Thanksgiving: Always Different, Always the Same

Ever try having a different Thanksgiving meal? Ever since I was a little kid, sitting around Grandma Still’s dining room table, my Thanksgiving meals have been the same: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and turnips, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, celery stuffed with cream cheese, carrot sticks, pumpkin and mincemeat pies.

Every Thanksgiving was the same. After Mom got us four kids all dressed up, we went to Grandma’s house. On Long Island, that wasn’t exactly over the river and through the woods. More like over the railroad tracks and through the traffic.

Grandma’s was a back-door house, so our arrival was into the kitchen, where things were bubbling on the stove. Her red and black tile floor was shining, the metal cabinets squeaky white and the sun brightened it all through the bay windows.

While Mom and Grandma tended to the bubbling things, we kids watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV. Sometimes we knew people who were marching in the parade, so we stayed glued to the set to see them.

About a half-hour before dinner, my Aunt Clara and Uncle Bob arrived with my cousin, Joann. Aunt Clara always cooked the turkey at her house, a few blocks away. The reason given was that it saved Grandma the work of lifting the huge bird in and out of the oven. Knowing Aunt Clara, a strong-willed German who never lost any of her accent, she probably wanted to make sure that bird was cooked right. It was always perfect and delicious.

At dinnertime, the “youngsters” had to sit at a card table set up in the next room. We hated that. It was a rite-of-passage when we got old enough (12 or 13) to sit with the big people at the elegantly-set table in the dining room. Grandma had a lace tablecloth, fine china, silverware and crystal that she used only once a year.

At other times when we visited, I loved to sneak open the drawer of the sideboard that held the silver. The drawer was lined with a velvet-like fabric and it all smelled musty-rich. Grandma must have treasured her dining room set, with its china cabinet, sideboard, large table and padded chairs. She and my grandfather had bought the house right before the Great Depression, so it was probably many years before they could afford good furniture.

Though my grandmother always called it turnip, the orange in the mashed potatoes is actually rutabaga, I discovered when I began cooking my own Thanksgiving meal. How did that tradition start? I don’t know. But I insist on keeping it, even though that rutabaga is hard as a locust post and I still haven’t come up with an easy way to cut it. Maybe if I stayed in the kitchen instead of watching the parade, I would have learned a great secret. In recent years, I’ve been whacking it with the really sharp meat cleaver, like splitting firewood, making loud karate sounds with each strike.

We eat my family’s traditional meal rather than the husband’s because after marrying we always had Thanksgiving with my grandmother and mother, along with my siblings. As Jehovah’s Witnesses, it was the only holiday Grandma and Mom observed, and they thoroughly enjoyed it.

So my kids grew up with the same meal as me. One year I decided to make a completely different Thanksgiving, one I found in a Better Homes & Gardens magazine, with cornbread stuffing and asparagus and peas or something. Everyone hated it and told me to never ever change the menu again.

The only adjustment I’ve made is the stuffing, which I learned to make from the husband’s grandmother. She taught me to simmer the giblets with the onion and celery for an hour, then take out the giblets and add butter, letting it liquify with the broth. When the giblets cool, dice them tiny and add them back in. Then mix all that with the stuffing mix (I use Pepperidge Farm herb-seasoned crumbs) and stuff the bird. Mmmm.

Living so far away in Virginia, after Grandma’s house was sold I got only a few items. But what I do have is from Thanksgiving. I’ve got the lead crystal dish in which she served the raw vegetables, the crystal wine glasses and the lace tablecloth.

With the kids grown up now, and family scattered all over the world, the faces at the Thanksgiving table change from year to year, but the meal never does. And somehow, in a world that’s vastly different than the one I grew up in, that is comforting.

Life Is Full of Interruptions

Life is all about the interruptions.

After my seemingly impetuous yet long-postponed decision to go gung-ho on redoing my living room by Thanksgiving, the interruptions lined up, one by one.

This living room job is no small task. It’s more than a paint job yet falls short of what it really needs. Still, I am tired of neglecting it. Beside the kitchen, this is the only downstairs room I have not made mine. It’s still painted and carpeted in the pastel colors chosen by the former owner (call me vain, but I look terrible in pastels). Not only that, but as the main gathering room for many years, it’s gotten shabby. And I don’t mean shabby chic. (Psst: I dislike the room so much that, except for a weekly vacuum, I no longer clean it. Yuck!)

About five years ago I redecorated the room next to it, now known as the parlor. It is our sitting room, but I have to shoo people from the yucky room into it.

So this 19-day project includes washing the whole room; texturizing and painting the ceiling; scraping, sanding, priming and painting the woodwork (it’s wainscoted and has a built-in bookcase); painting the walls; ripping up the carpet and two layers of subflooring; then sanding and poly-varnishing the oak floor.

I began Friday with shopping for supplies and emptying the room. That meant, of course, crowding the other downstairs rooms with its chairs, tables and books. Then on Saturday, some friends came over. Not just any friends, but good old friends of whom I see too little. I used to babysit the daughter, who’s now married. As we stood outside talking (it was a beautiful day, so no sense in inviting them in), I thought about my plans for the day.

In my younger days, I rarely finished a project, flitting from one interest to the next. Then I changed. I became goal-driven. I make lists. I check off my list.

Aware of the ceiling job that awaited me, I realized what I wanted more was to be outdoors with Becca on this warm November day. I relaxed. It was okay. It really was okay. The ceiling got done later.

After church on Sunday, my friend Hannah came over. She worked at the newspaper with me for a while. I hadn’t seen her in months. It was another warm, clear day. We ate lunch on the deck and took a walk in the woods. Again, I found myself being in the moment, just being with Hannah and not mentally somewhere else.

Then on Tuesday, when the scraping and sanding was to commence, I really wanted to see Maxine. She’s my almost-90 friend who lives 10 miles away. I hadn’t seen her in months, either. I could not ignore the urgency to visit her.

This is not me, folks. When I have a task to finish, I really cannot be bothered with human beings. Jesus bothered with human beings, even though he had a mission. No, wait … human beings were his mission. He was all about interruptions.

One time, while he was teaching some disciples, a Roman ruler interrupted him. The ruler’s daughter had died. He wanted Jesus to bring her back to life. So Jesus goes to follow the ruler home, and he gets interrupted again. This time it’s a woman who’s been hemorrhaging for 12 years. He heals her, then goes to the ruler’s house and raises the daughter from death.

Another time, he declined to go with his disciples to get food because he was exhausted and wanted to rest. So he’s sitting by a well in the afternoon sun, dozing off, when a woman comes for water. By the end of their conversation, this (“fallen”) woman, who has lived with five or six guys, is free of the shame she’s borne for so long. Woohoo!

The book of Acts is basically stories of healing and grace. Most of it was not planned. It’s like everything that happens during any given day is another opportunity for God’s grace and love to work. I do not say, as some do, that everything that happens is supposed to happen. It just does.

Interruptions, you see, come with faces and names. This week, it was Becca, Hannah and Maxine.

If my Thanksgiving table, laden with its feast, surrounded by those I love, ends up sitting on an old floor, caked with layers of ancient brown varnish, what of it? Really, what of it?

The Past Meets The Future At A New York Wedding

It had been decades since I’d attended a New York wedding.

We arrived at 6 p.m. to a spectacle of characters making their way toward the red-carpeted entrance of Bellport Country Club. It was a balmy evening here on the south shore of Long Island and these arrivals were too good to miss. Everyone was already snapping pictures.

There was Wonder Woman and Batman, Captain Jack Sparrow, Uncle Fester (with light bulb) and Wednesday. There was my sister as Mary Poppins, her daughter as Minnie Mouse and my youngest sister, her husband and daughter as the Frankenstein family. I went as Mother Nature and the husband as a leathered biker.

My brother and his bride met on Halloween four years ago. So it was fitting, when they decided to wed, that they do so on the anniversary of their first encounter. And that their wedding be a masquerade ball.

My brother, Phil, is actually my half-brother and the same age as my son. My dad and stepmom both died by the time he was 13, and it was decided that he go live with our cousins. We don’t see each other much. I guess you could say that, until last year, we were estranged. My sisters and I were so glad to share in his wedding.

Phil was dressed as a prince, and Pam, his bride, as a princess. The wedding party was angels and demons. The priest who officiated drew the line at the demons: No horns or tails during the ceremony. When the bride appeared, the priest strutted half-way down the aisle and ordered, “Everyone stand up!” (He had been in the military, hence the drill sergeant tone.) Pam walked (with her father, dressed as General Robert E. Lee) down the aisle to the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love.”

The priest was an irreverent reverend. He made the joyous occasion fun, but also became serious at the sacred moments. There was no tension about doing everything right, as there tends to be at such times. We laughed and cried.

Then we moved to a reception room, where the floor-to-ceiling windows opened to a balcony overlooking the golf course. We sipped cocktails and nibbled hors d’oeuvres while the wedding party did their photographs. We strolled about, eating stuffed clams on the half-shell, crispy breaded ravioli and miniature bruschettas. At the open bar, I ordered a Cosmo—it wasn’t strong—and (something I learned the hard way) stuck with that all night.

My favorite part was meeting up with relatives I thought I’d never see again. There was Uncle Russell, who, I discovered, is actually my first-cousin-once-removed. (His wife, Linda, explained the whole “removed” thing to me.) They were dressed as prisoners in striped garb. There was Aunt Joanie, another first-cousin-once-removed, in her 70s. She wore a hospital gown, open in the back, with a big plastic butt sticking out.

Then there were the McKaharays, from my stepmother’s side of the family and always dear to us Browns. Sean, his wife, Michelle, and his mom, Nancy, were up from Atlanta. Michaela had come from the West Virginia panhandle. Melissa and her husband, Russell, lived the next town over.

After about 90 minutes, we moved into the banquet room, greeted by a huge ice sculpture of a jack-o-lantern. The band was all set up. The wait staff was still loading the food bars with the delicacies that awaited.

I’ve been telling the husband for years that the only reason he likes the Chinese restaurants here in the Valley is because he forgets what good Chinese food tastes like. The food at the Chinese bar proved my point. All the food proved my point. Sesame chicken spiced so right and, oh, filet mignon that melted in your mouth. An antipasto bar with prosciutto, pepperoncini, salami, all kinds of cheeses, olives, crudités, breads. A sushi bar. An Italian bar. A salad bar. A carvery featuring beef, lamb, pork and other meats.

What I ate burned off while dancing. The band, the Green Machine, was mostly loud and fast. Everyone danced for hours, even Russell and Joanie, with her butt sticking out. The music stopped just before midnight. As we gathered our things and moved toward the door, there was an announcement about a bar opening upstairs for those who wished to party on.

I kissed my brother and his bride goodbye, with much talk of seeing each other again soon. Part of the reason we were estranged is because Phil is notorious for not returning phone calls or e-mails.

Ah, but now we’ve got Pam.

Amazing Women Are All Around Us

As anyone knows who works fulltime, days off are few and precious. Yet Heidi took the day off for my birthday.

Somehow my daughter manages to enjoy her career, raise two sons, cook delicious meals from French and Greek cookbooks, decorate her house, run numerous miles per week, spend time with her husband, be a caring friend to others. She has gone beyond what I ever imagined for her. A woman I admire.

Since the Daily News-Record began publishing Bloom magazine, I’ve had the honor of writing profiles about numerous local women. It is such a privilege to visit these women in their workplaces and homes, to learn about where they come from, the obstacles they’ve overcome, the challenges they still face, what makes them tick. Then there are the women in my life whose lives inspire me.

On my birthday, Heidi drove me, my sister and my niece to tour vineyards in Albemarle County. It was a warm, sunny day. It could not have been more perfect.

My sister, Lindsey, is visiting from Ireland. She moved there nearly 30 years ago to marry the man she still loves. All her adult life, she’s been helping people through her career in community work: empowering women, advocating for the weak, making her city and county a better place for everyone—rich and poor—to live. She has a compassionate heart, keeps a lovely home and is a great mother to her children. When I visit, she is a tireless hostess who cooks great meals and shows me the best that Ireland has to offer.

Lindsey’s daughter, Kendall, is one of those recent college graduates for whom there is no job. Unemployment is bad here; in Ireland it’s even worse. In spite of this, Kendall makes do with a very part-time job, does volunteer work, and has been nurturing her homemaking skills. She remains cheerful and optimistic about her future.

Then there’s my sister, Patti. I love her career journey. She is so not stuck in a rut, but has adapted to moves and changes in her life. Each job seems to bring her closer to what she’s really all about. In spite of working full-time, she, too, keeps a lovely home, spends time with her teenage daughter, and takes care of herself. She’s overcome obstacles that have stymied other women. Her daughter, Emily, is a talented girl. She enjoys soccer, plays the piano and loves to read. A girl after my own heart.

When it comes to thoughtfulness, my sister-in-law, Stephanie, wins hands-down. She’s one of those people who knows intuitively what to do for her family and friends in times of need. A treasure.

And then there’s Rachel. She’s the daughter who left for school and did not come back to live. She’s the world traveling musician, living the life she dreamed of as a child. She also uses her voice to speak for the homeless in the city where she lives. Rachel feels life deeply and shares that in her music and friendships.

My daughter-in-law, Heather, a strong young woman, uses her strength to serve others: the mentally ill, my son, her daughters, family and friends. A caring mother and talented cook, Heather has been a gift to our family.

Oh my, then there are the Bloom women: the Heatwole sisters, who gather for an annual quilting retreat, producing beautiful heirloom works of art. Judith Trumbo, who is managing the move of 2,300 employees to the new Rockingham Memorial Hospital, yet who is always serene and smiling. Jennifer Shirkey, who is managing three young children while sustaining a highly successful career in business law. Betsy Neff Hay, who is spending herself on making the world a better place for the vulnerable ones among us.

There are so many others: Peggy, Hannah, Ginna, Katheryn, Nicole, Paula, Barbara. On and on. It’s dangerous to compare myself to any of these women. When I do that, I feel pretty crummy about my lack of admirable attributes. It paralyzes me.

Ah, but when I am inspired by them to reach out, try something new, help someone, read a different book, use a new spice, study a subject, hop on my bicycle—anything that causes me to grow—then having them in my life has made me a better person.

And where, oh where, would we be without our girlfriends?

Step Outside and Listen

It is 6 a.m. In the yard outside my window, a chorus of insects softly holds a constant shrill note. Down the road a rooster is crowing. From the far distance comes the noise of hundreds, thousands, of cars, buses and trucks traveling on I-81.

Listen.

One of the exercises I assigned my kids long ago in home school was to go outside with a notepad and pen, and to write down all that they heard. I did it, too. This is when we lived in a mountain hollow. At first we wrote down the most obvious sounds, the sounds we are always conscious of: the neighbor’s hogs grunting, trucks rumbling by, dogs barking. Then we heard the birds and insects, the breeze rustling the trees. Then we noticed particular birds singing particular songs. We heard the way the wind made the leaves sound in the hickory leaves as opposed to the more crackly oaks and the tall brown grasses of the field.

It helped to close our eyes, to block out the sense of sight, so that we were not looking for sounds, just hearing them. Just listening.

Have you ever sensed a call from somewhere deep inside you to listen? To pull away from daily distractions and listen?

As a child, I lived outdoors. I knew how to listen. I lived on the water, on the Great South Bay, and it had much to say. I lived by a tiny woods – there were such untouched lots in every development – and went there to play, and the trees and earth had much to say. On my way home from school every day, I turned off the sidewalk to take the path down to Corey Creek, where I sat alone, watching and listening to the water.

Out there in creation, somewhere deep inside my child’s heart, I heard beyond what I could see and hear. I never went to church, was not taught about a deity, had no religious instruction, yet I knew about God. My God had no name.

“Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, have been clearly perceived in the things that have been made,” says Romans 1:20.
In my mid-20s, I had a more direct encounter with this God and, in an effort to know more, began attending church. For the most part, this was a good experience. But there were things that bothered me.

One thing that immediately endeared me to Jesus was all the time he spent outdoors. Oh, he went into the synagogues on the Sabbath, but he always had problems there with religious leaders. He spent most of his time preaching, teaching and healing outside, in the marketplace, out in the hills, on the beach. The people who came to see him did not sit in chairs in rows in a big box, but on the ground, leaning against trees, on their mothers’ laps.

When Jesus preached about how God cares for the birds of the air, the people’s ears were filled with birdsong, and birds flitted about overhead and among branches. When he taught the Lord’s prayer, about asking for “our daily bread,” the people could see the golden wheat ripening in the fields. When he healed a blind man, he made clay of the earth to rub in his eyes, and water from the river to wash them.

When Jesus prayed, it was not “heads bowed, eyes closed.” He looked up at the sky, to the heavens, to beyond what could be seen with his eyes.

John Muir, while exploring the western wilderness of America, said that the forests, mountains and wildlife was a better Sunday school for him than any in his strict Presbyterian upbringing, and that all children should learn of God out-of-doors.

“Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days … days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening at once a thousand windows to God,” Muir wrote. This kind of outdoor experience can be had only when you’re alone, or with somebody who also wants to listen, to hear. R.S. Thomas’s poem, “The Moor,” says it perfectly:

It was like a church to me.
There were no prayers said. But stillness
Of the heart’s passions – that was praise
Enough; and the mind’s cession
Of its kingdom. I walked on,
Simple and poor, while the air crumbled
And broke on me generously as bread.

The sun is higher in the sky now. The rooster is silent, perhaps taking a nap. An airplane flies overhead. Trucks cruise by. What else do I hear? What else is there to hear?

New Experiences the Antidote to Aging

OK, ladies, what do we think about turning 50? If I had known what a milestone turning 50 was going to be, I would have paid it more attention. And now I’m turning 55. Is there no way to stop the passage of time?

Turning 20, 30 and 40 changed nothing for me. For women, turning 40 is supposed to launch you into old age. All those magazine articles about keeping your skin young-looking and staying “fit over 40.” Piece of cake. Thanks to both my parents’ genes, my skin was always on the oily side. A hassle to care for, yes, but it stayed smooth and supple. As for staying fit, I was already in a routine. I ran several miles a day and worked out with weights. Believe me, staying fit is much easier than getting fit.

Then, at 50, everything started to fall apart. From my vantage point five years later, it’s clear that turning 50 was a watershed experience. Literally. It’s when everything catches up with you. Not to mention menopause.

If, in your youthful 40s, you could get away with overindulging in a few extra calories now and then, forget about it. Now, you pay for each bite. If you could stay slender and strong by running or walking 30 minutes a day and doing a few reps with light weights, forget about it. Now it takes at least twice the work. If you could forgo the lotions and creams and still have silky smooth skin, forget about it. Now, lathering is always followed by slathering.

Even so, gravity and time have the final say. But there are advantages. There is something liberating about walking down the street and not being gawked at by males of all ages. "After a lifetime of living under the gaze, one day you realize that you are getting older and any beauty that you had or hoped for is fading,” writes Lilian Calles Barger in “Eve’s Revenge: Women and a Spirituality of the Body.” “Younger men no longer look at you. Older men are too busy gazing at younger women.”

Barger goes on to say that instead of feeling relieved, we feel invisible. We realize how our identity was tied up with “constantly being gazed at.” So now I grapple with that identity. Who am I? Who do I want to be?

I admire women who are comfortable enough with themselves to let their hair go gray. I was going to let it happen when my virgin hair grew in after the chemotherapy (another after-50 event). But when I actually saw it, I couldn’t do it.

My Grandma Still had fluffy white hair at my age. While I can’t imagine her lacing up a pair of hiking boots to hit a Catskills mountain trail with me, she was quite fit. She would get so mad if the bus was late that she just walked the two miles to Patchogue. Back then, women didn’t walk for fitness. But Grandma Still did not drive, so walking was often her only option.

Grandma Brown always looked old to me, too. She was petite, with short, permed hair. At my age, though, she had a convertible and a big boat. She’d pick me up in her car, top down, cruise to the bay, and hop on the boat to go clamming or crabbing.

Still, I can’t imagine my grandmothers rolling down the back hill with me, as I did with my granddaughters last week. I can still do all the things I could in my 20s. However, I pay for it afterwards with aches and pains.

Two years ago when picking a physical education class at Blue Ridge Community College, I signed up for the soccer team. I love soccer. Then I talked to the coach. He said the team mostly consisted of 19-year-old guys. Hmmm, should a 54-year-old woman be playing soccer with teenage boys? An injury would lay me up for months. Then how fit would I be? I switched to yoga.
Of course, aging is largely a state of mind. As Chili Davis said, “Growing old is mandatory; growing up is optional.” The key is to not be stuck in a rut, in your mind or behavior. You should always be ready for change, and to have fun. One man I know does not accept invitations to do anything on Saturday morning because that’s the day he takes his garbage to the dumpster.

Now that is old.

Self-Sufficiency Is Too Much Work

The laughing days of summer have given way to the decaying beauty of fall. The summer wine is corked nicely into bottles and aging on the rack. What vegetables can be preserved are preserved. The Valley’s fields of corn have been cut, chopped and stored.

It’s been quite a summer at the Austin homestead. Neither the husband nor I were raised on a farm, but we do what we can, albeit with a mix of traditional wisdom and our own ideas about how to do things. You’ll hear no stories from me about putting up 200 jars of green beans. I don’t spend whole mornings weeding or afternoons snapping beans. On the farm, I do no more work than I have to.

That’s not to say I’m a slouch. My city friend who stayed for a few weeks in August was impressed with my energy. Every morning after my three-mile walk, I picked enough weeds in the garden to fill a wheelbarrow to feed to the chickens. Yup, chickens love greens. Doesn’t matter if it’s Romaine lettuce or dandelion greens.

Remember the chickens? In early summer we ordered 125 peeps: 100 buff orpingtons for meat and 25 leghorns for laying. When the post office called, we drove to Staunton to pick up our chirping cartons. Their warming box was all set for them.

Peeps are so cute, but they don’t stay peeps for long. In a few days their legs were longer. The soft baby down was replaced by adult feathers. When they were big enough, we moved them out to the henhouse.

The husband built an impregnable henhouse from materials we had laying around. He built it Salatin-style, as everyone does these days, to be moveable. He made ours on skids. When he pulls the building with his tractor, it glides right over the pasture. Thus do the birds fertilize our field.

After the husband built another coop for the roosters, we moved the 100 buff orpingtons out of the henhouse. Now all we need do is wait for the hens to start laying eggs and the roosters to get large enough to butcher.

Then came the day when we heard crowing. Our young men had reached adolescence. We were happy about that until we realized the crowing was coming from the henhouse.

What? I thought it was a fluke, that a few leghorn roosters had mixed in with the hen peeps. The husband was convinced that the hatchery had mixed up our order. I shot some digital photos of both kinds of chickens so the husband could e-mail them to the company. Sure enough, they’d reversed our order.

So. Now we have 25 leghorn roosters, bred for leanness and laying, and 100 buff orpingtons, bred to be huge and meaty. The hatchery kindly refunded our money, but still. Not according to the plan, but we can make it work.

Regardless, our summer days fell into an easy rhythm. After feeding weeds to the chickens, I picked vegetables: green beans, zucchini squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, peppers. I ate Greek salad nearly every day this summer. Even now, I’m using Roma tomatoes to make it: English cucumbers, tomatoes, fresh basil, feta cheese, kalamata olives, olive oil and balsamic vinegar or lemon juice. Sometimes a bit of red onion and green pepper. My ideal meal this summer was Greek salad, bass or catfish caught in our pond and fresh-baked bread.

Instead of canning tomatoes, I dried them. As I told the husband, canned tomatoes are cheap, but sun-dried tomatoes are expensive and delicious. I hope to marinate them for use in salads instead of the cardboard tomatoes sold in winter.

I have perfected making yogurt. Using raw milk, I incubate it with the culture in my oven with the light on. In just a few hours I have a bowl of yogurt. Then, to make Greek yogurt, I line a bowl with cheesecloth and pour in a quart of yogurt. Gather the ends, tie with a rubber band, and hang from a cabinet handle over a bowl to catch the whey. It gets as thick as sour cream and is delicious with our homemade maple syrup.

As for ever being self-sufficient, I don’t see that happening. It’s too much work. But there is something to be said about setting the table with vegetables you’ve grown, fish you’ve caught, bread you’ve made with locally-grown wheat and wine you’ve fermented with your backyard berries.

Contentment.

Undercover! Click Click Leads To Dancing in the Rain

So Trent Wagler posts a note last Thursday on Facebook offering tickets for SpaghettiFest at a discounted price “until midnight.”

“Hmm, I wonder who’s playing this year?” I says to myself.

There is no reason why I should recognize any bands playing at SpaghettiFest, an annual indie rock festival at Natural Chimneys, because I always check and I never have. But I do like Steel Wheels, Wagler’s band. I log on to the SpaghettiFest website anyway, just to check it out. The festival’s home page lists all the bands scheduled to appear. No familiar names. Oh, but what’s this?

Undercover? No. It can’t be THE Undercover.

Undercover has been my favorite rock band since the 1980s. I was not (am not) interested in the mass-produced pedestrian music coming from the contemporary Christian music bunch. I call it “changed and rearranged” music. Then I heard Undercover. The music was punk, rebellious and worshipful. They did a version of “Holy, Holy, Holy” that was loud and fast. “God Rules” was a shouted hard rock testimony to God’s presence in our lives. “Boys and Girls Renounce the World” was a challenge to do just that.

Undercover was original. You couldn’t say they “sound like” any other band.

Then came “Branded.” Undercover was already real, but their new album, “Branded,” was outright raw. No holds barred, nothing covered up, no making nice.

At the time, I was struggling with some hard stuff. And I was utterly alone. Why? Because when I tried to talk with my friends about it, they acted like I had cooties. Christian women don’t talk about those things. We don’t even think about such things. Christian women are nice. We’re nice. Leave us alone. We’re nice.

Yeah, nice.

Lyrics like this spoke to me:
It’s hard to fall asleep
When I hate the life I lead
And it’s hard to face the day
Cuz the night’s not far away
Cry, cry myself to sleep
It’s easier telling lies
When I’m dying inside
Than to open up my heart
And have it torn apart
Cry, cry myself to sleep
God in heaven above
Has compassion and love
His hands wet with my tears
He’s been drying them for years
Cry, cry myself to sleep.

I listened to “Branded”—all the songs spoke to me—over and over. My brothers in Undercover were the only people in the world who understood what I was going through. And the music was primo.

I never got to see Undercover in concert because they were a West Coast band and they just didn’t come this way. Then they nearly stopped performing. A gig in 2000, another in 2005. After the 1994 album, “Forum,” there was a live one in 2000, then “I Rose Falling” in 2002. That was it.

So on the SpaghettiFest site, I click on Undercover, and it takes me to Ojo Taylor’s MySpace! Ojo is the founder/main songwriter/keyboard guy. And there in his blog is a note about “Steve Reich at JMU.”

JMU? Why should Ojo care about anything at JMU? Then I read that he’s teaching in the music department at JMU.

What? What? How could this happen and me not know about it?

I scream. I jump up and go tearing out to the chicken coop where the husband is working. I am so excited, shaking even, that I can barely get out the words.

Of course, I immediately buy tickets to SpaghettiFest, held at Natural Chimneys in Mount Solon.
On Saturday afternoon, when then come onstage, I’m surprised to see it’s really them: Ojo Taylor, Sim Wilson, Gym Nicholson and Gary Olson. They put on an awesome rock and roll show. They play many of my favorite songs—“Mea Culpa,” “Come Away With Me,” “World Come Crashing Down”—but then, they’re all my favorites. The husband and I dance hilariously in the rain. A fitting metaphor.

The. Best. Concert. Ever. And I have seen the best.

I’m wearing my Undercover t-shirt, with the big “U” on front. The band is surprised to see a fan in the audience. Sim’s wife sidles up next to me and says they want to meet me, too.

Tell me how to keep the flame when seasons pass the time away… Remember me.

Wow. God brought my favorite band in the world to Mount Solon, in Augusta County where I live, just a few minutes from my house. Does he love me dangerously or what?

Jimmy Carter's Visit to JMU

Days before former President Jimmy Carter was scheduled to receive an award at JMU, he made a remark on NBC that got his name all over the news and talk shows for days. People raged against him; people reasoned for him.

Ah, our prejudices are once again at play in the public square.

Our biases got even more blatant in the aftermath of his speech at JMU Convocation Center on Monday. Me? I like Jimmy Carter. Always did. So when I heard what he told Brian Williams in an NBC interview last week—that Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s speech was “based on racism”—I had plenty of excuses for Brother Jimmy.

“I am, in plainer words, a bundle of prejudices—made up of likings and dislikings,” wrote the 19th century essayist, Charles Lamb.

Some people chalked it off as a sign of Carter’s age. He’s 84 and his mental powers are diminishing. But what I’ve heard and read by him in recent years tell me this is not so. My first excuse was Carter’s Georgia roots. Let’s face it, even if his family was not prejudiced against blacks, most of the people around him growing up would have been. Throughout his youth, he would have seen blacks working in subservient jobs. When I first moved to Virginia and heard slimy cracks against blacks, I was struck by the depth of feeling. So perhaps, I reasoned, Carter was speaking from his own latent racism.

It could also have been a knee-jerk reaction. In her most recent Salon column, Camille Paglia criticizes her own party (not blinded like so many by her party affiliation) for its members’ docility, due to “ideological brainwashing” in college. “The top schools, from the Ivy League on down, promote ‘critical thinking,’ which sounds good but is in fact just a style of rote regurgitation of hackneyed approved terms (‘racism, sexism, homophobia’) when confronted with any social issue,” Paglia writes. “The Democratic brain has been marinating so long in those clichés that it’s positively pickled.”

So I excused Carter because he’s just been a Democrat for too long.

This remark on NBC, in light of Carter’s lifetime of authentic service to the public, was not enough to turn me against him. I prejudged Carter as a good and honest man.

Carter’s speech on Monday was titled, “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land.” He reviewed his efforts as President on behalf of Israel: He put pressure on the then-Soviet Union to let Jews leave Russia, many of whom emigrated to Israel. He supported a law that prohibited U.S. corporations to boycott Israel. On Israel’s 30th birthday, he announced a commission to establish a memorial to Holocaust victims. In 1978, he negotiated peace accords at Camp David between Israel and Egypt and, six months later, a peace treaty between them.

“I left office believing that Israel would soon realize its dream of peace with its other neighbors,” Carter told the Convo crowd, “a small nation that exemplified the finest ideals based on Hebrew scriptures I have taught since I was 18 years old.”

Then he went on to describe the current plight of Israel in relation to the Palestinians who live within its borders. He placed the blame for the current situation squarely where it belongs, on those who are shooting the missiles and mortar shells, on Israelis first and on Palestinians.
What I heard is that he is pro-Israel, but that does not blind him to the crimes Israel is committing against its neighbors. I was shocked, the next day, to find that others thought Carter’s review of his past efforts toward Israel was just a ploy to pretend he is not biased against them, and that his motive was to totally fault Israel, which she described as “dangerous.”

Zonk! See what I mean? You hear what you want to hear. I hear what I want to hear. “A biased opinion is one you don’t agree with,” said the newsman David Brinkley on CNN in 1995.

The reason for Carter’s visit to Harrisonburg exemplifies all the reasons I’ve admired him all these years. He and Rosalynn were presented with the Mahatma Ghandi Global Nonviolence Award. The award is given by the Ghandi Center to recognize peacemakers who support nonviolence, love their enemies, seek justice and share their worldly goods with those in need.

Say what you will about Jimmy Carter, he certainly has demonstrated those beliefs in his life, words and actions.

But then, maybe that’s just my bias.

Fifteen Years

When I began working at the newspaper exactly 15 years ago today, my oldest child was 18, the youngest was 12. Kids in high school, sports, plays, parties. No I can't go getting nostalgic. It's not good for me.

Uncherished

My friend was weeping and heartbroken. She felt all alone and abandoned, left to cope with their three children single-handedly. Where was her husband?
No not playing golf, watching football or working. He was upstairs playing computer games, role-playing computer games. He was so consumed with playing the games he was ignoring his wife. Oh he would not say he was ignoring her. But unlike golf, football, working, or a thousand other things, playing computer games seems like nothing. To my friend, it seemed she was so not worth her husband's time that he preferred the mindlessness of a computer game. As if he wanted to escape her and needed an excuse.
When she wanted to talk to him, it was to the back of his head. Or to his face, but he never looked up from the screen, never gave her his attention.

Quitting my job

So I've been working at the Daily News-Record for 15 years as a staff writer and I'm launching out into the free-lance world. I hope to spend time in more literary pursuits. My column, however, will continue. It's a bit scary, but exciting. Can I make a living writing what I want rather than what I'm told to write? We'll see.