"It's a - Family Tradition"

I've loved to cook and bake my whole life, and have always gone overboard for holidays. Holidays mean lights of all types, from soft candle glows and kerosene lamps to bright and cheerful lighted decorations. So the dim candlelight flickers off of the china that holds the meats; turkey for Thanksgiving, and ham for Christmas, mashed potatoes swimming in butter, a gravy boat (owned by my grandmother) standing staunchly nearby. Always homemade yeasty rolls, and pies, pies, pies! Pecan, cherry, and pumpkin, with real whipped cream and lots of rich flavors. My Chocolate Rum Balls have been the downfall of many a poor party-goer; they just taste sooo good, melty and sweet, that folks get drunk off of them without even realizing it! A dear friend who writes a column still blames the rum balls for her interesting post-holiday column one year, and an EMT who shall remain nameless had to come off of the truck and be replaced as he dozed happily on my couch, unawakened by the tones that called him to duty, after indulging in the tiny morsels. (They were warned, but, you know....) Another treat is my Drunken Sot fruitcake. It is not the normal fruitcake with unrecognizable "candied" fruit; it has bananas, cherries, white raisins, walnuts, pecans, pineapple, and whatever else is in abundance that year. The fruits are soaked in a mixture of dark rum, French Brandy, and real butter until they double in size, then are added to the dark batter, rich with eggs and honey, cinnamon and cloves. After they are baked, I brush them all with the butter-rum-brandy mixture, and pop them in the freezer. I usually bake them the first week of November, and brush them again every weekend, then put them right back in the freezer, until I give them out over Christmas. Even people who HATE fruitcake ask for this every year. I don't know why.

Then there's the decorating. I have boxes and boxes and BOXES of ornaments, and I like everything to look just so - from the trees in every room, to the tabletop decorations, to the lights inside and out. Every year I add something else. The village I made years ago, with the houses and streetlights and people, was updated last year with a carousel, this year with a train and skating pond/river. Mike rigged my pickup with an inverter one year so that I can have Christmas lights around it, too. (Some folks may recall a certain hayride...) I love the lights, the music, the sights and sounds and smells of Christmas, and am always on the lookout year-round for the "perfect" addition to my ever-growing collection.

We always have an open-door policy at Christmas; friends who have 'no place to go' are always welcome at the table - and with enough warning we make a stocking for them, too.

Our favorite thing to do in the evenings leading up to Christmas Eve is to sit in front of the TV and watch all of the 'old' Christmas movies - and we are constantly adding to that group too. But we are very particular; brainless garbage or oversimplified remakes are not included just because they have a Christmas tree or someone dressed in red velvet. I and my best friend love "It's a Wonderful Life", but there are others... Rudolph and Frosty of course, and "Miracle on 34th Street" (the b/w one of course, the Natalie Wood one, and the most recent one are all in the library here) , and the one that no one else has ever heard of, "A Wish for Wings That Work" with Opus the penguin and Bill the Cat. Yes, we even like Bill Murray's "Scrooged". And as many times as I've seen them, I still cry at all of the 'appropriate' places.

Presents don't mean that much to us; gifts are something we prefer to give when we find something someone else would really REALLY like, or just to send an email card or make a phone call. We didn't raise our kids to require presents and false feelings of being forced to acquiesce to advertising hype. Just this past week, we loaded up our daughter's truck with all of our son's old He-Man and Castle Greyskull toys, and she took them to him. He had reserved a spot on his bookshelves just for them, and reports say he was playing with them as of old! Hee hee. What could be a better gift to an all-grown-up child than a chance to relive one's childhood?

The things that matter to us are things that bring us and others joy; from the groaning tables of food, thru the brightly colored and happy lights, the music and movies, and even down to the silly little button, "HO-3" we wear... Joy is in the ears that hear, the eyes that see, the hearts that share. These are our traditions.

$10 Steak Dinner?

Umm, well, yes - when you live in beef country, you can go to a fundraiser for the American Legion and pay $10 a head for donated, sweetly tender, grassfed Angus beef, over an inch and a half thick, cooked over an open charcoal grill, plus a baked potato and multiple salads and desserts and bread, even a drink.

I admit it, I am in my element here. No high-priced fancy imported beef - these steaks were, just last week, walking the hills around my town. The potato farm started digging last week; hundreds of flaky potatoes in their skins, not hard and tiny culls and nubbins. Real food, grown and raised by real people who take pride in their work, and who happily donate it to raise money for good causes. But dang, BEEF! Real Beef!! I am lovin it! I could cut it with a butter knife!

Yummers.

Sami's boyfriend shot a deer today, the first day of hunting season. He'll be bringing by the meat tomorrow. .. he just wanted the rack, after all. The wild game this year has been so abundant that each deer or turkey license gets two tags apiece. Sami is so proud of her boyfriend - and so proud too of her Honorable Mention in the District Drama competition. She and the Club go on to compete in the State finals - after, of course, they perform their play for the townspeople next week.

It's not just the food, both wild and tame, here that attracts. It is the people; the openness, the willingness to participate and have fun and share. Over 500 people crowded into the Hall tonight to pay $10 a dinner, chat and visit, introduce and re-introduce, and to just have fun. Paul and Enid joined us in the bar a block away afterwards, and we sat and talked family and hunting and politics and Christmas decorations with Pat and Marty and some other neighbors. Nothing rowdy, nothing obnoxious - Paul taught Marty's kids to shoot pool while we chatted and laughed. Janet came out of the kitchen and sat with us too.

The American Legion now has the money to send some more kids from the high school this next spring to a week-long leadership training, that they do every year in Lincoln for over 400 kids. Since we joined the Legion, we can be a part of sending ditty bags to Iraq, and last week I baked 9 dozen cookies for the Veteran's Day program. There were over 200 dozen cookies donated - more than enough to take to Hay Springs for the Christmas Tour of Lights sponsorship, too. Next week the FFA is entering kids in the Parly-Pro competition - what could THAT be? Why, it's where kids learn Paliamentary Procedure and practice it, and are judged on it. Robert's Rules of Order is practically a religion here; everything is pro forma and run by The Book.

And who provides the funding for all of this? Not some vast government bureaucracy, not the parents, not the teachers, not the School District. But the people that belong to the American Legion and Local Farmer's Union, that teach the children not just books but hands-on, practical, life training. They raise the money from donations and membership fees and fun things like steak dinners and pancake breakfasts and picnics. Everyone participates, everyone encourages, everyone works 16 hour days and still takes time to join in the fun and to volunteer to make life better for each other. No running around with their hands constantly out, their mouths constantly open in a whine, begging for this or that while the kids sink ever more increasingly into mindless stupors of drugs, sex, and hapless, helpless, government dependence. There's 'way too much to DO here.

Man that was an AWESOME steak...

Call of the Wild

Did you ever read it?
Silly question - who reads any more? If it isn't a movie or an audiobook, no one knows it.

It was always one of my favorites. Man against the elements, Man against himself, Man against Man - all of the classic elements in a 'dog' story. The movie didn't do the struggles, external and internal, proper justice - but then they never do.

"Buck" crossed my mind yesterday as I watched my beloved Sasha cavorting in the blizzard. Sasha would have been one of those high-bred, soon-to-die kidnapped dogs, forced to pull a sled until she dropped. Buck would have disliked her immensely - spoiled and fussy, even though her breed was bred for mountains and snow and cold, to take down antelope with a snarling leap like a cougar. She might think she could do it now, but... she likes her sleeping bag and her warm spots far too much. Work? Not my blonde beauty - she would be insulted by the very thought of it. Brush her and snuggle her and call her beautiful, and she laughs delightedly. She can bark, and when she does, it is a deep chesty powerful roar - but it is merely noise. Long gone are the painful, poignant memories of being kept in an 8x10 cage, bred for puppies, starved and broken-tailed and covered in mange.

When I got the email from an old and dear friend about how the black woman told my friend's husband that Barack Obama was going to pay her mortgage and give her free vouchers for gas - and she knew it was true because their preachers had been telling them in the churches for three months - I thought of Buck again.

Spoiled people who have never known hunger, true hardship, true poverty. Spoiled people who have never gone a day without food, or a month without meat, or night after long winter night without heat.

I was on a forum today, reading about a woman whose husband is being transferred, and she wanted to know of a place where: She could buy a house no more than five years old, preferably in a planned community; the schools were excellent; the playgrounds immense and planned activities for her three elementary-age children omnipresent; where malls and boutiques and coffee shops were all close by. I thought of Buck again, shivering in his dug-in hole in the snow in the Alaska wilderness, fighting over gristly meat tossed out to a pack of slavering, starving dogs that had been driven and beaten to put forth their efforts.

No, the three great struggles that forge the human (and canine) spirit are no more. Man against the elements? We whine that someone should house us and pay for our fuel to heat our homes and drive our vehicles. We complain about rain and snow and sunshine, darting from our warm or air-conditioned house to our warm or air-conditioned car to our warm or air-conditioned work, never getting out and challenging the elements, growing our own food or heating our own home by the sweat of our brows. Man against Man? No, everyone has to win a prize, or it isn't FAIR. Competition means a level playing field and fair play and smooth sailing, not overcoming the bumps and swamps and pathos of our lives. If someone gets a little less than they have been told that they deserve - whether from fate, or from a lack of direction and purpose, or from sheer laziness and self-indulgence - why, give them what they want anyway. They DESERVE it.

Man against himself? What does that mean? Why would you want to compete against yourself, why should you feel that you should prove yourself at all? So much easier to strut around and bark loudly and proclaim to the world that you own it, without ever having done anything to gain it or earn it. Turn on American Idol, or Survivor, or politics, and watch someone else pretend to overcome something, from the comfort of our living room recliner, and cheer or cry crocodile tears for emotions we cannot feel and never know. Emotions that we have not earned. For how can you know pleasure without pain, love without hate, fulfillment without despair, passion without ennui? Simply, you cannot. You can argue that you do, even think that you do. But it is false, tissue-paper emotion, ripped swiftly by our tears and cheers, meaning nothing, holding nothing, accomplishing nothing.

Yes, Buck knew what was important.

Survival. Mutual work output for mutual goal accomplishment. Deep trust, deep loyalty, honesty, and deathless love. Fulfillment of the body, use of the muscles and brain to accomplish, succeed, survive, and to do it better than you ever thought possible of yourself; and fulfillment of the soul, the passionate and raw emotions, tempered with common sense and matured with an ever-growing understanding.

Look around you. See that anywhere? Or are you like my Sasha, knowing and believing that the food bowl and belly will always be full, that she will always be petted and snuggled and spoiled and made much of, without ever having to lift a paw?

Election Whoas

Stopit. Knock it off already.

Any one who has any brain function at all already knows for which candidate they are going to vote - or has already voted absentee. I realize that that lets out about 60% of the population, not counting the ones who are slavering over this candidate or that one, believing whatever rhetoric stirs their hearts and gonads this year, but still.

Doesn't stop the phone calls, the emails, the constant barrage on the TV news of course. THEY have to act as though they are the ones who invented sleaze, political mindgames, and lying as an art. Yawn. I'm not even going to watch the news tomorrow - inevitably they'll have that little town in - is it Maine, or New Hampshire? - that votes first in the country, and the rest of those crappy news stories that pompously pontificate, predict, and prevaricate all the way til poor little Hawaii closes its polls. Ho-Hum. They only thing that matters is the results - and with all of the accusations of voter fraud, the mismanagement of polling places, the failure and susceptibility-to-hacking of voting machines, and the lies, vote-buying, intimidation, and briberies of ACORN, even the certified, sanctified, results will be in doubt. How low is your chad hanging?

Leave me alone. Stop calling me. Go jump up my ass, my state already voted last week by absentee ballot - a necessity in rural communities. Go away. GO. AWAY. DON'T leave a message on my answering machine.

I have a life. You need to get one - and to realize that it isn't the Commander in Chief who will make those all important decisions, but the lawyers in the House and Senate. And unless either side does what the Conspiracy Theorists fear and comes knocking on your door to take you to an internment camp or Gitmo, or to take away your guns, what they decide tomorrow won't change tomorrow, won't affect your job or your life tomorrow, or for the next three months or so anyway. Go away. Get over yourselves. You are not as important as you insist that you are.

Sheer hysterical enthusiasm cannot override pure unadulterated cynicism. I already did my duty - go do yours and shut up already. No! STOP! Not on the LAWN! Too late - another rambling voiciferous idiot did his doody, right out in front for all to see. And it is the rest of us, the cynics, who will have to clean it up. Sigh. What else is new?

"Liberal" Women Who Lie To Themselves

Liberal women were all drooling and cheering over Hilary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, but when Sarah Palin arrived on the scene, suddenly they focussed on Obama as their hero.

I could make national headlines if I hung Obama in effigy as a "Halloween decoration" - and back east I'd probably go to jail for a hate crime, get hate mail and death threats. But the news media thinks it's funny that a liberal hangs Sarah Palin in effigy.

You can't have it both ways. Either you really do admire a woman who has worked her ass off (in a "man's world") to achieve all that she has achieved, or you don't. Either you are honest or you are allowing yourself to be played by the liberal angst and fanaticism to only like certain women who fit a certain ideal - and all the others are nonentities, scrap on the man-pile, grist for the man-mill. Women who pontificate about how men have kept them down or abused women are amazingly silent on the Palin effigy. They should be outraged. They should be angry. Yet - they are not. What does that tell you about their real agendas, their honesty, their integrity, and their admiration? That they are all lies. Maybe they truly don't know that they are lying to themselves, but they are.

When it is ok, even FUNNY, to hang a white woman in effigy, but not ok to put a noose in a tree or on a locker, depending on who the victim is, that completely decimates their whole politically-correct mantras, and exposes them for what they are - mouth breathing, media-run panderers to liberalism and falsehood.

Don't talk to me about supporting rights for all, and equality, and fairness. You wouldn't know fairness if it dragged you into a courtroom and prosecuted you for your own stupidity and gullibility. You wouldn't know equality and freedom, hiding behind your support for only 'particular' women whom you are told should be admired. And most importantly, you are living and promulgating a lie, a falsehood, a weak-kneed pathetic attempt at fair play that only separates, not unifies, women... and patting yourselves on the backs for it!

Go play with your other weak minded liberal simpletons, and grouse about how women are STILL treated shabbily, isn't it AWFUL, we need to get behind a woman who is independent and forthright and not only believes in what she says but acts on it. Go pee in your own sandbox and try to cover it up. The grownups are talking. Don't bother us.

Exactly Why

A good friend of mine wrote this week once again that he believes, he KNOWS, that we must return to the gold standard both nationally and globally. However, in his post, down near the end, he wrote, "It would scuttle the grand plans of the political con artists who yearn to get rich by running the paper-money printing press overtime." And that to me is exactly why we will not ever return to a gold standard.

People don't even understand the basics of economics. Not their fault; of course, they believe what they are taught and told by people whom they trust, from teachers to professors to politicians. They don't understand that the stock market is a large imaginary, mutually-agreed-upon loss and profit quagmire. Its promotion solely depends on those who will profit the most from it. In good times, this is fine, it's ok, to be a little bullish, faithful, aggressive. In bad times, bearish times, folks are frightened. But of what? Common sense will dictate your investments, if you understand enough to ignore the hoopla and passion and to determine for yourself where the next boom (or bust) will lie. Never play with money that you don't have, don't trust a certificate but cold cash. Simple - yet all too easily run amok by ugly and talentless American Idol wannabes who know that people, especially gullible uneducated people, will follow hype instead of reason. Nevertheless, remember in the back of your mind that until your stock splits or sells and you have cash in hand, the whole stock market is purely imaginary; betting on products or services that have not even been invented yet. The dot com boom and bust, the Enron debacle, the housing boom and bust - all of these were led by people who knew exactly what they were doing and how money works - and who overhyped their products and seduced the gullible (as well as paid off the politicians) to keep their pockets lined at John Q's expense. They counted on the fantasy and excitement, the get-rich-quick eagerness and swallow-it-whole philosophy of the purposefully, determinedly ignorant. (The top three orchestrators of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac debacle are now Obama's financial advisors. Hand in glove, hand in glove, follow the money!)

Our dollars are built on the same fantasy, the same false sense of security. They have no grounding in gold, no basis in anything valuable and rare. If you print more dollar bills based on nothing at all, then you are being paid with nothing, are spending nothing. It is for this reason that prices of everything go up and the dollar's worth declines. The fantasy is fine and it works - for a little while - as long as people believe in it. But when it stops working - as it inevitably does, as more and more dollars are printed with no basis for their value - then people start scrabbling around for something that they can trade, or hold, that is valuable.

It is for this reason I believe that, by either force or suasion, the governments of the world will gather up all of the gold held in the hands of individuals. As governments take over banking and finance for their countries, they and they alone must hold the basis of that finance to make a profit or even to stay solvent and stable.

Have you ever known anything run by a government bureaucracy to make a profit or even to stay stable financially? Their attitude of - "If we need more money, will just raise taxes!" or "If we need more money, will just print more!" has gotten us where we are today. And it is a fantasy swallowed whole once again by the American people. There's really no hope for those who insist that they know nothing about economics, but insist on letting, even demanding, that their government or their stockbroker buy them into prosperity.

Don't Bug Me - My State's Voted

OK, well, part of us have.
Several years ago, the State Legislature took into account that they were spending a lot of money to open polling places and keep them open 12 hours. In our very rural areas, it was a huge waste of money and time. So what they do now is - the second week of October, they send out paper ballots to every registered voter, with self-addressed stamped envelopes to the county Election Commission. You fill out your ballot at home, pop it into the envelope, and mail it off. No voting machine expense; no machines to break down or to be tampered with. No poll workers and poll managers to pay. You can take an hour or more to read the amendments and questions, if you want. And no one stands behind you at a machine, no one stands waiting on the porch. Fill in the circles, zip, pop, sign, done.

Our county Election Commission folk are the most laid back people you'd ever want to meet. They'll sit and chat with you for an hour or more - about everything, about nothing. Why not? No stress. No problems. Everyone does what they are supposed to do; the folks who get the ballots can read and write, understand the importance of what they do, and send them back promptly, clean and crisp, just like they received them.

Out in the County, no one talks politics. Well, maybe some local politics - like Joe has seven kids and doesn't need to be on this Board any more, he's tired and wants to quit... no ranting, no screaming, no in-yer-face THIS IS WHAT YOU MUST DO. Every once in awhile a TIC or sharp little comment about Obama, but that's all; eyebrows and shoulders shrugging, no fanatical shrieking. It is a given that the Fed Gov will screw us no matter who we put in; nature of the beast, not as important as getting the calves loaded in the trucks this morning.

You know, in SC this could never happen. Too many emotional people and too much angst and mayhem, last minute 'revelations' that, for people who know how to read and who vote on lasting reason instead of burbling passion, are not revelations at all, but simply examples of what they already knew. Unlike the fellow we worked on in the wreck one Election Day, who told us he couldn't go to the hospital, that he had already voted in Point South, Ridgeland, Bluffton, and Switzerland, and still had to vote in Hardeeville and Savannah before the polls closed, or the infamous Jasper County Election Commission member who showed up to the Election Commission office with three hundred signed and voted absentee ballots in his hand; no cheating, no lying, no posturing for this candidate or that. It's over.

So all of those screaming and hissing telemarketers and pollsters can be ignored with the simple phrase, "Already voted". We have more important things to do now. Go away.