The Cucumber Condumdrum

I am beginning to wonder if I have an unhealthy relationship with my vegetable garden.

 Last year, I was seduced by a zucchini.  For more on that, I call your attention to last year's solitary blog. This year, I’m having trouble breaking from a high-maintenance relationship with cucumbers.  

After purchasing salt and spices, vinegar jugs and canning jars —the out-of-pocket price easily exceeding that of the commercial pickles readily assessable in the grocery aisle—my husband and I sliced, salted, and spiced gallons of cucumbers into pickles. There were the dill varieties, (hoping that one will be the perfect meeting of garlic and dill and crunchiness) and the obligatory old-family-recipe bread and butter variety. I even went out on a limb and processed the never-to-be-repeated (it-only-took-four-days-of-work) sweet gherkin. 

I get it. I was the one who planted four hills of five plants, but still. The vines go on and on, flowering and fruiting, either not caring or not aware of what it costs the harvester slaving away in her kitchen.

What is it about the human gardener species so loath to uproot a still producing vine? Are the dog days of summer interfering with normal brain function? Is an over-developed conscience whispering warnings against slaying the innocent?  Has the gardening experience formed her kind into some pitiable, amateur philosopher, wasting not but wanting to? 

 No matter which way you slice it, it's mental.

In this 2019 growing season, I had my sights set on one thing only: sinking my teeth into an ear of sweet corn. In anticipation, I planted four short rows, behind the four cucumber hills. How many kernels of sweet ears did I enjoy? 

Zilch. Zero. Nada. 

The raccoons ate it all.

They won’t touch the cucs.

Seduced by a Zucchini

Any novice gardener can tell you. Watch your zucchini plants closely. Give it any private time at all you will be harvesting something the size of a baseball bat.

Now if you have a large family, or are one of the many underpaid/underemployed adults in the nation, or are simply a romantic and as such are overly fond of your plants and cannot abide wasting a single one, then by all means shred, dice, peel, bake and saute your days away.  I do not blame you, for I myself uncovered a gargantuan specimen this morning, and instantly gave into the temptation that all other pressing matters must be shoved aside to make room for this one glorious thing.

The day was a disaster.

The first thing I tried was a new recipe for zucchini blondies.  If you come across this recipe, do not make it.  There is a large chance that you will be drawn by the sculpted abs on the woman who posted this farce. But she is not what is on the menu.  And go ahead, add the 1/4 cup of chocolate chips to the scant amount of sugar in this dessert, but the experience will still be a bitter one.

And while I'm on the subject of things not to bake.  Do not, I repeat do not attempt to bake a pie with a store brand ready-made crust.  You will not be doing anyone any favors.  Least of all yourself. My husband—late last winter—came home with two boxes of Kroger brand pie crust.  He was trying to do me a favor (see earlier remarks about favors). In all fairness to Kroger, the box was cleared stamped "Best used by February 2018."  The poor things have been sitting quietly on the shelf in the refrigerator.  I've looked at them often and passed them over.  Still, not wanting them to go to waste or make my husband feel bad, I attempted to make them into part of a blueberry pie for the Forth of July holiday. This made perfect sense because the frozen blueberries that had been patiently waiting in the freezer had also been stamped for use by February 2018.  Long story short, the pie is inedible.  Not because of the berries, but because of the aroma coming from the crust.  Think bacon-lemon flavored.  Americans are crazy for  bacon, but I am not putting any stock in this particular flavor catching on.

Getting back to the zucchini, I continued shredding another 3 cups to make into an "Italian Zucchini pie."  It was cooking next to the bacon-lemon-blueberry pie, so I am afraid to eat it.

On the dinner menu tonight is zucchini noodles (if I can stuff this monster into my handy veggie noodle maker).  Then I have about 700 kitchen utensils, pots and pans to wash, followed by mopping the floor.

All for the sake of one zucchini.

With age, they say, comes wisdom. May I have the strength to never again succumb to the seductive power of a vegetable.

Earth Day and EskieRescue

Earth Day 2018:  The Day I surrendered Caspian 

It is a heart-breaking thing to give up your dog, even if he really wasn’t your dog to begin with.  This may be obvious to all the dog lovers out there.  But I am not a dog lover. I did not have a dog growing up and my husband and I did not raise dogs along with our 4 children. I was my daughter's I-can’t-keep-my-dog-or-I’ll-get-kicked-out-of-my-apartment-foster-mom. For the better part of 4 years.  

The first time my husband and I met the rescued Eskimo Spitz we were living New York State.  The Alpha pup bolted out of doors and ate shoes and never came when called.  But he was an amusing site romping through the snow, seeming to grin from ear to ear, and coaxed in from play only when ice began to wedge itself between his toes.  So when our daughter needed a reprieve, we gathered up the pup and his things.  Totally ignorant of anything dog worldly, a $$$ personal in-home trainer instructed me on the basics of dog whispering - the bare basics. Caspian, she said, was the smartest dog she'd ever met.

Daughter followed pup. At the time, our whole family was in crisis due to circumstances and events I could not wish even on those who so callously inflicted them on us.  But the upheaval had only begun.  It would be several months before it was over, and by then, well we weren’t "in Kansas anymore."  Not even close.  The whole thing landed us, doggie and all, in the deep south of Mississippi.

It is, I suppose, one thing to be a displaced Yankee in Mississippi and quite another to be a fur-lined, long-haired Eskimo Spitz in Mississippi. 

For a couple of years Caspian went back and forth between my daughter (soon off to Texas) and me.  Mostly me.

For my part, I saw to it that Caspian had excellent health care, a large home, large yard, the best dog food and treats (real bacon). He even sported an ice blue cooling vest for outdoor play and had his very own doggie pool.  But I kept my heart locked.  He was, after all, not my dog.

He used his disarmingly good looks to his advantage, like when he wandered into the bedroom and gave me that is-it-time-for-our-pack-walk-in-the-park-I-think-I-heard-you grab-your-driver's-license look.  A simple nod of the head and "yes" from me set-off excited barking and a quick, bouncy, hurry-up-grandmom back and forth run to the garage door.  Outdoors he was a sight to behold in a full-out run, his eyes sparkling and his mouth in an open grin.  And Caspian was I-just-want-to-hug-you cute when he saddled up next me in the garden and gave me that what'cha-you-doing look, then snuck in a few kisses before setting off to explore somewhere else in the yard.

But there were things I didn't like. I could not or would not walk him in the park every day. And he had this howling thing that I called his death aria whenever he lost a toy or was left alone.  And  anyone, phantom or real, who ventured near the door was met with an exasperating frenzy of barks and jumping, and close inspection.  And ever the leader, he always released himself from those commands he deigned to obey.

Earlier this year, my daughter married.  She decided that she was a “bad” dog owner and Caspian should stay with me.  I wanted Caspian to have a home where they did the dog thing right, 100%.  A family that understood this handsome, intelligent, curious, protective, friendly breed and its needs.  A family that loved this beautiful dog and could take them wherever they went, that would not have to board him as much as out-of-state family obligations required me (Caspian has acute separation anxiety, and boarding was traumatic for him).

After all my husband had undergone two major surgeries only a few months apart.  And my father, living 1000 miles away, was so ill and in so much mental anguish.  And two of my close friends and kindred spirits had been seriously ill and died just months apart in  2017.  And truthfully, I had shockingly few tools in my doggie-training toolbox. Caspian, I felt, deserved more, and I was tired. And he was, after all, not really my dog.

Fast forward to today. Earth day 2018.  A brisk walk on lead in the park.  A ball tossing free run at the air field.  Ah, but you saw that right?  Air field. We were there to meet Pilots N Paws.

When I placed Caspian in the plane that would take him to his new foster mom, he tilted his head, his ears back, and looked at me as if to ask, “What’s going on?  Why am I in this thing without you?”

And I said that thing I almost never said to him.  Usually, if I had to leave him I said, “Stay,” followed by, “I’ll be back.”

But not today. Today I said, “Good-bye.”

That tight lid that I had kept on the not-my-dog-fostering-heart burst.  

I cried all the way home.




 

All the Noise, Noise, NOISE!

I did something radical this weekend.

Quietly radical.

I canceled my DirecTV account.  Now it's not that DirecTV did anything to me personally,  nor was it an issue of service quality.   It was all about the noise.  I can't stand the noise - the discussions, the analyses that are nothing more than shouting fests.  I scream.  You scream.  We all scream.  Except it's not for ice cream anymore.  It's about power and influence and destroying each other.

It's not that I don't have any deep-seated and deeply held beliefs: political, ethical, moral and religious.  I do.  And I don't care to have them purposely misrepresented any longer.

I've just decided to turn off the noise, and to grab a book, or take a walk or sit by the one I love and enjoy the silence.

Happy Lent!
Happy Silence!

Mindful Mono-tasking and the New Year

I'm a human "doing", not a human "being".

Everyone's got it—or so they claim. That ability to stand in a crowded stadium and watch the game while taking selfies and searching for your fleeting moment of fame on the big screen. The ability to jog on that treadmill and check your child's homework and determine next summer's perfect getaway even as you set the incline up a couple of degrees.

Get it done. Move on to the next thing.  Rush. Rush. Rush. Multi-tasking is a requirement of the world we live in and yet—I submit—it is a myth that anyone does it well.

It is a troubling aspect of my own life.  I'm sitting at the piano. In my hands is a beautiful adagio, but what I'm really consumed with is that magazine publisher who held onto a manuscript for 7 months and just announced it has stopped publication. I'm cooking dinner and I get an idea for a chapter book and run upstairs to GOOGLE a thing or two and then run back down to the take the burning pot off the stove.

I rush from thing to thing.  I'm a human "doing", not a human "being".  Never living in the moment. Instead planning the future, mulling over the past.

How I admire those with well-trained minds.  Concentration that wins chess tournaments, or churns out 1500 words in a sitting, or memorizes hundreds (even thousands) of pages of music.

How do they do it?

Mindfulness.

Try this.  Clear you mind and think of one thing and only one thing.  How long can you last?  Five seconds, maybe fifteen?

And that, my friends, is why I am still working  on manuscripts started 7 years go, on Mozart Sonata's begun 11 years back and on cross-stitch projects almost as old as my youngest son (actually, the stitching is still in a closet somewhere).




So here's to 2016:
To the attempt to live in the moment
To be present
To be mindful
To mono-tasking,
And to the end of the myth of multi-anything.

Della's Song

Last spring, just after moving to Horn Lake, Mississippi, I met Della on the street. Sometimes she was riding her bicycle.  More often she was walking the dogs:  a sweet, old beagle named Daisy and a pug named Otis that seemed more susine than canine.

Della's hands shook.  She got stuck in the middle of conversations, when the word she was about to speak evaporated, like morning dew. She could never remember my name.

Della and I have much in common:  we were directors of liturgical music; we taught music education in Catholic Schools.  I did so periodically; Della did so for 42 years.  Differences aside, we both love making music.

Last year, Della's son took away her driving license. (Sheriff's deputy's can arrange for that sort of thing, I suppose).  She could no longer attend Mass or sing in her parish choir.  A few people offered to bring her, but you know how that goes.  

Last month Steven and I decided to pick up the slack, switching from our Mississippi parish to Della's beloved St. Paul's in Memphis, Tennessee.  How happy the people of St. Pau's were to see her.  How grateful they were to Steven and me for bringing their Della back to them.  

In a token of thanks, Della gave me a copy of her vocal CD, recorded well before the onset of Parkinson's disease. I cringed. Several people have happily given me their musical CD's over the years. Most are - well - so very average. Della's astonished me. Her voice sounded so much like Olivia Newton John in her prime. 

Della thinks we are doing all the giving in this new relationship. But that's not true. In a world ever in motion, spinning endlessly toward some unseen end, Della moves slowly and patiently through unknown waters with humor and grace.  

Della still can’t remember my name, and she no longer rides her bicycle. Her musical form has changed. She often listens quietly or hums along as the words escape her. But when she does sing, few things on earth compare.

Parkinson's disease:  a chronic and progressive movement disorder
in which symptoms continue and worsen over time.
The cause is unknown; there is presently no cure.

Longing for a Village

There is a story recounted in Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers about the city of Roseta, Pennsylvania, not far from Bangor or Nazareth. Italian immigrants settled there in the first part of the 20th century to work in the coal mines. They developed their new city along many of the lines of their beloved village in the motherland.

Scientist and medical experts became interested in the citizenry of Roseta when it was discovered that only a small percentage of the over-fifty population had suffered any heart disease.

Roseta Valfortore, by  RaBoe/Wikipedia 

Diet was certainly not the reason.  Pizza in the homeland was a flatbread with oil cheese and vegetables. The same dish in the states had thicker breads and the addition of pepperoni, salami, and sausages. Rich desserts, a rare treat in the homeland, were served with frequency. The citizens of Roseta, Pennsylvania were not known to jog six miles a day or workout in the local gymnasium. They were under-exercised, over-weight, lived on rich food and drink.  They probably smoked. They did all the things health experts say they shouldn't, and none of the things the experts say they should.

So why were they so healthy? 

The village. 

They lived as a community: greeting one another on the street, sharing meals, stopping in to tell each other news and stories. They had common memories and connections. They knew each other. They were friends.  They were family.

I turn 53 years old, this year.  

I have stage 2 hypertension. 

I am not like the people of Roseta.  I am not obese. I do not each rich foods.  I do not smoke.  I limit my alcohol.   But, having moved so often, there is one spectacularly important way that I am not like them: there is no one here who knew me as a child, no one who knew my parents, my aunts, my uncles, no one to tell stories of my grand-parents.  I do not have the privilege of sharing a meal with someone who can remember childhood with me. There are no family members, no old friends passing by the street where I live.

Steven and I move every few years. so much so that my own children stumble over the section of applications reserved for "hometown."  This tears at my heart. They, too, will have no one to sit a spell with with and re-live childhood memories, or recall the stories and the people of their lives.

The more cosmopolitan among us think families and neighborhoods with lasting roots are quaint and oh-so-charming.  I have come to believe they are essential.

Photo Credit:
//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Roseto_Valfortore_038_(RaBoe).jpg

Rainy Days and Mondays

Rainy Days and Mondays: A lyrical litany

Weather has a strange power over us.

Steven and I took a short walk in the rain. When we headed back to the car, I wondered what all my hurrying was about. 

What ever happened to the notion of the purposeful, romantic walk in the rain, one where people actually get wet? Is this an exclusive rite of very young, fools in love or  lovers in a Nicolas Sparks novel?

Perhaps it is true that rainy days (and Monday) always get us down.  But how can I claim I made it through the rain, if I don’ ever soak it in? Sure, I prefer sunshine on my shoulders, but there is something healing and humbling, and exhilarating about standing in the rain. All little kids know that.

I am not advising you rush out into an open field during a tornado, or stand under the tallest tree in a thunder and lightning storm or casually disregard a local hurricane emergency evacuation, but baby, the rain must fall.  So don't just stare out the window, get out there, let the rain fall over you sometime, and not just to see if there really is something, somewhere over the rainbow.

The sun will come out, tomorrow.  Enjoy the rain today, it washes the planet clean, and fills our lakes and streams and grows our food. It is one of the most powerful and paradoxically, most gentle sources of life.  

And always after the rain, here comes the sun.

NO, YOU CAN'T THROW ROCKS AT THAT OLD WOMAN

photo courtesy of
Abigail P. Gage

Several Saturdays back, Steven and I were strolling down the main roadway of Latimer Lakes Park, in Horn Lake, Mississippi. A sweet family walked past: a father and two daughters. The father exchanged greeting with us and we smiled at the little girls, who looked to be about 6 and 8 years-old. We were barely out of earshot when I heard one sister admonish the other, "No, you can't throw rocks at that old woman."

I howled.

That moment is certain to be a permanent addition to all the memories we have collected in public parks over the last three decades.

You could say that our "official" life together began in a state park. May 11, 1984, Steven, who had graduated the semester before, telephoned my dorm room from his apartment in Delaware (This was in the age before ubiquitous cell phones) and told me to be up at 5:30 AM. In the still darkness, he drove us out to Round Valley State Park in Lebanon, New Jersey.  When the sun came over the horizon, he asked me to marry him (I had a hunch that was what this was all about and could hardly contain myself through his speech about something-or-another-undying-love. Steven would say that I didn't contain myself).

Limestone Rock
Shades State Park. IN

Thus began our life-long love affair with national, state and local parks. In Shades State Park (Indiana), Steven picks up other people's trash; I identify wildflowers. We stop at over looks (Hawk Mountain) or on beach fronts (Galveston) and take in the view. In every state we find something somewhere to illicit a sense of gratitude for this beautiful planet.

photo by Moon Rhythm

Lums Pond, DE

Talking about this recently, we discovered we hadn't been to any of the big boys together: the Grand Canyon or Yosemite or Yellowstone or Mount Rushmore. We seem to prefer exploring nature close by wherever we call home.

I suppose we'll eventually get to the big ones, but for now we're content to watch the mighty Mississippi roll pass, and hope the kids don't throw rocks at this old woman.


Oh, a little shout out to daughter Abigail who took me on an outdoor site-seeing expedition all over the big island of Hawaii.  She's an ace at planning trips here in the US and abroad, including our fall family trip to the Great Smokies.  I love you!

Great Smokie Mountains

Betting on Love

February 16, 1985
Colton Chapel
Lafayette College

Two Weeks.  That was the longest any of Steven's SAE Fraternity brothers were willing to bet on the staying power of his newest relationship.

As Steven likes to tell it, back then we were both students at Lafayette College and both on the Dean's List. Only, I was on the right one. And it was true we did have some interesting (and at times perplexing) run-ins with professors and administrators.

February 16, 2014
Methodist Hospital
Memphis, TN

In the local supermarket, one crisp autumn Saturday, Dr Pope, Chair of the Religion Department and ironically a Protestant, greeted us with,"Good Morning, Marianne" - look of astonishment- "What are you doing with him?"

There was also that time Steven and I took a walk about the quad, and Registrar Cyrus Fleck strolled past.  He glanced sideways, tipped his hat. "Good morning, Marianne."  Then stared straight ahead. "Mr. Gage."

I suppose we were an odd couple.  But I found something fundamentally good and lovable in Steven and he returned love for love.

November 2010
Germany

Truth be told, his love was deeper and stronger.  That's why, two blinks of the eye, four children, eight major moves, richer-poorer, in sickness and in health, for better or worse, thirty years later we're still together.

Anyone care to hedge their bets on the next thirty?

Wine and Facebook

A simple Facebook post started it: continuing comments on how many bottles of wine this writer may or may not have in her wine closet.  Yes, closet.  Cellars are at a premium here on the Mississippi Delta.  The initial FB share had nothing to do with wine.  It was a Grammarly meme that read:

Dear Optimist, Pessimist, and Realist,

While you guys were busy arguing about the glass of water, I drank it!

Sincerely,

The Opportunist

(Don’t you just love how Grammarly always uses the

Oxford comma? But I digress...)

I posted the meme, but the whole how-many-bottles-of-wine-can-she possibly-own thing was started by my very own sister, who commented,”quite frankly, if you know Marianne Gage, it was not water in that glass.”  Patti followed her accusation with the ever ubiquitous “lol.” 

Well...let the FB-comment ruckus begin.

I certainly did not deny that, at the start of the holiday season, 60-some bottles of wine rested peacefully in the closet or that 59 (umm...better make that 57) currently remain.  I did not bother to tell the curious that at one time we had over 120 said bottles.

I do not blame myself for the attraction.  I blame my sister.  Not the one that posted the FB comment, but the other one.  The one in California. In 2009, we took a family trip out from Texas to see her.  That’s when Jacque took me on my first wine-tasting tour.  And I loved it.  Because, let me tell you, Texas is good at many things—mostly big things—but wine-making is not one of them (Italian food is another, but that story will have to wait).

When Steven and I moved to the scenic Finger Lakes region of New York State, it was wine-heaven. Finger Lakes (Wine Country) New York boasts over 100 wineries nestled on the graceful, rolling shorelines of the region’s four main lakes: Cayuga, Seneca, Keuka and Canandaigua. We honed our tasting skills and became amateur collectors. We even bought the Teaching Company’s Everyday Guide to Wine (but boy, if those people think $400 Italian reds are everyday, they are seriously mistaken).  We actually got to very few of the 100 wineries; our favorite was Anyela’s Vineyard just off Skaneateles Lake and a few miles from home.

But, alas, our stay in New York was short-lived and now here we are in the greater Memphis area where we mostly mix a little song in with the wine.

Cheers. 
And always remember: every box of raisins is a tragic story of grapes that could have been wine.

Football, The Rivalry and the Three Last Things

The Rivalry is a college football game played by two institutions located seventeen miles apart in eastern  Pennsylvania: Lehigh University Mountain Hawks and the Lafayette College Leopards (my alma mater as well as my sister's, my brother's, my niece's, my husband's and father-in-law's). It is the most-played football rivalry in the nation and the longest uninterrupted annual rivalry series. As of 2014, "The Rivalry" has been played 150 times.

I mention this above in such detail because here in Mississippi, as in Texas or Alabama or Indiana, my neighbors would be incredulous that The Rivalry did not involve their local teams.

But it doesn't and  it is so old it predates football trophies; the winning team just gets to keep the game ball. These are painted with the score and displayed in winning institution's hall of fame or in the case of Lafayette, President's house. 

In 2012, prior to the 148th game, the presidents of Lafayette College and Lehigh University jointly announced that the 150th game would be played on November 2, 2014 in Yankee Stadium. Forty-eight thousand two-hundred fifty-six Pard and Hawk fans showed up.

Looking at the FB photos of my classmates and friends in that near-capacity crowd got me thinking of this 150 year-old tradition in the context of a larger one.  For those of us who profess to be Roman Catholics, Sunday November 3rd, the day after the big game, was the feast of Christ the King, and the end of what the Church calls Ordinary Time (The liturgical calendar of the Roman Catholic Church begins with Advent).

For weeks now we’ve been listening to Scripture readings and homilies on the last things:  Judgment, Heaven, and Hell. And obtaining Heaven, as St. Paul might say, is akin to winning the big race, the prize.

Here in Northern Mississippi, the Priests of the Sacred Heart tend to focus on challenging their flocks to do something with our lives, something, as Mother Theresa would say, beautiful for Christ. Something that says “I am what I believe” and “I believe you (the stranger, the child, the outcast, the lonely, the sick) are worthy of my time, my talent, my treasure, my inconvenience. And you are worthy of such gifts without question, without cost, without return, without blame, without judgment, without exception."

It’s a hard teaching, and one that I'm not convinced is humanly possible.

Certainly there in the stands, enjoying The Rivalry, were business executives and leaders, professionals, entrepreneurs, the rich and the wealthy, the privileged.  With its annual tuition and fees adding up to nearly $60,000, Lafayette has a healthy share of students and alumni from the top earners in the United States.  That in itself is of little importance.  What is important is to what end do we use this education? Is that end "love?"

The Rivalry has endured for one and a half centuries. It’s classic American fun and games.

Us against them. Pick  a side. A winner and a loser.

Pardee Hall

I hope we Pards have welcomed the stranger, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick. And that we did so, and continue to do so, without counting the cost.

That’s us with them.  No taking sides.  No losers.

Yesterday the Pards won, 27-7.  I hope you all enjoyed it. 

I hope you all win the big race too.

We’ll gather by the twilight’s glow,

In front of old Pardee,In all the world no other scene,

So fair so dear to me.

The Art of Eating in These United States or Why My Husband has to Order Meatloaf Out

One of my favorites memories is eating sushi in Texas.  Yes, that Texas.  The red meat state.  Steven and I were meeting a fifth generation Texan for dinner.  This well-do do, successful business man left his over-the-top self-confidence back at the ranch.  Poor fellow didn’t know what to make of it all and probably would have preferred some chicken fried steak - Texas fare I tried only once, and only so I could say I did.  I wasn’t sure a Jersey Girl was genetically capable of digesting the stuff (Yes, Nosey, she is, but she doesn't want to).

Growing up in middle class 1960 America made for a rather boring culinary experience.  The variety of foods, like the family budget was limited. Baked chicken parts, fish sticks, sausage, meatloaf, the typical meat-vegetable-potatoes variety except for the high holidays and Thursday night spaghetti. In fairness to my parents I should note that I was a finicky eater, a very finicky eater, whose favorite condiment was ketchup - lots of ketchup.   On just about everything, especially the meatloaf.

Besides predictable variety in the diet, we could also be certain that our meal was never undercooked.  Mom had a very real fear of trichinosis.  Turns out she had an elementary school teacher who suffered from it.  Modern food preparation techniques and agricultural science aside, meats had to be cooked on the well-done-and-dry side.  To this day, my siblings and I ask, “Is it done yet?", as we peer into the oven and stare at the roasting bird or pig and expect to somehow divine the answer.

When I was a preteen, grandmother tried to get me to try shrimp and cocktail sauce.  She promised I would like it.  She was right.  "Try the mushrooms," she suggested. "You'll like them."  She was right.  But I drew the line. Every year at annual clam-bake offered by my father's employer, I dipped pulled roasted chicken in clarified butter while everyone around me dipped lobster.  There was no way I was going to eat that thing.

Then, skinny, finicky me met Steven, my not yet handsome husband - to clarify, he was handsome, but not my husband.  Yet.  Steven asked me to lunch one January afternoon.  We were both college students working the interim session at Lafayette College.  I was in the biology department’s laboratory annex breeding fruit flies like crazy.  Again to clarify: the flies were breeding, I was merely moving them from vial to vial.  Steven was photographing metal samples with the metallurgy department’s scanning electron microscope that for some reason was housed in the biology building.

Lunch, he told me would be tuna salad.  He would be making it in the SAE house kitchen.  I wasn't scared of the kitchen, not with their commercial dish-washing system.  But let’s get a few things on the table, so to say.  To me tuna salad meant tuna with mayo and maybe celery.  I don’t like tuna.  I don’t like mayo and I don’t like celery.  But I did like Steven.  A lot.  So I went along with his plan, mentally preparing to take a few nibbles and spend the rest of the afternoon wondering about the caloric value of fruit flies.  Well, turns out Steven Gage tuna salad was a shocker.  Tuna, yes but with raisins and apples and pecans and dressing and oh so good that I didn’t notice the celery seed. That was a first epicurean eating experience with Steven Gage.  

Now 30 years and eight states later my culinary tastes (and waistband) have developed considerably. I long ago gave into eating the occasional lobster. Two years ago, I even tried the scallops.  Yummy.  So tonight, I’ll have the vegetable pakoras and raita and shrimp coconut korma.  And Steven?  He'll have the meatloaf because his wife ran out of ketchup years ago.

Meeting Gandhi in a Catholic Church in Mississippi

The world's great champion for non-violent civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandi would be 145 years old on October 2.  His birthday is a national holiday in India.  It is also recognized by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Day of Non-Violence

Last Saturday, I was sitting in a little classroom in a parish center in a church in the heart of American South. Christ the King Catholic Church in Southaven, Mississippi offered an all day adult faith formation / catechist certification workshop. Attendees came from five area parishes, making up the northern deanery of the Diocese of Jackson.  Most participants came as catechists fulfilling requirements toward certification.   A few others, myself included, came for the adult faith formation.
The session I attended was titled: Prayer and Spirituality.  In the afternoon, Gandhi paid a visit.  Not in body, of course, but in spirit.  Our facilitator introduced us to Gandhi's Seven Deadly Sins, those traits which the holy man considered to be spiritually perilous to all mankind:

Wealth without Work
Pleasure without Conscience
Science without Humanity
Knowledge without Character
Politics without Principle
Commerce without Morality
Worship without Sacrifice

These, Gandhi wrote in  Young India,  on October 22, 1925, are the roots of violence.

There is, of course, universal truth in Gandhi's observations from nearly a century ago, observations that seem to be ignored in much of our modern world.

There is much focus today on the reality of sociopaths in our midst.  Experts claim 1 out of every 25 people is a sociopath.  It seems to me that these are  the people who are aware of the perils of the seven deadly sins, and sin anyway because it is of no consequence to them. What care they of the consequences to you or to me or to unnamed multitudes?  

There is, of course, nothing new, under the sun. Even the Scriptures say so.  But for those of us who claim Christ, we also claim to be made anew, in His image.  So as we near Gandhi's birthday. I wonder: Do I demand work, conscience, character, principle, sacrifice from myself?   Do I model them to my children?  Do I expect them from my friends, my leaders?

Do you?

Maybe the best way to honor the memory and legacy of Gandhi is to take a long hard look at ourselves and the culture we are building.

Then as Gandhi also said:  Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Boarding Other People's Lives

    Consider living in eight states.   You pick up an interest or a hobby.  You take a class or join a club.  You serve on a board or open a studio.  You begin a new job.   You join a parish.  And then you meet people.  All sorts of people.  People who steal your heart, people who break it.  People who stay on your mind, people who get on your nerves.  People who bring out the best  in you and people who bring out your worst.  People who freely give, people who freely take. 

    Always different, yet somehow the same.  And the people come and go, countless and fleeting relationships built and abandoned, because you are the intruder, the outsider, the newcomer and they may no have room for you.  But you do not weep at this because you know, that if you remain patient, and have a heart that sees, somewhere in the sea of strangers there is one, or if you’re really lucky two, who will take you by the hand and call you friend.

Maybe we are all [Beth’s, ] boarding other people’s life journeys, or letting them hop aboard ours.  For a while we ride together. A few minutes, a few miles.  Companions on the road, sharing our air and our view, our feet swaying to the same beat.  Then you get off at your stop, or I get off at mine.  Unless we decide to stay on longer together.

from Riding the Bus with My Sister: A True Life Journey
by Rachel Simon, Houghton Miffin Company,© 2002