As I continue a series of recollections, one that comes to mind involves my grandmother and step-grandfather. The resourcefulness of the mountaineer cannot be underestimated, and my step-grandfather, Alonzo Lipscomb, was the epitome of that. A recollection of his memory is important to these recollections, as his memory is a fond one.
My maternal grandmother Elsie and my grandfather actually separated when my mother was quite young, and after some years both of them remarried to new spouses with whom they had happier marriages. My grandmother Elsie married Alonzo - whom from this point we'll call by the name we knew him as, Lonnie - after she met him sometime in the mid-1960's. Although Lonnie was not a blood relative, his family was practically family to me and I was always like a grandson to him. Many years ago, when he worked for a lumber company up near Albright, WV, he had a tragic accident in which he lost his right hand, and for years after that he had a stub for a hand. He did have a prosthetic hook, but only used it when he field-dressed a deer he would shoot. Although Lonnie died in July of 2005 after suffering several years with kidney issues, he is still a part of me in my memories, as he was truly a good man - not perfect mind you, as he was known for many years for being a bit of a drinker, but he was always a decent human being even with that vice. Being talented as he was with resourcefulness, it is that talent which inspires this story today.
For many years my grandmother Elsie and step-grandfather Lonnie lived just outside the town of Augusta, WV, in houses that often didn't have plumbing. That necessitated usage of both an outhouse and an exterior well, which in one of their houses was on the back porch. The well was accessed by a hole in the middle of the porch in which a long metal bucket was lowered to draw out the water. As for the outhouse, that could be an inconvenience at night in particular, especially for my grandmother who always was fearful a snake would crawl up her housecoat if she ventured out into the black night to either pee or undertake a constitution that was more substantial. To solve that problem, Lonnie came up with the idea of cutting a hole in an old kitchen chair, and then attaching a toilet seat to it and placing a 25-gallon lard bucket under the chair. The nasty part of this is that the bucket had to be emptied daily, or else the contents would begin to ferment and stink. I thought of this earlier today when I watched yet another of Susannah Lewis's videos concerning some sort of "vaginal steam" treatment that entails a chair with a hole in it and a steaming boiling pot of potpourri-scented water - these yuppie fad treatments know no limits, do they? At any rate, that brings me to another story regarding my grandmother Elsie, since mentioning her fear of snakes came to mind.
My grandmother Elsie passed away due to complications of a stroke (she had diabetes for years) on June 21, 2004. It was the last time I saw her actually, as she was laying in a hospital bed unable to talk or even keep her eyes opened - she was using a swab the nurse gave her to try to prop her eyes open so she could see. Elsie was by no means a skinny woman either - she would easily top 300 pounds minimum at her lightest. Keeping this in mind, like many West Virginia women my grandmother was deathly afraid of snakes, something my mother shares to this day with her. That fear of snakes extended to anything even resembling a snake. Now, as I mentioned, both my step-grandfather Lonnie and my mother back in the day enjoyed drinking beer, and one of our family pastimes in those days was to take a leisurely drive when opportunity afforded it for us. On this one particular occasion when I was about 15 years old, we were out driving on the back roads of nearby Hardy County, WV, and twilight was coming early in the evening. On those old back roads where traffic is sparse, wildlife comes out in abundance, and especially after a rainstorm it was common to see frogs and toads hopping on the roads at night. I, of course, loved catching frogs and toads, and my step-grandfather indulged that by allowing me to catch a few on the road. When a car light hits a frog's eyes, he is generally immobilized and easier to catch, so if you are diligent enough you can catch a few dozen in a night's adventure. This night was no different, and I had a couple of small pickerel frogs I had caught. Usually, I had something to contain them, but this night I didn't and one got loose. Somehow, the little bugger made it to the front seat where my grandmother was sitting, and it found her leg and managed to decide climbing up it might be a good escape route. At about the time that frog hit Elsie's leg, Mom popped a beer can and the subsequent hissing of the popping can made Mom, in a sort of mischievous mood, yell "Snake!" This sequence of events could not have been better-timed, as the popping of the can and the frog landing inside my grandmother's dress on her leg happened simultaneously. The reaction from my poor grandmother was immediate - she whooped and hollered like a banshee, and Lonnie had to pull over the car to let her out to shake away the offending creature, as my grandmother was afraid it was a copperhead snake wanting to make a home in her cooter or something. On that remote back road outside of Baker, WV, somewhere, my grandmother was in the middle of that road doing a dance that would make African tribesmen bow in reverence to her. When it was finally determined that it was not a snake but rather one of my newly-acquired frogs, we all (with the exception of my portly grandmother) were laughing so hysterically that my step-grandfather had to stay at the side of the road for a good ten minutes before everyone got their composure. Mom still laughs about that story, although now it has been well over 30 years since it happened.
My step-grandfather Lonnie was a gentle man too, and everyone who knew him loved him. But, when he had a drink or two in him, he could be a real character as he became one of those silly drunks - he wouldn't hurt a fly, although he did display some self-injuring examples of redneckery in action, such as the time he tried to toboggan down the slope of the hill adjacent to his house on an old refrigerator door; luckily the small old barn at the foot of the hill broke his fall. More often than not though, if the weather permitted he would like to sit outside, and with the essence of Canadian Mist whiskey in his system he would either sing Hank Williams Sr's whole songbook to his two dozen or so dogs and contrary nanny goat, or he would attempt to play his own rendition of country singer Carl Smith's 1961 recording of "Kisses Don't Lie" on a harmonica (he didn't play well, but he tried, God bless him!), which in turn would aggravate the huge and ornery old tom turkey they had at the time, which was also fun to watch - I am shocked that the big old gobbler didn't attempt to flog him. Lonnie loved his animals though, and as mentioned, at any given time in my childhood that I can recollect, he and my grandmother Elsie usually owned about two dozen or more dogs at any given time. Perhaps that is why the turkey restrained itself - the crazy bird knew Lonnie loved him, so he didn't do anything except gobble and fuss angrily at being disturbed by Lonnie's whiskey-laced singing or sub-standard but passionate harmonica playing. Whether slightly inebriated or sober though, Lonnie was an endearing guy, and he always tried to be happy, even with my grandmother kinda yelling at him (he did get in some trouble with her a lot, usually unintentionally). Looking back on it, my grandmother's squawking at Lonnie was an endearing quality to him too - they did love each other, but had their own way of expressing it. Only knowing them could one understand that. That is why he barely lasted a year after she had passed on - he missed her.
More could be said about my grandparents, but I wanted to share just a little about them here to sort of introduce people who didn't know them to who they were. I think fondly about Lonnie even to this day, and to me he was as much family as either of my natural grandfathers were - I really loved the guy. And, he taught me a lot too - I learned how to cook deer meat in several ways, how to identify and pick poke greens, and other things from him too. But mostly, it is good memories like these about him that make him immortalized at least in my memories. When I watch something like Duck Dynasty or Swamp People these days (I am a big fan of both shows) I often think how much Lonnie would have loved those shows - they were right up his alley, although they didn't come on TV until about 5 years after he departed this life. I think personally he would have appreciated Phil Robertson, as Phil is in many ways like Lonnie once was. Lonnie was a true "mountain man" in the most literal sense, but he also possessed an intelligence about the wider world that helped him appreciate it too. May he rest eternal, and I do believe I will see him one day in the hereafter. So long until next visit.
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Friday, April 26, 2019
More Late-Night Reflections
In the past couple of days, I have been doing a lot of reflection on many things, and one of those is beginning to talk somewhat honestly about memories and convictions, which is what the whole point of this blog is about. This does not mean nothing previous has not been honest, but rather that I have not allowed myself the time and attention to speak with the candor in many cases I should speak with. Fortunately, a book entitled Can't Make This Stuff Up, written by a Tennessee-born Southern humorist (and devout Christian) named Susannah Lewis came across my path, and it served to remind me of some things. Therefore, I wanted to begin to share some insights of my own - some of the stuff I may say is familiar, but with a little more detail, and some of it will be completely new. All I ask is that you bear with me as I share it, as I am flying by the seat of my pants at this point.
Tonight, I wanted to talk about some of my interests over the years, as at times especially when I was a kid I was into some things that still in some way impact me today, although I have outgrown a lot of it. One of those things was something my mother introduced me to when I was around five or six, and that was toy Noah's Ark sets. Although at around that time Mom had just gone through an intense divorce from my dad, and we spent several years of my early childhood migrating between relatives, Mom still wanted me to have some faith foundation, and for that I suppose I owe her some credit, as I may not have found Christ later and been in faithful service to the Church had I not been exposed to some aspect of the Gospel at an early age. The way Mom did this - and it was creative on her part admittedly - was by buying me Bible-themed toys. Back in the day, small plastic Noah's Ark play sets were easy to find at almost any religious bookstore, and Mom got me my first when I was about 5 years old and we still lived in Baltimore with my Aunt Ruth in an ancient-looking old row house on Stafford Street. Little did she (or I) know, but within a year or so I would take that to a whole other level, as that Noah's Ark set became one of my earliest hobbies. At the age of six, we moved back to my hometown of Hendricks and in with my great-grandmother in the house that both Mom and I had practically grown up in, and it was there my new obsession with Noah's Ark took off. I began to think I didn't have enough small plastic animals, and started to accumulate tons of them - at one point, they filled a large paper bag. When I would get engrossed in this diversion, I would often play outside in the summer and would line those toy animals up in twos around the entire house leading to that Ark. As I grew older, I began to lose interest and instead got into collecting trinkets out of those quarter prize machines when I was between the ages of 7 and 8 - I amassed quite a bunch of those too, and they included some things I thought were prizes at the time - tiny workable slot machines, miniature whistles, tiny working lighters, tiny cameras that took real pictures, and small Derringer toy pistols that shot caps. I am not sure how much of that stuff I amassed, but everytime Mom gave me an allowance I was in those machines. You see, when I get into a hobby, I go full OCD mode with it - I still actually do that today. These interests led to others, notably the "cowboys and Indians" phase that happened at around the time I was eight or so.
For my eighth birthday in 1977, Mom bought me two things - one was a toy fort panorama with plastic cowboys and Indians, and the other was a WWII military panorama with submarines and toy soldiers. I got it in my head then that I could play out a fantasy of building a miniature civilization out of these things, and a got a ton of that stuff too - it was reminiscent of the Noah's Ark toy phase a couple of years earlier. I was actually into that well into the time I turned 10 years old, at which time one day my grandmother Elsie was cleaning and inadvertently mixed my cowboys and Indians in with other stuff, and for me that defiled the whole thing and I almost immediately lost interest. It was toys like that though, and the obsessive collecting instinct I had with them, that led me to my music collection beginning with the age of 12, but this time it was different - I still collect records, and have now for 37 years.
As carried away and grandiose I got with these toy collections I had, there is one thing that toys like that did for me - they drove my imagination. Many kids today don't understand that, as most are glued to laptops and cellphones playing stuff like "Angry Birds" or whatever and don't really get to exercise their imagination. For a huge undertaking such as the Noah's Ark or cowboys and Indians phases I had, it took a day of strategizing and work to really set those up exactly as I wanted them, and by a day, it literally took that. My mom was always happy about it, as it got me out of her hair for a long time and she could do whatever it was she did (which was usually lounging around drinking beer and listening to Jim Reeves records, as she had little ambition then to do much else). Many of those same intricacies of planning are still evident in the way I do things today, as it sort of established a habit, which is in reality what play and imagination are meant to do anyway. At times, I would actually sit and plan out what I was going to do, often while messing around out in the woods or fishing at my step-grandfather's pond, and being alone allowed me to talk to myself and get some clarity in all of that. An active imagination in a child is a very precious commodity, and if you witness it, you should encourage it and allow them to just, well, be themselves. My mother was not the perfect parent by any means, but on that one she did good.
As mentioned, I still plot and plan even today about things, although this day and age it is no longer about cowboys and Indians or a horde of plastic animals going into a tiny replica of Noah's Ark. The planning skills I learned messing around with toy soldiers and cowboys are in essence the same skills and attributes that help me plan how to tackle some old bills, or even plan for dinner (as I love to cook, of course). At times, I have even gotten so good at it that I actually plan on the fly and come up with good and brilliant ideas. For example, one day I was watching a Gordon Ramsay documentary where he was visiting Singapore, and he sought out a classic Malay dish called a rendang. In watching that, those gears and wheels inside my mind started turning, and I was thinking, "Wow, I can do something with this!" So, in about ten minutes I had my own rendition of a traditional Malay rendang, and I was able to later try it and it turned out quite delicious (I think I may have the recipe on my food blog, but if not it will be soon). Adults are allowed, despite the contrary notions in modern society, to have imagination - if ingenuity is the mother of invention, then imagination is its grandmother. Many a fantasy has been turned into reality by a fertile mind imagining possibilities and then putting something together. This is something we need to encourage our kids to do too.
I want to now end this rambling for tonight, but the point is that imagination is good, and it can even be transformational if it is allowed to be cultivated at an early age. So long until next time.
Tonight, I wanted to talk about some of my interests over the years, as at times especially when I was a kid I was into some things that still in some way impact me today, although I have outgrown a lot of it. One of those things was something my mother introduced me to when I was around five or six, and that was toy Noah's Ark sets. Although at around that time Mom had just gone through an intense divorce from my dad, and we spent several years of my early childhood migrating between relatives, Mom still wanted me to have some faith foundation, and for that I suppose I owe her some credit, as I may not have found Christ later and been in faithful service to the Church had I not been exposed to some aspect of the Gospel at an early age. The way Mom did this - and it was creative on her part admittedly - was by buying me Bible-themed toys. Back in the day, small plastic Noah's Ark play sets were easy to find at almost any religious bookstore, and Mom got me my first when I was about 5 years old and we still lived in Baltimore with my Aunt Ruth in an ancient-looking old row house on Stafford Street. Little did she (or I) know, but within a year or so I would take that to a whole other level, as that Noah's Ark set became one of my earliest hobbies. At the age of six, we moved back to my hometown of Hendricks and in with my great-grandmother in the house that both Mom and I had practically grown up in, and it was there my new obsession with Noah's Ark took off. I began to think I didn't have enough small plastic animals, and started to accumulate tons of them - at one point, they filled a large paper bag. When I would get engrossed in this diversion, I would often play outside in the summer and would line those toy animals up in twos around the entire house leading to that Ark. As I grew older, I began to lose interest and instead got into collecting trinkets out of those quarter prize machines when I was between the ages of 7 and 8 - I amassed quite a bunch of those too, and they included some things I thought were prizes at the time - tiny workable slot machines, miniature whistles, tiny working lighters, tiny cameras that took real pictures, and small Derringer toy pistols that shot caps. I am not sure how much of that stuff I amassed, but everytime Mom gave me an allowance I was in those machines. You see, when I get into a hobby, I go full OCD mode with it - I still actually do that today. These interests led to others, notably the "cowboys and Indians" phase that happened at around the time I was eight or so.
For my eighth birthday in 1977, Mom bought me two things - one was a toy fort panorama with plastic cowboys and Indians, and the other was a WWII military panorama with submarines and toy soldiers. I got it in my head then that I could play out a fantasy of building a miniature civilization out of these things, and a got a ton of that stuff too - it was reminiscent of the Noah's Ark toy phase a couple of years earlier. I was actually into that well into the time I turned 10 years old, at which time one day my grandmother Elsie was cleaning and inadvertently mixed my cowboys and Indians in with other stuff, and for me that defiled the whole thing and I almost immediately lost interest. It was toys like that though, and the obsessive collecting instinct I had with them, that led me to my music collection beginning with the age of 12, but this time it was different - I still collect records, and have now for 37 years.
As carried away and grandiose I got with these toy collections I had, there is one thing that toys like that did for me - they drove my imagination. Many kids today don't understand that, as most are glued to laptops and cellphones playing stuff like "Angry Birds" or whatever and don't really get to exercise their imagination. For a huge undertaking such as the Noah's Ark or cowboys and Indians phases I had, it took a day of strategizing and work to really set those up exactly as I wanted them, and by a day, it literally took that. My mom was always happy about it, as it got me out of her hair for a long time and she could do whatever it was she did (which was usually lounging around drinking beer and listening to Jim Reeves records, as she had little ambition then to do much else). Many of those same intricacies of planning are still evident in the way I do things today, as it sort of established a habit, which is in reality what play and imagination are meant to do anyway. At times, I would actually sit and plan out what I was going to do, often while messing around out in the woods or fishing at my step-grandfather's pond, and being alone allowed me to talk to myself and get some clarity in all of that. An active imagination in a child is a very precious commodity, and if you witness it, you should encourage it and allow them to just, well, be themselves. My mother was not the perfect parent by any means, but on that one she did good.
As mentioned, I still plot and plan even today about things, although this day and age it is no longer about cowboys and Indians or a horde of plastic animals going into a tiny replica of Noah's Ark. The planning skills I learned messing around with toy soldiers and cowboys are in essence the same skills and attributes that help me plan how to tackle some old bills, or even plan for dinner (as I love to cook, of course). At times, I have even gotten so good at it that I actually plan on the fly and come up with good and brilliant ideas. For example, one day I was watching a Gordon Ramsay documentary where he was visiting Singapore, and he sought out a classic Malay dish called a rendang. In watching that, those gears and wheels inside my mind started turning, and I was thinking, "Wow, I can do something with this!" So, in about ten minutes I had my own rendition of a traditional Malay rendang, and I was able to later try it and it turned out quite delicious (I think I may have the recipe on my food blog, but if not it will be soon). Adults are allowed, despite the contrary notions in modern society, to have imagination - if ingenuity is the mother of invention, then imagination is its grandmother. Many a fantasy has been turned into reality by a fertile mind imagining possibilities and then putting something together. This is something we need to encourage our kids to do too.
I want to now end this rambling for tonight, but the point is that imagination is good, and it can even be transformational if it is allowed to be cultivated at an early age. So long until next time.
Thursday, April 25, 2019
Some Reflections Today
As of recent date, I have just recently finished reading a book entitled Can't Make This Stuff Up by author Susannah B. Lewis. In reading how she writes things, I was sort of inspired to begin to spontaneously write some off-the-wall stuff on my blog about my own experiences, which is why I started this whole thing in the first place. Trying to do this is some major work though, as much goes on inside my own cranial chamber, and therefore I thought it best to just go with it and see what happens. So, where do we begin today?
Yesterday was April 24th, which is a significant day of the year for me as it marks the commemoration of one of the greatest tragedies of the last century, that being the 1915 Genocide committed by the Turks against the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian peoples. I inundated my Facebook page yesterday with posts about it, as awareness of this tragedy is something that needs to be emphasized, and also that our US government needs to formally recognize (which, as of yet, it has failed to do - despite the many good things Trump has done in his time in office, I am disappointed in him for this one). One of the things I posted that captured my own attention was a very beautiful commissioned icon that was created to memorialize the Armenian victims of this atrocity, and I want to share that here now:
I really hope I can find a copy of this at some point on wood, as it is an icon that I need to have. I have worked with Armenian and Assyrian people for over 32 years now, and the Genocide has become a pivotal issue with me - if you are stupid enough to downplay or deny it, you and I will have issues, I guarantee it! Let us, therefore, remember the 3 million people who were massacred over 104 years ago in this atrocity, and it is my hope that articles like mine here will bring awareness of this to many people so that the memory of those innocents who were martyred will continue to live on.
On a less serious note though, let's talk about some things today. Having grown up in rural northeastern West Virginia, I had one of those precocious childhoods in which I am remembered in amusing stories that are retold every time a group of my relatives gathers somewhere. I was a rather unique child by many standards - I was a finicky eater, I loved to catch all sorts of critters and such from at least the time I was six, and I also had an imagination which proved to be a valuable ally during some rough times in my younger years. The imagination, in particular, was fed by an avid appreciation for reading. After all, I was the kid that many of my classmates remembered as reading an entire set of World Book Encyclopedias through at least 3 times when I was in 5th and 6th grades. I was also the kid who, as early as 10 years old, was reading some hefty material - my mother had books on the Jonestown tragedy that happened around that time, as well as a book about the fact that Hitler was a mentally-ill psychopath (Robert G.L. Waite's book Adolf Hitler - The Psychopathic God, which was published in 1977), and a large cookbook entitled Cooking for Everyday Life that I inherited from my late step-grandmother when she passed on to her eternal reward in 1979. I also got ideas to build forts from reading my grandfather's hunting books on duck blinds and such, and I would actually read my elementary school history textbooks for fun. Add to that a ton of old magazines we managed to obtain from people who just gave them away, and I was able to enrich myself intellectually quite well at a young age. Of course, in the small town of Kirby, WV, where I spent the latter half of my childhood as well as my early adolescence, there was not a lot to do, and compounded with the fact that we were poor (my mom raised me by herself, and we subsisted on about a hundred dollars monthly from my dad for child support as well as food stamps and the local Community Action taking care of our housing and utilities, so there was not much left to do anything leisurely), I had to find creative ways to occupy my time. This reading, accentuated by tramping around in the woods near our house looking for all sorts of wild foraged things such as tiny small wild strawberries, huckleberries, wild garlic, and other such stuff, as well as my Sunday night radio listening when I started to develop my affinity for vintage big band recordings, rounded out my life in those simple times. We didn't even have a television then, and this was a few years before even VCR technology caught on, so you made do with what you had. And, that leads to a few further reflections.
When you reflect back on your past, there are two feelings that emerge simultaneously (at least they do for me). One is this feeling of "how could I live like that??" which is a cross between revulsion and despair, and the other feeling is a fond recollection of certain things that are more specific. The coming together of those two divergent states of mind can create a sort of mental (and even emotional) tornado that can at times be overwhelming. It is dealing with that sort of thing that has led to my own interest in expressing myself in the written word, which I seem to do better than speaking aloud sometimes (although many of these meditations are often inspired by a session of self-directed speech - that is talking to yourself, for those not familiar - and over the years I admittedly have spent a lot of time doing that!). As I write this now, one of those memories comes to light now that I probably have talked about before, but it is time to put it into a narrative perspective maybe for those who haven't heard me talk about it.
The year was 1981, and it is summer in the little town of Kirby, WV. It is also around 10 PM on a Sunday night, and I am sitting at our kitchen table in our mobile home. Our little mobile home faced our landlord's corn patch to the north, and our kitchen window was on the north end of the little blue-and-white mobile home we lived in for about 6 years. Summers were rather nice in that area, and on that particular Sunday night I have both kitchen windows (one faced north and the other east) opened, and a light breeze is blowing through that is both comforting and invigorating. At our kitchen table, I am sitting there with a book listening to Henry Boggan start his Sunday night radio show on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC, and the only light in the kitchen is the light over our gas range. Mom has long gone to bed, having been sedated from the six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon she consumed some hours earlier, and I am at the table nibbling on a bag of Utz Sour Cream and Onion Chips while sipping on a warm cup of sugar-laden instant coffee lightened with Carnation creamer. Coffee is something I have actually been drinking since I was about five years old, and at almost 50 I still enjoy a good cup to this day, although now it is flavored with one of those specialty non-dairy creamers you can get readily at the supermarket (I am partial to blueberry flavored or Italian sweet cream, although the cup I had earlier this morning had Reese's Peanut Butter Cup flavored creamer, which is actually quite good despite the imagery). At one point when I was in 4th grade, I even got in trouble at lunchtime for carrying coffee in my thermos. At some point in Henry's program, he plays a song I like - it was either Stan Kenton's 1946 recording of Artistry Jumps, or Sinatra's stellar rendition of "I've Got You Under My Skin," with Count Basie's orchestra swinging nicely in that classic 1967 concert Sinatra and Basie made at the Sands in Las Vegas, or maybe it was that landmark Benny Goodman recording of Moonlight on the Ganges (the late 1940's Eddie Sauter arrangement) that turned me onto this music in the first place. As I sit here thinking about that now, the lyrics of another Sinatra classic sum up that night well for me, the song being The Summer Wind:
Yesterday was April 24th, which is a significant day of the year for me as it marks the commemoration of one of the greatest tragedies of the last century, that being the 1915 Genocide committed by the Turks against the Armenian, Greek, and Assyrian peoples. I inundated my Facebook page yesterday with posts about it, as awareness of this tragedy is something that needs to be emphasized, and also that our US government needs to formally recognize (which, as of yet, it has failed to do - despite the many good things Trump has done in his time in office, I am disappointed in him for this one). One of the things I posted that captured my own attention was a very beautiful commissioned icon that was created to memorialize the Armenian victims of this atrocity, and I want to share that here now:
I really hope I can find a copy of this at some point on wood, as it is an icon that I need to have. I have worked with Armenian and Assyrian people for over 32 years now, and the Genocide has become a pivotal issue with me - if you are stupid enough to downplay or deny it, you and I will have issues, I guarantee it! Let us, therefore, remember the 3 million people who were massacred over 104 years ago in this atrocity, and it is my hope that articles like mine here will bring awareness of this to many people so that the memory of those innocents who were martyred will continue to live on.
On a less serious note though, let's talk about some things today. Having grown up in rural northeastern West Virginia, I had one of those precocious childhoods in which I am remembered in amusing stories that are retold every time a group of my relatives gathers somewhere. I was a rather unique child by many standards - I was a finicky eater, I loved to catch all sorts of critters and such from at least the time I was six, and I also had an imagination which proved to be a valuable ally during some rough times in my younger years. The imagination, in particular, was fed by an avid appreciation for reading. After all, I was the kid that many of my classmates remembered as reading an entire set of World Book Encyclopedias through at least 3 times when I was in 5th and 6th grades. I was also the kid who, as early as 10 years old, was reading some hefty material - my mother had books on the Jonestown tragedy that happened around that time, as well as a book about the fact that Hitler was a mentally-ill psychopath (Robert G.L. Waite's book Adolf Hitler - The Psychopathic God, which was published in 1977), and a large cookbook entitled Cooking for Everyday Life that I inherited from my late step-grandmother when she passed on to her eternal reward in 1979. I also got ideas to build forts from reading my grandfather's hunting books on duck blinds and such, and I would actually read my elementary school history textbooks for fun. Add to that a ton of old magazines we managed to obtain from people who just gave them away, and I was able to enrich myself intellectually quite well at a young age. Of course, in the small town of Kirby, WV, where I spent the latter half of my childhood as well as my early adolescence, there was not a lot to do, and compounded with the fact that we were poor (my mom raised me by herself, and we subsisted on about a hundred dollars monthly from my dad for child support as well as food stamps and the local Community Action taking care of our housing and utilities, so there was not much left to do anything leisurely), I had to find creative ways to occupy my time. This reading, accentuated by tramping around in the woods near our house looking for all sorts of wild foraged things such as tiny small wild strawberries, huckleberries, wild garlic, and other such stuff, as well as my Sunday night radio listening when I started to develop my affinity for vintage big band recordings, rounded out my life in those simple times. We didn't even have a television then, and this was a few years before even VCR technology caught on, so you made do with what you had. And, that leads to a few further reflections.
When you reflect back on your past, there are two feelings that emerge simultaneously (at least they do for me). One is this feeling of "how could I live like that??" which is a cross between revulsion and despair, and the other feeling is a fond recollection of certain things that are more specific. The coming together of those two divergent states of mind can create a sort of mental (and even emotional) tornado that can at times be overwhelming. It is dealing with that sort of thing that has led to my own interest in expressing myself in the written word, which I seem to do better than speaking aloud sometimes (although many of these meditations are often inspired by a session of self-directed speech - that is talking to yourself, for those not familiar - and over the years I admittedly have spent a lot of time doing that!). As I write this now, one of those memories comes to light now that I probably have talked about before, but it is time to put it into a narrative perspective maybe for those who haven't heard me talk about it.
The year was 1981, and it is summer in the little town of Kirby, WV. It is also around 10 PM on a Sunday night, and I am sitting at our kitchen table in our mobile home. Our little mobile home faced our landlord's corn patch to the north, and our kitchen window was on the north end of the little blue-and-white mobile home we lived in for about 6 years. Summers were rather nice in that area, and on that particular Sunday night I have both kitchen windows (one faced north and the other east) opened, and a light breeze is blowing through that is both comforting and invigorating. At our kitchen table, I am sitting there with a book listening to Henry Boggan start his Sunday night radio show on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC, and the only light in the kitchen is the light over our gas range. Mom has long gone to bed, having been sedated from the six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon she consumed some hours earlier, and I am at the table nibbling on a bag of Utz Sour Cream and Onion Chips while sipping on a warm cup of sugar-laden instant coffee lightened with Carnation creamer. Coffee is something I have actually been drinking since I was about five years old, and at almost 50 I still enjoy a good cup to this day, although now it is flavored with one of those specialty non-dairy creamers you can get readily at the supermarket (I am partial to blueberry flavored or Italian sweet cream, although the cup I had earlier this morning had Reese's Peanut Butter Cup flavored creamer, which is actually quite good despite the imagery). At one point when I was in 4th grade, I even got in trouble at lunchtime for carrying coffee in my thermos. At some point in Henry's program, he plays a song I like - it was either Stan Kenton's 1946 recording of Artistry Jumps, or Sinatra's stellar rendition of "I've Got You Under My Skin," with Count Basie's orchestra swinging nicely in that classic 1967 concert Sinatra and Basie made at the Sands in Las Vegas, or maybe it was that landmark Benny Goodman recording of Moonlight on the Ganges (the late 1940's Eddie Sauter arrangement) that turned me onto this music in the first place. As I sit here thinking about that now, the lyrics of another Sinatra classic sum up that night well for me, the song being The Summer Wind:
The summer wind, comes blowing in, from across the sea;
It lingered there, to touch your hair, and walk with me;
All summer long we sang a song and then we strolled that golden sand;
Two sweethearts and the summer wind.
That same feeling would come again in the summer of 1989, when I graduated high school and was spending that summer at my dad's in Brunswick, GA. The reason it inspired me then was that I often got to spend evenings fishing on the pier at St. Simon's Island and those were fun times as well. The haunting chords of that organ in the original Sinatra recording along with the smooth Nelson Riddle orchestra in the background creates a mood - it literally speaks summer. And, for some reason, when I think summer, I think about that old trailer kitchen in Kirby, WV, sitting at our table illumined by the diminutive light of that stove lamp, listening to classic big band recordings interspersed with Henry Boggan's voice while sipping overly-sugared instant coffee and munching on Utz potato chips. It was a time when we were poor, but life was simpler and good to a degree. It is these type of things that are brought to mind while I write this now, and that leads me down yet another rabbit trail.
In my adult years, life has gotten overly complicated - I have to deal with work, earning a doctoral degree, and also making sure I interact with my wife to whom I have been married now almost 27 years. The reflection time I once had no longer exists, but there are days I long for it. It would be nice to listen to either Henry Boggan or to Chuck Cecil and his Swingin' Years program, while just sitting there at a cozy kitchen table sipping coffee and either reading or doing something creative. A part of me misses that luxury honestly. When I started to amass a huge record collection in my early teens (thanks to 25-cent old LP's I could pick up at the Rio Mall in the nearby town of Rio then - the place is still open today incidentally, and still has quarter records!) I would often take other nights of the week to listen to whole albums while in my room, and that could be an all-night adventure if I got a new one of those Reader's Digest boxed sets in the mail! I still have a lot of those old LP's today, and my extensive CD collection has most of their content on a more upgraded technology now. I really do miss those days, and they are not something I can even share with Barbara because honestly (and God love her) she doesn't have the attention span or perspective to appreciate it. On occasion when I try to introduce her to that world, she is fussing, talking off-topic, and other stuff, and it proves to be distracting as well as killing the mood. Some things are better enjoyed by oneself, in other words, and even our beloved spouses cannot fully grasp their significance to our own lives, as it is generally a part of our lives that precedes them so they cannot relate well with it. Luckily, I can still have those moments on occasion, and they are deeply savored.
I hope to share more stuff like this in the coming months, as it is time I do so. Thanks to Susannah Lewis and her top-notch writing, it has challenged me to explore that myself. And, it is time I start trying to creatively articulate these old memories and thoughts in such a way as they can be endearing to others (or aggravating, depending upon who reads this stuff!). I hope to do more of these forays down memory lane in the near future and hope you will indulge me to read these ramblings as I share them. Thanks again, and hope to see you again soon.
Monday, April 22, 2019
Reflections on Kate Smith and Patriotism
Kate Smith (1907-1986)
I have been, since at least when I was 12 years old, a collector of vintage recordings. Back when I began to collect this great music (primarily vintage big band and early jazz), I listened to a radio show that was broadcast on WBT-AM out of Charlotte, NC, on Sunday nights, which actually inspired me to begin the massive music collection I have today. During seasons such as the Fourth of July or Memorial Day, Henry Boggan (who was the DJ of the show then) would often play two very iconic patriotic recordings together - one of them was Battle Hymn of the Republic, which was recorded in 1949 by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians, and the other was God Bless America by Kate Smith. To this day, despite how disgusted I am with our society as a whole as radical left-leaning activists attempt to flush our history down the toilet because it "hurts their feelings," (I actually think it is more than that - these people were too stupid to pay attention in school, probably failing history to begin with, and in order to compensate for their own stupidity they have taken on social activism to revise it to suit their whims), both of these vintage patriotic recordings stir in me the reason why I am blessed to have been born and raised in a nation where I can be the person I am supposed to be without being suppressed, persecuted, and otherwise silenced for my convictions. Many so-called "progressives" today see this freedom as a threat - they want to manipulate, control, and run into the ground our culture, and they will try to find ways to eliminate the freedom of conviction that people with differing views have. I went on that rant, as recently Kate Smith herself is now under siege by these same morons, and being she has passed on over 33 years ago now, it is utterly ridiculous how these self-appointed "social justice warriors" want to silence anything that they feel disputes their own narrative. And, that is why I am writing today.
Although I love Kate Smith's recording of God Bless America, what really made me a great admirer of her talent was a live radio broadcast she did in the early 1940s in which she sang a beautiful rendition of When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain. To this day, that song still stirs a great emotion in me, as it hearkens back to a time when talent and artistry meant something in popular music - much of what passes for "music" today is in reality garbage, especially ironically if the "woke" leftist crowd seems to like it; that alone is reason to stay away from it. Pop music today has not only gotten more tasteless, but it is either so canned and artificial or so lewd and nasty, that to be honest, it astounds me that people still listen to the crap. The same can be said of art, architecture, movies, etc. Kate Smith's talent, however, hearkens to an era when quality in entertainment assured its immortality, at least until recently. Today, someone like Kate Smith would not win an American Idol or Voice audition (which is actually a blessing rather than a curse!), nor would she win a Grammy for a record (much of Kate Smith's recorded library was created before the Grammys even came into existence anyway), but for pure talent, she would outshine Katy Perry or Miley Cyrus any day. Back in that day, you didn't have tone-deaf idiots such as Simon Cowell making or breaking the artistic aspirations of performers - if you wanted to make your mark on the stage or on radio, the way to do it was simple; if you were a singer, you were often "grandfathered in" by a big band of some sort, as Frank Sinatra was by both Harry James and Tommy Dorsey and the actress Betty Hutton was by pianist/bandleader Vincent Lopez. Even the great Bing Crosby started out as a boy vocalist with Paul Whiteman's orchestra in the late 1920s. On occasion, however, there were those rare talents who were able to transcend that entry point and they achieved almost immediate stardom, and Kate Smith was in that rare club. Now this did not mean that Kate Smith didn't record with big bands, as I have several very fine recordings she sang on with Guy Lombardo and others, but her career didn't start as a girl singer in a band - she was, rather, discovered by then Columbia A&R man Ted Collins, who put her on record for the first time in 1930 and then worked with her for many decades thereafter. Along with Nat "King" Cole, Al Jolson, and Bessie Smith, Kate Smith was a legend who stood out on her own from the beginning. That alone tells you the type of person Kate Smith was as a talent.
Kate Smith was not much to look at either then - she was a hefty gal whose body was as big as her voice, but by all indications, her heart was also big as well. In later life, she became a convert to the Catholic faith and was devout the rest of her life, even serving as what we would call a cantor in the Church today. She also was a strong advocate for morality in entertainment, and like many great artists of her generation, she was distressed with what much pop culture had started to deteriorate into later in her life. I still recall when she died in 1986 - that same year we lost a lot of great legends, as within months of each other Kate, Rudy Vallee, and Benny Goodman had all passed on. When I heard the news, it was that summer when I was sitting up at my grandmother's house in Rowlesburg, WV, and a report came on TV about Kate Smith's passing. It was a rough time for me then anyway, and hearing about the loss of some major icons of early American entertainment was depressing. However, I was solaced by the fact that many fine recordings of her work still were around, and I had some of them in my own record collection. So, after almost 33 years after her passing, why is she being so attacked now by a bunch of leftist pansies?
The controversy started over one of her recordings that some dumb young Millennial found on YouTube or something had a song of Kate Smith's that mentioned the word "Darkie" or something, and of course these ding-dongs, who otherwise didn't even know who Kate Smith was as many of them were born after she passed away, went on this crusade against her supposed "racist legacy." We have seen this nonsense before - the same crowd who wanted to remove statues, who wanted to take the Christmas classic Baby It's Cold Outside off the air because it supposedly promoted date rape, and also the same morons who want to ban people from enjoying steaks for dinner were also behind this as well. As mentioned, the loudest squawks are coming from people who are in their 20s and 30s and as mentioned, would probably have never heard of Kate Smith before this, and their squawks are accentuated by enabling old "Boomers" who called music like Kate Smith "square" back in the days when many of them were getting stoned out of their minds with LSD. Their rebellion against Kate Smith then was due to the fact it was music their parents and grandparents liked, but now they have found new reasons to attack it, and they have an army of young mindless Millennial minions to enforce it. What is ironic about this is that Katy Perry can be a complete slut on stage, not to mention the recent antics of Miley Cyrus and Lady GaGa, yet that is "socially acceptable." It also makes me wonder who they will be going after next - perhaps it will be Al Jolson because he performed in "Blackface." There are days I am embarrassed for our culture, and this is one of them - ironically though, it is the perennial Kate Smith recording of God Bless America that reminds me that it is not America that is the problem, but rather the SJWs who are trying to eradicate America's (and indeed Western Civilization's) legacy. So, what is the call to action we can have against this insanity? Let me propose an idea.
Liberals these days - especially the young Millennial "woke" bunch of lunatics - are all about "safe spaces" and suppressing anything that shakes their comfort zones up. Maybe it is time we utilize that, as there are a lot more of us normal folks than there are of them - I think, for instance, there are some places where garbage such as Katy Perry should be disposed of in the sewer where it belongs, and instead efforts need to be enacted to preserve good music like Kate Smith instead. My house already is a Katy Perry-free zone, and it is about to become more so, and I intend to expand that zone too. Katy Perry is a no-talent slut who got where she is because she is talented at one thing - performing oral sex on record producers to advance her career, which she openly brags about. In contrast, Kate Smith had a career of over 50 years that showcased her God-given talent, and she is what America is about. It is time to call radio stations and TV cable channels to get the smut (and sluts like Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry) out of our hearing and viewing range and to shut them down. While we're at it, let's ship Justin Bieber's worthless arse back to Canada where it belongs, and ban his records too. Then, we can go after rap, the "drug/thug" culture it promotes, as well as all this LGBT crap that has been shoved down our throats - we don't want it, and we shouldn't have to be subjected to that. In a culture where "getting offended" seems to be a civil right, it is time for the rest of us to exercise that right and say "NO!" to the Hollywood hacks who are producing that garbage. If they continue to go after Kate Smith's legacy or anyone else, they can count on a fight from me against the crap they are trying to replace her with. In short, it is time to let the hacks know enough is enough!
I have ranted enough for one day, but suffice to say, there is little doubt that Western Civilization is under attack from godless, morally bankrupt forces who want to take over our society and turn it into a vision of hell. As long as good people live on this earth though, we don't need to allow them to do that, and boundaries need to be drawn. And, it starts first with the Philadelphia Flyers today, who perpetrated this insult to Kate Smith's memory. Thank you for allowing me to rant, and will see you next time.
Tuesday, April 16, 2019
Reflections From the Hospital Waiting Room
As I write this today, I am sitting in the waiting room of the hospital in Waynesboro, PA. Barbara is having a procedure done on her eye to remove a bothersome cataract - she has a second one scheduled for next month, so we'll be doing this again - and I am functioning on a bad night's sleep in the hotel we stayed in due to some ding-a-ling in the neighboring room blasting a radio, as well as just not being able to rest comfortably. That is the thing about being away from your own bed on any given night; regardless of how uncomfortable your bed at home is, and how nice the accommodations are in the lodgings we have chosen (and it was nice!) you still don't feel quite as rested as you would in your Chinese waterboard-like mattress at home. But, such is life. So, as I sit here waiting for Barbara's surgery to commence, I am a bit whisker-whipped and am drinking this triple-shot of espresso out of the complimentary machine here in the waiting room. To add to the excitement, today was payday, and as is usually the custom, bills get paid. However, that didn't quite go as planned, because I inadvertently "paid" more than what I intended, and it created some complications. So, after an hour of chewing out our internet provider (whose customer service already leaves a lot to be desired!) and finagling with the bank to make sure I didn't have a potential overdraft of almost two hundred bucks, I finally was able to get some resolution on that. NOT a good way to start the day, and thanks be to God for free coffee here in the waiting room - a triple-shot espresso did the trick for now.
After sitting for a while with Barb in pre-op, I am back in the waiting room as the doctor is getting her ready for the procedure. Right now, her right eyeball is dilated to the size of an Oreo cookie, but she is getting along fine. Cataract surgery is a fairly routine procedure, and it can be done in good time and with very minimal risk. Also, her doctor is a highly capable physician as well, so she is in good hands.
Yesterday, I got an interesting little book in the mail. For a couple of years now, I have been following on social media an author by the name of Susannah Lewis, and she has made some very amusing videos of the events she encounters in life. Also, recently, she recently has given birth to her third child, an adorable baby girl, and if she reads this she has my heartfelt congratulations. If you have a chance to do an internet search, you will find a ton of her videos on various things on YouTube, as well as her Facebook page, and this girl will literally have you in stitches. Possessing a quick wit as well as an endearing Tennessee drawl, Susannah's videos have gained some popularity in recent years - my personal favorites are the one where her dog has an unexpected "accident" in a romantic interlude with some sort of stuffed animal, and for his injury, she is instructed to "pour sugar water on it." Another one that I really enjoyed was a video where she sits in her car - she tapes herself in her car a lot picking up her kids or lamenting the craziness of the local "Wal-Marts" as she calls it - going off on a humorous rant about girls taking "selfies" in her local TJ Maxx. If you haven't had the chance to see those yet, you can access them at her website, www.whoasusannah.com, or as mentioned through a casual YouTube search which will pull up a treasure-trove of her Southern-accented wisdom. The book I mentioned, titled You Can't Make This Stuff Up, is her first venture into non-fiction, and in the couple of chapters I have read of it so far, it is excellent - I will post a lengthier review of it later when I have a chance to give it a more thorough read. One thing she asked on a live book signing last week was that we post pictures of the book for her to see, and this is the one I took in the hotel room and posted last night:
Again, the book is available on Amazon (I think, although someone said it sold out!) and is definitely worth the investment by what I have seen so far.
Back to the waiting room, there are a lot more people in here than there were earlier, so I am at a table over here near the entrance. This television above my head is blasting daily soaps for the old ladies sitting in here (Young and the Restless or something - I don't pay enough attention to those things to care honestly) and it is a bit distracting but we manage - this isn't the first time I have had to transcend noise and distractions to work on stuff, and probably will not be the last. Barbara's surgery should be done within a short time, and when she is in Post-Op I will probably going back with her, plus having to call the cab to take us back up to the hotel a few blocks away. So, I will be brief. Luckily they have a monitor in here that documents the progress, so I need to keep an eye on that as well. She will be really hungry I bet when she gets out, as she had to fast several hours before the procedure, so upon her doctor's recommendation we'll be trying out Frank's Pizza for dinner - a good local pizza chain we see all over the area. It is too bad they don't have Fox's Pizza Den, as I could go for a Fox pizza, but we'll make do.
Well, on that note, I will wrap up for now but will hopefully be back with some other "pearls of wisdom" to illuminate the day of some poor schlub who actually takes my ramblings seriously. So long until next visit.
After sitting for a while with Barb in pre-op, I am back in the waiting room as the doctor is getting her ready for the procedure. Right now, her right eyeball is dilated to the size of an Oreo cookie, but she is getting along fine. Cataract surgery is a fairly routine procedure, and it can be done in good time and with very minimal risk. Also, her doctor is a highly capable physician as well, so she is in good hands.
Yesterday, I got an interesting little book in the mail. For a couple of years now, I have been following on social media an author by the name of Susannah Lewis, and she has made some very amusing videos of the events she encounters in life. Also, recently, she recently has given birth to her third child, an adorable baby girl, and if she reads this she has my heartfelt congratulations. If you have a chance to do an internet search, you will find a ton of her videos on various things on YouTube, as well as her Facebook page, and this girl will literally have you in stitches. Possessing a quick wit as well as an endearing Tennessee drawl, Susannah's videos have gained some popularity in recent years - my personal favorites are the one where her dog has an unexpected "accident" in a romantic interlude with some sort of stuffed animal, and for his injury, she is instructed to "pour sugar water on it." Another one that I really enjoyed was a video where she sits in her car - she tapes herself in her car a lot picking up her kids or lamenting the craziness of the local "Wal-Marts" as she calls it - going off on a humorous rant about girls taking "selfies" in her local TJ Maxx. If you haven't had the chance to see those yet, you can access them at her website, www.whoasusannah.com, or as mentioned through a casual YouTube search which will pull up a treasure-trove of her Southern-accented wisdom. The book I mentioned, titled You Can't Make This Stuff Up, is her first venture into non-fiction, and in the couple of chapters I have read of it so far, it is excellent - I will post a lengthier review of it later when I have a chance to give it a more thorough read. One thing she asked on a live book signing last week was that we post pictures of the book for her to see, and this is the one I took in the hotel room and posted last night:
Again, the book is available on Amazon (I think, although someone said it sold out!) and is definitely worth the investment by what I have seen so far.
Back to the waiting room, there are a lot more people in here than there were earlier, so I am at a table over here near the entrance. This television above my head is blasting daily soaps for the old ladies sitting in here (Young and the Restless or something - I don't pay enough attention to those things to care honestly) and it is a bit distracting but we manage - this isn't the first time I have had to transcend noise and distractions to work on stuff, and probably will not be the last. Barbara's surgery should be done within a short time, and when she is in Post-Op I will probably going back with her, plus having to call the cab to take us back up to the hotel a few blocks away. So, I will be brief. Luckily they have a monitor in here that documents the progress, so I need to keep an eye on that as well. She will be really hungry I bet when she gets out, as she had to fast several hours before the procedure, so upon her doctor's recommendation we'll be trying out Frank's Pizza for dinner - a good local pizza chain we see all over the area. It is too bad they don't have Fox's Pizza Den, as I could go for a Fox pizza, but we'll make do.
Well, on that note, I will wrap up for now but will hopefully be back with some other "pearls of wisdom" to illuminate the day of some poor schlub who actually takes my ramblings seriously. So long until next visit.
Tuesday, April 2, 2019
What is Cultural Appropriation? Some Thoughts
In the politically-charged atmosphere that we call 21st-century America, a new fracas has been raised recently over defining what "cultural appropriation" is. I use the term fracas because honestly the whole thing is too stupid to be called a debate, and the ones raising the issue (the political Left naturally) are the stupid morons who seem to be raising it. In all truth, it is important to discern if "cultural appropriation" is even a real issue, to begin with, and if so, how and why? I don't plan into getting into all the semantics of this crap (it will give you a headache honestly) but I want to give my perspective on the whole thing.
In recent months, a number of things have been protested as "cultural appropriation," such as culinary choices, Halloween costumes, and other rather mundane things. Even celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has come under fire from the lunatics making an issue of this because he promotes something called "fusion cuisine," and because he was planning on incorporating Chinese dishes into his new restaurant menu in one particular city, he was slammed for being guilty of this alleged "cultural appropriation" to even being called an outright racist. I have actually been a fan of Gordon Ramsay for many years, as I have never missed a season of either Hell's Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, and in my personal opinion, the guy is brilliant. He incorporates certain things from divergent cuisines into his own repertoire, and it works - it is not "cultural appropriation," in other words, but is actually the sign of a refined palate. I respect the guy for his innovation, and if two things from different corners of the world taste good together, go for it! As cooking is something I have as a hobby as well, I do that all the time. Rather than being accused of being "racist," perhaps one should look at it this way - it is actually respect for various cultures to value ingredients in their cuisine, but it also is creativity when you can use those things together with something else to create something unique. This is equally true for art, music, architecture, and culinary arts. And, it is also a picture of America and the human race in general - Ramsay, a Scottish chef, is doing something uniquely American when he makes the "melting-pot" a culinary reality. That truly embodies what it means to be an American - if "cultural appropriation" truly exists, then America has been successful at it in a good way, as many different ethnic contributions have made America the nation she became. If any lunatic Leftist has an issue with that, they should probably ask their therapist to up their meds more as they lay comatose in their "safe spaces." Let me now take this further.
Many people like Italian food I am assuming, and Italian cuisine is true fusion cuisine, and here is why. First, let's take pasta - the concept of pasta is Chinese. The sauce on the pasta comes from two American vegetables that are its prime ingredients - tomatoes and peppers. Then there is pizza - pizza as we know it came into being in the US, so it is a uniquely American dish with Italian heritage. But, what are the ingredients on a typical pizza? First, the concept itself - pizza evolved essentially from an Italian flatbread called focaccia, which in turn was a regional adaptation of a street food item that Armenians and Lebanese-Aramaeans enjoyed called by two names, depending upon the ingredients - if it has tomatoes and meat, it is called lahmajun, but if it is topped with an oregano herb mixture, it is called za'atar. Take it back even further, as one source I read said that pizza resulted from the "cultural appropriation" of Jewish matzo which hungry Roman soldiers topped with olive oil, herbs, and cheese for a quick lunch. In other words, the history of the pizza is quite elaborate, but as you can see what we have is this - a Middle Eastern street food that was eventually topped by a sauce made from a fruit the Spanish brought back from the Americas, and then perfected centuries later in New York City by Italian-American immigrants. So, there you go! The politically-correct "thought police" would have a field day with that one if they truly knew, and Domino's and Pizza Hut would be boycotted possibly by these lunatics. Then there is fried chicken, the staple of Southern "soul food" that some idiots are now saying is "racist" to eat. However, where did fried chicken originate? According to my research, it was the Scots that invented it and brought it with them, and then Black descendants of slaves I guess "culturally appropriated" that - hmmm!! I guess that means KFC, Bojangles, and Popeye's all must be added to the boycott list (and of course Chick-fil-A - it's run by conservative Christians so it is the worst - NOT!)! On and on it goes. It is gotten so ridiculous that now if you decide you want a chalupa from Taco Bell or a plate of Mongolian BBQ from the local Chinese buffet, you are "culturally appropriating" and thus a "racist." News flash for the idiots who say this - may be the person just likes tacos?? That is a radical thought, isn't it?
I spent a lot of time talking about food here because it is the most contested area in this "cultural appropriation" battle, and perhaps this would have been good to write about on my culinary blog. However, it is a serious political issue too though, not that it needs to be though. Food, as well as clothing, art, music, etc., gets its aesthetic appeal from inspiration and creativity, and often those who are the creators get inspiration from other cultures. The creative impulse is one that we all have to a certain degree, but for me personally, this is how it works. Let's say I am watching something on TV, such as a cooking show, and the chef does Malay rendang. I am watching it, and something happens - I like the idea of the recipe, but maybe an ingredient in it doesn't appeal to me so I start thinking about what I could change. At some point I experiment then - for instance, maybe adding some Persian sumac or Ethiopian berbere to the recipe - and after tasting the result I like it. And, for those worried about "cultural appropriation," I can assure you that no Malays, Persians, or Ethiopians were harmed in the cooking of that dish. It's just called creativity. In music, something similar happens. I collect, as you well know by now, vintage big band recordings. Big bands, of course, evolved out of jazz, which the "establishment" says is the creation of Blacks in the South - was it though?? If one looks into the earliest history of jazz, you see a lot of things being thrown into that "melting pot" - in New Orleans, for instance, there were large communities of Italians that added their contribution, and in the Northeast, there were Jewish musicians playing a style of music known as klezmer that kicked in some stuff. Out in Texas, two things happened - polka bands and local cowboys. This later brought in Bob Wills and the whole "Western Swing" phenomena. Then, jazz goes overseas and meets up with another ethnic community, the Gypsies, and thus we get Django Reinhardt as well as the whole "Gypsy Jazz" phenomenon. Jazz is not"Black music," in other words - when music historian/bandleader Richard Sudhalter wrote his groundbreaking book Lost Chords a couple of decades back, he made that very point and was severely attacked by the minions of "political correctness," but he was right. Jazz is, first and foremost, an American art form, and many different ethnicities contributed to its development. To say it is just "Black music" is in itself a racist statement. Blacks, of course, did contribute to it, and many talented Black musicians became great legends in the jazz world - Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and so many others. However, Blacks don't have a monopoly on the jazz art form; it belongs to Americans as a whole, as it is part of our national heritage. It is also true to say pizza is not uniquely Italian either, as many of the best pizzerias I have eaten at were actually owned and operated by Greeks, Armenians, Lebanese, and one even by Turks, and they were phenomenal pies to try out. Pizza, like jazz, is American, as it was on these shores that the pizza as we know it came to be. Other culinary items - chop suey, the pepperoni roll, and chicken ala king - are all American creations adapted by ethnic immigrants to in time become culinary staples. And, it's OK - the music (jazz) sounds good, and the food is delicious for the most part. Therefore, one doesn't have to feel guilty of "cultural appropriation" if they want to enjoy a slice at the local pizzeria while listening to Count Basie or Dizzy Gillespie on the jukebox (do they even have jukeboxes anymore? If not, then on the MP3 player then, OK?). As a matter of fact, enjoy it washed down with some delicious white birch beer and enjoy a piece of Dutch apple pie for dessert. That is called, for the self-appointed "social justice warriors," living life.
I have deliberated enough on this today, as much more could be said. But, you get the point - if you enjoy something, you should be able to without some self-righteous SJW accusing you of "racist cultural appropriation" because you got that three-piece box at the KFC or went back for that second plate of Mongolian BBQ at the local Chinese buffet while listening to Xavier Cugat playing a rhumba - just enjoy life and tell the snowflakes to bug off. Have a good day everyone.
In recent months, a number of things have been protested as "cultural appropriation," such as culinary choices, Halloween costumes, and other rather mundane things. Even celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay has come under fire from the lunatics making an issue of this because he promotes something called "fusion cuisine," and because he was planning on incorporating Chinese dishes into his new restaurant menu in one particular city, he was slammed for being guilty of this alleged "cultural appropriation" to even being called an outright racist. I have actually been a fan of Gordon Ramsay for many years, as I have never missed a season of either Hell's Kitchen or Kitchen Nightmares, and in my personal opinion, the guy is brilliant. He incorporates certain things from divergent cuisines into his own repertoire, and it works - it is not "cultural appropriation," in other words, but is actually the sign of a refined palate. I respect the guy for his innovation, and if two things from different corners of the world taste good together, go for it! As cooking is something I have as a hobby as well, I do that all the time. Rather than being accused of being "racist," perhaps one should look at it this way - it is actually respect for various cultures to value ingredients in their cuisine, but it also is creativity when you can use those things together with something else to create something unique. This is equally true for art, music, architecture, and culinary arts. And, it is also a picture of America and the human race in general - Ramsay, a Scottish chef, is doing something uniquely American when he makes the "melting-pot" a culinary reality. That truly embodies what it means to be an American - if "cultural appropriation" truly exists, then America has been successful at it in a good way, as many different ethnic contributions have made America the nation she became. If any lunatic Leftist has an issue with that, they should probably ask their therapist to up their meds more as they lay comatose in their "safe spaces." Let me now take this further.
Many people like Italian food I am assuming, and Italian cuisine is true fusion cuisine, and here is why. First, let's take pasta - the concept of pasta is Chinese. The sauce on the pasta comes from two American vegetables that are its prime ingredients - tomatoes and peppers. Then there is pizza - pizza as we know it came into being in the US, so it is a uniquely American dish with Italian heritage. But, what are the ingredients on a typical pizza? First, the concept itself - pizza evolved essentially from an Italian flatbread called focaccia, which in turn was a regional adaptation of a street food item that Armenians and Lebanese-Aramaeans enjoyed called by two names, depending upon the ingredients - if it has tomatoes and meat, it is called lahmajun, but if it is topped with an oregano herb mixture, it is called za'atar. Take it back even further, as one source I read said that pizza resulted from the "cultural appropriation" of Jewish matzo which hungry Roman soldiers topped with olive oil, herbs, and cheese for a quick lunch. In other words, the history of the pizza is quite elaborate, but as you can see what we have is this - a Middle Eastern street food that was eventually topped by a sauce made from a fruit the Spanish brought back from the Americas, and then perfected centuries later in New York City by Italian-American immigrants. So, there you go! The politically-correct "thought police" would have a field day with that one if they truly knew, and Domino's and Pizza Hut would be boycotted possibly by these lunatics. Then there is fried chicken, the staple of Southern "soul food" that some idiots are now saying is "racist" to eat. However, where did fried chicken originate? According to my research, it was the Scots that invented it and brought it with them, and then Black descendants of slaves I guess "culturally appropriated" that - hmmm!! I guess that means KFC, Bojangles, and Popeye's all must be added to the boycott list (and of course Chick-fil-A - it's run by conservative Christians so it is the worst - NOT!)! On and on it goes. It is gotten so ridiculous that now if you decide you want a chalupa from Taco Bell or a plate of Mongolian BBQ from the local Chinese buffet, you are "culturally appropriating" and thus a "racist." News flash for the idiots who say this - may be the person just likes tacos?? That is a radical thought, isn't it?
I spent a lot of time talking about food here because it is the most contested area in this "cultural appropriation" battle, and perhaps this would have been good to write about on my culinary blog. However, it is a serious political issue too though, not that it needs to be though. Food, as well as clothing, art, music, etc., gets its aesthetic appeal from inspiration and creativity, and often those who are the creators get inspiration from other cultures. The creative impulse is one that we all have to a certain degree, but for me personally, this is how it works. Let's say I am watching something on TV, such as a cooking show, and the chef does Malay rendang. I am watching it, and something happens - I like the idea of the recipe, but maybe an ingredient in it doesn't appeal to me so I start thinking about what I could change. At some point I experiment then - for instance, maybe adding some Persian sumac or Ethiopian berbere to the recipe - and after tasting the result I like it. And, for those worried about "cultural appropriation," I can assure you that no Malays, Persians, or Ethiopians were harmed in the cooking of that dish. It's just called creativity. In music, something similar happens. I collect, as you well know by now, vintage big band recordings. Big bands, of course, evolved out of jazz, which the "establishment" says is the creation of Blacks in the South - was it though?? If one looks into the earliest history of jazz, you see a lot of things being thrown into that "melting pot" - in New Orleans, for instance, there were large communities of Italians that added their contribution, and in the Northeast, there were Jewish musicians playing a style of music known as klezmer that kicked in some stuff. Out in Texas, two things happened - polka bands and local cowboys. This later brought in Bob Wills and the whole "Western Swing" phenomena. Then, jazz goes overseas and meets up with another ethnic community, the Gypsies, and thus we get Django Reinhardt as well as the whole "Gypsy Jazz" phenomenon. Jazz is not"Black music," in other words - when music historian/bandleader Richard Sudhalter wrote his groundbreaking book Lost Chords a couple of decades back, he made that very point and was severely attacked by the minions of "political correctness," but he was right. Jazz is, first and foremost, an American art form, and many different ethnicities contributed to its development. To say it is just "Black music" is in itself a racist statement. Blacks, of course, did contribute to it, and many talented Black musicians became great legends in the jazz world - Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and so many others. However, Blacks don't have a monopoly on the jazz art form; it belongs to Americans as a whole, as it is part of our national heritage. It is also true to say pizza is not uniquely Italian either, as many of the best pizzerias I have eaten at were actually owned and operated by Greeks, Armenians, Lebanese, and one even by Turks, and they were phenomenal pies to try out. Pizza, like jazz, is American, as it was on these shores that the pizza as we know it came to be. Other culinary items - chop suey, the pepperoni roll, and chicken ala king - are all American creations adapted by ethnic immigrants to in time become culinary staples. And, it's OK - the music (jazz) sounds good, and the food is delicious for the most part. Therefore, one doesn't have to feel guilty of "cultural appropriation" if they want to enjoy a slice at the local pizzeria while listening to Count Basie or Dizzy Gillespie on the jukebox (do they even have jukeboxes anymore? If not, then on the MP3 player then, OK?). As a matter of fact, enjoy it washed down with some delicious white birch beer and enjoy a piece of Dutch apple pie for dessert. That is called, for the self-appointed "social justice warriors," living life.
I have deliberated enough on this today, as much more could be said. But, you get the point - if you enjoy something, you should be able to without some self-righteous SJW accusing you of "racist cultural appropriation" because you got that three-piece box at the KFC or went back for that second plate of Mongolian BBQ at the local Chinese buffet while listening to Xavier Cugat playing a rhumba - just enjoy life and tell the snowflakes to bug off. Have a good day everyone.
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