Monday, November 21, 2016

Apologies to Susan Stamberg - My Cranberry Sauce is Simpler

I wonder if Susan Stamberg's colleagues at National Public Radio ever get tired of hearing about her mother-in-law's cranberry relish every Thanksgiving. I guess it's a charming annual tradition: "Here comes dear old Aunt Susan again, insisting that everyone try her cranberry relish ..." It's probably pretty good, but even if it's not, you say it is because you don't want to hurt her feelings.

I have my own traditional way of serving cranberries at Thanksgiving.

Cranberry sauce. Chilled, right out of the can. No fuss, no muss. No pickled anything. If you want to put some effort into it, you can cut the perfect can shaped masterpiece into ready-to-serve slices.

People like it. I've never had any complaints.

Martha Stewart would not enjoy Thanksgiving at our house. If the table is set ahead of time, chances are a cat will lounge among the plates and flatware before the guests arrive. The hosts are generally dressed casually, in shorts if the weather is nice. The paper napkins are not folded into the shape of anything. The tablecloth is usually a little wrinkled, unless Clyde is inspired to iron it, which I don't encourage. The plates don't all match. The food is served in kind of a free-for-all, a combination of pass around and buffet, depending on the crowd, the food, and the space. Sometimes, guests have to get up to refill their own beverages. In terms of formal manners, it's pretty ugly. The pies, which come from Village Inn (they are not made at home), are topped with Cool Whip instead of whipped cream. Dessert is a strictly serve yourself affair.

We do have some standards. Football is not allowed on the television in the main room. Guests are encouraged to go to another room if they must watch.

It sounds like Thanksgiving at our house is kind of a bummer. It's not. Most of the guests enjoy coming back year after year. It's laid back. The conversation is good. We laugh a lot. Usually, we agree politically, which will come in especially handy this year. No one expects a formal black tie affair.

Years ago, I tried hard to impress when I hosted Thanksgiving. In particular, I tried to make fancy stuffing. One year I made special apple stuffing which didn't go over very well. Another time, I got a fairly ok cornbread stuffing recipe off the Internet. One year I made one with wine that smelled up the house for days. Then, for a few years, my sister-in-law tried. She got stuffing recipes out of Bon Appetite magazine. One made with rosemary was pretty good.

Until one year after dinner, someone yawned, "You know, I like Stove Top just as well as any stuffing I've ever had." Around the room, sleepily digesting, everyone agreed.

Years of research and anxiety over recipes went out the window. Why had I bothered?

The next Thanksgiving, in addition to my special way of preparing the cranberry portion of the meal, I began a whole new tradition of making stuffing for the family: several boxes of Stove Top. Just add water and a little butter, right at the last minute. They gobble it up.

Thanksgiving is not about fancy recipes. It's not about impressing guests or good china or which fork you're supposed to use. It's about having a good time and enjoying food with people you love. Even if it comes from a box or a can.

Saturday, November 12, 2016

The Four Other Stages of Grief

I, like many of you, am grieving about the shocking and horrifying election of Donald Trump to the U.S. Presidency on a wave of populism fueled in large part by racism, sexism, and anti-immigration.

I believe it is necessary to grieve now in order to properly respond to the challenges of the next few years.

What is often not understood about the five stages of grief, first written about by Elizabeth Kubler Ross, is that they don't always occur one at a time or in linear fashion. Often, they overlap or occur intermittently. I've already covered denial in a previous BillsWeek entry. Now, I thought I'd hammer out some thoughts about the other stages. Sharing in this way helps me cope with my own grieving. Plus, I'm not sleeping and I have nothing better to do right now.

For the record, what I say here reflects either my own thinking or something I've overheard from others. These reflections don't necessarily reflect my exact point of view. Or maybe they do.

Bargaining
  • The people who elected him aren't really racist (sexist, etc.). They were voting for Trump for some other reason.
  • He was polite to President Obama when he visited the White House. Maybe he's not so bad after all. Let's give him a chance.
  • He did hold up that rainbow flag that one time (even though it was upside down).
  • Maybe his stupidity (and/or other shortcomings) will render his presidency ineffective. Perhaps if we give him enough rope, he'll hang himself. 
  • Since he was so slippery and flip floppy on issues during the campaign, perhaps he isn't as conservative as we fear. Maybe he only acted that way to get elected.
  • He was once a Democrat and a friend of the Clintons. Maybe he's a liberal in disguise. 
  • Let's just be really nice to our racist neighbors and try to get along with everyone. 
  • Ok, we don't have to be anti-gun. Let's just be "pro-gun safety."
Hmmm. I see why this one usually comes right after denial.

Anger

  • If you voted for Trump, explain to your Black/ Muslim/ Immigrant/ LGBT neighbor/ coworker/ friend/ family member why they don't matter to you.
  • Since our citizenship and civil rights are under fire, can you be surprised that we are questioning our patriotism?
  • How can you come to my home, have friendly conversation with my boyfriend, attend my wedding, and still vote for Donald Trump? Don't you know what I have to lose? Don't you know what the stakes are? Don't you really care about me at all?
  • Be alert for that "Kristallnacht" event to happen when the KKK and other thugs start destroying the property and lives of minorities, first without consequences, and then with the endorsement and support of the government. Think it can't happen? It was less than a century ago in a first world country called Germany...

 When you think about it, anger is really just fear turned inside out. It's what has motivated the other side to become so hateful. Fear is what fuels bigotry. It's why a great Presbyterian minister, Jane Spahr, once said, we must love them through their fear. Easier said than done.

Depression

  • Can we just go to bed and wait until this is all over?
  • Isolation: no talking to friends, no allowing for the comfort of company. Being alone seems less painful, somehow, even though it probably isn't.
  • Music might help. Where are those old Peter, Paul, and Mary recordings?
  • Depression is the scary one for some of us who have suffered from the chronic, clinical disease of the same name. We fear that if we give into this one, we'll be stuck in it and unable to get out. To us, depression looks like a long, dark, sucking tunnel that pulls you in when you haven't the strength to fight it. It gets all mixed up with the normal, circumstantial depression that happens to everyone when some terrible, external event happens.

Acceptance

  • I don't accept this. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are not acceptable norms.
  • I don't accept that the U.S.A. is over.
  • We can only clearly see what's behind us. What is in front of us can only be estimated at best, and that is often informed by fear. Think of how frightened people were at other times in history when our national life felt threatened and the future was seriously in question: the Cuban missile crisis, Watergate, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and 9/11, just to name a few. Remember how frightened we were, and how shocked. At times we were despondent and hopeless. We always came through it. We always had a response, sometimes a questionable and debatable response, but we did respond. We never just rolled over and let it get to us. We're Americans, goddamnit!
  • I do accept Elizabeth Warren's challenge to get involved; to volunteer, to connect with others, to add my voice to others' voices so that we are heard.
  • I accept that every couple of years we get to elect new representatives. Look out bitches, mid-terms are only two years away.

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

Denial is a Good Stage

Crawling out of bed this morning felt like climbing out of ashen ruins after the apocalypse. The extra dose of Seroquel I took helped me sleep after the nightmarish election returns, but didn't make getting up in a strange new world any easier.

The world initially didn't look any different. The cats needed feeding. The coffee needed making. The dishwasher, having been run overnight, needed emptying. I didn't want to shave, but I did. Clyde woke up by himself today so I didn't have to wake him.

We eventually got around to turning on the TV just to make sure it wasn't all a bad dream. It wasn't. Trump was elected, oh my god, I can't even say it.

The world was looking a little different after all.

Like many others, I live in a bubble of like-minded people. Almost everyone I know - friends and family, people I like and hang out with, have the same political views. I read and listen to news that reinforces what I already think and believe. So it's not a surprise when I say that I really don't know very many people that voted for Donald Trump; just a few people at work and on Facebook. In fact, the state I live in (Colorado) didn't go to him in the electoral collage. I have that thread to hold on to. So I simply can't wrap my head around how this disaster happened.

And I'm not even close to ready to contemplate the implications of a republican house and senate (no, I don't intend to capitalize those words for the next four years at least).

I'm still stunned and in shock. I haven't yet declared myself "no longer American," like some others I'm reading about. My extended family is hatching a pretty serious sounding plan to move to Canada. Even though it's guaranteed to be warmer up there in the future (thanks to runaway climate change), I'm not quite yet ready to go. I'm still waiting for it all to sink in.

I'm sure that later I'll be enraged. I'm sure that I'll be terrified. Later. I'm sure I'll be sad. Hopefully at some point in the future I'll be motivated towards activism, but that's not happening yet.

I think this is the denial stage. It's a good stage. This is the stage where you go on doing things which keep you going. So I eat, I work, I feed the cats. If not for denial, I couldn't function at all. I'd just curl up in a ball and not move. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.