First, You Make a Roux: Theology of Pastoral Care

Part I: Prolegomenon to My Theology of Pastoral Care: First, You Make a Roux

First, an Item of Cultural Competency

What the *&^% is a Roux? And, how do you pronounce it? Roux = roo, rue, rhymes with blue, true, shoe, canoe.

Metaphors rely upon shared worlds. When I wrote this essay, I assumed enough people were acquainted with popular figures such as Emeril (Bam!) and Justin Wilson (the Cookin’ Cajun), and that Cajun cuisine had charmed its way into every enclave of America, even the insular New England states (wink to D. C. at FCUCC). Hasn’t everyone had a bowl of gumbo, a plate of jambalaya, a serving of étouffé?

Here in the Midwest, I have introduced my palate to many strange things: goetta, chicken and noodles served over mashed potatoes, chili that is not really chili served over spaghetti, chili that is chili served over elbow macaroni. Before landing here, I have eaten New England boiled dinners, I love steamers, and I love lobster so much I won’t eat it anywhere else but on a New England coastal picnic table. I pine for true Mexican poblanos in crème sauce. Rice and peas in Bolivia were somehow tastier than blackeyed peas and rice here at home. I will be very disappointed if I never get to go to Argentina for a steak. The curious palate is a good friend.

When I submitted this article, without this introduction, to my foodie friends, they received it with glee, finding it relevant and even provocative in a Pavlovian sense. One friend went right out that day and bought the ingredients to make a lovely gumbo for a dinner party that weekend.

Now, here in Indiana, I find that my reference to the roux has fallen flat like an unleavened biscuit left too long in the oven. There is no ring of truth, no salivary response, no urge to shop, cook, and serve. How, then, can I possibly expect to connect this phenomenon of my experience with my new world? How can I get an A on the assignment, to write my theology of pastoral care?

Not only must I explain, but I must get the attention of my examiners, who seem not only ignorant of this delicious preparation, but are also not the least bit curious to know or understand. I must take responsibility for this, to be sure my communication has not failed in our mutual service.

Isn’t this the way diversity works? Something strange and unknown comes along. To have any hope of crossing into the awareness of the Other enough to raise curiosity – the first step in empathy, I believe -- I must make these incurious and possibly suspicious readers hungry. I need to try to win them over, to bring together our two horizons of understanding, to create a hermeneutical moment that will satisfy both/all of us to the best possible degree. Only with this effort can I hope to convey the richness, vitality, and piquance of my cherished pastoral theological concepts.
The Roux Defined

A roux is the base for many recipes in a Southern kitchen, especially an Acadian or coastal kitchen. Try a quick Google search on the phrase, First, you make a roux. I got 3,180 hits. The phrase has become a code, a watch-word for those cognoscenti of the kitchen. The cliché also serves in any situation to indicate that there is one essential starting point for any process. Want to change the oil in your scooter? First you make a roux, meaning, Do you have the tools? Do you know the grade of oil to use? What kind of vessel are you going to use to catch the old oil? Want to perform surgery? First, you make a roux. Do you know what a scalpel is? Have you taken gross anatomy? Can you also suture? Nothing starts until you have the essential, crucial, most necessary ingredients.

Strictly speaking, the roux is the thickening agent added to other ingredients to form a stock, a sauce, a stew. This thickening agent is far more desirable than the lightweight corn starch and water, which should only be used in an emergency or in Chinese cuisine. In this strict sense, a roux begins with some form of flour (I use wheat) and oil or fat or grease (I usually use canola). Stricter traditionalists would use a tasty animal fat such as butter, lard, or the grease drained from a cooked cut of meat, preferably pork. The flour and the oil are stirred together into a thick paste.

The color of the roux is also a matter of folkloric argument. One dish calls for a light roux, one for a dark roux, one for a medium roux. You can measure the length of cooking time for a roux by the number of beers that are consumed while stirring the roux. What I’m talking about here is, to what degree can you cook the roux, browning the flour and oil, before burning it, to produce the solid line of bass and baritone that will hold up the range of symphonic flavors you will add to your creation?

With more practice, more refined nuances can be achieved in color: peanut butter, chocolate, coffee, brick, black. Flavors become more nut-like with more browning. Never stir more flour into a roux at the last minute. Under-cooked flour is pasty; it must be given enough cooking time to blend. Vegetable oil will get the darkest roux because the oil has the highest tolerance for heat. Butter and other animal fats will burn quickly. Olive oil will burn more quickly than canola.

Once the roux has attained the color you desire, add vegetables such as onion, celery, garlic, carrots – stout and flavorful vegetables that provide much of the seasoning. The French and Acadians call the mix of celery, onion, and carrots the marapois. Adding these ingredients to the roux and allowing them to cook to a transparent consistency will draw their flavors into the roux.

The stage of adding ingredients to the flour and oil is still the roux. Only when a liquid is added, such as stock, water, beer, wine, and the flour and oil disperse into the liquid, and vice versa, does the roux cease to be strictly the roux. Then it becomes the next stage: the base, the sauce, the stock, etc. But, the roux is always still present. The flavor and color of the flour and oil permeate the recipe and make all the difference in the overall success of the meal. Different vegetables, spices, and meats flavor and define different distinct recipes, but the essential starting point, the roux, is the foundation. Now, on to pastoral theology.

Part II: My Theology of Pastoral Care: First, You Make a Roux

The possibilities for theology of pastoral care are quite thick and rich and might prove to be overwhelming to prepare. Within the span of a few pages, I find only three categories are manageable, but these three can give shape to a satisfying enough recipe. I wish to present my theology of pastoral care by using three broad categories, incarnation, community, and healing. They form a thick and rich base for pastoral care, just like the elements of oil, flour, and the heat that binds together a roux fit for any good stew.

Recently, my niece requested a copy of my recipe for The McWilliams Family Roux, as if we have such a thing, a named recipe, codified within our family kitchens. Her request is precious. Her father (my brother, Robert, rest his soul), was a fine cook, and she saw him prepare many wonderful meals from scratch. Such a thing as a McWilliams Family Roux brings tears to my eyes, and brings to mind a recipe tested over time, applied the same way in all circumstances with such consistency that its endurance is unassailable, and its identity would be immediate for anyone who tasted it. Ah, yes, this gumbo started with The McWilliams Family Roux, no doubt!

There actually has never been such a recipe as The McWilliams Family Roux, until I wrote it for my niece and posted it as a note on my Facebook page for her and all friends to see, use, comment on, take issue with, improve, disprove, or whatever might come to mind. In fact, at the end of my writing, I invited all such interactions with my recipe. One friend reminded me that the document I posted for my niece was of such length and illustrated with such stories as to account logically for the failure of her use of my much shorter version sent to her on an index card. Now that she has all of the little nuances of time, temperature, color, and stories of applicability to varieties of soups and stews and gravies, she will replace her card with this longer and much more colorful example.

As I present my theology of pastoral care, I have a similar feeling to approaching the task as I did in presenting The McWilliams Family Roux to my niece. I have made long years of study of the theology of pastoral care. I have written about it, taught it, and performed it for so long, yet taking up the pen to set out a reasonable account seems as if it must be happening for the first time, ever.

Rather than turning to trusted texts of Seward Hiltner, Nancy Ramsay, and Emmanuel Lartey, I am going to tell this story of my theology of pastoral care as I did for my niece. I am going to start by telling what I do, making recommendations along the way and illustrating with enlightening encounters in which I have found the method to have proven to be, as for Goldilocks tasting the porridge of the Three Bears, “Just right.”

Incarnation

My theology of pastoral care begins with the concept of Incarnation. I am most familiar with the Christian version of incarnation – the embodiment, flesh-and-blood realism, actual presence – in the world of God’s person for God’s people, Jesus of Nazareth. Many faith traditions have exemplary figures of self-giving divine love sent to care for those who are suffering. I take my own call to action from the story in Luke’s Gospel, 4:18-21. Jesus announces to the people, "The Spirit of God is upon me; God has anointed me to tell the good news to the poor, to announce release to the prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set oppressed people free …”

I take this passage personally, as my own call to be God’s embodiment in the world, to be present with those who are oppressed, poor, imprisoned, wounded. Acting upon these words is, for me, the work of pastoral care, bringing the people of God into places of suffering in the world.

In the hospital setting these past four months, I have seen this text presented to me time and time again. I shared with my CPE group the stories of two different cases, two women caught up in desperate circumstances of poverty, oppression, disease, and mental handicaps. In each situation, these women were preyed upon by others who were also broken and suffering. Social service agencies could have served as a form of incarnation, addressing the poverty, addictions, and mental handicaps suffered by these individuals. Who will help if these democratically erected services fail? Somehow, the incarnation is present in the chaplain’s witness and the nurses’ ministrations of care. I felt the limitations of my usefulness in each story, yet I felt that I was called to be God’s agent to advocate for the well-being of each. Only God knows how their stories will continue. My call is to be faithful in these moments, to do and be God’s person, to embody God’s presence.

Community

The second essential ingredient is the setting of community. Pastoral Care as a discipline of study is relatively a recent addition to theological education. The timing could not have been better orchestrated. At the beginning of the 20th Century, the sciences of psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and anthropology took root in the American and allied European universities and centers of health and healing, and along with them, the field of pastoral care flourished. For many decades, pastoral care was maintained within the boundaries of human sciences, as an extension of the theories and practices of these sciences, especially as a study of the individual and his or her maladjustments to the modern world. However, many recent scholars and authors have pointed out that the exchange between theology and the human sciences was not reciprocal.

Psychology, psychiatry, sociology, and the other human sciences did not embrace theological explanations of the roots of human suffering in the mainstream. Such concepts as sin, bondage, oppression, spiritual dis-ease, and soul-sickness were regarded as relics of a former age of superstitious religiosity. The mainstream of pastoral care did not disagree, and for a very long time sought to distance itself from the backwaters of theological understandings of the human condition.

Lately, however, pastoral theologians have begun to write and teach that the language, theories, and practices of the human sciences cannot fully explain the features of and answers to human suffering. Human community and its core values, whether expressed through churches and other gatherings of faith, family systems, neighborhoods, or cultures, are better places (than the institutions of human sciences) to reorient suffering people, to help them find the bonds of trust and safety, the stories of meaning and belonging, and the resources of restoration that they need. Meaning, belonging, restoration, and trust are but a few essentials of human flourishing within community. Finding these in the actual exchanges of understanding of both theological and human science resources is the responsibility of pastoral caregivers. We are trained to recognize the differences of explanations and benefits of both worlds of meaning, to act in the interstices of these worlds and help mediate between them for the benefit of individuals and communities.

In the hospital context, the range of community of care-giving is visible in weekly or daily care planning meetings on units of care such as Family Medicine, Hospice, and the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Chaplains are accepted members of the team in these units, along with nurses, physicians, specialists, housekeeping staff, social workers, psychiatrists, and many others, as decisions are made for discharging patients after their stay in the hospital. Patients’ own pastors are invited to be part of the ongoing care of their parishioners. Surely, the opposite can be true, that faith communities can sometimes limit possibilities for flourishing, but when possible, involving an opening for meaningful engagement in church, synagogue, nursing home, and other supportive systems can improve the outlook for someone’s suffering. Even the act of privately praying with an individual has a communal aspect, opening up the communication beyond the single voice or thought to include others.

Healing

Finally, the element of healing brings together the paradoxical notions of hope amid suffering, abundance amid poverty, sight amid blindess, binding up of wounds, and freedom of captives. Healing is found in many expressions besides recovery of a previous state of apparent wholeness. Wholeness may depend upon a new sense of meaning of the term, “healing.” A wounded person may not recover to the condition that existed prior to the wounding. Healing for that one might not be a visible condition of restoration of a limb, an eye, or a body part. Healing might refer to some aspect of the person that is not readily understood to be related to the “presenting concern.”

I met with a young man, father of four children, son of a broken marriage, with himself having been married once before, and kept at a distance from two of his children. He was waiting to have part of his hand removed due to an incurable infection. He was helpless to change the outcome of this disease. He also was in need of help from his mother.

His current family became homeless while he suffered helplessly in the hospital, uncertain of their future. His lover and two children of his current relationship needed the young man’s mother to open her heart and her home to take them in. The young man knew that he could not afford to keep his family in hotels while he recovered, and other than his mother, the only people the children and their mother could turn to was a stepfather with a history of child sexual abuse.

Turning to his mother was his only choice. Not even a homeless shelter would take them in because they were not married. He was truly poor, oppressed, wounded, and captive. Because of a long history of poor impulse control due to a mental illness, he had been estranged from his mother and her husband. This young man had to beg his way back into his mother’s grace to secure a safe home for his family. Going back to this home would represent a kind of healing for this young man. As he left the floor for surgery, he was hopeful of his mother’s mercy.

As I conclude this over-long essay, I find that these three essential ingredients of incarnation, community, and healing provide an excellent base to start any substantial program of care. This recipe holds up well, invites the addition of varieties of texture, flavor, and setting. As many of my favorite recipes begin, so begins my theology of pastoral care: First, you make a roux.

Image borrowed from http://www.cajunfrenchblog.com/2009/01/louisiana-leroux/ who got it from http://www.flickr.com/photos/deadhorse/401048298/ until I can shoot my own.

Spiritual DNA, or, The Day the Imam met the Southern Belle

Spiritual DNA, or, The Day the Imam met the Southern Belle
Anne G. McWilliams and Michael “Mikal” Saahir
Sunday, March 8, 2009
First Congregational United Church of Christ
Indianapolis, Indiana

Today was an extraordinary day. True to the promise of the first covenant, G-d made Abraham a blessing in this place.

As I drove into the church parking lot, I saw a very tall, physically large man of dark complexion walking away from his car toward the back door of the church. He was wearing a handsome brown business suit and on his head was a cap that I thought was typical of Muslim men. A petite woman, also of dark complexion, followed soon after from the same car. She wore dark slacks and a pretty blouse, and she was drawing a colorful scarf around her hair and her shoulders.

I gathered my permanent name-tag from the rack in the foyer and moved downstairs to the big room where we have the early service. I walked past the Imam who was speaking with the pastor, Dick Clough. I went to my seat to review the new list of monthly events on the calendar that had been handed to me when I arrived in the room.

On the calendar was a little blurb about the Imam. When Dick introduced him, I learned that he was the Imam at Nur-Allah Mosque for many years, and he was involved in a variety of service works in the community. Dick said he was a bridge-builder, not a wall-builder. My curiosity grew. I wondered if he would be from another country or if he would be an American? I considered how many Muslims I actually know; known well, none; acquaintances, a few; what's my point of reference? Mostly Middle Eastern and African, maybe African American. What kinds of hints are bringing these associations to mind? A name? A culture? An ethnicity?

The service, true to its non-traditional order and style, proceeded in its typical multi-sensory fashion. A YouTube film told the story in cartoon drawings of Jesus in the wilderness. We sang songs of a mixture of genres, accompanied by an electric piano and a trap set. A woman and a man presented a skit that was prepared for this day.

The skit presented the spiritual DNA of the three major Abrahamic faiths, using comedy, relying on the prop of a laptop computer; delivering factual content that could have been derived from Google and Wikipedia. The skit drew an ever-widening circle from the smaller derivative Christian denominations, to the historic mainline churches, to the globally recognized predecessors of Judaism and Islam, arriving at the one that linked them all: Father Abraham -- our common source of spiritual DNA.

All of the symbolisms of DNA, family trees, and genetics captured the generous spirit of inclusion that would hold our thoughts throughout the day. In my church, it's practically a requirement to be willing to stand side by side with people of very strong Trinitarian commitment, with those who hold a moderate Christology, and with those who are frankly Universalist. This wideness is one of the inclusions of our community, and one of the things I was looking for when I ended my search for a church home here.

Once the Imam, Mikal Saahir, began to speak, I recognized that he was fully an American, an African American, who came to Islam as a young man through the influence of the American movement of the Nation of Islam. His voice was quiet. I must have been expecting a booming voice to emerge from a tall and big man. His demeanor projected a calm, humor-streaked, gentle, self-effacing authority.

Mikal’s presentation in the first service was brief, promising to go into more detail with questions and discussions during the Sunday School hour after the early service. Following this promise, the early service followed its patterns of songs, conversational and casual comforts, prayers, and exhortations. We formed a large circle around the room for the benediction, then broke for coffee and pastries and fruit.

Several people approached the Imam, but I approached his wife, Carolyn, to introduce myself to her. We began to exchange names. Mikal turned to me, shook my hand, and read my name-tag. In the murmurs of conversation swirling around us, I thought I heard him say something about knowing another McWilliams. (There is another Ann McWilliams, no e, in Indianapolis, a great R&B singer-songwriter.)

After completing a couple more sentences with Carolyn and others who had joined us, I turned back to Mikal and said, “What did you say about someone else ‘McWilliams’?”

He repeated, “I have a relative named Anne McWilliams.”

“Here in Indianapolis?” I asked.

“No, not here, in Alabama. She passed away some years ago,” he replied.

“Alabama? I’m from Alabama.” I am aware this is not always obvious or audible to people, because I tend to adapt my accent to my location.

“What part of Alabama are you from?”

“Athens. It’s about a hundred miles …” I began to locate the town of 18,000 souls almost equally between Nashville and Birmingham, on I-65. But, there was no need.

“I know exactly where Athens is. My parents are from Athens.”

Combining all of the places I have lived and visited, I could count on three fingers the number of people I have met from Athens. I did the cartoon double-take: Athens? Are you saying, Athens? Meanwhile, Mikal, who knows my home town, is clarifying his statement:

“Actually, my mother is from Elkmont.”

When my brain, not yet recovered from Athens tries then to take in the name, Elkmont, I am off balance and unprepared.

“Did you say Elkmont?” I ask, again with the double-take. “My father was born in Elkmont.”

“My ancestor, George McWilliams, was freed from slavery at the age of nine by his owner, a McWilliams, in Elkmont. The owner’s name was LaFayette McWilliams, but they called him ‘Fate’.” Mikal is delivering this information thoughtfully, slowly, perhaps also trying to get his balance about this unfolding story, this very unlikely encounter, this revelation.

“Jim Fate McWilliams,” I interrupted him. I know this name from a genealogy I received long ago. James LaFayette McWilliams (LaFAY-t, Fate) But, I can’t place him in his generation, I just know the name.

“Fate McWilliams freed my great grandfather when he was nine years old. And, he had a son, and a daughter, Mary McWilliams …” he continued.

“…Gilbert. Mary McWilliams Gilbert. My father’s aunt. I met her when I was in college. Her brother was my grandfather, but I never knew him.”

I feel weak in the knees as I realize, Fate McWilliams, my great grandfather, was a slave-owner. This is news to me. I began to perspire, I feared I would faint. How Southern Belle, to faint – Anne, don’t faint.

Somehow, I stayed on my feet. This news devastated my white liberal sensibilities, my struggle with internalized racism. Mikal delivered my history to me in a tone that matched mine, of amazement, of unfolding realization of our connection, our ties to place and home, our shared history. Has it been just four generations since the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction? But, the conversation is running on ahead of me, and my mind shifts to a closer past as I think about my father’s aunt.

My father took us to meet his Aunt Mary in 1979, when she called to tell us that my father’s father had died and had left him a small bequest. I was anticipating graduation from college and going to Bolivia for six weeks before entering seminary.

Mary McWilliams Gilbert’s husband was Van Buren Gilbert, whom I never met. He was the county sheriff, and eventually was appointed to head the Alabama State Patrol. He worked for the likes of Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor and George C. Wallace, governors during the Johnson administration and into the 70s and desegregation of our state’s public schools and colleges, among other upheavals of the Civil Rights Era.

I said, “Mary McWilliams and Van Buren Gilbert had two sons. One passed away when I was a child, but one still lives in Athens, Thomas Martin Gilbert.”

Mikal agreed that he knew this, and added, “I have a photograph of my great grandfather George McWilliams holding Thomas Martin Gilbert when he was just a baby.”

Thinking of my father, I said, “I would love to see that picture. I’m sure my father would love to see it, too.”

“I have it at home, a digital copy, I can send it to you.”

“I would love that,” I replied, thinking about Thomas Martin Gilbert, my father’s first cousin, a man I met thirty years ago, yet only had seen once since, at my mother’s funeral in 2001. I think of him as my coach into a life of travel and adventure. I suddenly feel that I want to visit him, talk with him. I suddenly realize what a distantly orbiting satellite I have been to my family in Athens.

Mikal very tenderly reported, “Mary Gilbert named my mother.” To my ears, this was both a beautiful gesture and a troubling one. I heard this news with tears forming behind my eyes.
Later, Mikal continued to explain this legacy to me:

“From what I understand, Mamie McWilliams lived in the house of her father George. George’s house was very close (just north) to where Mary Gilbert last lived in Elkmont. Mamie married William Edward Brown and from this union 15 children were born, one of whom was my mother Gloria, born in 1933. My mother married my father Oliver Flanagan who lived in Athens. They moved to Indianapolis in the early 1950s as part of the great migration of many African Americans who left the south seeking employment and education in the north. Nonetheless, apparently my grandmother Mamie (McWilliams) Brown and your great aunt Mary (McWilliams) Gilbert were close associates – close enough to suggest and have fulfilled naming my mother the beautiful name of Gloria.”

The name Gloria continues in Mikal’s family. His brother Thomas named his daughter Gloria who in turn also named her daughter Gloria. In our ongoing conversation, Mikal clarifies the meaning of this naming: “Thanks to your great aunt, the name Gloria (which means Glory – praise, honor, thanksgiving) continues to be a part of my family.”

Dick Clough provided a pen and paper and Mikal and I sketched out the generations of our two families, side by side:

• his great-grandfather, George McWilliams, freed from slavery at age nine by

• James LaFayette “Jim Fate” or “Fate” McWilliams, my great grandfather;

• his grandmother Mamie McWilliams Brown, and her contemporaries,

• my grandfather, Robert Lee (“Bob Lee”) McWilliams and his sister, Mary (McWilliams) Gilbert;

• his mother, Gloria Brown Flanagan, named as an infant by Mary Gilbert, and her contemporary,

• my father, Robert Lee (“Bob Jr.”) McWilliams;

• finally, for this day’s telling, our generation, Michael Flanagan (52) who became Michael “Mikal” Saahir, and

• my brothers’ and me (51). Robert Lee McWilliams, III (born 1960, died at age 44 in 2005); Patrick Butler McWilliams, born in 1963; and me, Anne Grace McWilliams, born in 1957.

We continued on to the Q&A upstairs in the library. I arrived in the room to find Mikal and Dick relating this story to the group gathered there. I sat down, continuing to feel quite stunned by this discovery of connection. When I left my house that morning, I was groggy from the time change and still re-entering from a vacation to Mexico. Now, I was buzzing with excitement, but also thrown for an existential and theological loop.

Long ago, I moved away from my evangelical certainties and developed a very stubborn non-interventionist streak when it comes to G-d’s work on the personal level. I have not had a very good history with the personal G-d of the ICU or of the parking space. But, I do know that something or someone holds me within some kind of orbit around the G-d of my environment and my people. Let’s just leave it at that.

Now, however, I feel that I am being visited by Providence. Or Something. I said to Carolyn Saahir, “This feels like a divine appointment.”

As we continued on through the morning, into the 11:00 service, Dick called Mikal and me up to the front of the church during the children’s moments. He had been talking with the kids about this G-d of Abraham, and this Abraham of the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims. Same G-d, same spiritual DNA.


Dick invited Mikal and me to recreate our conversation down in the coffee time earlier in the morning. I was near tears. People in the congregation were transfixed. We closed our testimony addressing each other, “Cousin,” and a handshake that became a hearty hug.

After the second service, we continued to gather scraps of information. Among many other details, Mikal told me that he felt impressed to go and visit with my father’s Aunt Mary in 1984, just 5 years after I met her for the first time. He had a long conversation with my great-aunt, the person who named his mother Gloria. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall!

Yes, today was a most extraordinary day. Today, the Imam came to our church. The G-d of Abraham was present in our wide circle of inclusion. I found a wider love and a deeper grace. Into my constantly expanding sense of family, I found a cousin, most likely not of flesh and blood, nor only of geography and place, but a DNA of Spirit that extends back as far as Father Abraham.

Assalamu alaikum ~~~ Shalom ~~~ Peace

Photo Details: George McWilliams (b. February 1854 – d. June 30, 1938) holding Thomas Martin Gilbert (b. 192?), Elkmont, Alabama. Contributed by Mikal Saahir from family archives.

The Emancipation Proclamation was extended to the Tennessee Valley of northern Alabama on January 1, 1863.
In what year was this photo taken? 192?
In what year was Thomas Martin Gilbert born?
George McWilliams (b. February 1854 – d. June 30, 1938). Born into the Yarbrough family, along with two brothers. George and one of his brothers were purchased by James LaFayette McWilliams. George was freed from slavery (along with his brother?) in 1863 at the age of nine.
If : Thomas Martin Gilbert was born in 1923 (estimating: he is older than my Dad who was born on October 9, 1929, in Elkmont; TM looks to be about 18 mos.); and,
If : George McWilliams was nine years old in 1863, when Jim Fate McWilliams was required to give him his freedom (he was!); and,
If : this photo was taken in 1925;
Then : In this photo, if it was taken in 1925, George McWilliams might be around the age of 69, Thomas Martin about 18 months.

Maddeningly Tedious E-mail Correspondence

Start at the bottom at BEGINNING and read upwards to END. I am yours truly. Secretary is the person attempting to set an appointment for the interview for CPE residency.

Would someone please take a look at the response from yours truly and tell me how this could be misunderstood?

Let's begin with the week of March 9 - 13. I will hold this week open to your convenience of scheduling. If nothing works for that week, I can keep going through the next week, also, March 16-20. I am eager to complete the step of interviewing. Scheduling this interview will be my #1 priority, and I will work around it.

I'm not sure, but I think I'm being punished. This interview will not be for another MONTH!

END
March 20, 2:00 p.m.
Thank you,
yours truly

On Feb 23, 2009, at 2:31 PM, Secretary wrote:

No there is nothing earlier.

Secretary

-----Original Message-----
From: yours truly
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 2:31 PM
To: Secretary
Subject: Re: 's schedule change!

Nothing earlier?
On Feb 23, 2009, at 2:26 PM, Secretary wrote:

Ok so does this mean you will be available for March 20th at 2:00?

Secretary

-----Original Message-----
From: yours truly
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 2:25 PM
To: Secretary

March 9-13
March 16-23

On Feb 23, 2009, at 2:20 PM, Secretary wrote:

I guess I am not understanding what days you are available.

Secretary

-----Original Message-----
From: yours truly
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 2:13 PM
To: Secretary
Subject: Re: 's schedule change!

Secretary, March 2 will not work. As I said below:

March 9 - 13. I will hold this week open to your convenience of scheduling. If nothing works for that week, I can keep going through the next week, also, March 16-20.

Perhaps you meant March 20?

yours truly

On Feb 23, 2009, at 1:14 PM, Secretary wrote:

Ok. I have it set for March 2nd at 2:30 p.m.

Secretary

-----Original Message-----
From: yours truly
Sent: Monday, February 23, 2009 12:04 PM
To: Secretary
Subject: Re: 's schedule change!

Secretary:

Let's begin with the week of March 9 - 13. I will hold this week open to your convenience of scheduling. If nothing works for that week, I can keep going through the next week, also, March 16-20. I am eager to complete the step of interviewing. Scheduling this interview will be my #1 priority, and I will work around it.

Thank you,
yours truly

On Feb 23, 2009, at 11:42 AM, Secretary wrote:

Due to some events that are taking place this week I will have to schedule you sometime in March. Could you give me some dates and times in March?

Thank you,
Secretary
BEGINNING

Self-Disclosure Games

I've decided not to go to Chicago today. Icy weather here is going to give way to snow, and there must be more even more north of here.

I'm reading Winter Hours: Prose, Prose Poems, and Poems, by Mary Oliver, Mariner: 1999. I love this poet. I also enjoy essays by writers about their craft. Mary Oliver is not much for self-disclosure in the direct way that we ask for it in therapy and pastoral care.

My colleague in CPE told me about her interview. Two men and a woman on the interview panel worked her over in that way of guerilla gonzo pseudo-psychoanalytic probing into the wounds of one's life. I have this interview to look forward to, also. So, this morning, I am thinking about self-disclosure.

I wonder sometimes if I had had a "normal" widowing*, if I would not have had such a long grief, with spells of -- torrents of -- self-disclosing pain, injury, wounding, anger, rage, self-pity? -- even as recently as this month. I'll never know. Maybe I can be an illustration for "complicated grief."

This interview will come. How shall I prepare? Everyone says, "Just be yourself." Indeed. I'm thinking it feels like a game. I've lived too long and trained a lot in the psychological strategies used in the service of ministry. One time, I refused to play by the rules of the game, withdrew from the game, and found a better pub in which to toss the darts, better friends to play with, but it did cost me some time and got me a reputation as one who now has "unfinished business" in the old place. Maybe.

Mary Oliver said, on xii in the preface to Winter Hours:

I have felt all my life that I was wise, and tasteful too, to speak very little about myself -- to deflect the curiosity in the personal self that descends upon writers, especially in this country and at this time, from both casual and avid readers. ... I am only too aware of the ways in which inclination and supposition will fill whatever spaces in this world, or a life, are left vacant.

Yes, Ma'am -- the universe abhors a vacuum, and transference is real. People will fill those gaps, as they will.

She goes on to say that, in this book, she is going to do a bit, tiny bit, more disclosure because she realizes she is getting older and some will claim to know her, so she wishes to [my paraphrase here] have some control over filling in some of the gaps, excepting the "important and proper secrets of a heart."

Wise and tasteful. I have been neither, often. Not that millions will read my writing. But, perhaps more importantly, people who know me well, or think they do, often read these thoughts. I am chastened by this thought, sometimes. Still, this sense of others reading over my shoulder has not stopped me from saying some things that might offend. I've never been one to say, "Oh, *&^% 'em," as Reb regularly responded to my reports of hurtful things, mindless things coming from ones I thought better of. I've not been one to take a "live and let live" attitude about some matters, believing that I could be persuasive and change someone's mind. Arrogant?

I have strolled into strange pubs and joined games in progress, hurling my points toward any board that I faced. Maybe I can be more selective now.

As I approach this interview, I realize I feel curious and interested about what kinds of questions may come, what darts will find a way to my center; will I cry when they do? Will I let anger show? Will I go in with a good humor, tell it slant? Develop an angle of delivery that will answer with a clever twist?

Look -- I just want to get on with this next phase of the learning, hazing and all. Earning a Ph.D. should be good practice, already. Somebody hand me a Guinness, I need to play my way through. It's only a game.

*a "normal" widowing: nothing the freedom to marry would not fix

Friending and other Facebook Phenomena

I was a reluctant newcomer to FACEBOOK back in the day, August 8, 2008. 8/8/08 -- that was not intentional, but what the bleep? One day, I realized I had over 100 friends. Somehow, that was shocking. It's been a long time since I've been "Annie Social" (in seminary). I think I've become more of an introvert over time.

One day, I looked at that list of friends and realized I was not really friends with that many people. We go to church together, we went to school together, we met at a party, or someone thought we would have a lot in common.

One day, I realized I was using FB to process too much of my inner life to have that many acquaintances looking on. I also realized I could not really say I wanted to be friends with some people who perhaps were students at some distant past time, or maybe we had known each other in college, before I knew I was a Lesbian, and this would be juicy gossip to pass around the old circle of friends. Maybe we knew each other from times past that I had left not just geographically, but also spiritually, emotionally, and the like. Some ground is just too full of roots and stones to keep breaking your plow over again.

So, I unfriended a lot of people one day. I figured maybe if someone I unfriended really wanted to be considered friends, they would miss me and get in touch. And, happy to say, one person did that.

I've had some contact from long ago acquaintances who wanted to "friend" me. I feel ambivalent about it, so I just don't respond. There's something kind of rude about blocking someone outright. Maybe if I let the invitation linger, there might be some additional correspondence later on with some additional self-disclosure, explaining more about why being friends with me would be a good or helpful or just pleasantly friendly thing to do.

Sometimes I think I learned to be too guarded in the past. For so many years, as I was coming into awareness of who I was in terms of loving a woman, and deciding how political I wanted to be about that (very much, as it turns out), I wanted control over access to my private world. Turns out, others made their incursions. I've written much earlier here about how that worked, with being outed, with people passing along rumors and lies along with some of the truth, with people of faith turning out to be extremely cruel and stupid. Yea, verily, don't cast your pearls before swine.

A time came when I relinquished that control. But, in the Facebook world, with people showing up again after eras of life have come and gone -- and with the present being so full of what it simply IS every day -- matters that once were private, like coming out, are now passé to me yet shocking to others. Now, I find that same old pearl-casting is falling into the wrong trough.

Maybe I'm too self-conscious to be comfortable on Facebook. Or, rather, maybe it's that I want too much to have my life integrated and consolidated through all of these eras and changes. I want so much for it to have a story line, a narrative, a point.

Maybe everyone goes through radical changes and interruptions in their previously settled senses of what is normal. Surely, I'm not the only one who has allowed the messy, the unexpected, the shock of death, the coming home to self that is being gay, the snags and hooks of certainty that are embedded in a certain way of having faith, and the senses of essential self and essential desires to find meaning and purpose in ways that continue to bring unexpected and unconventional quasi-, parti-, non-, semi-resolution over time. And, I really hope that essential self and those essential desires will hit home with some, to have that feeling of settling down in easy chairs by the fire to catch up and be with each other, authentically.

Apparently, many people want the same. And, I really love the here-and-now information sharing that simply moves us all, even the trivial "I'm up now and blowing my nose" posts that say we're all just getting on with our days. Somehow, that number of friends keeps creeping up over 100. Not sure today, maybe around 125? I'm just going to let it be what it is.

See, I loved and love many of these old friends who keep showing up in my inbox, my request box. I wish to say, come on in, see what has been happening all these years. See what there is to see. Stay, if you like. Move on with me. See what Love has brought to me over the years. See what Living has taken, too. Be sad with me. Rage against the injustice with me. Celebrate the whole with me. I'll try to be as forgiving as I want you to be with me. There is no time to linger, it all changes so fast.

Surviving Adolescence: Literature, Reading, Words

Teen Survival

Books and horses helped me to survive my teen years. Horses are still my totem animal, my symbolic world of strength, threat of death, survival, and confidence. Horses are another story, impossible to convey in prose. Maybe poetry, or poetry that will become songs, but not here, not yet.

Besides horses, I survived adolescence because of literature. The first people I encountered outside my own family who influenced my taste in literature were the Dearmans. I dated Bill, a twin, a musician (trumpet), a smart boy, an agnostic, and a tortured soul (spinal curvature, brace). We sat on a piano bench behind the band room and I noticed immediately that he smelled good. He always seemed to smell good. It was a combination of his deodorant, something spicy in his aftershave, and the fact that he showered a lot. Maybe that brace was hot and smelly. I miss that boy. I miss that girl, some, but that’s just the mist of nostalgia.

I might also credit my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. Peterson, Rita, and her husband, Don, one wicked-smart couple. That’s another story for another day, because so many elements of mastery, self-confidence, and self-understanding are in my halo of good feeling and memory of them. They had to go and ruin that halo by becoming really true post-Moral Majority evangelicals, which in my mind makes the halo into something kitschy and two-dimensional, like a stage prop you don’t want to get too close to because then you’ll ruin your illusion. Before that, however, they were just young, smart, edgy, and they helped me move forward in my self-differentiation in very significant ways. I thank them, over and over. Wow, what a ham-bake this paragraph is turning out to be. I think I’ll get back to the Dearmans.

The Dearmans senior were a couple of erudite taste. In my memory, Mrs. Dearman – Ella -- never missed worship at the First Methodist Church. Mrs. Dearman always recognized the pieces I played on her piano. That could have come from having so many kids and insisting on piano lessons for each of them. That would have meant a lot of Chopin études over the years. Ella smoked like a chimney, and talked whild she exhaled her smoke. She always seemed to be interested in what I had to say about things. And, Mr. Dearman – Commodore – seriously, although most called him C. C. (Commodore Columbus Dearman – who names a baby that?) – walked around the yard with, in a plastic cup, white wine in his top shirt pocket. In a dry county. He was taciturn yet readily critical, in a kind of Bostonian Brahmin Southern Accent, of most things coming out of his sons’ mouths, and he generally ignored me. He is the first person I ever knew not on a farm with a garden but no pigs who had a compost pile. He experimented with this compost pile by placing some raw chicken in aluminum foil into the center of the pile. The heat of the composting process cooked the chicken. Bill and I agreed he was some kind of nerd, although that word did not yet have wide use. I think C. C., who never went to church, walked around half-toasted on his white wine a lot of the time. They even cooked with white wine. They had a special dish, prepared by C. C., for special occasions, called Chicken Supreme. It was very special to be invited over when that was being served. I think Bill’s graduation was such an occasion. So was the evening after Tony Dunnivant died in his motorcycle accident and I mentioned it at the table, and Bob, Bill’s twin, burst up from his seat and slammed out of the house. I found it hard to swallow my Chicken Supreme after that.

Commodore, as his wife called him, began a fallout shelter in the backyard in the 60s, but he never finished it. He worked somehow with the government or the military or something mysterious (to me) in Huntsville, that capitol of top secrets, that Pentagon of North Alabama, for which my hometown served as a bedroom community.

Much to my surprise, I ended up living and having the most significant of my early serious adult experiences in the town that was Ella Dearman’s childhood home. She had a cantankerous old mother-figure/stepmother/someone, a stout yet very small and spry, and did I say: old woman who was very smart and sharp: Clara Weathersby. I visited Clara's home in high school with Bill and his sister Sally and her husband Ed. To tell the truth, I was kind of scared of Clara. She loved to argue and debate, and she got me cornered at least once on that visit. Only much later in my life would I learn how to hold my own in a hot debate, and I hope one day beyond time, I can tangle with Clara again, since I could probably enjoy it now. So, anyway, Clara was a devout Methodist and managed single-handedly to defy the Mississippi Conference cabinet, and keep open and supplied with a pastor a little church on the west side of Hattiesburg, MS. Clara was formidable. Only after she died did they finally close that church. Or, maybe they did it when she became so feeble that they merged her little one-woman congregation into the West Lake United Methodist Church.

Anyway, back to Ella and CC and my literary development: I spotted a book on the shelf (they had many shelves of books), A. E. Hotchner’s Papa Hemingway, maybe in the tenth grade. I wanted to be erudite, too, so I took this book home and read it quickly. I knew Hemingway was important to my erudition because I saw the Spencer Tracy film of The Old Man and the Sea, and there had to be some kind of gravitas and smarts in having such a tragic fish story made so famous, I mean, other than Moby Dick, which is, of course, one of the ultimate tragic fish stories besides Jonah's. My dad read Hemingway. My dad read a lot of good literature. I think he should have had a better education, but he had what he had. And, my Mom, with her college education, had a good liberal arts background. She also read well. I think I had to get out of the house and see some other shelves in order to go back home to my parents and my grandmother and suspect, somewhere around my junior year of high school, that some good titles waited on their shelves.

I read Hemingway. Somerset Maugham. Evelyn Waugh. Oh, yes, I took my Evelyn Waugh novel to my high school English teacher, thinking that she would be impressed. Not only do I think she never read the novel, but she also never returned it to me. She was so beautiful, new, fresh, a homecoming queen in my childhood. I know now that I had a crush on her and wanted her to be impressed with my adult taste in literature. It was easy, therefore, to skip my senior year of high school English, take it the previous summer at Lee High School in Huntsville with Gail Baugh, and get on with moving out of high school and home, on to college at Athens College, which was threatened to be closed by the UMC since the merger with the EUBs, and the decision of the denomination in the Southeast to really begin taking integration seriously. There were too many colleges to keep afloat what with integration and preservation of the historic black colleges and those schools with more cachet, like Birmingham Southern and Huntingdon, and Montevallo. I got to talk to a state senator and a state representative at the college at a luncheon mixer with alumni, students, and legislators, to explain how that college had been such a significant presence in my life. And it was, truly. My first rock concert, where Black Oak Arkansas played, and the opening band exploded one of those huge glass lab jars, ten gallons big, with a tiny opening at the top, probably a lot like plastic water cooler jars now. I saved a piece of the jar, kept it for years. The lead singer said, “Bummer, man” and kept playing. We could not have been more terrified and impressed with the coolness of that. It was probably better than sex would have been at that age, but I really did not have the comparison in mind at the time. It would probably have been even cooler if I had been stoned like a lot of my friends were, but, I swear to you, I tried really hard to smoke pot all those years and some combination of fear, conscience, and a deep parental omniscience transference kept me from smoking pot.

The college survived. Not the sweet old liberal arts college with Methodist minister scholars, who raised their smart kids along with us regular civilians in the First United Methodist Church, and sent them to smart colleges like Birmingham Southern and Harvard and Yale, at least to Alabama. But, the State of Alabama made sweet old Athens College first into Athens State College, the upper two years of the baccalaureate to complete the county’s junior college, John C. Calhoun Junior College, the first two years or associates degrees. I guess they got a doctorate of education or business or nursing, one of the trades of higher education in poor southern state community college systems. The signs on the interstate now have rectangles in newer shade of green and reflective white, with “university” placed over the “college.” For us natives, however, who still live there or who return from time to time will always simply call it, The College. They have the Olde Tyme Fiddlers’ Convention every October over at “The College” with the backdrop of the four columns of Founders Hall, the four apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

To this day, I have never smoked pot. Sometimes I think I missed out on something important, sometimes I think I was spared a lot of heartache, like my brothers’ fates, one dead, one in the grip of addiction. I never even got to go to Raney’s at the State Line (TN) with people who went drinking and driving on the weekends after football games, or Saturday nights, or all the time in the summers. By the time I could drive and could to there myself, Jesus was the center of my life and I could not go, or did not go. My abstinence held pretty much until after high school. I mean, how can a girl in a dry county, with Jesus at the center of her life drink beer, especially when the one time she does, and tells her dad about it, he breaks down and cries? Wow, that kind of disillusionment is really hard to take. These days, why I think I can enjoy my whiskey and beer and wine and not fall into the abyss, I don’t know, maybe because I somehow do not have that gene. But, I missed out on the whole chemical hook that got my brothers. Maybe it will get me later, when I’m old and need more drugs. Maybe I’ll sooner die.

See, the whole problem with me and authority is really all about parental omniscience and x-ray vision, and believing my dad when he said he would not bail me out of jail if I got arrested for drugs. Drugs were very new in my youth. Only the most marginal of people did drugs before Vietnam and Watergate – poor white trash, and black people who lived in the country and frequented the joint at Dogwood Flat. Eventually, no one would be without drugs in the family, not the minister or the chief of police or the school superintendent or the college president, not even the preacher at the Church of Christ. But, Dad had no idea what he was talking about. He bailed my brothers out time after time, and in his desperate love lost their respect, and mine. He let them take him for all he was worth. Every penny. I kept going in my inward struggle, going for many years toward conformity with an edge of rebellion, overcompensating, seeking healing in Jesus, pre-Moral Majority evangelicalism and Jesus movement psychology and spirituality. Fortunately, I was a good reader. I could explore the edges of my duality in literature. I’m so grateful to literature and reading. Here I sit, writing my heart out about reading and literature.

Even as early as fifth or sixth grade, I pulled For Whom the Bell Tolls from the shelf in the library, before the new high school was built, before shifting around schools in the changing political dynamics of our town, even before learning how to change classes, use a locker, and have time for a drink of water and the bathroom. The librarian, Mrs. Wathen, whom I later began to call Sheila -- because I grew up and was college roommate with Virginia, and young adults get to call their childhood adult figures by their first names; it’s a rite of passage – Sheila told me that book was over my head. Not only on the shelf, over my head, where I was working as some kind of reward for boredom as a library assistant at my school, making all the spines and the Dewey Decimal System lined up perfectly with the edge of the shelf, but over my head intellectually and developmentally. To this day, I line my books up by pulling all the spines to the edge, then taking a book out and with its spine, on its side, slide all the spines together to a common even distance from the edge. Wow. Books can really get into your head. That denial by Mrs. Wathen was all the challenge I needed. I told my Mom about it, and she gently suggested that I could try the book, and see how I liked it.


Mrs. Wathen’s type of challenge and my growing loss of respect for my father provided a rich bed of rebellion and general lack of respect for authority. I honestly believed the administrators at my school were stupid, except my history teacher/guidance counselor/Sunday School teacher, Mrs. Elizabeth Brett. I lived a double life of wanting to be good, a good girl, and wanting to be smart, which was subliminally related to being bad, out of line, out of my place, and somehow different.

My grandmother had For Whom the Bell Tolls at her house, so in my many summer days and weekends at her house, I read the book, anyway. And, I read Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (a good basis for a budding environmentally conscious young adult who has an Earth Day sticker on her guitar case), Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle, and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, and Taylor Caldwell, and Leon Uris, and Robert Ruark, the one who wrote The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, a powerful film for a young adult to see, all that WASP/Jewish clash of sensibilities, the antagonism and ambivalence that emerges in late teen years, making it necessary to begin both loathing and enjoying one’s social location, especially if it is white and middle class. I hated school enough to miss out on the Honor Society and good scholarships, but I took for granted that I would go to college and do pretty much what I wanted. I just didn’t really know what that was. Teach school in Athens, Alabama? Become a large animal veterinarian? Mostly, I majored in hating the Establishment, but really needing to please the same Establishment. Vietnam was too close yet, but eventually, it became literary stuff, and I can look back and sort out all of that social/cultural/personal chaos. It seems that these great upheavals of culture need years of unconscious ferment before good literature can emerge. What is that about?

Being a good reader always helped me through the awkwardness of my teen years. I knew I was different in a way that would not serve me well in life as I knew it then, so I cultivated the dual personae of inwardly nursing curiosity and outwardly wanting desperately to conform.

So, why did I go to college at UNA? Why not Birmingham Southern like other smart people in my class with good Methodist leanings? Who knows. But, my hero there had a very interesting intersection with the Petersons, The College, my growing interest in playing the guitar, and he was a really smart guy from the sticks: Bill Foster. Now, I wanted to impress Dr. Foster. I did not do so well in his Shakespeare class. I know now that I am an emotional learner, and I needed to talk and process all those plays and sonnets. But, the processing came after the pop-quizzes. That did not stop me from majoring in English. Being required to read a lot was like pizza to me, a treat and almost daily sustenance on campus when I had the money.

Thanks to Mr. Kingsbury, who recently passed away, and that pompous writer who shouted me down about his beloved England in creative writing, who told me I probably would not be able to write until after age 30, and Mr. Strickland. Lindsay. I was in over my head with the beat poets, but I will never forget the very proper and precise Lindsay Strickland. I understand him so much more now, and it’s not just the aging that I understand. I get him, his apparent solitary life, his quiet, almost secretive existence. Some kind of duality going on there, too, I think. Dr. Albert Sydney Johnston -- am I remembering his name correctly? the same as the Civil War General? -- another wee sissy, but kind of interesting to a student from a dry county who never met a queer she wasn't absolutely fascintated with -- who would come to class totally wasted, drunk as a skunk, lean on the podium and expound wistfully on whatever topic in poetry, with his very interesting old-South accent a bit like an Oxbridgian don, with a little listing and waver in his step, move toward the windows, weave back to the podium; or, just not show up at all.

Classics, “great literature” and creative writing – the hunger and appreciation of these have always sustained me. Thanks to my family, friends, and my education for giving me some structure. Please send me more and more suggestions for my list. My nightstand is piled high, and I will build more and more shelves. I am a reader. I love books. I will celebrate books as long as I can know and comprehend. Books let me know that I can not only escape into fiction, but can become something even more real than I can know without them. Oh, dammit, words fail. Maybe I'll find a good passage in a book to let you know how important this is to me, how much I need reading and books and writing to become me, to grow, to find life in words.

My mom died of side effects of Alzheimer's Disease. I want so much to be able to hold on to these words. So, just in case, I write all of this to you, a reader.

An Anniversary

It's a big anniversary this week. Pilgrims saved from starvation by Native Americans? Yes. Sadness, grief, bereavement? Yes. 10 years.

And then, the next year, near-death for a dear friend. Yes. 9 years.

And, since being in the hospital on a holiday is a miserable thing, I'm going to keep my same schedule at the hospital, visit some folks on the Family Medicine floor (reminds me of something Nancy would do), and some wee ones and their families in the NICU.

CPE is a great experience for me. It's not just about connecting to the past, or hoping there's a future in it; it's about being present with others, slowing down, listening, paying attention.

I will be remembering. I am so very thankful.

Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Grace. I love our family. I love you.

Thank you, friends. Thank you, family. I love you.

Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving preparations

Click here to go to the Picasa slideshow of my photos.

My refrigerator treated me to some good stuff this morning. I woke up thinking about the leftover turkey smoked sausage from dinner a couple of nights ago, how good that mix of sausage, bell peppers, onions, and garlic would be in a breakfast casserole. Yes -- it was delicious!

Then, as I was digging out the dregs of the rest of the leftovers of the past week, I discovered a bag of poblanos, seven of them, in perfect condition. I put together my indoor grilling apparatus and quickly roasted the peppers to use later on in something good and wintery, or maybe this Saturday, the Bama-Auburn game, a big ol' pot of chili.

Ramma jamma yella hamma give 'em hell Alabama!

The Cruelest Month?

These chilis are a feast the eyes and the palate! T. S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month, and I think I know what he means.In April, winter seems like it will never end; just when the buds break into bloom, the killing frost can come and destroy all of that promise.

I think October is the cruelest month. The poblano and Tabasco plants and their other flowering nightshade cousins, the bell peppers, and even the Roma tomatoes are still loaded with blooms. They want to go on and on, and the sunny days have them fooled. But, we are going camping this weekend, and just as likely now as with April, a killing frost is likely any night, most likely when we're gone, and we would be so disappointed! So ...

Today, I went out and pulled up a Tabasco plant by the roots. I picked all of the poblanos, at least three gallons of them, and broke apart and pulled up the plants as I went, being the cruel gardener who determines the end of the harvest.

I roasted the last of the eggplants. Some, I scored and baked to freeze for later use in a ratatouille, or a baba ganoush. One, I sliced thinly for a lasagne, for some cold winter night's repast (hear that drama?).

I say again, our garden was wonderful this year. Nature surprised us with the blessings of so much fruit, and enough to share and exchange. We Our friends were so generous with their fruits, also. Duane's cucumbers made a shelf full of dill pickles. I am so proficient now with the stove-top canning that I can quickly decide, as I did tonight, to cook up the last of the Romas with a couple of hands full of chilis, mix with some salt and cumin and a couple of the last of the bells, throw in some onion and garlic, and put away five quarts of taco sauce for later. We had so many tomatoes that I have another half gallon for our use in the coming weeks without having to use the sterile procedures.

The cold is beginning to settle around the doors and windows. You can still go out with bare feet, but not for long. Probably by Christmas, we will wish we had put away all of the vegetables instead of giving so much away. We will probably eat our way into winter and the freezer, now packed almost full, will dwindle before we are ready. But for now, I am smug. I remembered the lessons of my mother and grandmother, we can grow much of what we eat, we can find and share and exchange for what we don't have ourselves.

Let's go to the woods for a few days. This winter will come and we will go out to meet it.

Hey -- that's melodrama! We have a cozy Airstream. We'll be toastie-warm, and get our fire going for s'mores, not for survival!

Season's End for These Sweet Hot Chilis

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

[Click on these images to see the whole album in Picasa.]

What a beautiful afternoon to feast visually and victually on some chili peppers! We planted a couple of pepper plants next to the deck. The man at the farmer's market in Greenwood said they were Hungarian sweet peppers, but he forgot to mention they are also HOT.

I canned some pickled rings using the earlier greener peppers. Now, after some weeks of growth and neglect with lots going on, the green has evolved to green with a blush of orange to the emblematic chili pepper red that anyone would recognize as a HOT pepper.

I would not say these are as hot as a jalapeño, not by far, not even in the same county; and they are not even in the same country as the habanero (literally). But, they have just enough piquance to make them into a sauce all their own without mitigating with carrots to cool them down, or adding them to tomatoes for a salsa.

I made this recipe up, so all caveats apply: This is for entertainment purposes only, please consult expert advice for cooking and preserving home grown vegetables; I am not responsible for the safety of this recipe.

I added all of the following to an average blender (5-6 cup container); I blended on the high setting for about 20 seconds after adding each vegetable.

1/4 cup distilled water
1/4 cup white vinegar (store brand)
1 tablespoon pickling salt
1 3" diameter onion, peeled, trimmed, chopped coarsely
6-8 cloves of garlic, smashed, peeled, trimmed, chopped coarsely
1 lb peppers, seeds removed, but membranes kept

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

After adding all ingredients, I blended on high for about a minute. My ingredients made about four cups of mixture. (Blending adds a lot of air to the mix.)

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

I poured the mixture into a 4-quart saucepan. I brought the mixture to a boil slowly. All of the air added by blending wanted to escape rapidly, so I had to remove the pan from the heat several times and stir to release the air bubbles. After the mixture reached a boil, I reduced the heat by half.

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

Once I could see mostly pepper sauce and a little froth around the edges, I simmered the mixture on low for 15 minutes. I wanted the onion and garlic to cook well, to release the flavors and sugars, and to blend those flavors with the peppers well. Eventually, the froth was gone, and the mixture became a beautiful rich deep orange color.

I sterilized some containers -- an empty bottle of from my second-favorite sauce, Yucatan Sunshine; a plastic squeeze bottle from the grocery wholesaler's; and a pint jar. I ended up using all three. The half-pint in the jar will probably go into the next batch of soup or stew.

From Hungarian Pepper Sauce

The sauce was the perfect topping for my late lunch of white beans and ham, served in Margie's pottery bowl. Very tasty.

We have five Tabasco plants that need to be harvested before frost. I'm sure I won't come close to the flavor of my very favorite sauce, Tabasco Sauce, because I would not know where to begin with the aging process they use. But, I'll have fun coming up with my own take on it. Next!

Facebook Friend Wheel

Facebook is fun. This morning I became a fan of Guinness. Actuallly, I became a fan a long time ago, but just now on Facebook. I wish all of my friends from every era of my life would join Facebook so we can keep in touch.

One product of Facebook, the Friend Wheel, is bugging me like a little itch one of the sides of my brain. [Wait a minute: the brain is rather round, but is divided down the middle; what if mine is like a brick, with six sides?] I can't figure out which side, but the itch is real. The Friend Wheel is cool, showing the connections among all of my friends.

If I think about my life in terms of eras, I actually have several. First is the Athens, AL, era, from age 0 to roughly 18 [Era I]. Then, there is the UNA era, ages 18-21 [Era II]; the Asbury era, 21-24 [Era III]; Hattiesburg, MS, Main Street UMC, 25-30 [Era IV]; Hattiesburg, MS, USM Wesley Foundation, 30-35 [Era V]; Vanderbilt/Nashville, 35-43 [Era VI]; Jackson, MS, 37-41 [Era VII]; Dayton, OH, 43-50 [Era VIII]; Indianapolis, IN, 50-present [Era IX].

That's a lot of change in a lifetime -- 9 eras -- but not extraordinary. However, as I look at this Friend Wheel, I see very little crossover among these eras of my life.

I think this would be a very interesting ethnographic tool of study. So far, my social network shows that no friends from my Athens era have come forward with me into subsequent eras. In the Athens era, roughly 1957 t0 1975, I can think of no friends now who picked up on the use of email and internet to stay connected. My brother uses email when he can get to the public library, but so far, he is not an internet user to the extent of joining Facebook.

The presence of a person on Facebook does not appear until the fourth era, roughly 1982-1992. This person has no connection to any other era. Another individual shows up from the Jackson, MS era [VII], and he also would fit into the Nashville/Vanderbilt era [VI], but so far, there are no friends on Facebook to link between him and me.

One crossover is visible to me. Two people link the two Hattiesburg eras, and one of those links to the present era.

Why should I expect any crossover at all between my life's eras? Taking into account that Facebook is new, and most of my current online contacts are not using Facebook, the friends I do have on Facebook are in distinct categories. My life's eras are also so divided geographically, that I have made a new start in a strange location, by myself, 8 times.

Some of the transitions between eras have been normal developmental transitions: leave home to go to college; leave college to go to graduate school; leave graduate school to a job; leave a job to go to another job or more graduate school. A couple of transitions have been traumatic: death of my spouse and radical change to a new place, job, new friends, loss of ties to the past; leave a miserable job situation to start over again, find love, move to a new home.

I guess this Friend Wheel is a bittersweet visual reminder that life has taken unforeseen twists and turns. It also reminds me that I am pretty resilient. I do wish for more connection among these eras of my life, to be able to share all of my collection of freinds with each other. There is also a wish that probably is not realistic, that life can look like a journey of continuity with roots in the past and wings toward a fullness of presence. The reality is more like a journey with departures, lengthy sojourns in strange lands, flights away into places of survival, and a lot of traveling without a map.

I have some pain in realizing that not all of my friends have come along with me, and that I have let some friends go, perhaps knowing that they belonged to an era, not to me, and that I belonged to an era or reason for them. A student once told me that we have friends for reasons and friends for seasons, but very few friends for life. The recognition of the reasons and seasons friends sometimes comes late, bringing a lot of pain. Trying to hold on to some friends who will not come forward with me pulls on something deep, unconscious, a longing for something of the self that will not be fulfilled.

Not everyone I love and value appears on the Friend Wheel; some appear on the Friend Wheel for different reasons. This way of staying connected is not necessarily "electronic", and therefore "shallow" and "artificial." Facebook and other social networking is something new, leading who knows where.

Arriving where I am now has nothing of the inevitable about it, except to know that I have learned to trust my heart. I love my home, and this huge collection of friends that now is visible in my Friend Wheel.

KitchenAid Refrigerator Ice Maker

I fixed the ice maker today. Somehow, it was not filling and making ice. Before calling a professional, I thought I would at least try to troubleshoot. You know how it is when you're Googling along, and you get just enough of a hint to convince you that the answer is just another click away... then, next thing you know an hour has passed. Or more. That was how it was this afternoon.

Finally, I found the service manual here and here. Unfortunately, this is a PDF that cannot be published on Google Documents (yet). Look for Whirlpool manual R-92, JOB AID Part No. 4322658A. The part number for the ice maker is actually 4322658A, for both Whirlpool and KitchenAid models. The manual's foreword, p. ii:

This Job Aid, “Whirlpool & KitchenAid In-Door Ice System,” (Part No. 4322658A), provides the technician with information on the operation and service of the Whirlpool & KitchenAid In-Door Ice System. It is to be used as a training Job Aid and Service Manual. For specific information on the model being serviced, refer to the “Use and Care Guide,” or “Tech Sheet” provided with the Refrigerator/Freezer.

If all else fails, I cut and pasted the two sections that I used from the manual into a Word file.

Various components of the ice maker can be found fairly easily online at sites like this one. Model number of our fridge is KitchenAid KSCS23INSS00. Curiously, Whirlpool is the origin of the KitchenAid fridge. I wonder if one manufacturer makes the parts that are used in different brands? Probably.

In all of my browsing to try to find the answer to the problem, something that is inordinately time-consuming and frustrating, I realized that I could very easily have used my cynical go-to plan: if all else fails, hit it with a hammer. But, that would only make me feel better for just a little while.

None of this will make sense unless you actually unplug the fridge from the wall, take the ice maker out of the freezer, and remove the cover first.

Don't force any part of the ice maker, no matter how tempting it would be. Not to worry. If, like me, you pass the optical test and the electrical bypass with the jumper wire on the T & H little holes in the side test, and then you power off, power back on, open the door, and pass the LED blink test, you will be rewarded with the specific results you are hoping for. The electronics of the ice maker will cycle a few times and will set the ejector into the "home" position with the blades at 2:00. Now, I am waiting to be sure the thing is cycling properly on its own.

Savoring High Summer

These late days of high summer have been all about the outdoors here at our family compound. When we have not been camping and working on the Airstream, we have been working on our first garden, growing some veggies. We consider it an experiment this year, to figure out what will grow in our limited space, what we can manage, what we did wrong, what we did right, what we will do differently next year. There are no rules, other than the ones provided by the natural biology, meteorology, and soil of our location.

Our inspiration has been Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I recommend it as a guide to a first attempt to try to grow, buy, and live more locally. I need to find some asparagus crowns before frost. We are able to get lots of wonderful produce here in our farmer's markets. Something about growing your own, though, feels pretty good. I love working with veggies that did not cost a fortune and came coated with wax.





We spent our anniversary week at Patoka Lake. As I know very well from my hard-core backcountry camping experience, hiking segments of the Appalachian Trail in the Great Smoky Mountains, that these outings to the state parks and forests of Indiana are not, technically speaking, camping, but it's a great way to spend some time together and have some incredible experiences, like seeing the bald eagles and ospreys, and several types of herons and egrets on that huge lake.







We haul a little home with us out into the well-groomed utility-provided campgrounds of Indiana. We cook our meals outside on a fire and a gas stove, but that is really just because we like to do that. We could cook our meals inside, on a tidy little 40 year old Magic Chef range, which could include baking brownies in an oven, if only I could figure out what's keeping the oven from igniting, and I'm not going to take the time to figure it out as long as we can make s'mores and banana boats on the fire (thanks, Amy C. !), instead.

We also partied a lot in July and August with a whole lot of birthdays -- Mammaw, Pappaw, Cathy, Teenage Cousin, and moi. Hmm... must have been something about these cold midwest winters bringing on these summer birthdays. What's my story of origins? I guess it gets cold in Alabama, too.

Hey -- look who started third grade on 8/4/08!

We've been pleasantly surprised to find that the Chiclette loves to go camping -- as long as there are DVDs, cousins, buddies from church, bicycles. How do you talk to an 8 year old about slowing down, unplugging, and connecting with nature? We're figuring it out. Daddy long-legs, moths, and other insects are still sources of much screaming, but we're trying to introduce curiosity, which helps.











Most recently, we have been canning pickled veggies -- again, experimental, with a Proustian touch of reminiscence about how my grandmother and my parents did this in the summers of my childhood. The scent of dill evokes those kinds of erlebnis experiences upon which Dilthey elaborated, full of emotional associations, all good, tender, full of discovery and the freedom of many years of childhood summers and weekends spent in the country.

If I were a superstitious person, I would not continue this nostalgic exercise. These memories are mostly childhood memories because my grandmother succumbed to Alzheimer's Disease and died when I was in college. Then, when I was becoming a free-standing adult in a sort of marriage that was absolutely wonderful, and we finally lived in a house where I could garden and flex my homemaking muscles, my Mom was found to have AD, also, and died in 2001.

What am I doing now, carrying on these kitchen garden traditions? I mean, is Chiclette paying attention? I don't know ... maybe. I don't think she likes pickles. Now, maybe if I made ketchup, I would earn a few neurons in her mind, in which some future steaming pot of homemade ketchup will evoke memories of our kitchen.

I might have come close to surfacing a few neurons of my own I made my first attempt yesterday to duplicate taco sauce that I miss from the Mexican Kitchen in Hattiesburg. Maybe someone can let me know if this is the Mexican Kitchen I remember from living there in the 80s and 90s. I used to buy their taco sauce by the quart. Someone told me it was a commercial food service product, but I have searched for it high and low and cannot find it.

Finally -- I found something close here on the Southside, at Roscoe's Tacos. OK -- it's not Southside Indy -- it's Greenwood. Let's get this out: we live on the Southside, not in Greenwood. We live in Indianapolis, on the South side. We live sort of in Homecroft but not quite, but also not in Southport. Roscoe's Tacos is definitely in Greenwood, and anyone who thinks Roscoe's is the best Mexican in the world ought to live in Greenwood. Just like the Mexican Kitchen, Roscoe's is not the greatest Mexican restaurant in the world. But, it is good, as far as it goes, and you can't beat the value. One of the four secret recipe sauces I tried on my tacos came pretty close to what I remember from the Mexican Kitchen. I tried to duplicate the recipe at home. I think I am closing in on it. More about that in a later post...

So, anyway, back to Dilthey and erlebnis and all, I choose not to live with superstition nor nostalgia. Rather, I carry on for the sake of the here and now beauty of our garden, the fecundity of it all, and the anticipation of putting out a relish tray at Thanksgiving that will include our okra, squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, chilis, as well as the local produce we have collected all summer.

The next few posts will document directly or refer to some of our pickling efforts. I'm sure some stories will emerge along the way. Thanks to Troy and John for coming over to our pickling party where we all practiced with the Ball Blue Book. I hope this party will become a summer tradition in late summer/early fall.

By the way, I am looking for the best one-stop resource for all sorts of preserving, including freezing. Amazon has a plethora of choices listed. Does anybody have an opinion about Putting Food By?

We just got a chest freezer for the easiest preserving. We put it in the garage, just like everybody else I know.