When A Great Kid Bites the Dust

Well, you sorta need to live in a football-crazed town to understand this.

It happens that I do.

We're not as rabid as Texas, but we're close.  I live within a half a mile of Boise State.  Between Boise State and my friend, Larry, I admit I've come to like college football games.  And those are more fun when you win.  Larry is an avid fan, one of those rare guys that understands the whole shebang.  He has a whole lotta 'splainin to do where I'm concerned.

I'm not a fan of those big blow-outs, and we've lived through some of those.  I'm a simple-minded fan, like high scoring games, games where everybody gets home with their dignity and their digits intact.  My idea of a contact sport is doubles ice dancing.  So I'm a prissy sort of whimpy sort of auntie, who'd rather make chocolate chip cookies, most of the time, and spoil the local kids rotten.

Our quarterback broke his ankle, fell on it, rolled over it, had it stomped on.  Don't know for sure.
What I did see was a student who was frantic and out-of-your mind frustrated with that event.  You know how horses get this wild-eyed, head-twisting, need to escape when those babies are terrified.  That was the look Joe had as he hopped, on canes, toward the locker room.

I felt so bad for him.  His senior year.  Any hopes of NFL play, dashed.  The big plans he had for this year.  Gone.   Stunning to lose all of that in a minute, and to have a completely uncharted future in the time it takes to snap your fingers.  Can you imagine the adrenaline coursing through that kid's veins at that moment?

Here's what I hope for Joe:  that he relishes the time he had as quarterback and realizes that he had a great gift that few kids get; the he buckles down with his studies and charts out a newer future, one that requires the grit and fire football required of him, maybe art, maybe quantum physics, maybe history; that he listens to his mom and dad, his friends, and maybe a girl friend who will reassure him that he is still loved and respected, grandly.

The new kid, Grant, stepped up and did a magnificent job.  He'll get the spotlight for awhile now.
Football has some really tough lessons attached to it.  Hope those kids remember that, at base, it's still a game.

So this Story Is True

"Hey  Sophie!   What are you doing here?"

My friend Diane had stopped by to deliver some poetry stuff and was staying for tea.  I was fussing in the kitchen.  She was in the living room.

I don't  have a Sophie that lives with me.  I don't know a Sophie.

I walked around the corner, and Diane was talking to a curly-haired, black pooch, who seated, was still about chest-high.

"Well hi!"  I said and reached out and scratched Sophie's ears.  She was mightily glad to see some humans that liked her and wanted to pet her.

Sophie lived with Diane's next door neighbors and that was about a mile away, as the road goes, about half a mile as the crow flies.

Apparently,  Sophie had escaped, run down the hill, couldn't find her way back home.  She'd spotted Diane, whom she knew, followed her into my apartment building, then knew enough to search the open doors on a summer day, found my patio door open, walked in, and plopped her sweet self down until Diane spotted her.

I still shake my head.  How do dogs know what to do?

Diane called Sophie's human mom and she popped down the hill and picked up Soph.  Now there's a dog you want to know.

Fall's Roasted Chicken

If you could only see fall, looking out my windows, you'd still think it was August.  The catalpas are still as green as can be, although the beans are long and droopy.  The birch looks as fresh as the first part of summer.

But the morning air is crisp  and you can smell that a change is coming.  Some of the nights are verging on the chilly.  Very few of the leaves have fallen so I expect them to fall in a whoosh.  Can't wait.

It's the time when you can revert to long, slow cooking.  My favorite kind.  Here's a roasted chicken  recipe that I yearn for.

Fall's Roasted Chicken

3  lbs of bird.   Or so,   A whole one.  (Martha says you shouldn't  wash or rinse them, that you spread the germs,  however,  I'm an old girl and I like to wash them off and pat them dry.  A ritual.  M is right on the money, though, about washing your hands after.)

Some softened butter or olive oil.  Rub that over the bird.  Put it into a roaster.

Add these veggies.

2-3 carrots, peeled and cut into 3-4 inch chunks.
1-2 red onions, peeled and quartered
2-3  Sweet potatoes and/or yams,  not peeled, cut into chunk
2 red apples,  not peeled, but cored and cut into quarters,  put those flesh-side down in the pan
1/2 cabbage,  cut into 8ths

Put everything in the roaster.  Salt and pepper.  If you want a little more spice, add 1/2 tsp of Ginger and Cardamom and sprinkle it over the bird and vegg both.  Add more if you like.

1 cup good quality apple cider/juice,  pour that over the vegg,

Put the pan  in a 300 degree oven for at least an hour. Because every bird a little different you'll have to watch it closely the last 15 minutes or so.  It might take an hour and a half.   Baste the bird in the apple juice every 15 minutes.

The chicken fat will melt into the juice, which is fine.  If the vegg get too dry, move them about a bit in the juice.  The sugars and pulp in the apple juice will burnish the bird,  so it looks like copper.  And the vegg will be succulent.

Wonderful, wonderful.

My Little Library

Some places you just take for granted.  The grocery store.  The State House.  Your library.

I love my library.  I'm there once a week, usually Friday.  I get at least 3 books and a couple of movies, maybe a CD.  This month I've read Brady Udall's The Lonely Polygamist (I'm still not right.  Like really good writers, Brady writes about things you don't understand well enough you understand it viscerally) and now I'm working through James Rollins' The Blood Gospel (Can you accept vampires who take Jesus seriously?  I'll be thinking about that one for a while).

There's the main library and a few neighborhood centers.  But I love the main one.

I'm a sucker for opera and it's over-the-top emotionalism.  When I first heard Puccini I'd found a home.  And movies.  So I still check out The Lady Vanishes and every Cary Grant movie ever made.  The Thin Man movies left their mark as well.   And the dancers, particularly American boy Gene Kelly.  I marveled at Fred, but I loved Gene.

I can still find stuff that feeds my soul there.  I need something with a real story in it.  I need characters with good hearts capable of true love.  I like exotic locals and food I've never tasted before.  I cute my teeth on murder mysteries.  So I'm writing one now and I know that the thousand or so I've checked out will somehow shape my story.

So when Bev called me a few months ago and asked me to be a library ambassador, I was more than happy to help.  My job:  just tell people what a great place the library is and how much it matters in our community.  Easy peasy.

Last week, there was a little celebration to show off the ambassadors recognition wall.  Actually, a window.  Our names were painted on the spines of books—my favorite place.  I saw friends from my church, friends who were writers,  friends who worked in the hospital.  It is lively in a Dr. Suess sort of way.  Can you say More. Than. Pleased.  ???

My one library mishap:  One day I was having a chocolate attack.  You can have one of those just about any time.  And so I did.  I opened a little bag of M & M peanuts, poured them into a pocket and forgot they were there.   That is. . .  until I was deep in the fiction stack and leaned over to read the bottom shelf and all the little M & Ms fell out and rattled down the stacks.  They rattled the whole way across the room. A long, long ways.

So this week, Josh Groban is in town for a concert.  Yeah, that Josh Groban.  He'd captured the exclamation point at the end of  Library!, which was donated by our local pizza company.  The photo showed up on his web site today.

More. Than. Pleased.

Dang Dumb Luck

I was hungry.

Call it September's Blue Plate Special.  I thought I was cleaning out the fridge.  There was half a baked potato, a white onion,  black kale, a handful of itty bitty tomatoes, basil, and some mashed up garlic.

And it turned into lunch pretty much all on it's own.

So I melted some margarine, a better thing than butter, in this instance, because it took more heat.  I  heated a cast iron skillet, which I'm sure had a lot to do with this.  Tossed in the onion and the kale (took out the spines and cut the kale into bit-sized pieces.)  Then I added some potato and the garlic.  If I'd had some sweet red pepper, I'd have used that too.  Last, I tossed in the tomatoes and pulled the leaves off the basil.  Tossed it all together to cover the veg with the fat and let it go for awhile.

Then I got distracted.

A football game was on television, and it was right at one of the good parts.  I checked the e-mail and sent a couple of photos to Lea, the kid who borrowed my camera and shot almost 200 photos in four days.  (Her photo is at the top of the page.)  I ironed part of a shirt in the bedroom and cleaned the toilet.  Then scrubbed my hands and checked on the game.  I began to smell lunch.

So, back into the kitchen. Time for the salt and pepper.  The onions had become sweet; the kale and basil had become paper-thin, stand-up-chips, the tomatoes had cooked through and browned in spots,  and the potatoes were crispy brown.  Ready.  The little tomatoes exploded with flavor—all of the veg did.   You'll  have to figure out how long it took.

It was perfect.  A French country cook could not have done it better.  Everything had carmelized, gotten crispy, had cooked itself through.  I had a glass of milk, but a cold beer or a glass of icy white wine would do as well.

You have to understand, this was totally an accident.  Nothing was planned, timed, or measured.

And yet, and yet.

Some days, you just get lucky.

Judy and her New Book

A couple decades ago I decided  (actually I was no dang good at anything else) to write.  Write what?  Didn't know.  Make a living?  Still up in the air.  Find compatriots who were along the same path.  Got that covered.

One of the people I met was a journalist, Judy Steele, who was writing a column for our local paper.  She was the beloved journalist, but she was also hungering to write something much more serious, much more visceral.  And because we belonged to the same writers' group, I heard big passages of a fiction book that Judy was writing, set on a plantation in Brazil.  She had spent her formative years as a Volunteer for the Peace Corps—in Brazil and had loved the people and the landscape.

Something that never leaves  your soul?  Probably something you should write about.  That's what Judy did.  But then she got distracted.  In the most massive way possible.  Her sister-in-law caught a big, bad cancer and it turned the whole family on its ear.  After years of treatment.  Judy's sister-in-law made it, thanks to good medicine and a good family.

The book went into the dresser drawer.  And after a cancer scare, people are just not in their right minds for awhile.  But Judy revived her heart and her mind, and moved forward.

So here we are,  two decades later, I  attended a book-signing party last night for Judy, now Judith McConnell Steele, a published novelist. and Mill Park Publishing, owned by the astute and energetic Elaine Ambrose. I am beyond pleased.  This is a serious, lyrical, sensitive, elegant book, one of great depth.  I'm sensing that the book will have a long and fabulous publishing run.

And, thanks to Elaine,  Judy is getting to do the things authors need to do: get great reviews, meet the people who love your words and your story, and sign lots and lots of books.

You can look up Mill Park Publishing and order a copy.   

One Thing That's Next

So, last week, we went to an evening workshop for cancer survivors.  It was held at the hospital where my cousin had her treatments.  Most of you know how scary that time of our lives was.  Now we're over five years out.  Still left a big mark.  Altered Julie's body.  Altered my brain cells.

One of the things I most needed when we were in treatment (the whole family is in treatment, no news to you), was to see and visit with people who had been through it, who had come through it.  No one gets through it unscathed, but they do get through it.  I needed to see that.  Even a wave from somebody who'd been through cancer was enough to reclaim my right mind for a few days.  Priceless.

So, I signed up to become a lay minister at church and asked if I could be the support person from our church  for cancer patients.  I didn't care whether people were part of our congregation or whether they were sick people in need of a person to tell their story too.  People who needed and wanted prayer could have a prayer.  I could be that person.  That living evidence of a return to life and health.

The great good news is that more and more people are getting better.  The medicines are better, the research is richer and provides more answers, the docs and nurses are wonderful, wonderful.  We love them.  Hope is very real.  In fact, I don't much believe there is such a thing as a false hope.  Hope is hope.

So, I am unafraid.  And last week, I talked to the social worker from the clinic and they welcomed me.  They said that community resources, and that includes churches, were incredibly important.  I'll get to be the person bearing presents: a prayer shawl, a healing journal, some cookies.  Visits, prayers, and daily encouraging e-mails.  We'll obey the privacy laws, too.

So we're getting started.

Wish me luck.