Ready or Not, Here It Comes

The other day, when I went to my eye doc, the first person I encountered asked, "Are you ready for Christmas?" The next person, the tech who props me for the doc, asked the same question, as did the next person, the tech who takes pictures of my eye balls. And then my darling retinologist Dr. Lamkin (isn't that a cosy name for a guy who is going to stick a needle in your eye?) asked it again.

What does that mean, "Are you ready for Christmas?" Have I been out to the mall buying useless gifts for people who have everything they already need or want? Have I baked cookies? Mailed packages off to faraway loved ones? Is my tree up? Have I strung lights all over my property? Do I have enough wrapping paper and Scotch tape? I just finished boiling the turkey carcass to make broth for future soups, fa cryin' out loud.

I hate to sound like Scrooge here, but everyone gets so pressured and frantic around this time of year. I get a sense of anxiety in the people who ask this question. I figure they're not ready themselves and are hoping I'll say,"Wow, is Christmas pretty soon? I guess I'd better order that electric orange peeler they're advertising on TV at 3 in the morning."

We have pretty much decided this year to shower each other with consumable stuff, since we have run out of space for anything other than ephemera. It's fun to receive gifts, of course. Who doesn't like to open a gift? The problem, however, is what to do with it, where to put it then.

Everyone has too much stuff already. I'll be "ready" for Christmas on Christmas Eve, I think.

And I wonder if, as Mary and Joseph walked into the inn, the innkeeper asked her, "Are you ready for Christ, Miss?"

You read it here first.

Super Soup

For Christmas last year, my son John gave me a big slow cooker, one big enough for roast beast. I had a small one which he had also given me years ago with his paper route earnings, which I have used mostly for beef stew. Now I have one big enough to make a delicious pot roast with nice brown potatoes and carrots. This also results in a lot of gravy and general meat juices with which to make great soups.

One favorite is mushroom barley beef soup which is ever so good for one , with all that barley. If I throw in a little sherry it's even better. And if you have a glass of red wine, then you have an even healthier meal, since we all know that red wine is good for the heart, or arteries.

The other day I made the best vegetable soup ever. I had enough leftover potatoes and carrots to dice and added onions, broccoli, tomatoes and shreds of leftover pot roast and a little barley. It was very rich and almost stew-ish. With a good salad and crusty bread it was a very filling dinner. And a glass of red wine, of course.

John's girl friends' mother (I love serial possessives) gave him her recipe for butternut squash soup. He has made two batches so far. It's quite labor intensive and requires baking the squash, and lots of processing the pulp in small batches. It has fresh ginger and other spices and is very delicious. Her mother adds apricots, but John hasn't tried that yet. I found recipes online that are similar., which is where I found the directions for the following experiment.

I am not a squash person, but I found some of those really picturesque acorn squashes at the last farmer's market and decided to make soup with them. I had no idea they would be so hard to cut in half and at first I had the feeling that my best knife would be stuck in the first one forever. I finally gave it a good whack and it fell apart, so I whacked the other two successfully and put them into the oven to bake. An hour later, I opened the oven door and recoiled in horror. It looked as if I had baked a bunch of giant beetles. They gleamed like scarabs in a truly yucky fashion. Since they didn't crawl toward me, I removed them and let them cool in thier own beetle-y way. Then I had to peel them and dispose of a bunch of dead beetle skins. Ewwww!The soup turned out quite well. The recipe called for half and half, which I had on hand for coffee use. If I ever make it again, I think I will add sour cream or buttermilk instead.

One of John's clients gave him a beautiful pie pumpkin from which he has made two pies and has enough left over to make another - or perhaps pumpkin soup. It's been a very squashy fall. Soupy, too.

Breaking Taboos

I remember when Madelyn Murray O'Hair was practically tarred and feathered for defending the Constitutional requirement for the separation of church and state. She claimed that prayer in school was in violation, and furthermore, that she was an atheist! Well, you would have thought that she had admitted to some heinous crime against humanity. An atheist! Good Christian men awake! She was condemned in churches nationwide. Called terrible names. Taking prayer out of the public schools was seen as downright un-American.

Since I had attended Catholic schools where we prayed four times a day (first thing in the morning, before lunch, after lunch and at dismissal) , I found this puzzling. They prayed in public schools? Whatever for? They were all doomed anyway on account of not being Catholics. That's the sort of thing we learned when we were not praying.

Well, atheism has come a long way since Ms. O'Hair disappeared. It has become quite trendy, what with books out by Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens and some other guy whose name I can't think of right now. Nobody has consigned any of these writers to hell or accused them of sexually abusing goats and chickens. Their books have been best sellers, they've been on TV without being scorned. It's possible that there are folks who are clucking about this on talk radio, along with the birthers and death panel fear mongers, but they're not on my radar.

But there are limits. Even though an African American can become president, and openly gay people can serve in Congress, I have a sense that an avowed atheist could not become president in this country. Ever since Reagan pretended he was a born again Christian, presidential candidates have fallen all over themselves to show that they are church-going, born bona fide Christians and true believers, even if they're not. I think atheism is the last taboo. We'll have a Jewish, black, gay female president before we'll ever have an atheist, or even an agnostic. It's the American way, init?

Unchurched

I have been reading a lot in the area newspapers about the consolidation of Catholic parishes and the closing of churches. There have been sad interviews with mostly older parishioners. These are people who were baptized, made their first communion, confirmed, married and their parents and grandparents buried from these churches. In large cities like Akron and Cleveland, most of these parishes were established in the late 19th and early 2oth centuries by immigrants from Europe: Italy, Poland, Germany, Slovenia and Hungary. They built magnificent churches, which became the centers of their communities, along with the schools they built to educate and "Americanize" their children and inculcate Catholicism, of course.

In some of these churches the mass was said in the language of the parishioners. (I attender a church in Berea where Polish was used for the mass and for the sermon.I never knew what was going on. My favorite story about that is that one day after mass I asked a woman I had seen every Sunday what the closing Polish hymn , which sounded very martial, was about. She said, "In don't know. I'm a convert.")

We never happened to live in an ethnic parish, mostly WASPY kinds of churches. We always attended parochial schools from first grade through high school. Aside from high school, our parish schools were pretty much neighborhood schools. It was like being in a large extended family, with a few crazy aunts thrown in (some of the nuns). Our parents were involved in church activities unrelated to the school - altar society, choir, that sort of thing. It was a strong part of one's identity. I have good memories and some not so good mostly related to the crazy aunts. They were great for English grammar, literature and history - except when it came to the Reformation. In my high school there were no art courses, drama or music classes, aside from the chorus, run by Sr. Margaret Angela, who had a voice like a steam whistle, causing dogs in downtown Springfield, Ohio, to howl in misery.

I am no longer a church goer, but I remember the sense of community engendered by belonging to a parish, and empathize with those people who are now forced to leave the places that fostered them and nurtured them throughout significant moments in their lives: birth, marriage, and death. The children and grandchildren of the founders are now in the suburbs, attending churches that look like shopping malls. The bricks and mortar buildings of their forefathers will stand empty, be razed or converted into some other use. It must be like losing a limb. You still have the rest of your body, but you will always be aware that something is missing.

A Great Ride

The other day, I took a ride down to Tuscaroras County, which is about 70 miles south of here. There's a place I like to go every few years, mainly in the spring or fall. It's called the Moravian Trail. Back in the late 18th century, a group of religious Moravians established settlements in that area: Goshen, Gnadenhuttan and Schoenbrun. They converted the Indians and set up peaceful agrarian villages. The Moravians and their Indian converts were massacred by the British and the villages they founded have been restored and are part of the state's historical sites.

None of these settlements is on the Moravian Trail, so I have no idea why it bears that name, except that it may have been a path they used for some purpose. The whole area around the trail is now part of the Muskingham Conservancy District, a series of lakes formed as a result of flood control dams built in the '30s. The trail itself runs along a wooded ridge and encompasses 55 miles of absolutely gorgeous territory., The views are breathtaking, especially now, when the trees are a glory of color.

The section I drove is about 25 miles long and runs from a little town called Dennison, up hill and down and around many curves and ends up at Tappan Lake down at the bottom of the ridge. Abut halfway to the lake is a little town called Deersville, in which is a general store which has just about anything you might need in the hills or on the lake. There's a touch of "Deliverance" about it, at least in the folks who hang out there, big bellied men. I like to stop there for an ice cream cone or a package of chips. One of the men was talking about a big buck he had seen in a field that morning. He didn't want to say where the field was because he was going hunting and had his eye on it.

There are some beautiful old houses in the village, some of which have been fixed up by outsiders who come down to enjoy the peace and quiet. I know a couple of folks who have cabins down there which they escape to occasionally; in one case a literal log cabin, of which there are a number scattered about. I don't' know those people well enough to have been invited, but I'd love to see it. So far as I know they've never been tied to a tree with their pants around their ankles, but it seems to be the sort of place that could happen.

It's a lovely place this time of year, especially without dueling banjos and I'm glad I got to see it before the trees turned bare. In the spring it's also lovely, since thee are a lot of flowering trees and wild flowers. When I stopped to take this picture of the lake, the water was absolutely still, like a mirror, which was why I wanted to take a picture of the tree reflected in the lake. Suddenly there was some sort of disturbance under the water by the far shore and these ripples starting fanning out toward the shore where I was. I didn't see anything, but whatever it was made quite a strong current across the lake. It was a tad creepy.

But then it's almost Halloween.

Generation Techno-gap

I have been hearing all these commercials for HD radio, including the local NPR station, which is boasting of their three channels, each carrying different programming: one all classical music, one folk music and one news. All this with better reception as well. I thought this sounded like a good idea, especially since WCLV, the great classical music station which used to be on the east side of Cleveland but moved a few years ago to the far west side (to Lorain, in fact, and is now only accessible to me on my computer) has been HD for quite a while. That's the only radio station around here which still broadcasts the Met on Saturday afternoons. Now I don't know for sure if I could even get WCLV with an HD radio, but I decided that I'd check it out.

Since Best Buy has been running commercials for this product, it seemed the logical place to go. My past experience with Best Buy has not led me to be too optimistic for reasons that will become obvious as I relate my tale of woe and frustration. I headed for the electronics department where I managed to flag down an "associate," as they are called these days.

"I'd like to see your HD radios," I said to a 12 year old associate.

"A Walkman?" she queried.

"No, a radio," I responded.

"Oh, a boom-box," she replied.

"No, just a radio," I rejoined.

Consternation played over her chubby little baby face.

"The boom-boxes are over there," she pointed out.

"I don't need a tape deck and a CD player, just a radio," I snapped.

"A radio?" Doubt cast a shadow over her innocent visage.

"Yes," I said, " the kind you just plug into the wall and turn on and sound comes out, like music, or people talking. You put it on a table or some kind of flat surface and listen to it."

"A boom box." Her little face brightened.

I decided to go back to my original question.

"I've heard your ads for HD radios. Does anyone here know where they might be?"

She tagged a passing 14 year old male.

"Do we have any HD radios?"

He was moving pretty fast, but he managed to say, "Yeah, but just for cars."

So much for communication between the advertising department and the actual store. Never had said anything on TV about HD being just for cars. In fact, in the recent NPR begging fest, an HD radio was one of the premiums if you sent them a couple hundred bucks. Cars were not mentioned.

By this time, my eye had caught sight of a tiny little flat screen LCD TV on a nearby shelf. Giving up on HD radio, I wandered over to have a look.

When TV went HD, I had to give up my little black and white desk model analog TV, which I kept on my drawing table. I missed it. I turned to the 12 year old associate.

"Hey, does that thing work without having to be connected to cable or a converter box?"

She picked up the box and pretended to read what was written on it.

"It doesn't say, but it looks like it just works with this antenna that comes with it. Maybe."

My God, I thought don't thee people have any clues about what they're supposedly associated with? I examined it. It would fit just fine on my drawing table. It didn't seem to have any connections beyond the outlet it was plugged into. I didn't see any other cables.The 14 year old male associate drifted back into view and wanted to discuss the HD radio thing again, but I told him to just forget it and did he know anything about this little TV. He didn't.

I decided to take a chance on it. I could always bring it back . When I got to the check-out, I mentioned that the associates back in Electronics seemed a bit poorly informed and could she find someone who could give me information about this little TV. She sent a 16 year old back to ask, and when that person returned she said that I would need a converter box with it. I didn't believe her, since there had not been any sort of thing connected to it in the store. She surmised that it could have been hitched up in some way invisible to the casual observer (well, she didn't put it exactly that way) but that it probably was hitched up to something like a cable. Since I had not seen anything other than the usual cord, I said I'd take my chances with it, and bring it back if it didn't work on its own.

And then I paid and got the hell out of there. Sure enough, when I brought it home, I plugged it in and it worked just fine - no converter box needed.

Don't NOBODY at BEST BUY know NOTHIN'.

Leaves and Amish Laundry

Right now it's raining, but last Monday I took my friend Harriet, who can no longer drive, up to Geauga County, where the trees color up earlier than here in Portage County. It was a cloudy day, but the colors were still brilliant.

We drove through a rather isolated Amish area, where even on a cloudy day, clotheslines were loaded with washing - Monday is still wash day there. I don't envy the life of an Amish housewife. Depending on the sect, there is no electricity and laundry is done on a wash board. They do have manual wringers. There weren't many buggies out that day, only a few carts driven by farmers.

I have heard that the Amish in Geauga County are more conservative than those down in Holmes County, which is overrun with tourists this time of year.

That's where my friend and I had the enormous sandwich a while back. We had gone to the community of Berlin to see "Behalt" at the Mennonite and Amish Historical Center. It's a huge cyclorama, painted by a German artist who was fascinated by the Anabaptist's. He came to this country and offered his services to portray their story. It is a history of them from the very beginning, telling how they split from the established church over infant baptism. There were two leaders who arose, one named Mennon and one named Ammon. They went through draconian persecution and ended here in land that resembled their home countries (Germany and Switzerland) with lots of arable land and rolling hills. Ohio has the largest population in the country. The woman who narrated the cyclorama for us had a slight German accent. She told us she didn't speak English until she was 6. She's no longer Amish, and had contributed some of her clothing to the costume exhibit at the center. Cool!

But I digress. On this trip, we stopped at a little diner in Burton, which is a maple sugar center. And, and we each had a real sandwich in this little place, one that was the right size, the kind I would make at home, the kind a person could hold in one hand and eat. And it was delicious. It was a very nice afternoon, even though cloudy (which Harriet kept complaining about as she is wont to do.)

I shall have to miss the next couple of farmers'markets because I am taking a class in pastel paining which started out on Wednesdays but had to be changed to Saturdays on account of the iunstructor got a real job. It's a great class and I am learning a lot. But I hate to miss the market. And pastels are messy.

The picture above is the maple tree in my front yard and is from last year. Hasn''t turned yet, but when it does it makes my whole living room glow golden.