Life with a "Foodie"

Being married to a self-proclaimed "foodie" is a beautiful thing.  I hardly know where to begin.

Eating Out
It's a given that we overfeed ourselves in America.  If I were up to full blogging speed, I'd attach one or two links to that statement as proof.  But I flash-blog these days, so you're on your own.  You know it's true though.  As did the authors of The 9-Inch Diet, (which I pretty much read cover-to-cover standing in Barnes & Noble one evening).

Anyway, the beauty of life married to a carnivorous foodie, is that we can split almost anything when we're eating out.  I can't think of anything that one of us loves that the other doesn't as well--with the possible exception of blue cheese, for which I've yet to develop any sort of real enthusiasm.  So, knowing that most restaurants tend to overdo portions, we split a lot of main courses.  Result: we enjoy more food in the long run.  We start with two appetizers instead of one, and almost always have room for dessert.

But eating out isn't what inspired tonight's post.

Eating In
We both love to cook.  And on occasion, we even collaborate.  Take tonight for instance.  Take the turnips.  Yes, turnips.  At least two months ago, my better half introduced me to a vegetable that I'd never actually seen on the table.  Sure, I used to pluck one fresh from the field now and then, out quail hunting with Dad and my Uncle Floyd or Cousin Roy, and bite into it raw like an apple, but I don't recall turnips ever making an appearance on the dining room table when I was growing up--growing up smack dab in the middle of fields of turnips, I might add.

I would reach the half-century mark before first seeing them at the dinner table.  Oddly enough, the turnips in question would come from my father's garden.

Whole Foods
I should take a moment here to note how lucky we are to live close enough to my Mom and Dad to see them once a month or so, and to carry back to Richmond, on a regular basis, the fruits of their labor.  In the summer it was tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, potatoes, and some of the sweetest watermelon I've ever eaten.  With the advent of fall, it became pecans and turnips.  Back in late December or early January, I brought home a larger bag of turnips than I thought we could possibly eat, in part because not having grown up eating them, I couldn't imagine exactly how we would eat them.  But Laura does a better job of using everything in the pantry or fridge than anyone I've ever known, myself included--and that's saying something.

She had no more idea what to do with turnips than I, but that didn't stop her from preparing an absolutely delicious dish of them the first week we had them.  I think she baked them.  I say, I think, because by the time tonight rolled around, she could no longer remember.  We just both remembered that we really liked them.

So tonight, two months later, after a really great day of getting things done around the house and in the study--a day that began with an almost three-mile walk with Sydni and finished with a hour at the park with the kids--we tackled dinner.  I say we, but really, I was just the sous-chef.  She'd been thawing chicken most of the day and was busy prepping it for the oven when, digging through the vegetable drawer for a lime I needed for the margaritas I was about to concoct, I came upon the second half of that bag of turnips.  Sure they were two months old, but turnips are one of those foods you can store in the ground itself through the winter months if need be.  These had been in our fridge since their arrival from Mom and Dad's garden, and the elapsed time from ground to veggie drawer, as if it mattered, was probably less than six hours.

From Red Clay to Tawny Port and Cream
"Shall I slice up the turnips for dinner?" I asked.  "Sure."  So I sliced while she tried to remember how she'd made that dish we loved so much, now more than two months into the past.  Drawing a blank, she'd settled on sauteing them.  One Google search later, I confirmed that she was on the right track, and so she started them with a little butter, a little olive oil, some salt and a lid, and set them to simmer.

Now I'm more than a little bit sensitive about anything I'm cooking, and figuring that she is too, I didn't want to mess with what she had going, but as everything neared readiness (there was a pan of green beans simmering in just a little water and a lot of vinegar to round out the colors of the meal) I couldn't resist a little experimentation with a small portion of the turnips.  So I spooned a few of the now tender slices into a smaller omelet pan and added a splash of Tawny Port and another of half-and-half and a little more salt and waited to see what would result.  (I'd have used Madeira if I'd had it, but this was the first time I'd missed it since our arrival here, and the Port seemed a near enough substitute.)  After it had simmered enough to reduce the cream and port to a mere hint of something clinging to the turnip slices, I took the chef de cuisine a bite to sample.  From that bite came blissful blessing to dress the rest of the turnips in the same fashion.

The result will be a staple around here, and the next time we're offered a whole armload of turnips from the overflow of Mom and Dad's garden, instead of taking just half because of not wanting to waste food we're not sure how to prepare, you can bet we'll find room for all the turnips they can spare.

Life with a foodie
The baked chicken was mouth-watering and the green beans, well, let's just say that thanks to me, they had enough vinegar in them to keep the mosquitoes at bay well into July, but I liked them.  All in all, that mirror over the dining room table makes more sense every day. ;-)

So much for flash blogging. ;-)

Our Vanishing Americana

If I weren't going to be on a plane when this airs tonight, I'd be watching. I'm consoled by the fact that it'll air twice more in December. And for any who know me personally, feel free to add the book to my Christmas list. ;-)

"Our Vanishing Americana" airs tonight at 8 p.m. on WTVI, with additional airings Thursday at 9 p.m, Dec. 14 at 10 p.m., Dec. 18 at 10 p.m. and Dec. 28 at 9 p.m.

25 Random Things About My Father

I mentioned once before, just in passing, John Eldredge's claim, in Wild at Heart, that every man is wounded somehow by his father. I implied in that earlier post that such wasn't the case with me. Today, Father's Day, I want to state it outright.

I do not believe I suffered any psychic wounding at the hands of my father, ever.

Honestly, that's no small claim. I've watched other men and their dads. I've watched women and their father's too. I had acquaintances long ago that couldn't return home when they left the Air Force Academy they hated because their fathers told them not to come home if they quit. I had a so much more than friend, who will likely read this, who went there for a year, because her father told her if she would try it for that long, he would foot the bill for college elsewhere--she did; he did not. I've heard fathers say things to children in public that made my heart ache.

I had and have the best father I know. I know a couple more who are right up there with him (my new father-in-law among them), and I have friends who think or thought the same of their fathers. We are lucky people, those of us in this club, and today is a day we celebrate that luck.

Not all that long ago, I posted 25 Random Things About Me. Today, I'm going to take a shot at publishing another 25 about him. Wish me luck.

25 Random Things About My Father

1. He has taken up the drums. At least, he bought a drum set months ago, and for a while at least, he was playing them. This is especially interesting to me because a little less than four years ago, I took drum lessons for a short while. Neither I nor my father knew this about one another, which is a good segue to the next point:
   
2. My father's life has mirrored mine in so many ways that it's genuinely eerie, especially romantically. I could elaborate, but I'm going to leave it at that for now.
3. I suspect my father of being a closet adrenaline junkie. He owned a motorcycle from the time my parents split up until well into his second marriage. And he was, after all, a volunteer fire chief for over a decade.
4. When I left for the Air Force Academy, over three decades ago, the last thing I remember him saying to me as I walked out of Charlotte's Douglas Airport to climb the stairs to a waiting jet, other than, "I love you," is, "If you get there and you don't like it, son, you know you can always come home." It put staying there all on my shoulders. No expectation, no threats, no rebellion value in leaving (not that I ever felt any need to rebel). It made it possible to stay even during the months that I hated it most and seriously thought of leaving. Having options makes almost any task less onerous.
5. In all the years of my youth, he gave me only one spanking I hadn't genuinely earned. That one time, he was acting on misinformation from my Sunday school teacher. I didn't forget, but I didn't really hold it against him either. I just never liked that teacher much after that.
6. I've seen him pitch nearly perfect games of horseshoes. At Five Forks ball park in China Grove, NC, I watched him and Lee Smith, on their way to winning first place in a church league, throw ringer after ringer from one end to the other. It was awe inspiring.
7. He taught me gun safety at an early age, and how to shoot birds on the wing, to drain a rabbit's bladder before putting it in your hunting coat, how to build a rabbit trap, and how to enjoy the beauty of good bird dogs working a field.
8. He also taught me, by example, to think of all men as equals, at least equal in worth and rights, vehemently disdaining all the petty prejudices that so many fathers so sadly wean their children on. The stories in this regard are almost legend and fodder for longer posts at a later date. I'll simply say here that had Harper Lee known him, and if you knew him and her novel, you would think him her model for Atticus Finch.
9. He blames a long tour in Alaska, at Gambell Air Base, on St Lawrence Island, for the early loss of his hair. His seven brothers each kept theirs most of their lives.
10. His children have always come first in his life. Whatever other ambitions he may have had, I truly believe that being a good father was the ruling goal of his existence. God knows, he put up with more, and sacrificed more, for our sake than any other man I know would have.
11. Right behind Atticus Finch, the character from fiction that he is most like would be Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry. He was, for all practical purposes, the unspoken mayor of the small town in which I grew up. Smaller than Mayberry.
12. He can teach anyone to waterski and he was always good at it himself. For the most part, when anyone learned to waterski with us, they learned to slalom, right out of the gate.
13. He plays a wicked game of hopscotch. He always played with us on the shore during our annual vacations at Windy Hill Beach, SC, and I have since played more than a few times with my own daughters.
14. He loves tractors. He may think we haven't caught on to that, but he does. I'm not entirely certain there isn't a frustrated farmer trapped in him somewhere.
    
15. His two greatest shots in golf may have been his hole-in-one and his blind eagle. The hole-in-one was so dead on that it bent the base of the pin going into the hole. In basketball lingo, he "stripped the net." His blind eagle I was there for--a par-four on which he'd hooked the ball into the adjacent fairway, hiding the green from him behind a set of pines dividing the two holes. He hit the ball over the pines on his second shot and into the hole. I found it there. He was still looking everywhere else.
    
16. His dedication to golf during my youth was such that my youngest sister once recited the days of the week as, "Sunday, Monday, Golfday, Wednesday, Thursday . . . " He worked all day on Saturdays until he retired, but only half a day on Tuesdays. He is as good a golf coach as he is a ski coach. I should have tried out for the golf team at the Academy instead of wasting my time with track.
17. He would still like to learn to fly. He says he's let that ambition go, but I think I know better.
18. He can fix or build just about anything.
19. So far as I know, he has never cultivated any of the vices that other men, including myself are prey to. He doesn't swear, drink, or smoke, and yet he doesn't begrudge other men those "pleasures." I think he is simply cautious of the genes he carries, having had a father, grandfather, and more than one brother for whom these things were problems.
20. He is fiercely and poignantly patriotic. I remember him once calling me to the window over our kitchen sink, pointing to the flag flying at the fire station he helped found about a quarter mile away, and saying, "Isn't that beautiful?"
21. In our family business, he was all about Total Quality Management and focusing on the customer long before TQM became a watchword for the rest of the world. I remember trying to figure out what the fuss was about when the Air Force tried to institute TQM because I had always thought those principals were common knowledge. I've learned better since.
22. He is a true gentleman--gentle and yet fiercely strong. He is always polite. He opens my stepmother's car door, holds her chair, helps her with her coat.
    
23. He's more or less ambidextrous. He plays sports left-handed, yet he writes right-handed. It makes him very handy to have around when your ball is up against a tree and you really need a left-handed club to swing.
24. What he lacks in distance these days, he more than makes up in accuracy. I've been able to outdrive him since college, but I've never outscored him on the links.
25. I love him. I admire him. And I still want to be like him when I grow up.

Happy Father's Day, Dad.

On the Road Again

I'll be on the road this weekend, in Richmond, Virginia, looking for a new place to live, beginning another new adventure. Blogging will likely be light as I explore firsthand, yet again, the old saying that, "North Carolina is a vale of humility between two mountains of conceit."

Snow Day, Inside and Out

Life is about choices, about balancing what we want with what we need, what and whom we will be near with what and whom we will miss.

Missing my daughter in Colorado is a constant ache, a dull throb like that of a tooth that you walk around with your tongue over to protect. It might be different if she had reached the age to fly the nest and left for college, but instead, the nest disintegrated around her, and with all the other changes in the world last year, her father retired from one job and came to South Carolina to take another. Being apart was a given. Where I would be was the choice--somewhere in this country, or in another land, half a globe away.

But there is balance. That throb of missing one daughter is constant, but on the other side of the scale, I am in the same time zone with almost everyone else that I so dearly love. I see her older sister every few weeks, one way or another. I even see the younger every six weeks or so, sometimes more often, sometimes a little less. There is Facebook and MySpace and text and e-mail and video messaging, but bear hugs and butterfly kisses don't quite translate through those things.

What brought all this on today was seeing photos in The Salisbury Post of the snow in the neighborhood of my childhood home. Those photos reminded me how glad I am to be here, in the South, on this side of the world where most of my heart resides. Originally, that had been the topic I intended to post. Funny how the truth outs itself. The joy is pure and transporting, and instantly balanced by the throb of an absence that will never completely fade, for either of us I expect. I look at the scenes of snow, think of the gray skies covering a world that seems to light itself from the bottom up, and think, "She'd like this . . . but her head would be awfully cold today." (That would be because she took part in a benefit for cancer at her school, and is now sporting the hairstyle of Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta.)

I drove back from Georgia through that snow on Sunday night and into Monday morning. It's the first time the Jeep has been in 4WD since Colorado, but it was in that mode for well over an hour during that trip. I chose to come the southern route, through Athens and Augusta on US-78 rather than through Greenville on I-85 and I-26. It was, so far as I could tell from the news yesterday, a good decision. Though the major shutdown of the interstate appears to have occurred slightly north of my route, it could just as easily have been me out there stuck for seven hours. Surface roads don't have that problem. You can always go around. But stuck on an interstate is stuck. And by driving late that night, I avoided the only real obstacle a 4WD Jeep Grand Cherokee outfitted with fresh, new tires would face: other drivers. In all, the alternate route and snow together added less than an hour to the trip, and was, actually, rather beautiful.

As for what inspired this post, you can see a gallery of photos from readers of The Charlotte Observer here. (The Salisbury Post is closer to home and has better photos, but is too worried about their copyright to post images of sufficient quality to even be enjoyable on the gallery. "Buy this photo" teases one button on their site. Well, if I could see it, I might be tempted, but . . .)

Here are a couple of the better ones from the Observer. Enjoy.

History Repeating Itself

And in an echo of the Great Depression, businesses in some Piedmont counties are even resurrecting a local paper currency. Pegged to the dollar, it's designed to keep money in the community.

Because I'm in the middle of The Forgotten Man, recommended to me by Barry as an outstanding read on the Great Depression (and living up to the recommendation), this story on brokered bartering caught my eye in today's Charlotte Observer. But we're not in a depression, they keep telling us. No. Not yet.

As for the bartering:

Organizers say new sign-ups have tripled in recent months.

“When we first started out we had to explain that it can be a lifeboat in times of economic uncertainty or instability,” Donovan says. “But we don't have to explain that anymore.”

Swat-a-Litterbug

We all have our pet peeves. One of mine is people tossing their cigarette butts, usually still burning, out the window of their cars. Well now, according to this article from the Wilmington Star News, you can do something about that, at least in North Carolina:

Some motorists and car passengers in our area might benefit from a letter from the colonel of the N.C. State Highway Patrol.

That’s what happens when alert witnesses report litterbugs to the state through its Swat-A-Litterbug program. The offenders get a letter, informing them that someone spotted them littering, what they did was illegal and that fines range from $250 to $2,000 and can double on subsequent convictions. It’s signed by the colonel.

And according to the N.C. Department of Transportation, more people are tattling. More than 9,600 littering reports were made to the Swat-A-Litterbug program in 2008, up 23 percent from 7,800 in 2007.

Now I'm not sure how many people this will actually deter from littering, but I know it'll make me feel better if I can arrange that sort of correspondence for them. It'll be the next best thing to one of the best ideas George Carlin ever had for handling bad drivers. (And if anyone can find a video or audio of the a--hole flags routine, I'll be happy to post a link. Some of you know what I'm talking about.)

Just in case you feel your inner police informant vibrating in harmony, here's the rest that you need to know:

The Swat-A-Litterbug program is administered by DOT’s Office of Beautification Programs and the Highway Patrol. If you [spot] someone littering from a vehicle, you can make a report through the mail, over the phone at 1-877-DOT-4YOU or online (the preferred method) at www.ncdot.gov/~beautification. Mail-in cards can be obtained by calling 1-800-331-5864. To make a report, you need the vehicle’s license plate number, date and time of the incident, street name, city, county and a description of the offense.

Enjoy.

Skydive Carolina

[I publish this with a disclaimer of sorts. I wrote it early this morning, first thing after my perusal of the eight front pages I scan on a daily basis. But rather than publish it immediately, I sent it to the DZ manager of Skydive Carolina to fact check. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure he's gone to the Parachute Industry Association Symposium, so I may not hear from him for a while. If I've gotten any details wrong, I'll publish corrections. Meanwhile, I'm confident enough about the principles involved to go with what I've written.]

Some things are newsworthy only by proxy. If a man has a heart attack on the neighborhood basketball court and dies doing what he loved and among friends, it'll make the news. But if a man simply gets a bloody nose charging the lane during a game, it's hardly newsworthy, unless it happens on the same court the very next weekend.

This article from the Charlotte Observer this morning is like that, only worse--its sloppy use of language does the finest drop zone (DZ) in the Carolinas, and all the Observer's readers a disservice:

For the second time in slightly more than a week, a skydiver suffered a mishap while landing at the Chester County Airport. This time, the jump ended without tragedy. A skydiver suffered minor injuries Sunday afternoon after a hard landing at the end of a solo jump, said James LaBarrie, general manager of Skydive Carolina. The man might have suffered a sprained ankle, LaBarrie said.

Eight days ago, a first-time skydiver steered safely to the ground after his instructor suffered an apparent midair fatal heart attack. Both incidents involved Skydive Carolina, a skydiving company that operates out of the Chester County Airport.

First, the incident itself is analogous to that basketball game in that a new solo skydiver landing hard and spraining an ankle isn't something that happens every day, but when it does, it's hardly more newsworthy than a bloody nose or a twisted ankle on the neighborhood basketball court. It made the news today only because of the prior weekend's much more newsworthy event. Unfortunately, even that event is misrepresented here.

In addition to being a skydiving instructor with years of experience, I'm also an English professor. While skydiving is my love, teaching literature and writing pays the bills. I stress to my students, on a daily basis, that above all, they should be careful that the things they write are true. To say, "For the second time in slightly more than a week, a skydiver suffered a mishap while landing," is wrong, untrue, misrepresentative, and downright lazy. In the incident the previous weekend, the tandem instructor, after safely deploying the main canopy and even exchanging a few words with his student, suffered a heart attack before reaching the ground. The student, a young soldier with the kind of situational awareness and initiative that makes our armed forces the finest in the world, then steered the canopy to a safe landing and even attempted CPR on the instructor. That's not a "mishap while landing." That's not even really a skydiving mishap. It may be arguable that it's even a "mishap." Everyone is saddened by the loss of a good man and fine instructor, and yet most of us, at least most people I know, harbor a very real hope that when our time comes, we'll have the good fortune to go so peacefully in the middle of doing something we love, rather than wasting away in a hospital bed with some form of cancer or living long enough for dementia to set in and no longer being able to find our way to the DZ. Thus, even the word "tragedy" may be a misnomer. That same heart attack suffered on the road on the way home could have been a far worse tragedy. (And for those wondering, had it come earlier, before deployment of the canopy, yes, there is a backup system that would have deployed the main canopy at a set emergency altitude.)

But I'm allowing myself to become distracted. My point is this. A sprained ankle at a DZ is not news. Barring the previous weekend's events, it would never have reached the threshold of public awareness, and to report it as if it were a part of some ominous trend is sensationalism at its worst. I can only guess it was a slow news day in that corner of the Carolinas.

For what it's worth, I've skydived over much of this country, from Maryland to California and from Florida to Washington, either for pleasure, or in demonstrations with one military team or another. Every DZ has a certain character, an ambiance, and a reputation within the skydiving community. I made my first jump at Skydive Carolina back in 2003, and I made my last attempt to jump there this past Saturday. It was an attempt because the winds were a little high. Not so high that many of the places I've jumped wouldn't have pressed right on. (The United States Parachute Association's (USPA's) Basic Safety Requirements (BSRs) are really more "recommendations" than "requirements." The Skydiver's Information Manual refers to them as "risk-reduction procedures," an unblushing acknowledgment that ours is a sport in which risk is only reducable, never capable of full elimination.) At other DZs I've patronized, those winds, sporty without doubt, might easily have lost out to the interplay of testosterone, adrenaline, and the fact that an aircraft on the ground earns no lift fees. Not at Chester. Skydive Carolina, after waiting the winds out for a while on the ground, called it a day rather than risk an off-DZ landing or injury should enthusiasm get the upper hand of good sense. I cannot stress enough the difficulty and cost of borderline calls like that and just how much they say about the character of a DZ's owners and manager.

And that is what this post is really about. The contrast between a good DZ and poor news reporting. With great power comes great responsibility. Our media these days are heady with power, and more than a little short on responsibility. By saying anything at all about a non-event and by saying it in language that can be described most charitably as "inprecise," the Observer does all of us, jumpers and readers alike, a disservice. Either more was needed to put the report in proper perspective, or nothing at all should have been said. All that is unspoken has the effect of suggesting too much that is untrue.

I've recently moved back home to the South after 31 years wearing Air Force blue. I expect to spend a lot of time at Chester. It's friendly, it's clean, it has amenities other DZ's only dream of, and above all, it's safe. When she's of age, Skydive Carolina will likely be the DZ where my youngest daughter makes her first jump, and perhaps, if we can get off the golf course long enough, even my dad.

And that, for what it's worth, is my two cents on today's skydiving "news."

An Open Letter to The Charlotte Observer

Alexander Pope says, in "An Essay on Criticism":

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what ne'er was, nor is, nor e'er shall be.
In every work regard the writer's end,
Since none can compass more than they intend;
And if the means be just, the conduct true,
Applause, in spite of trivial faults is due.

Wise words, and words that Lawrence Toppman in particular needs to learn.

Toppman's review of Gran Torino is a study in how to get most of the details all right, and yet, get it all wrong in the end. Someone should remind the man just what the purpose of any review he writes might be. The Academy isn't going to refer to his opinion in deciding its awards. The best he can hope for is to be relied upon by locals, by readers of the Charlotte Observer, when those readers are trying to decide whether or not to see a film.

So far, I've read two reviews by Toppman. One on Quantum of Solace, and one on Gran Torino. At least he's consistent. Twice now, for me, he's gotten it dead wrong.

Do the editors of the paper bother to read the comments posted about Toppman's reviews? Do you bother to compare Toppman's comments to your own opinions. Do you share his opinions? Judging from the commentary on your web, not many of your readers do.

Start paying attention. Have a conversation with the man. Someone explain to him that the bottom line readers are looking for is going to be, "Is this worth my ten bucks?" A film can be filled with all the flaws Toppman points out and still be worth our time and money.

Get a decent critic Charlotte. Find someone who's more interested in informing the public about the quality of a movie than the sophistication of his own personal taste. Toppman's reviews are largely useless. Spare us and save yourself some money.

Correction: The Beanshooter Man

I titled yesterday's post "The Slingshot Man," and that ain't right, as we say where I'm from. He was, as Barry's cousin Chip Womick points out in a detailed story about him from 2001, the Beanshooter man. There's no predicting what posts will generate the most attention here, but since this one is working on breaking records, here's just the beginning of Chip's article, offered to whet your appetite:

Some area residents and most younger folks do not know the story of how an overall-clad Randolph County farmer named Rufus Hussey introduced Johnny Carson to a bit of downhome wit and wisdom.

Newcomers may have never heard of Hussey.

Some youth may have never heard of Carson.

But the two giants in their respective fields met on Jan. 23, 1986. When the on-the-air encounter was over, Carson smiled, grasped one of Hussey's huge hands in his and said, "You're a remarkable man. Pleasure to have you."

Carson, of course, was the king of late-night TV until his retirement.

And Hussey, well, he was the king of slingshots, though he was known far and wide as, and called himself, The Beanshooter Man.

Hussey died in February 1994 at the age of 74. When he suffered the heart attack that felled him, he was doing what he loved best - sitting at his dining room table, listening to the radio, and carving a slingshot from a piece of oak.

From: "H-e-e-e-e-re's Beanshooter Man," by Chip Womick. Worth the read. The account of Hussey on the Carson show is even more fun than the video of him shootin' June bugs off plant leaves, especially if you ever saw enough Carson to be able to imagine the exchange. Enjoy.

Hat tip: Barry

The Slingshot Man

I was asked recently where did I see myself in another 15 years. It's a good question. One thing's for sure though--if I start practicing today, I'm still not likely to be this good with a slingshot by the time I'm this man's age.

Hat tip: JPL, who titled the e-mail, aptly enough, "some down home NC talent."

Livermush: Good Eatin'!

It's funny how some things you grew up with seem normal to you, but strike others as strange. Livermush is one of those things. I love it so much my mom usually makes a point of having some on hand to fry for breakfast when I'm home.

I've always known it was a distinctly southern thing, but imagine my surprise the first time I went to the grocery in Charleston and found no one had even heard of it. Not at Publix. (Okay, no surprise. They started in Florida, that geographically separated province of New York and Cuba.) Not at Bi-Lo. (A little more surprising, since this is a chain more restricted to the area of the south I think of as home.) But most surprisingly, not even at Piggly-Wiggly, which, really, even if it has spread to seventeen states, you'd think would proudly carry anything made from pig.

For the uninitiated, here's the Wikipedia entry on this "poor boy's pâté":

Livermush (or Liver Mush or Liver Pudding) is a Southern United States foodstuff composed of pig liver, head parts, and cornmeal. It is commonly spiced with pepper and sage. Vaguely similar to scrapple, livermush was most likely brought south through the Appalachian mountains by German settlers from Philadelphia. Livermush is colloquially known as poor man's or poor boy's pâté.

Shelby, North Carolina hosts an annual Livermush Exposition, which began in 1987 to celebrate the unique delicacy. In that year the Cleveland County Commissioners and the Shelby City Council passed resolutions proclaiming that "livermush is the most delicious, most economical and most versatile of meats." Other towns in North Carolina that have livermush festivals include Drexel and Marion. Sonnys Grill in Blowing Rock, NC is famous for its livermush [1]

It is commonly prepared by cutting a slice off of a prepared loaf and frying it with grease in a skillet until golden brown, much like you would Spam. At breakfast it would be served alongside grits and eggs. For lunch it can be made into a sandwich with mayonnaise or mustard, either fried as above, or left cold. As livermush's popularity rises, it is appearing as a primary ingredient in dishes such as omelette and pizza.

And for the literary-minded among you, Wikipedia included a link to a Christian Science Monitor article with this jewel:

Some of its fans enjoy publicizing the unusual meat. Jan Karon, author of a series of books set in fictional Mitford, N.C., has her characters eating livermush in almost every volume.

And finally, for even those who grew up with it, here's a great little video clip from Mark DiCarlo's Taste of America series, on a visit to Shelby, NC:



Bottom line for me? I'll be carrying "home" to Charleston at least a couple pounds of this poor boy's pâté every time I visit Mom and Dad from here on out.

That's all I've got for this morning. Time to go fry some livermush and scramble some eggs. Mmm mmm!

Start With Your Heart

Some four years ago, I was the deputy head in a department west of here, when my boss complained one day of having a problem seeing. And a headache. And numbness in one arm. I promptly informed said boss, a full colonel, that she was going to the clinic with me, post haste. When she resisted, I offered to get the Dean of the Faculty, a brigadier general, to accompany us.

Stroke is not a thing to be taken lightly. I scares the bloody hell out of me.

North Carolina takes it seriously enough to create a Task Force dedicated to it. Complete with helpful videos. They're even entertaining. Sweetness and light.

But the best part? That guy hosting the "game show" in the awareness spots below? He's another of those few that Robert Penn Warren aptly termed "the friends of our youth." Governor's School of North Carolina alums, we were to be roommates at UNC-Chapel Hill, had I headed that way instead of west to the Colorado School for Wayward Boys and Girls.

Enjoy. (Left clicking on the icons will open the video in a separate window.)

Hat tip: Connelly

Reunion

I'm writing this quickly on Thursday night, because my life is about to pick up pace for the next few days. My daughter arrives in Charleston from Colorado Springs on Saturday (the day this should post, if I get this right).

We have cars to look at, movies to see, colleges to tour, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and cousins to visit, feasts to enjoy, tattoos to discuss, beaches to walk, and general catching up to do. If I could, I would stop time on Saturday and just bask for a while in her presence. Our sons and daughters grow up way too fast. And you can tell a young parent, "You're gonna miss this," until you're blue in the face. Until that time comes, they really have no idea. So, rather than missing anything, I plan to enjoy every second of the next week, until I put her on a plane back to Colorado the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

I've been good lately about posting something every day. If I'm not so good this coming week, I hope you'll come back. With luck, I'll have plenty stories to tell by then. Just in case I don't make the time between now and then, I say up front, I hope everyone out there has a grand Thanksgiving in the company of the people they love most.

So I raise a toast to family
Put thanks in my glass
In the arms of your loved ones
It's the only home that lasts
--Edwin McCain

Peace ya'll.

Listening to McCarthy's The Road

A little over a year ago, my family and I made what would be our last annual trek anywhere as a family. We drove from Colorado Springs to Sunset Beach, NC. We took two vehicles, my Jeep Grand Cherokee and my oldest daughter's VW Beetle. For much of the journey, whoever rode with me in the Jeep consented to listen with me to an audible book. Somewhere just west of Nashville, I finished the book I had been listening to, and began listening to a work I'd already read, The Road, by Cormac McCarthy.

I'd had little success in interesting my spouse in anything McCarthy had written. His works are too violent and dark for her. Fair enough. But this book had been one of Oprah's selections, so I thought it might at least be tolerable. Still, that wasn't the primary reason I wanted to listen to it as we made that last day's journey. The more important reason would be that, driving I-40 across the Appalachians, and knowing that McCarthy never writes about a place he hasn't personally set foot, I knew that much of the terrain we would be covering would be that which McCarthy had in mind when he envisioned the post-apocalyptic world of this novel. And though I suspected it was not the NC coast at which the father and son finally arrive, I knew nonetheless that the dunes of Sunset Beach were much like those described in the book. I knew that the topography we would traverse, crossing the French Broad River east of Knoxville, and shadowing the Pigeon River through the mountains, and transitioning through the NC Piedmont and Sandhills and into the Coastal Plain, would mimic the journey of father and son in the book.

By the time we arrived at the coast, so had they, father and son. And when we finished it, finally, on the road one day from Sunset Beach up the coast to Wilmington where my eldest would begin her college career in another month, I was sad that it was over--much sadder than I had been the first time through it, in print.

Most ironic of all to have made that journey, already suspecting in my heart that it would be what it was, listening to a book whose central point may be that love is the only place where hope resides.

I look forward to the movie.

Heaven Help Us

Over at Enrevanche, Barry's post today struck a nerve. What follows is my comment, posted over at his place.

See? See, Buck especially? See? This is why I'm fed up with my former party. This is the same BS as claiming that Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex. Low, dirty, shameful lies. Anyone who allows, "I'm (insert name here), and I approved this message," to go on the air with something like that can't be trusted to wash windshields at a stoplight, let alone serve in public office.

What shall I do? I dislike Obama's policies just slightly less than I despise McCain's, and now Dole's, tactics. Sitting on my file cabinet is a flag flown over the capital for me by Dole. Like Tommy Lee Jones's character from In the Valley of Elah I am tempted to fly it . . . upside down.

God help us all.

Mountain Bound

Light blogging this week. Mid-term grades were due. Light this weekend. Supposed to do two demo jumps: high school football game Friday night; college game Saturday afternoon. Both in the NC mountains. Neither likely to happen with the rain and low ceilings rolling in, but I'm due a trip to the mountains anyway. May just have to cuddle up and stay in. Life is rough. ;-)

See ya'll on Monday. Maybe.

James Taylor on Cobert

Remember that trip back across the country in May? The one that included a stop for a James Taylor concert in Raleigh? Well, my daughter pointed out to me that he was on The Colbert Report a week ago. To watch the full episode, click here. The JT interview starts at about 15 minutes and runs to the end.

Enjoy.

Cheerwine: "The Nectar of North Carolina"

I managed, in a 27-yr Air Force career, to be stationed in or next door to North Carolina for ten of those years. The other 17 were split between Colorado and California. During the 10 years in Colorado, I used to get my "southern fix" in a couple of different ways, largely with the help of my Dad. Sometimes he just made sure when I was packing up to drive back from a visit that I wasn't forgetting essentials. Other times, he would ship those essentials to me. Essentials, in this case, translates to cases of Cheerwine and gallon jars of Duke's mayonnaise--two of the first things to enter my fridge in the new place here on the SC coast.

So, I thought it worth noting that there were two articles in the hometown paper Thursday about the soft drink I grew up considering a natural part of the world. The first regards "a new branding, packaging and marketing campaign" and the second tells us that, "Cheerwine has taken a foothold in New York City."

I couldn't help but smile at both of these. I could smile because it doesn't sound, for now at least, as if the company is trying to make itself into anything new. Rather, it sounds as though they're wisely attempting to do a better job of marketing what Cheerwine has always been. The article's quote from the company's CEO pretty much nails it: "Those who know and love Cheerwine have always connected the brand to simple and relaxed times, hanging out, eating Southern barbecue and being laid back." So long as they don't mess with that, I don't expect too many people will get bent out of shape about new packaging. It's changed before.

And that image of what Cheerwine is really all about is why I also had to smile at the second article. I recently had a series of conversations with several friends about the difference between Yankees and damned Yankees. You can't really fault a person for the geography of his or her birth. But you can sure fault them for their attitude, blue and grey alike. I have good friends who are Yankees; damned Yankees give me a fairly wide berth.

Here's why. Throughout my sojourns into over a dozen foreign countries through the years, I've tried, everywhere I've gone, not to be the obnoxious American (I'd have said Yankee here, but it might have muddied my point, despite the upsetting behavior being pretty much the same in either case). I've tried to make it clear that I've been interested in learning about the culture of the place I was visiting, in occasionally immersing myself in that culture, in appreciating it for its own values and pace. I have tried, studiously, to avoid giving any impression that I expected that culture to conform to my values, my pace, my concept of the shape the world should hold. I have tried, tried consciously, carefully, consistently, not to be a "damned Yankee."

I've noticed, especially now that I'm back here in the land of y'all somewhat permanently I hope, that some of these people are noticeable before they say a word. They wear an expression much as if someone had just waved a teenager's unwashed sneaker under their nose a good month into gym class. They hate it here. The pace irritates them. The culture we treasure, they revile. They cannot understand why, if the North won the war over a century ago, the South should remain so utterly foreign a place to them. They want quick service, they don't want to know how you're doing, and would rather you didn't ask about them. Their desire, their expectation even, is that we should have been just like them by now. On the whole, they are a good example of the very things that make the stereotypical obnoxious American abroad obnoxious. They are, if you think about it, a good example of some of the most misguided features of American policy abroad: the inappropriate drive, not to thoroughly understand a foreign culture and work within it to emphasize the better qualities, but to reshape it wholesale toward an American model. I'm well aware that we don't always get it this wrong, but on the whole, I think we far too frequently do.

But, I digress. My point is simple. The war goes on folks, never doubt it. It's not for real estate now though. It's for hearts and minds. The culture is both the battleground and the prize. And in that war, food is one of our main weapons. So when I read in that second article:

Brother Jimmy's Barbecue, which has six restaurants in New York, has begun offering Cheerwine with its traditional North Carolina-style barbecue and hush puppies. 'We have finally brought the nectar of Carolina to New York City,' said Jim Goldman, an owner and founder of Brother Jimmy's BBQ.

I couldn't help but smile. I had to smile at Brother Jimmy's slogan too: "Put Some South in Yo Mouth." Yeah! Take that ya'll.

Striving for Second Worst

Yesterday's blog post and the news story that spawned it reminded me of a story published in the Raleigh News & Observer back when I was a grad student at Chapel Hill.

Seems North Carolina had had the distinction of sporting the second worst SAT scores in the nation, then SC, who had been worst, moved up a notch, knocking us to the very bottom of the list. Comment from the state's education head? Not that we needed to look at the programs of the states near the top of the list and see what we could apply to The Old North State. No. In a remark that really revealed more about the roots of the problem than it was probably meant to, the person in charge of educating our Tarheel children remarked (and I may paraphrase here, after 19 years or so, but not much, if at all): "We clearly need to find out what South Carolina is doing, and do more of that."

Yeah. Second worst is so much better than the bottom.

If you get ambitious (I have the ambition, but not the time) and look up the original story (sometime between summer 89 and summer 91), I'd love to have a link.