One of these things is not like the others

Facebook Spiritual Offerings Erratum

I would rather walk with God in the dark than go alone in the light.

I would rather live in Seattle and pack salmon than live in Paris and write like Robert McAlmon*

I would rather light a candle than curse the darkness.

*Robert McAlmon was one of the Paris literary ex-pats who got no respect.

The "AHA" use for what you already have.

Remember George Forman?  He was a boxer who made a comeback at forty-five and named all of his many children George. In 1994 he started selling the George Forman Grill - the mean lean grilling machine.  We all bought one.  We were astounded at the sense of it.  Then we were less astounded and put it on a high shelf. I don’t know why we do that.

The G. F. Grill was meant for grilling meats (mainly hamburgers) and it sloped downward so the fat from the meat could trickle out, leaving you with a nice lean burger and an oily mess on the counter.

 

One day recently I wanted a panini very badly. For some reason any simple sandwich tastes better if you smush it so all the stuffings melt and blend together.  It helps if you call it a fun name - panini.  I thought about the mechanics of steam rolling that sucker. You need something heavy and hot that makes the bread toasty and the ingredients (should always include good cheese) begin to ooze out.   There are lots of things that can qualify.   A frying pan with a foil wrapped brick, a foil wrapped weight of any sort - heck you could foil wrap the cat and plop it on top of that sandwich. (Kidding.)  I looked in the cupboard and hauled out the dusty old Forman grill heated it to high and put the sandwich inside.  There was a big gap between the jaws but as the sandwich gave in to its fate, the gap lessened and a beautiful panini resulted.  I left the G. F. grill on the counter because I wanted to eat paninis three times a day.  When I wanted a vegetable panini, I grilled the zucchini or peppers in the G.F. grill before assembling the sandwich.  This was great for eggplant that usually needed a lot of oil to cook in a regular skillet.

One morning I made some pancake batter but right in the middle of readying the pan I wished for waffles instead. Waffles are always airy and crisp whereas getting fluffy pancakes is difficult.  I poured a little of the batter into the G. F. grill.

The grill slopes down so a few drops of batter dribbled out before it set (easily remedied).  In about a minute and a half, I got a waffle. It had ridges and tunnels instead of squares but it tasted light and airy.

Real Simple magazine would call these “aha” uses because you’re going to scream “AHA!” when you think of it.  I certainly did.  If you have any “aha” ideas, please send them to me.

The Prince of Ass (or So Many Wipes, So Little Time)

One day at 3 a.m. a resentful, sleep-deprived mother was changing her baby and using wipes as fast as they popped out of the holder. Soon there were seventeen wipes for this one tiny bottom that was now as clean and inviting as rose petals. The mother surveyed the sparkling plump cheeks. A light bulb went up over the mother’s head. Why should this up-all-night baby be the Prince of Ass?  I’m going to use these comforting moist sheets on my own ass?   This outlier began a revolution and now mothers everywhere are using wipes for their toilette and causing an unbiodegradable apocalypse.

Let me say something here about wipes in general and the new rules for cleaning up a baby’s bottom. I have seen mothers obsess about the direction in which the wipes must be used.  The rule starts at the elimination place or the “poop chute” as Tom Hanks called it in some movie. and moves backward, especially for girls.  Not only for poops but for peeps too. Mothers are now taught to regard the baby’s bottom as we would our dinner plate - it has to be fit to eat on.  It’s as if the entire report card on motherhood is weighted on wipe direction and quantity of wipes used. Suppose you’re half asleep, (it’s counter-intuative) and you do it the wrong way?  The baby’s butt is not going to fall off from gangrene.  Trust me, if it’s a girl, that butt will be there to torment her throughout her life.

In the pre-wipes middle ages when I had babies, I often put the kid over my arm, rump up and used the hand held shower in the bathtub,  Quick and to the point. Not sanitary, you say?  We’re all still here.  Asses in place.

Is this a compelling book - one that you must read to the finish? Yes. To the finish.

(Today I'm reviewing Elizabeth Gilbert's (Eat, Pray, Love) new historical epic, The Signature of All Things.)

It’s obvious that Elizabeth Gilbert best known for her “first eat good food, then find a good guru, then find a good boyfriend,” book of recovery is going in a different direction with her latest. The Signature of All Things is a long, astonishingly researched historical about extreme individuals who do extreme things against a backdrop of - botany!  Think moss.  I don’t mean to sound snarky because this epic took talent and hard work and a huge leap of faith to produce.  Some of the language is exquisite:  “She felt a deep bruise of absence for her father.” is a sentence that could only come from a writer that is giving us her best.  First I thought well, Elizabeth is writing a fabulous story of deprivation and wealth and plant life as a sound and grand metaphor for life.  If I’m smart enough, I’ll get it.

A serious look into 1800's Philadelphia grandeur was not what I was expecting from Elizabeth Gilbert.  Is this good or bad?  I don’t know.  The beginning of this book is a quick set-up of the type that Jeffrey Archer did in Kane and Abel - very poor boy gets a foothold into a life that catapults him through happenstance, suffering and cunning into untold riches and power. That’s okay with me.  I like a story that moves along as long as I care about the eventual outcome.  Once fame and fortune are accomplished, the storytelling slows down to introduce the real main character, Alma, a gifted brainiac, raised by the tiger mother of all tiger mothers. This tiger permits no frivolities, not even unkind thoughts. She instills an ethic of hard work that defines her daughter’s life. At times it consumes her life.    

 

Is it a love story?  Yes, but not in any ordinary sense.   Gilbert is going for transcendence.  Transcendence but still on earth - now it is clear why we have entered a religious order where plants lead us to the altar of the most high. And about the moss - Alma got me to fall in love with moss and Moss Time.

I had the benefit of reading a lengthy profile of the author in the New York Times Magazine that spoke of Gilbert’s process to settle on this project and her research for it.  It did not prepare me for Alma, the main character. Alma’s emotions and ambitions and rigidity are not usual in popular fiction. Yet the outcome of her arduous journey to self-knowledge rings true and satisfies.

Is this a compelling book - one that you must read to the finish?  Yes.  To the finish.

10 simple rules for being a good guest (an oxymoron because there are no good guests.)

Overnight guests were invented to introduce torment where none existed. if you are about to be a guest here are some rules to make you barely tolerable. (Family not included, of course.)

1. Upon arrival, give a precise (to the minute) departure time.  Even before you say hello, say “I’m leaving Tuesday at 9:35 a.m.” The most distressing issue of overnight guests (outside of having them at all) is not knowing when they are leaving.  The worst answer is “I’m not sure.”  No?  Why not?  My life is not an open-ended deal at your disposal.

2.  Make your footprint as small as possible.  If you are a large person, hunch into yourself.  There’s nothing less lovable than a big ole guest hogging all of the oxygen in the room. On this issue, don’t bring a large suitcase.  Nobody wants all of your stuff in their house or any of your stuff.  They already have too much of their own stuff.  Come with a backpack or a small plastic bag.

3.  Don’t ask questions about the habits of your hostess.  There’s nothing more annoying to the hostess than having to explain why she does all the weird things she would do in peace/privacy if you weren’t there to question.  Don’t ask anything.  Not even where she got the bayonet or the saber.  You don’t need to know.

4.  Don’t lounge on the hostess’ furniture as if you are in your college dorm.  Furniture, though it might look shabby to you is precious to her. In fact don’t lounge.  It makes you look as if you own the place and breeds resentment.  Sit up straight and keep your feet on the floor and your hands in your lap.There aren't words to address a guest who lies prone on the couch.

5.  Don’t take a long shower and leave zero hot water for everyone else.  In fact, don’t take a shower at all.  Hearing the shower running for more than twenty seconds makes the host see dollar bills flying out of the window. Showering is overrated and creates laundry.  Needless to add don’t leave wet towels anywhere.  There’s nothing that reminds a hostess of a recent guest more than a wet towel.  And it isn’t a fond memory. It’s up to you how you make the towel dry.

6. Just because you are a guest doesn’t mean you must talk.  Think of talking as a bank account that only has a hundred dollars left and you have to ration it out for a year. Besides showing up at all, talking too much is an indelible black mark that will be on your forehead like an Ash Wednesday smudge that brands you as insufferable.  Bring a book and read on the porch.

7.  Slip out of the house early in the morning and get your own breakfast at the corner Starbucks but leave a note so the hostess doesn’t think you had a heart attack in your bed and now she has to do something with your body.   If you do go to Starbucks bring back a bag of Starbuck goods for the rest of the house.

8. Ask if you should keep your shoes on inside the house (especially if they are full of sand or mud).  If you walk into the house with muddy or sandy shoes, the hostess will remember. And not in a good way.

9.  Don’t argue with the hostess about anything.  If she says something is blue that is clearly red, it’s blue.  Period.  This is not the time to prove a point. She is probably not thinking straight because you are there.

10.  Call the day of arrival and cancel.  Something came up and you can’t come.  Your hostess might say “too bad” but her heart is singing, “Oh, happy day.”  The house is clean.  She has a fridge stocked with good food and nobody’s coming.  What’s better than that?

When the meek finally inherit the earth they will not say, “I’m humbled.”

(Two news items that caught my eye)

It’s Emmy night.  Get ready to hear the word “humbled.” 

Humbled is a word only used in front of a microphone.  It is uttered by someone who has just won an award or a plum job or a ceremonial position but they want to go all “gosh, I don’t deserve this.”  They could say, hey I don’t deserve this Emmy but someone has to win it and hooray, it’s me.

Humbled is only recognized as a real word by young on line dictionaries.  It is a word that contra-indicates because anyone who is really humble doesn’t realize it.  They carry on as their normal meek selves.  When the meek finally inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5), they will not go to a microphone and say, “I’m humbled to be given the earth.”  They will probably have their lawyer say something.

Recently Caroline Kennedy was “humbled” to accept the ambassadorship to Japan and “carry on JFK’s legacy.” What was JFK’s legacy?  I know, I know, he was handsome and Jackie was beautiful and the Bay of Pigs and there’s too much tragedy involved and he liked to listen to Camelot before going to sleep and Johnny, we hardly knew ye, etc., etc.   However, could someone remind Ms. Kennedy that most ambassadorships are political back scratching for some real or imagined help given to the office holder and often the appointee has no diplomatic credentials.  And it could be compensation for the ‘now she’s the Senator from New York, oops, now she’s not’ fiasco. She must have expected some goodie was coming down the pike when she said, “Yay! Obama.”

Red Lobster and The Olive Garden - how could sales be down?

I’m sorry to hear that sales are down at Red Lobster and the Olive Garden. The bottomless pasta bowl - how could that not work? They “see food differently” That’s for sure.  Once I heard a comedian say that at Red Lobster they had this giant roll of red felt and they cut out all of the shrimp and lobster shapes out of it and breaded them and that was the seafood they served.  That was mean-spirited, wasn’t it? 

When I see one of their luscious ads and notice how happy the diners are to be there, it makes me wish I were there, too, knowing I could have as much pasta Alfredo as I wanted.  

The brain compartment marked "Mom"

 

This is a reconstructed conversation, word for word, told to me by my “friend.”

Whenever I begin a conversation with my children they will say, we’ve had this exact conversation a hundred times. This always makes me stop and think.  Really, I’ve brought this up one hundred times? What is wrong with me? So then, in case they are right, I say, well let’s just say I like to talk about this could you indulge me?  And they say, yes we could do that if it didn’t really annoy us that you believe and act on all the shoddy stuff people say when they want to sell you an idea. 

I slap my forehead in thunderstruck recognition.  Gullible as charged.

I try to think what I might look like in their heads.  And that’s when I realize my children think I’m about seven years old.  I say seven because by then you know how to cross the street safely and put on your clothes and eat with a dull knife and fork and generally bathe yourself but you still don’t know when someone is trying to sell you the Brooklyn Bridge. (Buying the Brooklyn Bridge is a time-honored metaphor that depicts a naive untried person who believes anything.)  A seven year old would say, “Yipee. Here take all the money in my piggy bank and give me the bridge.”  But even a seven year old might stop a moment and say, “How can you give me the bridge? You can’t lift it because there would be a big hole and it wouldn’t be a bridge.” My children think I don’t know when someone is trying to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge.

Whenever I have to take some action in my life, they say, “This is what you should do.” I'm always a bit surprised that they have a complete answer for any situation. Really.  A complete answer that I had not considered.

I finally went into the children's heads and took a look in the compartment marked “Mom.” There, cowering in the corner was a seven year old and all around her were hucksters and ads with bad ideas.  There were a bunch of sign posts marked "wrong way." There was a big question mark above her head because she didn’t have a clue.  Really, not a clue.  I do recall that I have done things and weathered situations and made important decisions while they were off to college or off to Europe or off  running their lives. 

The one act that is never questioned in that compartment marked “mom” is the food I offer.  They even compliment my food or just eat it greedily which is like a compliment.  One of my children has never taken a plate of food from me without asking, is that meat or those eggs really done? And here I might insert an indispensable philosophical premise: just because something was true one rushed morning in 1983 and it stuck in your head like a piece of bubble gum melted by the summer sun, it doesn’t mean it will be true for the rest of time.  

Remember, this is all stuff that my “friend” told me.