Friday, May 31, 2013

Thanks to Facebook and Aunt Frances

 
                I love Facebook! You can “face” your “friends”, but—unlike in person—you can scroll through everything you don’t want to “hear” them (or THEIR friends) “saying.” The technology amazes me! How so much information can be called up so quickly blasts my brain cells.
                By clicking “like” beneath any picture or message or forward, you can give notice that you agree or that you really do like whatever it is. You can “face” and visit with folks you don’t get to see but once or twice a year—Lucidity poets, for instance.
                You can “share” any pictures, comics, humorous illustrations, recipe presentations, etc. that appear on any of your friends’ “timelines” or on the general “news feed” onto your own timeline/status (I haven’t quite gotten the difference.)
This last subject is what I want to describe.
                Picture it (if you’re not on Facebook or have not seen it): two unpeeled baked potatoes, one in front of the other, exact same size, cut crosswise into many small slices (larger than for chips). Think perfectly twinned potatoes. Directions say to drizzle olive oil, butter over them, add sea salt and pepper, bake 40 minutes at 425 degrees.
                I “shared” it on my timeline, thinking that since I had a cellophane-wrapped baking potato, I would try it. At least two other friends said they believed they’d try it, too.
                As is the custom in food mags and pictures of food, presentation is the key. Mouth-watering, perfect lighting, perfect objects. I would try to replicate the picture.
So, Thursday, I betook myself into the kitchen to prepare this scrumptious dish. On Wednesday, Aunt Frances had brought luscious food from their garden—fresh asparagus, two garlic cloves, a small baggie of sugar snap peas, small red potatoes, and small white potatoes. Her husband, Uncle John Pelton, is the ultimate home gardener.
I de-cellophaned the potato I’d had  for too-long-to-remember, set it on the Pampered Chef cutting board, found my Pampered Chef thingie with spikes close together (for cutting boiled eggs, onions, etc.), pulled out a knife—I was ready.
Something about one end of the potato looked suspicious, so I cut into it to check the soundness. Oops! Good thing. I began slicing from that end, and piece after piece was black in the center. Alas! Only half was usable. So much for presentation. I’d have to find a way to re-present. No sweat.
I sliced the half-potato using the “slicer.” Hmm. Not much there. But I remembered Aunt Fran’s potatoes. I sliced them, too, found a small square, pear-motifed baking dish, sprayed it with oil and arranged all three different spud types into it.
Olive oil I drizzled; coarse sea salt I shook, pepper also. In the meantime, then I clicked on the potato picture once more and noticed that others had used a variety of herbs and spices.
My spice shelves were crowded since Billy brought all his (originally mine) home from the HSU apartment. I added dried onion and onion powder. Surely….
Who wants to heat up the kitchen when a microwave sits in the corner of the countertop?  I cooked the potatoes in two-minute increments until they were tender.
Not much to look at; not worth posting on Facebook, but good tasting.
How could it not be tasty? If I can figure out how, I’ll add the picture to this post.

Thursday, May 23, 2013

She opened the cemetery gate and I rushed through

 
Cameron Cemetery, Salem Community, Benton AR, photo by PL
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

by Pat Laster
           I know someone who—when anyone tells her about anything—always has a better, more intriguing tale about the subject. I call her Ms. One-Upper—behind her back of course.
 
           I don’t want to be one-upping Ms. N., but her last week’s column listing of cemeteries hit me right in the Compendium of Journal Jottings that I’ve been amassing for several years.
 
          I have a list–now, by adding those she named that I didn’t have, thank-you-very-much, Ms. N.—of 386 cemeteries in Arkansas. That's not complete, just ones I've come across in my readings.
 
         Some of the more colorful names in MY list are: Ash Grove and Aunt Dilly, Barnishaw, Barren Fork, Brush Creek and Burnt Schoolhouse; Chalybeate Springs, Chickalah and Chinquapin;
 
        Daniel and Dongola, Eagle and Eden, Free Gift and Free House, Gaster Hill and Graves, Hephzibah and Honey Hill, Ida Mission and Ivy Chapel,
 
         Jerusalem and Judsonia, King and Koshkonong, Lick Creek and Lick Prairie, Maynard Bend and Morning Star, Needmore and Nogo, Old Jennie Lind and Old Texas, Puddin Ridge and Pumpkin Bend, and Quiet.
  
          Red Doors and Rush Fork, Sandy Ridge and Stranger’s Home, Temperance Hill and Three Brothers, Union Valley and Urbana, Violet Hill and Virginia, Walnut Bottoms and Water Creek, Yellow Creek and Zion.
  
         To continue in this vein, here are some poems about cemeteries from the website ablemuse.com.

HIDE-AND-SEEK- Robert Francis 
 
Here where the dead lie hidden
 Too well ever to speak,
Three children unforbidden
are playing hide-and-seek.
            What if for such a hiding 
            These stones were not designed? 
            The dead are far from chiding;
            The living need not mind.

            Too soon the stones that hid them 
            Anonymously in play
            Will learn their names and bid them
             Come back to hide to stay.


 MARK TWAIN’S EULOGY TO HIS DAUGHTER OLIVIA SUSAN CLEMENS
  
           Warm summer sun,
           shine brightly here, 
           Warm Southern wind, 
            blow softly here,
           

            Green sod above, 
            lie light, lie light, 
            Good night, dear heart; 
            good night, good night.

 
IN A DISUSED GRAVEYARD - Robert Frost  

The living come with grassy tread 
To read the gravestones on the hill; 
The graveyard draws the living still,
 But never anymore the dead.
The verses in it say and say:
 "The ones who living come today 
To read the stones and go away
Tomorrow dead will come to stay." 
So sure of death the marbles rhyme, 
Yet can't help marking all the time
How no one dead will seem to come. 
What is it men are shrinking from? 
It would be easy to be clever
And tell the stones: Men hate to die 
And have stopped dying now forever. 
I think they would believe the lie.
Pat here:
 This close to Memorial Day, let us stop and remember.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

A great Mother’s Day week

A younger Kid Billy, now 23
 
by Pat Laster
Early during Mother's Day week, Amazon sent word that Florida son Gordon had honored me with a gift card. That Friday, Hot Springs son Eric came over and --for his (requested) Mother's Day gift--worked in the north yard cutting down and apart the huge branch of the hackberry that had peeled off and lain in the yard for a couple of months. All the while--till about 1:30--I worked alongside him pulling branches to a new brush pile beside Couchwood Dr., clipping the ubiquitous privet, honeysuckle and sawbriars (with scratches on my left hand to prove it--I eschew gloves), then weed-eating around the area.
             E. took his chain saw later and cut (to the ground) the stand of privet, a wild cherry and hickory (alas) sapling that attached (in looks) to the giant tree. Wonder how long it's been since anyone attended to that mess. (My brother said later, "Probably 30 years.") I left the yellowbell and the spirea, of course. Still more privet among the yellowbell, but I'll take care of that myself--with such a good start as was made that day. I took pictures but it will take a while to get them online.
Billy came home overnight Friday to pick up his birth certificate. He's moving from the (expensive) on-campus-but-contracted-out apartments to an apartment out in town with a friend and the friend's girlfriend. At 23, he's old enough to decide--and the rent is only $260 a month.
He'll take summer classes again. Next fall will be the beginning of his 6th year. His trumpet advisor laughingly said at the last choral concert, "Yeah, we're gonna give Billy tenure."
I told someone I didn't care what he learned or didn't learn, I'm just proud of his musical training/experience. You wouldn't believe how still he can stand without moving anything but his mouth (and vocal apparatus) and one hand to turn pages and his eyes to move back and forth (without moving his head) to watch the director/music. So proud!
And if those weren’t blessings enough, former middle-school-choir student, former church-choir member and present friend, James, came by Friday night since his wife was at choir rehearsal. We caught up on Chamber Singers, River City Men’s Chorus, St. James UMC (where he now attends) and his family doings. He told of attending a “contemporary” funeral of a relative where the mood was celebratory in the most vibrant sense of the word. The only tears he noticed were from the deceased’s mother and one other relative. Guitars, drums, vocals, praise and worship—you name it, he said.
            Saturday night, daughter Annamarie took me to dinner at Casa Americana. Afterwards, we ate yogurt from a shop across the parking lot. Two journals and two cards added to the evening.  
Cards came from the other two children-grandchildren-in-laws.
Lucky, lucky me.


Thursday, May 9, 2013

May is Arkansas Heritage Month

by Pat Laster
 
Here are some facts and figures on Arkansas gathered from my readings during the past several years.
* Alice Walton, 61, daughter of Sam Walton of Wal-Mart, in mid-2011, was worth $21 billion––the 9th richest person in the US.
* An Arkansas law of 1930 provided that prayer ‘may’ be offered, making such action permissive and neither requiring nor prohibiting it. (Other Days – 1961, Arkansas Democrat Gazette)
* The Arkansas Gazette was 172 years old before being sold in 1986 to the Arkansas Democrat.
* Arkansas is in the St. Louis district of the Federal Reserve, which has 12 districts.
*Arkansas cannot be sued in the state’s courts (sovereign immunity). But people can file with the Claims Commission.
* Arkansas’s 175th birthdate (1836), the 25th state in the Union, was celebrated on June 15, 2011.
* Arkansas State University-Jonesboro is the state’s second largest public university with about 13,920 students.
*Before integration, the Gethsemane public school system with Merrill High School existed in Pine Bluff. Also in 1951, there were Gurdon Colored Schools.
* Boxing was legalized by the Arkansas legislature in 1929. Before that, even movies of boxing matches had been banned in the state.
* The Brown Dense lying beneath parts of South Arkansas (Smackover field fallow since the 1920s) is a shale formation that companies are hoping produces oil through horizontal drilling and fracking. Fracking is the process of blasting millions of gallons of water mixed with sand and chemicals into a well to break up rock and release trapped oil and natural gas.
* The Bureau of Legislative Research used 10.4 tons of paper during the 2009 legislative session.
* There is a California Township in Faulkner County with 5 eligible voters (5.20.12)
* The Callery pear tree is an invasive (to Arkansas) species.
            * Camp Magnolia in southern Arkansas was where religious conscientious objectors were housed during WWII.
            * Cellular-phone service in greater Little Rock began July 2, 1986 with Alltel Mobile. Phones cost $1500-$2000.
            * Charter Schools: as of mid-November 2011, there were 17 open-enrollment, publicly-funded, independently-operated charter schools in Arkansas. Charter Schools have to meet twenty standards.
[To be continued. Sometime. Maybe.] 

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Post-Louisiana UMCOR trip account


 Part of Jacksonville First UMC's team who served at UMCOR recently: left to right:Ursula, Colleen, Maryette (in absentia), Pat, Kathy and Mary. Photo by Joyce White, team leader
by Pat Laster

            On Friday morning, April 26, close to 60 UMC “missioners” finished a week’s work at Baldwin, Louisiana's Sager-Brown UMCOR's warehouse.

            The group from Jacksonville UMC (AR) let me be a member of their team and I enjoyed getting to know them, plus others from Hot Springs Village--31 came from there and called themselves the Village People-- and Portland (area), Oregon, eleven of whom flew down, rented two vans and were hanging around afterwards to see the sights nearby.

           I was one of 12 folks tumping out "verified" school bags--verified somewhere, but not at Sager-Brown--checking them for the appropriate items:  3 packs of paper, either legal pads, spiral notebooks or notebook paper, but only one pack of the latter in each bag; a pencil sharpener; a pair of child’s scissors, blunt or rounded tips; a 12-inch ruler with both inches and centimeter markings; six pencils, unsharpened and with erasers; a box of 24 crayons and a large eraser. The bags themselves had to be at least wide enough to hold that ruler sideways. The handles had to be long enough and sewed in two inches from the sides of the bags. The bags had to be sturdy, the handles double stitched and the seams preferably serged against raveling.


            We refilled and turned in around 4,000 re-verified bags during the week. Several of the Village men put them in boxes—12 to the box—taped and labeled, then dolly-ed them down to the end of the (huge) warehouse to be shelved until needed.

           At other tables, volunteers worked checking “verified” health kits and layette kits. Most all the health kits included items that had to be discarded, especially unwrapped bars of soap. 

          The layette-kit folks could be heard oohing and aahing when one of them opened a kit with a precious knitted or crocheted baby sweater.

           Meanwhile, down in the sewing room, women were busy re-doing the school bags that didn’t pass muster: too thin, straps too short, seams too narrow or already frayed, stitching that hadn’t been tied off (back stitched). Also, those with advertisements on them, plastic shopping bags, bags sold by stores to pack items (without using the ubiquitous plastic bags) had to be discarded.

          All discards were packaged up for use in the local community’s women and children’s shelter, Chez Hope, or in the schools and nursing homes.

          Midweek, folks volunteered to help load two container trucks with the three types of kits. After a circled group prayer and the singing of the Doxology, we watched as the containers left for Houston to be loaded on a sea-going vessel to Armenia. There, after authorities check and approve the shipment, the kits will be processed out into the remote areas where missionaries work.

          Wednesday afternoon was everyone’s day off. Part of our group stayed and worked in the warehouse; the others took the church bus and drove north (an hour away) to see the sights near Lafayette. At the appointed hour, the other half drove up to meet them at Pont Breaux where we all ate Cajun food. Zydeco music from the house band brought many diners to the dance floor--including us.school bags, checking them against "the rules" and restuffing them. As of this afternoon, this week's crew has prepared 3,336 bags that have been boxed, taped and moved close to the doors leading to the loading dock. Earlier this week, two container trucks were loaded and will ultimately end up in Armenia. There they will be dispensed by missionaries around the area.
           On Thursday night during Vespers, I accompanied the flutist and announced the hymns.   If all this sounds interesting to you, either contact me or visit the UMCOR website. It's a great experience.