Dipping In to the Great American Melting Pot

It's funny how so many of our family memories, our ways of coping with stress, heartbreak and tragedy, and every single moment of celebration all revolve around food. At least at our house, whenever things go well or very, very awry, my response begins and ends in the kitchen, making something special for my family to bring us all back together again.  I feel like that is true for a lot of us.

Jonathan Gold got that fundamental truth: food is what knits the family together.

If you haven't watched the brilliant documentary -- City of Gold -- about Gold's work as a food critic at the LA Weekly and the LA Times, you should make the time to fix that right now.  Seriously, I'm not kidding, make time to watch it today.  His quirky, unapologetic love of good food is far away from the Anton Ego critic in Ratatouille, because he genuinely cares about the well-being of the people whose craft of food genius draws him into the restaurants he loves.

I've been thinking a lot about Jonathan Gold's work as I've made meal after meal for my family at home during this pandemic shut down, because I've been seriously contemplating how our food choices knit us together in a giant, patchwork tapestry here in America.

For example:  Why is there such a disconnect between people who love to eat out at a Mexican restaurant and those same people discriminating against hispanic folks in their neighborhood?  How much of our food tastes are cultural remnants, woven into the fibers of our DNA like some ancestral calling card, the nature outside of whatever food nurture you have built up from years of family meals?   How can our love of pure, ethnic goodness in our food choices not translate to a "love thy neighbor" feeling about people who are different from us -- if by "different" you mean skin tone or language, which we celebrate if it is our own or denigrate if it is not far too often these days.

One of the things that I love most about living in small town West Virginia is that because we are small in population but big in heart, we all begin to feel like family.  We care for one another, we reach out, and we check on those who are a little older and frail -- that's an important thing to do in a pandemic, and a lot easier when you already know and like your neighbors.

Shining A Light Into The Dark Corners Of Domestic Violence

Folks who know me are aware that I worked as a lawyer for many years, including a stint as an assistant prosecutor in a local county office many years ago.  What I saw during my years of legal work still haunts me today, as I still find myself waking up nights worried about abused children or various other individual cases that were not entirely tied up in the neat little resolved package that I might have wanted in a perfect world.

I think that is true for everyone who has worked in the criminal justice field in one way or another:  most people I have known who were decent and dedicated prosecutors or police officers and such worry -- even years and years down the road -- about the cases that remained not fully resolved for the better.  But sometimes, it cannot be helped:  you do the best you can with what you are given, facts, evidence, circumstances and so on, and then you have to move forward once a verdict is reached or a case is closed.

What you are often left with, though, is that unsatisfactory, nagging fear that you have still left a child or an adult in a situation that is going to continue to be abusive in some way.  Even if it is less so than it might have been without intervention, that is still a very, very difficult outcome to accept even when the law dictates that this is the way that things must be.

In the above video, Patrick Stewart eloquently and incredibly movingly talks about his own childhood in a home permeated with domestic violence.

So often, families facing this sort of fear feel as though they must hide in the shadows, keeping the secrets of the beatings and the terror and all of this away from the light of public scrutiny.  There is still shame attached to being a victim of domestic violence and, worse, far too often a fear of escalation or death.

So often, this continued silence is because of overwhelming fear -- of judgment from those outside of the home itself, or a fear that the violence will escalate, even to murder, because that is exactly what is threatened and far too often carried out by the abuser.  It is a terrifying way to live your life, every day, day in and day out, so drenched in fear that you cannot breathe or even conceive of a way out.

Imagine growing up in that sort of home as a tiny child.  Now imagine becoming involved with an abuser as you get older -- it would seem to you, in so many ways and for far too many people to count, that this is just the way the world is for everyone or, worse, that you somehow deserve to be treated as "less than."  It is a painful, painful thing to watch, and requires an enormous amount of will and courage and even luck to break free from this wretched start to life for far too many children.

As Patrick Stewart says so well here, "Everyone suffers.  No one escapes the trauma of those experiences."

Teachers and Blogging

We live in a society where people voluntarily put themselves into a glass house and invite the stonethrowers over for a party.

It's all public blahbity blah all the time.  Between facebook, blogs, tweets, retweets, and the myriad of other public commentary purveyors?  Frankly, most of the time I fear we know far too much about each other far too quickly.  Real Housewives?  Enough said, right?

So where is the line when the blogger is also a teacher?  Should there be a line?  Who should draw it?  Where should it be drawn in terms of what is or is not appropriate for discussion?

These are questions I've been mulling the last couple of weeks as I've been working my way into being the librarian at The Peanut's school:  how is this going to impact my daily blogging?  Should I even be blogging?  And, even more of a question, can I continue to do so without stepping on the toes of the kids I'll be teaching (or their parents)?

Let's Tour The Library!

Welcome to the new library at The Peanut's school!  Consider this a true labor of love for me. 

For the most part, I've finished the bulk of the decor and shelving of books -- there is still a lot of work to be done, but small people can, at least, enjoy the library from the very start of school tomorrow.

It's a miracle, believe me, but I'm just so glad and grateful that the kids get to walk in tomorrow to a whole new, grand, exciting world of books.  I'm so excited for them and to share this with them.

In any case, I'll start with the entrance and walk you through the grand tour:

Behold, the door that is doubling as a bulletin board.  I bought the cool letters because they looked very Dr. Seuss, but made the "books" with some thicker scrapbook paper and a little clipart and glue stick magic.  If anyone is interested, I'll put together a "step by step" post and show you how I made them after school gets underway.  It was very easy.

As you enter the library doors, you see this:

Pardon the bulletin board leaning against the reference desk -- I haven't gotten it hung back up on the wall just yet.  Can you see the little surprise at the opposite end of the counter, though?  My special favorites are the library dinos that The Peanut and I put together.  They help to guard the reference desk:

Back to the Library

I can finally get back into school to work on the library today.  Hooray!

There is lots to do and school begins on August 17th for us, so the window of time to get everything done is really, really tiny.

I've spent the last couple of days making bulletin board and display materials:  signs for the "books we love" display pointing out fantasy, mystery, new to the library, sports, friendships, etc., etc. types of books for the kids; along with making "books" out of brightly colored thicker scrapbook paper, using an off-white as a small rectangle on the side that I then "striped" with a Sharpie to look like pages.

They turned out pretty well -- will take some pictures when I get them up and maybe do a step-by-step photo montage for folks to see how to make them if anyone is interested.

Today will be a long, sweaty slog -- between shelving and finishing the decor, but it will be worth it to finish everything up completely between now and next Wednesday.

Hope you have a great day.  If you need me, I'll be at the library, figuring out a way to inspire young minds...

Make A School Supply Box: For Home And Teachers, Too!

Yesterday afternoon, The Peanut and I took her supply list for the Third Grade (!!!!!) out and about for some school supply shopping.

This year, for some reason, the school supply seasonal sales have begun really early -- perhaps because they start back to school earlier this year, or perhaps because retailers are all trying to get a jump on each other in sales.  Whatever the reason, there were some serious bargains and we took advantage of them by stocking up our home school supplies bin.

What is that, you might ask?

We have a large, green plastic bin with a lid that I keep stocked with wide-ruled notebook paper, boxes of crayons and colored pencils, colored markers -- both wide and thin -- No. 2 pencils, little hand-held pencil sharpeners, school scissors, glue sticks, erasers, purse-sized packs of kleenex for the backpack, and pretty much anything else that seems like it might be useful during the school year.  I started doing this when The Peanut began kindergarten, mostly because she kept losing her crayons or pencils (either on her own or because she loaned them out and they never made their way back to her, I have no idea).  Having a steady supply to replenish her little desk whenever she would come home and say "I need more ______," without having to make a special trip to the store was heaven.

It truly has been a sanity saver, and is also super useful for homework and various projects, because we already have a good supply of things here at the house for immediate starting.

The bonus for stocking this up when "back to school" sales are plentiful?  You have a ready supply at a quarter of the price if you play the store sales correctly.

For example, we have multiple packs of wide-ruled notebook paper that I've gotten for anywhere from 25 cents a pack up to 75 cents a pack -- when the going rate for regular price is $1.50 or more.  I got 40 boxes of 24-packs of crayons yesterday for 25 cents each, way less than I would have paid for them at the regular price.  And the list goes on.

Why buy so many crayons?

Each year we also stock a box of room supplies for The Peanut's teacher and give it to her at the beginning of the year, so she has extras like scissors, crayons, pencils, Clorox wipes, kleenex, construction paper, copy paper, you name it...in case one of the kids needs a loaner for the day.  Just call it our little thank you to a teacher for doing such a tough job all year long.

A Hefty Helping Of Thanks!

Several of you -- and you know who you are, you book-loving darlings -- rock my world.

Over the past few days since I made my little library announcement, books have appeared on our doorstep as if by magic.  Several have been books that I have on the Amazon wish list on the blog, but a lot have been childhood favorites of your kids that you sent along for the kids at The Peanut's school to enjoy.

Please don't misunderstand, I don't say this to beg or to cajole people into buying books for the library.  This isn't some sort of coercive bleg, because I know all too well how much so many folks are struggling to make ends meet.

What is it?  A sense of shared community and gratitude that we all sort of reach out to each other once in a while and of how wonderful that really can be when it happens.

Family isn't just what you are born into when you arrive in this world.  It's also the shared groups that you collect along your own paths that mirror your hopes and your dreams for something better, and hold you up when you stumble or doubt so that you can continue to see the light at the end of some very dark tunnels along the way. 

Sometimes, it really feels like I'm writing these words out into a void.  Especially because the comments can be sparse thanks to the wonkiness of the google/blogger comments system and my inability to find anything that has worked any better here (my tech limitations are astonishingly sad sometimes).

So when there is an outpouring of this sort of kindness?  It really does make me stop and sniffle in gratitude.  So thank you, one and all, for all the kindnesses.  You all rock.

Can I Hear An Amen?

Less of the "it's all about me" brand of politics and more of this, please:

But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together....

We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others.

That process of reflection, of making sure we align our values with our actions – that, I believe, is what a tragedy like this requires....

If this tragedy prompts reflection and debate, as it should, let's make sure it's worthy of those we have lost. Let's make sure it's not on the usual plane of politics and point scoring and pettiness that drifts away with the next news cycle.

I wish that I could believe that we will all now turn to the better angels of our natures and think about the political and public sphere in terms of "us" rather than "us vs. them," but we won't.

Not spontaneously, anyway.

What I do hope for, however, is that everyone who has learned the lesson of what you can say versus what you ought to (or ought not to) say will be willing to speak out now when someone crosses a line.  That could, after all, make an enormous difference in what boundaries people try to push going forward.

Hobbling To The Resolution Starting Line

It's time to put all those resolutions into action, gang.

Although I could not have timed my 2nd degree burn any more poorly, I refuse to allow my current state of mobility limitations to prevent me from moving forward on my plans.

Sometimes life throws you a curveball.  The trick for me is figuring out how to move past it without sabotaging my own plans for better health.

And so?  Today will mean that I clean out our fridge so that we can start off Monday with a fresh and healthy set of choices.

Sure, I'll be cleaning things out while sitting on a chair, and Mr. ReddHedd is going to have to help me -- and go shopping for me -- but we will make do.  Then I'll spend some time, still sitting on a kitchen stool, prepping snacks and some other food for tomorrow.

And hopefully, if I can keep moving forward today -- which isn't a given since I've been needing naps as my scalded leg heals -- I'll try to post what my menu plans are for the week.

Just Pausing For A Moment To Say...

Just pausing for a moment of gratitude this morning.  Thank you so much for being readers here.

And, further, a huge thank you to everyone who has used the Amazon search link on the sidebar of this blog to purchase any items.  Or used any Amazon links in my posts to purchase any items.

Your purchases over the last few months have enabled me to pick up a couple of books for donation to The Peanut's school library, which were very much appreciated.  Additionally, you've helped to supply my taste in (particularly hard to find here in WV) British tea on at least one occasion which makes sitting and writing a lot more fun for me, and also helped me most recently purchase the The Indian Slow Cooker cookbook I'd been ogling for quite a while.

I promise a review of it will be forthcoming as soon as I've had time to read, cook and digest several of the recipes therein.

Also, I've recently had an offer to review an item of my choice from a company with a fairly diverse internet presence (they have several website from what I've been able to figure out) which makes furniture and other home items, including home bar furniture, rugs and all sorts of organizing goodies, and also cooking and homeware.

Am still trying to decide what, if anything, I'll review -- if there is an item you think looks intriguing, but you'd be reluctant to buy it without someone testing it first, let me know and I'll see what I can do.   My budget isn't huge, though, so keep that in mind.

Off To The Santa Shop

Every year, The Peanut's school has a little "Santa Shop" for the kids so they can buy presents for mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, assorted pets...and themselves.

Today?  It is my turn to help out with the present wrapping.

Not certain I've ingested nearly enough coffee to do this justice, but I'll do my best.

Hope everyone's day is merry and bright...

World AIDS Day

For all those lost.

For all those struggling.

For all those who have lost loved ones, friends and family.  Today is World AIDS Day.

Let us all remember...in hopes that some day there will be a cure.

We must do better.

Because the children of this world deserve better than indifference or outright hostility.  May we all find true compassion, reaching out with the whole of our hearts, educating ourselves and making better decisions going forward...and may we all never have to face what AIDS orphans are living with -- through no choice of their own -- every single day of their young lives.

Most of all?  May we all find hope as we work, together, toward a cure.

One Of My Favorite Christmas Treats

Every year, our family picks out several needy kids through our local Salvation Army, and we put together stockings filled with toys, warm gloves and assorted other fun things for them. 

It's one of my very favorite things to do for Christmas. 

Today was my annual shopping day for stocking goodies, and I had a blast.

We had four children to shop for this year:  two tiny babies (so fun!), a little girl about The Peanut's age and a boy who was just a few years older.   So it was a very mixed group of shopping, but a fun one nonetheless.

I managed to find some lovely baby toys, including a few teething items that doubled as learning toys, and the most adorable hat and mitten sets -- a pink bunny one for the baby girl and a brown bear one for the baby boy.  Too cute!

Living in Harmony

(Again, for some reason, the YouTube only shows up here when you click through to the full post. Sorry about that, gang, but I cannot figure out the glitch in the HTML no matter how many times I stare at it. Weird. In any case, it is a lovely preview, and I hope you'll click thru and watch it. -- CHS)



This evening on NBC, a documentary called Harmony will be aired at 10 pm ET featuring Prince Charles and a host of environmental scientists and plain old regular folks, just like you and me, who are trying to make a difference in their own communities.

Harmony has been years in the making.  By people who have devoted their lives to making our world a better place, to teaching communities how to better use their resources without decimating their own environment so that they, and the land around them, can live together in some sort of harmony over the long run.

Too often, our considerations are only about short term gains or our own selfish profit without a thought to the cost of our decisions and behavior to anyone else.  Look where that has gotten us.

The environmental changes that have led to the need for this movie have been years in the making, bad decision after bad decision.  We see the results of this in island communities and coastal disasters, in once full fishing nets that have now gone bare and bee population collapses all across this country, and in so many other ways every day.

The question is, what will it take to wake us up to the need to make better decisions?  To be more careful and nurturing?  To preserve the beauty around us and try to make decisions that do less harm instead of not caring about the longer-term consequences of our actions?

I wish I knew the answer to that.

Voter Blues

Already this morning, I am out of my usual election day routine.  Normally, I try to get up early and then head out to vote closer to the opening of the polls so I don't have to deal with a line.

This morning?  The Peanut and I are still catching up on sleep and readjusting to the eastern time zone, so we slept in until after 9 am.  It's unusual for me, but really off kilter for her -- so I'm glad we did.

Frankly, I'm not in any real rush to vote this year anyway.

Other than a couple of races where we have people I would consider friends or good acquaintances running, most of the candidates for elected office in our area inspire a feeling of "meh, that guy is no better than the other guy, and neither of them really care about doing the work -- just getting elected."

I'm really tired of feeling that way about candidates for public office.  Aren't you?

The exception this time is a friend of ours, Mike Oliverio, who is running for Congress from WV's 1st district.  Mike's wife attended law school with us, and he's been our insurance agent since we first got married.  I've had many a political conversation with Mike -- he's more conservative than I am, but he's willing to listen to arguments, facts and policy disagreements, and really think about what you are saying -- which is more than I can say for a number of folks I know inside the Beltway these days.

The only conflict for me is that fear that by sending him to elected office in Washington, we may not be doing him any favors as a human being given the nastiness there these days.  But the alternative is a candidate I definitely do not want in DC -- lobbyists would have my district for lunch even more than they already did with Alan Mollohan, and that is saying something.

So, what's a girl to do?

Drink some more coffee, grab a quick shower, and stroll over to commit democracy with The Peanut in a little while after I've woken up.

The Furniture Move Final Tally

All that furniture that I've been helping to move?  It's finally been moved over to St. Mary's.

Huge, huge thank you to the wonderful folks at Evans Transfer who generously donated time, manpower and trucks to make this move happen.  We could not have moved all this furniture without them -- they were wonderful from start to finish.

How did we get the furniture, you ask?

Steptoe & Johnson - a local law firm that began in Clarksburg, WV, almost 100 years ago at this point -- just moved to their gorgeous new office building.  They ended up building their own office space because their old rented space was, honestly, just not working for them any longer (you can see wallpaper peeling off the walls on a couple of the floors now that the furniture is out because the internal humidity makes the glue disintegrate on those floors, just for starters).

It was a shame that it came to that, frankly, for downtown Clarksburg's sake, but given that one of the building's elevators broke down -- again -- between when we moved on Thursday and Monday morning when we came back to finish?  I can see why they needed to make a change.   

(On a personal note, it was weird walking through the empty building, having been in it so many times over the years that my husband has worked there.  Our daughter crawled down those hallways more than a few times, until she graduated to toddling and then walking/skipping them when we would go to visit daddy at the office, and he graduated from a baby lawyer upward there as well.  Ahhh, good times.  But I digress...)

Steptoe generously offered furniture from the old offices that wouldn't work in their new space to several local organizations and schools, including not only St. Mary's Elementary, but also Notre Dame High School, Heritage Christian School, the Boy Scouts, several municipalities and civic organizations, Hope Inc. (which works locally with domestic violence issues), the local YWCA, and a whole host of other groups as well.

What was St. Mary's able to get?  Here's a partial list:

- At least 10 tall metal bookshelves, single-sided, plus 1 tall wooden bookshelf.

- 6 small, two-shelf bookshelves.  Wish we'd been able to snag more of these, as they work perfectly in the Pre-K through 1st grade classrooms.  But the ones we brought to the school are lovely -- and sturdy, too, which is wonderful.

School Furniture Move, Day 2

Some days? You just need a little LaVerne and Shirley.

Here's hoping the rest of the move goes smoothly today. Everyone send non-rainy thoughts, because we got drowned like rats last week...

St. Mary's Furniture Moving, Day 1

And God said, "they'll be moving furniture into a parochial school today, I will open the heavens and a downpour will make things slow going and tedious."

And verily, it was so.

But we still managed to get half the furniture loaded into the truck and over to school before we were all too popped to fight the weather any longer. 

So there are new desks and bookshelves and assorted other goodies at the school, a few of which have yet to be assigned to any particular room.

The rest of the furniture donated by Steptoe to St. Mary's?  That will be moved over on Monday.

The movers from Evans Transfer are saints.  They were sopping wet and still carrying heavy furniture up the front steps today.  

Everyone pray for sunny weather on Monday.  For all our sakes. 

Taking Stock

After spending a little over three hours doing donation furniture inventory yesterday?  I learned a few things.

We have a "new" desk available for just about every teacher at St. Mary's.  That's exciting. 

The bookshelves for the library are lovely, sturdy and fairly easy to take apart.  But we are going to have some work configuring them into the small space that is the school library in a way that the kids will find useful and everyone else will find navigable.  

Plus, we can have our pick of about 30 or so other single-sided tall bookshelves for the classrooms and storage areas in school -- very nice indeed, but also presents a puzzle on where and how to arrange them.

Either way, though?  It's going to be very, very nice.  The library shelves are a deep forest green, and are so sturdy.  They really will last for a lifetime for the school.

Am having a moment of serious gratitude here this morning for the furniture donations from Steptoe.  This is going to make a huge difference for the school for years and years to come.

Lots Of Surprises

One of the coolest things I've discovered about Yellowstone in my research thus far?  There are native pelicans there.

You don't really think of pelicans as an inland bird, and yet there they are. 

I booked a couple of touring excursions for us while we are there -- they apparently fill up really quickly, too, and I wanted to be sure we got these.  One is a driving/walking tour of the Firehole Basin -- we'll get to see all the geysers, hot terraces, and bubbling mud pits one family could possibly dream of on this, and do so with someone who has a working knowledge of geology which is evenbetter.

The second is one I booked for myself at Mr. ReddHedd's urging:  it's a way-too-early in the morning photography "safari," which they try to keep to small numbers with an instructor who goes along to help you improve. 

Between now and then, the plan is that I'll have gotten myself a decent DSLR camera and worked on taking photos with it.  Am still looking at pros and cons of several models, but am having lots of fun with it at the moment without even having gotten a camera.

If anyone has suggestions, pros or cons, about a camera for a beginner who wants to do some nature photos, perhaps a few landscapes, maybe some decent macros, and just plain have some creative fun along the way?  Please let me know.

But today?  I have to run over to the Steptoe & Johnson old office building and spend several hours inventorying furniture that is being donated to St. Mary's (The Peanut's elementary school).