Buffalo Gal

There is a small opinion piece in the  FORUM today about the observation of one writer who has noticed the terrible waste of food in local restaurants.  The writer said that many times entire plates of food are not eaten at all, and the result is  that all that good food is thrown away into the garbage.

Two years ago, while visiting relatives in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, we made a trip to the Puerto Vallarta "dumps"…..a huge land fill for the entire city around which is the "poorest of the poor" neighborhood.  Many of the people who live in that neighborhood spend their days awaiting the garbage trucks that bring in the "freshest" garbage from the city and that includes a lot of food.  These "poorest of the poor" pick through the garbage looking for items to recycle and sell, but, also looking for edible food that they can take home to their families.

There is a Christian ministry that our relatives support vigorously year-round, called "The Children of the Dumps" and this ministry has built a small school in that poor neighborhood where the children can attend after-public-school classes to learn English and Computer skills—two educational areas that can help them to get better jobs and help to break their cycles of extreme poverty.  The students also receive a hot meal at the school;  the ministry also provides a hot meal out at the dumps to the people who spend their day digging in the huge piles of garbage.  The day we visited, we went along and helped distribute the meal to the people.  It was the most "shutting up" experience I have ever had.  I was so shocked by the poverty of those people who lined up with great cheerfulness and great gratitude for that hot meal….hot soup, bread, crackers, cold drinks and fruit and cookies, if I remember correctly.  Never have I encountered such poverty; never has it been brought home to me like a sledgehammer blow on the head how much is wasted…especially food….in modern societies, even in a developing nation like Mexico.

From the poor neighborhood near the dumps and from the dump itself, we could see the shining towers of the luxury hotels along the beaches of the Bay of Banderas….just blocks away from the starkest poverty, where extremely wealthy people from many countries… and from Mexico, were dining in the most elegant restaurants, ordering lobster, steak….huge amounts of food served up to them and much of it could be sent back to be deposited in the garbage–later to be picked over by the poorest of the poor, among whom we stayed for a brief time as we helped distribute the hot meal of the day, among the stinking heaps of garbage in the landfill.    You can understand why it as a "mouth-shutting" and "mind-blowing" encounter.  All of us….tourists to Mexico….spoke little during the distribution of the meal, except to the people who were receiving it and many of them who could not understand either our English or our broken attempts to speak Spanish…. the people smiled and were thankful for the simple meal they got to eat each day…thanks to the ministry of the Children of the Dumps.

Today’s FORUM opinion piece about wasted food in local restaurants took me back, instantly, to that day spend at the Puerto Vallarta dumps.    What price might we eventually pay, as a nation, for our disgraceful waste of our riches…..not only food…but all the other valuable things we so carelessly deposit in our own garbage cans and dumpsters????

I got a call from my cousin today.  In my last blog about "beans" I got 1 ingredient wrong in my cousin’s Mom’s (my Auntie Mabel) recipe for baked beans.  He set me straight and was obviously paying attention when his Mother was cooking!   Her beans did NOT have molasses in them—–she used brown sugar.  I stand corrected and humbled by the son who KNEW what he was talking about.  My Auntie Mabel was also one of the neatest and most persistent of housekeepers…her home was always spotless and in order, this in spite of the home being on a most active dairy and grain farm (it was the "homeplace" for our side of the family and she and her family were the third generation on it after my great grandparents homesteaded in the early 1870′s coming to Tansem Township in Clay County after emigrating from the Gran area of Norway.  My cousin set me straight about the use of molasses also…..his mother used molasses when she baked "brown bread"…..I remember my mother doing the same and both of their homemade brown breads were absolutely out of this world!   So…I have made my correction.

OLD FRIENDS:  When people refer to "old friends" they do not usually mean that the friends are chronologically "old"…they mean that they are very long-term and very dear to their hearts.   I had occasion to socialize with many of my "Old Friends" today when we had a potluck lunch together during the lunchtimes of the teachers and staff at my retired-from elementary school.  What fun it was to be there and to hug, laugh, catch up on news with these marvelous "Old Friends".  They were like my sisters and brothers for so many years…almost 25 to be exact.  I missed them more than any other aspect of my job as the school librarian…when I was still at school, I always was glad to have them pass through the library and chat, listen to the music we always had playing (classical and soothing). After school was over and the kids were gone home, we often had any necessary meetings in the library and sometimes we had after school treats and coffee there.  We worked on the daily crossword puzzle together and the word jumbles.  It was a place of great friendship and that is why it is so wonderful to go to school once again for an occasional potluck lunch together.

Two Old Friends of the entire Fargo-Moorhead and surrounding area have died within 24 hours of each other.  Both of them…Dr Clarence Glasrud and Edwin (Sonny) Gulsvig reached ripe old ages before they departed this life and both enjoyed life to the fullest if I understand it correctly.  I remember seeing Dr Glasrud and his wife coming in to an opera performance in old Weld Hall two years ago when the opera version of the story of the Lewis and Clark expedition was performed on the campus of MSUM.

"Sonny" Gulsvig got his wish if I understand the newspaper’s account of his death…he wanted to die watching a game on TV and I think he got his wish.  What a way to go for the ever- interested basketball coach.

"Old Friends"….they are so important in our lives.  That is why so many people love attending high school class reunions.  Even though they do not see each other very often, a reunion brings back the comradeship enjoyed in our youth.  Weddings and, sadly, funerals, bring us together with friends and family we have not seen in a long time. 

It was not always this way.  Just a few decades ago, people lived out their entire lifetimes in one community, knowing Old Friends for as long as they lived.  Times have changed greatly; we have become so "mobile" that people leave home and settle far from their origins.  I believe every culture in the world has the concept of "Old Friends" and that phenomenon goes on and on, never to be broken ikn our earthly lives.    Thank God for that blessing!

This week I got a 2 pound bag of dried navy beans; I had a specific purpose for this purchase.  I have been thinking of home-made bean soup for a long time and also….my Aunt Mabel’s home-made baked beans.  The bean soup is made and is being enjoyed (I make a huge batch so it can be eaten several times..it gets better with each re-heating)  Eating bean soup is not without consequences because it has been "windy" around here, if you get my drift!    It will be the same thing when I make my Auntie’s recipe for baked beans as well but it is so worth it.  Aunt Mabel always brought her baked beans to family picnics, Christmas parties, and any other family potluck situation.  We all anticipated getting a big helping of Mabel’s beans.

I have to check my recipe for baked beans (from "scratch") but I know the basics…..the beans, pre-cooked to partial tenderness;  chopped onions that have been sauted til they "carmelize" in the pan;  side pork or bacon pieces, sauteed crisply;  MOLASSES…that is what makes them taste so "home-made";  a bit of brown sugar, salt to just the right degree of seasoning….and, if, you cannot bear the thought of beans without a little tomato flavor…you will have to add a little ketchup and a bit of mustard (this makes them taste a bit "VanCamp-ish")  But REAL baked beans like Auntie Mabel’s had only the molasses to flavor them.

When these baked beans are done and ready to eat, if I close my eyes, I can return instantly to Uncle Carl’s and Aunt Millie’s cottage on Pelican Lake—-more specifically, to the kitchen in that cottage late in the afternoon when the meal was laid out on the table to be picked up "buffet style".  The kids (me and my cousins) were all wolfishly hungry after having spent the afternoon in the lake—-swimming, rowing out to the "diving raft" where we "dived" (more like belly-flopped)…played "horse"..the water version… with one kid on the shoulders of the other trying to knock the opponents off the shoulders of another cousin; taking long daring swings on the rope swing fastened to a tall tree branch that would take you out in a wide arc across the sandy beach, almost to the water’s edge and then back again to the stone steps that led up the hill from the lake.  It was exhilarating and the thrill never got lessened by the many swings we took on that rope swing.

By the time the "supper" call came, we nearly knocked each other down, barely dressed again in dry clothes, hair wet and sticking out all over from our "bathing caps".  We would dive in to the "hotdish" (Aunt Millie)  the jellos with bananas and whipped cream and the homemade brown buttered bread slices (my Mom),  Aunt Mabel’s baked beans, and there was usually a potato salad or scalloped potatoes with ham , too.   There was always a cake…in a battered enamel pan…chocolate with chocolate frosting or white with fluffy 7-minute frosting, or a spice cake with brown sugar frosting (all of it home-made including the cooked frostings).  Oh how we loved it!   Oh how we ate it! 

Then we were doomed to stay out of the water for ONE hour lest we should get cramps and drown before each other’s eyes.  That was the longest hour of our lives.

Baked beans, scalloped potatoes, sliced buttered bread, jello and cake….all these foods from childhood have the power to elicit strong memories…memories of vigorous young parents enjoying each other’s company and talking , talking, talking throught a long warm Sunday afternoon on the lawn of the cottage;  my old Grandpa sitting in his wooden lawn chair enjoying the shouts and screams of his many grandchildren; my cousins and I engaged in so much fun we could hardly bear it…but we waited for Sunday afternoons in summer like nothing else. It was better than the County Fair, better than a small town visit by a "carnival", better than any birthday party,  better than anything….those wonderful days spent with each other in a family that was filled with so much love and respect for each other.

Mmmmmmm, I can hardly wait to taste the baked beans and travel backward in time to those wonderful summer days spent on the shores of "old" Pelican Lake….the lake that had only summer cottages and was so clear and clean you could see the bottom 20 feet down.

Nobody can actually return to days like that—but Thank God for memories that can take you back in an instant.

 After mulling it over some more and reading a couple of articles on RealClearPolitics about the hapless former NY governor who finally did the right thing and resigned today…..I have a couple more observations about Mr. Spitzer and other self-perceived "Big Players" on the political or big  business scene who , when finding themselves "put onto third base,  they  thInk they hit a triple! "  That was one writer’s comment about a former president of the U.S. who was born into a lot of priviledge and wealth.   Eliot Spitzer seems to fit that description of self- perceived importance and such self- centeredness that he does not think of others at all, including his own wife and children, before getting himself into such a mess with  high priced prostitutes and a prostitution ring.

Another thing that really galls me is that Spitzer is such a Gutless Coward when he gets caught in criminal activities, he cannot even face a press conference without dragging his wife out with him and she has to bear the humiliation in a worse way than he does.  I will never forget the look on her face at both of his so-called press conferences.  The same goes for the Gutless Wonders like Jim McGreevy, Larry Craig, and David Vitter, who did the same thing to their wives when they were caught up in scandals involving sexual hanky-panky and were forced to face the press—–but not without dragging their wives out with them….what humiliation these women have suffered for the sake of "standing by their man".   

 One of my commenters said she would not be standing beside her cheating husband if she were in such a position…she would be standing in line at a clinic to get tested for every known STD!!!     Laura Schlessinger was a bit more blunt than that…she said she would not be standing beside her cheating husband either…he would be all  by himself, and…. ON CRUTCHES!!!   I can identify with those sentiments exactly.

I hope Silda Spitzer has given her philandering husband a few good rounds too….maybe

now that the press conferences are over, she can throw a few lamps at him  and throw a few very carefully placed kicks or punches at him as well.  He deserves anything she can vgive him, punishment-wise.  

"Schaedenfreude" is a German word meaning taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. In that case there is a ton of "schadenfreude" happening in the business offices, the stock market aisles,…. anywhere Eliot Spitzer laid his heavy hand of punishment as the New York Attorney General or as the newly elected Guv of that illustrious state!!!

In an article on RealClearPolitics, Roger Kimball speculates as to whether Spitzer meets the true criteria of a hypocrite.  Kimball writes in his opening statements:    "Having just learned the news about New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s expensive taste in Tarts,  a friend e- mailed me and asked what the fancy word was for taking malicious pleasure in the misfortune of others.  "Spitzer?"  he suggested.         I have never liked Mr. Spitzer and his intrusive, rogue prosecutorial ways. I take it amiss that even in his disgrace we are all going to be subjected to a non-stop Spitzerfest for the next 48-72 hours.  Why can’t he simply disappear?…..Still there have been a few gems to emerge from the glee {of Spitzers’ fall from grace}…..my favorite was highlighted by Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit: ‘Prostitute Admits Links To Eliot Spitzer, Resigns In Disgrace.’   Pretty good eh?  "  (Unquote from Roger Kimball.)

The worst part of the Spitzer freak show was having to see his wife, Silda, dragged out to "stand by her man" (ala, Mrs Jim McGreavy, ala, Hillary Clinton,)   at that totally disgusting and confusing so-called "news conference" on Monday when the hapless Spitzer "apologized" to his wife and family and to someone else…the state of New York?  She looked like she was catatonic, and why shouldn’t she be?      HE APOLOGIZED?   He should have offered himself up to sit in old fashioned Puritan "stocks" set up in Times Square!  He should have a huge red "A" sewn onto his Brooks Brothers suitcoat!!!!   His wife should have been able to give him about 40 lashes with a cat-o-nine tails, publicly in  Rockefeller Center, for crying out loud.  The Lousy Liar and Cheater!!!!   Those actions would have seemed far more just and deserved by such a rotten cheating husband….instead he makes a mealy- mouthed "I apologize" statement with his poor wife looking like she had been "drug through a knothole backwards".

As to whether he is a hypocrite or not, I wonder if he really is.  The definition of a hypocrite according to Roger Kimball’s essay is that one does not qualify as a hypocrite if,  in expounding on the moral views one has, he or she does not necessarily have to live up to those moral standards on a personal level.  If that be true, Spitzer is no hypocrite. He is , however,  the lowest form of humanity in that he arrogantly thought he could get by with ANYTHING…he,  who was born with a silver spoon in his grinning Kisser, son of one of the richest men in New York…. he had all the priviledges and opportunities that only a rich man’s son can have…. he probably cut  a wide swath through the New York Debutante scene in his salad days.   Now  he blew it all to pieces with his many-year- long, 88,000-dollar habit of consorting with expensive call girls and getting caught in a Federal Sting operation of the sort he used to set up when he was the self-righteous Jackass of a state Attorney-General.   "The truth will out" William Shakespeare said in one of his plays.  

Spitzer has been outed big time.  Everyone who knows him and his ways can indulge  in lot of "schadenfreude" for as long as necessary to take their sweet revenge on the Arrogant Jerk.

 No doubt this was not  his first adventure in prostituting himself and the girls he pays so much money for….. he paid for "Kristin" to cross state lines (the Mann Act?) by having her come down on the commuter train to Washington DC from New York for their little pre-Valentine’s Day tryst at the Mayflower Hotel (where Judy Campbell, JFK’s long- time paramour, lived for many months waiting for the calls to come from the Whitehouse that the coast was clear…Jackie was not home!!!  

 How fitting that Spitzer set up his tete-a-tete with his expensive Tart in the same toney  hotel used for other famous trysters in government and elsewhere!   I doubt that his infidelities came as a big surprise to his wife, either.   She has known about his habits with other women probably all the years of their marriage, but like other political wives, she has had to "suck it up" and raise their 3 innocent daughters to make things look good for the Ugly  Political Husband she got stuck with.  Appearance is Everything….remember brave Hillary Clinton and Chelsea walking between her parents to a helicopter in 1998???

I hate the stench of rotten- to- the- core politicians like Eliot Spitzer…just the latest  in a long line of Dumbos  to get caught with their pants around their ankles…. or as David Letterman said last night, caught with yellow crime scene tape around his pants…..but it was at the Mayflower…..so it is quite elegant, at that!     Bah!  Humbug!

Who says you can’t sunbathe in March in the Red River Valley area???   (Nobody that I know of but that was a good opening line!)    I have just come inside from taking a wonderful sunbath on my deck.  The cedar- colored steel siding provides so much extra warmth right now from absorbing the strong March sunshine that I could have sworn I was back by the pool at the Buganvilias resort in Puerto Vallarta!   What a glorious feeling…to bask like a lizard in the warmth of the March mild air and warm sunshine!!!  My Kitty Princess joined me…til her gray and black tabby fur made her too hot and she jumped down from the chair I had brought out for her to lie on—-right beside my comfy rocking chair. 

 It was quite a feat to get those chairs out there.  I had to move things…like the Cat Condo Tower that sits directly in front of the wide deck door/window;  the plant containers that sit there also and a few other sundry objects that were making it an obstacle course.  But sheer determination to get out and get under the sun allowed me to do what I had to do to get those two chairs out onto the deck.   Ah, Bliss!

Kitty and I took our places in the sun and begin our basking.  I had brought out a cup of delicious Garat coffee (the best of the Mexican coffees…better than any I have tasted in the U.S.), …. two blankets to wrap around my lower half (it is not QUITE sunbathing weather without blankets, unfortunately) , my "hard" crossword puzzle book and a pen;  my glasses with sunglasses attached, a hooded sweatshirt (which I did not wear after all).  The Kitty brought nothing with her although I told her she could bring some of her fuzzy toy "mouseys" out onto the deck.  She soon abandoned me in favor of lying on a patch of grass right below the deck.  The March sun must have even warmed up the ground enough to be inviting to lie upon.  She looked up at me smugly as if to say…"ha-ha—I am a much tougher sunbather than you!"   I had her picture taken a few times with a zoom lens to record the historic sunbathing day on March 11.

Sitting on the deck in my rural setting is so peaceful.  All I hear is the sound of chickadees; the trains pulling up the long grade out of town three or more miles away as they start up the long incline that lasts for more than 6 miles til they begin going downhill again , heading for the towns east of here.  On a still day I can hear the sounds of traffic rolling along HIghway 10 which is more than a mile away from my perch.  I also hear the small planes that take off from the local airport—especially one belonging to a local businessman who loves flying so much he will make a flight to his home on Pelican Lake over his lunch break. That plane is an old one with a distinctive engine sound and I can always tell when —– is taking his noon trip to lakes country.  In the summer he lands on the water and in winter…?? ..maybe on skis?   There is no landing strip close by his dwelling.  It must fun to be so free and to look down on the semi-snowy landscape now and travel over 50 miles in just a few minutes.

I know one thing for sure….I am going back out to the deck in an hour or so and soak up some more glorious March sunshine.

DON’T DRINK THE WATER!  Yipes!  In addition to having to worry about pesticides, manure,  and herbicides in the water, now there is antibiotics, hormones, psych drugs and one other , which I cannot remember, lurking in our water supplies….at least water supplies in some big cities around the country.  I like to remember a sign in PiPi’s Mexican restaurant (the BEST in Puerto Vallarta)…."Don’t Drink the Water—-Drink the Margaritas".   Maybe we should all obey that clarion call and skip the tap water.  I do not trust bottled water either after hearing that Aquafina is nothing more than bottled tap water.  There is an extremely graphic illustration in today’s FORUM showing how these drugs get into the water supply and the second picture shows a toilet….I was all done looking after seeing that one.

CRABBY MAXINE MOMENT:  I spent half of the day scooting up and down highway 10 from west  to east, then back west and finally back east again.  I accomplished a lot…I am getting my sore knee tendinitis treated by the Best Chiropractor in Fargo and have delivered an important message to my old school haunts…POTLUCK ON FRIDAY!!!!   When I was driving west through Lake Park this morning, my eyesight was momentarily blinded by huge gobs of ORANGE.  It looked like a Minnesota Highway truck had gone off the road, crashed, leaped into the air,and splattered orange paint all over part of Lake Park.  But then I  slowed down and noticed that the massive orange splotches all belonged to advertising signage  for the "Continental Land Company", whose headquarters are just off Highway 10 in Lake Park.  I was ticked off by the Orange Assault on my senses.  Good Grief!  Such tackiness is not nice to drivers. One modest orange sign would do nicely.

SAY WHAT?  While sitting in a Hornbachers’ Parking lot late this morning adjusting my seat belt, making a grocery list, et.al. I heard, via the radio news, that the congressional Dems are launching a major investigation into just who and what and why and how all those judicial officials got fired by Harriet Meirs and someone else.  Say What?  I really tried to remember a big investigation of the "scandal" of the Clinton’s firing the entire travel staff of the Whitehouse during their first few weeks in office in 1993.  I do not remember such Democratic hysteria over that batch of firings….naturally.   Don’t these Congresspeople have anything better to do?  Like fixing the economy? Like closing our borders so hundreds of illegal aliens cannot sneak into Texas, Arizona and California on a daily basis?  Changing our dependence on MId East oil?       NO…they have to hunt for Perpetrators of the Great Firing…..good luck…it is akin to  hunting for communists under rocks back in the Joe McCarthy days in the mid- fifties.  The entire bunch of Dunderheads in the Beltway known as our Representative Government would be better off if they went on a massive Junket to Siberia and never came back. 

GOD BLESS YOU HORNBACHERS  for hiring the men and women to bag groceries from among the people known as "developmentally disabled".  These good workers are eager to bag groceries, help with carts, and do whatever is needed to help the checkers and the customers.  Two wonderful young men worked on my grocery bagging this morning and I thanked them profusely bringing huge smiles to their faces.  I heard one supervisior say to the two who were working at my checkout, "I don’t know what we would do without you guys!"   Such wonderful praise and encouragement for such good and happy folks like the ones who served me today!  God Bless the Mangement and Staff at the Hornbacher stores.

EASTER CANDY AND BIG HUNTS FOR IT:  Bemidji Mike’s blog reminded me of the quickly upcoming Easter weekend.  I have always enjoyed hiding Easter candy for my grandkids but the youngest ones are both 10 years old and the thrill of the candy hunt is diminishing.  Last year we had fun when I created a "Treasure Hunt" scenario.  I wrote clues for each kid and had them figure out a rather complicated bunch of clues in order to find their chocolate egg caches.  They still love the candy, but they feel they are too big and too grown-up to romp around the yard searching for it.     I am getting too forgetful to remember where I hid the candy  so the Treasure Hunt goes better.  Maybe we will try it again on March 22-23.  With our un-spring-like weather, the candy may have to be hidden in the house.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH POLITICIANS?   Democratic Governor Elliott Spitzer of New York has a proverbial part of his body caught in a wringer (as in old- fashioned  washing machines).   I do not know if politicians are over-sexed or what, but way too many of them are getting caught at playing the roles of the Great Lovers.   Bill Clinton tried his hand(s) at it many times while he was the Governor of Arkansas and President of the USA.  Now Spitzer may be fixing to resign his office after his name showed up on Prostitution Ring’s list of clients.  Was it Warren Harding who started all this oversexed politician’s history or did it start earlier?  Some President fathered a child  ( not his wife’s)  in a Whitehouse closet but I can’t remember if it was Harding or another one.  I also remember Wilbur Mills

of Arkansas being caught in  drunken debauchery in  one of Washington’s famous reflecting pools with a Stripper whose name I cannot dredge up….Fanny whats her name.  That was a long time ago and there has been a lot of water over the dam ( and a lot more congressmen over the couch or under the bedsheets)       Question:    has a congressWOMAN ever been part of a sordid sex scandal…I don’t think so).     Most women work too hard during the day and have headaches at night to get involved in such hanky panky.

If anyone knows of a "Naughty Nellie" congresswoman……please comment!!!!

Yesterday, in a first journey out of the house for over a week, I visited 3 good friends…all of us hoping to knock the top off the Trivia ratings at Izzo’s…but the electricity went off and stayed off for too long so we never got to Trivia. (I wonder what time Wild Rice Rural Electric finally got the problem fixed?)

But the absence of electricity gave us a fine chance to really talk about important things together—like the publication of one of the friends’ poems in a lovely regional journal out of Brainerd.  It needed to be celebrated…this woman is a very good poet and more people need to read what she writes.  She also showed us some interesting "very short stories" she had written and one of them caught me by surprise and launched me on hundreds of past remembrances of a special "rite" that occurs everywhere I know of.   When somone passes away, people of the town or rural neighborhood bring food to the home and also serve a special lunch after the funeral ceremonies and the burial or committal has been done. Her small story included this thought: that the women who were the dead woman’s friends "administered jello" after her funeral.

I looked up the word "administer" and my dictionary said that it means "to give out formally, to dispense" but the second meaning means more in the context it was meant to give in that small story:  " To give remedially".         Ah, now that is what we are talking about…remediation for sorrow, remediation for broken hearts and longing spirits, remediation that must go on for a long time because when one loses a Loved One, one does not forget or "get over it"…one only gets used to it….very gradually and very painfully, often.

I have attended so many funeral lunches or been at the homes of the Bereaved and seen the "administering of jello" and so many other things and ways meant to help in a time of great need.  I remember being handed a sturdy package of precooked ham and many packages of sandwich buns at my sister’s home when her husband died so suddenly over 8 years ago.    That particular "administrator of jello" also shed tears as he handed me the food and hugged me in a bear hug that only meant "I am so sorry you have to go through this awful sorrow."

I remember eating many colors of jello at many funeral lunches, along with  1. scalloped potatoes and ham   2. Funeral Hotdish (rice and hamburger and chow mein noodles flavored with soy sauce    3. Funeral sandwiches…i.e. ham on buns, baloney/egg mix on buns/cheezwhiz on round cinnamon bread.        3. Funeral cakes or bars.(all flavors and sizes)    4. Jello:  red, green, yellow, orange…with apples and bananas, with fruit cocktail, with pear pieces in the lime jello or maybe lime jello marshmallow cottage cheese surprise…lemon with grated carrots, orange with mandarin oranges and all of it topped with REAL whipped cream..(you can still get jello like that at the Sons of Norway for Sunday dinners)

 We all sit down to eat the food and drink the delicious "church coffee" which for me, calls up the sweet scent of the "egg coffee" cooked in great, white enamel pots years back…the coffee that only Nita Hanson could make to taste "right".  Bless Nita Hanson—-she has been gone from the earth for years but she "administered egg coffee" at so many funerals, weddings and other "church doings".   I hope that in eternity there was a special place for her….maybe to make more egg coffee for the Heavenly Beings???           Catherine Marshall in her book TO LIVE AGAIN, described a dream in which she distinctly saw her deceased husband, Peter Marshall, in Eternity…he was tending a rose garden and she thought how lovely!….that her husband should be allowed to do what he loved to best on earth and take care of beautiful roses.

And so jello… and other ways of expressing love, friendship, compassion, pity , kindness … keeps on being administered in many towns all over the country and all over the world, I think…even in places where jello is unknown.  Where ever death overtakes us….the remediation…the administration of familiar foods helps to give comfort in time of need.

Later, we realize how much it meant even if, at the actual time of stunned grief, we do not feel like eating the food or drinking the coffee,  much later, we are overwhelmed with the compassion showered on those who grieve and mourn their loss.

Being a self-confessed news-junkie, I run across all sorts of bits and bites from here and there and everywhere.  Some amusing/maddening items recently include today’s "bit" that Bill Clinton’s archivists in his "library" are not releasing the reasons why Billy pardoned Marc Rich and other criminals in the final hours of his presidency.  (They probably don’t want to reveal where all the WhiteHouse household items that got stolen in the final days are stashed, either.)  If Hillary got elected as president in November 2008, would they bring back some of the silverware, china, tablecloths, pillowcases, maids’ aprons (snatched when Bill tried to grab at them) and other WH property back in their moving van????  The item about Bill’s unwillingness to share information about his pardons is on AOL news right now…it is a moderate-length article.

Amusing:  a man waiting to take a public bus to his anger management class got into afurious fight with a few other waiting bus riders when something or other ticked him off and caused a fit of anger.  I have wondered for a long time where all this current "anger" comes from; there are SO many angry people out there, driving cars, walking the streets, sitting next to you at cafes or theaters…..I do not remember such raging anger in past decades but I cannot put my finger on when it really got going so badly.   Did it show up in the Vietnam/Hippie generation?   Is the terrible turmoil in familes the heart of it all?  I have my suspicions based on my own observations of elementary children over the past 20 years. Kids with homes that are out of control…divorces, boysfriends/girlfriends in and out/ poverty brought on by dysfunctional parents who create dysfunctional children, lack of true Faith in a child’s life, confusion from being passed around between "parents" or "grandparents"…. children growing up among heavy drug using parents, developing prenatal brains that could be affected by mothers and fathers on meth, cocaine, marijuana, et. al….this could all cause anger and frustration…. and I have observed it develop in some children. Those with stable parents and stable, peaceful lives do much better in not being such angry young people.  Those kids are friendly and easy to get along with; they rarely cause trouble in school or get into arguments or fights  because they are basically happy, content little people who trust adults in their lives.   I nearly got wiped out by an angry driver this morning on my way to have my son, the D.C. who can work miracles on aches and pains, put me right from a tendinitis attack.       This 20- or 30-something dude who was driving an expensive new car and being a "Yapping Yorkie" on his cell phone, turned into traffic on a red light and nearly hit my vehicle.  I do not remember things like this happening even ten years ago.

PATHETIC:   a news item from Britain about Prince Featherbrain (a.k.a. Charles, the Prince of "Wails" (who will not be King for many years, I think…Live On Queen Elizabeth!!) is getting into it again with his views on Global Warming.  Apparently the burgeoning number of scientist who are disagreeing with those politically-motivated ones and  are declaring Global Warming alarmism to be highly overrated.  I find it interesting (in doing research among the view of many global climate scientists) that so many of them (true objective scientists) attribute long-range climate change on the activity or lack of activity in the Sun. The correlation between the Sun’s active and passive activity cycles and global warming or cooling is not a coincidence….except to the current batch of global warming Hysterians, including Charles, who has never been noted for his brain power…as have many others been declared a bit "dotty" in his family called the Windsors.  It is Bonnie Prince Charlie of Windsor who talks to his flowers and other plants in his rural English estate garden.  Whether the plants and flowers talk back to him has not yet been established. 

 It is endless fascinating that the ones who insist that global warming is upon us and that people can actually change that situation by buying "carbon credits" (a la Al Gore) or driving greener vehicles or not using electricity or air conditioning (unless you have a huge mansion) or not using  commercial and private jets so much (unless you are a celebrity or have to travel to lecture others on how to live their lives to reduce carbon dixiode)…..are so arrogant and so sure they are "god-like", that they can call the shots on global warming or cooling. 

 It is part of the ancient theme of arrogance and pride, first seen in the Garden of Eden when Satan told Eve, she could be "as God" if she ate of the tree of good and evil…the same Pride that denies the fact that there are some things totally out of our control….it is called "acts of God" in law….but now in modernity, hurricanes are caused because the Kyoto Treaty was not signed by the U.S……the glaciers are melting in the north pole because the U.S. is putting out too much carbon dioxide and disaster is going to befall the entire world because WE ARE NOT DOING ENOUGH TO STOP IT!!!!    Has anyone noticed the awful spate of icy winter climates in 2008 in many places around the globe?  The terrible cold and stormy weather in Europe and Asia and Australia and Africa???   Records for cold have been broken this winter in a lot of places and it might be due to that little thing off the coast of S.A. called "la nina"….a phenomenon that governs many of our winters and summers.  Can the Global Alarmists do anything to stop "la nina" from forming in the ocean? Can they put a halt to her little brother "el nino" who also affects winters and summers in its time off S.American shores.  Al Gore and his G.W. crew better get on this, and I mean now!—-HELP STOP LA NINA AND EL NINO BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE  say the signs and placards at the demonstrations organized by Global Warmers who have arrived in their Humvees and SUVs and huge Pickups.

The continuing phenomenon of irrational Pride and Arrogance are common denominators in all eras of history…including those who threw Galileo in prison for his scientific research on the Sun being the center of the Galaxy instead of the Earth (which of course was flat!) Pride and Arrogance will never leave us so dig in, and resist those who declare that WE are the answer to problems like climate changes.  Just follow Prince Featherbrain over the cliff like a bunch of globally-warmed Lemmings.

Just a few more thoughts on being in Mexico for 2 weeks:   I spent one of the first mornings at the Buganvilias resort sitting on a sea wall staring out at the Bay of Banderas’ blue waters. I was hoping to spot whales that had been reported by a family friend who was living in one of the highest places in the building.  He had seen a pod of 30 or more female whales with their calves swimming together.  In retrospect, after NOT seeing any whales from the seawall, I should have ponied up the pesos and gone out on the tour boat that went to where the whales would  be swimming…but I didn’t so it is lost to me.  California gray whales gather in the Bay of Banderas to give birth to the baby whales and to teach them to swim close to the mothers before they continue their northward migration up the coast of western Mexico and the western US as they travel to the colder waters of the Pacific for summer feeding.   I was told that Killer Whales try to get the baby whales on this journey so, therefore, the necessity of the training process to learn to swim close to the adult whales.

While I was looking westward to the Pacific Ocean, I did see a lot of interesting things, particularly the diving birds that I think are called Ernes or Sea Eagles.  In profile they definitely look like skinny bald eagles with the white heads and the eagle head.  One of the relatives called them Frigate Birds but I need to get a look at a Birds Of Mexico book and check on it.  These birds fly high over the ocean surface and suddenly go into an almost vertical dive, hitting the water at a tremendous rate of speed.  They disappear momentarily and bob back up a few minutes later.  This is definitely a feeding maneuver and the steep dive nets them a good meal while they are submerged.  I noticed that after several dives, they head towards the town center and disappear into the trees….maybe to a nest????    The other birds I watched were the brown pelicans who cruise the water only about two feet above the surface.  These pelicans fly in formation and I came to think of them as the "Brown Angels" because I saw them so many times looking like a perfect delta fly-over by the navy’s Blue Angels.   In the heat of the afternoons, the Pelicans and the Sea Eagles/Frigate Birds (?) would ride the thermals that formed by the many-story hotel building.  That was when I observed the formation-flying.   I was amazed by the way these creatures rode the thermals without having to move their wings for such long periods of time.  One day while looking up, several of us got "bombed" by a Pelican and I am here to tell you that a Pelican "bomb" is very large and dangerous.  I would say that at least 5 of us got splattered and it was some of the worst smelling stuff I have ever smelled.   Think about every rotten fish odor you have ever had to inhale.  I could not get back upstairs fast enough to get my shirt off my back.

I miss the hot days, the thermal soaring birds, and the ocean dives by some of the most amazing birds I have ever watched.    But when I sat on my own deck yesteray, bundled up in blankets and a parka, I lifted my face to the strong March sunshine and heard the calls of Chickadees.  They are just as nice as Pelicans and Sea Eagles—-in their own sweet way!!!

I thought of how it won’t be too long before I hear  strange cries from overhead, as the Sandhill Cranes ride the thermals on their northward migration.  It is a sound and a sight to behold and I am so ready for them.

Spring is on its way in spite of our temperatures in the early mornings.  The strong sunshine is a huge indicator and the much later sunsets and earlier sunrises (about to be snatched from us by the Accursed Coming of (gag!) Daylight Savings Time this weekend….just when I was thinking about the abundant sunshine and early sunrises, I had to go and remember DST.  Rats!