I'll Be Banging Pots With Wooden Spoons

Everyone is loving on this right now.

Happy New Year Dear Reader. I hope that 2012 is a kind and gentle year that brings to each of us what we need. I love you.

Merry Christmas with Bells On

Granny's Cookies

It's my birthday! So far so good. Start as you mean to go forward, so I took a long shower. Washed all the worries I am not carrying forward away. Now I am all shiny and new and ready for adventure.

Just before it struck midnight (and became MY BIRTHDAY!!!) I was making three batches of Granny Kelly's cookie dough. My mother's mother-Granny Kelly- must have learned the recipe from her mama. All my life, every Christmas my family gathers and we make Granny's cookies. We roll them out. Pick out our favorite cookie cutters (I am partial to the scotty dog and the bunny). Cut them out. Bake them. Sneak a few while they are warm. And when they have cooled, we whip up some butter cream frosting (never royal icing) and tint it whatever colors we want. Cover the table with waxed paper. Put out every sort of sprinkle, colored icing sugar, silver dragees, cinnamon red hots, bowls of frosting and get down to business. It can take hours. The youngest decorators sometime lose interest and wander off only to be drawn back to the table because it is covered in delicious sweet stuff.

Tomorrow after school my nieces will come and we will start the process. Then their parents, my little brother and sister-in-law, will show up, followed by my daughter and her sweetheart.  My son will be working but he will be home in time to eat many a cookie. And a birthday party of my favorite sort will ensue.

Down in Reno my littlest brother and his family will be making Granny's cookies this weekend too. I suspect my mother, who is spending the winter warming up in her desert home, will make a batch to give to holiday visitors.

We will all be together in spirit,gathered around the kitchen table, feeling lucky, remembering our Granny and Poppa and all the love that flows through us generation after generation.

Granny's Cookies

from the kitchen of Florence Kelly to the kitchen of her daughter and grandchildren, and now her great grandchildren

1 Cup Shortening
4 Cups Flour
1/2 t Salt
2 Eggs beaten
1 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Milk
1 t Vanilla
1 t Baking Soda

Sift flour and salt together. Cut in shortening (I use my cuisinart sometimes, sometimes a fork or pastry cutter). In a separate bowl combine the eggs, sugar, milk, vanilla, and baking soda. Add in flour/shortening mixture until just combined. Don't beat up the dough. Cover and chill overnight in the fridge. When it is time to bake, preheat your oven to 400 degrees F. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface to about 1/4 inch thickness and cut out with cookie cutters befitting the holiday (I make them sometimes for Valentine's Day and Keenan's Day too!).  Bake until golden, about 8 minutes. Cool on wire racks.

When cookies are cooled (after you've had pizza and salad and sung a round of happy birthday to me) frost and decorate. We make the frosting with varying amounts of butter, powdered sugar, milk or cream, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Use a recipe you love and don't make it too thin because that is just mean.

As I will be making these later today (after I sleep) I don't have a picture to show you. Wait! I think I have an example from my son's birthday party 2 years ago. He decided he would rather have Granny's cookies than a birthday cake. Let me look.........





There they are. His auntie made a portrait of him being grumpy. His cousins have always called him "deeda". He isn't always grumpy. You can see we are very fond of sprinkles.

Transitions and Perfection

I adore Roseanne. She is unapologetic. This is too rare in female form. Her show was a blast. I remember laughing to wonderful dialogue like this:

DAN: Ah man, we're screwed.
ROSEANNE: No Dan. We are so far beyond screwed that the light from screwed will take 1 billion years to reach the earth. 

Roseanne isn't hung up on perfection. Life is what it is and what you make it in her universe. As a recovering perfectionist, I find this so inspiring. If you have breath and love, you are rich. You have it all. 

I ran across a recent quote that made me smile. I was comforted to know she is still trailbreaking with the best of them.


"I am old now: gray, wrinkled, tired, and bloated, and my joints ache, too. But I am ready to come into my full destiny—as my childhood dreams predicted—as a Neo-Amazonian Pirate Queen of my own vessel: firing cannonballs at the worldwide culture of patriarchy in the name of all that does not suck. I no longer fear moving on to a better existence than this one, which is, of course, no existence at all. Oblivion will be fucking sweet after a lifetime at the mercy of my hormones and my biological clock and the twisted logic that produced the craving for a dominant male sex partner. I’m quite thrilled to say that at this late hour, in my autumn years, I have at last found a man who is more savant than idiot, and with whom the sparse occasions of physical enjoining of souls is quite sublime."

- Roseanne Barr on life post-menopause

We need more unapologetic, fierce, and female voices in this world. Bless your brave soul Ms. Barr. You are a treasure.

As I approach my last birthday in my 40's, I suppose I am seeking out role models for the uncharted (by me) territory ahead. I have, of course and hallelujah, my glorious mother as torch-bearer. She gleefully reminds me that at 50 I can become a member of AARP. And then she laughs. I have another year and not quite a month until that milestone. When, the universe willing and all systems go, it comes I will be grateful. To be here is the gift.

The Pleasures of Home

Beatrice Wood the Mama of Dada

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am so grateful to be spending Thanksgiving with both of my children. My kids are so cool. Funny, wise, loving. They are my favorite people. I love them so. The rest of our family is spread out over the west this week and we alone are home in Portland. A quiet day, a feast, laughter. How lucky we are.

Also, to my dear reader Red Tara a million thanks for coming to my rescue armed with pledge, windex,paper towels,elbow grease, and a vacuum to get me over my fear of tackling big things. Before you arrived I saw landmines everywhere and could not find a place to begin. I was overwhelmed. I can not believe we did it. In one day everything shifted and I feel at home again. Thank you so very much.

Beatrice Woods lived an extraordinary life- one she claimed was fueled by young men and chocolate. This quote has always encouraged me when I fret over decisions and failure, "My life is full of mistakes. They're like pebbles that make a good road." She loved her home and studio in Ojai living there for the last 50 of her extraordinarily rich 105 years. By example, she taught me to romance my own creative life into being. I feel like anything is possible. Wow.  I just wrote that. I believe it too.

Happy Thanksgiving to you.

11.11.11 Today She Would Be Four

Photo of Maddie by her mama Heather Spohr

Today is Madeline Alice Spohr's 4th Birthday. Every day Heather and Mike have to navigate the treacherous waters of grief because their glorious girl with the golden curls is not with them. A birthday must be so very hard.

I have written a bit about Maddie and something of what I have learned from her brief and shining life. I love her parents. They are courageous, funny, honest, loving people. Together they created Friends of Maddie  to honor the life of their firstborn. You can visit Maddie's site  to learn about how you can team up with Maddie's people to make the world better for premature babies and their parents.

This year in honor of Maddie's birthday Mike recorded a song, "You are the One".  Heather sings backup and Madeline's little sister Annabel was in attendance in the recording studio to cheer her parents on. Buy a copy! It's a wonderful song written by Mike. 100% of the profits from sale of "You Are the One"on iTunes/Amazon will go to Friends of Maddie to continue Madeline's legacy as a brilliant light in the lives of so many. For the links and more information please visit The Spohr's Are Multiplying.

Mike wrote to Maddie (on the occasion of her 4th Birthday),  "So tomorrow I will try not to be sad. Instead I will focus on celebrating the day you brought color into my life. And while 11/11/11 won’t be as joyous as I had imagined when you were alive, there will be joy. Because it will be a day about you."

For everyone celebrating Maddie it is a day about a delightful little girl, a lovely family, unimaginable loss, and the exquisite joy of the day her parents met their beloved child. I will never forget her. Not ever.

Watching The Occupation

I'm live streaming the OWS protesters and NYC cops in Times Square. Guess the  broadcast networks can't be bothered to interrupt the football games. I learned that there were 60 to 70 thousand who joined them in spirit  in Madrid today. Here in  the Rose City we have our own OWS camp in the Park Blocks near Portland State. What to say? I feel so old and jaded.

When I was a child my mother took me to picket the City Club of Portland whose membership was not then open to women. And as a girl I saw that the efforts made by my mother and her friends were not wasted. The City Club began admitting women in the early 70's. Protest and assembly was a regular feature of my childhood as the daughter of two politically active, passionate people.

Sadly, in an age where corporations are people endowed with greater rights and freedoms than the people who granted them existence, protest seems so much more dangerous. I admire people taking action. I hope we can enter into a new era where the interests of the human person are considered of value, precious just as those our government so desperately courts and fawns over for the corporate "persons" currently calling the shots.

I retweeted ReformedBroker -Downtown Josh Brown's comment:

"But they paid back TARP!" Great, where's everyone else's interest-free, second chance loan? Where's everyone else's debt forgiveness?

Good question. And what further indignity will it take to make the majority wake up and ask the same question? What moves Americans these days? I shudder.

Also, I run into this picture all the time:

 

I think I've mentioned my personal political heartbreak. This picture, every time I see this picture, I remember why I voted for Hillary. I am no longer naive enough to imagine that this photograph proves she is a more compassionate person than our president,  nor do I suffer from any illusion that her scruples would have prevented her from executing Bin Laden as he has done. But I do believe she has  maturity and the strength of character to value substance over style. I can't help but question the sitting president on this. She was so much less invested in branding, pop art portraits, and taglines. The change we all wanted to believe in sounded so good. It was like believing in the tooth fairy and Santa. And sweet children that we are, we tried to keep up a good front after someone spilled the beans. Ain't no tooth fairy. Santa is yo mama.

I just float around in dread of the 2012 election cycle. Devastated that Supercilious Slutlicious Sarah chose not to  run. If anyone could unify my people, it is the Thrilla from Wasilla. We'd all be heading for borders north and south and the truth that our culture is bleeding out would be a global statement of fact.

Despite a lifetime of interest, I try desperately to let go of any illusion of a participatory democracy and find a new outlet for my poor, weak mind when it turns it's focus to humanity.

I have this book on hold at the library. Thanks to  MissWhistle I found it via this article. 

I think for mental health purposes the scope of my activism will grow smaller - so tiny in fact that it will be invisible. For now. I promise if we are in the same place you will feel it.