A chip too far

In the store the other day I noticed that Lay's now has 'southern biscuits and gravy' potato chips.

Now, I love biscuits and gravy. It was a distinct 'food group' in my childhood. And everywhere I find them on a menu, I order them.

The last place I found them was in a little breakfast and lunch place in Higganum, CT, just the other day.

On the menu they were called "Hotlanta"--for the city in Georgia. I normally distrust sausage gravy made above the Mason-Dixon line but I tried them anyway with scrambled eggs. And they were great, best ever in CT at anywhere that isn't Cracker Barrel. (They did toast the biscuits, which no southerner (or Appalachian for that matter) would ever do. But the gravy made up for it. Truly.

The place is called Blue something and shares a building with a homemade ice cream place. If you like ice cream with your biscuits and gravy, you couldn't go wrong there.

It's called Blue Highway and is 900 something Killingworth Road. I've been there before and it has been great every time. They now owe my a Hotlanta on the house for the free advertising....

But given my love for biscuits and gravy (you can make white gravy with bacon as well as sausage, but it isn't as good--unless all you have is bacon!) I will not try a potato chip pretending to be biscuits and gravy! For one thing the texture couldn't be wrong-er! Biscuits and gravy sort of dissolve in you mouth with minimum chewing, unlike chips.

I did try some 'dill pickle' potato chips once. They did taste like dill pickles but had no pickle juice in the ingredients. Just chemicals I didn't recognize.

I wonder what chemicals masquerade for sausage and biscuits?

God help us....

Red Maple babies

Bern often tells me that I don't have any connection with the outside world. Truth is, I live in my head a lot.

She can move furniture and it takes me a day or two to notice. And stuff she moves around in the back yard--give me a break!--I seldom notice.

This evening, before dinner, I was out on the back porch. Spring in New England is warm in the sun and cool in the shade. I had on jeans and a sweater and the sun was just perfect across our back yard and I saw, as if for the first time, our Red Maple tree's babies. There are at least four of them in our eastern neighbor's yard.

One is 10 feet high--a few years--and the others are smaller, but not new, by any means.

Our Red Maple is 25 feet or so, just in back of our house and has a trunk shaped like a human body in many ways--arms up, torso just so. Morgan, our granddaughter, likes to climb it as far as you can. We've hung a mask on it like a head. It works.

But, for whyever, like me not noticing stuff, I hadn't seen the babies until the sun at 6:30 pm today.

And there they were. Lovely, with the same wondrous red leaves and reaching branches.

What all do I miss, living in my head, in the world out there.

Red Maple babies for sure.

What else...?

What else indeed....

Since spring is here

I thought I'd share a poem from a few years ago about Spring.

Ponder it.

YOU ARE MY SPRING

Walking on the Canal today, Bela and I

were serenaded by dozens of birds.

Bela stopped twice to cock his head and listen.

I could not escape their songs.

My soul leaned toward Spring.

Perhaps they are back too soon

and will freeze in the February night.

But they were there this morning,

trying out their voices,

making music that sounded like April,

when we both were born.

Some winters, here in the Northeast,

test the will and Hope, itself.

Others, like this one,

tease us with their mildness.

Either way—Winter Comes.

And it is the Spring I lean toward, always,

no matter which winter rolls in.

Today, walking with a Puli dog,

listening to the misplaced choruses of birds,

I realized that I lean toward you

the way I lean toward Spring.

In all the Winter-times of my life,

I lean toward you.

You are my Spring,

my Hope, my Love.

                              VALENTINE'S DAY 2012, from Jim to Bern

Cousins

One wondrous surprise at Angie's funeral was that two of my cousins, A and S, showed up before the service. I hadn't seen them for decades, but I knew them immediately. They are younger than me by a bit--third cousins, if I've got that right.

My father's side of the family was very loose in describing blood relations. I called A and S's mother and father 'uncle and aunt' though, truth be known, Ralph was the son of my grandfather Bradley's sister. So, he was my second cousin in reality, but "uncle" in my father's family.

I had two Bradley cousins who were the children of my father's brother and my maternal grandmother's brother's daughter. We called each other "double first cousins". My mother's side of the family would have be more precise: Sarita and Greg were my "double first cousins once removed".

I had a huge family. Lots of Aunts and Uncles and a multitude of cousins.

And I've not 'kept up' the way I was taught to.

I'm a person who lives pretty much in the moment. I form relationships wherever I am rather than carry relationships with me.

We lived far away from 'family', so our children grew up with 'adopted family' that Bern and I gathered along the way.

If I have any regrets in my life--and the truth is I am a person with almost no regrets!--it is that I didn't keep in touch with family.

Anita and Suzanne showing up last Wednesday filled me with great joy and wonder as well as a feeling of deep loss that I hadn't 'kept in touch' with them or any of my family.

My cousin, Mejol, is the sole exception. I still see her from time to time and her two children and two grandsons, but only because they all live in Baltimore and on some trips to see Josh and Cathy and my granddaughters, I touch base with Mejol. But not nearly enough. We did go to Charleston, WV a couple of years ago to visit our Aunt Elsie and this year to her funeral. But not nearly enough.

Anita and Suzanne gave me a great gift--the knowledge that my 'family' is still there. But they also reminded me of my guilt at not 'being family' in a more active way.

I'm going to do my best to 'keep in touch' with Anita and Suzanne. I wrote letters to some of my Jones side cousins I saw at my Aunt's funeral. And I haven't heard back. But A and S are email folks...I think I can keep in touch with them.

I hope so.

I pray so.

What a deep joy that they showed up.

Amazing.

I am blessed. So blessed....

The New Yorker is too ironic this week for even me....

I love irony. Most of the time I look at life as ironic and it gives me both possibility and hope.

I love the cartoons in the New Yorker magazine. Mostly because they are so ironic.

But this week's edition has a couple of dozen cartoons and every single one of them (by design and irony, I'm sure) is about Donald Trump. Some are laugh out loud. Some are ponder and chuckle. Some are find someone to show it to. Some are just to smile about. The last one (by design and irony again) is of a cartoonist at his desk and his wife/secretary is at the door saying, "that Trump cartoon you did yesterday just happened!"

I liked them all and liked how ironic it was to have every cartoon deal with the same subject, even if it was The Donald.

But it raised an issue for me. Should we still be laughing?

The Trump Clown Show was a hoot for a long time. In fact, the whole Republican field (14 of them at one point!) was ripe for humor, irony and satire. But now that we're down to two very scary possibilities (Trump and Cruz) and one not so scary 'impossibility' (Kasich)--should we still be laughing?

I'm still pondering that question.

returning is good....

I've complained a bit about my new computer--and one of the complaints is that if I turn away for more than a minute or so, it goes to sleep.

It actually doesn't 'go to sleep', it starts a slide show of all my photos. But I do have to sign back on to keep doing whatever I'm doing....

I've been doing stuff tonight that causes me to look away for a time. And every time I do, the photos start.

At the Making a Difference Workshop in Ireland, the second or third time we practiced Centering Prayer, someone bemoaned having so many distractions.

(I don't know what you know about Centering Prayer. Here it is in a nutshell: sit comfortably, INTEND to be with God who dwells within you, clear your mind and whenever you notice a distraction, use a prayer word to return to the center.

Pretty simple. In fact, so simple it drives people crazy who want to "do it right". You see, there is no "right or wrong" way. It is a prayer of 'intention' and if you 'intend' to be with God, whatever shows up is what shows up while you're being with God.

Basil Pennington, who gave the workshop Centering Prayer, used to reply to people who complained of having to use their word to 'return' so much by saying: "You had to use your word 50 times? How wonderful to 'return to God' fifty times!!!")

I'm going to apply that wondrous and sacred wisdom to my computer taking me off line if I don't touch it often enough.

The first photo I always see is of Mimi looking back at me and pointing in wonder to the bridge in Sydney, Australia. The other photos are all of people I love and pets I love and vistas I love.

So, when my computer takes me off line from now on, I'm going to say to myself, "how wonderful to 'return' to Mimi and all these memories again and again...."

Feels better already....

sudden Spring

After the post-Easter snows and days of rain, I looked around today at Spring.

Granted, I'd been gone two weeks--one in Ireland and one in West Virginia (neither of which seemed further along in Spring springing than Connecticut!)--but today it was all there.

The trees are budding, flowers are everywhere, birds are in profusion, the world is simply glorious.

Bern brought in a bouquet of jonquils from her garden--6 different kinds!

I wore shorts today. (The joke is that in New England people wear shorts with a hoodie.)

Winter wasn't nearly as brutal this year as in recent years, but the darkness and chill tend to drive down the Spirit. I'm writing this at 7:43 p.m. and there is still enough light to read on our porch.

Light is what is needed. Light brings the world to life.

As sudden as it seems, Spring has come in abundance.