Thanks for giving

You died in April, but I always remember you at Thanksgiving. I remember learning to cook, not at my mother's side, for cooking was a chore for her, but at my brother's, where it was a joy. I learned to be fearless and go forth without a recipe, that garlic is required for everything worth eating, that spices and herbs had to be fresh to be worth it. I watched your hands--my hands, writ larger, down to the chewed fingernails and torn cuticles--confident with a knife, prepping, prepping, endless prepping. You were so confident with your knife (and you had only one, a large chef's, honed and forbidden to all but you, and then, when I had proven my worth, me) that you would look up as you sliced, diced, chopped, and chatted, paused, swigged from your beer. Your skills and practice learned from short-term jobs in various kitchens but even more from late night munchy fests with friends in the industry--3 a.m. London broil with a strangely delightful zesty tomato gravy, "potato nachos" with sliced yukons baked crisp, topped with bacon, bechamel, and dill. The foods were a wonderland, an escape, and you wrote your heart onto your steak, your homemade teriyaki sauce, your gorgeous salads with frisee (what the fuck is that, I asked? It looks like mermaid hair, or a weed nearly gone seedy! We eat that?). You did not sit to eat with your guests, but served, and then watched, so vulnerable, as we took our first bites. I think your mood, and your alcohol intake, was as tied to that first bite as to any chemical combination in your body. Your decline became real to me the day we stood side by side in Mom's kitchen, my son alternately entertaining and annoying Dad, and I watched your gnarled, scarred hands shake. Unbelievably shake. You tried to peel carrots, and gauged them into ugly, pitted cylinders of orange, and you sliced them into hunks and pieces, not uniform sticks, not neat concentric circles. You didn't want to help determine the recipes; you had no idea or desire around the beautiful fresh halibut; the potatoes Duchesse brought you no joy. There are many ways to see the decline in a loved one caught up in an addiction, but this way, this way, this downward spiral where the preparation of and beautiful nourishment for family and friends, this way, brother, broke my heart long before you left us for good. So when I cook for my family, when we gather at friends' houses and break bread, when I look down to see my gnarled, scarred and bitten hands prepping, prepping, endless prepping, I am grateful for the joy you taught me, nurtured in me, left with me to tend; there was no room for it in your sorrow, and I am sorry you cannot stand next to me in this world anymore. But I am thankful, so profoundly thankful, for the time, the gusto, the love, the memories so filled with sensory depth I cannot chop parsley without your ghost hovering, laughing,"You've got the good knife, now, sis, you don't have to hack at it."

Kidletting with two is different. And I don't know if I've said it enough, but the huz is the very last link between me and sanity. This thought comes to me as the huz and the Squid prepare to leave me with Nubbins while they flit about the midwest, scaring themselves silly on roller coasters. What I keep pondering, while I wonder if I can successfully keep the one left to me alive, is how anyone does it either as a single parent in status or in effect (you all know someone who really does have to do it all, gets no help from the co-habitating parent--that's who I mean by in effect). The latter is the case I'm thinking of today. And while the willingness of the unhelper comes into play a great deal, so also does the control freakdom of the put-upon main laborer. In the cases where the unhelper would be willing to assist, to watch the kid(s) while the 24/7 on duty parent-bot took a walk, a hot tub, a night out, I've seen a remarkable number of the parent-bots unable to let them. And I see in this a dangerous parenting style that started long before the child(-ren) came along. If you can't trust the other parent, an adult, to Do the Right Thing with your combined DNA-gone-wild, how the hell are you gonna let go and let the kid become who s/he needs to be? The same mom who "lets" dad feed the children, anxiously hovering in the background to offer advice and who, ultimately, ends up taking over because it's not being done "right" will be the one packing for this child for his first semester of college. Pops'll get the kid fed. It may be messier. It may involve a melt-down, if a certain ritual is not followed. And Pops can deal with that, too. Amazingly, kids who get parented (really, daily stuff, the little things like learning to deal with disappointment at the dinner table to the zoo trip) learn more about how to behave. And the parent-bot can more quickly become a human adult instead of a slave-to-the-child martyr. It's hard, really hard, in it's own way. I battle every day with my control freak impulses with both children's interactions with Huz, since I of course have the whole path laid out with primroses and college degrees. But when I convince myself to step back, as I am (preen!) often successful at doing, I find he's doing something *differently than I would have* and . . . . oh, pride, watch your step! ooops . . . often better. I've found that letting the Huz fully into the process means it's (slightly) easier for me to let Squid grow into himself without me getting into the way, because I'm not under the illusion that I am his formative influence. So for those who go it alone not because they have to, nor because their co-parent doesn't want to, please back off the Type A schtick and let Parent B have a go. You'll have a happier kid, and many more opportunities for cocktails, along the way.

While Stepping Over Bum Piss in the Parking Garage . . .

. . . it occurs to me that the social ills of this city must be self-perpetuated to some extent. I know we're supposed to call them homeless, and I do believe that there are many who deserve that less-stigmatic label. But if you drink from a paper bag during daylight hours in public spaces, and choose to piss in the stairwell of a parking structure, you're a bum. But in Portland, the bums and the homeless are all lumped together and receive the same social services, food, and shelter options, and I must say, it gets tiresome to see the residue of the bums every time I arrive near work.

To Godbag, or Not to Godbag? Is It Really a Question?

Squidlet wants to go to church. He's asked about every four days in the last three-four months, and while the Huz and I really keep hoping this interest will go poof, like so many others do for a busy almost four-year-old, it keeps coming up. Well, now, what's a good liberal feminist to do? To say? Because Christianity makes my skin crawl, do I have an obligation to keep him away? Do I say, "Oh, wee bairn, you would not understand this yet, as your penis is not yet the center of your existence, but I cannot hand you over to the people who have systematically supported the classification of women as property and meatsocks since the system was established"? Do I find a nice liberal church that offers God Light and at least will perform civil unions for same-sex couples, which is the very least I would expect of an institution that claims Love as a cornerstone? But even then . . . I fear they will refer to the Bible often as if it had some validity, and that too, makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit. One of my friends thinks that the Church (by which she means Christian, because there is no other for her) offers a good cornerstone of morality that one can build critical thinking upon, though I would argue it hasn't done that for her, as she still buys the spiel and can't get past gay "marriage," though she says she believes homosexuals have every right to every State-sanctioned benefit allowed to any heterosexual couple--she just can't get past the word "marriage," she says, because "marriage is religious." Really? Tell that to the het couple drunkenly married in Vegas by one of the State-sanctioned Elvi--unless God is in the sequins, I don't buy it. Marriage is now and always has been the contractual establishment of a small business, with assets (home, hearth, cattle and offspring) conjoined and, until recently, no escape clause. It's just that up until very recent history, the Church was the State. But I digress.
So, the Huz and I have been discussing this, and I was at first thinking, "Ehhhh, a couple rounds of Jesus won't kill the kid, and the basic tenets really are the same across the board," but the more I watched Huz twitch in memory of his fundamentalist Godbag upbringing, and the more I heard his discomfort with the exclusionary and downright meanspirited approach to "salvation," the more I wondered--what if they get their claws into him young? I mean, we don't let him watch TV, why should we let someone take him into a closed room where we aren't welcome and indoctrinate him in the company of his already-singing-along peers? The pressure there would be enormous, and he very much does like to please, and he's smart, so there'd be Psalm-spouting in no time.
Part of the conversation with the Huz made me recount my spirituality, and where I find God/Creative Life Force/Wilma. I was thinking, my church is and has been getting out in the woods for a hike on Sunday. It's finding that spiderweb glistening with dew stretched impossibly between four fern fronds at opposing angles, or listening to old old Gospel at full volume . . .

More on this later, probably, as we just finished up a fine dinner--split pea soup with ham and a new addition, SPINACH--it's a perfect hider for a fuckton of greens--and homemade cheddar bread. Yum!

Inauguration Day Rant

I’m having a lot of conflicting thoughts today, the day Barack Obama took his oath and became the first black President of the United States, the day that it seems this town is peeing itself in ecstasy and CNN begins the dissection of a pop star more than a President with its coverage of inauguration fashion.
First, I’m glad that an African-American can make a bid for, and win, the highest office in the nation. Hell, I’m glad that two women were serious contenders for the two highest offices in our land, too. But for me to be so happy because he’s black and won makes about as much sense as racists who celebrate when a person of color doesn’t win.
It’s about politics, and it’s also about the tenor of the nation, and the former worries me a bit, while the latter just outright terrifies me. Politics is not going to morph overnight into a more just, pristine, integrity-laden industry because one man’s political advisors let him use “Time for a Change” and “Hope” for his campaign slogans; the issues our behemoth government faces and fucks up are not lessened because we finally crossed a Presidential color line. And there’s still the more powerful body politic to consider, the Senate. President Obama’s political record is very, very liberal. There are many for whom this is a positive; I am not one. I have spent too many years in a small business watching money coming in vs. money going out not to be frightened of more government spending; it may take longer, but even the U S of A cannot support spiraling debt forever, and the crash, if it’s not starting already, will be proportionately devastating. To his credit, and hopefully to that of his newly formed administration, it appears that President Obama is urging citizens to do what has been needed for the last thirty selfish years—get off our butts and do something for other people. While I am against increasing government funding for programs, it’s not because I am a cold-hearted, let ‘em suffer capitalist. (Well, ok, I am the latter word . . . but if there can be compassionate conservatism, can’t there be compassionate capitalism? But I digress.) I simply don’t believe that the government can be as efficient as smaller units of social good, because the government has too many barriers. Look at Doctors without Borders, Mercy Corps, and other NGOs whose “$ per good act done” ratio screams passionate, efficient social good compared to our government’s efforts. Because here’s some icky cold hard truth: there are a lot of people who lost a lot of money this year. Not the big dogs, proportionately, but little folks like me, whose savings, college funds for kids, house values, and small businesses plummeted. When you bring home less than $50k and your net worth, investments, and business losses are double that, the good news is, you won’t owe any taxes. But when hundreds of thousands of people like me don’t pay taxes, and are refunded what’s been withheld (and already spent, no doubt), how do we run the thousands of governmental programs to help the poor, the truly destitute and homeless? If the middle class doesn’t have the money to be taxed, they sure don’t have it to donate. It’s my belief that we need to wean social services down to the very bare bones, and yes, increase community service on the individual level. Pick an interest, a fancy, a whim—you don’t have to go to the Food Bank and shelve if that bores you. But I am willing to bet that damned near anything you enjoy, you can volunteer at and begin to displace the parasitic hold government aid has on us as a nation. So this service aspect of President Obama’s message pleases me. It’s just that he doesn’t have much of a voting record for decreasing spending, taxation, or governmental involvement in our lives. So, for the politics side, I am not ecstatic, but I am not nearly as terrified as many, because while I know it’s a stupid, short-sighted economic thing to do, I also realize that we can’t wean ourselves off the teat cold turkey. And I reserve judgment, as he may do things differently in this climate than his voting history might suggest.
The mania that is gripping the country—hysteria?—scares me. My three-year old son is being indoctrinated with “Happy Obama Day,” and I find that a little unnerving. I was not aware that brainwashing a preschooler with politics was part of the educational program we enrolled in, but there again, it’s our responsibility as his parents to monitor and counter what bothers us, isn’t it? It’s just hard to instill critical thinking about a voting issue when the kidlet sees party hats and noisemakers. Again, see above, and I do hate to be a downer, but this country is economically fucked, and I see years before we can truly begin to recover a modicum of health. I think President Obama sees it and is, if he’s as smart as I think he is, scared shitless of what’s been handed to him to deal with (though he’s taking it on with dignity and not twitching in public, as I would in his place). But it’s like we all got stuck on the Change and Hope lines and stopped listening to the news (bad), the economic statistics (worse), and the international political situations (fucking scary, not even counting our own war). Believe me, I want hope—I sat and argued with the Huz for smashing my idealism with his dour take on the current situation. I’ve always been an idealist, and worked for those ideals where I could. I do believe a better country is possible, but I find blind, slobbering optimism without any effort behind it as nauseating as the Bush-bashing that went on without any concrete examples (ok, not so much of this in the last few years, as Bush gave enough for even the politically illiterate to have a couple at hand, but . . . there was a time when I heard people who could identify more supermodels or tv stars than local/state/national politicians mouthbreathing Bush-hate. And while I have no love for him, I don’t believe we serve our nation through critical thinking lapses of this magnitude). I think President Obama had a brilliantly-run campaign that spoon-fed us what we needed, hell, maybe even deserved to hear after 8 years of international embarrassment and national decline. I believe calling attention to it as a marketing ploy shouldn’t diminish President Obama’s accomplishments, achievement, or intelligence one iota—it shows he’s a good politician, which maybe he can help change back from a dirty word to a job description. But please. Don’t tell me Happy Obama Day. Tell me how you think his political actions are going to translate, in reality, down the road. Tell me what you’re doing to answer his call to service. Tell me about your boss, who’s decided to credit you ten hours of community volunteer time a week. Tell me about your neighbor, who has her elder mom to care for, and how you gave her a few hours of respite care one weekend. Tell me about your work with the kids at your local Head Start program. Tell me about real hope.

How much is it worth? how about a nice handful of your own teeth?

I had another of those odd experiences that remind me of several gradual changes that have occurred, culminating in my current curmudgeonliness. I was work-bound and mass transit-trapped, the mouth breathers closing in as the morning commute count grew, and a perky little feller just felt bound to lean in close to me and say, "You should smile, Miss!"

"Really? How much are you gonna pay me?" I asked.

He didn't say anything, and I didn't feel like going into it with Sparky the Cheerleader of the 12-Sandy to City Center. But that's a big part of my shift over the last 10 years. I actually used to love people, and customer service and teaching and all that kind of random public interaction. Now, after roughly 20 years of smiling for money, I do not wish to smile at anyone outside my family and friends unless I am getting paid. It seems a smile at strangers is akin to a bullseye for the freaky, needy, and unstable to find you.

I used to honestly believe that most people are mostly good, blah blah blah. Now, having managed a sizeable crew, one of whom is still in jail for her crimes and a couple who probably should be, and especially after less than a year in a union, here is my impression of Most People:
Immoral, lazy, selfish, illiterate, and possibly incontinent. And they will need to cross my palm with some gold for a smile. I've not gone all cynical, though--I still believe that somehow we have the ability to not completely fuck things up as a race and that we can figure out a lot of the problems we face and will survive, as a race, more or less ok. Macrocosmically, what happens is we get a good leader here or there (and I'm not talking about the President so much as your local city and state politicos and committees) who essentially function as benevolent dictators and make decisions that no one opposes because we're all so freakin' thrilled someone else is managing things that we just roll over and piddle ourselves in glee. This same process is generally how the Evil Among Us rise to power, however, so it's not fool proof. It's why I think it doesn't matter more than shit or shinola who is President. Everything that matters happens in your city, at your level, and on your watch.

Is there anyone else who would like to see a little less government going on? I mean, yay whoo Barack what-the-fuck-ever, I have no problem with him that I wouldn't have with any other spend-happy politician, and it was "nice" to have our national emotions proud and hopeful for once, and yes, I do think he's better than the current, DUH. But that's like saying ptomaine is a better option than cyanide, because it's less likely to completely kill you. You know what? I'm against the State recognition of gay marriage. But I'm also against the recognition of het marriage by the State. Frankly, the State has no business in my house for any reason, whether to determine the nature and solidity of my relationships or set a tax rate based on those relationships and/or my ability or desire to breed. Flat tax, baby, government fix the roads, maintain a military force sufficient to protect our borders, and then cut it the fuck out. Smaller organizations are much better equipped to provide social services, and you know what? When did taking care of everyone become the responsibility of the government? When we started paying them to take care of our sick, our elderly, our addicted, our fucked up, our neglected, we got the bad end of the bargain. It's not that I don't believe all people don't deserve care and the best life they can have, it's that I don't believe the government is a good, efficient vehicle for delivery of anything.

Ok. End rant, more later. The gist of my mood for today, however, is that my smile comes at a price, and most stranger folks really don't want to pay it. It's why I don't carry a gun.

Flour, water, salt, yeast, and maybe olive oil

I am deeply in love with Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. Here's why:

I made bread for Squidlet's school potluck/fall program, even after working til 3 pm:


And then, last night, Alan and I had a hankering for pizza-esque thingies, so I happened to have some olive oil dough prepped, and here's what happened:





And these little puffy bready things are TASTY all by themselves (I'm sure it varies depending on the flavor of olive oil used--I happened to have some really good stuff around). Then we added some roasted garlic olive oil, diced grilled lamb, wilted chard, goats' cheese, and roasted red peppers for this:

And then, after Squid and the Huz chowed through one of these each, we experimented with a tomato chutney and some sardines for this:


So other than the fact that I'm a rotten photog, I hope you get the gist. And if you've ever been afeared of baking bread, it's not so bad.