Month: November 2023

Surviving in dangerous times
Books

Surviving in dangerous times

AuntGem2 Comments

The world seems to have gone nuts ever since the Covid lockdowns. With the protests which devolved into riots that summer of 2020, to the constant demonstrations in big cities over anything – climate change, oil, illegal immigration – we’re constantly spinning from bad news to worse. Don’t like who got elected? Riot. Upset about a war in a foreign land? March. Oh, and don’t forget the random terrorist attacks.

All of it makes me want to avoid large crowds.

You can’t stay locked up in your home forever, though Amazon would love to be your supplier of choice. To learn more about self-protection, I’ve been reading Left of Bang: How the Marine Corps’ Combat Hunter Program Can Save Your Life by Patrick Van Horne and Jason A. Riley.

No, this book isn’t going to turn me or any reader into a Recon Marine. But it does teach readers how to recognize, use and improve what so many people call their “gut instinct.” Such as:

  • You’re about to walk onto an elevator with a stranger – but something stops you
  • You are ready to go inside a restaurant – but something tells you to leave and not enter
  • You’ve finished an interview with a job candidate who looks good on paper – but your senses say, don’t hire

“Left of Bang” is the phrase the authors use to describe the time leading up to an event which they call the “bang” – a shooting, mugging, or even terrorist attack. “Left of Bang” is the time when you can take steps to avoid or get out of the way of the bang. “Right of Bang” is the aftermath: the reaction and clean up after the event. This book is designed to keep you on the left side of the bang.

I’m currently working through the section on the six domains which make up the language of profiling: kinesics, biometrics, proxemic, geographics, iconography, and atmospherics. Next, the authors will teach me how to take action as I apply all the technical knowledge.

I’m probably still going to avoid large crowds in big cities, but it is nice to know I can be proactive.

Let’s read and eat this holiday!
Beauty · Books · Cooking · holiday · hostess with the mostess · just plain fun · Something wonderful · Thanksgiving

Let’s read and eat this holiday!

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This year’s Thanksgiving, I’m keeping it minimal. No two main dishes of both Turkey and Ham, no 12 side dishes, no pie and cakes (plural) for dessert.

It’s a bare-bones Thanksgiving dinner: ham, one side dish of green bean casserole, and one recipe inspired by something I read: Bourbon-Berries. The recipe I got years ago from Gabriel Mallor’s recipe exchange on the Ace of Spades website. Sorry, no picture of that – but it looks delicious! I’ve already made it in advance of the holiday and it is chilling in the fridge.

I smile and shake my head thinking about the Thanksgiving extravaganzas I’ve put together in the past. Last year I brined the turkey for the first time ever, taking the recipe from the Pioneer Woman’s wonderful book: The Pioneer Woman Cooks: A Year of Holidays.

That lovely book, a gift from my sister-in-law (who knows me well) helped me create my aforementioned Thanksgiving extravaganza. There were so many dishes on the table that as we were finishing, I exclaimed: “I forgot the carrots!” Or some such extraneous side – I can’t remember now. Everyone looked around and laughed. And Dad, ever the wit, said, “Well, Thanksgiving is ruined!”

Cookbooks – books that please twice

Anyone who knows me knows I love to read and I love to eat. It’s just too bad for my waistline I also love combining the two. Reading cookbooks is one of my favorite pastimes too – if you truly want to learn the history of American food, how it developed from the colonial days, suffered through the “better living through chemistry” boxes and cans of the middle 20th century and has enjoyed the renaissance since the early 70s of Alice Waters and other chefs, NEEDS to read’s James Beard’s classic: American Cookery.

I bought this book from a kiosk in the old Dutch Square Mall in spring 1985 – the year James Beard died. In a fit of religious zeal I had just decided to do a Lenten fast from Diet Coke and sweets – I was so ambitious those days! Therefore, I was hungry. So naturally I had to buy a cookbook. But this cookbook – it was an inspired choice. If I had to save one cookbook from my house in a fire, it would be this one. All the beautiful illustrated cookbooks by Susan Branch, the Moosewood Cookbook, the Pioneer Woman, *even* The Joy of Cooking – I’d leave all those to burn up if it meant I could save this book.

Beauty in the word and image

I adore the writers of cookbooks who not only write delicious recipes, but also illustrate them with beautiful artwork they’ve created. I love both cooking from and just admiring the ones I own by Susan Branch, an artist/writer/cook who lives on Martha’s Vineyard. I started with her first book, Heart of the Home: Notes from a Vineyard Kitchen, and now with the change of the seasons, I’m cooking from her aptly named Autumn. Just look at these beautiful covers and pages – all hand-drawn:

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you, and may you cook something special this year!

For the literary tippler
Books · just plain fun

For the literary tippler

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“An English major walks into a bar….”

Today’s book isn’t the usual work of fiction I love. Instead, I got a present for my birthday which I love just as much: Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist. This collection of recipes carries the theme of “cocktail book for the literary obsessed” from the dedication: “For Brenda … – worth her weight in Cuervo Gold” to the Acknowledgements (“Loud, slurring thanks to my first readers and drinkers.”)

This book is for anyone who actually read all the way through the classics we were assigned in ninth grade (except for Moby Dick, who could get through that) or the introverts whose idea of a good time is a good book, and something to munch on. It’s for all the book nerds. Make that the mixologist nerds too.

Every cocktail recipe celebrates a book. Choose your favorite poison; Author Tim Federle, a former Broadway actor, found a literary allusion for it. Is it five o’clock somewhere? Have an Are You There God? It’s Me, Margarita. Love the juniper in gin? Enjoy a Gin Ayre. For something sweet, try Love in the Time of Kahlua.

Perfect for Christmas!

Ever since I started stocking a bar cart during Covid-times (no bread-baking for me, no sir) I’ve had lovely bottles of spirits sitting around on display. Now I can invite the Book Club over and make “The Pitcher of Dorian Grey Goose” and facilitate the most convivial book discussion ever!

Tequila Mockingbird: Cocktails with a Literary Twist

What if you lived forever?
Books · Introspection

What if you lived forever?

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Escapism with truth thrown in

Columnist John Nolte took on this theme in his first novel Borrowed Time, published this September. I bought it almost immediately and read it in two days. Then I proceeded to re-read it, savoring my favorite parts. I’m still re-reading chapters.

This is not a typical science fiction story, although the premise begins that way: a man born to a tribe of North American Indians, so ancient they predate all others we know about, learns he cannot die. Or rather – he dies, and then comes back, always to the same spot in the southwest desert.

We learn just enough about Joshua Mason’s life across the millennia to understand his frustration and fascination with the “All-at-Once” – Mason’s term for the stupendous amount and rate of change that took place in only the last 150 years of his existence. To him it seemed as if modernity hit “all-at-once” – the machines, the speed, the conveniences. His love of modern air-conditioning made this Southerner smile.

Not about the woo-woo

Mason is far wiser than most he meets today, who are never happy, never have enough, never stop to think how blessed they (and we) are. Written by a lesser author, you’d get the feel of a forced sermon. But Nolte is too good for that – Mason’s thoughts are woven into the book’s central plot: a love story. Nolte never hectors the reader.

Mason loves Doreen so fully that he gladly participates in their “secret” marriage. He spends 30 years as her handyman at the motel she runs on a back road bypassed by the interstate. Guests are so few no one realizes it is the same handyman over the years. How they cope is a blend of comedy and tragedy, especially after Doreen’s brain-damaged grandson comes to live with them. He is not just physically ill; the car accident warped his soul as well.

Their love story, and the people they meet over the years, are the reason I come back to the book. Even the evil characters in this book are painted in full, allowing us to realize why they act the way they do. Every time I came close to pitying a major antagonist, I realized that character’s choices made them the way they were.

Thankfully, there are a few in the book who are purely happy. And these people, Mason thinks, are the few he’d want to live forever. They are content. They make me think of Paul’s words:

 I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 

Philippians 4:11b-12

Borrowed Time by John Nolte