dream, dream, dream
Chilly 41° breezy NE 5 mph, feels like 38° and rain about to start toward that 100% chance of rain forecast. Not as cool as yesterday just before dawn when it was 36° momentarily and the weather lady told Linda the wind chill factor was 29°.
Whatever, it's not a bad winter so far, and for those of us who are still alive in this day at this age, Every Day Is A Beautiful Day.
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The grocery situation was different when I was a boy. Red, ripe tomatoes in season, let's see you find nice tomatoes today unless you live over near the tomato farm in Grand Ridge. Fresh fruit in season was always a treat, peaches to slice on my Post Toasties or Wheaties or Shredded Ralston or Skinners Raisin Bran, bananas now and then, nowadays fresh fruit is available year round, and year round it's not fit to eat. Pineapple? I do like seeing a fresh, whole pineapple now and then, in the old days (is that when America was Great that some want to Make it Again?) pineapple only came in a can, Dole brand in syrup, OMG was it good: some girls used to open their lunch box and pull out a pineapple sandwich - - on white bread, smear of mayonnaise, a slice of sweet Dole pineapple. When I asked for that Mama told me no, that's not a healthy lunch. So a variety, cheese sandwich, spam sandwich, pbj sandwich with smooth peanut butter and grape jelly on white bread. But always denied a pineapple sandwich. So I had one for breakfast this morning.
This is not a food blog, but food enters the picture from Time to Time. Later today: Nana's Usual Meatloaf, made with beef ground from cuttings off the Boxing Day tenderloin roast. Not lunch, only Yankees have lunch, it'll be dinner, about two o'clock this afternoon, then ice water for supper. Meatloaf: a lifelong favorite, especially what our kids used to call "Mom's Usual."
Why am I writing this stuff? Finishing my second mug of hot & black and although it's been sitting there a while, it's not the least bit gone cold.
Sometimes here in Hobbiton there's second breakfast, and today it'll be one slice of Pepperidge Farm's extra thin whole wheat bread cut in two, lightly mayonnaised, a thin double-slice of liverwurst, another lifelong favorite. These days liverwurst only seems to be available at Bill's (Grocery Outlet) and they had it at Piggly Wiggly on 15th Street corner Lisenby the last Time I was there a year or two ago.
If you don't like liverwurst, Braunschweiger, you probably don't like raw oysters either, so never mind.
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Reading: "Unsafe Passage" in the current issue of The New Yorker magazine, a man's searingly vivid account of his treatment by IDF as he and his family, with an American passport, traveled south to leave Gaza. The meanness of the IDF soldiers could turn me against Israel's cause except that last week I read an Israeli girl's report of her Time as a hostage, treated hatefully, even by the children, by an ordinary Palestinian family who were holding her. People are mean to each other and ever since My Lai it has been clear that being American makes no difference. Someone said "How does God stand us?"
Thomas Hardy would say that God long ago gave up on us and has moved on. IDK.
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Going back this morning to read "Crown Heights, North" the fiction piece. That I usually read The New Yorker fiction makes me wonder about myself. So often noir, leaves me thinking What the hell? Is the author under psychiatric care? What about me, reading this stuff: should I check myself in?
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Online reads this morning, Anu Garg's word-a-day, Pneumatology. Genesis 1:2 in the LXX says πνεῦμα θεοῦ, the pneuma of God moved -> spirit, wind, breath. For some Christians, and I liked to show the folks in my Sunday school classes, those first passages of Genesis introduce the idea of the Trinity. God (Father) creates. Pneuma the Spirit moves. God says (which Gospel John calls Logos, Word, enfleshed in Jesus). Passing thought stirred by Anu Garg this morning.
Liked best, Anu Garg's thought for today, which ties both to my favorite Robert Frost poem and to my being charmed by "Before the coffee gets cold" and it's magical possibilities about traveling back in Time.
A THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
Still round the corner there may wait, / a new road or a secret gate. -J.R.R. Tolkien, novelist and philologist (3 Jan 1892-1973)
JRR Tolkien: I loved his fantasy fiction, taught his Hobbit and Lord of the Rings stories one year at Holy Nativity, with Middle School students. Why? Because the love commandment of God the Son is to be found there if you keep watch and I tried to exercise them in keeping watch! Did you know that you can love a classroom of students as much as if they were your own grandchildren? BTDT!! A highlight of my life, being there, teaching there, the students, the other teachers, a strong sense of ownership in the old Cove School building. Would I go back? Don't need to, All I have to do is dream.
RSF&PTL
T88&c