I just finished reading Julie and Julia, the book that was the basis for the movie of the same name, and have something embarrassingly awful to admit. I’m jealous!
Here this Julie Powell person comes up with this cooking-her-way-through-Julia-Child idea and suddenly she’s a full-time writer. So I figured there’s only one thing to do. Imitate!
Thus, the title of today’s blog. Except I haven’t found a Helena that I can emulate. There’s Helena Rubenstein, a famous name in cosmetics, but being a lipstick-only lady I have absolutely no interest in spending a year, or even a week, trying out all her different eye shadows and foundation creams.
There’s Saint Helena, also known as Helena of Constantinople, who died about 1600 years ago. According to you-know-what informational website, she “was the consort of Emperor Constantius, and the mother of Emperor Constantine I. She is traditionally credited with finding the relics of the True Cross.” Admirable, but definitely not accomplishments I can repeat. Or even understand very well, starting life as I did in the bosom of an eastern European Jewish family.
There’s Helena, Montana, which happens to be the capital of that state. I know this for a fact because when my seventh grade teacher called out “Montana” and I didn’t immediately raise my hand with the answer, she made a very big point of staring at me and emphatically pronouncing my name to make sure I’d get it. I got it. And I’ll never forget it.
And it’s absolutely certain that I could never love cooking the way both Julie and Julia do, or in Julia’s case, did. Nor would I ever willingly work my way through 524 recipes. The culinary highlights of my life make a pretty short list. And since you all know how much I love lists, here it is.
Liver. Yep, you read that correctly. Liver. In my pre-vegan days I adored the stuff. All kinds. Calves liver, chicken liver, chopped liver. Cold liver sandwiches for lunch. (Truth!) I cooked calves liver the way my mother did, dipped in egg, breaded and fried, and now and then daring people have told me that was the only liver they ever enjoyed eating. Not a lot of people Some people. One or two. Maybe only one.
Blintzes. That’s another recipe I learned from my mother. If you don’t know what a blintz is, think crepe and you’ll be close. I used to love watching Mom make blintzes, it was such a major production. First she would cover our big dining room table with a white tablecloth, then she’d mix up a bowl of egg batter and a batch of dry cottage cheese mixture. Next step was heating a small iron skillet – actually, I think she had a couple of them going at the same time – and pouring in some of the egg mixture, then pouring most of it back into the bowl, leaving a very thin skin to quickly solidify. She would dump each circle of cooked egg crepe on the table and head back to the stove for more until the whole table was covered with rows of yellow circles about, oh, I guess about 3 or 4 inches around.
Using an ice cream scoop Mom would plop a mound of the cottage cheese stuff into the middle of each little pancake, and when that step was completed, she would fold each pancake to make a sort of cheese-mixture-filled envelope. And finally most of the blintzes would get piled on a plate and put into the refrigerator for frying at a later time. By now I was visibly panting and salivating, because the wonderful conclusion of this whole project was getting to eat a few of the blintzes that she fried right away
When I tried duplicating this process, some 20 years later, a lot of my egg pancakes were too thin and tore when I tried to fold them, and others were the right consistency but my folding skills were sadly lacking, so I ended up with a bunch of mostly odd shaped and falling apart blintzes. And some of them completely disintegrated during the frying stage. Didn’t matter, though. They tasted just fine.
Mac & Cheese and canned spaghetti. Yep, you read that correctly, too. I used to think that one of the best dinners in the whole world was to make a batch of Kraft macaroni and cheese and combine it with the contents of a can of spaghetti and heat up the whole mess together. And when I say “used to” I don’t mean “used to” as in “when I was a kid.” I’m talking sophisticated grown-up cuisine here.
Banana bread. There was a period of a few years when I was kind of into baking, and one of the two or three items that I made back then was banana bread. I used a recipe that was in the Settlement House Cookbook, the resource my mother had relied on for everything. An easy recipe, except it called for a half-cup of buttermilk. I hated buttermilk, and neither my husband nor daughter seemed to ever want the stuff, either, so it wasn’t something we usually had on hand, whereas all the other ingredients called for were items I kept in stock. One day when I was lamenting to a friend about having to run out for buttermilk whenever one of these baking fits came over me, she told me that I could substitute a solution of half milk and half vinegar. I tried it and sure ‘nuff, it worked. Until the day I decided to double the recipe and make two loaves. In my mathematically deficient brain, I figured out that creating a cup of faux buttermilk required a whole cup EACH of milk and vinegar. Those were strange tasting loaves of banana bread, as you can well imagine.
Vegan chili. So with this kind of illustrious history as a cook, it really tickles my tootsies to have such great success with my chili. Especially since calling it a recipe, or even characterizing what I do as cooking, is really a stretch. I’ve been making the stuff for years, and all it amounts to is opening a bunch of cans and emptying them into a crock pot. Really. Not exaggerating. I put in canned chili beans, canned tomato sauce, and canned diced tomatoes. Swish some water around in the cans after they are empty and pour that into the pot. Add onions. In the old days, before it became vegan chili, I used to add cooked ground turkey. Now I use textured vegetable protein, which ends up looking somewhat like ground meat. Beans and sauce and tomatoes and onions and TVP cook on low in the crock pot for eight to ten hours and voila, chili. Very popular chili that almost always gets completely devoured at potluck dinners, even though I’m often the only vegetarian in attendance, and almost certainly the only vegan. I figure crock pot slow cooking is the secret ingredient.
However, since it isn’t likely I can find a way to turn completely un-gourmet chili into a path to fame and fortune, looks like I’ll just have to be satisfied with being just plain Helen and skip the search for Helena.
Or maybe, if I moved to Montana ….
-30-
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Private corners
It’s so much fun reading my daughter’s blogs. She challenged herself to write 30 blogs in 30 days, so there’s a continual flow of yummy stuff to read. And it amazes me how differently we remember things. Not just the experiences of her childhood. Everything.
Throughout her adult life we have spent a lot of time together. Rooming together, working in the same restaurant, performing together professionally, hanging out with card playing friends at coffee houses, sharing an eye-opening series of candid discussions about race unity, serving together as elected members of a Bahá'í spiritual assembly, starting various joint projects and ventures. Sometimes happy with each other, sometimes not.
Yet although so many of her blogs are about times and places and events in her life that are also my times and places and events, her memories of them are very different than mine. More proof that we – all human beings -- each live in our own private universe. I think my daughter and I should put a book together, or rather separately together. List a bunch of our shared experiences, then each go off to our own corners and write about them.
Wait a minute, why does that idea sound familiar? Riiiiiight, we’re already doing that. It’s called blogging!
Now, this minute, we are preparing to launch our most ambitious project yet. It’s a children’s theatre company associated with a New York City group of the same name. We’re calling our local chapter Soul Miners, based on a statement made by Bahá'u'lláh: “Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.”
Probably the easiest way to describe this activity is to borrow a phrase from the New York City company and say that our goal is to build character on stage. Following their highly successful model, we will be providing Saturday afternoon theatre arts schools built on a foundation of spiritual education. Or moral education. Or virtues education. However it’s described, the core lessons for the six-to-ten-year-old students will be to know that they were created noble by a loving God, to understand that their highest calling is service and contributing to mankind’s well-being, and to appreciate the essential unity of message in all the great world religions.
And we’ll be aiming for as much diversity as possible in this and subsequent classes – racial diversity, religious, economic, whatever – which will provide great casts for the production of original musicals from the New York group’s award-winning repertoire.
We almost didn’t get started at all. The sheer volume of “how to” information that our New York mentor gave us, and the size and scope and complexity of that 10-year-old project, temporarily paralyzed us into frightened inaction. I might have stayed paralyzed forever, but my daughter, who’s better than me at cutting to the core of things, declared that we would have to just begin very small, very simply, and let the mission develop and grow over time. With that decision made, we were finally able to set a firm starting date and take action to recruit students, teachers, and volunteers.
In another situation I recently heard someone say, “ We are building the ship as we cross the ocean.” I immediately thought of Soul Miners. Yes! I said to myself. That’s exactly what we are doing.
What an exciting journey this will be. What magnificent gems we will help to mine. What wonderful stories we will share. And someday when we talk or write about this experience, no doubt we will each relate a very different version of what happened.
And we’ll both be right.
-30-
Throughout her adult life we have spent a lot of time together. Rooming together, working in the same restaurant, performing together professionally, hanging out with card playing friends at coffee houses, sharing an eye-opening series of candid discussions about race unity, serving together as elected members of a Bahá'í spiritual assembly, starting various joint projects and ventures. Sometimes happy with each other, sometimes not.
Yet although so many of her blogs are about times and places and events in her life that are also my times and places and events, her memories of them are very different than mine. More proof that we – all human beings -- each live in our own private universe. I think my daughter and I should put a book together, or rather separately together. List a bunch of our shared experiences, then each go off to our own corners and write about them.
Wait a minute, why does that idea sound familiar? Riiiiiight, we’re already doing that. It’s called blogging!
Now, this minute, we are preparing to launch our most ambitious project yet. It’s a children’s theatre company associated with a New York City group of the same name. We’re calling our local chapter Soul Miners, based on a statement made by Bahá'u'lláh: “Regard man as a mine rich in gems of inestimable value. Education can, alone, cause it to reveal its treasures, and enable mankind to benefit therefrom.”
Probably the easiest way to describe this activity is to borrow a phrase from the New York City company and say that our goal is to build character on stage. Following their highly successful model, we will be providing Saturday afternoon theatre arts schools built on a foundation of spiritual education. Or moral education. Or virtues education. However it’s described, the core lessons for the six-to-ten-year-old students will be to know that they were created noble by a loving God, to understand that their highest calling is service and contributing to mankind’s well-being, and to appreciate the essential unity of message in all the great world religions.
And we’ll be aiming for as much diversity as possible in this and subsequent classes – racial diversity, religious, economic, whatever – which will provide great casts for the production of original musicals from the New York group’s award-winning repertoire.
We almost didn’t get started at all. The sheer volume of “how to” information that our New York mentor gave us, and the size and scope and complexity of that 10-year-old project, temporarily paralyzed us into frightened inaction. I might have stayed paralyzed forever, but my daughter, who’s better than me at cutting to the core of things, declared that we would have to just begin very small, very simply, and let the mission develop and grow over time. With that decision made, we were finally able to set a firm starting date and take action to recruit students, teachers, and volunteers.
In another situation I recently heard someone say, “ We are building the ship as we cross the ocean.” I immediately thought of Soul Miners. Yes! I said to myself. That’s exactly what we are doing.
What an exciting journey this will be. What magnificent gems we will help to mine. What wonderful stories we will share. And someday when we talk or write about this experience, no doubt we will each relate a very different version of what happened.
And we’ll both be right.
-30-
Monday, January 18, 2010
A messenger of joy
“I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve?”
These words of Bahá'u'lláh have been a challenge and a mystery to me for over 40 years, since I first learned committed myself to the Bahá'í Faith. There was no joy in death as it was understood in my childhood home and early religious education. Death was a punishment, or an injustice, or just simply an end. Judaism, as I was taught it, did not include a view of life continuing beyond earthly bounds.
And I was just plain scared of death. Felt trapped, unfairly given a life that was destined to be snatched away and completely erased, more completely than the pencil marks in my sketches when I rubbed out wayward lines to replace them with more exacting ones. Those lines at least left a faint trace of themselves on the paper. My life would simply disappear, as if it had never happened.
But my contact with the Bahá'í Faith gave me a new understanding of death as a transition from the training wheels phase of life to a continuing, progressing, eternal existence. Eternal. That was the sticking point. My dread, my outright panic at times, transferred itself from fear of endings to fear of forever.
And I still felt trapped, by a fate over which I had no control, no choice.
But I believe that Bahá'u'lláh’s words are true, that they are directly channeled to us by a loving Creator, so my challenge was rely on prayer and meditation to accept death as a “messenger of joy,” and actually become joyful about it.
It’s been a long journey. I’m much farther along the way. There have been moments when I have felt almost there, and the peacefulness of those moments call for more.
It’s not surprising that my period of greatest serenity about death came during the time, starting three years ago this month, that I was dealing with cancer diagnosis and treatment, and with the uncertainty of outcome. Most people tried to be helpful by talking about cancer as if it were a sports event. I was counseled to beat it, fight it, was assured that I would win, with winning was defined as staying alive.
Did that mean that if I died, if the cancer “won,” I would “lose”? Did it mean that death was synonymous with defeat? Such a view didn’t gibe well with the image of death as “a messenger of joy.”
I thought a lot about the fact that death is not an “if”, it’s a “when.” I will die, someday, that was a given. Did it matter that much whether it was now or later? Logically I couldn’t see that it did.
So I could not then and cannot now accept the idea that if I, or anyone, dies from cancer or any other disease, they have lost a battle. Serenity during that time of living in cancer-world came from accepting that, while of course I would do whatever was necessary to get healthy and stay healthy, any result, any outcome, would be OK. More than OK. It would be a positive good.
It’s been a greater challenge to hang on to that serenity about death since I’ve been able to get off the sofa and have an active life again. But in a few days I have an appointment with my oncologist, a routine three-month check-up, and every time one of these appointments nears, I wonder if this will be the one where I learn the cancer has returned. And every time I have to remember the lessons cancer has taught me.
This week, with my upcoming appointment plus all the news about the devastation in Haiti and the trial initiated against the seven Bahá'ís in Iran who are accused of non-sensical and vague capital crimes, I am more aware than ever that death is inevitable, and that it will come on its own schedule, with or without warning.
And that my job – everyone’s job, regardless of their specific beliefs about death – is to be ready for it at every moment of life. Not in a morbid way. Just accepting it. And accepting the “when” of it. Because, as the well-known Alcoholics Anonymous prayer tells us, serenity comes from knowing what we can control and what we cannot control, and from putting our energies into the former rather than the latter.
It seems to me that in today’s world, the manner and timing of our deaths are more and more out of our control. I hear the rumblings of what is coming as the world collapses in upon itself, as the spiritually bankrupt structure of society as a whole implodes from lack of solid support.
It’s not the earthquake that is the disaster in Haiti, it’s the racism and materialism that created a poverty which failed to provide buildings that could stand during an earthquake.
It wasn’t Hurricane Katrina that washed out New Orleans, it was the racism and materialism that created its poor capacity to withstand a major hurricane.
And far too many people die not from disease but from the treatment of disease, treatments and drugs and procedures that often exist to serve stockholders as much, sometimes more, than patients.
Everywhere in the world I see disunity and injustice stemming from racism and materialism, from a lack of real and active faith in God, a lack demonstrated by the self-serving practices of business and government and in the everyday lives of everyday people. I see how we have created a modern Tower of Babel: too high, too weak, too poorly constructed and managed to stand
Bahá'u'lláh talked about the twin processes of destruction and construction that would lead us to a world based on justice and love. Many of us will be caught, often without warning, in the first process, even many individuals who are committed to groups and projects and goals that serve the second.
Since I don’t know what will happen to me or my family, to my friends, to my community; since my limited vision can’t see whether specific events are “good” or “bad” in the overall scheme, both personal and universal; since the only things I can control are my actions and my attitude, I choose joy. Acceptance. Serenity.
And hopefully, whenever it comes, death.
-30-
These words of Bahá'u'lláh have been a challenge and a mystery to me for over 40 years, since I first learned committed myself to the Bahá'í Faith. There was no joy in death as it was understood in my childhood home and early religious education. Death was a punishment, or an injustice, or just simply an end. Judaism, as I was taught it, did not include a view of life continuing beyond earthly bounds.
And I was just plain scared of death. Felt trapped, unfairly given a life that was destined to be snatched away and completely erased, more completely than the pencil marks in my sketches when I rubbed out wayward lines to replace them with more exacting ones. Those lines at least left a faint trace of themselves on the paper. My life would simply disappear, as if it had never happened.
But my contact with the Bahá'í Faith gave me a new understanding of death as a transition from the training wheels phase of life to a continuing, progressing, eternal existence. Eternal. That was the sticking point. My dread, my outright panic at times, transferred itself from fear of endings to fear of forever.
And I still felt trapped, by a fate over which I had no control, no choice.
But I believe that Bahá'u'lláh’s words are true, that they are directly channeled to us by a loving Creator, so my challenge was rely on prayer and meditation to accept death as a “messenger of joy,” and actually become joyful about it.
It’s been a long journey. I’m much farther along the way. There have been moments when I have felt almost there, and the peacefulness of those moments call for more.
It’s not surprising that my period of greatest serenity about death came during the time, starting three years ago this month, that I was dealing with cancer diagnosis and treatment, and with the uncertainty of outcome. Most people tried to be helpful by talking about cancer as if it were a sports event. I was counseled to beat it, fight it, was assured that I would win, with winning was defined as staying alive.
Did that mean that if I died, if the cancer “won,” I would “lose”? Did it mean that death was synonymous with defeat? Such a view didn’t gibe well with the image of death as “a messenger of joy.”
I thought a lot about the fact that death is not an “if”, it’s a “when.” I will die, someday, that was a given. Did it matter that much whether it was now or later? Logically I couldn’t see that it did.
So I could not then and cannot now accept the idea that if I, or anyone, dies from cancer or any other disease, they have lost a battle. Serenity during that time of living in cancer-world came from accepting that, while of course I would do whatever was necessary to get healthy and stay healthy, any result, any outcome, would be OK. More than OK. It would be a positive good.
It’s been a greater challenge to hang on to that serenity about death since I’ve been able to get off the sofa and have an active life again. But in a few days I have an appointment with my oncologist, a routine three-month check-up, and every time one of these appointments nears, I wonder if this will be the one where I learn the cancer has returned. And every time I have to remember the lessons cancer has taught me.
This week, with my upcoming appointment plus all the news about the devastation in Haiti and the trial initiated against the seven Bahá'ís in Iran who are accused of non-sensical and vague capital crimes, I am more aware than ever that death is inevitable, and that it will come on its own schedule, with or without warning.
And that my job – everyone’s job, regardless of their specific beliefs about death – is to be ready for it at every moment of life. Not in a morbid way. Just accepting it. And accepting the “when” of it. Because, as the well-known Alcoholics Anonymous prayer tells us, serenity comes from knowing what we can control and what we cannot control, and from putting our energies into the former rather than the latter.
It seems to me that in today’s world, the manner and timing of our deaths are more and more out of our control. I hear the rumblings of what is coming as the world collapses in upon itself, as the spiritually bankrupt structure of society as a whole implodes from lack of solid support.
It’s not the earthquake that is the disaster in Haiti, it’s the racism and materialism that created a poverty which failed to provide buildings that could stand during an earthquake.
It wasn’t Hurricane Katrina that washed out New Orleans, it was the racism and materialism that created its poor capacity to withstand a major hurricane.
And far too many people die not from disease but from the treatment of disease, treatments and drugs and procedures that often exist to serve stockholders as much, sometimes more, than patients.
Everywhere in the world I see disunity and injustice stemming from racism and materialism, from a lack of real and active faith in God, a lack demonstrated by the self-serving practices of business and government and in the everyday lives of everyday people. I see how we have created a modern Tower of Babel: too high, too weak, too poorly constructed and managed to stand
Bahá'u'lláh talked about the twin processes of destruction and construction that would lead us to a world based on justice and love. Many of us will be caught, often without warning, in the first process, even many individuals who are committed to groups and projects and goals that serve the second.
Since I don’t know what will happen to me or my family, to my friends, to my community; since my limited vision can’t see whether specific events are “good” or “bad” in the overall scheme, both personal and universal; since the only things I can control are my actions and my attitude, I choose joy. Acceptance. Serenity.
And hopefully, whenever it comes, death.
-30-
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Health food homicide
One by one they have all gone and now she is alone. The phones don’t ring. No footsteps can be heard in the hallway. Nary a door opens or closes in nearby offices.
The world inside feels as muffled and quiet as the world outside, where several inches of snow are threatening to shut down the city. As the only staff member who took the bus and didn’t have to worry about driving safely home, she has stayed, unconcerned as she answers emails and processes documents. Ho hum, snow again, what’s everyone so excited about? This is winter in Illinois. This is what happens here.
Then she remembers.
She had planned to go to the health food store that evening. She needs to buy kale. And not just any kale. Organic kale. She has tried the other stuff and found it limp and short-lived compared to the locally grown fluffy green bunches that particular store offers. And she absolutely must make sure she never runs out because kale is the secret ingredient in her morning nutrition shakes. Kale is Supervegetable. One sip of that amazing concoction and she can leap tall buildings at a single bound.
But she has only enough kale in her refrigerator for one more shake.
One. Just one. If the weather worsens as much the next day as forecasters are predicting, she might not be able to get to the store to get new kale. The store might even be closed. She shudders to think such a horrible thought.
But wait. There’s more! What if the store is not open tonight? Everything else is closing early, according to the radio, so why not the little store. Gasp! Horrors! What to do?
OK, she tells herself. Don’t panic. Let’s get the facts, then you can panic. And sure enough, when she calls the store she learns it is going to close at 6:00 p.m.
Time to panic!
By the time she leaves work at 5:00 and trundles to a bus stop and waits for a bus and is slowly chauffeured home and shovels enough snow to make a path to get her car out of the driveway … by then it will almost certain be too late.
Too late to replenish her kale supply. Too late to insure that she will have what she needs to make those miraculous morning shakes throughout a possibly shut-in weekend.
Too late! More gasp! More horrors! What oh what to do?
Maybe she could take a bus straight to the store and another bus home from there, just skip the shoveling-snow-to-move-the-car situation altogether. Great idea! Except to take the bus that goes by the store, first she would have to connect with it at the main transit point, and the bus schedule tells her that bus #2 is scheduled to leave that point just minutes before bus #1 is scheduled to arrive. Not such a great idea.
Suddenly the light bulb above her head bursts into brightness with the obvious solution: leave work early. It’s about 20 minutes till 5:00. If she goes now, she’ll have a fighting chance of getting an earlier bus and arriving home with enough time to rescue her car and make it to the store before 6:00.
Off with the computer. On with boots and coat and hat and scarf. Grab book and lunch bag and purse. Turn off all the lights. Lock the doors. Hurry hurry hurry.
It’s hard to hurry, though, when inconvenient mounds of thick snow are piled all over sidewalks and crosswalks, and the parking lot that is the shortest path to the bus stop is an icy obstacle course. But as luck would have it -- and luck does have it sometimes – here is her bus pulling up to the corner just as she arrives. Blessed bus, wonderful bus, opening its welcoming doors to allow her to clamber in.
Huddled in a seat in the dark as the bus rumbles cautiously down the street, she silently urges the driver to do whatever is necessary to keep this vehicle moving with all possible speed – or rather, in this weather, with the least possible delay.
There isn’t a moment to lose.
Ah, at last, she sees her corner. She pulls the cord, the bus slows down, she stumbles to the door, it opens, she’s outa there. Slogging through the white stuff to reach her door. Home at last. Fumble for the key, miss the keyhole in her haste, finally get the door open, drop the book and lunch bag, grab the shovel, push her way to the car, struggle to get that door open, start the car, commence to shoveling.
Shovel.
Shovel.
Shovel.
The minutes tick by as she labors to dislodge heaps of snow from behind the car and create enough path to give her a fighting chance of backing out to the street without getting stuck. Finally she’s done about as much as she can manage, shoveling not being one of her better skills, and she heads back to the car, ready to roll.
Except the car is covered trunk to hood with snow.
Somewhere inside this automobile there is a watchamacallit, she just bought it a couple days ago, it must be here. Yesssss! Here it is, hiding under the passenger seat. Frantically she brushes off the windshield, the side windows, the back window. Finally she’s in the driver’s seat and the car is moving, ponderously grinding its way backwards to the street. She’s at the stop light. She’s only a few blocks from the store. She’s in the parking lot with minutes to spare. She’s racing down the aisle to the produce section, where she sees one lone bunch of kale sitting in its bed of ice water. She reaches for it --
And a hand swoops down and grabs it, leaving her own hand dangling over the now empty bin.
She stares in shocked disbelief at a tall man striding away, pushing his cart in front of him, her kale inside it. This just can’t be happening. There must be more kale here, hidden away in the dark recesses of the store where customers never go. She rushes to the checkout counter and pleads with the clerk to go back there and look. He goes. She waits.
And waits.
And waits.
This is taking so long, is it a good sign or a bad one? Finally she goes back to the produce section to see if the clerk has come out into the light. After a couple minutes, he finally reappears with a cart full of boxes. “Sorry it took so long,” he says, this customer wanted a couple things, too.
“This customer” is the same man who has stolen her kale right from under her nose.
But no matter, there’s more where that came from. Two more bunches, which the clerk is placing on the shelf. But as she reaches down immediately to take them, they disappear right before her eyes. That man has done it again. He has beat her to the punch. He has stolen HER kale.
How can the clerk let this happen? Why doesn’t he do something? But he is walking to a different part of the store to place the contents of other boxes in other places. Obviously he is not interested in seeing that justice is done.
Meanwhile, back at the produce section, that man, that despicable kale thief, is examining a box of avocados, pretending to be totally oblivious to her distress. But he can’t hide the tiniest of smirks. He knows what he’s done. And he doesn’t care.
He does not deserve kale. Kale is too good for the likes of this monster. He is evil personified.
She is stunned, shocked, incapable of rational thought. She has only one idea in her mind. Get that kale. Any way. Any how. Just get it.
She grabs the spiked sign that reads “Organic kale, $2.79,” jumps between the man and the avocados and plunges the sign into her nemesis’ heart. She laughs maniacally as he falls to the floor in a pool of blood, clutching his chest, wheezing, staring unbelieving at her while she reaches into his cart and takes all three bunches of kale, then runs victoriously out the door.
She is in her car, maneuvering snow-packed roads to get home and put away her prize, when she suddenly remembers that she never paid for her groceries. The car clock says it is 6:02, too late to go back. She will have to pay next time she goes to the store.
After all, she’s not a criminal. She just needs her kale.
(Except for the homicide and a few other minor details, this is a true story. Really!)
-30-
The world inside feels as muffled and quiet as the world outside, where several inches of snow are threatening to shut down the city. As the only staff member who took the bus and didn’t have to worry about driving safely home, she has stayed, unconcerned as she answers emails and processes documents. Ho hum, snow again, what’s everyone so excited about? This is winter in Illinois. This is what happens here.
Then she remembers.
She had planned to go to the health food store that evening. She needs to buy kale. And not just any kale. Organic kale. She has tried the other stuff and found it limp and short-lived compared to the locally grown fluffy green bunches that particular store offers. And she absolutely must make sure she never runs out because kale is the secret ingredient in her morning nutrition shakes. Kale is Supervegetable. One sip of that amazing concoction and she can leap tall buildings at a single bound.
But she has only enough kale in her refrigerator for one more shake.
One. Just one. If the weather worsens as much the next day as forecasters are predicting, she might not be able to get to the store to get new kale. The store might even be closed. She shudders to think such a horrible thought.
But wait. There’s more! What if the store is not open tonight? Everything else is closing early, according to the radio, so why not the little store. Gasp! Horrors! What to do?
OK, she tells herself. Don’t panic. Let’s get the facts, then you can panic. And sure enough, when she calls the store she learns it is going to close at 6:00 p.m.
Time to panic!
By the time she leaves work at 5:00 and trundles to a bus stop and waits for a bus and is slowly chauffeured home and shovels enough snow to make a path to get her car out of the driveway … by then it will almost certain be too late.
Too late to replenish her kale supply. Too late to insure that she will have what she needs to make those miraculous morning shakes throughout a possibly shut-in weekend.
Too late! More gasp! More horrors! What oh what to do?
Maybe she could take a bus straight to the store and another bus home from there, just skip the shoveling-snow-to-move-the-car situation altogether. Great idea! Except to take the bus that goes by the store, first she would have to connect with it at the main transit point, and the bus schedule tells her that bus #2 is scheduled to leave that point just minutes before bus #1 is scheduled to arrive. Not such a great idea.
Suddenly the light bulb above her head bursts into brightness with the obvious solution: leave work early. It’s about 20 minutes till 5:00. If she goes now, she’ll have a fighting chance of getting an earlier bus and arriving home with enough time to rescue her car and make it to the store before 6:00.
Off with the computer. On with boots and coat and hat and scarf. Grab book and lunch bag and purse. Turn off all the lights. Lock the doors. Hurry hurry hurry.
It’s hard to hurry, though, when inconvenient mounds of thick snow are piled all over sidewalks and crosswalks, and the parking lot that is the shortest path to the bus stop is an icy obstacle course. But as luck would have it -- and luck does have it sometimes – here is her bus pulling up to the corner just as she arrives. Blessed bus, wonderful bus, opening its welcoming doors to allow her to clamber in.
Huddled in a seat in the dark as the bus rumbles cautiously down the street, she silently urges the driver to do whatever is necessary to keep this vehicle moving with all possible speed – or rather, in this weather, with the least possible delay.
There isn’t a moment to lose.
Ah, at last, she sees her corner. She pulls the cord, the bus slows down, she stumbles to the door, it opens, she’s outa there. Slogging through the white stuff to reach her door. Home at last. Fumble for the key, miss the keyhole in her haste, finally get the door open, drop the book and lunch bag, grab the shovel, push her way to the car, struggle to get that door open, start the car, commence to shoveling.
Shovel.
Shovel.
Shovel.
The minutes tick by as she labors to dislodge heaps of snow from behind the car and create enough path to give her a fighting chance of backing out to the street without getting stuck. Finally she’s done about as much as she can manage, shoveling not being one of her better skills, and she heads back to the car, ready to roll.
Except the car is covered trunk to hood with snow.
Somewhere inside this automobile there is a watchamacallit, she just bought it a couple days ago, it must be here. Yesssss! Here it is, hiding under the passenger seat. Frantically she brushes off the windshield, the side windows, the back window. Finally she’s in the driver’s seat and the car is moving, ponderously grinding its way backwards to the street. She’s at the stop light. She’s only a few blocks from the store. She’s in the parking lot with minutes to spare. She’s racing down the aisle to the produce section, where she sees one lone bunch of kale sitting in its bed of ice water. She reaches for it --
And a hand swoops down and grabs it, leaving her own hand dangling over the now empty bin.
She stares in shocked disbelief at a tall man striding away, pushing his cart in front of him, her kale inside it. This just can’t be happening. There must be more kale here, hidden away in the dark recesses of the store where customers never go. She rushes to the checkout counter and pleads with the clerk to go back there and look. He goes. She waits.
And waits.
And waits.
This is taking so long, is it a good sign or a bad one? Finally she goes back to the produce section to see if the clerk has come out into the light. After a couple minutes, he finally reappears with a cart full of boxes. “Sorry it took so long,” he says, this customer wanted a couple things, too.
“This customer” is the same man who has stolen her kale right from under her nose.
But no matter, there’s more where that came from. Two more bunches, which the clerk is placing on the shelf. But as she reaches down immediately to take them, they disappear right before her eyes. That man has done it again. He has beat her to the punch. He has stolen HER kale.
How can the clerk let this happen? Why doesn’t he do something? But he is walking to a different part of the store to place the contents of other boxes in other places. Obviously he is not interested in seeing that justice is done.
Meanwhile, back at the produce section, that man, that despicable kale thief, is examining a box of avocados, pretending to be totally oblivious to her distress. But he can’t hide the tiniest of smirks. He knows what he’s done. And he doesn’t care.
He does not deserve kale. Kale is too good for the likes of this monster. He is evil personified.
She is stunned, shocked, incapable of rational thought. She has only one idea in her mind. Get that kale. Any way. Any how. Just get it.
She grabs the spiked sign that reads “Organic kale, $2.79,” jumps between the man and the avocados and plunges the sign into her nemesis’ heart. She laughs maniacally as he falls to the floor in a pool of blood, clutching his chest, wheezing, staring unbelieving at her while she reaches into his cart and takes all three bunches of kale, then runs victoriously out the door.
She is in her car, maneuvering snow-packed roads to get home and put away her prize, when she suddenly remembers that she never paid for her groceries. The car clock says it is 6:02, too late to go back. She will have to pay next time she goes to the store.
After all, she’s not a criminal. She just needs her kale.
(Except for the homicide and a few other minor details, this is a true story. Really!)
-30-
Monday, January 4, 2010
A short note for today
Apparently not having a schedule for almost two weeks detracted from my energy level rather than enhancing it. I spent more time doing basically nothing than I thought possible, because the urgency wasn't there. There was always tomorrow.
Until yesterday. I woke up Sunday knowing that the next day I'd be back at work. And voila, my energy came back, full force. A big task related to the incipient children's theatre company suddenly seemed doable, so I actually sat down and did it. Immediately!
The 11-day work break had its moments. I watched “Julie and Julia” twice and spent two delightful days with my older grandson, including sleepovers in my home, and another two days moving furniture and hiding (along with the cats) from the dust and noise of sanding. The payoff to that is that we now have a beautiful, smooth hardwood floor in the living room. It still needs staining and sealing, but since that will require us to leave for a few days, it's a project for a later time.
And I skated a lot, doggedly practicing, or rather attempting to execute, a couple of basic and necessary maneuvers that are the prelude to regaining the jump-spin level of the sport. (Small jumps, slow spins!) I even took grandson and his cousin to the rink. But that wasn't the best thing that happened that day. Devyn gave me permission to tell you the story.
Seems he had found a ring in a box in his house, but no one in his family knew where it came from or claimed it. It was a small ladies ring with diamond and pearl setting, and probably had been left in a box they used for moving in. Devyn urgently wanted to know if the ring was real gold, so I agreed to help him get an assessment.
Before going to the rink, we went to a nearby mall that has a jewelry store. The proprietor was a kindly woman who examined the ring and said it was gold mixed with metal, the diamonds were fake, the pearl was real but a very low grade. She said a jeweler could only buy it to extract the gold, and based on current gold prices and the amount that was in the ring, it would be worth $20.
We left and started walking toward the mall exit while Devyn pondered this information, but then he saw something -- actually, someone -- that halted his steps. "I want to sell it right now," he told me. So back we went to the jeweler, who exchanged the ring for two $10 bills. I'm going to give $10 to the man who walks around here all the time, he explained to the lady.
We both knew who Devyn meant: a bushy bearded, gray haired man known as Bill, who can be seen at that mall every day, winter and summer. I've never seen him beg. And this is important, because we are Bahá'ís, and Bahá'u'lláh very explicitly forbade both begging and giving to beggars. He also said "O ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease."
I don't know Bill's situation, whether he really is poor and homeless, but it didn't matter. Supporting Devyn's generous spirit was the higher priority. So I stood quietly by and watched as he walked up to the man and handed over one of the $10 bills, for which he received a gracious and grateful response.
And that left Devyn $10 to add to his savings for something called a Gameboy Advanced, which he was happily able to purchase that evening.
For me that moment in the mall was the best part of my grandson's visit. And as my daughter noted in her own recent blog, being a grandma is a high priority in my life. All of my grandparents died before I was born and I had missed having them in my life, so being a grandparent myself seemed a very important goal. Not one I could reach on my own, of course. It required my daughter's cooperation. And she can tell you what a pest I was about that before she met and married her husband at what I thought was close to a dangerously advanced age for my own chances of attaining grandparenthood.
But that's another story.
-30-
Until yesterday. I woke up Sunday knowing that the next day I'd be back at work. And voila, my energy came back, full force. A big task related to the incipient children's theatre company suddenly seemed doable, so I actually sat down and did it. Immediately!
The 11-day work break had its moments. I watched “Julie and Julia” twice and spent two delightful days with my older grandson, including sleepovers in my home, and another two days moving furniture and hiding (along with the cats) from the dust and noise of sanding. The payoff to that is that we now have a beautiful, smooth hardwood floor in the living room. It still needs staining and sealing, but since that will require us to leave for a few days, it's a project for a later time.
And I skated a lot, doggedly practicing, or rather attempting to execute, a couple of basic and necessary maneuvers that are the prelude to regaining the jump-spin level of the sport. (Small jumps, slow spins!) I even took grandson and his cousin to the rink. But that wasn't the best thing that happened that day. Devyn gave me permission to tell you the story.
Seems he had found a ring in a box in his house, but no one in his family knew where it came from or claimed it. It was a small ladies ring with diamond and pearl setting, and probably had been left in a box they used for moving in. Devyn urgently wanted to know if the ring was real gold, so I agreed to help him get an assessment.
Before going to the rink, we went to a nearby mall that has a jewelry store. The proprietor was a kindly woman who examined the ring and said it was gold mixed with metal, the diamonds were fake, the pearl was real but a very low grade. She said a jeweler could only buy it to extract the gold, and based on current gold prices and the amount that was in the ring, it would be worth $20.
We left and started walking toward the mall exit while Devyn pondered this information, but then he saw something -- actually, someone -- that halted his steps. "I want to sell it right now," he told me. So back we went to the jeweler, who exchanged the ring for two $10 bills. I'm going to give $10 to the man who walks around here all the time, he explained to the lady.
We both knew who Devyn meant: a bushy bearded, gray haired man known as Bill, who can be seen at that mall every day, winter and summer. I've never seen him beg. And this is important, because we are Bahá'ís, and Bahá'u'lláh very explicitly forbade both begging and giving to beggars. He also said "O ye rich ones on earth! The poor in your midst are My trust; guard ye My trust, and be not intent only on your own ease."
I don't know Bill's situation, whether he really is poor and homeless, but it didn't matter. Supporting Devyn's generous spirit was the higher priority. So I stood quietly by and watched as he walked up to the man and handed over one of the $10 bills, for which he received a gracious and grateful response.
And that left Devyn $10 to add to his savings for something called a Gameboy Advanced, which he was happily able to purchase that evening.
For me that moment in the mall was the best part of my grandson's visit. And as my daughter noted in her own recent blog, being a grandma is a high priority in my life. All of my grandparents died before I was born and I had missed having them in my life, so being a grandparent myself seemed a very important goal. Not one I could reach on my own, of course. It required my daughter's cooperation. And she can tell you what a pest I was about that before she met and married her husband at what I thought was close to a dangerously advanced age for my own chances of attaining grandparenthood.
But that's another story.
-30-
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