Images of the Southwest

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A Christian Nation?

I can hear my Grandmother in my ear right now, even as I write.  'What do you mean we are not a Christian nation?"  That sound you hear is Grandmother Baker spinning in her grave.  She was so very concerned when I married my ex, and no, it didn't work out.  However, it was not the fault of Judaism, and it DID work til he lost his mind(at least, that's what I prefer to think).  My other hypothesis is that aliens abducted my husband, and left me with a true jerk.  I remember thinking that once: "Who are you, and where did you take my husband?"

Ah, but I wander.  I was reading on my kids' facebook pages, and I saw that Mandy had responded to someone who was upset that a Moslem edifice was being built in proximity to the 911 Memorial in New York.  I happen to agree with my daughter, most followers of Islam want peace and to be allowed to worship, live their lives with their loved ones in peace. To say that all Muslims have terroristic leanings is as ludicrous to say that most Catholics support the pedophilic priests, that most Jews own banks, most Protestants are knuckle-dragging racists.  Tolerance, when did that become a dirty word? 

Sitting in the Burger King drive up, waiting for my unsweetened iced tea.  I watched as , in the car in front of me, a tiny little guy, maybe four or five,  began to hang out the window, as his father placed his order.  To my amazement, and the amazement of the speech therapist who was with me, the little fellow climbed out of the car, crawled on top of the roof and took a look at the scenery.  I put on my 'Alene Baker' face, and shook my finger at him (anyone who remembers my mom knows that face and that finger).  My face, apparently, was not as stern as hers had been, because he grinned a big grin and shook his finger back at me. I mouthed, "Get your self back in the car before you fall and bust your bucket'  He smiled and mouthed, in perfect imitation of my face, 'No'.  Then, I saw a big hairy arm reach out of the driver's side window, work its way up to the roof, grab  the little fellow by the waist and haul   him back into the car.  Without yelling, screaming, hitting,  his dad placed him back into the back seat, buckled him back into his car seat and pulled up to the window.  Now, obviously, the little guy was being naughty, and I have to say his father buckled him in rather firmly, but with no hysterics, no drama, no 'You're a rotten kid' sort of expletives. The father had dealt with his son, put him back where he belonged and got on with it.  I really liked that.  Sometimes, we all need to take deep breaths and dial it down.  Would I have been that calm?  Heavens no, I'd have flipped out,but I preferred this gentleman's way of dealing with the behavior. 

Mother's Potato Salad

First, you need a Salad Master salad contraption, a Food processor of any other kind will not work. I don't know why.  I bought mine on E-Bay, Tom and John and, I think, Libby , also, have all got their own, as well.

1. 5 lbs of potatoes (Mother scrubbed hers, then peeled them after they had cooled.  I think that is doing a job twice. I peel them and then boil them, and  let them cool. (If you see Mother, do not tell her.  When she caught me doing this, AFTER I WAS MARRIED, IF YOU PLEASE, she threw a fit.
2.    Boil 6 eggs
3.  Onions--white, 2-3, a personal taste issue 

  Now, here is where it gets tricky, family 'discussions' have occurred over these last two ingredients (We discuss, we do not fight, that's what Mother used to say, and if she said that, you did yourself a favor and left the room)
4.  Dill  pickles (4-5 medium sized ), but the issue is, do they have to be kosher, do they have to be only Heinz?  I buy store brand  dill pickles and move on.  I don't like the fancy ones, cause they have all that dill and stuff floating around in the bottom. The only prejudice I have about pickles is that they be dill, and they be whole cucumbers, not pre-sliced.  Again, something about the pre-cut  ones makes the whole concoction taste different.
5.  A quart of either mayonnaise or Miracle Whip.  I prefer Mayonnaise, original. One of my brothers, I do not know which one, uses Miracle Whip.  Mother or Daddy preferred Miracle Whip, but again, I don't remember who preferred which.  What I do remember is that this, also,  was matter for  discussion every single time what we will, from here on out, refer to as THE DISH, was prepared.  They resolved it by alternating.

6.  Grind up all the ingredients, randomly. There are four blades with the salad master, a slicer, a cole slaw, a ripple and a fourth that is smaller than the ripple but bigger than the cole slaw. That's the one I use. 
7.  Get a large mayonnaise/miracle whip jar (bigger than the quart you bought), which you have saved just for this, you will need the lid, also.  Mother kept a couple in the cupboard just in case.  A sealable measuring cup would probably work, but I wouldn't know how to get the proportions right with anything else.  Put the mayonnaise you bought into the larger jar, add pickle juice from the pickles you  have.  I don't know how to tell you to do this, it's a learn as you go, sort of thing, you can always add more pickle juice, but it's harder to add more mayonnaise if you get it too thin, better to start with less pickle juice and add it til you get it the way you want it.  Add some salt, seal the jar and shake that sucker hard.  Open the jar, the thickness should be like buttermilk, maybe a little thicker.  Pour that onto the potato salad and spoon it all the way through until all the potato salad is coated.  Chill it for a couple of hours before you serve it, giving the mayo/pickle stuff time to soak through. 
There you have it. 

Prayer , Attributed to St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred, let me sow love:
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy
Grant that I may not so much week to be consoled as to console;
To be understood, as to understand;
/to be loved, as to love'
For it is in giving that we receive,
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
And it is in dying that We are brought to Eternal Life.

They branded him.

http://www.navajotimes.com/news/index.php

It seems to me that this sort of behavior is reoccurring at a truly alarming rate. Even this poor victim expresses such feelings, on a less violent basis, when he observes that he is neither a goat nor a Jew.  I know that he did not mean that it was ok to brand Jews.  Given his mental status, he, no doubt, was repeating something that he had heard from someone else. Still, this comment demonstrates to me the pervasiveness of this sort of attitude. 

I am not naive enough to think that people had stopped having these sorts of feellings, but for a while, it seems to me, with the exception of the truly off the hook types, most people knew enough not to express such feelings, either verbally or through hate filled actions.   More and more, however, it seems to me that people feel that this is the 'New OK'.  I have heard people say that everyone has these feelings towards other ethnic groups.  'Everyone is prejudiced.  You are prejudiced, and if you don't admit to such feelings and thoughts then you are lying both to yourself and to others.'  Nonsense!

Lately, also, as a part of studying for my teacher certification examinations, I have been re-reading history and all sorts of these ethnically centered epics of madness have found their way into my reading:  Krystalnacht, the treatment of the Navajo people by the Indian Fighter, Kit Carson, the regime of PolPot, the Rawandan massacre, on and on and on.

 I am as proud of my 'roots' as anyone on the planet.  My cousin, Sharol, has done some truly great research into our background, and through reading it, I get a feeling  of who we are , as a family.My Aunt Skeet did, before her death, quite a lot of research on my Dad's side of the family, but she quit  when she got too close to the possibility that we might be directly related to John Wilkes Booth (I doubt we are even remotely related to him, but still it was a worry for her).

Of course, in our recent history, our family brings new meaning to the term, multicultural.  As a unit, we are neither Christian, Jew,  Muslim nor Buddhist.   We are not White, Black, Asian, Hispanic  or Native American. I had a friend, once, when I explained to her the nature or our multicultural family, observed, 'My goodness, the only food you can serve at family reunions that everyone will eat is squash.' I had to tell her that, not even squash was an option for me  as I didn't like it very much.  I told her that my mother, at family dinners, always managed to make sure that the vegeterians, non pork eaters and unrehabilitated carnivores had plenty to eat, and that no one walked away hungry.  She never set a table that did not include pears and cottage cheese. She even made a separate bowl of potato salad for my uncle, because he didn't like onions.  (After his death, however, no one else got that sort of service.  Uncle Dink had been special;  anyone else, according to Mother, could just pick the onions out)

 Perhaps. that background is why it is so easy for me to make this next observation:  At what point do we cross a line between pride in our own background and condecension,  hostility  and hatred towards others?  It seems to me, when people join clubs to play for the death of our duly elected President we have crossed a line and are headed into a state of complete depravity and yes, evil.

Now, the question becomes, what do I, a borderline senior citizen, do to make a difference on this issue? I do not want to  leave this world without making an attempt to leave  it  a better place  for my beloved grandchildren.   I could , and given my own temper would love to, start running around slapping people, but that seems kind of counter productive.  Reminds me a little of the story about the  proverbial mother in the supermarket, who spanks her child and yells, 'I have told you (swat), and told you (swat) and told you (swat), not to hit your brother!' 

I can't do anything , truly, except monitor my own behavior and be a spokesperson for my beliefs. And, one more thing, since I still believe that love trumps hate, I can pray and meditate and send out goodness and love.  Which is what I think that I will do.  Every night for the next month, at seven o'clock p.m. Mountain Standard Time, I am going to stop what I am doing , breathe deepy and recite the Prayer of St Francis of Assissi (which I remember now, thanks to my cousin, Jaynie, and sister, Terri.   I invite you to join me. 

Canyon de Chelly Lookout

World of Sally

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My first post

This is my blog, it will have my pictures, my writing, fiction and non fiction, my concerns, and also quite a lot of just b.s.  It's a blog in progress, and as I learn, I will improve it.