Stuck

So there is a blog I subscribe to via my Google Reader (Meme Express) that delivers a daily prompt - one that most would-be writers are always in desperate need of, and that is a "topic."

I don't feel like I am an actual writer. It always seems like everyone else's words flow so much more easily than mine do. I have writing envy fairly frequently when I look at the posts of my more creative friends. Since I seem to have an incurable case of writer's block, the daily prompts from Meme Express are immensely helpful in just giving me something, anything, to go with, in the writing-is-a-skill-that-must-be-exercised kind of way. Some days are more difficult than others. Other days you think you know exactly what direction you will take and the next thing you know you are someplace completely different. I like those kinds of days.

Which is precisely what happened when they delivered "Baking" into my Reader:

I loved Grandma Z's cookies. The cinnamon, the spice, the molasses. The battle with my much older and bigger cousin over who would get more. He usually won because he lived in the same town as Grandma, whereas my family lived two hours away. These are simple cut out cookies - no fancy cookie cutters, just a glass. The ingredients are rustic - no butter or shortening, but honest-to-goodness lard. Not to mention strong, cold coffee. And they are amazing. They are even better one or two or more days after they've been pulled from the oven. The spices deepen and mellow and blend into the best ginger cookie you've ever had.

Having her recipe now, making them just like she did, decades after I first fell in love with them, reconnects me to a part of the family that isn't very connected. For a variety of reasons we aren't close to mom's side. It'd be easy to blame one person or side or family unit, but it's never that simple or easy, is it? More it's along the lines of you can pick your friends but not your family. Probably needless to say, but I doubt any of us would pick the others to be friends.

But Grandma's cookies somehow breach that gap. My aunt was so excited to share the recipe. We mail them out to family in California. We share them with the next generation, as a way to connect to the ones before.

Turns out that's what my grandmother was doing too. Come to find out all these years later the recipe was actually her mother's. It's no wonder my great-aunts and their kids loved them as much as we did - it was part of their family tradition as well. So technically they aren't Grandma Z's cookies, but rather Grandma C's.

The branches in our family tree will never be close - at least not in that idealized, Norman Rockwell sense. But we'll always have that recipe to bind us together. It's comforting to know that if all else fails, all other attempts at conversation falter, we can always come back to our love of those cookies.

Positive TV

Because honestly, there is enough of the negative. I know, I know, negative works. And I agree. But sometimes isn't it nice to say something nice?

The first decision is a telling one

When people run for President of the United States of America, they spend a lot of time making speeches, informing voters of their goals and their vision for America. They tell you what they are going to do in the future. Then the opposition usually takes it upon themselves to tell you what they have done in the past.

However, you can get a glimpse of the type of person the candidate is, and the type of decisions he (or someday she) will make, when confronted with choosing a running mate. You see what they consider important,and what type of person they want running with them.

In the case of 2008, apparently Senator Barack Obama considers it important to be connected to career politicians and seen as a Washington, D.C. insider. For a candidate to build his entire campaign on the words "hope and change" to then pick a running mate who is so clearly the antithesis to them has to be a bit... deflating for his followers. Senator Joe Biden has a long and distinguished career as an elected official - emphasis on the long, as he has been an elected official for 36 years. He's been a politician for longer than - 40%? - of the voting age population has even been alive. Apparently Barack Obama thinks he needs to reach out more to the liberal, white, upper-middle class, East Coast, straight-Democrat-ticket voters of America.

On the other hand, Senator McCain caught everyone off guard in his masterful pick of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin. Senator McCain, with his pick, told America this - I value women, I value blue collar workers (her parents were and her husband is). I value hard work, I value family (she has 5 kids!), I value Life, and I value the ability to stand up for what's right (her first act as governor was to put an end to the state of Alaska's participation in the ridiculous "Bridge to Nowhere," calling it a "waste of money.")

In other words, McCain showed America hope. And change. And he didn't resort to mere rhetoric, but demonstrated it through actions.

Like I said, the first decision is a telling one.

Do you know enough?

Taken for granted

That would be our first amendment rights - freedom of speech, freedom of the press and the right to peaceably assemble here in this country. People say stupid stuff here all the time that drives me nuts, but dang it, they have a right to say it. We have no idea what others have to go through to make their words heard... including prison.

Remind me again how China, that paragon of virtue and human rights, got to host the Olympics?

RIP, Estelle Getty

So I didn't love everything about the late 80s sit-com The Golden Girls (mainly because, hello, in the late 80s I was a teenager who couldn't really relate to the "golden" part of the girls), but Estelle Getty was one of the funniest comediennes out there. Her Sicilian grandmother character Sophia Petrillo was priceless.

So in honor of her willingness to do anything for a laugh, I leave you this:

Trading in the City of Washington for the City of God

Mr. JenX and I were remarking on what great "air time" God has received recently on calling two very public, and very publicly faithful, men Home.

We lost Tim Russert on June 13; we lost Tony Snow almost exactly a month later on July 12.

These two men - giants, really, in their professions, were admired, in part, because they were in the public eye. They seemingly had the world at their respective feet. But to me it is remarkable that each is remembered for so much more than what they did for a living (not an easy feat in the political world!).

They are remembered for their beliefs; their kindness; their sense of humor; their love of life; their love of friends, family and God.

The faith that each man lived out daily was well documented. Tim and Tony were the same people with those that loved them as they were with those that... didn't love them as much. That so many, from so many different walks of life, knew of the faith that Russert and Snow both held, is a tremendous testimony to each man, certainly, but also to the Lord they loved.

When God called each one home to Him, Washington saw an openness about faith and the role of God in both our public and our private lives that it hasn't experienced in a long-time. One could even say God generated some good buzz about Himself...

The president concluded his eulogy of his friend, Tony Snow, with “Tony Snow has left the City of Washington for the City of God.” (hat tip: K-Lo), and the same can be said of Tim Russert as well. Though I live in the Washington, D.C. area now, I look forward moving into their neighborhood some day.