"It is remarkable, that persons who speculate most boldly often conform with perfect quietude to the external regulations of society." -- Nathaniel Hawthorne, THE SCARLET LETTER
I voted (again) today. December 2, less than a month since November 4, with The Election Shiny worn off The Process for many, Georgia had run-off elections. But I'm not here to proselytize a particular candidate or party.
I'm here to praise the experience.
I love voting. I love going to the polls and seeing the senior citizens and college students working the polls, checking off names, filling out forms, handing out yellow plastic cards for the voting booths. I love seeing old retired black men who may still remember when voting was a dangerous privilege, and young pregnant white girls who may be wondering about their futures and those of their children, and even, yes, rich society golfer types who may be worrying about tax hikes and plunging stocks, all standing in line, all standing in a unified act of great faith.
Despite what the above blurry cell phone photo might suggest, the feast was a success! So the Legendary Dressing was so epic that it didn’t quite fit in the stove! Nothing an inventive husband, merry family, and good Chardonnay can’t cure!
Better, no Botulism Bird and all Parental Units had a fine time, as did the Offspring.
“Better than Cats!”
Five stars, (or should I say bananas, Jean Louis?)
As we get closer to the arrival of the Parental Units, and I listen to friends plan (and moan) about their upcoming holiday plans, we continue to plan our Big Meal, which has inevitably lead to self-analysis and loved-one analysis about what is sacred and what is not at Thanksgiving.
While not a purist like some about specifics, there are those well-known dishes that make it That Special Day, mainly turkey, dressing, and cranberry jelly. I really don't like to mess with those standards. To quote Frasier’s dad when his son insisted on a fancy fresh-cranberry side dish and not getting canned cranberry sauce (with the "ridges from the can"), when people go off the reservation and into fancy cuisine on that one day, I wonder, “Is it that you can’t learn, or you won’t learn?!”
Don’t mess with the canned jelly goodness and pass the pumpkin pie!
In the spirit of my desire to be slightly perverse about this good day, however, without ruining the menu, I offer two Alternative Thanksgiving tidbits.
The origin of this holiday is, of course, in the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving, recorded by William Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation. Sidestepping any politically-correct revisionist questions about the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving and their relationship with the Native Americans, I would like to share a later Turkey Tale as related by Bradford.
Dissatisfied with the secularization of the Pilgrims years after their 1620 settlement, Bradford relates a story that can only be summarized as A) “These teenagers today are out of control,” and B) “All of ya’ll are all going to hell in that proverbial hand basket!”
“Ther was a youth whose name was Thomas Granger; he was servant to an honest man of Duxbery, being aboute 16 or 17 years of age. (His father and mother lived at the same time at Sityate.) He was this year detected of buggery (and indicted for the same) with a mare, a cowe, tow goats, five sheep, 2 calves, and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the historie requires it.”
I can imagine poor Thomas busted for bestiality and dragged in front of the elders. Knowing he would be executed for this crime against biblical law and nature, he confessed: “Ye Gods! I did do it,” going on to list a litany of possibly fictional farm animals, and culminating "with a Turkey too! So there!”
Of course, Granger isn’t the only one to abuse the turkey. PETA’s protests & my cooking aside, I just overheard a colleague talking about his new-found holiday tradition, something I had not seen since moving from South of I-10 in Louisiana. Turducken!
For those of you outside Louisiana and parts of Canada who are unfamiliar with this culinary abuse of the turkey, allow me to quote my students’ favorite source of all wisdom, Wikipedia: “A Turducken is a dish consisting of a partially de-boned turkey stuffed with a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed with a small de-boned chicken. The thoracic cavity of the chicken and the rest of the gaps are filled with, at the very least, a highly seasoned breadcrumb mixture or sausage meat, although some versions have a different stuffing for each bird.”
Kinda like a Russian nesting-doll concept. Often credited as a culinary invention of Paul Prudhomme, I see it as a Culinary James-Dickey-Deliverance Special!
Mmm. Mmm.
Check out the picture if you need further convincing for or against such a dish:
Perversions aside, I do love Thanksgiving. Still relatively-commercial free, it’s nice to have a day set aside to pig out and piously reflect on one’s blessings. What a wonderful American Tradition!
Before I start to get all Oprah-cheesy, here is a recent poem about giving thanks aired on Prairie Home Companion this past weekend:
We are now beginning the countdown to Thanksgiving, our first big Married Couple hosting event. My husband thinks I am making too big a deal about this; he's right on a certain level. For example, I am not a cook, and I am afraid I will kill everyone with Botulism Bird. Rationally I know my husband won't let this happen because he is a cook, and my best friend (also a cook) says she will be on speed-dial, adding that my kitchen safety-related worries are over-rated, facilitated by animal rights groups and the Internet. Notice, however, cooks are telling me not to worry. They probably only suspect a portion of what are my kitchen-anxieties, deeply-rooted in Career Woman Who Never Learned to Cook syndrome. What makes it worse is the best cooks I know are career women & men. Thank goodness I will not be left alone in the kitchen.
I had jokingly offered Tofurkey as a menu alternative, to wit my husband responded, "Murder is Delicious." (How would Morrissey respond?) While I am Friend to the Animal Kingdom, I have to admit that I love leather shoes and holiday turkey; it's the other accompanying anxieties of holiday entertaining. I love my family; don't get me wrong. In fact it's because I love them so much, I want everything to be perfect. It won't be. I know this, but I am a perfectionist in recovery. Off to the grocery store! Wish me luck!
As we enter the less-than-one week countdown to the wedding, we finally picked our last poem today to be read at our ceremony. It’s surprising how much I dislike most poetry about love when it’s love of another person. Poetry is good when it’s about God, loss, sex, regret, death, irony, writing, or the family pet. But finding another poem about love after we had already found one? How the second had eluded us, words of love without the tang of saccharine, the ring of the facile and obvious. Until today.
Then this afternoon, we met with the minister to discuss, among other things, our ceremony. It became a discussion of context and language: scripture to be read or not read in full or not at all, lines we wanted taken out of the service, all in light of "the cultural milieu" (the minister’s phrase not mine), and our own consideration for our own integrity and all those dearly beloveds who will witness our happy day.
All this wrestling with language made me realize tonight that I had not written much in the last two months.
I had turned outward to direct experience and inward, not willing to share in writing what I had been feeling (sorry Gentle Reader), but happy to let others do the writing.
Two days ago I started writing again. A new friend told me about a writing exercise where you handwrite 4 pages every morning without stopping. Supposedly it's to "unblock" your Inner (Read: Nasty) Editor. So I started writing. Only few interesting insights have appeared on the pages in the midst of mostly boring stuff.
Yet I will keep writing.
This past weekend as my Husband-to-Be coped with his Wife-to-Be's pack rat ways (see above photo of former home office as Exhibit A), what emerged from The Merging of Things were characters in folders of unfinished stories and one pretty room, a room of my own, a room where the writing will once again occur.
My Love has given me many gifts but what a gift this new room is. A quiet clean place for words.
