Turkey Day 2019

Once, back in the day, I cooked meals. When I say meals, I don’t mean the kind of meal your grandmother would have made. Nor do I mean the kind of meal that one would expect to be served in a restaurant. Instead, I mean meals like a BLT or a tuna salad sandwich (using whole wheat bread so that it’s healthy). Sometimes I would eat something from a frozen box—something completely unidentifiable without the picture on the box. Sometimes I would open a can—but I already mentioned tuna.

In recent years my meals have devolved into things even less enjoyable. I might eat nothing all day and then fix myself a PBJ sandwich. Unless I don’t have jelly or jam, in which case I’ll spread peanut butter on bread. Unless I don’t have bread, in which case a jar of peanut butter and a spoon will suffice.

Lately, I’ve begun to cook frozen fish fillets in a toaster oven. The cooking directions are simple: 1) preheat oven to its maximum temperature, 2) place frozen fish on oven rack, 3) turn off heat when thick smoke pours from cracks around the oven door. The fish is now done, but wait a few more minutes unless you want your room to be filled with the aforementioned smoke.

In cooking, I guess I take after my mother in her later years. Allow me to illustrate what I mean with a brief anecdote.

One weekend I drove to my mother’s home to visit her. Soon after I entered the house, I noticed Mom’s microwave oven was missing.

Me: “Mom, where is your microwave oven?”

Mom: “In the backyard.”

Me: “Why is it in the backyard?”

Mom: “Firemen put it there.”

Me: “Why did firemen put your oven in the backyard?”

Mom: “It was on fire.”

I can’t deny the logic of her answer, but it begged more questions. I went to the backyard and examined the oven. The “turntable” (that round glass platter that rotates the food) had small shards of a hard, white substance fused into it. I’m guessing the shards were remnants of a ceramic pot that had become so hot it fused with the turntable. I can only speculate as to how that happened. Perhaps Mom put food in the oven and punched in 99 hours. Nor can I guess what manner of component created the smoke but, amazingly, the oven still worked. I gave it away.

My own cooking failures tend to be smaller. For example, on at least two occasions I’ve succeeded in filling the house with smoke by using the toaster to convert a slice of bread into a glowing ember the size of a Ritz cracker. Upon witnessing these disasters, my oven committed suicide in a fiery burst of electric glory. It was a sight to behold.

When I’m not burning something on the stove or in the oven, I’m burning myself with a splash of hot grease. I need one of those fireproof suits that racecar drivers wear.

“Hey VW, are you going to Nascar?”

“No, I’m going to the kitchen.”

For the sake of neighborhood safety, I was planning to forego cooking on this Thanksgiving day. Then my pal Butch invited me to have Thanksgiving dinner with him and his family. And I did. I was very glad I did.

Butch and his daughter Paula prepared the food. And, hand to heaven, the food was incredible … amazing … delicious. I stuffed myself enough for two people, and then Paula fixed me a take-home plate and I stuffed myself again the next day. I probably put on 10 pounds but who cares? There are only so many meals that good in a lifetime! And I’m not saying that because I know Butch and Paula are going to read this. I’m saying it because I want Paula to begin selling meal tickets for her home-cooked meals.

“What do you say, Paula, can I get two meal tickets? One meal for here and one to go!”

Because dinner isn’t enough. A person has to have a bedtime snack.

Tragedy Redux

Everyone has heard the story. A man on a cruise ship became momentarily distracted, and while he was distracted, his granddaughter crawled through an open window and fell to her death. Now the man—the grandfather—has been arrested and charged with negligent homicide. I suspect this is less about punishing the man and more about deflecting legal consequences for the cruise line. I’m sure there is plenty of guilt and remorse to go around. The cruise line should have done this thing; the grandfather should have done that thing. Blame is easy to pass around.

I felt a need to write something about the incident. And then I realized I had already written about it. The following text is from an essay I wrote on June 20, 2001, for a website I had then. I re-published it on this blog on June 20, 2011. I think it’s time for us to read it again. The title of the original essay is Tragedy in L.A. Hence the name of this essay: Tragedy Redux.

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June 20, 2001

As I write this, the TV news is telling the world about the death by drowning of a small child who was attending a pool party in Los Angeles. For a few minutes, at least, no one was watching the child. A few minutes is all it takes for a child to lose his life. Certainly, the death of a small child is a tragedy, and my heart goes out to the parents of that child. Yet it seems to me we are forgetting something important, or perhaps we are denying something important.  We are forgetting that we all are only imperfect human beings and not failsafe robots programmed for perfect operation. We are forgetting, too, that death is a part of life.

Our existence on Earth is brief and transitory. We are born, we live, we die. While we live, we know joy and we know pain.  Life is precarious. Our 21st century culture seeks to banish death, seeks to blame death on someone so that we can punish that someone. But children cannot be watched 24 - 7, and life has risks. Sometimes a tragedy is no one's fault. Sometimes a tragedy is just a tragedy, the result of a confluence of events we could not control.

There was a time when a family stricken by cruel fate would seek out their spiritual advisor or find solace with family and friends. That time may now be a relic of the past. The parents of this child say they are consulting their attorney. Now, when one of life's tragedies overtakes us, our first thought, too often, is to find someone to blame, someone to sue, someone to punish. Our pain can cause us to strike out at others we perceive to be at fault, and we may not pause to consider that those others may be going through their own private suffering and regret.

Sometimes, of course, there really is someone to blame. Sometimes it really is appropriate to take someone to court. Sometimes. But all the laws and lawyers in the world will not eliminate the pain and suffering caused by life's accidents. That is the nature of our existence. Accepting this simple reality furthers healing; denying it, seeking someone or something to blame, delays healing and prolongs grief. For in denial, we are saying that accidents should not happen. We are saying that our world can and should be a risk-free world. And that means we are denying our reality and opting to live, instead, in a world that can never be.

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Addendum

So how do I, the author of this snippet of wisdom, think this case should be handled?

I don’t have all the facts. But from what has been in the news, I would not charge the grandfather with homicide. A charge of homicide seems like piling tragedy onto tragedy.

In the news recently: a woman didn’t feed her baby and it starved to death. That’s negligent homicide. A man put a loaded gun on a table, and a toddler picked up the gun and shot and killed someone. That’s negligent homicide. But turning your head for a few seconds should not be a crime. As I said, humans are not failsafe robots. In fact, not even real robots are failsafe robots. A man looked away for a moment and within seconds tragedy struck. No one intended it—not the grandfather and not the cruise line. Where is it written that life has to be fair? Cars crash and planes crash, even when their human operators are doing their very best to be safe. That’s the nature of our reality, and it always will be.

The Cold Creeps Closer

At 8AM the sky is gray and the temperature is 54°F.

At 11AM the temperature is 44° and a cold rain is falling. Despite the cold temperature and gray skies, I like this weather—I think because it gives me an excuse to be lazy and stay inside the house and basically do nothing. And blogging fits into the category of doing nothing.

By 1 PM the temperature is 35° and snow is falling. Tonight the temperature will hit 24°. Tomorrow’s high will be 40° and tomorrow night will dip to 20°. A cold front is inching closer to my humble burg. But no worries; I have a storage tank filled with decomposed dinosaurs and a boiler to burn them in. Life is good.

My cousin-in-law who lives in Florida tells me the temperature in her city is 83°. That’s nice weather, but nice weather all the time gets boring. I have a friend in Costa Rica and his weather is also nice. It’s always nice. Sometimes they have rain, and sometimes they have a thunderstorm. But mostly, the weather is nice. Nice yesterday. Nice today. Nice tomorrow. Nice next week. Nice next month. Nice, nice, nice—until the end of time. Y-a-w-n.

My Jeep has 4-wheel drive. Before I bought my Jeep, my Subaru had 4-wheel drive. Why? Because in central and western Virginia the nice weather is sometimes interrupted by very un-nice weather. Snow. Sleet. Icy streets and parking lots that haven’t seen a snowplow. I had my experiences with that.

At 3 PM the snow stopped falling. The temperature did not. The little taste of winter we got this afternoon may be around for a while.

Oh, regarding yesterday’s post: I have a new system for cooking battered frozen fish in my toaster oven. First, make sure you have a fire extinguisher handy. It must be a CO₂ extinguisher, not one of those baking soda things. Preheat toaster oven for 6 minutes. Place frozen fish fillet on oven rack, with drip tray below it. After 10 or 12 minutes begin watching oven closely. When flames begin shooting off fish, turn oven off, open oven door, and use the fire extinguisher to extinguish said flames. The fish is now perfectly cooked, and the oven is now preheated properly for cooking frozen french fries. One more thing: follow my instructions at your own risk.

The Frozen Fish Factor

If you read this blog on a regular basis, you’ll know the author is not a cook.

Nevertheless—

I put a frozen, battered haddock fillet into my toaster-oven. The instructions on the box said to cook it in a preheated 450° oven for 25 minutes. After preheating the oven, I put the fillet on the oven rack and placed the drip tray below it and began waiting. After only 14 minutes (11 cooking minutes remaining) I looked at the oven and saw smoke pouring out of it. I turned off the oven. I was sure the fillet was burnt black. But when the smoke died down, I removed the fillet from the oven and it was cooked perfectly. The batter was brown and crisp and the fillet was fully cooked and not overcooked. It was quite tasty. So what happened to make the smoke?

Fish oil had dripped from the haddock into the drip tray and, because the heating elements are below the drip tray, the oil had burned onto the tray. I tried to scrub off the residue but succeeded only in turning my dish sponge black. I threw it into the kitchen trash can. (The sponge, not the tray.)

Next time I’ll set the timer for, maybe, 12 minutes instead of 25. And I’ll keep a close eye on it. And I’ll line the drip tray with aluminum foil. I could order replacements for the drip tray and oven rack, except Sears no longer sells parts for that oven. Of course they don’t, and we all know why. They don’t want you to fix your product; they want to sell you a new product.

But wait. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so quick to mock Sears. Surely I’m just being a cynical American consumer. No doubt Sears has a perfectly legitimate reason why they can’t sell a couple of simple parts.

Now that’s called mockery.

The Meaning of Life

What is Life?

Some call it “chopping wood and carrying water.”

Your job—your vocation—is only a way to give structure to your life, nothing more. It’s like a framework, a stage prop. You may be a stockbroker or you may be a janitor. When you die, the Creator will not be impressed by how many cars you own or whether they have leather upholstery. The Creator cares about whether you treated your fellow travelers with love and compassion.

How you treat others is the most important thing about your life.
  
Your life on Earth is a visit.

It’s only a temporary visit, you know.

It’s like a trip to the beach. You go there, you test the water and, if it’s nice, you stay in for a while. You explore. You visit the fishing pier. You go to a seafood restaurant. You enjoy the sights, the smell of the ocean. But in the back of your mind you know you’re there for a week. After that week is up, you’ll go home.

Your trip here is like that. I mean your visit to physical reality. It’s temporary. One day you’ll return to your true home. Your legacy—the only legacy you can have—will be the love and compassion you leave behind.

Lowest of the Low

In the news, the spacecraft called “Voyager 2” has left the solar system. Voyager 1 (which was launched after Voyager 2—go figure) left the solar system seven years ago.

Frankly, I don’t blame them. I’d leave this solar system, too, if I had a way. Just reading news headlines is enough to make me want to leave. Maybe I could be frozen solid as a brick and shot into the chill of eternity. It would cost me many millions of dollars and I’d probably have to sell my coin collection, but it would be worth it.

I can’t believe, or understand, the craziness in the world today. It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when good conquered evil. But, like a weed, evil bounces back. Unless it is constantly fought, it flourishes. Why?

The foot-soldiers of evil rarely reap its rewards, unless perpetrating evil is its own reward. Whoever killed those 8 month old twin babies in Mexico must feel like a real man. (Sarcasm intended.)

“Look at me—I’m a tough guy. I murder babies.”

“No, I’m tougher—I murder unarmed women with their hands in the air.”

And what kind of monsters torture a young aid worker, pull out her fingernails, rape her, and murder her? Calling them monsters is an insult to monsters.

It’s a race to the bottom to see who can be the lowest of the low. It’s a contest in which the biggest loser somehow thinks he’s won. One day they will die, too—perhaps in an ambush or a gang execution. But in this life or another, justice will prevail. The universe always balances.

Programmed

We think we have free will, but we don’t. We are the product of programming by our families and friends, who shape our lives and thoughts in ways of which we are usually unaware. It happens in childhood, and by the time we are adults we are programmed in ways from which most of us never depart.

Religion is an example of programming. Christian parents have Christian children. Muslim parents have Muslim children. Hindu parents have Hindu children. And so on. Coincidence? No, just programming.

Politics is an example of programming. Conservative parents have conservative children. Liberal parents have liberal children. I’ve seen it repeatedly among friends and family. Parents pass their values and perspectives to their children and their children rarely question or examine those values and perspectives.

I was programmed to be conservative, and in my younger days I was conservative. But I moved away from the influence of others. As years passed, I saw other perspectives and reflected on them. Now I consider myself a liberal—a person having liberal values—though I’m not a “leftist”, which is different. (I have observed that many people seem to misunderstand what liberal values are, so I wrote an article about the subject. Read it here.)

While all of us have been programmed to some extent, we also have the ability to reprogram ourselves. We can change; we can evolve. The world is not black and white. It is, rather, many shades of gray. Understanding requires empathy—the ability to imagine ourselves in someone else’s shoes, the ability to see those shades of gray, to understand both sides of a dilemma and perhaps to find the higher path. Eliminating our programming is our lifetime goal. It doesn’t happen in one lifetime.

Just Another Day

The day is sunny and warm, so I walk down the street to visit a friend. An hour or so later I return to my house and I notice the curb in front of my house is wet. As I come closer, I notice the cover to the water meter has water standing on it. I go to my garage and get my curb key and lift the lid off the meter box. The meter box is full of water.

I go into my house and phone the city. A woman answers.

Me: “I have a problem with my water meter and I need to speak to someone in Utilities.”

She: “Are you having a problem with your water meter?”

And so it goes. But in the end someone from Utilities comes to my house and fixes the problem.

I decide to make a large glass of lemonade. I open the freezer door to retrieve ice cubes, and the door snags a box of raisin bran flakes sitting atop the fridge, and the box tumbles to the floor, depositing most of its contents into a brown heap on the kitchen floor. I look at the bran flakes and think, “This is not good.”

I get out the vacuum cleaner and begin suctioning bran flakes and raisins off the floor. Before I can finish, the vacuum cleaner loses suction. I have not vacuumed up enough flakes to fill the bag, so I am somewhat disconcerted. What happened to the suction?

The vacuum cleaner wand comes in two parts that fit together. I pull the two parts of the wand apart and a large shower of bran flakes (along with the aforementioned raisins) spills out of the wand and onto the floor. Bran flakes scatter everywhere. Now I know what happened to the suction.

In the midst of these events I become aware that I have misplaced my cell phone. I don’t know where it is, but I know it’s in the house. I’ll find it.

And so another day grinds it’s way into oblivion. A day peppered with little problems. Some people have huge problems. I’m thankful that my problems today are so small and so—ordinary.