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Posts Tagged ‘Thanksgiving’

“A Very Radical Person”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 2, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Today’s the day!

Because TN’s Representative R-Mark Green decided to run for office and then promptly give up his seat, our extremely gerrymandered Nashville district is holding a special election. Yes, last year at this time a scandal broke out about Green and he decided not to run, but Mr T called the former Army surgeon and convinced him to run again. After all, what’s a little womanizing between friends?

“Camilla Green, the wife of Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Green, texted a group of Congress members to warn them against the evils of politics, accusing Green of being corrupted by D.C. and having an affair with a woman 27 years younger than him. The scandal, which comes less than a month after Green filed for divorce, raises questions about the Tennessee representative’s brand as a pro-family conservative, including from his own daughter.” https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/mark-green-affair-daughter/article_6a06fb0c-7440-11ef-9875-670dc401c023.html

And naturally, he won! Then he quit.

Like most politicians, he had more money to make in the private sector and also, he’d have to pay for a messy divorce right? So now, in the middle of a rainy cold snap and holiday shopping, Nashvillians are being asked to vote again – for the Democratic candidate, Aftyn Behn, who is being called a “very radical person” all over the media, or the Republican West Point graduate and combat veteran, Matt Van Epps who would like to keep the GOP’s majority in the House. He was hobnobbing with Marcia Blackburn out in Franklin yesterday.

“The crowd milling around the sleek multimillion-dollar barn full of gleaming vintage cars was already a snapshot of the Republican elite in Tennessee. There were donors, state representatives, five members of Congress, the governor and the candidate for the state’s House special election on Tuesday, Matt Van Epps. Then Speaker Mike Johnson, who flew in from Washington early Monday, called President Trump and put his phone on speaker…“They like to talk about affordability,” Trump said in the Monday evening tele-rally for Van Epps. “To them it’s just a con job, it’s just a word.”

“The whole world is watching Tennessee right now, and they’re watching your district,” Mr. Trump said,…” NYTimes

Well Lordy! Seems our president has nothing better to do than to call a candidate in the state of Tennessee in a district he won by over 20 points! More than $1.6 million from the pro-Trump MAGA Inc. super PAC has been poured into this race in the last few weeks. They must be running scared about this particular radical person!

I mean Behn is talking about affordability and bringing health care costs down while VanEpp is being funded by hedge fund billionaires and special interest groups to insure they get their tax cuts. You can’t fool all the people all the time Mr T, your credibility is starting to crumble with your base. Killing people on boats off Venezuela may be your kryptonite. You are running the biggest con ever on the American people. Whether we win or lose by a few percentage points here in TN, you Mr President are a lame duck.

If Behn’s radical left agenda supports voting rights, reproductive freedom, clean air and water, equality and education I’m all in. When an administration changes the name of the DOD to the Department of War and closes the Department of Education, I believe we can all see through their extremist ideology.

I’ll be teaching the twins a new take on an old song this Hanukkah (which starts early this year on December 14) when we sing, “If you’re happy and you know it clap your hands.” We’ll be singing “If you’re radical and you know it clap your hands.” Here’s a pic from the Thanksgiving table, set with Grandma Ada’s china, as we were sitting down with the Groom’s parents. The Bride really knows how to throw a party!

Now get out and VOTE Nashville!

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Comfort Food

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Did the ‘short loop’ around the Greenway this morning with the Bride. She walks her rescue dog Maple, and I trudge alongside with my hiking sticks. Bob stayed home which meant the talk wasn’t all medical. In fact, I told her I was making the corn bread tomorrow for the corn bread stuffing and she was surprised I didn’t use a box-mix. She told me about the yummy pumpkin cake with cream cheese and caramel icing she’s going to make and then stopped on the way back to borrow my cake pans. Americans everywhere are thinking, planning, and shopping for food this Thanksgiving week.

Of course Bob and I bake the stuffed turkey every year, and I do the gravy.

What are your favorite, traditional turkey day sides? Do you continue serving the same old same old carbs and veggies your family put on the table fifty years ago? Since we had craftily avoided family gatherings in the past with our original Big Chill Friendsgiving, we stayed in our own gastronomic lanes. Each couple was responsible for one major food group on the harvest table, and like any good commune we all cleaned and cooked equitably. Bob still put the turkey in the oven, but I didn’t get to make cornbread stuffing. There were no surprises, but OTOH there were no surprises. Not even a Turducken!

Later, we were surprised by a Facetime call with our Twin Granddaughters over lunch in LA. It was hilarious! One girl has been particularly verbal, perfecting saying my name – with a mouthfull of banana pancakes and yogurt all over her sweet face – she repeated NANA, NANA, NANA! I’d like to think she recognizes me in my blue glasses on her parents’ small cell phone? Maybe she just loved the pancakes? But I can’t wait to hear her sister call my name in a day or two. They just went to the pediatrician and they are each 17 pounds!

Here are some comfort foods from my childhood Thanksgivings that have not survived the test of time: creamed onions, green bean casserole, even mashed potatoes! What with all the carbs already present, the simple white russet is no longer necessary. The Bride will however make the yummy sweet potato marshmallow casserole, the cranberry relish, and she’ll roast a bunch of vegetables. The Flapper’s crystal dish of tiny pickles has turned into a modern day charcuterie board before the main meal, filled with cheese, salami and yes, pickles.

And maybe it’s because we’re Southern now, the Bride asked me to make my mac and cheese this year! I grate Vermont cheese and make my own bechamel sauce for our family’s original comfort food.

The Grands have a half day of school today so the plan is to pick them up and head to the movies to see “WICKED for Good!” It opened this past weekend and sold $223 Million in box office seats globally. From The Hollywood Reporter: “Wicked: For Good is a needed jolt for the struggling North American box office in particular, which has suffered the worst fall in decades due to a glut of male-skewing pics and a lack of product for females and families. The movie’s better-than-expected performance more than proves the buying power of girls and women; nearly 70 percent of audience were females.”

And we can’t elect a female president because…? Happy Thanksgiving all y’all! I’m grateful to you my readers, and so grateful to be here, a year after my fall, to love on all my grandchildren. Look at these little gobblers!

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Talking Turkey

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on November 26, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I’ve been accused of falling to avoid cooking for Thanksgiving; it is always said jokingly, and I usually laugh along. But I’m missing the whole chopping and shopping and planning phase because for me it’s all about the sides and the table decor! The Bride’s Virginia in-Laws have already arrived and will be picking up the slack, but she has tasked us with cooking the turkey. There is a cute little Butterball defrosting in our refrigerator, and today we will bake a loaf of corn bread for the stuffing. This is our traditional recipe, classic corn bread stuffing cooked in the bird and not in a casserole dish.

My left hand is pretty free these days, the splint goes on only when I’m outside or around children and dogs. You can barely see the surgery scar. My right hand has to wear the splint all the time for the next three weeks. I’m not supposed to lift anything or exert any force on any one hand – so trying to pull the microwave door open was a mistake. I can push down the seatbelt to unhitch, but I can’t push it in. I feel like Goldilocks, forever looking for that sweet spot between comfort and pain.

My plan is to have Bob chop up all the vegetables for the stuffing the night before and Thanksgiving morning we’ll begin – I will pick parsley and sage in the garden, and I will be able to crumble the bread into the sauteed mirepoix. In fact, this will be hand therapy for me! But Bob will have the heavy lifting; he’ll be brining the bird and assembling the stuffing and getting ole Tom into the oven. Which is fine with me. The Bride is in her happy place baking up a storm of pies and biscuits.

I was invited to see Wicked last weekend with the Bug and I couldn’t resist. Three generations at the movies with candy and it was a marvelous escape, the seats even reclined! Still, it was hard to feel engaged, my head was stuck in its Aspen collar looking straight ahead so I couldn’t gauge the Bug’s reactions. Every now and then I’d throw my splint across her body and I never knew whose hand I was holding. But we all loved it, the costumes, the singing, the fantasy of it all.

I held my box of Goobers with my right hand and carefully picked out one nut at a time with my left – hand therapy with rewards!

On the way home I asked the Bug if she ever felt different. Like Elphaba, did she ever feel the need to defend herself? I said that I always felt different as a child: my last name was different than my foster parents; I had blazing red hair and I wanted black hair; plus I had the whole two mother, two separate families thing. She thought about it for awhile.

“Well Nana, I really don’t feel that different,” the Bug said.

And I felt a calmness seep into the car because we talked about her girl friends and her height and all the tween drama that’s happening. And I understood that this one has a bit of her Grandma Ada’s energy – a willingness to help, a compassionate perspective. It’s almost like the Bride’s yoga study and Ada’s counseling skills found their match in this next generation. I know these are the Wonder Years, and we have high school on the horizon next year, but dear God please keep this child safe.

And thank you for not killing me when I slid into the end table! Here is my left hand at occupational therapy… and Happy Thanksgiving All Y’All!

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Techno Turkey

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on November 20, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Good Morning everyone. I wish you well if you’re traveling this week. We’ll be cooking up a storm here in Nashville with all the usual sides – my butternut squash casserole and the Bride’s baked sweet potato marshmallow confection. In fact I’ll have to make this short because it’s time to make the corn bread for my traditional corn bread stuffing; no jalapenos, or sausage, because I’m keeping it classic.

But before I head into the kitchen, I feel I’ve finally been vindicated! For a long time now I’ve been suspicious of my devices. Not to the point of roaming around Times Square with a poster, but I think that they are listening to us. Even when they’re not turned on… Why? Because almost every night I climb into bed and Bob starts getting ads on his iPad, like ads about cordless Dyson vacuums, or bras. And I understand, I really do.

But every now and then we’ll get targeted ads about stuff we’ve only discussed in the privacy of our home. It’s one thing to search the internet for a small bathroom vanity, followed by Wayfair vanity ads, and it’s quite another to have a conversation about “natural pools/ponds” and start seeing them show up everywhere. What I didn’t know is that Alexa was actually caught listening, recording and selling private conversations a few years ago, and they even archived the data. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-alexa-spying-scandal-creates-trust-problem-with-customers-2018-5

Oh and in this season of giving, guess how a reporter tracked the money trail from lawyers who had business before the SCOTUS to Clarence Thomas? For a Christmas party no less. They sent the cash via Venmo to one of his aides! “J’ACCUSE”, Mr Thomas.

“Just as surprising was the way the publication learned about it: from the aide’s public Venmo records. Brian X. Chen, the consumer technology writer for The Times, wrote that even he was surprised that such records of money transfers could be public.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/20/opinion/apple-google-privacy.html

I draw the line with technology and not cause I’m too old to understand it. I’ve never used Venmo. I refuse to talk to Alexa, I will only thumb-text. I’m off Twitter thank goodness, and I’m not going near Tiktok. Can’t quite quit the Gram, but using Facebook/Meta sparingly and only on my laptop. And anytime an App want’s me to sign in for some AI, I say, “No thank you!” That was way before today’s big news about the chaos at OpenAI since Sam Altman was sacked and promptly scooped up by Microsoft.

In a bit of good news, California and Colorado have enacted laws to allow for one single opt-out request to have ALL data brokers delete ALL your personal information. Guess every state will have to clunk along to catch up for us to expect any semblance of privacy. And I’ll just have keep the Flapper’s secret ingredients for her stellar banana cream pie to myself!

Here are the Grands baking (apple cider donut muffins) and making (a guitar) this past week.

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Migration

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on November 22, 2021| 6 Comments »

There are two beautiful blue jays chowing down at the dove diner outside my window. A cardinal had swooped in earlier for a bite; a brilliant red sign that today would be a good day. And of course there’s always Kevin the squirrel, the ringleader who determines who can stay and who can go. My city garden is teeming with wildlife adventure; with dozens of sparrows, finches and mockingbirds flocking to the feeder that hangs above the tree stump, aka the 24 hour all/you/can/eat dove diner.

I’ve been wondering why pigeons have become pariahs in many cities. A photographer I follow on Instagram (Quarantine in Queens) posted a picture of a stately pigeon sitting on a lion’s head at the NYC Public Library, and he called the pigeon “dirty.” I was offended. Isn’t a pigeon just like a dove, only bigger? Plus one of my favorite children’s books is “Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus.” I loved reading all about this insistent, toddleresque, willful pigeon to my Grands when they were toddlers.

In fact as it turns out, pigeons and doves are related. They are part of a large family of birds called Columbidae, which consists of more than 300 species!

 “Paul Sweet, the collection manager for the department of ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History, says the difference is more linguistic than taxonomic. The word dove is a word that came into English from the more Nordic languages, whereas pigeon came into English from French.”

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/554182/what-is-difference-between-pigeons-and-doves

The word “dove’ developed from our Viking ancestors, and “pigeon” from the Normans. People have trained homing pigeons, and kept dovecotes for centuries – which is just a fancy bird house at the top of a structure for pigeons! Despite my bird-feeding mishap of a few weeks ago, I love to start the day by throwing out seeds and nuts for all the ground feeding birds, too big to perch on the feeder.

Is it ironic that I now have a really BIG bird defrosting in my refrigerator? The President may have pardoned Peanut Butter and Jelly, but our Butterball turkey will still preside at the Bride and Groom’s Thanksgiving table this week. I’ll be making my traditional cornbread stuffing and butternut squash casserole. I’m also game to try something new, like ‘fried sage salsa verde,’ since our sage is still growing abundantly.

The Groom’s parents will be flying in from Virginia with Aunt J, and unlike last year we’ll all gather inside! We are all of us boosted with Covid vaccines, plus flu… and even the Grands have had their first shots. I’m still one of very few people in a store with a mask on, and I’ll continue to be masked until mid-December when our babies are fully immunized – unlike a certain quarterback named Aaron Rodger. To me words matter. The truth matters. The health of my family and friends matter. And yes, even perfect strangers matter.

The Bride saw a very sick patient yesterday with Covid. I asked her if their vaccination status affected her medical care, and she thought for a moment. “No,” she told me. She sometimes forgets to ask because it’s assumed, but now they must ask for the hospital record and the CDC I suppose. I was glad that my daughter’s empathy has withstood these ‘trying times.’ I’m not sure that mine would have.

I have no advice for how to deal with relatives you may see this holiday season. You know, the ones who did their own research, wanted to wait and see, or some such nonsense? Put the children’s table in the garage? Put the unvaccinated in the garage? But if you’re migrating or flying south for turkey day, or feathering your nest and staying put, I wish you a happy and peaceful Thanksgiving. And I have some big news…

WE BOUGHT AN OLD HOUSE.

Standing next to the larder inspecting some new beams

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“Who Put You in Charge”

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on November 27, 2019| Leave a Comment »

This is the week we give thanks.

This is also the week we prep, cook, and bake like banshees for a few minutes around the Thanksgiving table. Like Columbus Day, this is another holiday deserving a second look – certainly Native Americans have a different point of view. And more and more families are trying out a plant-based diet, giving more and more turkeys the day off, or a pardon by the president.

Our family is staying put this year; the Big Chill has diminished from death and divorce, and all the grandchildren require our presence. In the words of a great American jazz singer Benard Ighner, “Everything must change” is one of those eternal truths… “the young become the old, mysteries do unfold.”  https://secondhandsongs.com/work/4541

A couple of friends have gone to Disneyland, FL, which is a fantastic idea. Maybe next year we’ll do Disneyland, CA?

Disney never disappoints. This past weekend, all 3 generations saw Frozen 2, like most of the families on this planet. Its opening weekend saw a total, world-wide box office toll of 350 Million – breaking the previous record for an animation release! I made some sandwiches to trade for the concession stand, and leaned over to remind the Bride that her brother composed one of the trailers while we settled into our reclining seats.

My daughter reached for my hand when Olaf and Anna were in the cave (spoiler alert), we both had tears in our eyes as the little sister held her snowman. All of a sudden, our L’il Pumpkin turned to us and said,

“It’s not the end, The end is happy.” 

Elsa, the big sister, knew that change was necessary; she had a suspicion that the origin story they were fed as children didn’t add up. It was time to do something drastic, so she sent Anna and Olaf out of harm’s way in a canoe. Elsa took charge, she went looking for that happy ending.

“You say you’re a king, who put you in charge?” Lyrics by the not-so-well-known Christian rapper NF popped into my mind as I listened to Fiona Hill testify. She had asked Ambassador Sondland,

“Who put you in charge of the Ukraine?”

My heart stopped a little. I mean come on, was anyone going to take the heat for this fiasco, this tempest of a “perfect call” vs “Quid pro Quo” aka bribery, abuse of power?

“The President,” Mr Sondland said.

“Hill is due process and righteous anger, brains and brilliance and fire and loyalty ready to be deployed for her country, now and forever.

It is not just that we are hungry for norms and qualifications. We are desperate for someone competent and principled to be in charge. We want someone smart to tell us it will be okay and that they care.

 

He who would be king seems to have been in charge of it all, like a bull in a china shop, Mr T continues to wreck havoc with our constitution.

If President Obama sent his personal lawyer to another country to shakedown political dirt on Mitt Romney, I wonder what Lindsay Graham would say? When will the GOP wake from this Trump the Grifter nightmare and realize this president in NOT the chosen one.

Tomorrow, at the Thanksgiving table, I will give thanks for Adam Schiff and his diligence in unfolding this mystery. I will think about our founders and their definition of high crimes, of their wish to keep royalty on the other side of the pond. I am grateful for all the selfless civil servants who toil without fanfare in their offices around the world, and I will pray for a “competent and principled” person to rise from the ranks of the Democratic candidates’ field.

Forget Mike Bloomberg – Bob Iger, any interest in running? Remember, it’s not over till we get the happy ending, or the blue cookie.

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A Family Feast

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on November 23, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Mr T is thankful for something this Thanksgiving. First and foremost his family, and why not? They are feasting at Mar a Lago surrounded by courtiers, in gilded glamour. Then right up there next to family, the Commander in Comedy of the Absurd said he’s thankful for himself!

“When asked what he is most thankful for, Donald Trump says the ‘tremendous difference’ he has made to the country. The US president made the comments after a Thanksgiving phone call with troops in which he compared the migrant caravan in Mexico to the fight against terrorism in Afghanistan.

Well for once I agree with him, partially. Family is everything to me. Maybe because i had to share two families as a child? Maybe because I was taught food is love, and so I adored cooking for a big family meal. I still cook for four all the time, so creative recipes for leftovers is my jam. Like this one for a Filipino Turkey Silog (garlic fried rice with eggs) from the NYT: https://cooking.nytimes.com/action=click&module=nav&region=logo&pgType=guide

I’ve always loved Thanksgiving because the Flapper would bake delicious pies, and my cousins came over and we’d run down to the baseball diamond and throw a ball around. This morphed into our second family of friends, the Big Chill Thanksgiving, where everyone cooked something together on the day of Thanksgiving, and then we’d play touch football in the mud, usually.

There was no religion, no prayers, no gifts, no costumes; just really good food, friends and family. A friend said her family tradition was to have creamed pearl onions on the table. When I told the Bride our tradition is to have pickles on the table, she asked if we could have olives too. So now we have a new tradition.

I made a traditional cornbread stuffing, Bob baked the turkey and the Bride did everything else. She bravely hosted 18 people yesterday from age 94 to 4! The Big Chill was represented and the Groom’s parents flew in. The Rocker and Aunt KiKi came from California and this year we met our new cousins from North Carolina, two of the sweetest teenage boys. I was wishing for more kids crawling around under the dining room table, but that will come. And politics never came up!

We didn’t watch football, we watched Star Wars instead. Hope your turkey day was filled with family, laughter and love too!

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Time’s Almost Up

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on November 21, 2018| 2 Comments »

We are counting down to Thanksgiving.

My turkey is defrosting, the corn bread is crumbled and the butternut squash is ready for its close-up. Our Big Chill friends Bernie and Ellen arrived Saturday from a frigid Buffalo and are always eager to help, which means today we make a lasagna! Some people have mac and cheese, we have veggie lasagna.

This is the first time in our history where we are expecting one or two die-hard Republicans at the Thanksgiving table. I guess it was inevitable, right? So I thought I’d share this little interactive ditty from the NYT; you decide if your angry uncle is conservative or liberal and then answer a few questions…one little hint. Don’t talk about the weather, because, well you know.

But before you give it a whirl, go see Bohemian Rhapsody. Going to the movies after Thanksgiving dinner has been a tradition on my side of the family. Bob’s side would put all the doctors in a room and hang up a sign for consultations – Aunt Bert would get her knee checked and the latest rash on cousin Amy would be poked and prodded.

Not to brag, much, but I found out on Instagram that the Rocker just won two more Cleos this year!

One for Bohemian Rhapsody, and one for The Quiet Place. Imagine composing music for a mostly silent horror movie! My guy is rather humble, so I had to Facetime him to ask directly what he was getting congratulated about all over social media. When I think about gratitude tomorrow, I’ll think I’m the luckiest mom in the world. Two adult children, both living authentic, creative and challenging lives.

And I’ll be thanking the Bride for hosting all 20 family members, inbetween saving lives and raising children.

OK, now for your angry uncle Bot, or aunt for that matter. This really does work, that is if you want to keep your turkey day civil. Plus, it’s never too late to learn a few new communication skills. Bon Appetit!

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The Bird is the Word

Posted in an expository essay, Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 16, 2018| 1 Comment »

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and I’ve heard that more and more Americans will NOT be serving turkey this year! Millennials seem to be leading the charge/change to a more vegetarian diet, replete with seeds and nuts. Like squirrels.

Well, you can count me out – I’m a purist on “Turkey Day,” and will be assembling my famous corn bread stuffing along with plenty of sides for the main attraction. I tried talking Bob into making ravioli, but he feels his pasta needs a night all its own!

Since when did food become political? Tofurky aside, I remember my first meeting with two vegetarians in college (vegans came into being much later). They were purists, absolutists too, they didn’t wear leather shoes. I looked down at their feet, under the cafeteria table laden with plastic wrappers. Then they told me they wouldn’t use honey, unless they knew the beekeeper! In the 1970s I thought this was absurd, who would mistreat bees?

Ever since, I’ve abhorred anything in the extreme; politics, religion, whatever. I would never cook Kosher because I always ate meat on Friday! I hope you’ve seen that episode of Portlandia, the one where they are ordering dinner in a farm-to-table restaurant and they end up at the farm with the waitress!

Most of you know I’ll eat just about anything, except sushi. Raw sushi, aka bait. But it wasn’t until I read this fascinating article about the intersection of food and politics with a feminist slant that our current obsession with everything gastronomic made sense.

“…the eco-food movement, also known as the eco-gastronomy or alternative-food movement, was busy embracing the war on obesity, joining the front lines of the fight. And food became something to categorize — whole or processed, real or fake, clean or dirty — and to fear. Pretty soon almost every food and health writer I knew was dropping gluten or white sugar from her diet, then bringing it back, then dropping something else. Now that trend has gone mainstream; even my 88-year-old grandmother knows what gluten is and why half her family isn’t eating it on any given day.”  https://medium.com/s/story/how-the-eco-food-movement-mass-markets-eating-disorders-d0302e0e0b85

When we categorize a certain food as “good” or “bad” we are unleashing our inner critic and jumping on the “Oh I only try to eat (insert whatever word you like – whole, healthy, slow) food.” In the article, Virginia Sole-Smith, a self-described recovering food writer, admits that such extreme food restricting is another form of body dysmorphia. Many food writers, and bloggers as magazines and newspapers died, became nutritionists who would try to sell us some image of clean food that is linked to conservation and social justice; not just another vain attempt at losing weight through the latest diet scheme.

We can save the ozone layer if we only give up __________.

Save the ocean, only eat wild caught __________.

Once the organic farming movement joined forces with the health and wellness community, and Oprah took on cattle farmers, we were prime for a revolution. Food could cure just about anything! “The Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit based in Miami, Florida, which conducts industry research, calculates that the worldwide “wellness economy” is now worth $3.7 trillion.”

The Bride and I were just discussing how easily integrative medicine, with an evidence-based practice, can slide into quackery. This was while I was drinking my chai tea, and after my T’ai Chi class!

The Flapper taught me that food is love… And So It Is… in all its pesky forms. There may be some “Toxic” chemicals you want to clean off veggies before serving – “Toxic” being the “Word of the Year.” And I was so sure it was going to be “Curate;” as in, you don’t have to be a museum director to curate things anymore.

If you haven’t watched “Salt Fat Acid Heat” on Netflix, you must do so NOW!! And for my Tuscany peeps – the first episode is in ITALY!!! https://www.netflix.com/title/80198288

Happy Thanksgiving to all y’all! Here is a picture from Italy which explains why I hope no one in our family will ever be vegan. All hail our Pecorino Cheesemaker

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Gratitude Journal

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , on November 21, 2017| 1 Comment »

It’s that time of year. A time to think about gratitude and sheer luck – we happened to be born in these United States and not in say, Syria. We get to roast a turkey and kick back to watch football, we’re not packing up our meagre belongings to flee across borders, escaping bombs, and worse. We’re making cranberry sauce. We’re trying politely not to talk politics.

Bob and I are packing tonight for California. We’ll be catching up with the newlyweds, and meeting up with nieces and cousins for Thanksgiving. My amazing Sister-in-Law, Jorja, is hosting the combined clan in Pasadena. Big props to her, she lost my brother Mike several years ago, but family is everything to her. And she just moved to Cali to be closer to her grandbabies, so we can relate!

Did I mention the Rocker won two Clio awards? He composed the music for the trailer, Dunkirk, the movie by Christopher Nolan about WWII. About altruism and honor, sacrifice and courage. I was thrilled when he told me, almost as an aside. I remembered when we sat at a cafe on the street in Silver Lake, and he saw Nolan get out of his car. The Rocker was still “taking meetings.” I had faith in him; somehow, I knew everything would work out. I can’t wait to see those golden statuettes!

So this Thanksgiving I am grateful for:

  • My Little Pumpkin running into my arms
  • My Love Bug singing to me as a turkey in her school play
  • Bob agreeing to move to Nashville
  • The Bride and Groom in their new house, paying off their med school loans
  • The Rocker and Aunt Kiki not just surviving, but thriving in LaLa land
  • Great Grandparents who are still living independently

Life is about change, I know. And I vow to embrace whatever the future holds. I am California dreaming and I prefer not to think about North Korea, or a president who tweets like a Kindergartener. I’m happy not keeping up with CNN. I’m happy making chicken masala for our crew tonight.

Despite our differences, we Americans can gather around our Thanksgiving tables, and be grateful we are free to worship and speak freely. We are free to take a knee. We are free to be… totem poles of love.

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