When I was a kid, mold was a bad thing.
Not a white rind on cheese
Not a blue vein, but a bad thing.
The slab of bacon leans against
the side of the fridge
white and blue flecked with gray
not a bad thing, just mold-covered.
Like cheese. I paid too much for it.
So I'll eat it, risking stomach cancer
rather than throw it out.
Mold is not a bad thing.
Osama bin Laden was a person who is hard not to demonize. He may well have deserved to die the way he did. He started a terrorist enterprise that has killed thousands of people, most of them Muslim. For him, the ends always justified the means. He's a great example of the danger of religious belief running amok.
But we hardly knew this man, and we shall never know any more of his story, because he can't tell it. While President Obama can claim that justice has been done, I'm not so sure, because the case has not been proven for this "justice" killing. I hope that the case is made, a speaker for the dead, for bin Laden and the people his actions killed. The pre-meditated killing of Osama bin Laden appears a lot like murder, even though he pretty much deserved what he got.
Rejoicing? Dancing in the streets? Jubilation? I am troubled by that reaction to his death. Bin Laden's death brings none of his victims back to life. It fills no empty space at the dinner table. It fills no lonely arms. His death is not something to celebrate, maybe something to thoughtfully consider, to mull, to tease out details of a life we hardly knew, and the lives of those who are lost to us now. But please, no rejoicing.
I just finished working up my taxes for this year. Every year, I dread reporting my taxes. I want to start my own tea party revolution about taxes, and in the meantime, soothe my churning bowels.
I don't mind paying taxes. In fact, paying taxes is a civic duty, and much good comes from all of us voluntarily paying and reporting our taxes. What gets my goat, though, is the weighty burden that figuring out and reporting taxes entails. Uncle Sam depends on us voluntarily reporting and paying our taxes, but the tax code is so difficult for the average taxpayer, and the forms are so arcane, and the language is so steeped with accounting and legal language that citizens are almost forced to use professional help for fear of mis-reporting their taxes. I deeply resent having to pay a professional to figure out how much I have to pay the government.
The tax code is long overdue for an overhaul. I think such an overhaul should follow a few simple principles:
I'm sure the Republicans will want this proposal to be revenue neutral. Okay. I'm sure the Democrats will want the burden to be equitable. Okay. I just want it to be simple. And I'd like that in time for my 2011 taxes. Meanwhile, my bowels are acting up. Gotta run.
I'm part of a dining group that has potlucks around a theme. I've written about some of those dinners in this blog. The next dinner's theme is German. I have in my head a notion about German food, so I was delighted when the host wanted to sample German culinary culture around the world - including Pennsylvania and East Texas.
My own family has German roots. My Stepmom's father was born in Germany. Until I started thinking about this meal theme, I didn't think that German had too much to do with the way I ate as a child and growing up. I'm changing my mind. My grandfather was a farmer in and Colorado. He always had a large garden and a root cellar. My grandmother raised chickens. I'm pretty sure they raised some pigs, too. Grandpa liked his sauerkraut. Grandma sometimes made him spaetzle, but more often chicken soup with biscuit dumplings.
I think underneath the food I grew up with was this Germanic theme that emphasized meat, root vegetables, and garden vegetables. We often baked our own bread and desserts. We rarely purchased prepared foods or ate out very much. The food was hearty and perhaps heavy, and often overdone.
So along comes this German-themed dinner. I decided to pick a place that was not Germany, but German-influenced. I also wanted to prepare a homey dish. I settled on a dish from the Alto-Adige region in Italy, Speck Knödel. It's a bread dumpling (as opposed to a biscuit dough or noodle dumpling) that uses Speck, a cured and smoked bacon imported from Alto-Adige.
Speck is hard to find in the greater Washington, DC area. I finally procured a (large) quantity from Antico Mercante in Atlanta, Georgia. It's a slab of bacon, and it has a subtle, smoked taste to it. I've been eating too much of it. It makes the Speck Knödel into a wonderful dish.
Of course, I get to experiment on Ron. I made this dish this weekend, and it tasted really good. I've had bread dumplings before, and they are often heavy. These were not. My Mother made a bread dressing and stuffing when I was growing up, and these dumplings taste a lot like that dressing. I think it's interesting how the form of food changes as it moves from place to place. Do noodles become spaetzle, then bread dumplings, and finally dressing? Maybe not, except that there remains a commonality of taste and ingredients. It's been a lot of fun exploring some (perhaps stretched) cultural culinary connections.
It's not gay marriage or same-sex marriage. It's marriage. It's not a different kind of marriage. It's not about being lesbian or gay or straight. It's simply about marriage. That's all that it's about. Marriage.
I'm deeply disappointed that the House of Delegates did not pass the Civil Marriage Protection Act, but instead sent the bill back to committee. The delegates took their action because of the religious prejudice of some of the delegates, and because of the religious prejudice that many constituents have about homosexuality. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, "Religious bigotry makes bad public policy."
I resent that this whole topic is even up for discussion. Marriage is a basic human right - a right to form and nurture a family. I am angry that legislators, responding to a religious proscription that is 5,000 years old, would deny me my civil right to marriage. These same legislators wear linen/wool blends, but they certainly don't act on that ancient religious proscription.
Religious bigotry is insidious for several reasons. First of all, it's a useful cover in the United States, because our society has an extremely high regard for "Judeo-Christian" beliefs and practices. Secondly, this kind of bigotry is highly selective in the kinds of proscriptions it professes to be God's will. It used to be that slavery was God's will. Today, it is God's will that gay and lesbian people cannot marry. In America, if you can wrap your rhetoric in the Bible, then wrap it in the flag, you're well on your way.
Okay, I'll calm down some. But I ask the members in the House of Delegates, how would my marriage undermine marriage? If any of those delegates who voted to recommit the bill are divorced, or have committed adultery, I submit they are truly undermining marriage, and maybe they should re-examine their stance on the Civil Marriage Protection Act.
I'll miss Stanley. Oh, he wasn't a close friend, or anything like that, but I'll miss him, nevertheless, much as God misses any of His Creation. I mean, I don't have to know his intimate life (although I do) to appreciate the fact that Stanley, well, Stanley was quite a piece of work, and a hard worker, too.
I've got to keep better track of things. I didn't see it coming, and I should have, because that's my job. I suppose I could have prevented his death, it was untimely. According to my charts, Stanley was supposed to clock in another twenty-two years, four months, and eighteen days. I did not anticipate that flying lunch box. Normally, air resistance would have slowed it down so that it would have dented Stanley's head, but it wouldn't have been fatal. Alas, it contained one too many cans of sardines, and it fell, unimpeded down those eighty-seven stories.
No, I don't take the blame for Stanley's passing. I don't engineer events. I just let them happen. I'm not a personal God, because that would make me a personal servant. I don't make coffee for anyone else. And Stanley was walking when the lunch box impacted his cranium. He was one of my best thinkers: clear sighted, energetic, calling out Obama and the homosexual agenda, defending my values. I adored what he did, although I thought he was a bit stuffy and overly combative.
Stanley was right about one thing. Homosexuals getting married is really going to upset the applecart. It's so sad that he stepped in front of that bus trying to avoid that gay skateboarder bearing down on him. I mean, I knew that the skateboarder was packing fudge, but Stanley only knew that theoretically. Stanley was plastered up against the windshield like a giant locust from Utah. His colleagues at the Hudson Institute (of which Dr. Kurtz was an associate fellow) will miss him terribly. The skateboarder was unhurt, but ticketed for feckless behavior.
If I had hands, I would wring them. I once had hands, and I did wring them, and it caused lots of problems. To put it simply, the unexpected expansion of the universe shortly after The Big Bang was caused by a lot of my hand wringing. Or maybe it was the blink of an eye. I forget. Fifteen billion years doesn't seem like a lot of time, but there is so much to remember, and frankly my memory is not that good. I would wring my hands over the demise of Stanley Kurtz. He was that good.
Yes, he was walking his dog, Swoosie (that was his little joke for being saddled with his last name: he really didn't like it that much), when the dachshund leaped after a squirrel, and Stanley slipped on a banana peel. How life mimics art! His left leg came up over his chest and wrenched his buttocks into an airborne state. The cheery whistle on his lips morphed into a rictus grin of prescient doom. Clearly, Stanley knew that his number was up. Felled by a banana peel. This is an end of Biblical proportions. I didn't plan it this way at all. Stanley crumpled on the street, only to be run over by a charging garbage truck. Because I'm God, I don't believe in luck. Fate is another, different thing, though.
Like Stanley, I don't particularly like homosexuals mocking me. They pretend that when they marry each other, it's all going to settle the matter. I sent them Fred Phelps. I sent them Pat Robertson. I sent them Stanley Kurtz. I even sent them Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith, Jr. I stripped them of their dignity. I had thugs beat and murder them. I turned my back on them, even the ones I loved (Caravaggio's angels come to mind). And what do they do? They want to get married. Can you imagine that? They want to get married!
Stanley would have none of it. He was a great statistician, which is to say, he was no statistician at all. He knew how to make numbers lie so that hateful pols and smarmy media commentators could make blood libel (truly, those Americans really do like to kill homosexuals) about part of my imperfect creation, something that I was a little disturbed about, too. Stanley knew, and I fully agree, because I am God, that homosexuals threaten marriage. I'm not sure why they threaten marriage, that was up to Stanley to figure out. So he lied about it.
My creation started out better than this, and the six thousand years or so (yeah, I know I cooked the fossil record, too) turned out pretty well. The earth had a certain bloody order (if not the universe). But it's gotten out of whack. The Madonna isn't a virgin anymore. Jesus is a Mexican baseball player. And Modern Family is the most popular television show in America. I gave them Sarah Palin, but they are watching Glee. And now, Stanley is gone. I weep, but enough of that. You don't want to see me weep. It messes up the atmosphere.
So Stanley died at his desk. He was reading M.V. Lee Badgett's book, When Gay People Get Married. His hippocampus suffered a proto-molecular quantum wave collapse. He never recovered. Dead as a door nail. Stanley Kurtz is dead.
We arrived here yesterday around 2 p.m. Ron's bag wouldn't fit in an overhead bin, so it got checked, which meant baggage claim. (Fortunately, he was not charged for the checked bag.) This is tourist season, and the shuttle ride to the rental car center was crammed full. It was a harbinger of things to come.
I had reserved a car with Thrifty. When I made the reservation, I had forgotten to change the default pickup and return times. When I went back to the web site to change the times, the cost of the rental went up $80. Ron printed out both confirmation letters and took them with us. We were able to get the original contract price, then when we went to add Ron to the contract, the woman helping us had already printed out the contract, so she just added him gratis. It certainly makes me a loyal Thrifty customer!
We headed out of the airport to our guest house, the Alcazar Resort. The staff here is very friendly. It's clean and neat, and just a little spartan, two pools, and a hot tub. It's very comfortable.
As soon as we got settled in, we headed (walking) for the beach. We found a cafe and had a pizza. I finished it all off with some ice cream. We walked up and down A1A for a couple of hours. There are a lot of us tourists in town, and an abundance of gay men, too. For dinner, we went out to the Casablanca Cafe. We had a great meal, Ron eating about half his entree (I ate an additional quarter), and I had mussels in a cream sauce.
Evening found us in the hot tub back at the Worthington (the Alcazar's sister (brother?) resort. We stayed there for an hour and a half. My backache was gone this morning. My arm felt 100% better. It must be something in the water.
Today we got up late for breakfast. Then I caught up on email this morning, and laid out in the sun for a while. We took a long walk before lunch, walking up on Sunrise Avenue. We ended up eating lunch at The Deck. We had quite a character for a waiter. He made some recommendations that we followed, and we were quite happy with the result, a seafood salad (and I had a side of potato salad). After lunch we walked down to the gay beach. It is exactly one block wide. It's this invisible line in the sand that quite visibly separates gay and straight. I know where I'm going to be tomorrow.
The afternoon saw more time at the pool, then a nap, then dinner. We went to Il Mulino, an old-style Italian restaurant, and another delicious meal. We've decided we're probably not going to lose a lot of weight on this vacation.
O Spiderman of sticky web
How did you end up in my bed?
I dreamed of this, you know, quite wet
Revealing that you're not quite het.
No Mary Jane could turn your head:
instead a fag in spandex skin,
A circumstance I revel in,
A situation, queer, indeed.
I can't believe your hairless chest
is getting my attention best.
I dreamed of this, a spider's nest
of comfy love togetherness.
A tighty white across my pecs,
You, Spiderman, made quite a mess!
I heard a disturbing news story about home foreclosures on NPR this morning. In Nevada, one in four of all foreclosures were owners walking away from their mortgage payments. The article reported that the stigma that used to be attached to foreclosure simply isn't what it used to be.
The news story reported that homeowners with a mortgage are frustrated with the bailed-out banks, and that homeowners haven't yet received their bailout. Bankers seem to be pretty unpopular among the indebted set. The government assistance programs to troubled homeowners are too cumbersome, and are not helping to relieve their debt load. So the homeowners take a walk, even those who can afford their mortgage, they take a walk.
Human nature strives mightily to rationalize behavior in ethical or moral ways. When we have moral lapses, we look for excuses to explain why bad behavior isn't so bad. Sometimes, foreclosure is necessary. Sometimes the debt is too much, and circumstances make it impossible for homeowners to pay on their mortgage. Certainly, loss of a job, major illness, divorce may make it impossible to pay the mortgage. Are walkaways, where homeowners have the means to pay their mortgage, justified?
Homeowners sign a contract with a bank when they get a mortgage. What does a contract mean if a person willfully breaches the contract when that person has the means to fulfill the contract? The decision is a moral decision, and I didn't hear much justification in the news story, except that it just didn't make economic sense for the homeowners to continue with their mortgage payments. These are people who can afford the payments, but choose to walk away because their homes will never have the resale value as the mortgage that they are paying.
Here is where the finger pointing begins. Undoubtedly, banks were out to get homeowners to buy as big a mortgage as possible, in some instances to re-finance and pull most of the value out of their homes. Homeowners believed that the value of their homes would never fall. Bankers engaged in predatory practices. Homeowners bought overpriced property with money they didn't have. Now the banks are bailed out and moving toward financial health, and the homeowners are struggling and feeling like they've been screwed over.
Unfortunately, the bubble has burst; the horse has left the barn, and we're closing the barn door. Homeowners who walks away from mortgages that they have the means to pay are devaluing the property of their neighbors who continue to make their payments. While it may be best for the individual homeowner to walk away, such action damages the social contract. It hurts the rest of us. On the face of it, the act is dishonest. It does no good to blame the greedy bankers. Somewhere, sometime, individuals have to be held responsible for their actions. Unless a homeowner was signing that mortgage contract under duress or fraudulent circumstances, that homeowner knowingly and willingly signed the contract and agreed to make regular mortgage payments.
This news story isn't over yet. I'm not sure how the government can (or should) help homeowners who are underwater. I can appreciate the anger and frustration that homeowners feel. I hope they think long and hard before taking a walk when they have the means to pay the mortgage. When they walk, they are taking money out of your back pocket.
One of the challenges of living near the epicenter of American politics is that I have developed a certain tone deafness to the nuances of political debate in the hallowed halls of our Nation's Federal City. Part of this is caused, no doubt, by my own tin ear to all things Republican. It hasn't always been that way, only since Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.
NPR announced this morning that the Senate is "frozen." Senator Reid used his authority as Senate Majority Leader to keep the Senate in session such that every day is the Senate's first legislative day all over again. Bill Murray is starring in the movie. The Democrats are keeping the option open to change the Senate debate rules with a simple majority. Senator McConnell opined that the Republicans are happy with the rules as they stand. Meanwhile, Senator Tom Udall declaimed that "... [the American People] are fed up with us." I'm pretty sure that his sentiment is shared by most Americans across the political spectrum, and goes far beyond the issue of the filibuster and the Senate Rules. Amen.
Democrats flirt with the rule changes, but using a simple majority to change the rules on the "first" legislative day of the session could lead to worse consequences. The Republicans may well control the Senate in 2013, and what happens in 2011 could be repeated two years from now. Udall is correct, much of the American public is fed up with the way the Senate operates. The public has a way to change that. It can oust incumbent legislators who obstruct the legislative process. Scorched earth procedural tactics aren't the answer. Talking with the Republicans, and calling McConnell (and others) on their egregious behavior is a better way.
The Tea Party poses a real threat to Republicans. It has tilted the party sharply right (if that is possible!), and has constrained the policy space in which the Republican leadership can move. The Tea Party legislators propose no taxes and wounding spending cuts. While the movement claims to be speaking for the American public, the 2010 campaign was not a public debate about the the deficit, taxes, and spending, rather it was about eviscerating opponents. The public is still in the dark.
Here's the challenge. The tax and budget hearing rooms on Capitol Hill are inhabited by three 800-pound gorillas: the need to raise taxes, the need to cut entitlements, and the need to rationalize defense spending. Unless those three issues are addressed, the politicians are only bloviating, and they aren't serious at all about budget reform. If the Republicans can't compromise on taxes and defense spending, and the Democrats can't compromise on entitlement cuts and cuts to other "discretionary" spending, then it's all just talk. The test of this Congress will be whether it can craft meaningful compromises. The country needs presidential and congressional leadership on these issues. The country needs a factual, meaningful debate.
During this Senate's Longest Day, let's hope our leaders find wisdom....
Cold metastasizes on my skin then
moves to my core: I cannot keep warm.
I shiver, rubbing hands stroking arms bedeviled.
Winter rays, gray and low, numb my spirit.
Frost's glistening blanket engulfs me in a shade
through which light creeps diffuse, unfocused.
This is just the long beginning of the season,
a time between times, a time of quiet dread
and dead white color blinding me.
I don't believe the winter promise, the fallow
lie of spring's reward for having made it through
to warmer days.
If you've been reading my blog at all, you know that I've started writing poetry here, not particularly good poetry, but trying to work more on craft, trying to experiment with words on a screen. Tim suggested that I take one of my poems and cut out as many words as I could, just as an exercise. So I did. Below is the original poem, and it's followed by the edited version.
An accidental interloper, he
Filled in the empty spaces of one heart.
He moved between their two magnetic poles,
A force, himself, to move the two apart.
At first, he hardly noticed the affair.
His curiosity had seen the pair
Impregnable it seemed to the outside,
The unlatched heart, broke, hidden in its lair.
A spark, impassioned, flew from their cold hearth
and kindled flames of folly in his breast.
Swept up in the idea of hot romance,
Put life's relation to a bitter test.
The pair's polarity reversed, tears shed.
The barreness unspoke acknowledged now.
His heart quite broken in the aftermath
Of ill-considered pleasure in a bed.
Here's the revision:
Accidental, he
filled empty spaces
between two magnetic poles,
a force, himself.
He hardly noticed.
Curiosity
impregnable to the outside,
unlatched, broke, hidden.
A spark flew
kindled folly.
Swept up hot.
Put life to a bitter test.
Polarity reversed,
barreness unspoke
quite broken,
ill-considered pleasure in a bed.
An accidental interloper, he
Filled in the empty spaces of one heart.
He moved between their two magnetic poles,
A force, himself, to move the two apart.
At first, he hardly noticed the affair.
His curiosity had seen the pair
Impregnable it seemed to the outside,
The unlatched heart, broke, hidden in its lair.
A spark, impassioned, flew from their cold hearth
and kindled flames of folly in his breast.
Swept up in the idea of hot romance,
Put life's relation to a bitter test.
The pair's polarity reversed, tears shed.
The barreness unspoke acknowledged now.
His heart quite broken in the aftermath
Of ill-considered pleasure in a bed.
The Washington Post published a commentary by Phillip Kennicott in today's Style Section that got me thinking about the recent art/censorship/gay controversy surrounding a video created by the artist David Wojnarowicz, and subsequently removed from the National Portrait Gallery exhibit, Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture.
The dustup was sparked by Bill Donohue, president (and apparently the only member of) the Catholic League who vehemently attacked Wojnarowicz's video A Fire in My Belly as being anti-catholic. His real agenda appears to be to stoke the tiresome culture wars that continue around homosexuality in this country, and Mr. Donohue is quite successful in that regard. He set an anti-gay trap for the exhibition and for the Smithsonian, and R. Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian walked right into it.
And R. Wayne Clough just kept right on walking. He's been silent on the issue ever since he made the decision to remove the video. The controversy (air quotes), the anti-catholic message (ironic air quotes) of the video stems from an approximately eleven second segment which shows ants climbing over a crucifix. Donohue took this segment completely out of the context of the remainder of the video, and denounced the whole piece as being anti-catholic. And Mr. Clough went along for the ride, feeling that it was better to appease the Catholic League, then to let museum goers make up their own minds.
Mr. Kennicott in his commentary calls for Mr. Clough to resign his post as Secretary. Kennicott further states that the curators of the exhibit should honor AA Bronson's request to have his work, Felix, June 5, 1994, removed from the exhibition in protest over the censoring of Wojnarwoicz's video. Indeed, the huge blank wall at the end of the exhibition would bear mute testimony to something, but I'm not sure to what. I have a better idea.
The curators should remove Felix, June 5, 1994 from the exhibition. Then they should nail R. Wayne Clough to the wall in its place. It serves the catholic need of Mr. Donohue, and it certainly is Roman in its application of justice. It will also please the masses.
Who thought peanut butter could be so deadly?
The flattened, nearly headless mouse lay stiff
the trap sprung, but not a lick of Jif remained.
What peanut butter peril enticed the rodent there
to release the bale that bloodied hair, what pain.
Did it see stars before the end? Was it instant death?
Or were there seconds of nervous charge elapsed
a crashing synapse, broken neck, and matted pelt
a terror, a sharpened, sickened moment's motion
a squeal before no air could pass the esophagus?
The mousetrap sits on the drainboard drying.
Scrubbed clean of fear-soaked blood and urine,
ready to bring another mouse to ruin in the closet.
Reset with peanut butter and returned downstairs.
In the weeks after the funeral,
The widows came to the house
Corningware, Tupperware, Rubbermaid.
The doorbell rang; each dish accepted,
acknowledged, and refrigerated.
Jello eight ways. Three kinds of macaroni.
Spaghetti and meatballs in a metal bowl.
Four tossed salads with five different dressings.
Three molds, five glass baking dishes, four casseroles,
washed, dried, and returned.
December, January, and February.
O Mother with your burning heart,
Sursum Corda on your lips,
Betrayed, the blade wedged in your valve.
Your skirted smile scarce hides your sorrow.
A golden crown can't salve your loss.
The lily's fragrance masks the stench
of death, of lost tomorrows.
O Mother's son sprained on the cross
O Mother's heart broke from the loss
A world quickly walks on by
lost in talk, concerns, and bills.
Your lips are closed to words expressed
that might explain your open breast,
spread apart with bleeding flames,
a heart afire that fans your pain.
O Mother, I can hardly stand to watch.
Not a wrinkle or a blemish on your face,
and yet you tear a hole in my own chest
That connects your picture frame to mine.
O Mother with your burning heart
Betrayed, that blade wedged in your valve.
I'm a fan of Lynne Rosetto Kasper's Splendid Table, and I was listening to it as background noise last Sunday. One of her guests was Jim Lahey, owner of the Sullivan Street Bakery, and the inventor of No Knead Bread. He was making claims on the show that this is a chewy, wonderful rustic bread, just the kind I've been looking for.
Of course, I was off Googling the Internet for No Knead Bread recipes, and they all came back to Jim's basic recipe, a recipe so simple that even I could make it. It has four ingredients: flour, yeast, salt, and water. You stir them together in a bowl, cover it, and let it sit for the next 18 - 20 hours. Then you (minimally) shape the loaf, let it proof for another couple of hours. Finally, you really crank up the heat in the oven, and bake the loaf. It's baked in a covered, heated dutch oven, then the loaf is uncovered, and the baking continues until the top of the loaf is browned.
This isn't to say that other recipes aren't out there. They are, but they acknowledge Jim's genius, and they use his methods and recipe proportions. The method was published in 2006, but as the old joke goes, I only heard about it yesterday. Even Martha Stewart has her version of No Knead Bread. She uses olive oil to grease the mixing bowl, and to grease the top of the bread dough while it's rising. The oil is not necessary.
I like this bread for several reasons: it is simple. It heats up the kitchen when it's cold outside. The loaf really is a rustic loaf. The texture is crusty, chewy, and holely. The gluten forms during the long rising, and the flavor is distinct - a slight sourness rounded out by the salt, with a smoky aroma. Although the crust is singed in places, the loaf does not taste burnt. The loaf looks like and tastes like it just came out of a wood-fired oven.
An important part of cooking is creating the smell. Try this: heat the oven to 400°F. Take some chicken giblets, and maybe the wing tips, and place them with a little oil and butter in a small iron skillet. Sprinkle them with salt, a grind of pepper, and two large pinches of thyme. Set the skillet in the oven for fifteen minutes. In the meantime, chop half an onion, a small carrot, and a stalk of celery. Add to the chicken giblets, and continue cooking for another 15 minutes or so.
Take a sniff. The smell is herby from the thyme. The onions are fragrant, and you can smell the sweetness of the carrot and the fresh whiff of the celery. The aroma hits my nose when I open the oven door.
Quickly, my chicken stock takes shape as I dump the skillet contents in a saucepan, and add some water, a bay leaf, some cloves, and allspice. As the stock bubbles, the wonderful smells continue, and my home smells lived in and loved. The joy of onions, carrots, and a chicken neck transform a cool autumn day into an abundant scent of memories.
Each day I write a poem
Not always with much meter
Never published in a tome
Unsavored by most readers
Sometimes, my poems have punctuation.
Each line is filled with tidy thoughts.
Captitalized lines march in formation.
All ended neatly with tiny dots.
Or I can wander.
And not really put much thought
into heuristics.
I'm not Emily Dickinson.
