The Stub Ends of 2019

How did it get to be December 31 already?

In my late November post, I noted that the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving had been hard, making that unexpected Thanksgiving so much the more special. The pace and the issues did not slack off after that holiday, but steamed ahead into December.

The last two months of this year have been brutal, including grandson Orlando being hospitalized in PICU for RSV. But there are slivers of hope and light: Orlando got home and is healthy again. Dad will be coming home from the skilled nursing facility this Friday after a long stay. Another person in my life who has been homeless and recently gave birth to incredibly premature babies and lives with significant mental health issues (can we say "Enough" yet?) may be (we hope; I hope) approved for an apartment with the help of community agencies and others stepping forward to get and keep her housed. (I'm awaiting the approval call from the leasing office.)

Little bits of hope, of forward progress.

December is always a whirl for the musician in our household. Warren's last gig, a Christmas cantata at a Columbus-area church, was on December 22.  It is such a relief when the last one is done, beautiful though some of them are. I attended most (all?) of the performances, which included a stunning choral concert one weekend and our Symphony's holiday concerts (possibly the best ever) two weekends later. There were times when I closed my eyes and let the music wash over me.

Little notes hanging in the air.

Hanukkah just concluded. Warren kept me close company while I lit my menorahs. The second night, in large part because of the chaos and hardships going on, I sank to the carpet in front of them and lit them from that position, my voice cracking from stress and tears coming into my eyes. (I put my menorahs on a small outdoors table positioned by our front windows; the menorahs are at eye level if I sit on the floor, as I discovered that night; it turned out to be so gratifying that I lit the menorahs from that position the remaining nights.) Lighting the candles, saying the prayers, and reflecting on my beliefs (spiritual, personal) carved out some much needed space and silence. On the eighth and final night, I looked up at Warren (in a chair next to me) and asked "would you like to light one of the menorahs?" The thought had never occurred to me to ask him and it caught us both by surprise. Yes, he did, and yes, it meant so much to me.

Little bits of light.

So here I am, on the last day of the year, thinking of what the year held (including our new grandson) and what the year ahead may hold. I am looking to focus even more on the essentials and cut away the excess and the unnecessary, whatever that may mean. I am looking to try to truly hold each day in my heart.

Little bits of light, little bits of hope.

November Money Review

I started my October Money Review with the observation that if (if) we spent $175.00 in both the month of November and the month of December, we would finish the year with an average monthly outlay for groceries and household items of a little over $180.00 a month. We would have to spend $140.00 or less those last two months to bring the monthly average to $175.00, my target. I then sagely noted, "I'm not sure we will hit that mark."

We did not hit that lower mark ($140.00) or even the higher mark ($175.00) for November. We came in at $236.13, all but $2.14 (two boxes of tissues) in food. Our monthly average year-to-date? $186.98.

I made some quirky marginal notes about our November shopping patterns  that I will share here. On the first day of November, we spent $9.75 on "candy." The candy in question was delicious gourmet dark chocolate peanut (or almond) bark from The Milk Shake Factory, a stunning fixture in Pittsburgh for over a century. There were two turkeys, one thawed for our unexpected Thanksgiving, the other still deep in our freezer. Those came to a little over $10.00 because Meijer was selling their brand frozen turkeys for 33⍧ a pound. There was almost $36.00 worth of butter purchased at $1.99 a pound because butter has been sky high and we have room in our freezer. There was a little over $10.00 worth of food costs related to two events I hosted or co-hosted. There was also $9.00 worth of Krusteaz boxed cookie mix because Krusteaz mixes are delicious and when baking for something that comes up quickly, they do the trick.

And then there was the Thanksgiving Eve dash to the store to replace a can of canned pumpkin. For the first time ever in my life, when I went to open an ordinary can, the contents first hissed and then oozed up through the first opening I had made with the can opener. (I thought the lid had looked a little flexed, but I wasn't sure.) I'm casual about food safety but not stupid. What was stupid was opening the can of coconut milk (I use a pumpkin pie recipe that calls for coconut milk) with the same can opener and realizing too late that there was pumpkin ooze now contaminating the coconut milk. Both went down the sink and the resulting run to the store cost $3.59.

Note: The pie was delicious. 

Further Note: The Thanksgiving turkey carcass was made into delicious dark stock that Very. Same. Day.

So if you add up those little marginalia notes and then subtract them, our food costs would have come in below $160.00.

There was a grocery triumph or two, nonetheless, the greatest being the almost $40.00 worth of groceries purchased for $4.92, thanks to a combination of coupons and a quarterly rebate I get by using my Kroger Mastercard (a card I pay off in full every two weeks: no balance carried forward here).

Our eating out costs were all related to conferences: no coffee dates, no "let's just grab a bite to eat." Eating out costs came to an eye-watering $155.29, with $79.48 of that being assigned to Indianapolis (our annual trip to Percussion Universe) and the rest to our two days at my conference in Pittsburgh.

Yeah, November was expensive.

I'm not sure what December will bring. One of our November purchases was raw peanuts for Warren's holiday peanut brittle (about $17.00 worth), so that is out of the way. On the other hand, I will be making biscotti as always; while I certainly have enough butter for the cookies, I have yet to purchase the almonds. I'm not sure what the holiday meals will bring (who is going where for what); Dad is still in skilled nursing. So our costs may come in (she writes optimistically) around $170.00.

Or $150.00.

Or $250.00.

Stay tuned.

The Unexpected Thanksgiving

There was not going to be a Thanksgiving this year, at least not in the traditional sense of family members gathering to eat.

This November has been a hard month. My silence on this blog reflects that: I have been pulled and stretched too thin to find the quiet inner space in which to be still and write. November held two conferences out of town: one to Pittsburgh (mine), one to Indianapolis (Warren's). November also has been a bucket, filled to the brim and slopping over, of family and friends struggling: financial issues, health issues, hospitalizations, deaths.

Certain friends and I at particularly difficult stretches of life will say in passing, "So, other than that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

It's been a Mrs. Lincoln kind of month.

Two of those hospitalizations involved my dad, who just earlier this week was released from the hospital to a skilled nursing facility to regain his strength and independence. Throughout it, my siblings, our spouses, and I were all dealing with long hours at the hospital, irregular schedules, broken days, and lots of stress. We're not at our best as a result.

Originally, my and Warren's Thanksgiving was going to be at dad's house, where my youngest brother Mark and his wife now live too. After dad's well-being took a tumble, and after we wore ourselves out (Mark has a chronic, progressive illness which wears him out and I am into a decade and a half of my progressive, incurable cancer), my brother and I talked and agreed to cancel Thanksgiving. They were tired, we were tired. That worked for the four of us, and our other brother Mike had his own family to host, so his plans were already set.

Well, that was his plan until his wife Kate called me earlier this week. Could they join us for Thanksgiving? Please? There would be five of them. Warren and I talked. Okay. But wait! If we were eating at noon (our plan), that would eliminate two of them (son Mike Jr. and daughter-in-law Hannah who would not be coming this way until later that day). Okay. Then a granddaughter who didn't want to go to her stepdad's family was added. Okay. Six of us total. More plans were made: you bring this and that, we'll make that and that.

On Thanksgiving morning, their youngest son, Timon, driving down from Cleveland, showed up early. Per his mother's instructions, I put him to work helping pull chairs out, washing china, setting the table. Then I get a phone call from Mike Jr.: they were coming earlier after all. After I got over my shock (I ordered him to hang up and call his mother immediately), I recalculated. Okay, now we're up to eight. That meant reconfiguring the table settings, adding another table, washing more china. That's okay, though: I had help. So we all worked some more, although Timon said, as we rearranged things, "I bet you they don't make it in time. They'll be late."

My brother, sister-in-law, and their granddaughter arrived. The turkey was close to done; we may have had it out of the oven already. One of their phones rang: the travelers are turning back to switch cars because the check engine light came on. Sorry, they are still coming, but they will be late.

Timon pumped his fist in the air. "I told you I'd win that bet!"

We pulled down the folding table that had been added to the end of our kitchen table to fit eight. We hastily took up the extra place settings. Warren started cutting turkey and piling it on a platter. Food went into bowls, water glasses got filled, and we all sat down.

I anchored one end of the table, my brother Mike the other. He looked around the table, beamed, and said "It's good to be here at this table and to all be together."

Those were more than just casual words tossed out to make everyone feel good. Mike was the brother I was least close to, both when growing up and as an adult. In the spirit of full disclosure, I am the one who kept Mike at arm's length over the years; Mike did nothing to create that breach. When I was diagnosed with the myeloma in 2004, I apologized to Mike for how I had treated him by, frankly, not treating him at all. Mike just smiled and said, very gently, "It's okay, April."

Mike meant it. It was okay. And now here we were at the most improbable of Thanksgivings, a Thanksgiving that wasn't supposed to happen and surely in a million years would not have been spent with Mike and crew.

The meal was wonderful. We shared good food, good conversation, and laughter. Mike and I shared stories from our childhood of Thanksgivings (and Christmases). We passed the turkey, we passed the rolls, we passed the love.

The pies were delicious.

As Kate, Warren, and I started clearing plates and making containers of leftovers, the door opened and Hannah and Mike Jr. walked in. We made a clear spot at one end of the table, rescued the settings we had swept off the table earlier (I had just set them on a small couch in the study) and loaded them up with food. Warren started the dishes. Several of us grabbed dishtowels. Talk flowed through the kitchen; talked flowed in the living room.

And then it was over. Mike, Kate, their granddaughter, Timon, Mike Jr., and Hannah headed out to go see dad before going their own way. Hugs, thanks, "wait, Grandpa forgot his phone," goodbye waves.

And, like that, our unexpected Thanksgiving was over.

2019 marks my 64th Thanksgiving. There have been some great ones.

This was one of them.

Small Moment: Soup Stock

What is it about soup stock—so blessedly simple to make, thrown together from an assortment of scraps and discards—that can make the house smell wonderful even before it gets down to the business of coming to a boil?

The aroma of soup stock: that's what is filling our house this morning. Both Warren and I were out working in the yard, doing some cleanup before the winter sets in harder, and the moment I walked through the door, the aroma wrapped around me.

October Money Review

As we start to wind down the year, I took a long hard look at my food dollars and did some calculating. Based on what we spent in October (keep reading), if we spent $175.00 and no more in the months of November and December, we would finish the year averaging $180.33 a month for all of 2019. That would be just above our goal of $175.00 a month for the year. We would have to spend no more than $140.00 in both November and December to bring the yearly average to $175.00. I'm not sure we will hit that mark.

As I look ahead to next year, one thing I am going to start calculating into our overall food costs is our eating out costs. I have been tracking those dollars for a few years, but do not count them in the $175.00 a month goal. The bulk of our eating out dollars directly relates to travel, especially Mayo and conferences, and performances, especially those in Mansfield when dress rehearsal falls in the afternoon, followed by a mid-evening concert. Yeah, some of our eating out dollars are just us taking the easy way out, and I still very occasionally have tea with a friend, but the bulk of the expenses are related to not being home. I will have to take a long, hard look at what we spent this year (and how much was strictly pleasure versus the travel/concert issue) and come up with some realistic targets for 2020. Just saying.

So what did October look like? In groceries (food), we spent $179.78, which, I am thrilled to say, included the reception we hosted after opening the Symphony's 41st Season. Back in April, I had budgeted $75.00 for the end-of-season reception and wildly overshot that amount, spending double those dollars. For this reception, based not in small part of on my notes of what worked and what didn't back in April, I spent a grand total of $67.38 for a wonderful reception (with a lot of leftovers)! So that revamping of our reception spending made a significant contribution to our overall monthly bottom line.

As for household items, our October expenses were a modest $5.18. Total spent in October? $184.96, $10.00 over the $175.00 goal. Monthly average for the year? $182.06.

As for eating out, our costs were not outrageous, but scaled up towards the end of the month because I had a conference in downtown Pittsburgh and the expenses were higher. (Most of the eating out expenses from Pittsburgh will hit in November and I will be reimbursed for much of my food costs, but it was still expensive.) Our eating out costs in October were $117.41, counting tips. That's pretty high for us.

One of those eating out occasions was due to my not standing firm on not eating out in a training session. Along with some close coworkers, I attended a lengthy training session through our local school district, with the training located in our downtown. As I always do with local training, I frugally packed my lunch. I had it with me. When the lunch break came, everyone started making plans to walk to different places downtown and done together. Everyone. I said "I brought a lunch." I got pushback. Then I said "Lunch is my most difficult meal to eat out because of where I'm at in my health" (a true statement). I got pushback. Loving, friendly, come-join-us pushback, but pushback all the same.

And I folded. I walked to lunch, I ended up sitting with some attendees I did not know well or at all but got to know a little (a positive), I ate very frugally ($6.00 with the tip), I took the planned walk to the library immediately afterwards so I could drop off the library book I had brought with me (a chore accomplished), and I ate the packed lunch the next day (so no waste). Was I better for joining the others? Perhaps. Certainly in the sense of getting to know attendees (all school employees) and sharing stories. That's always a plus. But I am nonetheless embarrassed that I let the peer pressure get to me. I'm 631/2 years old. I should be over this.

So that was October. As I noted in my last review, we did indeed miss Halloween. It snowed lightly in Delaware that night. (It probably snowed in Pittsburgh too, but I was inside.) According to a friend down the street, Halloween foot traffic was light as a result. So yes, I missed Halloween but I also missed sitting outside on a bitter night.

Since I missed Halloween here, I took great pleasure when pictures from the west rolled in:

All three of them, Ramona being the dinosaur posing! 

And in true Halloween fashion, the youngest of the trio didn't even last past the third house:

November is swirling all around us. We just ate the last of the lettuce (which I moved inside before going to Pittsburgh, knowing it would be getting cold while we were gone). And I will eat the very last 2019 tomato tonight. The. Very. Last. Tomato. We are joining Thanksgiving, not hosting it; I already have dibs on the turkey carcass. So we'll see where the dollars fall when we come out the other side.

Small Moment: Late Lettuce

Back in late September, I planted four planters with lettuce seed, hoping for a late fall harvest. Right after I planted them, the weather turned quirky: hot dry days, gray days, dry days, early light frost days.

I doubted anything would come up. Nonetheless I watered the planters during the sun-stricken days and pulled them inside Warren's shop on the frosty nights.

And my efforts were rewarded, more or less. The Black Seeded Simpson did not come up, the Emerald Jewel did:

It came up despite the irregular weather. It came up despite the squirrel or two who insisted on digging in the planters (that is why the planter at the top of the photo has an irregularity in the soil at the end on the right side: squirrel digs).

And tonight, not knowing how much more these planters will produce, I added some to our salad:

There's probably enough to make a small salad or two, or to supplement a salad with a different (i.e., store bought) salad base. And then the lettuce is done for the season.

Next year's garden is already in my head.

Some More Thoughts About The Essentials: Unplugging

My last post I  wrote about balancing the essential again the urgent or, really, about my tendency to shove the essential aside for the urgent. I have been thinking about that very concept for days now, trying to be more aware of my actions and activities.

As part of this, I have found within myself the commitment to finally tackle the paperwork clutter that I let pile up in my study. I'm not talking about a small stack on my desk. I am talking about a voluminous stack, which I then shift to the bed, which I then shift to a paper sack, telling myself "I'll get to that soon." And then don't.

For the past several days, I have been dealing with the piles (yes, plural) in 15 minute shifts. I set my alarm for 15, then tell myself to sort through and make three stacks: Keep (and file away at the end of the 15 minutes), Recycle, Shred. I am embarrassed to say the Shred pile has been large, the Recycle pile larger. The Keep pile? Small potatoes.

This morning I tackled the paper pile in two separate sessions (with enough interlude between the two that I did not feel overwhelmed by the task before me). While doing so, I came across some notes, meant to be a blog post, from just after we got back from vacation. Here they are, as they perhaps tell a story related to the essential:

Unplugging

 When we went on vacation, I left behind my Chromebook because it pushed the limits of my minimal packing too far.

12 days without email or Facebook. That was interesting.

And eye opening.

Two things I learned:

1. Despite my protestations to the contrary (and reading books as much as I do), my mindless perusal of social media has steadily increased over time, especially on weekends.
2. Along with that increase, my time to do other things decreases.What other things? Write letters, read, prep zucchini and apples for freezing [remember, this was written in early September], or just sit and luxuriate in the moment.

So now I am looking at all my electronic tethering: the computer, the Chromebook, the phone. I carry a flip phone, not a smart phone, so the temptations are fewer, but there is still texting. And based on that and my vacation experience, I am ready to take a few more steps:

1. I am already not on my computer/Chromebook most evenings after 6:00 (and often earlier). What if I eliminated Saturday and Sunday too? Or only use Word and Numbers for work-related or Clinic purposes? Or only turn it on an hour one of those days for those reasons and also to blog? 
2. When I am at work, I carry my phone. I always have it on me or nearby at home. I always carry it in my car if I am running errands or driving to a school; with a 14+ year old car, I want a way to call someone if I get stranded. But what if I stopped carrying it at all when we (Warren and I) go out? There is no news, good or bad, that the delay in seeing the message would make a difference. 

I am penning these thoughts sitting at a rehearsal an hour away from home. I left my phone at home. I'm not sure of the time because I am not wearing a wristwatch and to wear one again would require a new battery. But with the phone gone, I am also not glancing constantly to see what the time is or whether anyone has texted me or tried to call.

So what if I tried this? What if I tried stepping away even more?

I know there will be exceptions from time to time. We should be reestablishing weekly chats with Ramona soon and those will fall in the early evening because of the time difference between here and there. There will an occasion, most likely related to my writing the Symphony press releases, which will find me on the computer some evening.

It is hard to break the lines of the electronic. One of my favorite minimalists is Anthony Ongaro at Break The Twitch. He came up with that name to describe the mindless clicking of the mouse to make yet another unnecessary purchase, but it fits here as well. My twitch is not to buy, but to click mindlessly across sites.

So what do I hope to get out of breaking my own twitch? I hope to be more mindful. I hope to be more thoughtful. I hope to deepen my personal connections to my work, to my day, to my marriage, to my friends.

To my community.

I hope to be more connected to my self.

*******
That's where my notes ended. They were written about a month ago. In the time since, I have managed to turn off or not even start the computer most (all?) evenings and even some weekend days (this is not one of them, obviously, but it IS going off soon). I have found it even easier to turn down the phone and only check for messages/calls occasionally.

And this goes back to thoughts of the essential. It is essential for me to connect outside of the electronic world. It is essential for me to reclaim that time.

Let's see where this goes.

The Essential And The Urgent

I spoke last week to a local United Methodist Women's group, an engagement that had been scheduled in late 2018 and, through a series of calendar complications, mostly of my own making, got moved more than once. It had been scheduled long enough that, in preparation for my talk, I scanned the most recent church newsletter to see if there was any note about the evening.

There was not. But in the minister's message, which I just happened to glance at, I found such a nugget that I have been walking around quoting it (usually badly paraphrasing it) ever since.

The minister had taken time away from the pulpit in August. In the September newsletter, he reflected on what he had learned during his renewal leave. His second observation caused me to stop reading:

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

I read that again, then said it out loud.

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

Holy moly. If that isn't my life, then I don't know what is. When I look back on my posts, my conversations with colleagues and friends and my dear husband, my letters, my thoughts (day or night, a day just starting or a day half over, or a day spent and gone), an overwhelming portion of my thoughts and sentences are spent on the urgent (or what I perceive to be "urgent") and on complaining (internally or externally) about how I never have enough time to get to the essential. My writing comes to mind immediately. Even when I have in mind a brief post or have sketched out some thoughts for one (or for my column or for a poem), I too easily shelve it in the urgency of the moment. ("How can I take time to write now? There's [name it] that needs done.")

And when I talk about the "urgent," I am not referring to the daily routine. Yes, the laundry needs done. Yes, the meal needs prepared. Tasks are tasks. I am talking about the white noise: the everything else that I frantically grab at and tend to all the time. All. The. Time.

So this sentence grabbed me and shook me.

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

It is still shaking me. April, it shouts, what are you doing? You are throwing away the essential to do the urgent.  STOP IT.

As I noted, I read that sentence last week. I have been handing it out like business cards ever since. I met a new friend for coffee in one of our local shops this Thursday past. Standing at the counter, I chatted with the proprietor about how her week was going. She made the typical comment about how busy things were, how hectic things were. I started to agree, then remembered my sentence and pulled it out, clumsily paraphrasing it.

Shelley stopped immediately. "Oh, I like that! How true!"

How true, indeed.

I do a poor job of not letting the urgent crowd out the essential. I know that about myself. That is why my study is a mess, why my writing is in piles here and there (some literal piles, some figurative piles), why I always seem to be busy. Coming off of the High Holy Days, during which I indeed let the urgent (the tasks and demands of the day) crowd out the essential (the spiritual significance and self-reflection required), I am telling myself that, in this year that has just started, I need to make an effort to live more essentially and less urgently.

Need to make? Have to make.

It's easy for the essential to be crowded out by the urgent. 

Let's see where this takes me.

September Money Review

Here we are in early October. After a week of blistering, high heat summer days (temps in the 90s), Thursday evening the weather suddenly looked at the calendar and dropped into suitable fall weather: cool days, blue skies, and crisp nights. The lettuce I planted last weekend has come up (its germination helped along by the high heat, no doubt); now the question is whether there will be enough days before the frost to get a bowl or two of salad out of my efforts.

And the black eye (and black and swollen jaws) from last week are fading, enough that casual interactions do not result in curious stares or questions. Kim of Out My Window worried whether my predicament was the result of treatment. Nope: I do not have treatments at Mayo. My situation was simply my body saying "I've had enough." As I told my dad when I saw him earlier this week, my body is a union shop and it walked out. Management has duly noted the severity and legitimacy of the issue and changes will be made.

After the vacation-increased food expenses of August, our September spending dropped substantially, although not to or below the $175.00 a month average I am aiming for (to my surprise). We spent $178.31 on food at the grocery and farm market (come on, it was the end of the sweet corn season!) and another $19.74 in household (half of which was a big toilet paper pack at Aldi; most of the rest of which was foil, freezer bags, and other kitchen items related to food storage) for a total of $198.05. When I plug September into our year-to-date spending and divide by nine, I get a monthly average of $181.74.

So we're running six dollars ahead of our goal. If we hang around that mark, we'll finish the year $120.00 ahead (in a good way) of where we finished last year.

Eating out in September included the trip to Mayo, We spent a whopping $36.75 on that trip. ('Whopping" is to be read with great sarcasm.) Our food costs were so low because we packed a lunch/supper for Day 1 (the supper was supplemented with a salad from my beloved Kwik Trip) and ate the free breakfasts that came with our overnight accommodations. The rest of the month came to $72.77, a figure that included a concert night in Mansfield and treating ourselves to fair food when the county fair rolled around. Grand total: $109.52.

October food costs on the home front should be routine, with the exception of the opening of Season 41 with the Central Ohio Symphony. I'm anticipating we'll be hosting a reception afterwards; my mind is already turning to what to prepare and how to keep the costs reasonable. If nothing else, I do not have to buy any proseco, because I still have the five (5!) bottles from our reception at the end of Season 40.

One food expenses we will not have this year is Halloween candy, not because we are ignoring it, but because we leave town on the 31st for a two-day conference in Pittsburgh. I will miss our town's Beggar Night: I love to see the children and their costumes, I love to pass out the candy, I love to snack on the candy while I sit outside...

Next year.

Starting To Wind Down The Garden

 This was a hard week, ending a hard month. This week was a particularly hard ending to September as we did a 54-hour door-to-door road trip to Mayo, sliced and diced so thin because of other equally (more?) pressing matters at home, including the Symphony. Oh, we made the trip all right, but I got spectacularly road-sick once we were back home, vomiting with such force that I ended up with a severely swollen face and a black eye.

I'm much better now.

It is the last Sunday in September and the eve of Rosh Hashanah, for which I am not spiritually ready in the least, and it is an intense spiritual holiday, opening the High Holy Days. So perhaps it was not all bad that I just came in from an hour in the garden, cleaning it up somewhat, checking what was going on (peppers now going strong, tomatoes on the wane) and, perhaps, showing some optimism myself in one of the garden tasks I accomplished.

The bees in the agastache 

The bees are still around and I caught a few in the agastache. They were far heavier in number earlier in the summer, usually so many that you could hear the plants hum. As Warren and I looked the bed over (cutting back on agastache bunch that had uprooted in the drought), I looked up at the tall ornamental grasses we had transplanted from a friend's giveaways. 

"Look."

The grasses have gone to seed and are beautiful in a new and different way.

The ornamental grass going to seed 

I picked tomatoes this morning, while Warren deadheaded the marigolds rimming two of the four sides of the garden. This late in the season, the marigolds in are full glory, blazing away, paying no heed to the coming autumn, seemingly impervious to the coming frosts and snows. As for the tomatoes, after I picked (and trimmed back and even pulled out one plant, done for the year), I ended up with a respectable load to share with my family's joint household here in town.

The basil got caught in the heat while we were out in Oregon and Washington, and never recovered. I'm glad I made pesto earlier in the season. I contemplated pulling it up, then figured that task could wait. 

We are clearly moving into the cooler days, with the sun moving along its fall course. With the cooler weather comes the hope of a fall crop of lettuce. So I spent a quiet half hour or so breaking up the dried soil in the planters, remixing the soil, and seeding it again. I'm going with the Black Seeded Simpson and Emerald Jewel for the fall, having found those the most enjoyable of the ones I tried this spring.

And maybe that's my optimism: seeding four planters in lettuce seed, hoping for a fall crop of salad, looking forward to what the autumn holds. 

One of four planters, seeded for salad

And perhaps my thoughts while I prepared the planters was some preparation for the High Holy Days.

The High Holy Days are a time of contemplation and self-assessment. It is a time for soul-searching. What did I accomplish last year? What were my biggest mistakes? What do I want to change for the coming year? What do I need to change in myself?

Mixing the soil, breaking up the clods, adding some plant food, watering it to the right consistency were all concrete tasks with fixed end points. My mind could wander through some of those more intense, personal thoughts: Where am I in my life? What does this year hold? Who am I now?

The Jewish sage Maimonides came to mind: "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am for myself only, then what am I? And if not now, when?"

And if not now, when?

Let me see what the New Year brings, both inside me and outside in the garden. 

Small Moment: Washing The Loaf Pans

I made zucchini bread Friday night as I had a lot of zucchini that needed cooked, baked, or cut, bagged, and frozen. I ended up making a triple batch of bread: six loaves in all. When I turned them out onto the cooling racks (including yours, Katrina!), I just ran water into the pans and let them set overnight.

[Note: My zucchini-less status lasted until Saturday morning, when my dad brought by another grocery bag of them, possibly, maybe the last of the season. We just finished dealing with them this morning: freezer for some, supper tonight for the rest.]

Saturday morning I turned my attention to the loaf pans. All, even then non-stick ones, had been greased well so cleaning them was not an onerous task. I washed them in groups: the two smaller non-stick pans, the two larger aluminum pans, a small glass pan, and a large pottery one.

I ran warm, soapy water into the first two (while the others still held water from the night before) and started in. For the next 15 to 20 minutes, I cleaned them one by one, pouring the soapy water from one into the next one. There is a window overlooking the backyard at the sink and the sunlight played on the water as I washed.

I paid slow attention to each pan instead of my usual brisk, swipe and wipe pace. You heard of the Slow Food Movement? This was the Slow Washing Movement. As I washed, I thought about the pans. Warren remembered his mother making molded jello fruit salads ("all the time," per Warren) in the glass loaf pan. The two aluminum pans, standard size, were the remaining ones of the eight or ten I bought and used the summer I kept our household (my two sons and I) afloat baking and selling breads and pies at our downtown Farmers Market.

The heavy pottery loaf pan came from a long ago client, a young woman whose divorce I handled for free because she was having a hard enough time keeping her children and herself fed, let alone scrape together the money to pay an attorney. When the divorce was all over, she came into my office and presented me with the loaf pan filled with something delicious she had baked. My client explained that her mother had bought the pan to make her offering extra special. Then she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Thank you. Thank you."

Just her "thank you" was enough. The baked dessert was more than enough. And the pan? Well, I still use it and I think of that long ago client every single time.

The whole washing episode was a peaceful, quiet start to my day. It was a small moment, a routine task. It was a way to be more mindful, more grateful, as I stood there just washing the pans.

The Pie Of Summer

Kim, the blogger at Out My Window, asked me whether I would share the recipe for the corn/bacon/onion pie I references in my blog about August spending.

Absolutely!

Warren is the one who called my attention to the recipe, which appeared in The New York Times under the caption "Is This the Pie of the Summer?" The subheading referred to bacon and corn in a "rich, quiche-like tart."

How was I not going to make that, especially with it being sweet corn season?

The recipe as originally published called for a traditional butter crust with some cornmeal thrown in. I made my own standard water/mayonnaise/flour crust, threw in some cornmeal (by feel) and rolled out a (deliberately) thicker than usual crust, which I baked first and let cool. What I did to make the thicker crust was make the recipe for a double-crust pie, then roll out a single crust.  You can find my crust recipe discussed here; if you are pre-baking a shell using my crust recipe, you heat the oven to 475 degrees and bake it about 12-15 minutes.

The ingredients for the filling for one pie are:
1 small red onion
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice (note: i used bottled lime juice and it worked fine)
1/2 teaspoon salt
pinch granulated sugar (I omitted this one time; it did not make a noticeable difference)
4 ounces bacon (4 slices), diced
1 1/2 cups fresh/frozen corn kernels (2 small ears if fresh)
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup sour cream or plain Greek yogurt [I used Greek yogurt one time I made it; sour cream the other. No difference.]
3 large eggs
3/4 cup coarsely shredded sharp Cheddar (3 ounces)
3 tablespoons chopped parsley. I omitted this ingredient because I am not big on parsley and just threw in some dried herbs one time, some chopped fresh basil the other.

I left out one ingredient entirely: 2+ tablespoons chopped jalapeños because I do not eat jalapeños. I will note in the instructions where they come in. Looking at step 2 below, you can also pickle a little of the chopped jalapeños and add them later (step 5).

You make the filling as follows (this assumes the crust is made and cooling or cooled):

1. Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

The corn/onion mixture

2. Cut red onion in half at equator (not root to stem), then from the center cut out two very thin round slices. Separate the onion into rings and put in a bowl with lime juice, salt, and pinch of sugar. [This would also be where a little of the chopped jalapeños would go.] Set aside. Coarsely chop the remaining onion and set it aside.

3. Scatter diced bacon in a cold skillet. Turn heat to medium, and cook until bacon is brown and fat has rendered: 10-14 minutes. Transfer bacon to plate (paper towel on it) and leave fat in the skillet.

4. Stir chopped onion into skiller with bacon fat and place on medium heat. Sauté until golden-edged and translucent: about 6 minutes. Stir in corn, 1/2 teaspoon salt. [If you are adding the chopped jalapeños, add them here.] Cook until corn is tender, about 2-5 minutes.

Ready to go into the oven

5. Remove from heat and scoop 1/2 corn mixture into blender. Add cream, sour cream, and eggs; blend until you get a thick purée. [Note: I used a hand mixer one time because I did not have a blender handy. Same result and cleanup was about 1000% easier.] Scrape the purée in the pan with the other kernels, add the bacon and 1/2 cup Cheddar. Stir, then scrape into the pie shell.

6. Top mixture with pickled red onion (jalapeños if you did that) and sprinkle the remaining Cheddar cheese on top.

7. Bake until puffed, golden, and just set: 35-45 minutes. Transfer to wire rack, cool slightly. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Out of the oven

And there you have it.

Kim, if you make it, I'll be interested to hear how it turned out and what you thought!

Did someone say bacon? And corn?

August Money Review

As predicted when I last wrote about our grocery spending, the food purchases (groceries, not eating out) made while out west pushed our August numbers way past the $175.00 mark.

Way past.

Just before we left for vacation, our combined food/household spending for the month was $197.13, $174.15 of which was food and $22.98 of which represented household items such as toilet paper and cleaning agents. So we were already past our $175.00 goal, but even so, our year-to-date average still came in at $165.80.

While on vacation, we spent another $111.20 at the grocery on food, nudging our year-to-date average to $179.70.

This is what that corn/cheese/bacon pie looks like. 

Why so much?

Because we bought all the food for two meals for nine adults. (I'm not counting the children, one of whom is an infant.) One meal was a variation on a Cuban pork dish my sons' grandmother used to make; the other featured three bacon/onion/corn pies and two roast chickens. Leftovers went to various homes or made reappearances in the days that followed. Another $20.00 or so went to a sundae bar (Ramona's favorite) when seven adults (and the children) gathered on the last evening. My sons (and their partners) provided the main meal and did all the cooking, but we supplied the dessert. (There were also some smaller purchases along the way, some of which we shipped home.)

Our August food expenditures were worth every penny.

I suppose I could take the position that our August food bill should be the lower amount and not count the vacation. But had all these wonderful people been in my home, I would have bought greater quantities of food and counted those amounts. So I'm counting them here. It will be nip-and-tuck to see if I finish 2019 with a monthly average of $175.00, but, ehhhh, I'm okay with that.

Surprisingly, our vacation eating out (just our portion, not the amounts we spent treating others) came in at a cool $93.29. Before we left, we had spent only $43.64 on eating out, which included our share of a lunch for my dad's 86th birthday and a desperately needed bag of food after a very, very late legal clinic. So the month came out at $136.93, with the bulk of that being the vacation, and I'm fine with that.

 When we got home on September 1 (new month, new totals), we did a major shopping to get perishables and restock some basics that had run low during July and August. I'm predicting September comes in around $175.00, especially if I make a point of turning to the freezer and cupboards. Between purchases at a local family-owned farm market and my dad bringing over zucchini from his garden, our freezer is packed heading into the fall and winter.

I'm eager to see what the last four months of this year bring, and where we end up on our food spending.

Back

We have been back for one week, having arrived back in Ohio last Sunday. I just finished catching up my accounts and am wending my way through paperwork I'd shoved aside before leaving. I'll post my August figures in the next day or two, but dollars take a backseat to these short glimpses.

Here are my sons, preparing a meal together, all grown up:

And here is Ramona, running into the ocean, just on the brink of being seven and beginning second grade (school started while we were there and she had her 7th birthday the day we left):

Lyrick will be three at the end of this week:

And this guy? Almost seven months old, almost crawling, and has an opinion on everything:

For the record, he was thoroughly approving of his sister making peanut butter cookies.

It's always good to be back home, but, oh, how I miss them!

Small Moment: Isn't That The Point?

We are packing tonight for an early morning flight to PDX. As I noted recently, there is one grandchild I am eager to meet for the first time, and two others I am anxious to spend time with again.

The bag from three years ago

I am again bound and determined to pack small and light. Three years ago, I managed to pack clothing for a conference and a visit in a bag approximately 9 x 18 x 9 inches. I told Warren to get that one out for me for this trip as well. Sticking to a trimmed list, I packed away.

Okay, I got almost everything in that I wanted to get in. But dang, that bag was heavy. And tight. And...

Too Full.

I am also carrying my go-everywhere bag, and it too was weighted down, mostly with things that did not fit into the bag.

Clearly I had to rethink my approach.I thought about what was in it: a minimal amount of clothing (we will be staying with Alise's parents, so we can do laundry). Some photos that I want to put in Sam and Ben's hands, culled from my parents' thousands of photos. My Chromebook layered in between a skirt and a pair of shorts.

[An aside: Warren is packing a big carryon and a small person bag as well. But I don't want to weigh him down with my stuff. ]

I looked again at my list, looked again at the little bag straining at the seams. What could go? What did I not need to bring?

Or rather, what did I need to bring most?

Once I reframed the question that way, the answer crystallized. Other than clothes, what I needed to bring most was me. Me as in being mindful and focused on enjoying my children and our grandchildren and our family. Me as in leaving behind a basket full of stresses and worries that have dogged me all summer. Me as in "I want to savor this time." 

"I want to savor this time."  Indeed, isn't that the point of my going?

Exactly.

Once I answered that question, I knew exactly what to pull out. Out came the Chromebook. It can stay behind for ten days. My world won't come to an end without access to Facebook and email and headlines. (Warren is bringing his laptop so he can do some Symphony work, but I generally do not get on his machine.)

Once I removed the machine, the bag gave a sigh of relief and zipped easily. I, too, gave a sigh of relief.

And now I am ready to go.

Small Moment: "I Love You More"

Warren and I ran an early morning errand today and when we got back to Delaware, I told him to just park his car in his usual spot (a half block or so from his office) and I would walk to work (a block and a half) from there. As I started to cut across the Justice Center parking lot, I called over my shoulder, "I love you!" With a smile that could have been a wink, Warren called back, "I love you more."

Oh my. That was a hand-to-my-heart moment. "I love you more" is how my beloved Aunt Ginger and I always took leave of one another, with each of us often trying to top the other:

"I love you."

A moment with Aunt Ginger and a very young Ramona (2014)

"I love you more."

"Well, I love you more than that."

"I love you all of that and even more on top of that!"

Even in her last months, when the dementia was starting to take its toll, Ginger would remember to say "I love you more" when it came time for me to leave.

Ginger has been gone now for a little over nine months. I visit her grave occasionally, and noted to Warren when I came back last time that we need to seed her grave this fall or spring as the grass put down by the cemetery crew did not come in well (and it has been such a dry summer the last several weeks that nothing would take right now). I have some photos of her in my study, and a memento here and there.

But mostly I have my memories, over six decades of them. As I noted when she turned 80, Ginger was a key part of my life always.

And today Warren called her response to me, deliberately invoking her. That's what his smile was about. And after I blinked the tears out of my eyes. I looked to the skies and said out loud, "I love you, Aunt Ginger."

"...and I miss you."

What Poverty Looks Like, 2019 Version

I recently saw a meme on Facebook so hostile and ugly (I know, I know, you're thinking "You only saw one that fits that category?") that it made me take a step back and comment to Warren that I was having a very hard time with the post because this is someone in our immediate family, not just someone I can delete from my life, who thought it appropriate.

Now, a couple of comments before you start jumping to conclusions. The person posting is not particularly political; the meme had no mention, pro or con, of the current administration, Congress, the upcoming 2020 Democratic primary candidates, or the Supreme Court.

The meme was not about race.

It was not about immigration.

It was not about the environment.

The meme was about entitlement and privilege, which is something I often talk about. The twist was that the meme was about the "privileged" poor and how they (the poor) have to get over their special sense of entitlement.

Really? Really? 

The meme was particularly timely because just this week at work we had a real life (no meme here),  graphic demonstration of the gulf between privilege and poverty. At work right now, we (all County employees, not just our Court) are having to verify to the overarching benefits provider that the family members we carry on our health insurance are indeed entitled to be there by virtue of marriage, birth, or whatever. This has caused a lot of grumbling ("If my five year old was my birth child three years ago when we last did this, chances are good he is still my child") and a lot of faxing.

In the midst of this, a coworker shared with me two birth certificates as a demonstration of what a hard life does even to the young.

The first birth certificate is that of her stepson's and it looks like that (she photographed the backs of them for me):

That is the birth certificate of a child who was raised in stable circumstances, with food on the table, clean clothes to wear, a roof over his head, and the other benefits of an economically sustainable household. When my coworker asked her stepson for his birth certificate so that she could fax it in, his initial response was uncertainty as to where it was. The paper the birth certificate is printed on is unblemished; it has been kept in a nice, thick plastic sleeve.

The second birth certificate is that of a young adult, also male, of whom she was awarded custody (out of a Juvenile Court proceeding in another county) when he was still a teenager. She gained custody, even though there is no biological connection, so that this youth would have a roof over his head and someone to help him navigate a harsh world. Because he had essentially been raising himself from his early teens on, he and not a parent was always responsible for knowing where essential papers were at any given time. When my coworker asked him last week if he had his birth certificate for the verification requirements, this young man knew immediately where it was and handed it over. It was in his wallet. It looks like this:

Those creases and wear marks are from it being carried in a wallet for several years. The certificate is paper thin from wear; you can hold it to the light and see through it. (Take my word for it, you cannot see through the first one.)

This is what poverty looks like. It is not about privilege and it is not about entitlement. It is about surviving. Yes, sometimes there is government help when and if it is available (and if varies wildly from state to state, incidentally). But that is not a given ever. Poverty is about figuring out how to eat maybe once a day (more if you're lucky), stay warm in the winter, and make it to work or school no matter how far that may be, whether you have any gasoline, or whether you have a car at all. It is about staying safe under circumstances that many of us never have to imagine, let alone experience.

Poverty is about a battered birth certificate that a 20-year-old carries in his wallet so he can prove who he is when he has to.

My coworker and I talked for several minutes about these two certificates and the different stories they told. I mentioned a book I read several years ago by a sociologist who spent months traveling Greyhound buses and talking to riders, examining the lives of those riders. The author made a striking observation about how most of us who do not live in poverty have a general idea of how much money (cash, not debit or credit cards) we have on us at any given time, but how when you are poor, you know down to the penny exactly how much money you have on you, because that is likely the only money you have and you have to spend it carefully. (Economists have made similar observations and many conclude that people who live in poverty are far more intelligent consumers because every dollar has real, immediate value to them.)

My coworker immediately agreed. The young man with the tattered birth certificate? He can always tell you how much money he has on him at any given time. A young woman I know who lives in deep poverty? The same.

In the end, the ugly meme reminded me of the Ghost of Christmas Present turning on Scrooge in anger for Scrooge's earlier callousness about the poor dying so as to decrease the surplus population. When Scrooge reacts emotionally to the Ghost's pronouncement that Tiny Tim will die if nothing else changes, the Ghost throws his words back at him, concluding: "It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child."

I know. It's just a meme. And I also know that Facebook is a cesspool of viciousness on many, many fronts. But I'll let the Ghost have the final word.

"Forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is."

July Money Review

Following the extravagance of May and the parsimony of June, our July grocery bills looked pretty darn normal. When I sat down yesterday to run the totals, I confirmed this: $184.20 for food, $4.00 for household items, total $188.20. Yes, we nudged over the $175.00 I am hoping for each month, but just barely. And our year-to-date monthly average came in at a cool $161.33.

Our eating out expenditures were $80.99, about half of which were meals out with out-of-town friends. (I only count our share of those meals, not the total bill.) That's a huge reduction (about 75%) from our June expenditures.

Clearly the anticipation of meeting us is just overwhelming. 

August is going to be a challenge to come in around $175.00. We will be heading west for time with family, including the long anticipated introduction to Orlando, who will be just past the six month mark when we finally meet.

Last year when we were out west, I counted the groceries I bought, even when buying for the whole family. I will do the same this year. Even shopping at my beloved Winco, which will keep the costs rock bottom low, adds up when buying for ten to twelve people.

The bigger challenge for the August grocery spending will be that, even though it is only August 4 while I write this, we have already spent $142.43 in food ($119.45) and household ($22.98).

No, we did not buy lobster. Or anything remotely resembling lobster. But we did spend money restocking some basics (toilet paper among those items). We also spent some serious bucks on meat: about $10.00 on chicken thighs and $50.00 on salmon (8.5 pounds, but who's counting?). The salmon was a whale of a sale for local salmon prices; I cut it up this morning and wrapped it to freeze in meal portions. In the quantities we eat, that's a whole lot of meals; the final count was 13. (The chicken thighs already met a similar fate.) That comes to $3.85 a salmon meal, incidentally. What with all of our purchases and the items already in the freezer, I said to Warren, "We really only have to buy perishables from now until we leave."

And that simplistic sentiment was not inaccurate until I realized we are buying zucchinis at a locally owned farm market because dad's zucchini plant might get something on it before the first frost. (Let's just say it was a bad season for dad and his garden.) Warren and I eat a lot of zucchini during the winter; we slice and freeze it in quart bags all through the summer and into the fall.

Oh, and the first sweet corn is hitting the local farm market too. We do not eat as much sweet corn (cut off the cob and frozen into quart portions) as we do zucchini, but still, there will be sweet corn purchases.

So who knows what August will look like when all is said and done?

In other financial arenas, July held some major expenditures, chief among them airline tickets (which I had been saving for). It held some unexpected medical costs when an unexplained fever sent me to Urgent Care, at which the doctor took less than five minutes to send me straight on to the ER. I have really good health insurance through my job with Delaware County, but it was still a pricy night. I have a modest amount of money in an account separate from my regular checking account, so I could cover the costs, but it made me acutely aware of the whole issue of financial sustainability.

Financial sustainability is something that is out of reach of about 43% of the US population. It is very roughly defined as having enough income to meet your monthly expenses, ranging from housing and food to transportation, without having to beg, borrow, or go without. While some of those Americans in that 43% are those who live below the poverty line, a large and growing portion of them are what sociologists, United Ways nationwide, and a lot of others of us now refer to as ALICE.

ALICE stands for Asset Limited Income Constrained Employed. ALICE is in every state. ALICE knows no geographic, age, ethnic, or racial boundaries.

ALICE is a topic near and dear to my heart for several reasons. One is that many of the clients who come to our monthly free legal clinic are in the ALICE group. Another is that this fall I will be presenting at a national conference on the topic of ALICE and the legal system: how do we make sure those without means have access to justice?

But the major reason I am so keen on ALICE is that I have been ALICE. If I were not married to Warren, I would be ALICE now. And but for the fact that Warren owns his house without a mortgage, we would likely be ALICE. I have close friends and family members who are ALICE. And they are ALICE not because they are lazy or profligate spenders, but because the reality of today's economy is that financial sustainability is increasingly impossible to attain.

So as I sat there in ER and the very nice staffer informed me that my ER cost would be $150.00 and how would I like to pay that, I was grateful I had the means to take care of it right then and there, without having to calculate wildly how many months I could stretch it out over (as I have had to do in my ALICE past). And it made me think of all those who come through those doors (or through the grocery line or to the landlord) who do not have that ability.

As I mentioned back in January, I knew 2019 would hold challenges. We are both starting to look at retirement "somewhere" in the future. I don't turn 65 until April 2021 and cannot retire until Medicare kicks in (assuming that such a thing even exists in 2021) but am starting to look at that date (assuming I don't die before then). Warren sailed past his 65th birthday, a huge relief for me knowing that if I did die while still employed by the County, he would have medical insurance. While we are just starting to kick around what-might-this-look-like? when we talk, we are aware that our financial situation will change significantly when we both step away from drawing a paycheck. Other friends in our age range are having the same discussions; we compare notes in letters and emails and conversations.

More to come.

But first comes our trip and these little ones:

Lyrick will be turning 3 next month. Ramona is on the cusp of turning 7 and starting 2nd grade. Her school got a whole new building built over the summer. I'm excited because we will be there to tour it at the open house and watch her head off on her first day of school, an experience we missed last year because of the strike.

Wonderful times await.

Coming Full Circle

In this part of Ohio (smack dead center) when I was growing up (I started 1st grade in 1962), it was not unusual to hear a classmate announce "I'm part Indian" or "I'm part Cherokee" or something similar. (Maybe it still is, but I am talking about then, not now.) Everyone (well, at least four or five kids)  claimed Native American ancestry, often Cherokee, whenever indigenous peoples were talked about, which in school meant when we talked about "ancient" Ohio history—the Adena and Hopewell tribes, called "Mound Builders" by the dominant white colonial society—or around Thanksgiving.

Heck, my family even had an "We're part Indian" story that persisted into the 21st century. My

Grandma Skatzes: not Native American 

Grandmother Skatzes told stories, perhaps more than one, that we had a Native American ancestor in her family tree. It was a grandmother, three or four generations back, who would tie her children to the fence so that she could work in the garden. (My grandmother, a gentle-hearted soul, would tear up when she told this, saying "That was a cruel and terrible thing to do! Those little children would holler all day long!") There was never a name attached to this allegedly Native American ancestor, just the story of tying the children up so she could do her chores.

Another version which popped up once or twice was that we had a male ancestor, supposedly of the Apache tribe, somewhere back in the past. Seriously? Besides the fact that the historical lands of the Apache were in the southwestern part of this country, a part of the country we did not move to or come from, a narrative involving a relationship with a male Native American runs contrary to what the standard settler/Native interrelationships looked like: male settler, Native woman.

Trust me, it didn't happen.

Still, the stories persisted. As I grew older and learned more history of the colonization in this part of the country, I began to disbelieve the whole family myth of a Native American ancestor. Most of our maternal genealogical records, even without digging too deep, followed such traditional white trajectories that I could not begin to shoehorn a Native American ancestor into them. Rape or sexual assault somewhere in the past? Absolutely a possibility. But a marriage or domestic partnership? No way. It was white, white, white all the way.

With the advent of DNA testing for "heritage" purposes, one of my cousins on my maternal side took a test. She was excited waiting for the results, anticipating seeing threads of that Native American ancestor pop up in the results. I told her to be prepared: there won't be any Native American DNA identified. Yes, there will be, April! Just wait and see!

True to my prediction, there was no Native American DNA. Zero, nada, nothing. Unlike Elizabeth Warren, we couldn't even pretend to have any Native American lineage.

That story resurfaced when I went to Kentucky last month with my dad and brother and sister-in-law. While we were eating dinner at a Bob Evans, Mark brought up that we have Native American blood in the Strickler family line (our mom's maternal lineage).

"No, we don't. There might be some in the family, but it's not there."

Dad looked at me quizzically. "The Skatzes side?" (That would be Mom's paternal lineage.)

"Not there either," I said, explaining that our cousin (who has the same Skatzes/Strickler DNA that my brother and I do) had a DNA test and the results were negative for Native American DNA.

"Frankly, if there is any Native American blood, it'll be on your side, Dad."

I went on to point our that his family history, of which I know the bare bones narrative, was more likely to have Native American/settler interrelationships of the kind that would lead to marriage or a domestic partnership. Our ancestors were in Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky very early in the dominant white colonial history of this country, and probably far enough in advance of "civilization" that tribes in the area would have been the only other humans around.

That's when I came to a complete stop in my mind.

Oh hell.

We, my family, did that. We were part of that wave of white settlers invaders, part of the white colonization mindset that it all belonged to us and those others—those indigenous people seen as lesser than, if seen as human at all—deserved to be pushed out of the way or slaughtered or both in the name of God, the King, the United States, the whatever.

We were those people and for all of my participation in circles on historical trauma and cultural and biological genocide and (gulp) restorative justice, it never hit me that I was a direct heir and beneficiary of that. All my law school clerk experience in the Native American law field, my championing of tribal law and the many Native sovereign nations: that was good work, but I was flying blind, in the fog, and upside down. I couldn't even coast by saying my family came to those parts of the United States (Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio) post-Civil War through Ellis Island after all the tribes had been exterminated or removed.

Oh, no, no, no, we were here from the very beginning and took part of that long, horrific history.

Oh hell. Talk about privilege. Talk about white dominant colonial culture bias.

Talk about feeling like a totally clueless goof.

If my child-in-law Alise, who is Anishinaabe, is reading this post, this is about the point where she is nodding her head and saying "uh huh, April, uh huh. Now you get it."

Better late than never.

But dang, that "late" was way late in coming.

In The Garden

As I predicted a few weeks ago, the lettuce has indeed come to a halt: too bitter, too burnt, too bolted. I have not yet dug up the planters, but the lettuce is over until I replant it in the fall. I did, reluctantly, buy some romaine at the store, but after days and days of eating fresh, picked-just-five-minutes-ago lettuce from the back patio, it is less than satisfying.

But that disappointment was offset by these:

Yes, the long winter wait is over and I am starting to pick fresh tomatoes again. They were a couple of weeks behind last year's first ones, but, oh, oh, oh. 

And I just picked and processed a lot of basil. A. Lot. I don't cook a lot with fresh basil, but I do make it into pesto, most of which goes into the freezer or to friends. The basil had gotten tall and thick, so Sunday morning I went out and started clipping. 20 minutes later, I had a sink full of basil:

That bumper crop led to several hours of cutting, chopping, grinding, and whatever else it took to bring it to pesto.

I do not use a pesto recipe. Ever. Some years ago, some food reporter for the New York Times went on a quest to find the area's best pesto, hearing rumors of it being at some diner, perhaps in the Hudson River Valley. The reporter indeed found the very best pesto (having sampled pesto far and wide) and talked with the pesto maker, the proprietor of said diner or restaurant. I don't remember the details other than this salient one: she did not use a recipe at all, but just threw in ingredients until it looked, smelled, and tasted right to her.

Dang! I read that and never looked back. 

My pesto is chopped basil, pressed garlic, parmesan cheese, olive oil, and chopped pecans. I do much of that work by hand using basic kitchen tools, including what a long ago car mechanic friend called a BFH. I use a home-sized BFH (shown below) to smack the garlic to break the husks. 

Warren and I have a very, very small food processor. We bought it many years ago, for (if memory serves me) $9.99. It maybe has a cup and a half capacity. Okay, maybe two cups, but I don't think so. We have used it (no exaggeration) hundreds of times: for salsa, for relish, for pesto, for grinding pecans or almonds for biscotti. It has a crack from top to bottom that does not leak, so we keep using it.  Let's just say we got our money's worth out of it.

When you have limited capacity in your food processor, it takes awhile to work your way through a sink's worth of basil. But slowly, throughout the morning and into the middle of the afternoon, the pesto accumulated and accumulated and accumulated.

By 3:00 p.m., the basil was all gone and I was left with this: 

It took another hour to clean the kitchen (and, in fact, the above photo was taken after I got the kitchen cleaned). 

One container immediately went next door to our good neighbors, Maura and Adam, who recently welcomed a new baby (and a little sister for their daughter) into the world. Distant as my sons' births are, I still remember the pleasure when someone showed up with food that I didn't have to prepare when I was a new parent. Another went to a young friend and her husband. The rest went into my freezer. 

There will be more basil and probably one more pesto day. (Yes, Tonya, I know you want some!) After that, I will let the basil go to flower, because I get such pleasure in watching the bees in it. 

Bees in the basil. I can't wait.