#1 grandson is of course going to press once again for his favorite name – Cool Ass Mojo – and once again isn’t likely to prevail. That’s okay, he can name his own child thusly. Grandpa and I are just delighted, hoping this birth will be much easier on our sweet daughter who has proven herself to be an extremely good Mom. Her family is happily well-adjusted and for her good choices we are grateful.

Meanwhile, Grandpa’s intensive work schedule in various regional public school systems kicked into high gear when school started in August, bringing home more than ‘the usual’ season-change cold this year. Some of you may know that the new H1N1 flu is officially rampant here in the Southeast. Some wish to call it swine flu, but it’s also got elements of bird flu and Spanish flu – a regular Chimera. So I just call it the Unicorn Flu, in honor of the worldwide panic it’s engendered since its so-public appearance in Mexico City this past April.

Hubby at first thought it was an attack of allergies, though he did have a headache and some fever to go with his sneezing and coughing. But not bad enough to cause him to miss work, so he no doubt helped spread it around. A couple of days later I came down with the sneeze attacks, head and body aches, sore throat and fever. I told him it had to be the flu, since allergies aren’t contagious.

Flu instead of just the usual cold because the cold doesn’t knock you down. Or, it doesn’t knock US down. I was down for a full 24 hours with this, and the fever was high enough to signal something more than rhinovirus. Still nursing a nasty congested cough two weeks later, with enough of a leftover fever to suspect I’ve graduated to bacterial bronchitis or mild pneumonia. Haven’t gone to a doctor and so long as I’m on top of it, won’t. It’s harvest time here on the homestead, I’ve been keeping up with that and preservation, can still play 5 holes of mountainside disc golf without trouble, and have been drinking a lot of my anti-viral/antibiotic herbal tea both hot and cold, with raw honey. I think I’ll live.

Deal is, for all the super-hype for this flu, it’s not nearly as bad as some other flus we’ve managed to catch over the years. While I wasn’t inclined to eat anything, there was no nausea or vomiting like there was with the Hong Kong flu back in the ’70s. Which nearly killed us for sure, though we were healthy 20-somethings at the time. I’ve read quite a bit of alternative super-hype about the vaccines they’ve rushed into production for this flu, and that’s over the top as well.

The rampant paranoia about forced vaccination and quarantine is overblown, given that the first vaccine is still weeks away and the flu itself is rampant. Not even bad enough to close any schools, it’s making the rounds pretty much like your average cold and not causing serious absenteeism or an increase in hospitalizations on a par with the average flu season around here in January. I see no indications from CDC that they’re going to force us all to get shots now that a majority of us have already had the flu. What would be the point in that? If it ever was the plan, the vaccine is too little too late in a region where the epidemic has already taken hold (and just about over by now).

So. If you happen to live in one of the states where this flu hasn’t yet made itself rampant, you may well wish to get the vaccine. Especially if you are in the high-risk groups, which in this case includes healthy young people. I’ve advised younger daughter to get vaccinated a.s.a.p. because she’s pregnant – and pregnant women have depressed immune functions by purposeful nature so they don’t attack their own baby growing in the womb. They account for many of the deaths reported for this flu, so that’s a definite risk. We’ve got our fingers crossed that she’ll make it to when they release the vaccine, and is first in line. Prayers to that effect offered daily!

For the rest of us, don’t worry so much. It’s not that bad.

The first part of July was very full of relatives here at the homestead, and my relatives run the gambit in ’size’ designations between morbidly obese and thin as rails. I’m a sort of in-between person. Weigh the same now (approaching my 40th anniversary next month) as I did the day I graduated from high school and the day I got married. Don’t tend to gain or lose and never have. Hubby is one of those ‘high metabolism’ sorts who could look like a starving Ethiopian with little trouble just by skipping a few meals, but keeps firm muscles under the no-fat covering by getting way more exercise than most guys these days. Comes from the homestead lifestyle, heating with wood (thus cutting and splitting), maintaining the acre of up-and-down yard, and playing lots of ‘challenging’ disc golf.

Our daughter takes after him. You’d swear she’s got a giant tapeworm or something watching her woof down more food in a single sitting than I’m likely to eat all day (or over two days!), never gains an ounce and has to eat lots to maintain what little she’s got. Her son takes more after his father, and could easily put on significant weight if he’s not careful. Of course his diet is worse than ours – he likes fast food burgers, fries and soft drinks, whereas we are mostly vegetarian, seldom eat out, and drink primarily our great spring water in herb/green teas or plain, or mixed with straight fruit juices like blueberry, cranberry, pomegranate or some combo. All of us get sugar cravings occasionally and are known to pig out on chocolate or other candy, but that’s rare enough not to be a big deal, living as far from town as we do. Daughter likes a little coffee in her sugar, when she’s not here a pound of sugar can last for months. Hubby and I don’t use it in coffee or on cereal (though we do like fruit on our Cheerios), and don’t drink milk straight-up ever. Daughter can consume a gallon a day without even trying.

Out of five kids in my family, 4 of us siblings tend to be slender like me. Yes, the poundage has rearranged quite a bit over the course of my 58 years, but you’ll have this (it’s a gravity thing, I think!). The youngest, my baby sister who had a 17″ waist when she got married, is now morbidly obese. She and her three children spent four days here, took grandson back with them to Florida. Her two sons are like her hubby, high metabolism guys whose plain old nervous energy keeps them skinny. They don’t exercise or even go out of the house much at all, so that’s not a factor. Her daughter is just now ‘chunky’, risks being fat as she gets older if she isn’t careful. Our parents weren’t fat folks, in fact, Mom was a runway model with long legs and perfect posture, lots of grace and beautiful chestnut hair – a real beauty. Grandparents weren’t particularly large on either side, though my father’s sister was a fat woman as was my mother’s grandmother. So there are no doubt a few fat genes in the mix, where there seem to be none on my hubby’s side.

And indeed genetics do play a role. Primarily, I suspect, in how metabolism is regulated, along with hunger signaling and tendencies to store fat. But my observations also tend to support my strong suspicions that most of it is diet and exercise habits. Primarily diet. This was doubly confirmed during their four-day visit, when we had to be the food suppliers.

Now, I’ve an ample garden and the apples are ripe, the pears are dropping, and there’s plenty of juice, tea, milk, cereal (Cheerios and plain Shredded Wheat), whole grain bread, cheese, pickles, canned veggies, etc. I cooked dinner every night, usually a bean dish (Mexican), potato soup, salads, vegetable plates, linguini or ravioli, etc. None of them would eat a bite of any of it. Over those days the bring-home from work for hubby consisted entirely of a 24-pack of Coke, a gallon of whole milk and two giant-size boxes of Frosted Flakes. Sis and her daughter ate bowl after bowl after bowl, finishing off both boxes every single day. Niece also whined constantly for someone to drive to McDonalds and get her bacon cheeseburgers, though we never did.

When I visit them I observe their diet too. Bags and bags of fast food burgers and crap piled on the kitchen table, cabinets chock full of snack foods, a fridge full of fatty lunchmeats, ice cream, chocolate milk, etc., and boxes, bags and wrappers piled in corners and along the walls of every room. They haven’t had a working stove/oven in 15 years, but sis doesn’t cook anyway so there’s no need for anything more than the hot plate her hubby and sons use to make themselves occasional Campbell’s Soup or canned spaghetti and meat sauce or beef stew. Adding it all together in my head, I figure they must spend 5 times what we do for a week’s worth of food, and not a single bit of it is what I’d considered healthy.

This of course isn’t everybody’s story, but it certainly plays a part in most of the “obesity epidemic” in this country. Bad food, bad habits, bad choices. And sis, being an RN who actually knows the reality of such things, expects just like most of the rest of ‘em that medical science will simply come up with a “fat-pill” one of these days that will keep them skinny without them ever having to change a single thing about their choices in life. I find that terribly sad.

Now, I’m ten years older and will probably die long before she does of something or other. She could well be like my great-grandmother, who we called “Big Mama” and who lived to be an obese, chain-smoking (corncob pipe), happy and semi-healthy 100. So general health isn’t a terribly good argument to use if the person is perfectly happy as they are. She does have some issues with depression, but not considerably large ones (no more than the rest of us, I’d say). She and hubby love each other just as they are, the kids are well-adjusted enough to function, they seem to enjoy their life fine. So I don’t bitch, I just stand in awe and wonder.

I do perceive an odd American mindset in all this. Sort of flagrant indulgence in the deadly sin of gluttony (as popular these days as lust, greed, wrath, sloth, envy and pride) as a way of life, with full expectation that somebody will ‘cure’ the deadly results without the person having to give up the sin. I also am guilty of not feeling too sorry for the greedheads on Wall Street (who DO NOT deserve to be bailed out with my hard-earned money!), the lusty free sex addicts and serial semi-monogamists, the angry old racists who disrupt Town Hall meetings with their hatred, the evil torture-enablers who want to be tyrannical dictators, or the fat folks who live in a pile of empty food containers they can’t even manage to throw away.

That’s probably pride on my part, though I’ve nothing much to be proud of, so I’ve my deadly sin too. I don’t tend to fat. That’s because I don’t eat a lot, and I don’t eat junk. But if I WERE constantly hungry and DID eat junk, I’d weigh what she does. I’m too dumb to be greedy and too lazy to be rich, though I’d sure love to be not-poor for a little while in my life. Not ever likely to happen, though. Maybe I’d have been a loose woman had I not found my soul-mate early in life, so I can’t too much fault those still actively seeking The One in their own lives. And if I didn’t mind living in filth, I probably wouldn’t ever clean my house (or my daughter and grandson’s rooms, which qualify in spades for the ’sloth’ designation). I do get mad enough to be considered ‘wrathful’, often at things I can do nothing about and sometimes at things I could do something about if I approached them differently. The Irish in me is just an excuse, so I’m no doubt guilty of that one as well. We’ve all got our issues and our weaknesses – our deadly sins – one is no better or worse than another.

So I just love ‘em. It’s all I can do. Try to encourage them to get more exercise or eat better when they’re here, but giving in and buying them most of the junk they want anyway just so they’ll be happy. Simply like being around them when I can, try to understand where I am overstepping and shouldn’t interfere, accept them as they are and as they come just because I love them. Life is hard on all of us, for sure. And no one can live anyone else’s lives, nor reasonably force them to be someone they’re not. So through the years I’ve learned to take things with a grain of salt, enjoy what little time I get with people I love, and try most of all to encourage their happiness. If what would make them happy is not something I can provide or they can ever provide for themselves, they’ll just have to learn to do without.

Like when some young relative who dropped out of school because he thought the requirements too stringent bitches that Bill Gates hasn’t yet made him the multi-billionaire VP of Microsoft (or some such ridiculousness), I just laugh. What’s the point of pointing out how silly that sounds? Or when another young relative bitches that nobody is giving her a nice car for free when she’s got two DUIs and wrecked the last one and is too drunk most days to hold a real job, what’s the point of suggesting that she quit getting drunk all the time, get a job and buy her own damned car? Or when another relative complains about achy knees and a bad back that make the stairs to the bathroom too difficult while weighing three times what a normal person weighs, what’s the point of pointing out that’s probably why she’s sore? All these things are entirely self-evident. They know that as well as I do. So they’re just sounding off, I make small noises of sympathy, then distract them with some other topic or project.

Still loving them, still glad to have them in my life, still thankful for the time in life I get to spend with them. And in return, I’m thankful that they don’t spend much time on my deadly sins and giving me advice I won’t take about how to ‘fix’ my life. Who knows? Maybe someday somebody really will invent a sin-pill we can all take to fix what our indulgences do to our lives and health!

The every-other-year trip to sunny Oklahoma to visit with Grandma (great-grandma to my grandkids) was quite the stressful situation this year, which is the year my hubby’s and my sole remaining parent turns 87. She was hospitalized for ten days a couple of months ago with a terrible case of food poisoning – we don’t buy the ‘flu’ excuse, it wasn’t flu – and we flew our daughter out there to stay with her when she got out because we couldn’t take the time off. Daughter made arrangements for home health care, which she needs because she lives alone in a too-big house. The one her mother bought just off Main Street, which survived the tornado that took out the hotel a block in front and the Presbyterian Church a block behind. Back when my hubby was 8 years old and Norma and Clint ran the hotel.

She has also lost sight in one eye, so needed someone to take her car keys away for public safety’s sake. This also makes her depth perception non-existent, and has led to a series of nasty falls that have us and her other son’s family who lives about 45 minutes away most paranoid. Her friends and neighbors love her, but don’t want to be the ones to discover her dead one day alone in that big house, but she’s stubbornly clung to her independence since her husband of 50 years died over a decade ago.

Luckily she has very tough bones, product no doubt of her youthful career as a Rodeo Queen – champion barrel racer – and the number of times she’d been bucked off her horse. But it’s inevitable that one of these days she’s going to break something, and all her choices will be gone. That would be a very sad end to a wonderfully storied life, and not something we would ever wish upon her. So our job was to unite with the rest of the family and try hard to convince her that she should go into a nice assisted living facility less than a minute away from #2 son.

Her mind is going, at least the short term memory part. She often repeats herself, and tells the same long-ago stories over and over again to anyone there to listen. I figure the assisted living crowd will love her greatly, and never tire of her stories because their memories are bad enough that they’ll always be fresh! Plus there’s bingo, Bible study her son the Baptist minister teaches, good meals served to her in her apartment or at a table in the great-room (with the big screen TV), and the staff is there to make sure all her meds are current and given on time, which prevents those overdoses or underdoses elderly people are so prone to.

Plus, we bought her a nice mini tape recorder so she could go ahead and tell those stories for posterity, write that wonderful book about her life that we’ve wanted her to write for years. Something about her hard-earned wisdom of getting right back on that horse no matter how much it hurts after you get thrown. So pertinent to dealing with the nasty curve balls life throws at us all if we live long enough, and at which she is a certifiable expert.

She lost a husband in WW-II, then married my hubby’s father because he insisted. Loved her the moment he met her, despite her strong independent and rebellious streak. They lived those 50 years in a love story that has been a never-ending inspiration to me, Clint was the best man I’ve ever known apart from his #1 son. She is lonely now, and vulnerable. The boys and sister-in-law pressured her pretty heavily for the change in her circumstances, as of course they had to do because they’re her boys and the love her and they worry endlessly about her.

I had a different job. She got me when I was just 18, and we’ve had the most amazing relationship all the years since. More like best friends or twins from birth, we’ve always been completely honest with each other and aren’t afraid to criticize or generally bitch, or laugh at the silliest or raciest things, as if we shared a private joke.

So I was totally honest. We know we’re going to lose her if we don’t get hit by a bus any time soon, and it doesn’t matter all that much to me how or when. I’m still going to wail and cry and miss her terribly. So will her sons. I respect her independence, and am not going to insist or cajole or push in any other way for her to commit herself to an assisted living facility, but I will say it’s a nice place, nice people, plenty of company and they’ve never heard her stories! It could literally add years to her life, though she is like me in dreading the thought of living to be 100. Yet she might, so she should make arrangements accordingly.

Norma Jean is already the last one standing of her family and friends from childhood, so that’s not a wish she can still dread like I do. So I told her something she’s told us a million times, her way of dealing with the patients of the Gould Farm facility she volunteered for through her church after Clint died. When they asked her advice – and they always did because they considered her their grandma too – she’d always tell them they already knew the choice they would make, so they didn’t need her to tell them otherwise or to support that choice.

That’s what I told my beloved Norma. She already knows what she must do, and she does. She has put it off long enough, and will make the move. I told her we’d do nothing with her house and all her nice things. Not sell it (I might need it someday!) or rent it out, just seal it up and let the bank keep on paying the bills and Brinks to keep it safe. Then, I said, if she ends up hating the place, we’ll just take her home again. I think that helped.

While I’d love to be in a position for her to live here on the mountain with us and let me care for her until it’s over, she’s deathly allergic to animals and nature these days. Plus, my only bathroom is in the basement and the only spare room in the loft. It cannot be. I could leave my family here and move into that big house with her, but she really could live to be 100. What about my life and my kids and grandkids and such? Totally impractical, and there’s no more work in Oklahoma for a 58-year old man like my hubby than there is here. Where he has a job he likes and pays the bills, letting us stay here in our beautiful retreat from the wider world.

But I’ve volunteered for a mission too. She’ll send me the tapes of the stories, I’ve promised to transcribe and send back, she can edit and add, I’ll get the final manuscript all typed up. And then I’ll find a publisher and get it published. Real history, wonderfully funny and exciting and sadder-than-sad stories that may help others well beyond her own lifetime. She owes that to the world, and I aim to make it happen.

I love you most sincerely, Norma Jean. You’ve always been my heroine!

Pictured is Grandson #2, Michael, who graduated from high school last month and will be attending a college for the artistically gifted, which of course he is. This marks two grandchildren to make it to college, two with rather extreme artistic talents who ought to do very well in the world, and one very, very proud grandma!

We’ll be seeing Mikey and his folks and sister for the week following the 4th of July. Now this is going to be a little bit tricky, but I’m looking forward to Mikey’s complaint-less help in harvesting blackberries for the cobbler he loves so much. We are leaving this coming Saturday for Oklahoma to visit Great-Grandma, who will be 87 in August. We’ll be on our second day homeward on the 4th, and will have to swing through Kentucky on the way home to meet with other sisters, brother-in-laws, nieces and nephews to send my little sister’s ashes over Cumberland Falls, something she made us promise to do before she died a couple of years ago. It’ll be the first time we’re all together since then, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Meanshile, Mikey and family will be leaving Atlanta on the 4th to come here. I’m going to give them the ‘break-in’ secret for getting into the house if we’re not home yet (and we might not be), because we’ve been having a bit of bear trouble this year. Don’t want them camping in the yard, for very good reason.

Usually it’s copperheads that make summer risky around the homestead, and Mikey knows that because he spent his 13th birthday in the hospital from copperhead bite. Only get bears passing through spring and fall, on their way to somewhere else. We’re right in between slices of National Forest, so that is to be expected. But in late April we were visited by a 300-pound she-bear who wasn’t just into dragging the trash from the bin up and down the mountainside. She’d come right onto the porch, sidle unconcerned between the bank and the truck just feet from the front door, and refused to be scared when we yelled at her. Even loaded up the shotgun and fired it off a few times in the air hoping she’d be scared, it didn’t impress her at all.

But she finally moved on a couple of weeks ago, we thought we were in the clear until pear season. Then a 250-pound youngster decided to show up and rummage through the compost. I’m thinking he’s a teenager she’s dropped off in the bottomland, and he thinks she gifted him with our place. ARGH!!! The bear population is booming – have seen more on the back road and here than ever before. A lady in our nearby town was injured just last week in her own driveway when she tried to save her little dog who was dumb enough to get between a trash-foraging she-bear and her two cubs.

It’s gotta be because our beloved 12-year old Lucy dog died. Bears will stay away from dogs. But we aren’t anxious to adopt another so soon, though we may have no choice. At any rate the wandering and camping will be a bit constrained this season due to bears. Just as well, I think.

Happy family fun to all my readers, may you enjoy ample family, lots of fun and fireworks, and heartfelt hugs from your wonderful grandchildren!

The volunteer students from D.C.’s Bancroft Elementary School who have put some backbone into the First Family’s organic kitchen garden this season enjoyed a fresh lunch salad topped with sweet, fat peas that they’d helped to grow and harvest. For dessert, they got cupcakes topped with berries, also grown in the garden on the South Lawn.

Thus far the well-tended organic garden, which sports various cultivars chosen by the White House Chef to compliment the cuisine served both to the Obama family and to their guests – with a majority of the bounty going to local D.C. food kitchens – has thus far produced 80 pounds of fresh food. And it’s still June, not even tomato time yet! As the First Lady says in this clip, getting involved in growing, harvesting and preparing fresh, organic food can help with a number of health-related issues that plague this country’s citizens…

Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure are all diet-related health issues that cost this country more than $120 billion each year. That’s a lot of money. While the dollar figure is shocking in and of itself, the effect on our children’s health is even more profound. Nearly a third of the children in this country are either overweight or obese, and a third will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lifetime. In Hispanic and African American communities, those numbers climb even higher so that nearly half of the children in those communities will suffer the same fate. Those numbers are unacceptable.

A. Siegel of Get Energy Smart blog does a little math and comes up with an intriguing scenario related to gardens just about a quarter the size of Michelle’s. If just five million Americans were inspired to create a Victory Garden in their yard (or in containers on their deck or patio, in window boxes, inside by a sunny window, etc.) that produced 20 pounds of food each year, it would amount to 100 million pounds (50,000 tons) of fresh, healthy vegetables and fruits grown right at home or in the neighborhood. That’s 50,000 tons of good food that would not have to be grown with chemical intensive agriculture, harvested by third world peasant/slaves, shipped to your local market using fossil fuels, and costing a hefty chunk of the shrinking household budget.

The added incentive is of course getting people outdoors instead of parked in front of the television when they get home from work, bending, digging, hoeing, tending and simply enjoying their garden. Even that little bit of exercise and simple enjoyment can help reduce a tough day’s accumulation of stress, and reducing stress has its health savings dividends as well.

Kudos once again to our beautiful First Lady, her helpers in the kitchen, the Obama girls and the students of Bencroft Elementary for a tasty job well done. Things like this are a fun and healthy chunk of the Change We Need!

Yes, Grandma is once again gifted with a baby grandson, this one making his appearance on Valentine’s Day! No doubt a signal that he’ll be as much of a heartthrob (and/or heart-breaker) as his big brubby and his Daddy, whom I often describe to people as one of…

The Few, The Proud, The Incredibly Good-Looking. Yup, he’s a Marine. Seems to like it okay, will soon hit the decade mark with the Corps. We’d been hoping he would be stationed nearer, but it seems they like him too much where he is now. Welcome to the world, grandson #7!!! I hope it treats you well, and that you will spring lightly along your journey.

Proud and happy as I am to report another grandchild in the growing ranks, it’s been a rough couple of months on the loss side of the scale too. First a friend succumbed after a hard-fought five year battle with ovarian cancer. Days later a another dear friend discovered he had cancer of the spine. He went out relatively quickly, which is just as well with this particular cancer. Yet another old friend fought his cancer hard, checked out last night.

This photograph is of a Christmas season show for our popular New Vaudeville Night in Florida nearly 20 years ago. The weekly fun-fest was sponsored by our friend Rick whose kite shop served as our anchor, and who died in April of last year.

There on the left is our son – who died in 1992 – as EB [Easter Bunny] wearing a Santa suit and being berated by the three characters on the right for trying to muscle in on Santa’s extended holiday money-making gig. EB only gets one day a year, and since he’s laid off in December anyway, thought he’d pick up some extra bucks filling in for Santa at some mall or shopping center – or New Vaudeville Night.

Second from left is our friend Gus, who on this occasion is Santa’s son Solomon Claus, filling in for the old man by gathering up the Christmas wishes of a host of lovely young women in the audience that night. Gus died a few weeks ago. Next to him is the show’s emcee, Nelson Nermal the Nerd, who is the only one still kicking. And on the right is our friend Jerry, dressed as Uncle Sam who is also there trying to muscle in on Santa’s gig. Jerry died last night [2-18]. No wonder we’re feeling really old lately (and not just because it’s February)!

I asked my Mother-in-Law a loaded question once when she was losing her dearest friend since childhood to cancer. This was before our own loved ones and peers started dropping like flies. If we reach a time when more of our loves are on the other side of death’s veil than are still present in the world, does death start looking less like an enemy and more like a friend? She didn’t answer, which was probably wise of her. More than two decades later I am beginning to recognize that I’d known the answer all along. Just dreaded the experiencing of it, I guess.

Through these sad weeks filled with painful deaths and significant losses, one event serves to reinforce the lesson learned. Dearly beloved Great-Aunt Melba died too, a week ago Monday. Peacefully in her sleep, age 96. No fear, which is just the way she’d lived.

Seems when contemplating life and death on planet earth from this end of things that there’s a lot we could fear if we were inclined to do so. Fear for the newly-arrived, for what their world will be, how they’ll make their way in it, what suffering they will no doubt see. Fear for the checking-out, wondering if this veil of tears was all there is, or if it really is just a sort of grade school for something more waiting for us once we’ve shed our cages of gross matter and moved “on” – wherever “on” might be. And at times like these, I usually end up right back where I started on the never quite objective contemplation…

Being afraid doesn’t generally prevent people from being born, and it’s never stopped people from dying. Every single human here to wonder (and/or fear) gets both conditions whether we want them or not. So I’m siding with Aunt Melba on this one – No Fear.

Joyful greetings, young grandson! Tearful good-byes, my dear ones.

…that lasts throughout the year!

It’s getting closer to the Big Day, even as credit continues to dry up, jobs go away by the thousands, and ideas for alternative gift-giving are increasingly making the rounds. So today I’m going to promote an idea that will hopefully begin to catch on all over the country for Christmases present and future.

It’s called volunteering. Now, many families volunteer their services at Thanksgiving every year, preparing and serving T-day feasts to shut-ins via Meals On Wheels, at senior centers or at the city soup kitchen. Of course many others donate goods, like food and clothing, blankets and winter coats, etc. during the holidays. But not so much at Christmas, and I’ve always wondered why.

Sure, there’s not much call for volunteers at most charity operations on Christmas Day proper, but on most other days all year long there is a shortage of volunteers to do the work. Things like sorting and boxing donated food to be distributed to needy families and food banks, the preparation and serving of regular meals through all the agencies and charities that feed the hungry, manning the check-out at the church or secular thrift store, spending a few hours sitting with a disabled child or adult so their primary caregivers can have a much-needed time out, maintaining trails in parks and forests, even repairing and building homes with Habitat for Humanity. There are ongoing projects in most cities and counties all over the nation that would love nothing better than to have more volunteers than they need during day-to-day operations, at all times of year. I’ll include some source links at the bottom that should help readers in search of projects to volunteer for.

Even when there’s little money, the gift of self and time is worth a great deal. For Christmas gift-giving your family could produce some hand-made cards to exchange with each other, promising a certain amount of hours to a chosen charity, in the recipient’s name. For instance, a teenager could gift Grandma with 30 or 40 hours (or more) over the next year of volunteer work at her senior center, at her favorite nursing home, or at her church’s supported children’s home. A husband could gift a wife with X number of hours promised to help divvy up the food donations to the food bank, and deliveries for Meals on Wheels – in HER name.

All the gift-giver need do is choose a charity, find out when their need for volunteers is great (and coincides with when hours may be available), and request that the charity log the hours “in the name of” whoever the gift is given to. Most will readily accommodate this wish, and even include the in-name donations on their list included in the annual report.

There could be days when everyone in the family could be busily engaged in their chosen charities, arriving home to each other exhausted in the best and most satisfying of ways. Each appreciating anew – long after the holidays are over – the true value of the gifts. The giving of gifts is a display of selfless spirit (or, it’s supposed to be), so including needy strangers in the process just expands the selflessness. Plus, it does a lot of good for those many who are in need. But beware, volunteering can be addictive and lead to ever greater commitments of time and energy volunteered.

Links:

Volunteer USA Foundation
World Volunteer Web: Not just for Christmas
Volunteering your time this Christmas
Don’t wait till Christmas to volunteer
Food on Foot: Volunteers Wanted
VolunteerMatch: Find a Place

It’s November already, the the world economic situation – or just the US economy – is dire. Many are wondering if there will be a Christmas at all this year, and that’s a shame. It means we’ve come to identify this wonderful holiday with the ugly consumer orgy it’s become over the years. Where credit cards get maxed out buying useless, cheap plastic junk or electronic gizmos that don’t last, and just about everything ends up in the landfill before next Christmas anyway.

So I’m going to advocate very strongly here for the kind of Christmas that whole families can enjoy together doing and making things that will surely become treasures to be cherished forever. Gift-giving really isn’t all about how much money you’ve got to waste, it’s about giving of one’s self and one’s thoughts and love and skills. Grandmothers are particularly adept at teaching these sort of things to the up and coming generation, and apart from some serious messes to clean up, these are wonderful projects for the holidays.

Our friends over at the blog Life on a Shoestring Budget have some very nifty ideas, a surprising number of them having to do with that ubiquitous dryer lint that mostly gets tossed these days. My favorites are dryer lint paper – for Christmas cards or handmade notebooks – dryer lint mache, and dryer lint clay. The recipes offered in links to Frugal Living and PlanetPal look to be easy and satisfying.

I really like the idea of handmade journals for budding writers and artists, kids can put so much of themselves into a project like this! My grandson learned to make leather bound journals in school, and cuts up old leather jackets and such from thrift shops and free bins to make patchwork covers. We’re just starting on the paper-making, which will probably go mostly for Christmas cards. I’ve plenty of scraps of material, lace, trim, sequins, beads, studs, jewels and buttons that can be glued on the paper to make winter or Christmas scenes. Just need good old Elmer’s and some scissors, your distant family and friends will keep these cards forever!

Check out the post at Shoestring Budget and get busy, time is slipping away! For great ideas, check out Casual Keystrokes, which has a fine list of cool journal and planner ideas. And don’t forget that the kids can also help Grandma with edible gifts. In a later post I’ll include some of my favorite cookie and candy recipes for just this purpose. If you are like me, you save all those Christmas cookie tins when the season’s over (mine are stored with the rest of the Christmas decorations). These can be filled with all sorts of yummy goodies that make great gifts. My extended family has grown so used to getting their Christmas cookie-candy assortment every year, I think they might riot if ever I were to miss a year!

The holiday season wasn’t invented to bolster free market Capitalism, you know. It’s a time for love and sharing and warmth between people. Children honestly need to know this, as the economy is very likely to be grim for the next few years, and people will be struggling hard just to survive. Teach your grandchildren how, and encourage them to enjoy. These are lessons they’ll carry forward through the rest of their lives, and will never be sorry to have learned.

Links:

Christmas in a Depressed Economy
Casual Keystrokes
‘Tis the Season: Gift Ideas
Making Paper from Dryer Lint
Lint Craft Recipes
Stuffed Toy Patterns

Since our daughter and grandson got back from their sojourn to Florida and Costa Rica, I’ve again had cause to prepare the kind of labor-intensive foods I didn’t bother with at all when it was just hubby and I here by ourselves. One of our favorite cold munchies are two-bite sized stuffed grape leaves, so I thought (since I made a big batch today) that I’d go ahead and give the details on this delicious delicacy.

The key ingredient, of course, are the grape leaves. These should be gathered in the late spring (May-June), when the vines are barely blooming. The newest leaves and the leaves near the bloom clusters are the best, they should be as large as your spread hand at the base. Wild fox grape leaves work too, though they are only about half the size of good vineyard leaves. They also have a tarter flavor of their own, so these can even be the preferred leaves if you’ve got some growing in your immediate area.

When the leaves are gathered, you can freeze or brine them. I usually freeze enough to add to every jar of dill pickles that I produce during the cucumber harvest (July-August), as they help lend crispness to the pickles. Those leaves that you want to preserve for stuffed leaves are best put into brine. For this, use kosher or pickling salt, 2/3 of a cup of salt to two cups of water. I use the “cigar” method, which is pretty easy.

Put your leaves into a flat-bottomed container (baking pan works well), stacked ten or twelve on top of each other. Pour boiling water on them to cover (you may need to weigh them down a little) and let them sit for five minutes. Lay out smoothly on newspaper to dry. Once they’re fairly dry and workable, cut out the base stem, fold the base and sides to a rectangular shape and roll the leaves loosely around a pencil to make tubes. Pack the tubes upright into canning jars (you should be able to get 35-40 in a single jar) and pour boiling brine to cover. If you’ve sterilized the jars and lids first, you don’t have to seal by water bath, the brine should preserve fine for 3 to 5 months. If you’re planning to keep them longer, go ahead and put the jars in a water bath for 20 minutes to seal.

The stuffing can be pretty much anything you can imagine. Our favorites are cous-cous and pine nuts or brown rice. If you make a mean tabouli, just omit the cucumbers (but keep the tomato), undercook the grain. To these add lots of herbs, the best being ground cumin, turmeric (with rice), fresh mint leaves and basil, parsley, and lots of chives. Cook the cous-cous, grain or rice to about half done (use half the water, don’t let it burn). Mix the herbs in, add any grated veggies you want to include – good choices are carrots, peas, bell peppers, eggplant or lentils – plus a healthy amount of roasted garlic and a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.

Rinse unrolled grape leaves well in cold running water, lay out to dry again on spread newspaper. Put a hefty spoonful of the filling at the stem base end and roll tightly. For this, I fold over the filling the base ends of the grape leaf to cover, roll up one turn, fold in the sides and then finish rolling to the tip. This makes a tight package. As I make the rolls I put them atop a lone (and inedible) grape leaf on the bottom of a soup pot overlap side down. Pack them together tightly and cover the bottom of the pot, then you can put a second layer on top of those. When the leaves have all been stuffed, put another large leaf on top of the pile and weight it all down with a small saucer and add your cooking broth.

The broth is just water, olive oil and lemon juice. To 2 cups water add 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil, 1/2 tsp. salt and 1 ounce of lemon juice (adjust this ratio to get enough broth to cover all your stuffed leaves). Bring to boiling over medium-high heat, then turn down to medium low, cover and cook for about 20 minutes (however long it takes to finish off the pasta/grain and/or rice) plus 5 full minutes. Remove grape rolls carefully with tongs, put on newspaper seam-side down to cool and drain. When cool enough to handle easily you can refrigerate them in a closed container or simply serve at room temperature as appetizers.

Yea, the kids are home! Kind of strange how empty this place seemed while they were gone. Hurricane Fay came through in August and dumped a full foot of rain in two days, flooding the ground floor thoroughly and making hubby and I have to sleep on the fouton on the living room floor. We liked it being so handy so much that we stayed there for a month before putting the room back together. It was just us, who’s to care?

I never quite figured out how to cook meals for just the two of us either, the leftovers just kept piling up until the fridge was completely overloaded. It all eventually got tossed into the compost bin. When the pears ripened Da Bear came on in to feast, totally destroyed the trash bin to get to – whatever was in there he thought he could eat. Since we don’t toss food scraps, I’m guessing it was stale, flat, watered-down drips of beer from cans waiting for recycling.

Grandson only got to work a few days at his Dad’s comic book shop, but enjoyed it a lot. Didn’t earn anything for college, of course. His dreadlocks are dreadful, sort of a sickly green color from too much time in the neighbor’s swimming pool. Did manage to get his internal clock turned entirely backwards by the weird schedules of my sister’s family. Sister – the one who has a regular day-job – didn’t want to let him go, he’s the only one who could deal with my ‘headstrong’ 5-year old niece, who adores him. My sister has learned more about how NOT to give in to niece’s mad demands from my dear only-child grandson than she ever learned by just being a parent!

Daughter is exhausted from her nursing ordeal, very saddened by our old friend’s condition. She did get to accompany him to Costa Rica, which was a lot of fun for her despite 12 hour a day nursing duties. Met lots of cool ex-pats and locals, who took to calling her “Shiny-Girl” or “Tough-As-Nails” (because she could put up with the “Hard Man”).

They’re both very glad to be home, just before the autumn leaves peak. The fuel situation kept our Western North Carolina tourist season at bay all summer as people decided to just stay home, our October leaf-looker season is also looking to be a bust this year as the economy melts down. Tourism is the #1 industry here – at least half the citizens make their living off visitors one way or another – so we will of course suffer worse than most areas of the country. If it’s mere “recession” out there, it’ll be a full-fledged depression here.

So we’re going to reconnoiter about what to do from here to keep our home and property, have enough money to buy food, etc. Maybe start a new home business, sell my car to get daughter’s car fixed (needs an engine), whatever is necessary. In the meantime, I’m delighted to have ‘em home!