Today I’m thankful the world isn’t any more complex than it already is and have a Christmas wish that we all find ways to make it simpler. Repeat after me: "Analogue is Awesome; Digital is Disastrous!” If you think I’m overreacting, check the stories on /. Slashdot each day for a week or more. When was the last time a computer really made your life better? Or, do they just help US to make the same dumb mistakes even faster, with fewer options available to correct those mistakes? Was identity theft a real problem when we all relied on snail mail? When was the last time someone hacked the postal system?
Are you tired of being nagged to sign up for auto-payment by one or more basic service corporations? At the moment, trash, phone and power companies want to get into my banking accounts. One credit card company, after selling my account to a different organization, keeps asking me to see if I’m prequalified for one of their accounts. 😏
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| Sven in his canoe
Photo by J. Harrington
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While I spent the morning wrestling with one of my “It just works!” computers, the Better Half dug out and set up more or our holiday decorations. Sven in his canoe and Ole on his skies are now perched on top of various pieces of furniture. Seeing sparkles and candlelights has boosted my holiday mood. Last night I noticed the subtle simplicity of the lighted wreathes and angels and wondered if adding the icicle lights might be too garish. We’ll see this weekend.
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| Ole on his skis
Photo by J. Harrington
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I’m well aware of my privileged status and how much less I have to complain about than Gaza or Ukraine or other refugees. That doesn’t keep me from wondering what it would be like if the “developed” countries put as much effort into simplifying production, making less that works better for longer and is more repairable than creating as much toxic waste and unrepairable and largely unrecyclable junk as they do. I’d give a lot more thanks if I, and you, could live in a simpler, more wholesome and healthy world than the one we leave behind daily. New, improved, bigger, faster isn’t always, and we don’t have enough earths for all of US to live the way some of US do. We can do better.
When the Burning Begins
for Otis Douglas Smith, my father
The recipe for hot water cornbread is simple:
Cornmeal, hot water. Mix till sluggish,
then dollop in a sizzling skillet.
When you smell the burning begin, flip it.
When you smell the burning begin again,
dump it onto a plate. You’ve got to wait
for the burning and get it just right.
Before the bread cools down,
smear it with sweet salted butter
and smash it with your fingers,
crumple it up in a bowl
of collard greens or buttermilk,
forget that I’m telling you it’s the first thing
I ever cooked, that my daddy was laughing
and breathing and no bullet in his head
when he taught me.
Mix it till it looks like quicksand, he’d say.
Till it moves like a slow song sounds.
We’d sit there in the kitchen, licking our fingers
and laughing at my mother,
who was probably scrubbing something with bleach,
or watching Bonanza,
or thinking how stupid it was to be burning
that nasty old bread in that cast iron skillet.
When I told her that I’d made my first-ever pan
of hot water cornbread, and that my daddy
had branded it glorious, she sniffed and kept
mopping the floor over and over in the same place.
So here’s how you do it:
You take out a bowl, like the one
we had with blue flowers and only one crack,
you put the cornmeal in it.
Then you turn on the hot water and you let it run
while you tell the story about the boy
who kissed your cheek after school
or about how you really want to be a reporter
instead of a teacher or nurse like Mama said,
and the water keeps running while Daddy says
You will be a wonderful writer
and you will be famous someday and when
you get famous, if I wrote you a letter and
send you some money, would you write about me?
and he is laughing and breathing and no bullet
in his head. So you let the water run into this mix
till it moves like mud moves at the bottom of a river,
which is another thing Daddy said, and even though
I’d never even seen a river,
I knew exactly what he meant.
Then you turn the fire way up under the skillet,
and you pour in this mix
that moves like mud moves at the bottom of a river,
like quicksand, like slow song sounds.
That stuff pops something awful when it first hits
that blazing skillet, and sometimes Daddy and I
would dance to those angry pop sounds,
he’d let me rest my feet on top of his
while we waltzed around the kitchen
and my mother huffed and puffed
on the other side of the door. When you are famous,
Daddy asks me, will you write about dancing
in the kitchen with your father?
I say everything I write will be about you,
then you will be famous too. And we dip and swirl
and spin, but then he stops.
And sniffs the air.
The thing you have to remember
about hot water cornbread
is to wait for the burning
so you know when to flip it, and then again
so you know when it’s crusty and done.
Then eat it the way we did,
with our fingers,
our feet still tingling from dancing.
But remember that sometimes the burning
takes such a long time,
and in that time,
sometimes,
poems are born.
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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