Great Balls of Sauerkraut!

The holiday season always brings a lot of talk of food.  Most families have special dishes they make for the holidays, and here in Northeastern Ohio that means, amongst other things, sauerkraut balls.  As a matter of fact, the city I live in, Akron, Ohio, is widely considered the sauerkraut ball capital of the world. Credit the many German immigrants who settled in the area, but instead of being a New Year's treat, but a specialty of the house in many NE Ohio bars and restaurants  all year round.


As a kid I didn't know this. I only knew that every year on Christmas Eve we had sauerkraut balls.  Years later when I asked my mom why we did this she said that my dad's mom, who was Hungarian, always served sauerkraut on Christmas Eve, along with fish, pierogies, and poppy seed rolls.  But her grandchildren didn't much like the taste of kraut back then (I love it now, especially with kielbasi), so my mom bought the sauerkraut balls.  Sauerkraut balls on Christmas Eve became a family tradition, one I shared with my husband when he came into the family and we started spending Thanksgiving with his family and Christmas with mine.

All this time we were still buying sauerkraut balls from the store.  Then my husband decided to try a recipe he had acquired along with a new food processor.  It was a revelation. The premade ones are fine, but when you start from scratch and assemble your own ingredients, its a revelation.  With a certain hesitancy, he brought them to my family one Christmas Eve.  People who are used to a certain recipe don't always like a new one.  My family was delighted, however, and he has become the official maker of sauerkraut balls to my relatives.  About 6 years ago he made them for a niece's graduation party and they were a huge hit with his family as well. 

One of the nice things about sauerkraut balls is they can be made ahead and frozen, and then simply baked or briefly popped back into the fryer again.  They are time consuming but easy to make too.
There are numerous variations, but what we make requires a pound of sausage, a block of cream cheese, a bag of sauerkraut, bread crumbs and an egg. Drain the sauerkraut, pressing the excess moisture out. Cook the sausage, then mix it, the sauerkraut and the cream cheese together, and let sit in the fridge overnight.  Next day, form into small balls, dip in the egg and drop in the bread crumbs, then deep fry till golden brown.   Serve right away, or freeze them till you need them.

And New Year's Eve and Day are  great days  to serve them as pork and sauerkraut are traditional fare in many parts of the country.  One reason I have heard to have pork on New Year's is because it was the richest dish most people could afford, so you were eating well on New Year's hoping it mirrored how you would eat the rest of the year. 

And however you choose to celebrate have a great New Year!!!

Theme Thursday I Here Highly Resolve

So its time for the New Years' resolution again. I will make the same one I make every year, to try to be a little more organized and a lot less cluttered. The resolution has been a major work in progress for several years. As a sentimental Cancer born in the year of the Rat no less I do tend to colllect things. And I am makibng progress, though not enough to give up the resolution yet.

Actually the last two years I have had two resolutions, for at the prompting of an old friend I have been trying to resume the writing that has been so derailed by life the last 20 years or so. This year I started my blog and have been posting fairly faithfully. So while continuing to write I think I can go back to concentrating on the clutter dragon.

I have a room that is basically the household place of holding. Kind of a junk drawer, but with walls and a door. Anything no one wants or knows where to put goes there. The problem is:I need a work space, to write and scrapbook and do geneology and shut the door at time to chaos. When the kids were younger I did this in the living room or wherever else the kids were. But they frankly dont need the supercvision any more at, least not on that level. I need to make my own space.

Last year major progress was made. I cleaned a whole closet of clothes from my college days that I will never be small enough for again, and post baby clothes that I don't intend to ever be large enough for again. I set aside for Goodwill a number of books that are duplicates or will never be needed again. I even threw out a few falling apart books that I had other copies of. Getting rid of books gets me where I live. But I recognize the neccessity.

So the resolution for this year is to build on my success so far. There are clothes thsat fit, but will never wear. There are paperbacks Ialso own in hardback. I need to get more bookshelves up, clear out the rest of the boxes that moved with us 11 years ago from the last house, set up a scrapbooking and photo center. I hope to report progress soon.

And maybe I can make a new resolution next year.

This post is part of Theme Thursday, a group of writers blogging on the same topic. For more info please click on the button below.

God Bless Us, Everyone!

There are a lot of Christmas Stories I am very fond of.  The Gift of the Magi, Yes Virginia there is a Santa Claus, The Other Wise Man.  Louisa May Alcott wrote a number of stories that revolved around Christmas,  most memorably perhaps, the opening chapter of Little Women.  A pulp writer of the 20's and 30's, Seabury Quinn wrote a story for Weird Tales called Roads, that gave a unique and interesting story of the origins of Santa Claus.  And then there is the Master himself, Sherlock Holmes, in The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle. 

But when you get right down to it, there is no denying the greatest of all fictional Christmas stories is the one Charles Dickens jotted down more than 150 years ago. Scrooge, Marley, Tiny Tim and all the Ghosts, are alive in the minds of people who never read the book itself.  I personally have read the book many times, including an annual once rgrough every Christmas Eve. In college I helped put together a travelling production that remains among my fondest memories of that time. Also I have collected film Scrooges like some folks collect Hamlets, personal preference: George C Scott. Part of this story's appeal is due to the brillance of Mr Dickens in creating charecters,  But I feel another reason for this is that of all the classic Christmas stories, none has more lasting relevance to our own time than this work.


Two things were going on at the time that inspired Dickens as he wrote A Christmas Carol.  One is that the celebrating of Christmas had fallen out of fashion in England, where it had never recovered from the Puritan control of the Cromwell era. What Christmas celebrating did take place was usually in the country, and regarded as rustic folklore.  Dickens loved celebrating Christmas himself, and wanted to preserve something of its practice.  But Dickens had another purpse in mind as well.  Before he became a novelist, he was a journalist.  In that capacity he saw a lot of poverty and neglect in society.  Moreover he had come from a poor family himself, and had seen several siblings die of chronic illnesses in part because there was no money for doctors.  He felt society needed to take more responsibility for its have nots.  He often used his skill as a novelist to advocate for the needs of the poor; for food, medical care, housing and education, nowhere more brilliantly than in a Christmas Carol, where he reminded society that caring for have nots was also a concern of the one the holiday was named after as well.

"Christmas is a time when want is keenly felt and abundance rejoices" the businessman tells Scrooge as he seeks donations. Scrooge rejects the opportunity to help, regardless of the cost to the poor: "If they would rather die then they had betterdo it and decrease the surplus population." Like so many wealthy persons he has no concept of the needs and lives of the poor.

Christmas Present shows Scrooge all the ways Christmas could be kept. Scrooge is given intimate glimpses into the lives of two persons he should know well, but doesn't:his nephew Fred and mthis clerk, Bob Cratchit.& Fred is the stand in for Dickens reminding Scrooge and the reader that Christmas is a time of goodwwill and concern for others.
In the charecter of Tiny Tim Scrooge is finally drawn to care about someone in need. He has learned "what the surplus population is, and where it is." And when the ghost confronts him with the childrwn Ignorace and Want Dickens speaks most passionately of the need to care for the less blessed among us, "This boy is Ignorannce. This Girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased."

The sad truth of course is that so little of this has changed in the 170 some years since Mr Dickens was so inspired. True there is more of a safety net in society now than there was in his time, but so many of us speak of it grundgingly, and perpetuate the fraud that recipients would rather be poor and dependent on others rather than do for themselves if they could. We pretend that we gained our successes entirely on our own merit without any help from family, education. Contacts or plain good luck. And too many people who have gotten to the top of the ladder prefer to kick the ladder down rather than help others up.

Dickens scorned this attitude. And during much of the debating the last few years years during the often acrimonious debates over health care and and so called Entitlemants and unemployment extensions I have often amused myself with thought of what Dickens would think of it all. During the 47% controversey I fantasized about him showing up on Mitt Romney's doorstep with a few ghosts along to demonstrate what tge 47% is and where it is.

I think we are so drawn to this story for many reasons. We love a good story of redemption, and if Scrooge can be redeemed, we all can. And we need a reminder occasionally that we are all in this together. And we love the idea of carrying the Christmas story into the rest of the year. As Scrooge tells the last spirit "I will honor Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the past,present and future. The spirits of all three shall strive within me. I shall not shut out the lessons that they teach." If thats idealisric, its a good ideal to strive for. "And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be said of us, and truly all of us. And so as Tiny Tim observed,"God Bless Everyone!"

Happy Solstice: Here Comes the Sun

Its the Winter Solstice today the darkest and longest day of year. After today the weather may get worse, but the nights will be shorter.  Right now, working 7-5 I catch a bus in the morning in the dark and its pretty well dark when I get home again. Pretty soon that will change. 

We know it will change, because we know how the tilt of the Earth's axis and its rotation around the sun work together to produce the length of our days and the cycle of our seasons. Our ancestors long ago weren't lucky enough to be gifted with the same knowledge.  They worried each fall and winter as the days grew darker and colder. What if it didn't change?  What if the sun decided to desert us forever?  When the solstice arrived and the days started lengthening again it must have seemed like a miracle, something to celebrate.

We have lost some of this fear of the darkness. Our scientific knowledge tells us that winter will cycle over to summer again, that this is only temporary. Moreover relatively few of us, at least in America, know what it is to be truly in the dark or in   the cold for any extended period of time. We have electric lighting   at the flip of a switch, heat at the touch of a dial.  Even when the power is out we know that sooner or later it will be restored. (And even that is scary enough.)  But our ancestors had only hope and faith to hold on to till the sun came again.  And when it did they felt gratitude and celebrated to show that gratitude.
 
Maybe this year the Mayan Calender nonsense did serve that much of a purpose.  Maybe one thought for just a second that the Solstice miracle wouldn't happen this year, that the light wouldn't return. And for just the moment we felt what our ancestors felt so  much more deeply: fear.

It's not a coincidence that nearly every religious group in the world has evolved a holiday at this time when the sun seems born again.  What better to celebrate than the promise of another cycle of seasons, another year of life?  In our house we mark both Yule, at the actual date of the solstice, and Christmas. For a few years we had a Jewish friend living nearby who was without family in the area and we kept Hanukkah with her.  A chief feature of all these festivals, and many others is light. Candles in the Menorah or the Advent wreath, lights on the Christmas Tree, burning a Yule Log. 


I have always felt sorry for people who chose to not celebrate anything at all this time of year.  As the days get darker and the weather get worse,  there is, even in our technological age, a deep seated desire to light a candle in the darkness.  Or as Jerry Herman so memorably put it in Mame:  "We need a Little Christmas" 

Last week I wrote about my favorite Christmas songs, and I mentioned one of my favorites was "The Christmas Wish" from John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together.   I love the song because it gets to what is, for me, the heart of the matter:  whether you "Believe" in Christmas or not, if you believe in love, and Light in the Darkness, that's reason enough to celebrate.

And for the pure joy of the solar return, you can't beat George Harrison:

 

 

Happy Solstice!!!

10 Good Turns

The sorrow over what happened in Newtown,CT has further been compounded for those of us involved in Scouting by learning that 8 of the little girls whose lives were lost were Daisy Girl Scouts and 2 of the little boys were Tiger Cub Scouts. As leaders we stress to our Scouts the connection between themselves and every other Scout all over the world. They wear symbols of that association on their uniforms. Girl Scouts promise to be a "Sister to every other Girl Scout." I think we should find a way to make this real to our Scouts, to help them learn to take positive action in the face of tragedy.


A suggestion making the rounds online is doing 26 random acts of kindness as a remembrance of the 26 victims of random violence. I think this is a splendid idea. But as Scouters I would particularly like to see each of us commit to doing 10 Good Turns, one for each of our lost Scouts, whether in our Troops or on our own. I presented this idea to my Girl Scout Troop tonight. They liked the idea and are going to try. If you are a leader I hope you will suggest it to your Scouts as well.


We who are leaders all know the sweet innocent excitement of Daisies and Tigers. Their commitment and enthusiasm is infectious. They totally believe in their Promise and strive to follow it. We can do the same in their honor. Big deeds or small, public or private., let's all do 10 Good Turns. For them.

A Day of SIlence

Empty Chairs

"There's a grief that can't be spoken
There's a pain goes on and on
Empty chairs at empty tables..."
Les Miserables

It's a brilliant image, isn't it? The empty chair, the empty desk, the empty room.

Dickens used it too- when the Ghost of Christmas Present tells Scrooge "I see an vacant seat in a poor chimney corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved."

And in Oklahoma City, the victims of America's worst domestic terrorist attack are remembered with 168 empty chairs.

Since last friday this is the image that has stuck with me longest...the empty chairs in the room.

I admit to having difficulty dealing with these events. Like other first responders I have spoken to we tend to view them through two perspectives at once, both professional and personal. I have in the course of my job at least twice taken calls from people actually with victims of a shooting. One was a carjacking and the other a drive by shooting. I have taken lots of other calls on shootings and stabbings and other ugly things. I have also been to workshops teaching dispatchers how to respind to shooting incidents. I have watched surveillance videos of some of these incidentsin the course of rhis training. What other people find inconceivable we know all too well. The dispatchers, mrdics,and police officers who responded to this call are deveatated too--please have a thought for them as well.

But of course we're not just professionals we're parents and grandparents and spouses too. We know better than most how easily it could be our kids instead. My children attend innercity schools (the kind ironically, that many involved in these mostly suburban tragedies thought they were escaping.) Each of.our high schools and middle schools has a full time officer assigbed to the school. I am mostly ok with this. There is certainly some deteremt benefit to their presence andif there has to be someone with a weapon at a school lets make it a professional. But it isn't a cure all and sending one's child out the door in the morning remains an act of faith.

When you are a parent you don't just worry about their safety, you worry about their worry. You want the to be cautious, but not paranoid. And you wonder how this long string of tragedies has afffected them.


Sunday mornimg while waiting for the football game to start, my son I watched Forest Gump again. It's a favorite film for both of us. One of the things that has always felt true about the movie is the steady stream of assasinations that play like background music through the film. If you grew up in the 60's and 70's you know how it was. You can mark your ages by who died each year. From JFK to Lennon, it was the soundtrack of our youth.

And as I sat watching my son watching the film (and what did any of us do this weekend except watch our kids?) It occured to me that a similar story is playing out for my son. Born a few months after Oklahoma City
He was 4 for Columbine, 6 on 9/11,saw VA tech at 12, and Aurora CO just before his 17th birthday.

For our kids there is also rhe chilling reality that their victims of their youthful nightmares weree ordinary people just going about their lives.

All this went through my mind all weekend as I struggled for words and had none except to express my inarticulateness. I watched as muchnews coverage as I could stand knowing sooner or later some detail would crack me. After Virginia Tech it was a mother with her daughter's well worn point shoes that broke my heart. This time it was learning that at least one of those little girls was a Daisy Scout. My daughter was a Daisy, srill is a scoutin faxt, but I cuuld picture clear as day that little girl in her blue vest and that bubbly enthusiasm Daisies and Brownies always seem to have.

I don't know what the answers are but we need to have areal conversation about these several issues. I revere the Constitution as much as anyone, but surely the Founders never meant this. And we need to talk about thestigmatizing of mental illness, the lack of help for families, the lousy iinsurance coverage. And we need to adfress the culture of violence among young people, the feeling of cheapness of life that so many seem to share.

We need to do this before our hearts are broken again by another empty chair at the table.

Express Yourself--Favorite Christmas Songs

I hear the Bells on Christmas Day

I wrote this entry before last friday's horrific events. As a writer I remain frozen in thought with 1/2 dozen false starts littering my drafts. I have decided to go ahead with this because these sad times reflect what I was trying to say in the piece, so much of the Christmas music we love is born out of darkness to give us hope.


Along with decorating the tree and reading a little Charles Dickens, Christmas Carols are one of my favorite things about the holidays.  Maybe its because Christmas songs, like treasured tree ornaments and Tiny Tim blessing us all everyone, are about the best and purest ideals of the holidays, even when the songs themselves come out of the worst of times.  Maybe especially then.

Recently I was in the car with my daughter when John Lennon's Happy Christmas (War is Over) came on the radio, and the 13 yr old mentioned she really liked that song, and indeed it caused her to swipe my Lennon CD's and listen to more.  I mentioned that I always found it a melancholy song, both because of the time it was written (during the Vietnam war) and because John Lennon had died so close to Christmas, and I heard the song so many times that year.  There is a wistfulness to the children's choir singing "War is over, if you want it" and added sadness in the thought that it is more than 40 years and we are still waiting.

There are several nice versions of this but not surprisingly, I prefer the original.

When I started thinking about this post I realized that Happy Christmas isnt the only favorite of mine that hails from war time. One of the best selling songs of all time, Bing Crosby's recording of White Christmas dates to World War II,originally it was just one of many songs in the film Holiday Inn, but it took off that winter as it reminded many of the Christmas traditions they left behind. Bing does it best, accept no substitutes.

 

Also coming out of the war, though featured in a nostalgic film about an earlier time, is Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, from Meet Me in St Louis. This was always a favorite song of mine, but it grows on me as I get older and am seperated one way or another from so many people who I would like to spend Christmas with. I like the way Judy Garland sang it in the movie, but check out this version, starring John Denver and  Rowlf the Dog from The Muppet Show.

Another favorite was born out of a differant kind of war.  Most peIople today don't realize that Do You Hear What I Hear was inspired by the Cuban Missle Crisis of 1962, which brought this planet closer than it has ever been to a nuclear war.  It takes a lamb, and a child, and a king to let everyone know the world needs peace.  This was another song that Bing Crosby did one of the first recordings of, and I think its still one of the best.

But my very favorite song born of war goes back to a very dark time indeed.  In 1863 the great poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was greatly disturbed by the ongoing Civil War, which he had sons fighting in, and which had not been going well for the North. It inspired him to write a poem he called Christmas 1863, but which is now better known by its opening words "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day."  He recounts the sadness of a wartime that mocks the message of "Peace on Earth good will to men" before consoling himself with the hope that  Good and Right and Peace would be restored in the end.  I dont think anyone has ever set down so clearly the dichotomy of celebrating  Christmas in the midst of war.  The poem has been set to several differant melodies, here is one of my favorite versions with Harry Belafonte

When I was a kid the first record album I ever owned was by Gene Autry.  I played it all the time in season and out, since it was the only one I had.  2 songs stuck with me, the classic Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer (I was kind of a misfit, and bullied a bit too, so we understood each other) and Here Comes Santa Claus (the 7 yr old Misfit me also appreciatated that "Santa Claus knows we're all God's children, that makes everything right.") 

Another song I really liked as a kid was The Little Drummer Boy.  There are a lot of great versions but Bing Crosby (Him again?) and David Bowie (yes really, Bowie)  have them all beat.

I have gone on, but please be patient for one more favorite.  Most people don't know this song, but it was recorded for John Denver and the Muppets, A Christmas Together.  It's called The Christmas Wish and features the one and only Kermit the Frog.  It may be my very favorite Christmas song. What I love about this song (besides Kermit) is its universiality: even if you arent celebrating Christmas, "If you believe in love, that will be more than enough for you to come and celebrate with me." Even if you never saw the Christmas star "I know there is a light, I have felt it burning bright, and I have seen it shining from afar".  and then Kermit wishes us what every one wants at the holidays, peace of mind and love throughout the year.

And in case we dont chat again this month, I wish you all the same.





Today There Are No Words

Today I have no words
No words to say all that I feel.
No words of hope or words to heal.
Too hard to think of things to say,
I'll try again another day.
Today there are no words.

Theme Thursday--The Wedding Story

When our kids aren't lamenting the fact that they are the only kids they know whose parents were married before they were born, and have the same last name as all of their siblings, they mock us for our unromantic courtship. The truth is we got engaged in a parking lot. Or rather we were walking through a parking lot when we decided we would get married.

We had started out as roommates in the last 2 years in college; and then, as we began to consider life beyond college, realized we were perfectly happy with the household we had created and wanted to make it permanent. We had a lengthy discussion of this one May afternoon while walking home from classes, and had just reached the parking lot on the corner of our street when we decided that we would indeed get married. Hopelessly unromantic.

Although it was true we were about to obtain degrees, it was also true that my degree was in theatre and his was in music and that between us we had 2 part time jobs, mine in the recreation bureau entertaining kids after school and on vacations; and his as a church choir director. Moreover our parents were not in a position to help us out much financially.  We knew everything had to be done as inexpensively as possible. 

We decided to get married at the church my husband worked at and have our  reception in the church social hall. No one had ever asked to use the small hall for a reception before, so we weren't charged anything for it, and in fact they painted it just before the reception. 

We always deplored wedding that put the attendants at huge expense for rentals or expensive dresses they could never wear again, so we were determined to avoid it at ours.  As a musician my husband already owned a black tux that he would wear.  We polled our groomsmen and learned they all owned grey suits, so grey it was. I had my matron of honor and 3 bridesmaids sit down with a Penney's catalog and choose a dress that would work with their figures and their budgets. The pretty pink summer dresses we found cost them 39.95 each, and each lady wore her dress at least once for another occasion.  I am very proud of that.

Here is everybody in their perfectly nice grey suits and pink catalog dresses.
 

Speaking of dresses, it was my original intention to do what my bridesmaids did, and purchase a dressy off the rack outfit.  Then my mother in law suggested I might wear her wedding dress, which had been sewn by her now deceased mother. Not many brides wear the groom's mother's gown, but I knew my mom's would never fit, it was a lovely dress, and it would please both the groom and his mom to feel grandma was part of the wedding.  An extremely talented costume designer friend altered the dress. (One advantage of being Theatre and Music majors was that we knew a lot of creative people. This came in handy a number of times during the event.)

We knew 2 of the biggest expenses at a wedding were alcohol and music.  Since neither of us dance, (nor would there have been room in the social hall had we chosen to) we created our own mixtape of favorite songs that played at the reception.  The church didn't actually forbid alcohol at social events, but we decided to keep it to a couple of bottles of champagne, enough for everyone to toast the bride and groom.  I don't think anyone missed the booze or the band. We didn't hire a photographer either, but relied on the talents of our many friends with cameras. Some of their handiwork you see displayed here.

Our parents couldn't afford to help us out much, but my mother in law purchased all the food for the rehearsal dinner, which she and my future husband spent several weeks preparing and precooking so everything could just be warmed (if needed) and served that night.  My parents purchased a ham and sandwich fixings for the wedding, family members cooked other dishes, and the ladies of the choir were kind enough to take care of decorating the tables and putting out the food. Our cake was done by a member of the church who was just getting into cake decorating.  She charged us 75.00, it looked lovely and tasted better. 

Here we are with the amazing cake.
 

As for the rest...the groom made the baskets of flowers that the bridesmaids carried,the hairpieces they wore and the basket of mini roses that I had in place of a bouquet. (this was one place we went wrong....I wanted to carry shamrocks, but no one has them in July. If you want shamrocks for a summer wedding better raise your own in advance.) Our sterling silver Claddaugh rings came from an Irish import shop.  They cost 25.00 apiece which means they are currently averaging out to 1.00 per year. All of the music in the church was written by the groom, and played by one of our college friends who was a piano major.

We put it all together for  about 1000.00 in the space of 10 weeks. (And case you were wondering what I might wonder if I read this, our first child didn't arrive for another 7 years.)

It all turned out lovely. It was very hot that summer of '88, one of the worst droughts of the century.  We were ha In fact many of our friends, like ourselves, had either recently graduated or would soon do so, and the wedding was one of the last big get togethers amongst our friends, before everyone scattered for adulthood and the real world. 

I am not knocking those who want, and can afford a huge wedding, or those who want to have 2 years between the engagement and the big event.  But it wasn't right for us.  We had just done 6 plus years of college each, and were ready to get on with life together, and celebrating that with family and friends. 



This piece was written as part of Theme Thursday, a group of writers blogging on a weekly topic.  For more information click on the button below.

Express Yourself--Dream Winter Getaways?

I have to say that a dream winter getaway is something I never thought about much. I can honestly say there is no place I particularly desire to see in the winter time. I am not into winter sports like skiing that one would go looking for the perfect snow weather. And I don't hate winter so much that I want to go off to some warm weather place either. But compared to seeing Autumn in New England, or blooming cherry trees in DC in April, or Stonehenge at the Summer Solstice, there is just no place I can think of that I would want to visit just because it's Winter.

Unless it's my own living room.

I do like to take time off in Winter, especially in January. Its easy to get time off from work then, and the kids are back in school. There isn't a lot going on, so no social obligations. Sometimes the kids will have a 4 day weekend at Martin Luther King Day and we will take a quick trip somewhere. But mostly it's a nice time to sit in my living room and watch snow fall and know I don't have to go out in it at 5:30am to get to work, or take calls for salt and fender benders when I get there.

That's as dreamy a getaway as I need.

This post is part of  Express Yourself Weekly Meme. Please click on the link if you would like to read more wonderful posts on this topic.

I Can Remember the 8th of December

I was kind of late coming to rock and roll. My parents graduated from high school in 1950 and 1955, so they were more into the music of Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby than Elvis or Chuck Berry. And since I was an eldest child I didn't have older siblings bringing rock and roll home either. I wasn't completely unaware of the music of course, various rock groups did appear on the TV variety shows or were covered on the news. I often say that my first memory of the Beatles was news coverage of their breakup. But as I moved towards the mid 70's and high school, I began to pay more attention to contemporary music. I was really into the singer/songwriter era of the 70's, but I also was discovering older groups, including, especially, The Beatles. I especially took to John Lennon's solo work, particularly Imagine. I didn't have a lot of financial resources in high school to buy music, but by college I was able to but records occasionally (they were still records then) and I remember picking up a copy of Double Fantasy as soon as it came out. I had just recently sent in a card for a subscription to Rolling Stone also. And that was December 8, 1980, which I still remember with such clarity.

I was still living with my parents then (Rent free as long as I stayed in college) and as usual for a Monday Night, we were watching the Football game. Monday Night Football was an event in and of itself. It was what people talked about the next day, even if they didn't normally follow football. My dad was a die hard football fan, so we always watched. We weren't particularly interested in the teams playing that night, but this was the pre-cable era and choices were much more limited. 

And then we saw and heard this:

I don't remember the rest of the game. I just remember it being over and saying goodnight to my dad and heading up to my room to  listen to the radio all night.  I remember having the presence of mind to turn on my cassette recorder at some point during the night and taping off the radio. First I figured I would want to remember what I heard that night, and second, I didn't have many Beatles recordings.  And the next week my first issue of Rolling Stone arrived, with its now iconic Annie Leibovitz cover. I know I walked through the next few days, reading all the papers (insert joke about the opening lines of :"A Day in the Life" here), watching all the news.

  I found it somewhat frustrating that no one in my immediate circle felt quite the way I did. I longed to be somewhere like Central Park in New York, with the ongoing memorials that lasted for days.  Those people were at least having company in their mourning. As someone who was born at the beginning of the 60's, I was hardly new to the idea of assassinations or  death by violence. Although I have only the faintest recollection of JFK's death, I have vivid memories of the deaths of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy; of Kent State (only 15 miles from my home, much covered in the local  papers) and many others. And I had observed the hysteria of Elvis' death 3 years earlier as well.  Lennon's death was like the perfect storm of all these events coming together.A music icon dying violently.  And I, just a few months short of my 21st birthday, felt this was the worst coming of age gift ever.

  Since then I have listened to a lot of Beatles music and a lot of Lennon's solo music.  It has certainly stood the test of time, at least to me.  Just like a really good book I find new things each time I listen. And as I get older many songs take on different meanings.

 My most profound feeling, at the time, was of being robbed. Robbed of his talent, of his presence, of the music. Only one other time in my adult life have I felt so profoundly cheated by the creativity gods, and that was when Jim Henson died.

  Time as the cliche says went on.  A couple years later I finally found a friend who felt as I did about Lennon, the Beatles, and the 8th of December.  It was she who accompanied me to Strawberry Fields some 31 years after the events. There was a certain closure to that moment, of a quest of sorts fulfilled.

Its ironic that this comes one day after a day burned in the memories of so many other people.  Pearl Harbor may have been America's first instantaneous tragedy, everyone in the country was involved as soon as they heard it on the radio.  And everyone of that generation knew exactly where they were and what they were doing on the date that would live in infamy.  And to this day I remember how I felt that night, and the days after.  It's burned into my memory. I can't sit down to watch Monday Night Football with my son, or hear a recording of Howard Cosell without being plunged backward into that moment in time more than 30 years in the past.

  All those years ago.

Theme Thursday--Working Christmas Blues

The thing I hate most about Christmas is the thing I hate most about working all of holidays, namely having to work. Now I know alot of people have to work holidays. But working a job like mine, in a 911 call center has particular issues.

Over the years I have worked a lot of Christmases (and Thanksgivings). My kids have opened gifts at 5am before I left for work, and have waited all day and opened them when I got home. Over the years they have gotten used to the long drawn out anticipation, studying wrapped presents all day waiting for mom to get home. Usually they had one big gift from Santa that was unwrapped under the tree to amuse them for the day.

You would think the most depressing thing about working major holidays would be separation from your family, or dealing with major tragedies on such happy occasion. And both cam be stressful. But the very worst thing about working the holidays is dealing with the people who don't appreciate their good fortune being with their families.

The morning on big holidays is given over to custody disputes. Sometimes one parent is late bringing the kids back so the other calls police. Other times the one parent decides to hide from the ex on Christmas so the other can't have the kids at all. People...if you are incapable of co operating on any other day, give it a try on Christmas. You're not hurting each other, you are hurting your kids, who will remember Christmas as just one more fight between mom and dad. And speaking of fights...

Later in the day the volume of calls usually shifts to family fights. Its understandable to some extent. When families only get together once or twice a year, especially occasions that involve alcohol, and sooner or later they will start remembering why they don't really like each other.

All of this is hugely depressing to the calltakers, police officers and firefighters who are spending their holidays responding to everyone else's chaos.

As it happens I have this Christmas off. But a lot of my co-workers don't. So take it from me:be extra safe this year. Drive carefully and don't plug too many strings of lights into the same outlet. Burglaries happen a lot so make sure you lock the car and house up good. And try to get along. You will have happier holidays, and so will your community's safety forces.

This post is part of Theme Thursday, a group of bloggers writing on the same weekly topic. For mor einformation click on the button.

Express Yourself--favorite Christmas Gifts

My mom's best friend, whom she she has known for over 60 years, always does something interesting at the holidays. Rather than ask people what their favorite gift was that they received, she asks people what was the favorite gift they gave. When I was a kid this always seemed a little quirky, one of those "you must stop and think about the true meaning of Christmas " moments that parents like to inflict on their kids. As I got older, especially as I had kids, it seemed to make much more sense. As a grownup we usually do give alot more gifts than we receive. And my fondest memories do seem to be attached to gifts I have given, not gotten. So Regina Speaker, this blog is for you.


Several of my all time favorite Christmas gifts have been courtesy of my daughter who had a penchant for last minute requests to Santa. One year we went to the Cub Scout Christmas Party on the 23rd where she advised Santa that she wanted her own little tree. PANIC! Plus I had to work Christmas Eve leaving little time to get one. Fortunately the corner drug store had trees left on sale...and I found a lovely little tree with built in lights...just 2 feet tall. Another year she requested her own Harry Potter video...at least that was easy to find. During her pink period, which lasted about 8 years, we gave her a doll size Graco stroller and carseat set. Unfortunately it was blue, and the next Christmas she advised Santa he had brought the wrong color stroller, and she needed a pink one this year. I bought her a little pink umbrella stroller so Santa didnt lose face. A couple years ago, the last year she asked Santa for gifts, she wanted a dollhouse. By the time I had the money the Barbie mansions were all either sold out or way out of our price range. Knowing this was probably our last "Santa" year made me want even more to get it right, when I found at Target a dollhouse shaped bookshelf. 3 floors and ceilings high enough for the whole Barbie family, it had the added benefit of being wood, not plastic, and much sturdier. In a charitable moment her brother assembled it and hid it in his room till the big day.

The boy has usually been easier to shop for over the years. Once he outgrew Brio trains, his usual preference was for whatever new Harry Potter Lego set was out. We had 2 seperate Hogwarts castles, the chamber of secrets, The Hogwarts Expressand many more. My only rule was that we assemble them once according to the rules and I be allowed to photograph the results. Assembling Legos were a piece of cake compared to assembling Hot Wheels. I still have nightmares about a Hot Wheel post office with tiny packages that rolled down a tiny conveyer belt into tiny trucks. But that was when the Boy believed Mom could do anything, so we made it work.

This past year he wanted baseball gear that he picked out but I managed one surprise that was an alltime favorite. The Boy as previously mentioned, is a huge Civil War buff. His favorite person of the war is Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and his favorite regiment the 20th Maine. While surfing on line I found a "Propertyof the 20th Maine" tshirt which I managed to get ordered and into the house without him seeing it. The look of surprise on his face was worth all the hassle. He wears it to school all the time. There are about 3 people there who know who the 20th Maine was, so he enjoys his symbol of extra knowledge.

I should in fairness to the givers mention a few favorites I have received. For about 5 years when he was small my son gave me "Barbies" in holiday gowns. I have them all on display in my room, still in their original boxes, because that is how one displays fine collectable dolls. Over the years I have also aqured a number of hand crafted items of jewelry and pottery, treasures every one of them. In fact one of the things I miss now that the kids are both out of grade school are all the lovely little photo tree ornaments and holiday decorations they used to make. I have a wreath the boy made in cub scouts that consists of a bent fir branch and a big red bow. It goes on the front door every year.

I am especially fond of gifts that remind of the giver, such as several coffee mugs I have gotten from friends over the years. Sitting down to a cup of coffee with one is like a hug from the absent one. One of my dads best friends sent me a figurine for my daughters first Christmas...a little blond haired girl dancing with Santa. I treasued it first for what it showed, and treasure it even more now as a memento of someone I miss.

Several of my favorite gifts from my husband have been books: an annotated Wizard of Oz one year, an annoted Christmas Carol another. Our longest running joke was over the bottle of Channel no 5 I laughingly included each year, knowing it was far beyond our means. One Christmas about 10 years ago he finally bought me a bottle. How much I treasured it can be seen by the fact I finally used it up last month. Guess its time to start hinting for a new one.

If I were to sum it all up I would say the gifts I treasure most are loved for the thought that went into them and for the fond connection to the giver. I hope those I have gifted feel the same way.

This post is part of the Express Yourself Blog Hop go to:.http://jackiefelger.blogspot.com/p/express-yourself-weekly-meme.html to find out more.

Theme Thursday on Sunday:Parental Cliches That Wont Go Away

This week's Theme Thursday topic was "Things I've had in my mouth since I became a parent."  Unfortunately there were some delays in getting from first draft to Internet, so we are having Theme Thursday on Sunday.  Now then, on with the blog.

"I can still turn this car around"

"This hurts me more than it hurts you"

"Just wait till you have children of your own."

We all do it. We swear we won't and then we do it. We promise ourselves that when we become parents we won't repeat those same old phrases that our parents did, and then we do. Meanwhile, our own parents, if they are still around, are silently laughing with glee.

Perhaps because he wasn't around by the time my kids were born, I find my self quoting my dad more than my mom, who is still with us. My dad was a great one for the repeatable cliche. One of the fondest memories of childhood is bickering with my siblings across the back seat of our Hornet station wagon and being advised by our father that he could in fact turn the car around.  He would employ this phrase in what were clearly obvious not going to really turn around situation....like when we were sitting in traffic on the causeway into Cedar Point Amusement Park, after a 3 hour drive and with the tickets in my dad's pocket. We were in fact in a position where he couldn't turn the car around if he wanted to. But he said it anyway, and we would momentarily subside as if we believed him.

Since I am not a driver, I don't get the chance to threaten to turn the car around...though I have been known to say at the transit center..."I can get on that bus going back to our house just as easily as the one going to Grandma's". Not quite as effective perhaps, but we have to work with what we have.

But there are others that have stuck with me ever since and I use all the time. One of my dad's favorite expressions, employed when we wanted something out of the reach of economics or practicality was "People in Hell want ice water." Unfortunately it wasn't nearly as effective with my children, who were never really introduced to the whole hellfire and brimstone concept of afterlife. I still employ it though.  "People in hell want ice water," is just the perfect response to the more ridiculous concepts of entitlement that our kids develop.

Why do we do this though? Why do we repeat cliches we had from our parents that we ourselves swore we would never use. I think its a desire for continuity between us and our parents.No matter how much we, as kids, rejected what our parents told us, we find as parents that alot of it was pretty darn useful.  Employing the phrases they did with us makes us part of the parenting continuum.  We feel less like we are on our own out there.  And that's a good thing.


This post was written as part of Theme Thursdays, a group of bloggers writing on a select subject each week. If you would like to read more posts on this subject, or find out more about Theme Thursday, please click the button below.

Red Ribbons for Remembrance

Today is World AIDS Day

I guess you could say I've been writing this piece for nearly 23 years now.  That's how long its been since I lost a friend to AIDS. 

His name was Craig.  He was a beautiful and charming young man, funny and quick witted, the sort of person you feel privileged to know and even more privileged to be considered their friend.  We studied theatre together in college where he was a writer and actor of much promise. 

He was also a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS from contaminated blood clotting agents. 

Its hard now to look back at the AIDS hysteria of the late 80's.  Persons with AIDS were fired from jobs,expelled from or refused admission to schools, run out of neighborhoods, banished from social circles.  Since most  sexual transmission cases in the early days involved gay men, frequently acknowledging AIDS status also meant coming out of the closet.  Gay people had very little legal protection in those days either.  Sometimes gay people were discriminated against just because they were potential AIDS carriers. 

Being a theatre major, I was isolated from much of this discrimination in college.  AIDS created huge holes in the performing arts community, so we were both more aware and more compassionate than the average person in 1988.  When I went to work after college, it was a whole different story.  One of the biggest shocks was the double standard of compassion many had towards AIDS victims.  Persons who contracted AIDS through blood transfusions, or organ transplants, or babies who had contracted AIDS in utero were "Innocent Victims of AIDS" (surely one of the most absurd phrases ever devised).  People who contracted AIDS through sexual activity or needle sharing had made "Irresponsible lifestyle choices".  Frequently AIDS was spoken of as "God's judgement" on such persons. 

That is when AIDS was spoken of at all.  Its probably hard to believe now how much a major health issue was totally ignored in the 80's by the people at the top of the government.

 Ronald Reagan was president from 1981-1989. The first cases of AIDS were discovered in the early 80's but the President and much of is administration totally ignored the issue. Reagan never mentioned the word AIDS in public until 1987.  If you knew someone who had AIDS you didn't talk about it to anyone else because you didn't know who else knew and who it might get back to.  When people died of AIDS it was never mentioned in their obituaries or in conversation at their funerals.
(If you want a good view of what it was like in those days watch the movie Longtime Companions. I watched it once and have never been able to watch it again, it was so gut wrenching and emotionally real.)

When Craig died I decided I would talk about what he died from and why.  One of the problems I saw in the people around me is that they dismissed AIDS because they didn't know anyone who had it (or at least anyone they knew had it). There was also that tendency to think of it only as a gay problem, not one for "ordinary" people to deal with. (A lot of them didn't think they knew anyone who was gay either.)  So I talked about it. That I had a friend who died from AIDS.  One of the stupidest most ignorant things I have ever heard still sticks in my head from that time.  I told someone I had lost a friend to AIDS and they asked "How did he get it?" Since I saw it as part of the mission to get people to realize that AIDS was a problem for everyone, I told them. When the woman heard that he was a hemophiliac her response was, "That's OK then".  It was apparently OK for young people to die as long as they didn't get this horrible disease from sex or doing drugs. Its hard to believe but its true. 

After Craig died a group of us got together and made a panel for the AIDS Quilt.  I contributed a swatch of material from my wedding dress. He had been so happy to see us get married, and it was one of the last time a lot of our friends were all together.   We supported fundraisers and other events. 
When our son was born, 5 years later we gave him Craig as a middle name.  We have always told him why.  I hope by the time his kids are old enough to ask it will be no bigger a deal than for me to learn that a grandparent was named after someone who died from polio.

I do know the experience radicalized me.  It wasn't just Craig's death, it was the fallout from all the ignorance and lack of compassion. How many people died because the victims were stigmatized,because they didn't want to admit to risky behavior, because the governments all over the world dragged their feet on assisting persons who couldn't afford medication, or because they were too squeamish to advocate safe sex?

On this World AIDS day there is actually much good news.(see.http://www.un.org/en/events/aidsday/.) New cases are declining in much of the world. Medical therapies have improved, people who are properly treated are often asymptomatic, and more people are getting that treatment.   But the single most important weapon is to talk.  Talk about the disease.  Talk about safe sex.  Talk about getting help.

This is my friend, Craig.  Knowing him was one of the privileges of my life. I miss him every day, as does his family and many other friends.  For him and his family, and for all the victims and their families, speak up.  Its the least we can do.


For more info about World AIDS day and things that you can do see here:  http://www.worldaidsday.org/