Preparations
How did it get to be Tuesday? And will all the cooking get done by dinner on Thursday? Or will the in-laws and aunts have to wait around chewing on nothing much until Friday?
Ok, it will all get done, although I've no doubt that it will be later than my father-in-law will like. He can have a few crackers to tide him over. My mom always fixed shrimp chowder for that purpose, but I'm not that elegant.
So, yesterday I finally cooked the cushaws for the pies. Today I'm doing bread and ice cream. Tomorrow the bread will become bread crumbs for the dressing/stuffing -- which we will have some of both, and some will be vegetarian dressing since one of the aunts is vegetarian. Also, tomorrow four pies (2 cushaw, 2 pecan) will be made, and all the salads (brocolli salad, corn salad, tabouli -- although the tabouli won't be finished until Thursday as it just won't hold). The big ol' bird is actually in a cooler defrosting, which I always hope it actually gets defrosted and it never entirely does so the last is always done that last morning in the sink. Who has a 20 pound hole in the fridge that she doesn't need for nearly an entire week? Not me. Thursday will be the bird, the dressing, all the veggies. The table will groan and be crowded and I absolutely love it.
It is the beginning of a whole bunch of parties. Sure, it is too late for a real harvest festival, but what the heck. Let the feasting begin!
7 comments:
I was just thinking today, about how the more animals you have in your life, the more life and death you experience. That life on the farm puts you up close and personal with death and maybe that's how human's learn to cope with the living and dying all at once.
In the city, you have a different kind of death. The woman I stopped to help because she'd been hit by a car (don't even know if she survived or not) the car wrecks and such that are part of city life. What I don't like about the modern part, is that life, death, learning and all the important things are relegated to institutions. As a society, we are out of touch with the rhythm of the birth-death cycle.
That's not good. But I believe with all my heart that cities could provide the cultural nexxus and jobs that some people want, while also being healthy. COULD. I read books like "The Celestine Prophecy" and it gives me hope that humans CAN have all their luxuries, be good to each other and the earth.
I'd like to think all of the luxuries we enjoy can actually be part of evolution. If humans don't have to struggle to survive, they can learn more, stretch more, focus on the esoteric stuff. Maybe, just maybe.
It's possible that we'll just destroy ourselves too.
Well, there isn't necessarily a struggle to survive (what I said about letting go of the struggle part of it). While it (survival) is always iffy, it is *supposed* to be iffy. It is the iffy that ALLOWS the esoteric. It is the luxury that inhibits the esoteric, the creative, the philosophical.
Cities have pretty much always been about exploitation.
OH sheesh....I'm sorry I put the comment at the wrong post! I thought I was at your post about life/death struggles that you deal with daily.
I see the exploitation part, but I also see hubs of creativity, gathering of art and knowledge, ports for access and places for activity. I long for cities that have the best and find ways to meet the needs of all participants.
Ren:"I read books like "The Celestine Prophecy" and it gives me hope that humans CAN have all their luxuries, be good to each other and the earth."
The Celestine Prophecy is a good example why the live of culture and art in the cities has never in human history been available unless it was squeezed out of the life of the peasants in the country. Our current society is no different.
Now, it's been a number of years since I read it and after reading it, I did not care to own a copy, but in as far as memory serves:
In the third insight the protagonist comes upon someone meditating in a garden by a patch of beans. The insight is that if we pay attention to, and meditate on, the very plants we are going to eat, they increase our spiritual energy.
Then later, don't recall which insight, he presents the idea of paid full time spiritual advisers who are to spend all their time raising their spiritual energy and then "selling" [my term] their insights to others. When the protagonist remonstrates that it would be a burden on people to have to support a "clergy" as it were, he is told [to wit]"Ah don't worry about it, by then machines will be raising all the food and we'll be freed up for such pursuits."
Whaaaaa? What happened to meditating with the very vegetables we were going to be eating. Did the guru get up, trample through the bean patch on his way for the professional spiritual advisor paycheck? Seemed that way to me so I chucked the book.
There have been ideal societies proposed where everyone (that's everyone) works at "bread labor" for which they expect to be paid or share in the "bread". Then they pass the other half of the day in spiritual or artistic pursuits for which they are NOT paid. See for example the writings of Scott Nearing.
As far as I can tell, anything other than this arrangement always leads to exploiting the folk.
There were some other faults with Celestine Prophecy as well. Being fantasy, it's forgiveable I suppose.:) BUT, I liked the idea that our evolution could take us deeper into spiritual matters, because we could have our luxuries in a life sustaining/earth sustaining way.
It might be a bunch of new-age, mental massage too. ;)
Some of the ideas stayed with me, like the nurturing plants with our energy as a more holistic cycle. I actually found the "10th Insight" really lame. Maybe if I re-read it now, I'd be able to analyze it better as the ideas were very new to me many years ago.
I thought the whole book was totally lame and so don't actually remember most of it. I enjoyed Ishmael more but still, it was more of a "you'll feel better about yourself if you think this" sort of thing. Folks might have noticed, it isn't my nature to try to make you feel good about yourself because in truth you never will until you face the truth which isn't pretty, or easy, or feel good.
Although there are a good number of good parties in it.
Reading your comments, Ren, I'm left wondering what you consider to be "your luxuries" to be, and how does one just "have" luxuries anyway? Although this may not be the forum.
Ren:"BUT, I liked the idea that our evolution could take us deeper into spiritual matters."
A likeable idea. But I like this idea better:
The difference between science and religion, says I, is that science sees us coming from base beginnings and moving toward perfection, much as Redfield's notions in CP.
Religion sees us as having once been perfect and moving farther and farther away from that: Garden of Eden, Summerland, Hybrazil, Atlantis, the Land of Fu Sang, the Golden Age, etc.
Many have pointed out that although we can procreate and have an offspring old enough to procreate by the time we are in our 30's, what's Nature's purpose for making the human frame designed to last 120 years. Perhaps at one time we WERE spiritually advanced and that's why we are designed to live so long. But, alas, we've fallen into bad habits and many thousands of years ago we failed to pass along that spiritual part or ourselves.
Got to get ourselves back to the garden.
Post a Comment