids, even my friends’ kids who are extremely picky. My only complaint is that they’re a little denser than non-vegan muffins. If I decide to fiddle around with the recipe some more, I might add a little baking soda to see if I can get more fluffiness.
Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. To me, Martin Luther King Jr. lived out the teachings of Jesus in a very public and real way that few others have accomplished. I thought I’d share some quotes of his that I find particularly interesting, inspirational, and challenging.
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. giving his “I Have A Dream” speech during March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (aka the Freedom March). By Francis Miller, via the Google LIFE photo archive.
One of my favorite quotes of all time:
“Through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder.
Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth.
Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate.
Darkness cannot put out darkness.
Only light can do that.”
These next two remind me of a metaphor I heard once: helping people out of poverty one at a time is like pulling people out of a river. But at some point you have to look upstream and see what is pushing them in, and make it stop. Social justice work must be combined with political activism, or it will always be a losing battle:
“Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary. “
“On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life’s roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
This next one reminds me of another line I hear a lot from people involved in justice and equality work: My liberation is bound up in the liberation of others:
“Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.”
“Everybody can be great…because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.”
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
“We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
“Life’s persistent and most urgent question is, ‘What are you doing for others?”
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that in my fair state, our official holiday today is Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert E. Lee Day:
So, I wrote to my state senator and representative:
Dear [Senator or Representative],
was very disappointed today to learn that in the State of Arkansas, today’s official holiday is Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert E. Lee Day. I immediately set about to learn who my representatives are, so that I might ask them to address this disappointing combination of holidays.
It tarnishes the great, nonviolent, positive work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to insist that the State of Arkansas must celebrate him in the same breath as Robert E. Lee. It is a concession to ignorance and bigotry to combine these two holidays. Anyone who attempts to celebrate Robert E. Lee without acknowledging that he fought primarily to defend the cause of slavery is ignorant of history. The confederate states wrote articles of secession making clear exactly why they chose to secede and fight, and in each document, slavery comes up as the #1 issue. Celebrating Robert E. Lee is synonymous with celebrating slavery, and any disagreement on this point is ignorant of history. It is also un-American to celebrate someone who tried to tear asunder the great United States.
I ask that you and the other representatives work to change the name of this holiday, so that we might truly celebrate the legacy of Dr. King without also celebrating the legacy of the slavery and injustice and hatred that he opposed.
Sincerely,
[erniebufflo]
If you’re an Arkansan and would like to see this holiday be devoted to Martin Luther King Jr. and he alone, you can find your state representatives using this map. Let them know.
Image via Flickr user Rennet Stowe under a Creative Commons license.
I wrote the other day about the warming shelter Canvas Church was operating this week to keep our city’s homeless out of some of the worst wintry weather we’ve had in a while. With warmer weather (by which I mean, not death-cold) on the way, the warming shelter shut down today, and I headed over this afternoon to help with cleanup. When I got there, I realized there were more than enough hands to help, and was headed toward the door when a man stopped me and asked me if I could help him find the phone number of the Revenue Office. What are smartphones for, right? I pulled out my BlackBerry, Googled a number, and handed him the phone.
The quick story I got was that his truck drivers’ license had expired, and though he was getting job offers, he couldn’t take them without a valid license. What was standing in the way of him and that license was $42, a fee a local ministry had agreed to help him pay. I agreed to give him a ride to get the check and then take him to the Revenue Office to renew his license.
Along the way, I got to know him a bit. His name is McKinley, and when he first describes himself and what he does, he says he’s a poet. He recited some of his poetry for me, including a really good one about “what if Jesus came to your house.” Of course, the whole time I’m thinking “what if Jesus asked you for a phone call and a ride?” He used to own his own business, but somehow, after the death of his wife, he lost it. He still carries his Wells Fargo business credit card in his wallet. He was a truck driver, but his license was suspended in the state of Washington when he committed what he says is a “logbook violation,” which he explained to me was working more hours than he was supposed to in a given period, and for which he didn’t even get any points on his license. When we got to the Revenue Office with his $42 check, we realized that he actually needs around $650 to pay off fines in order to get the suspension removed, so he can then pay $42 and renew his CDL.
McKinley had a temporary job doing seasonal work for Honeybaked Hams, but that job is over now. He can’t get another job very easily, because most employers want to see a valid ID, and his CDL is expired. He could give up his CDL and get a regular drivers license so he could get a job, but if he does that, his CDL is gone, and in order to get it back, he’d have to go through training again, which he says costs around $4,000.
So, basically, what is standing between McKinley and a job is around $700. And I want to help him raise it. All I can think of is a quote I read from Mother Teresa yesterday: “Help one person at a time. Start with the person closest to you.” I feel like God placed McKinley in front of me today, and I want to help him.
If I can help him get a job, I have connections who can help me get him a place to stay. So what I’m asking is if anyone is willing to help me help McKinley get his CDL so he can get a job and hopefully get off the street. I can pay his fine directly to the state of Washington over the phone or via fax, so you don’t have to worry about me just handing over your cash to a stranger. Can you give a little bit, even a tiny bit, to help me help this truck-driving poet?
UPDATE: I’m working on getting it set up so that donations go through my church, Eikon, so that people who make donations can get a tax write-off for a charitable donation.
UPDATE 2: Looks like, about an hour after posting this, friends have already committed enough money to get McKinley his CDL. Thanks so much!!
I can be a crank. A complainer. A cynic. This post is none of those things. Well, it does feature a brief episode of me freaking out. But mostly, it’s about what my friend Kyran would call cracks that let the light in. It’s what others would call blessings or miracles.
We spent the first 10 days of January in Colorado with my husband’s family. They all live in Denver, his parents and sisters and aunts and cousins, and we, along with one piece of the family who live in Utah, are the lost family members, only able to return once a year or so to a brood that spends a lot of time together.
And this is just the *immediate* family.
We swam in a hot spring fed pool in 20 degree weather, steam rising off of hands lifted out into the frigid air, and icicles forming on any heads that dared to be dunked underwater and then surfaced again.
This is where we swam. Image via Flickr user Dekan under a Creative Commons license.
We read bedtime stories and sang “Away in a Manger” with our five-year-old niece who favored us with special attention all week– attention I didn’t particularly want when it involved her sneezing worms of snot out of her nose and looking to me for a tissue and help with the nose-blowing.
Uncle Jon was very popular with our niece this visit.
We revealed our lowlander ways as we huffed and puffed in the mountain air, me finding snow more amusing than any true Coloradoan ever would. I doubly betrayed my non-native status when I revealed my fondness for Canada geese, which I find beautiful, but are something of a nuisance out there.
We joined up with Jon’s siblings to throw their parents a 40th anniversary party. They met in youth group, married at 20, and are still going strong. I savored time in the kitchen with my sisters and mother-in-law, even when I was crying over collapsed cupcakes (who knew high altitude baking was so hard?) and receiving consoling hugs. I beamed with pride as my husband gave a wonderful toast. I chuckled as his parents tried to sing along with “One Hand, One Heart,” the song from “West Side Story” that they sang to each other at their wedding. I sang along with all the party attendees to “So Happy Together,” which is their song. I celebrated a love that birthed the love of my life.
High altitude baking FAIL.High altitude baking success=boxed cupcake mix (following high altitude directions) plus homemade frosting and/or ganache.Gratuitous pic of me and the love of my life.
At the end of our visit, we found ourselves waiting at an airport gate when an announcement came up asking for volunteers to give up their seats and fly the next day, in exchange for a night in a hotel and $400 vouchers for future travel. Hoping to travel to London this summer, we happily volunteered. We waited for everyone else to board, got our various paperwork, and headed off to catch a shuttle to our comped hotel. It was only after reaching the hotel that we realized that while I had the hotel and meal vouchers, the boarding passes and $800 worth of vouchers which had been handed to Jon were not with us.
Readers, if you know me at all, you probably know I did not handle this well. I stomped to the elevator, fumed in the hotel room, and called my mom to vent while Jon searched every incoming shuttle for the lost vouchers. I called the airline and, after spending about 10 minutes trying to get an actual human on the line, reached a man whose English was incomprehensible, who promptly put me on hold before even asking who I was or what I wanted. I hung up and called back, only to get someone with even less intelligible English, and the best I could make out, all I could hope was to go to the airline ticket counter and throw myself on their mercy the next morning.
By this point, Jon had returned from his futile search, and I apologized for acting like a jerk over what was a total accident. He trekked to WalMart nearby to get some necessities, as our luggage had already flown on to Little Rock without us. We ordered pizza, watched the national championship game, and got some fitful sleep.
The next morning, showered with my hair styled with hotel lotion as hair cream and a blowtorch of a hotel hair dryer, without a lick of makeup on my face, in the clothes I’d been wearing the day before and had slept in, we arrived at the airline counter, where we were informed that vouchers were as good as cash, and could not be replaced. Our faces fell as she typed on the computer and then continued…”but I’m not seeing in the computer that they were ever issued to you, so I might be able to just issue you new ones.” Our faces cheered. I said to Jon that I felt at that point I should start clapping and shouting “I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRIES!” to make Tinkerbell, and the magic, come back to life and help us. As the agent fidgeted with our new flight numbers and putting new paper in the printer, another agent said to her: “Is that the couple that’s flying out to Little Rock this morning who lost their boarding passes and vouchers?” It turned out someone had found our priceless paperwork and turned it in to the airline! There it was! Waiting for us! Hallelujah! We felt like the luckiest sons of guns in the Denver airport that day. Neither snow nor cranky travelers nor the TSA could dampen our spirits.
Upon our arrival back home, our friend picked us up from the airport and told us about the warming shelter that had been opened in a local church to shelter people without homes in some of the coldest wintry weather our city has had in years. Our little church was to serve breakfast in the morning, and could we help out?
Well, after a trip filled with blessings that ended in a miracle, showing up with food (what we Southerners always do in a crisis) was the least we could do to pay it forward. So, last night, I assembled breakfast casseroles while Jon baked a bazillion biscuits, and this morning we had the pleasure of serving our homeless neighbors alongside our church friends. Rarely have I ever felt so proud of my church, my Twitter community, and my city as I am seeing what has been pulled together to help our homeless neighbors, though the bulk of the credit goes to Canvas Community Church. For a city once voted the meanest city to the homeless, it’s good to see that there are cracks where the light is getting in.
This is how I celebrated last New Year's, with a can of champagne, home alone with the dogs. This year I'll celebrate with Jon's family in Denver. Bring on 2011. Image via Flickr user herecomesanothersongaboutmexico under a Creative Commons license.
My husband and I are enjoying his first days off (not counting the ones he spent in the hospital as a patient), and my first healthy days, since December 4th. Between my deathflumonia (that’s what I’m calling it, though Dr. Jon (I like to call him that since he sounds like blues singer Dr. John) says I can just call it the plain old flu) and his insane work schedule, our December has kind of been one of the worst we’ve ever had. It makes me want to sing that Counting Crows song: “a long December and there’s reason to believe, maybe this year will be better than the last.”
This is not to say that Christmas wasn’t lovely. In fact, Christmas was a bright spot in an otherwise crappy month. I got to spend several days at my parents’ house an hour from where we live (Jon joined us in between shifts in the ER), and my middle sister was in from Nashville with her adorable pug, and my lil’est sis was amped up on kid excitement about Christmas. We drank Russian tea and played with the pug and I got stomped at gin rummy. My sister, mom, grandmother and I all do-si-doed around the kitchen getting a big Christmas Eve meal together, and at church that night I caught up with a lot of old friends. I was, as always, showered with far more gifts than I deserve, and generally had a lovely holiday.
Now we’re just enjoying our down time between our first Christmas and our second one, which will be in Colorado with Jon’s family. I’d say we’re being hermits, reading quietly in the living room while sipping tea, laughing at the dogs’ antics, but the truth is, Jon gets stir-crazy after a few hours of that, and so we’ve also done some cleaning and bookshelf purging. We both even managed to stop coughing long enough to go see “True Grit” which was wonderful. I realized afterward that I can’t remember the last time I saw a movie featuring a strong woman who wasn’t involved in a love story, who was just being a badass, and not some sort of “sexy” badass. You should definitely see it.
And, in between reading and cleaning, I’m reflecting on this past year. It’s been a big one. We found out we were moving back to my home state, put our house up for sale in a terrible market, and drove halfway across the country to our new home. I started grad school and tried and failed to find a part time job, though I flourished as a student. I’m so thankful that Jon encouraged me to pursue my love of literature and really feel I’m in the right place. Jon started his fellowship and has received confirmation again and again that he’s chosen the right subspecialty, that he really does like the ER. I’ve enjoyed being back home, having “my people” again in the form of friends old and new, and being able to drive to my parents’ house on a whim should the mood strike me. I’ve seen my family more in the last 6 months than I did in the entire previous 3 years. We realized our house in Charleston wasn’t going to sell nearly as quickly as we’d hoped, thanks largely to Wells Fargo, our lender, dragging its feet, but after a short sale process that was anything but, as of a couple of weeks ago we are finally no longer homeowners in South Carolina or anywhere. Ask us right now and we’ll tell you we will never own a home again. It helps that we love the house we’re renting now and have the world’s best landlord.
Though I wouldn’t mind a do-over on December, I definitely have no desire for a do-over on this year. It had its ups and downs, and again we have proved to each other that we can weather anything together. I’m looking forward to what the next year holds. I want to keep up my good work as a grad student. I want to keep challenging myself and trying new things in the kitchen, including learning to make macarons, and I want to do more food blogging. I want to do better about blogging regularly than I have this term. I want to have people in my house more often, and I want to feed them good food. I also want to finally find a part time job! Those are my goals for the new year.
Long time, no blog! My friends would say I caught the blogflu, but the truth is, I caught the regular flu too. Somewhere between getting busy with the end of a semester of grad school, catching the flu, and my husband having a brief cardiac episode that landed him in the hospital overnight, I haven’t done much blogging lately. The truth is, I was kind of burned out on blogging. I’ve been doing a lot more tweeting and Facebooking of things about which I’d normally churn out a nice blog rant. But, I’m finally feeling healthy and starting to feel the urge to blog again, so I’m back. Luckily, I’m not like, Dooce or anything, so I haven’t deluded myself into thinking that anyone missed me.
But, here’s what’s gotten me fired up enough to take pen to paper fingers to keys and get back to blogging: awkward interactions with old high school classmates.
Now, Little Rock is a big small town. It’s small enough and close enough to where I grew up that I still feel wary about going to Kroger unshowered and un-makeup-ed, because I know I’ll run into someone I know. Now that everyone is coming home for the holidays, the odds of me running into old friends in public is amplified by a factor of ten.
Just yesterday, my husband and I were out doing holiday shopping when I ran into a high school classmate. We hugged and caught up and exchanged the basic details of where we live now and what we’re up to. She told me I looked just the same as in high school. I told her, “Thanks, you too!” And then she said, “No, I don’t, I’m fat!” What was I supposed to say to that? On the one hand, she has gained some weight since high school. And, I read enough Fat Acceptance blogs to believe that the word “fat” should no more be an insult than “tall” or “short.” On the other hand, I know that to most people, calling oneself fat is self-deprecation at best, and an insult at worst. Was I supposed to argue with her? Say, “No, you look great”? Was I supposed to just agree and say, “You’re right, you have put on some pounds”? I felt really awkward.
Instead, I felt like I should insult myself too. Other women can correct me if I’m wrong here, but it felt like we’d entered some sort of ritual, where we’d both self-deprecate in order to be “nice.” I muttered something about having to buy new pants lately because my ass has gotten bigger (this is true, but not something I’m super concerned about), and then saw my husband approaching and changed the subject by introducing him to my friend.
Still, even as we’d left the store, I was thinking about the awkward exchange. As I munched french fries with my husband, I asked him, “Why couldn’t she just smile and say thanks? Why do women so often do that? Why can’t we just take a compliment, be it about our looks or our abilities?”
The truth is, this happens a lot. You compliment someone on their outfit, or their hair, or their figure, or the great job they did at something, and then they start trying to convince you that you’re wrong, they don’t really look great, or they really don’t deserve all the credit for that awesome thing they did. And then you, the complimenter, feel like a jerkface. Like, why did I even bother trying to say something complimentary?
It’s enough to make me want to become a motivational speaker (plus or minus a van down by the river), to have seminars where I make women practice receiving compliments with a broad smile and a sincere “Thank you!” Where I holler at a crowd about OWNING YOUR OWN AWESOME, and the way that this makes people who give you compliments feel good, and more likely to give you compliments, and also about the way that owning your own awesome gives others permission to own their own awesome too. Because I guarantee you, there is something awesome about you. And I also guarantee you that the person telling you about that awesome thing really does think it’s awesome. My friend may have gained some weight since high school, but she’s still a gorgeous woman, and it seems she has a fulfilling job and a husband that she loves, and by most metrics is having a great life. She should own that awesome.
So, my motivational speech to anyone reading this is: if you bump into an old friend this holiday season, and if they give you a compliment, JUST SMILE AND SAY THANK YOU. Trust that the other person means it. Know that when you deflect their praise, you make them feel awkward and kill the conversation, which is the opposite of gracious behavior. OWN YOUR AWESOME.
Image by Gary Villet via the Google LIFE photo archive, under a Creative Commons license.
Every year Bill O’Reilly goes to war against those he believes are “at war against Christmas.” You know what I’m talking about– he, and a lot of others, get really irritated that greeters at WalMart and cashiers at the mall say things like “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” preferably with the emphasis on CHRISTmas. As if there aren’t other people in this country celebrating other holidays at that time. But what really galls me is, O’Reilly is entirely missing the point. The problem isn’t WalMart greeters and mall cashiers, it’s WalMart and the mall. Christmas has become a disgusting celebration of consumerism.
According to Advent Conspiracy, Americans spend around $450 BILLION on Christmas each year. According to Bread for the World, the basic health and nutrition needs of the world’s poorest people could be solved for $13 billion per year. There’s just something stomach churning about using a holiday to celebrate the birth of a king who was born in poverty and preached about concern for the poor more than any other issue being used to fuel a $450 billion industry when a tiny fraction of that could feed and care for the world’s poorest people.
And of course, I sit here typing this as a total hypocrite. I’ve tried to convince our families to do without gifts, in order to focus on time together and giving to charity, and yet so far, all I’ve been able to do is encourage caps on gift spending, hopefully leaving us with more money to give to charity. So, in large part, most of the hoopla surrounding Christmas seems to me to be at war with the values of the man it celebrates, and yet I feel powerless to stop it.
So instead, I focus on Thanksgiving. I think sharing meals was a pretty common theme in the life of Jesus, and I believe something special happens when we gather around a table with people, even our dysfunctional families. I also think gratitude is a key component of a truly examined life. In some ways, I think Thanksgiving is a more truly spiritual holiday than Christmas, in terms of how we celebrate it in this country– it’s about spending time with family, sharing a meal, and being thankful. Sure, it can be taken to gluttonous extremes, but it can also be a beautiful celebration. And maybe if we do it right, if we really take time to be thankful and realize we have all we need, that we are truly blessed, we will be able to keep our priorities in order when it comes to celebrating Christmas. I can only hope.
Note: I am, of course, aware that Thanksgiving, like almost everything in the history of Western Civilization, has a backstory full of violence, bigotry, theft, and oppression. I hope that by reclaiming that holiday as one of gratitude and love, and perhaps even sorrow for what happened in the past, we can try to make sure such things don’t happen in the future.
Image: day 212: over the shoulder, via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.
When we lived in Charleston, I hosted the annual Thanksgiving potluck for all the pediatrics residency folks, most of whom didn’t get the holiday off and couldn’t go home and celebrate with their families. We’d cram people into our little house, folks perched wherever they could, my dogs hoping someone would drop some turkey. The first year, I made my Memaw’s Russian Tea, and by the end of the party, people were DEMANDING the recipe. Every year after that, when I’d send out invites to the Thanksgiving Potluck, people would ask, “Will there be Russian Tea?” Of course! It’s not Thanksgiving without it!
It should be said that there is absolutely nothing Russian about Russian Tea, or my family, which, as best as I can tell, is mostly British and Irish. Russian Tea is really a citrusy spiced tea, best when spiked with booze like bourbon or dark rum. I like to make a giant batch in my stock pot, keep it in the crock pot during the party (Memaw keeps hers in an old percolator thing that keeps it SCALDING hot), and then put leftovers in pitchers in the fridge for heating up a cup at a time later. So, here’s the recipe for my favorite holiday tradition:
Russian Tea
4 cups water, plus 8 additional cups
4 tea bags (plain tea, like Lipton)
1.5 cups sugar
2.5 cups pineapple juice
1.5 cups frozen orange juice concentrate
6 tsp. fresh lemon juice
8 whole cloves
2 cinnamon sticks
Dark rum or bourbon
Boil 4 cups water and steep 4 regular-sized tea bags. Add to that mixture in a large stock pot 1½ cups sugar, 2½ cups pineapple juice, 1½ cups orange juice (frozen concentrate, not diluted), 6 Tsp. fresh lemon juice, 8 whole cloves, 2 cinnamon sticks, and 8 cups water. Bring to a boil, serve warm, add dark rum or bourbon as desired. I recommend adding the booze to each cup individually, so the buzz-inducing properties don’t get cooked out.
Easy double batch:
Boil 8 cups water with 8 tea bags, add 1 large can pineapple juice, 1 family size frozen OJ, 12 Tsp. lemon juice, 2 cups sugar, 16 whole cloves, 4 cinnamon sticks, and 16 cups water.
I make no bones about the fact that I’m a pacifist, and as a result, Veteran’s Day is a bit problematic for me. I sometimes find the language surrounding it disturbing and I’m leery of ever praising violence. I’m also leery of saying certain conflicts are about protecting “our” rights and freedoms when they really have nothing to do with our rights and freedoms at all, as is the case in our more recent wars and conflicts. Still, I have family currently serving in the military, and, like most Americans, I have a long family history of people serving in the military, and I am thankful for the sacrifices men and women in the armed forces make for our nation. I know we as a nation don’t take as good of care of our Veterans as we should, and I pray that we can do better. I also pray for a day when no one will need to take up arms in service of our nation.
That said, today, I wanted to write about a particular veteran. One I’ve never met.
My Great Uncle Albert, my father’s father’s brother, is something of a family legend. I’ve heard about him and my Pops growing up in downtown Hot Springs, Arkansas, where their mother ran a boarding house in the height of the town’s “Sin City” days. Mobsters, including Al Capone, spent time there, and the Milwaukee Brewers spent their spring training there. I’ve heard about how a mobster once saw them playing baseball with a stick, and bought them brand new bats with their names engraved on them. Another time, a Milwaukee Brewers player saw that they lacked a proper baseball and bought them an entire case of balls.
My Pops and Uncle Albert sold homemade newspapers to earn money to go to the movies. Then somehow, this boy from Arkansas found his way into some major Hollywood pictures himself. He appeared, uncredited, as a child actor in “Boys Town,” “Angels with Dirty Faces,” “A Star is Born,” “Tom Sawyer,” and “Nothing Sacred.” As a teenager, he lied about his age in order to join the Air Force and serve in World War II. He became a tail gunner, and he served until he was shot down in England, where he is buried.
After his death, his mother received a collection of his paintings from his painting teacher. She never even knew he was a painter.
I wish I could have known him. I’m sure he was a riot, and full of stories. Instead, I have stories others tell about him, and I have one of his paintings:
The man in this painting was my Great Uncle Albert's painting teacher.
I know Veteran’s Day is supposed to be for the living, and Memorial Day for the dead, but I wanted to share my Great Uncle today. Thank you to all Veterans. I look forward to a future where actors and painters can be actors and painters, not soldiers.
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