Spetember 11, Ten Years On

September 11th, 2011 by sharktank

When America was attacked on December 7, 1941, we had a clear enemy with whom to go to war, but we still reacted in ways that shamed us, interning Japanese Americans who were natural born citizens in camps in the remote desert. We didn’t even acknowledge that in our schools until 1968. I remember when it was first memtioned in CA textbooks. It was given a single short paragraph. When I moved back to the middle west in 1970 it still wasn’t mentioned in Ohio textbooks. It wasn’t until 1988 that Congress passed and President Ronald Reagan signed legislation which apologized for the internment on behalf of the U.S. government. The legislation said that government actions were based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership”.

My dad was a child when that happened, just past 10 years old. He told me once that he first heard the news reports on the radio at his aunt and uncle’s store. They listened to President Roosevelt’s speech later on the same radio. Dad’s description made it clear that like the attack on the World Trade Center, it was not a thing anyone old enough to vaguely understand what had happened would ever forget.

Oddly enough, as shameful as that episode of American history was, I find hope in it. We recovered from that particular insanity. It was very clear who “The Enemy” was and where to find them after Pearl Harbor, and we took the war back to them. We also pinned the label of Enemy on anyone who had the remotest genetic connection, and suspended civil liberties in the name of “security”. To me it looks remarkably similar to our reaction to Al Qaida’s attack, though our response was far less well considered. But once again, we pinned the label of Enemy on anyone with a remote connection to the real enemy, this time based on religion as well as nationality. Certainly our attackers were genuinely evil men led by intelligent, ruthless, utterly evil fanatics. I’m even sure they have the quiet aquiescent backing of some of their countrymen, out of shared hatred or fear or simple indifference. That doesn’t make a third generation Arab American an automatic terrorist or sympathizer, any more than it automatically made the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Japanese immigrants spies for the Emperor.

As a nation, we didn’t recover from the fear engendered in 1941 until that “other” was no longer The Enemy, and we went from that pretty directly in the anti-Communist hysteria of McCarthyism. I don’t know what it will take this time. There is no single nation or alliance we can point to, which makes it that much harder to figure out when we are safe. Osama bin Laden is dead, as are many (possibly all) of his chief lieutenants. We’ve arguably been at war for all the ensuing ten years against the wrong enemies. We are, at the moment, ethically and financially near bankrupt. We have people in office who, like McCarthy and his House Committe on UnAmerican Activites, feed the fear and hatred to stay in power. But we did, eventually, remember what our Constitution said. We did, eventually, repudiate the purveyors of fear. We did, eventually, relearn that we were Americans first, regardless of where our ancestors came from or a few rotten apples in their baskets.

So yes, I remember where I was on that perfect clear Spetember morning. I was driving to work listening to NPR, when I heard the report that a plane had been flown into the first tower earlier that morning. They were describing it as a tragic accident. Then less than five minutes later the report came that the second tower had been hit, and my immediate thought was that someone was declaring war on the United States, and that we didn’t even know yet who or why. I watched in horror and in pride as the country and the world responded. Since then I have watched in grief and in shame and in dread as we have quietly surrendered our constitutional rights and as our alleged leaders continued to milk the events of that single day for political capital and personal profit. But we have been this way before. Today, ten years after, I hope we find our way back to the nation I grew up loving.

Posted in Randomness | No Comments »

A Matter Of Degree

September 2nd, 2011 by sharktank

To my husband’s unconcealed delight, project fudge will require several steps. He, of course, gets to be Chief Poison Tester Quality Control Officer and Destroyer of Evidence in the entirely likely event the initial result is less than perfect.

But everything I’ve read or been told agrees on one thing: especially if you are a novice candy-maker (which I am), a good quality candy thermometer is an absolute necessity. Yes, I have made fudge before, but it has always been the kind that uses marshmallow creme, which is pretty difficult to ruin. You can burn it – one can burn anything, with sufficient talent – but short of that you can’t get large crunchy sugar crystals no matter what you do.

Not so the kind of fudge I’m trying to make now. This stuff could be used to teach a lesson in physical chemistry. And the key is contolling the temperature, both in the cooking and in cooling it before you start beating it. My Aunt Judy might be able to judge by eye when to take the pot off the heat, and by a hand on the side of the pot when it’s time to start beating, but she’s been making fudge for more than 40 years. I haven’t had reason to try doing it the hard way before this.

So I have taken the first necessary baby-step, and acquired a really good candy thermometer. I ordered it online from a store with the delightful name of Kitchen Kaboodle. It was in today’s mail. Next will be a trip to the grocery for cream, which I don’t normally keep on hand. For the first batch (or 2 or 3) I’ll use the regular recipe, until I have the hang of it. Then I’ll start modifying, one variable at a time.

I foresee a lot of fudge in my future. Fortunately for our waistlines, I seldom have trouble giving such things away.

Posted in Kitchen Encounters | 3 Comments »

Out The Door

August 30th, 2011 by sharktank

I love gardening. I love to see things grow. I love the magic in seeds, that turn into various plants that feed both body and soul. I have been known to let sow-thistle and hawkweed grow just so I can watch the butterflies come to the flowers, and later watch the goldfinches come for the seeds, looking for all the world like scraps of flying sunshine. I’m plotting to grab a milkweed seed pod or two (they’re ripening across the road within easy reach) and establish a bed in an area where it’s tricky to mow. It attracts butterflies so well one of its other names is “butterfly weed”, with Monarchs heading the list. It grows happily in marshy ground, and for an added bonus is one of the few native plants that can hold its own head to head with Canadian thistle.

And yet this year I’ve had a horrible time getting myself up off my butt and outside. Some of it has been the weather – either it’s been unbearably hot, raining or both. But some of it has been a combination of lack of energy and sheer inertia. The end result is that not only did I not get anything in the ground this year, but the weeds have overrun everything.

I don’t know exactly what changed, but something did. I noticed that I had a tangle of exceedingly healthy vines at the base of the maple nearest where we park the cars that was comprised of a combination of poison ivy, nightshade, multiflora roses and wild grapes. None of those are desirable plants, to say the least. I sprayed them with vinegar several times over until most of it withered, then got in there with a rake and gloves and yanked it out. It all went into the trash can, not the compost nor the marsh across the road where I’ve dumped other things to decompose. Another couple of weeks went by, but I’ve managed to spend an hour or so most days doing the long delayed work. All the weeds and grass in my raised bed have been pulled, running through the soil until I stopped finding roots from grass or creeping charlie. It’s thoroughly mulched now, in hopes I’ll have a usable bed again come spring. The cottonwood, maple and mulberry saplings have been cut down. I’ve yanked barrowloads of Queen Anne’s lace and wild lettuce, though I’ve as much and more yet to go. I’ve come in sore and tired, but after a week of it I’m okay by the next morning. I’m even starting to see perceptible progress. I’m enjoying myself.

I still have to kick my behind out the door in the first place, but that’s okay. At least I’m finally doing it.

Posted in Life as I know it | 3 Comments »

A Place To Start

August 28th, 2011 by sharktank

A woman I know lamented to me that she adored fudge but could no longer have it due to allergies. No, not the chocolate. She’s allergic to corn, soy and milk. Corn syrup is a common ingredient, soy lecithin a stabilizer in a lot of chocolates and milk, butter or both are in pretty much every recipe you find.

I took this as a challenge. What purpose, I wondered, does corn syrup serve? It turned out to involve the chemistry of sugar crystslization. Corn syrup is an interfering agent, keeping the sugar from crystalizing too quickly and forming large clumps. That was something I could work with. There are other invert sugars, among them brown rice syrup and Golden syrup. First substitution determined.

Onward…what does the milk do? It provides a certain sort of protein, which almond milk also contains. I like the flavor of almond with chocolate, so I don’t care if my fudge has an almomd undertone so long as the texture is right. Second substitution found.

The last one was the easiest. If I use a recipe with unsweetened chocolate instead of semi-sweet, I don’t have to worry about lecithin. It will be somewhat tirckier than fudge made with marshmallow fluff and the best bittersweet or dark chocolate I can find, but that’s okay.

I found rice syrup at the grocery today. Next up will be acquisition of an instant-read digital candy thermometer, and then the ultimate test of whether theory survives first contact with reality. I’m looking forward to the experiment!

Posted in Kitchen Encounters | 4 Comments »

Learning My Limits

August 27th, 2011 by sharktank

Joseph and I were in Indy for not quite a week shortly before he started school. It was busy, both because I tried make sure both sets of grandparents get as much kid time as they wanted and because this time I tried to at least touch base with people I don’t always have time to see. (I see my amazing friends Li and Michael because I usually stay with them.) So I went somewhere in addition to Mom’s pretty much every day, until the middle of the week. That day I woke up to find that if the wall hadn’t quite fallen on me, it was certainly shedding a few bricks in the vicinity of my head. Yeah, that wall. The one with “fibromyalgia” engraved on it. That really is a pretty good analogy for what it feels like when that sort of fatigue catches up with you.

A lot of the time when I’ve noticed that wall getting a bit shaky, I’ve just kept going. I am, as I may have observed previously, ridiculously stubborn, and besides I hate to miss anything. I just shove the loose brick out of my way and proceed to ignore it.

There’s just one problem with that. It doesn’t go away. If I don’t take the time to rest, bricks continue to tumble at an increasing rate until there are simply too many to shove aside, climb over (or out from under) or otherwise slog through. If I push it to that point, I’m pretty well useless.

If you look up fibro you’ll see “fatigue” as one of the primary characteristics, but that word isn’t strong enough. It’s not just being tired. It’s being unable to keep your eyes open. It’s knowing that you aren’t alert enough to drive safely. It’s feeling as if your thoughts are wrapped in batting, disappearing into softness when you try to pin them down. At its worst, it’s what a friend and I call “cat days”, when instead of being awake for about 16 hours in a day, that’s about how much you sleep.

So about the fourth day of the visit, when I found myself asleep by 10:00 and dragging at 8:00 the next morning, I didn’t fight it. I cancelled plans other than a late-afternoon expedition promised to my son and dinner with his godparents, and rested. When other adults were available, I went back to sleep. It worked – the following day I was fine, and we went on with our plans. But I hate calling and making those apologies, hate disappointing people, hate disappointing mysef. I look in the mirror, and the woman looking back at me doesn’t look like there’s a thing wrong with her other than her weight. It’s a good thing most of the people I know are aware I’m more likely to push myself too hard than to shrug off an obligation on a whim. As a society, we are not kind to those whose problems aren’t physically obvious. We are suspicious of any sort of weakness, often viewing it as a moral failing. It’s hard not to judge myself that way, even when I know I know it’s not valid, when I know the people whose opinion matters to me don’t judge me so.

I’m learning. I’m working out how to pace mysef. I’m learning to say no, to remember that if I have a lot to do, it’s far more likely to get done if I stretch it out over several days than try to get it all done at once. I’m learning to notice when those first few bricks start to shake loose, rather than going on until the whole thing lands on my head. I’m learning that not only do I not have the energy reserves of any two normal people, I no longer have the reserves of one. If I were battery operated, it wouldn’t be holding anything close to a full charge.

It’s aggravating (very), but really no more than that. It isn’t life threatening, and if I’ve finally had to acknowledge I’m not superwoman worse tragedies have occurred. I have a wonderful, loving, non-judgmental husband, who will point out to me when I’m the one being hard on myself. I have friends who will look at me and tell me it’s time to stop for the day if I start into the “just one more thing” script. I’ve never been particularly good about taking care of myself, but I have people around me who help with that, and will give me a metaphorical kick in the tochis if I’m disinclined to listen. And I’m finally learning to do it for myself. I would say that is a Good Thing.

Posted in Life as I know it | No Comments »

The Pot Speaks

July 14th, 2011 by sharktank

The other day I found myself with assorted things in the refrigerator that needed to be used up, and decided the best way to do it was to make soup. I have tended to fill a soup pot to the point that any sort of starchy liquid will overflow, so this time I went after a bigger pot. To be specific, I pulled out my big stock pot.

Now I have become accustomed to washing my pots, mixing bowls, etc. before I use them as well as after. My house is anything but rodent-proof, and while my organic self resetting mouse traps do their best, they’re more likely to dispatch the invaders after they’ve come out through the kitchen cabinets than before. All three girls are excellent mousers, but I digress. Anyway, I had the sink all ready tp wash the pot as soon as it was out.

The big soup pot usually lives at the far back of a very deep cabinet, so other pots don’t end up stacked in it. You might imagine my surprise when I grabbed the handle and lifted to find that it had definite weight. It’s a heavy stainless steel pot, but it doesn’t weigh ten pouns. So instead of lifting, I pulled, sliding it toward the front of the cabinet.

The pot protested.

It said “Mrouw?”

I pulled it the rest of the way out to find the pot a bit less than half full of black cat. Tornado had curled up comfortably in the bottom, and was blinking at me as I pulled her cozy bed out into the light. Hmm. Leek, mushroom and cat soup was not what I had planned.

That pot was at the far back wall of that cabinet, as were my dutch oven and double boiler. The one nearest the entry is the double boiler. She had to step through it, but it was too small for her to curl up in comfortably. Next to it was the dutch oven. She likely curled up in it for a bit as well, but it is a wide pot and she is a smallish cat. The last one was stock pot.

I must say, she did fit perfectly.

I should start calling her Goldilocks.

Posted in Cat Tails | 2 Comments »

Rye Bread and Barn Swallows

June 17th, 2011 by sharktank

Life has been random, as is its nature, and so shall this be.

I hadn’t intended to make rye bread any time soon. I made a large batch a couple of weeks ago. (A small batch isn’t worth the effort, as you have to mix the starter three days in advance.) I love it, but I’m the only one who eats it. I have five of my six small loaves left in the freezer. On the other hand, I had not reckoned with the baking gremlins. I was intending to make Indian chapattis to go with lentil and tomato soup for dinner. I grabbed the nearest canister of non-white flour and mixed. Only one problem – once blended with water, it became very clear that the grain in question was quite a dark brown and sticky into the bargain. I took a bite, and sure enough, I had grabbed the rye flour instead of the whole wheat. That left me a choice – either toss it out, or add another cup of water and a bit of yeast and let is start fermenting. So after I’d pulled out another bowl and made the intended chapatti dough, I turned my mistake into the basis for another batch of rye bread, which is now bubbling away happily. It’ll be ready to bake with on Sunday, and I’m figuring that this one will be seedless raisin rye, just for fun.

Our son will be a C.I.T. (counselor in training) for the day camp he attended last summer. They’ve never had a C.I.T. program before, but they had a couple of kids they really wanted to keep that would have otherwise been too old – Joseph and his girlfriend. He starts Monday, and he’s tremendously excited. I’m not sure if it’s about camp, about the prospect of some responsibility, or about spending every week day for the next six weeks with T. It doesn’t really matter, though; what matters is his about-to-jump-out-of-his-skin enthusiasm. But one of the things that came with it was a staff meeting this last Tuesday, and after it we got some carry-out and went to have a picnic.

It was the perfect day for it; sunny and warm but not hot. Indeed, it was the first rain-free day in most of a week. J. was done eating long before I was, so he went off to explore the park a bit. It wasn’t long before he was back, urging me to hurry and finish so he could show me something.

“Something” turned out to be a whole colony of bird’s nests made out of mud. It took us a few minutes to figure out that there were birds sitting in them. They’re up in corners on the park buildings, no more than 3 or 4 inches under the eaves, so it’s quite shadowed. But there was the line of a feathery tail, and then we noticed the curve of the top of the head at the other end, one eye watching us carefully. We walked around, finding that every suitable corner had its own nest, some of them with distinct cheeping sounds coming from inside. We watched for awhile, until I saw a bird fly in and another fly out, and there was that distinctive divided tail. They’re small, fast, and absolutely beautiful in the air. Finally, after much wandering around, one of the adult birds hopped up to sit on the edge of the nest and I got a picture with my phone. Not a great shot, but good enough to compare to a photo at home, and sure enough – barn swallows! I’m trying to figure out how to set up a place they would consider appropriately safe from our cats to lure them to nest here. Not only are the a delight to watch, but they evidently eat their weight in insects daily. Given the bugs around here, that sounds wonderful! It shouldn’t be too hard, as the birds actually prefer rough wood to painted surfaces. They need something that their mud nests can adhere to.

And that’s life. I just let Tornado in the door, and watched as she got past her nemesis (Cloud) by the simple expedient of jumping over her. Tornado ignored my laughter; Cloud licked her paw and then wandered off as if to say “We planned that game of leap-frog”. Tomorrow I’m planning to drive over to Chicago for the day, and Sunday His Boyness wants to go swimming, weather permitting. Not terribly eventful, and even though some of the eventfulness of the past month or so was joyous, the calm is wonderful.

Posted in Life as I know it | No Comments »

It Doesn’t Work That Way

April 29th, 2011 by sharktank

I saw a bumper sticker on a minivan while I was driving around town yesterday. It read Parenting Advice Is Not Welcome Unless You Also Have A Child With Autism. I smiled a little, sideways, in understanding, and winced in sympathy.

Even before I knew that our son had autism, I had figured out that most of my instincts, and all my parenting books, were wrong for this child. My instinct is to cuddle a crying child, but it only made matters worse. I have sung babies to sleep since I started babysitting in my teens, but if I sang to my son, or even in his presence, he screamed. A time-out didn’t register, because he was in his own little world to begin with; what stressed him was being forced to interact, or having his routine disrupted. Explaining things to him was useless, (though I kept doing it) because he did not understand.

And for all that, he was a little boy. I took him to the library sometimes, because he’d taught himself to read and loved to look at the books. But he also loved to run, and so I found myself, one day, trying to get him to stop playing keep-away around a middle-aged gentleman who was most unamused by the antics. “What kind of mother are you, that you can’t control your child” he asked scathingly. “If he were mine I’d give him a good spanking. That would get his attention.” Yes, it would have, but it would have overwhelmed him so much he wouldn’t have understood the reason for it. I sat down on the floor, pulled my son into my lap on his next pass, and held him there by main force until he calmed down. I hoped my critic would go away once he was no longer an obstacle for a mischievous child, but no such luck. Finally, when my son was no longer fighting me, I looked up. “He’s autistic” I said, “and he’s four. What’s your excuse?” He stared at me for a second, muttered “Sorry; I didn’t know”, and finally, finally walked away. We left too; it was a couple of years before I tried to take my kid to the library again.

That was exactly it. He didn’t know. Most people don’t. Unless you live with it, it’s invisible; you can’t see that the beautiful child standing with his mother is neurologically different. Physical disabilities make people uncomfortable, but you can see them. Autism isn’t obvious unless you know exactly what you’re looking at. It looks like a tantrum at an age when tantrums should have been outgrown. It looks like defiance, or stubbornness, or repetitive, disruptive behavior. And yes, sometimes it looks like what would be lax parenting in a neurotypical kid. Even if my son’s behavior didn’t pull them in, absolute strangers felt called upon to tell me what I was doing wrong when he behaved in unexpected ways. Sometimes it was very specific advice, sometimes simply “I’d never let my child get away with that.” I resented the need to explain him all the time. I resented being judged and found wanting by the clueless.

He’s grown up quite a lot, and now the comments I get are complimentary. People tell me what lovely manners he has, and how helpful he is, and how confident. There’s still a lot they don’t see, but what they do see no longer arouses negative comment. I no longer get well-meant but irritating advice from random strangers in the mall. But I sure do understand that bumper sticker.

Parenting Advice Is Not Welcome Unless You Also Have A Child With Autism. Yes. That. Exactly that.

Posted in Parenthood, Ruminations and ramblings | 1 Comment »

Expiration Date: None

April 23rd, 2011 by sharktank

My son’s bar mitzvah is in less than a month now. All sorts of gifts are appearing magically. His godmother is making his guestbook. His school librarian is making his cake. She who keeps me from losing my mind is organizing the entire affair, because she rocks a party. And an old friend from high school and college is weaving his tallis.

That’s the one that most stuns me. We were very close then, but we lost track of each other more than 25 years ago. We both moved, I couldn’t remember her married name, and didn’t know who to ask. I thought her mother was probably still in Indianapolis, but I didn’t know her first name, knew my friend’s father had died and that her mom had sold the house and moved, and ran aground on the five pages of people with the same last name in the phone book. When I’d last spoken to her, she didn’t have any children. By the time a mutual friend mentioned her in passing and invited me to join them for lunch,, her daughter was grown and living on her own. She’s never met my son. But when she told me over that lunch that what she did now was weave custom prayer shawls and I mentioned that my son was becoming a bar mitzvah, she offered it as a gift. And having offered, she was determined to do it.

It made me uncomfortable. There was so much time between, though we picked up as if there had been a few months instead of all those years. I know both how much work goes into weaving and what such a thing costs. The other things are just as much gifts of love and creativity and the time of incredibly busy people. They are certainly just as treasured, but they were not a surprise. Hers was, and is.

I was talking it over with the woman who’s doing the party planning, saying I had no idea what I could have done so many years ago that would lead to such an offer. She looked at me as if I didn’t have much sense (and sometimes I don’t, I agree) and opined that it didn’t matter; whatever it was, the weaver remembers it, and it was important enough to her that it had no expiration date. It still matters to her. This is one of those times when all I can do is accept the gift, as I have accepted all the other such gifts, with immeasurable gratitude.

I am under no misapprehension. As much as they are gifts to our son, all of these are gifts to me as well. Truly, my friends are a blessing.

Posted in Ruminations and ramblings | 1 Comment »

Something Suitable

April 22nd, 2011 by sharktank

My son’s bar mitzvah is coming up quickly. I waited until the last minute to go suit shopping because he’s been growing so incredibly quickly, but the last minute has arrived. So off I went, figuring I shouldn’t have too much trouble getting him a suit.

Wrong-o, fuzzy one. He’s right on that line where men’s suits are absurdly broad in the shoulders, (even at the smallest size) but boy’s are too tight across the chest, and a bit short in the sleeves. And don’t even start on pants – the shortest available inseam is 2 inches too long.

Now, I can attend to things like hems and sleeves. It won’t even take me very long. Shoulders, on the other hand, are trickier. While I can give them extra support with temporary pads, there’s still that boy-head balanced on that slender neck in the middle, and it just looks silly. On the other hand, shoulders are, bar none, the most difficult structure on a suit to adjust – so much so that tailors will tell you to get the shoulders right and everything else can be worked around. And that’s true, if the suit has side-back seams to let out or take in. Unfortunately the current style has only center-back seams, and altering those to come out straight is first cousin to impossible. I know. I’ve done it. I ended up sewing it up, then drawing my straight line and hand-stitching the thing to get it right. It was a miserable experience, and one I swore never to repeat.

So that’s where I am. I’m going to call a place online that specializes in boy’s suits tomorrow morning, run through the kid’s measurements, and ask for advice. If they can fit him, I’ll be thrilled.

If not, I’ve got some serious and intensive shopping to do, followed by some equally intensive tailoring.

We’ll have to see.

Posted in Life as I know it | No Comments »

« Older Entries