July 2006 Archives

Fresh blueberries have been on sale in my grocery store for the past few weeks, which makes me happy because I love love love love LOVE blueberries. I think they're among the cuter fruits the planet produces: OK, they're not big, prickly and imposing like a pineapple or a drag queen, but their tiny round vulnerable neatness appeals to me, as does the delicate little crown on the bottom (I wonder what purpose it serves), and I also love that blueberries really truly are blue! How many other naturally blue foods exist in the world? And they taste good. I like them fresh, but I especially like them cooked, so that they burst open and the insides turn purple from the juice in the skin and the sugar in them caramelizes a bit.

I didn't know I loved blueberries when I was little; I thought they were only OK, and this is entirely my mother's fault. The only way she fed us blueberries when I was growing up was in blueberry muffins--made, of course, from a mix that included canned blueberries. (I asked her about this recently; she said they were too expensive to buy fresh in Arizona, and it never occurred to her to buy them frozen.) I have compensated for this mistake by making blueberry muffins a grand total of once in my adult life: a few weeks ago I got to thinking about how I'd never made blueberry muffins and decided to try it, but I couldn't leave well enough alone and had to spiff up the recipe with cream cheese and chocolate chips, and the results were edible but not worth repeating.

But I love blueberry crumble--I LOVE it. I especially love it for breakfast, smothered with Stonyfield Farms Full Cream French Vanilla yogurt. YUM! I also love blueberry sorbet. Both recipes are below.

Today is a holiday I haven’t celebrated since, oh, 1976. It’s Pioneer Day, anniversary of the day in 1847 when Brigham Young and a bunch of other guys (including my great-great-great-grandfather Tarleton Lewis, the first bishop of Salt Lake and the only man to be bishop of the entire city) arrived in the Salt Lake valley. Supposedly when they reached the descent into the valley, Brother Brigham, who was quite ill, sat up in his bed in the back of a wagon, surveyed the scene, then said, “This is the right place. Drive on.” (It’s often shortened to “This is the place.” But my dad, who reads lots of history books and loves correcting misinformed tour guides--he's done it all over the country, on topics ranging from the burial place of Wyatt Earp to the birthdate of Joseph Smith--always insisted that we say it correctly.)

When I was little we had big Pioneer Day celebrations; we dressed like pioneers and had parades with handcarts. But then the Church got ambitious and wanted to shed its provincial western image, and Pioneer Day ceased to be a big deal outside of Utah, where it's still a state holiday. I’m not complaining; it’s not all that fun to put on a long dress and sunbonnet and walk up and down the streets during monsoon season in southern Arizona.

But I admit I am totally captivated by the story of the trek across the plains, which killed a few of my relatives: Tarleton lost one of his sons that way, a small child of three or four, who wandered off one evening while collecting cow patties for fuel with a group of children. They found his bucket, but they never found the boy. Tarleton was heartbroken. Then there’s the story of the Willie and Martin handcart companies, a group of people who got a late start and so were overtaken by snow storms and blizzards. The survivors were eventually rescued by a bunch of young men. It chokes me up even to think about it.

In Primary we used to sing this song I absolutely loved, called “Pioneer Children.” It went,

Pioneer children sang as they walked... and walked... aaannd waaaaalked
They walked for miles....

and I can’t remember the rest. I just remember the way we’d draw out “aaannd waaaaalked.” It was fun.

So happy Pioneer Day! If you get a chance, take a walk. (I still can't--my gimpy hip is still bugging me.)

Picking up where I left off yesterday on the matter of unpleasant parents:

Another good thing about the way Mormons deal with kids: everyone (well, almost everyone) learns very early that there are places where it's just not appropriate to bring children. This doesn't cause kids much pain or resentment, because a lot of those adult forums are plain boring, and kids are rightfully glad to escape them. You learn that your parents can go off and leave with you a babysitter and it won't kill you, the babysitter OR your parents--in fact, if the babysitter is cool enough, you might even have fun, and you usually get something special for dinner.

The last ward (a Mormon congregation) I attended was an young adult/student ward at the Institute at the U of Arizona. There were no kids in this ward, because you had to be a childless university student and/or single person over the age of 18 but under 35 to attend it. The idea was to help young people meet potential mates, though childless couples in which at least one spouse was enrolled as a student could also attend this ward.

But there was this divorced woman in her late 20s who insisted on bringing her five-year-old daughter with her, and largely because the bishop felt sorry for her, both mother and child were allowed to attend. The daughter went to all the meetings with her mother, including Relief Society, the meeting for women. Well. One Sunday I was teaching the lesson, and I made an off-hand comment about how there was no Santa Claus.

Well!

I wrote Monday about how I generally like children, but there are plenty of parents in the world who irritate me. Wednesday I wrote about dealing with parents and a child I liked, and today I'm sharing an anecdote about an encounter with a parent who totally pissed me off.

A couple of weeks ago I went to Target for some particular product. I don't remember what it was; I only remember that they didn't have it. They did, however, have Clueless on sale for $7.50, a spiffy anniversary edition dvd with lots of special features, and as I collect adaptations of Austen novels (in case you didn't know, Clueless is based on Emma) and as my VHS copy of Clueless has grown worn from use, I decided to buy the dvd. So I took my single item and went to stand in the express checkout line.

The woman ahead of me in the express lane was dealing with two children. She seemed a bit frazzled--her son, who seemed about six, wanted some gum, but kept picking out kinds that were sour, and she kept saying, "It says sour! See? It says sour!" I can be pretty good at tuning out other people, so I just ignored her and thought about the pleasant activities I had planned for the rest of the day--I think I was planning to sew. The cashier rang up and bagged my movie before the woman had removed her bags from the counter, and for some reason her son, who had not taken any of his mother's bags, picked up my bag.

As I explain in this post about my freak dancing accident, and in this post about my bursitis diagnosis, I've been in pain lately. That's one reason–actually two reasons--I didn't post anything here yesterday: sitting was uncomfortable, and then I ended up spending several hours seeing a doctor and having x-rays and working with a physical therapist. The other reason I didn't post yesterday is that I had a dinner invitation that took precedence over writing.

My hosts were a colleague, her husband and their three-year-old son, who is really damn cute: big smile, bright brown eyes and this head full of tousled curls because his mom has been two busy to cut his hair recently. I sat down next to him at the dinner table, remembered what I'd posted Monday, and asked myself, "All right; do I like kids or not?"

And I decided I really do, if the parents allow both me and the kid to treat each other like people.

I asked the kid how old he was, what his name was--basic ice breakers, to which he gave me basic answers. His dad said, "We forgot your knife," and went to the kitchen. And the kid said to me, "I have a blue knife."

I think of myself as someone who likes children, mostly because there are a lot of children I like. OK, occasionally I meet a kid I truly dislike, same as with adults: a couple of my friends had five children, four of whom I found mildly repellent: they were not only badly behaved, but just plain weird--one in particular I rather expect to end up in the penal system. But generally, I'm well disposed to like kids. If I see a cute baby in a stroller, I usually smile and try to make eye contact. If I hear a child crying, I usually think, with a pang of genuine sympathy, "Oh, that poor thing."

I especially like kids old enough to walk and say at least a few words and feed themselves a high-chair-tray full of diced broccoli, but still small enough that you can pick them up and tickle them and play peekaboo with them: there's something profoundly wonderful about making those wee ones squeal and clap their hands in delight. I also like little kids whose parents buy them really cool electric train sets (that would be my brother and his wife). As I've watched my nieces and nephews grow up, I've noticed that sometimes they get hard to talk to around nine or ten (and they can stay that way for about a decade), but if a kid likes to read, I can usually manage a reasonably interesting conversation. And I'm gratified by the fact that the kids I like seem to like me OK, too.

There's a famous scene where WC Fields (I have no idea what movie it's from--I tried to find out) says to some child, "Go away, kid, you bother me," a particular expression of his general antipathy for children. I was always baffled by that in my youth, and offended as well: how could anybody who'd been a child dislike children on principle? I still sort of feel that way.... Because I really do like kids at least as often as I like adults. Change that: I like children more often than I like adults. It's certain parents, I've realized lately, that I really have problems with.

Because I occasionally write about sex, and about sexual violence against women, and because I also discussed various terms for female genitalia and announced my preference for a particular term and my impatience with the misuse of another term, my blog can show up when people do searches for sexual images and situations. Thus, when I check the searches that have led people to my blog, a lot of them are deeply disturbing and vile. I won't provide examples because that would lead even more weirdos to my site. But I must say, that as someone who has stayed away from internet porn, it has been very educational to me to see some of what other people go looking for out there.

But this one I found amusing enough to share: a search on "naked women in teddies."

Dude, chick, whoever you are, grasp this obvious fact: If they're wearing teddies, they're not naked!

Yesterday as I was getting in my car to run some errands, Joe, my mailman, strolled up to my driveway with my mail. I thought I would save him the few steps up to my porch and so walked over to take it from him.

"How you doin, Ms. Holly?" he asked. The first time he addressed me by name, I was a bit surprised; but I soon realized of course he knows my name; he reads it almost every day. He probably also knows, if he cares enough to analyze the magazines I subscribe to, my religious background, my political leanings, my general taste in music.

"I'm fine," I said, taking the envelopes he held. "Thanks. How are you?"

"Doing real good. You have a good day, now."

"You too," I said.

From that same journal as the last entry, this one on page 10. Dated 7 May 05. Accompanied by a drawing of a burning bridge, done by me in Crayola Crayons.

I love no spectacle so much as that of a burning bridge--OH the glowing beams, the leaping flames, all of that light reflected in the dark, rippling water--and then, when the fire burns through the structure and its timbers plunge into the water, so it bubbles and steams--

Well it's just so cool

Not that I've ever seen a burning wooden bridge, but I imagine it's quite a phenomenon

First you imagine the river. Deep, wide and rapid though it may be, you are looking for its narrowest, calmest spot. You construct a sturdy, serviceable crossing that stretches from bank to bank. Then you set it on fire.

And that's all.

Here's a strange little reflection I found on page one of a journal I started about two years ago. I avoided writing in it because it wasn't the format I generally prefer for a journal: heavy lined 8.5 by 11 loose leaf notebook paper. But for reasons I explain below, I finally started using this journal as well. I'm currently on page 13.

I have had this little book since before I graduated from high school in 1981. What the hell have I saved it for all these years? Good god, it's now 2004 and this book is still empty, unused-- not quite wasted (because it still has potential) but almost, since it is a thing that has a purpose and that purpose is going unfulfilled. And if that purpose is never fulfilled, well, then the thing is wasted.

Everything has a purpose, but we don't get to decide what those purposes are, necessarily-- only the purposes of the things we make. The purpose of a cow is not to be eaten, but to be a cow. However, the purpose of beef is to be eaten, and it would be wrong to waste beef. Once the sacrifice has been made, once a thing has been killed, then it's wrong to let it go to waste.

I'm thinking about issues of utility and worth-- I don't want to exploit things, and I also don't want to waste resources--

and that's it.

I haven't read The End of Faith by Sam Harris, but after reading this interview with him in Salon, I want to. He hits on some of the reasons why I find many true believers intellectually, morally and spiritually repellent, and why I refuse to let my family bear their testimonies to me. Here are two excerpts from the interview conducted by Steve Paulson:

What about the Bible? Do you see this as a recipe for religious intolerance?

Oh, I do. There's no document that I know of that is more despicable in its morality than the first few books of the Hebrew Bible. Books like Exodus and Deuteronomy and Leviticus, these are diabolical books. The killing never stops. The reasons to kill your neighbor for theological crimes are explicit and preposterous. You have to kill people for worshiping foreign gods, for working on the Sabbath, for wizardry, for adultery. You kill your children for talking back to you. It's there and it's not a matter of metaphors. It is exactly what God expects us to do to rein in the free thought of our neighbors.

Now, it just so happens, however, that most Christians think there's something in the New Testament that fully and finally repudiates all of that. And therefore, we do not have to kill homosexuals. We don't have to kill adulterers. And that's a very good thing that most Christians think it. Now, most Christians actually are not on very firm ground theologically to think that. It's not an accident that St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine thought we should kill or torture heretics. Aquinas thought we should kill them, Augustine thought we should torture them. And Augustine's argument for the use of torture actually laid the foundations for the Inquisition. So it's not an accident that we were burning heretics and witches and other people in Europe for five centuries under the aegis of Christianity. But Christianity is at a different moment in its history.

But isn't this a problem mainly when you read the Bible or the Quran literally? Doesn't the conversation change once you stop reading sacred scriptures literally? If you understand, for instance, the historical context -- when Judaism or Christianity were first emerging, they were religions competing with other religions. Doesn't that free you up to appreciate their spiritual teachings?

I'd be the first to agree that it's better not to read these books literally. The problem is, the books never tell you that you're free not to read them literally. In fact, they tell you otherwise, explicitly so. Therefore, the fundamentalist is always on firmer ground theologically and -- I would argue -- intellectually than the moderate or the progressive. When you consult the books, you do not find more reasons to be a moderate or a liberal. You find more reasons to be a fundamentalist. I agree, it is a good thing to be cherry-picking these books and ignoring the bad parts. But we should have a 21st century conversation about morality and spiritual experience and public policy that is not constrained by superstition and taboo. In order to see how preposterous our situation really is, you need only imagine what our world would be like if we had people believing in the literal existence of Zeus. I defy anyone to come forward with the evidence that puts the Biblical God or the Quranic God on fundamentally different footing than the gods of Mt. Olympus. There are historical reasons why Zeus is no longer worshiped and the God of Abraham is. But there are not sound epistemological or philosophical or empirical reasons.

Much to my surprise, the theater in the rancid backwater I call home actually booked a few showings of An Inconvenient Truth--the movie arrived on Friday. Convinced it won't stay in town for long, I went to see it yesterday.

It didn't tell me much I hadn't heard before, and I was just so thrilled that the movie might be seen by people who might otherwise not think about this stuff, that it really cheered me up. But then I started thinking about how different the world might be if Bush had not stolen the White House, and I got really depressed.

I don't know how Al Gore would have handled the 9/11 attacks but I am convinced he'd be a better president than Bush--and even in 2000, when I had little affection or admiration for Gore, I still knew he'd be better than Bush--I KNEW Bush would be a disaster; I knew he was simply a bad, bad man. It was very painful for me to listen to my friends in the Green party insist that there was no difference between the two major parties' candidates, because there was so little difference between the two major parties.

One reason I suffer so from insomnia is that I have always been a worrier. I sometimes wake up out of a deep sleep, my heart racing and my mouth dry with panic over melting polar ice caps and destruction of wetlands. My primary obsession is the environment and I admit that I have long felt it should be everyone's because if our world is uninhabitable, what does the rest of it matter?

All I've ever really wanted, really and truly, is a lifetime of connection to transcendent beauty.

Really now, that's not too much to ask, is it?

There have been times when I've been willing to accept substitutes, like enlightenment and serenity, and I sought them diligently. But now I see what shoddy substitutes they are, and I seek them no more.

P.S. I'm not kidding.

In the comments on my guacomole recipe, Juti (thanks, Juti!) provided a link to this recipe for an avocado milkshilk on this very cool blog, the Traveler's Lunchbox, written by a gastronome named Melissa.

I just tried the recipe. I can't decide whether it is more aptly described as "heavenly" or "obscenely delicious."

It was also ridiculously easy.

I'm posting the recipe here the way I made it, because I want easy access to it. But you should follow the links and read Melissa's essay about "the secret life of avocados" and check out the rest of her entries as well.

Holly's ever-so-slightly-modified Avocado Milkshake

1 ripe Haas (dark-skinned) avocado, peeled and pitted
1/3 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup cold milk, more or less depending on thickness desired
several handfuls of ice
a splash of amaretto (Melissa recommends a few drops orange extract, or some vanilla, rum or coffee, but as I didn't have rum or orange extract or brewed coffee and wanted something more exotic than vanilla, I tried a substitution, which worked OK)

Put everything in a blender and blend on high until the ice is chopped fine. Pour in a glass and enjoy.

My last two weekends have sucked, especially both Sundays. Some miasmatic malaise has come upon me while I slept Saturday night, bringing with it troubled and unsettling dreams, so that I awoke in a truly vile mood.

Today I dealt with it by being dutiful; I went into my "screw it; I might as well do stuff I don't want to do if I'm already cranky" mode and attended to some chores I've long been neglecting. But last Sunday I took a completely different approach to my bad mood.

Around noon I was sort of reading The Great Transformation, Karen Armstrong's new book, out on my back porch, and sort of thinking about how much I'd like to piece a quilt top but really shouldn't because it's so labor intensive and I just shouldn't take that much time off from uh, WRITING (like I ever really write anything significant) until I get tenure. I'd wander down to my basement as I do from time to time, and, just as a diversion, look through the half a dozen bins and footlookers I have stuffed with unused fabric. I also delved into the big crate where I keep the scraps I will one day piece into quilt tops. And I thought again about how I really shouldn't start such a major project when I have all this writing to do. And I went back out on the porch with my book.

And then I shut the book and went back to the basement and hauled my ironing board, my iron, my rotary cutter, my cutting board and armfuls of fabric up to my living room, and I got busy cutting and piecing, because why the hell not be creative when it's what you really want to do.

Remember when I wrote about how much I hated my couch, the hideous, old, uncomfortable couch desecrating my living room?

Well, last week I just couldn't stand it any more, so I went furniture shopping. It took me a while to find something I both liked and could afford, but eventually I came across something I could live with and put down a deposit. Tuesday two very nice young men showed up and assembled a spiffy new futon in my living room. At first I wasn't sure I liked it: it's a futon, not a couch, and futons just aren't as settled and grown-up as couches. But I wanted something practical--something my cat couldn't shred, first of all--and I also don't feel settled enough to invest in expensive upholstered furniture. The futon is also big: taller, wider, and deeper than its predecessor. At first it seemed to overpower the room, and I worried that I'd made a mistake.

But now I've had a few days to get used to it and it's fine. I don't love it, but I don't hate it the way I hated that couch, either. But the real bonus is that the couch has been granted a new life and I no longer hate it, either. In fact, I love it!