Yes folks, it's that time of year when I contemplate what we will have to start Thanksgiving dinner. In years past, it was simple. We started with Cranberry Cocktail, a recipe my mother has made since I can remember. In fact, until probably around 1998 or so, she made it for Thanksgiving and brought it to our house for the celebration. Probably around that same time, the younger generation began to indicate that they really didn't like it all that much. Hmmmmmm. I have a comment written by one of that generation, who shall remain nameless (Sarah) who wrote right on my recipe card, "Yummy, Highly recommendable."
So, after the moaning and groaning began, we tried other "starters," such as squash soup, crackers and cheese, etc. In 2005, after my trip to Ukraine, I made borscht. That went over almost as well as the Cranberry Cocktail. Last year, I think I remember buying already-made squash soup and heating it up. How tacky.
This year, I'm feeling particularly nostalgic for lost traditions, and, since it very well may be my mom's last Thanksgiving with us, I have unilaterally decided (since I am the only one here, anyway) to make the dreaded Cranberry Cocktail. Here are a few differences between the way my mother made it and my proposed dish.
1. She made several gallons of it. It often lasted in the fridge until Christmas. I am making barely enough for a small serving for each of us.
2. She peeled (!!!) a ton of grapes (and seeded them in the days before seedless grapes were invented) ((Yes, I am that old.))
3. She included chunks of grapefruit, which really did taste awful mixed with the cranberry
We'll see how my recipe holds up with the younger set this year.
1. Small amount
2. Regular green grapes cut in half
3. Only oranges, no grapefruit
4. Slice banana into the dish just before serving. Voila, the first course is almost ready to eat, as we speak. The cranberries have been cooked and sieved, the sugar has been added and the lovely red mixture is cooling (chillin') in the fridge, ready for the fruit to be added tomorrow. I bet it would be good with some kind of liqeur added to it......hmmmmm...there's really old Amaretto in the cupboard....(just kidding).
What could be next? For Christmas, there was always mom's strawberry jello with cream cheese salad.........
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Winter has come to northern New Hampshire
Today reminded me of why I am happy I live in southern NH. Not that I don't love northern NH, because I do. I just don't want to live here. It is cold: 20 degrees with a 15 mph wind. Snow covers the ground from Groveton to Pittsburg. It is barren; most of all, it is COLD.
Yesterday I drove up through Franconia Notch, where the air was thick with snow, but nothing had really accumulated on the road, and once through the Notch, as is so often the case, the snow stopped, and it was just cloudy. A highlight of the trip was seeing a large flock of wild turkeys in a large field just outside of Whitefield. A big highlight was discovering that the restaurant in the motel is open (it had been closed last year), so I didn't have to venture out in the cold to get dinner.
A lowlight was the fact that the hot tub is broken and the women's locker room had little heat. The large pool, however, was a big highlight.
Today was......interesting!! The wild kingdom highlight was a gorgeous pheasant standing beside the road, green feathers on head and neck sort of irridescent as he turned his head. If the road had not been slick in spots where cars had packed the snow, I would have tried to stop and take a picture.
Somewhere on the road between Colebrook and the Poore Farm (my first destination) I passed the 45th parallel, which is noted by an historic marker. I couldn't stop to read what the marker said, but visited Google when I got back, and discovered that I was halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. If you ask me, I was much closer to the North Pole than to the Equator!! A milestone of sorts, and one I'm not sure I've crossed before. Check it out on Wikipedia.
The Poore Farm is a wreck of a house, built in the 1830s, and lived in from about 1850 to 1980 by the same family. A family of savers of stuff, of everything, of letters, newspapers, tools, clothes, of STUFF from every generation of the family. All of it was there in this house when it was taken over by a group who wants to preserve it. This was a vision of my house gone very, very wrong. (See my previous entry on harpsichords and orange blossoms). I will not soon forget the way this place looked today, even after tons of junk has been carted away.
There are other reasons I won't forget it......the temperature inside the house was the same as outside, and though I had dressed "warmly" in layers, my fingers turned white and froze inside my gloves, and my toes were well on the way to frostbite by the end of an hour and a half of touring the wreckage of this place. Though I was assured that the foundation of the house is stable, the floors sag badly and many of the ancient plaster walls looked like only the stained floral wallpaper was holding them together....sort of.
The barn is in better condition, and holds an interesting assortment of displays which reveal the huge array of artifacts saved by this family. There was everything from the old farming implements to early maple sugar taps, a recreated Civil War campsite (one family member fought for the Union Army and lived to come home with a pack full of.....stuff), a display of patent medicine bottles, labels, advertising flyers, a display of circus posters.....and on and on. By the time we were finished in the barn, the 3 of us were so cold our lips could hardly move......We huddled in the only heated area, a small hut where they collect admission fees until we had thawed out enough to go out and start our cars.
The best part was still to come, and that was going with one of the board members back to Colebrook to Le Rendevous bakery where we bought hot split pea soup and homemade bread and proceeded to her house to eat lunch. One of the worst moments came when I tried to get in her car to ride from Colebrook to her home, and her dog, a large Bouvier (sp) lunged, snarling at me from the back seat. I have never closed a car door quite as quickly as I did at that moment. She calmed the dog, but I have to say that I was a bit scared of trying to get in the car again. All's well that ends well, and the dog and I became "acquaintances," if not friends.
This woman turned out to be a kindred spirit. She has been working for 8 years transcribing the collection of letters and diaries found in the Poore Farm. She has also identified and catalogued all the clothing, which of course begins with garments from the earliest days and ends with the garments of the last woman to live in the house in the 1960s. The letters and diaries are what held my interest, and I would frankly like to give up everything else I'm doing and sit and read the Civil War letters written to and from John Calvin Poore, who saw a lot of action in the war and wrote fascinating letters home.
After an enjoyable (and warm) 2 hours, I was on my way to Pittsburg, where I had another great meeting at the tiny high school there - typical graduating classes have 10 to 20 students. The librarian and the social studies teacher are eager to involve their students in some oral history gathering, and so we talked about that project, and I think they have a good plan in place. There's not much to the town of Pittsburg, but it has some interesting history, and people who are eager to try to engage students in the life and history of their community.
Back in the car, I descend past the 45th parallel, and at least am headed toward the Equator again. It was a horizon-broadening day for me, for sure. I passed the "Douanes" sign for people coming down from Canada; I managed to avoid being shot by the hunters who are everywhere; I saw the telltale signs of an economy headed toward the Equator - snowmobiles for sale in many front yards - ; I have yet to see a moose, though I tried to be vigilant, especially wherever there were "Moosecrossing" signs. I suppose that the Moose don't always know that there are certain places where they are supposed to cross the road........
Yesterday I drove up through Franconia Notch, where the air was thick with snow, but nothing had really accumulated on the road, and once through the Notch, as is so often the case, the snow stopped, and it was just cloudy. A highlight of the trip was seeing a large flock of wild turkeys in a large field just outside of Whitefield. A big highlight was discovering that the restaurant in the motel is open (it had been closed last year), so I didn't have to venture out in the cold to get dinner.
A lowlight was the fact that the hot tub is broken and the women's locker room had little heat. The large pool, however, was a big highlight.
Today was......interesting!! The wild kingdom highlight was a gorgeous pheasant standing beside the road, green feathers on head and neck sort of irridescent as he turned his head. If the road had not been slick in spots where cars had packed the snow, I would have tried to stop and take a picture.
Somewhere on the road between Colebrook and the Poore Farm (my first destination) I passed the 45th parallel, which is noted by an historic marker. I couldn't stop to read what the marker said, but visited Google when I got back, and discovered that I was halfway between the Equator and the North Pole. If you ask me, I was much closer to the North Pole than to the Equator!! A milestone of sorts, and one I'm not sure I've crossed before. Check it out on Wikipedia.
The Poore Farm is a wreck of a house, built in the 1830s, and lived in from about 1850 to 1980 by the same family. A family of savers of stuff, of everything, of letters, newspapers, tools, clothes, of STUFF from every generation of the family. All of it was there in this house when it was taken over by a group who wants to preserve it. This was a vision of my house gone very, very wrong. (See my previous entry on harpsichords and orange blossoms). I will not soon forget the way this place looked today, even after tons of junk has been carted away.
There are other reasons I won't forget it......the temperature inside the house was the same as outside, and though I had dressed "warmly" in layers, my fingers turned white and froze inside my gloves, and my toes were well on the way to frostbite by the end of an hour and a half of touring the wreckage of this place. Though I was assured that the foundation of the house is stable, the floors sag badly and many of the ancient plaster walls looked like only the stained floral wallpaper was holding them together....sort of.
The barn is in better condition, and holds an interesting assortment of displays which reveal the huge array of artifacts saved by this family. There was everything from the old farming implements to early maple sugar taps, a recreated Civil War campsite (one family member fought for the Union Army and lived to come home with a pack full of.....stuff), a display of patent medicine bottles, labels, advertising flyers, a display of circus posters.....and on and on. By the time we were finished in the barn, the 3 of us were so cold our lips could hardly move......We huddled in the only heated area, a small hut where they collect admission fees until we had thawed out enough to go out and start our cars.
The best part was still to come, and that was going with one of the board members back to Colebrook to Le Rendevous bakery where we bought hot split pea soup and homemade bread and proceeded to her house to eat lunch. One of the worst moments came when I tried to get in her car to ride from Colebrook to her home, and her dog, a large Bouvier (sp) lunged, snarling at me from the back seat. I have never closed a car door quite as quickly as I did at that moment. She calmed the dog, but I have to say that I was a bit scared of trying to get in the car again. All's well that ends well, and the dog and I became "acquaintances," if not friends.
This woman turned out to be a kindred spirit. She has been working for 8 years transcribing the collection of letters and diaries found in the Poore Farm. She has also identified and catalogued all the clothing, which of course begins with garments from the earliest days and ends with the garments of the last woman to live in the house in the 1960s. The letters and diaries are what held my interest, and I would frankly like to give up everything else I'm doing and sit and read the Civil War letters written to and from John Calvin Poore, who saw a lot of action in the war and wrote fascinating letters home.
After an enjoyable (and warm) 2 hours, I was on my way to Pittsburg, where I had another great meeting at the tiny high school there - typical graduating classes have 10 to 20 students. The librarian and the social studies teacher are eager to involve their students in some oral history gathering, and so we talked about that project, and I think they have a good plan in place. There's not much to the town of Pittsburg, but it has some interesting history, and people who are eager to try to engage students in the life and history of their community.
Back in the car, I descend past the 45th parallel, and at least am headed toward the Equator again. It was a horizon-broadening day for me, for sure. I passed the "Douanes" sign for people coming down from Canada; I managed to avoid being shot by the hunters who are everywhere; I saw the telltale signs of an economy headed toward the Equator - snowmobiles for sale in many front yards - ; I have yet to see a moose, though I tried to be vigilant, especially wherever there were "Moosecrossing" signs. I suppose that the Moose don't always know that there are certain places where they are supposed to cross the road........
Sunday, November 16, 2008
The $209.00 Rose
The days continue, each one as strange as the next.....or so it seems to me. Last Friday featured a visit from the chimney sweep and his helper at 8 am. After they spread drop cloths from the front door to the fireplace, across the newly-shampooed rug (here's a shout out to Gino Bertini), the younger man started to clean the fireplace chimney, while I went to the basement with the older man. He has a wood furnace just like mine, so we had a good chat about heating with wood, and I said I was looking forward to a warmer house this winter. We shared stories of what happens when a particular valve sticks open and heat, heat, heat pours into the house. We've had days when the windows and doors had to be open in the middle of winter and everyone wore t-shirts! But I digress.
One of the things the sweep had to do was take the wood furnace pipe and the oil furnace pipe out of the flue to inspect that chimney. When he did, he called me downstairs. The news wasn't good. The ceramic tile chimney liner is crumbling and there were large holes visible between the liner and the chimney wall, a situation which could be dangerous in the event of a wood fire that is too hot, and allowing the possibility of carbon monoxide in the oil furnace exhaust to leach into the "guts of the chimney" and then into the house. I'm not so worried about that, but I'm distressed that I need to have a new liner, which may cost anything from $1500.00 - $3000.00 dollars. Hmmm, that renders heating with wood a whole lot more expensive than it was going to be......plus, he says I shouldn't run the wood furnace until the chimney is re-lined.
So, feeling somewhat bummed out, I bid farewell to the chimney sweep, and closed the front door. The cost of cleaning the chimney was $209.00. I went back to my computer, only to hear a knock on the front door. The older sweep was on the front porch, holding a single, long-stemmed red rose. "Here," he said, handing me the rose. "This will brighten up your day."
And it did.
One of the things the sweep had to do was take the wood furnace pipe and the oil furnace pipe out of the flue to inspect that chimney. When he did, he called me downstairs. The news wasn't good. The ceramic tile chimney liner is crumbling and there were large holes visible between the liner and the chimney wall, a situation which could be dangerous in the event of a wood fire that is too hot, and allowing the possibility of carbon monoxide in the oil furnace exhaust to leach into the "guts of the chimney" and then into the house. I'm not so worried about that, but I'm distressed that I need to have a new liner, which may cost anything from $1500.00 - $3000.00 dollars. Hmmm, that renders heating with wood a whole lot more expensive than it was going to be......plus, he says I shouldn't run the wood furnace until the chimney is re-lined.
So, feeling somewhat bummed out, I bid farewell to the chimney sweep, and closed the front door. The cost of cleaning the chimney was $209.00. I went back to my computer, only to hear a knock on the front door. The older sweep was on the front porch, holding a single, long-stemmed red rose. "Here," he said, handing me the rose. "This will brighten up your day."
And it did.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Sucker? Who, me?
I scarcely know where to begin. Probably at the beginning.....however, it's tempting to start by saying that I already know that I'm going to hell because I have occasionally used my handicapped parking permit (issued because of my mom) when I haven't been able to find a parking space.....so NOW, I'm also going to vacuum cleaner hell......
This is an old story. One that many others have experienced. It's called almost total humiliation at the hands of the Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. They ask you to vaccum before they arrive. That's so they can re-vacuum your rug, your floor, your piano keys and your chairs to show you over and over how poorly your vacuum cleaner (and by implication you as a vacuumer) performs. They even spill baking soda all over your floor and rug and show just how much your vacuum cleaner leaves behind......ah, my poor expensive Sears Kenmore.....how badly you clean the dust, the dust mites, the allergens, the pet dander, the dead skin cells and all the accumulated crap of 20 years or so which is lodged in the living room rug.
The hook? Well, I was on my way out the door to go visit my mother when the 2 front men arrived and offered to shampoo my rug for free, if I would allow them to demo the vacuum cleaner. The rug shampooer was FREE along with the vacuum cleaner only on this day, and they wanted to do it. I told them that I knew that I didn't want to buy their vacuum cleaner, but I did need my rug cleaned. I walked them in to look at the many stains from cat throw-up, to make sure they really wanted to do this for me. They did. So.....off I went, planning to return by 4:30 so they could do their darndest to clean my rug.
Much to my surprise, a third man, Gino Bertini was the one who showed up to do the demo and shampoo. He kept reminding me that he didn't come along with this fabulous, 17 different-machines-in-one-vacuum cleaner. He was a very enthusiastic demonstrater, and after about an hour, he had covered my rug with round white pieces of filter paper covered with......the above mentioned accumulation of crap. It was pretty clear that I am a bad housekeeper and I use an inferior vacuum cleaner. To show what a nice guy he was, he threw in a free shampoo of my recliner chair, after he vacuumed all the dead skin off of it. About this time, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry......ha ha. And speaking of ha, ha, ha, his cell phone rang in the middle of the chair shampoo, and it was his mother calling. He got off the phone quickly, but that precipitated over 45 minutes of his life story, his mother's brain aneurysm, his father on oxygen, his deadbeat older brother living at home for 2 years and not paying any rent and then his dead-beat ex-wife showing up with their 3 kids to move in to the parents' 2 bedroom condo, how this ex-wife person had stolen his (Gino's) wife's identity a few years earlier and it had taken them 2 years and $4000.00 to straighten that mess out........Wow! No vacuuming or shampooing took place during this narrative. After a glass of juice (by this time he was pretty worked up and sweating profusely), he began to work on the most obvious of the cat throw-up stains. Oh, did I mention that it is now 7:00 p.m. and we've been at this for 2 1/2 hours????
While the shampoo is working its way into the fibers of my gross rug, he gives me the run-down on how cheap he is going to make this purchase for me. The price to start was $1995.00. He could subtract the shampooer for $250, give me a $200.00 trade-in on my vacuum and the crapola Dirt Devil I have in the basement; I got a discount for being "elderly," and for being a member of AARP. And on top of that, he was willing to subtract $100.00 of his $160.00 commission to bring the price down to something like a measley $1200.00. What did I think? I said, no, I didn't want to buy the vacuum. On the other hand, I hadn't had my rug shampooed yet either. What to do, what to do? I told him I didn't have the money. He offered an interest free loan. I said no. He asked what it would take? I said nothing. I didn't want to buy a new vacuum cleaner.
Fortunately for me, his cell phone rang again, and it was the 2 front men, having found another live one. He told them to come get him to do the next demo, and asked one of them to stay and shampoo my rug. Wow, I dodged a big bullet on that, I thought. I was going to get my rug shampooed after all......Before Gino left, though, he took me aside and said sotto voce, that if I wanted the machine, I should call him, and he would get the head guy, to give it to me at his cost, which was $1000.00. By now, it was 7:30, and all I wanted was to get my rug cleaned and get them out so I could eat dinner. At 8:30, I breathed a big sigh of relief, having fended off several other sales pitches from Zack, the shampooer.
Oh yeah, how could I forget.....I had to give names and phone numbers of people to call, and that's where the vacuum cleaner hell comes in. I went down the list of people at my former place of employment, and chose people I wasn't particularly fond of, and put their names and phone numbers on the list.......sorry guys! If you have 4 hours, you get a good looking rug and chair out of the deal.
This is an old story. One that many others have experienced. It's called almost total humiliation at the hands of the Kirby vacuum cleaner salesman. They ask you to vaccum before they arrive. That's so they can re-vacuum your rug, your floor, your piano keys and your chairs to show you over and over how poorly your vacuum cleaner (and by implication you as a vacuumer) performs. They even spill baking soda all over your floor and rug and show just how much your vacuum cleaner leaves behind......ah, my poor expensive Sears Kenmore.....how badly you clean the dust, the dust mites, the allergens, the pet dander, the dead skin cells and all the accumulated crap of 20 years or so which is lodged in the living room rug.
The hook? Well, I was on my way out the door to go visit my mother when the 2 front men arrived and offered to shampoo my rug for free, if I would allow them to demo the vacuum cleaner. The rug shampooer was FREE along with the vacuum cleaner only on this day, and they wanted to do it. I told them that I knew that I didn't want to buy their vacuum cleaner, but I did need my rug cleaned. I walked them in to look at the many stains from cat throw-up, to make sure they really wanted to do this for me. They did. So.....off I went, planning to return by 4:30 so they could do their darndest to clean my rug.
Much to my surprise, a third man, Gino Bertini was the one who showed up to do the demo and shampoo. He kept reminding me that he didn't come along with this fabulous, 17 different-machines-in-one-vacuum cleaner. He was a very enthusiastic demonstrater, and after about an hour, he had covered my rug with round white pieces of filter paper covered with......the above mentioned accumulation of crap. It was pretty clear that I am a bad housekeeper and I use an inferior vacuum cleaner. To show what a nice guy he was, he threw in a free shampoo of my recliner chair, after he vacuumed all the dead skin off of it. About this time, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry......ha ha. And speaking of ha, ha, ha, his cell phone rang in the middle of the chair shampoo, and it was his mother calling. He got off the phone quickly, but that precipitated over 45 minutes of his life story, his mother's brain aneurysm, his father on oxygen, his deadbeat older brother living at home for 2 years and not paying any rent and then his dead-beat ex-wife showing up with their 3 kids to move in to the parents' 2 bedroom condo, how this ex-wife person had stolen his (Gino's) wife's identity a few years earlier and it had taken them 2 years and $4000.00 to straighten that mess out........Wow! No vacuuming or shampooing took place during this narrative. After a glass of juice (by this time he was pretty worked up and sweating profusely), he began to work on the most obvious of the cat throw-up stains. Oh, did I mention that it is now 7:00 p.m. and we've been at this for 2 1/2 hours????
While the shampoo is working its way into the fibers of my gross rug, he gives me the run-down on how cheap he is going to make this purchase for me. The price to start was $1995.00. He could subtract the shampooer for $250, give me a $200.00 trade-in on my vacuum and the crapola Dirt Devil I have in the basement; I got a discount for being "elderly," and for being a member of AARP. And on top of that, he was willing to subtract $100.00 of his $160.00 commission to bring the price down to something like a measley $1200.00. What did I think? I said, no, I didn't want to buy the vacuum. On the other hand, I hadn't had my rug shampooed yet either. What to do, what to do? I told him I didn't have the money. He offered an interest free loan. I said no. He asked what it would take? I said nothing. I didn't want to buy a new vacuum cleaner.
Fortunately for me, his cell phone rang again, and it was the 2 front men, having found another live one. He told them to come get him to do the next demo, and asked one of them to stay and shampoo my rug. Wow, I dodged a big bullet on that, I thought. I was going to get my rug shampooed after all......Before Gino left, though, he took me aside and said sotto voce, that if I wanted the machine, I should call him, and he would get the head guy, to give it to me at his cost, which was $1000.00. By now, it was 7:30, and all I wanted was to get my rug cleaned and get them out so I could eat dinner. At 8:30, I breathed a big sigh of relief, having fended off several other sales pitches from Zack, the shampooer.
Oh yeah, how could I forget.....I had to give names and phone numbers of people to call, and that's where the vacuum cleaner hell comes in. I went down the list of people at my former place of employment, and chose people I wasn't particularly fond of, and put their names and phone numbers on the list.......sorry guys! If you have 4 hours, you get a good looking rug and chair out of the deal.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
The Pacifist In Me
I'm always surprised at the things that get a reaction from deep in my gut. I know that I'm opposed to war, but sometimes I find that my opposition sneaks up and surprises me.
A couple of days ago I got an email that featured photographs of the USS New York, a new warship. The unusual thing about this warship is that it was constructed out of the scrap metal recovered from the World Trade Center. On one level, I could appreciate the recycling of that material, and that it was probably somewhat labor intensive to create something out of masses of tangled scrap. Or maybe not, if all the steel was just put in a large smelter and reconstituted.
Aside from the "ingenuity" of it, I found myself feeling saddened and offended, that someone thought it was a good idea to use the World Trade Center remains to make a weapon of war. Under the last of the photos was the caption: "It is the fifth in a new class of warship - designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft." This ship is a massive new weapon in the war on terror. Why don't we realize that war IS terror?
I know my reaction to this is heavily colored by the fact that my next-door-neighbor's brother was killed in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices on 9/11, and her parents were the ones to write the NY Times to say to the whole country, "Don't retaliate in our son's name. Don't bring this kind of pain and anguish to other families." Another one of my friends, who lost her husband on one of the planes that flew into the Trade Center is a founding member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Through these people, I have met others who lost their loved ones on 9/11, but who have chosen to pursue a pathway to healing through forgiveness. They have worked tirelessly to forge connections with others around the world who are working for peace through understanding and education. They have raised my consciousness regarding the human capacity to forgive, to "love your enemy as yourself," and to witness for peace every day.
Could we have used the 24 tons of steel to build a school or hospitall? Could we have used the steel to build new bridges in this country or to help rebuild the bridges we have wrecked in Iraq? Why did we have to use the wreckage of so many human lives to create another weapon which may be instrumental in wrecking more lives?
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, " Wars make poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." I would amend that to say, "Warships make poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."
A couple of days ago I got an email that featured photographs of the USS New York, a new warship. The unusual thing about this warship is that it was constructed out of the scrap metal recovered from the World Trade Center. On one level, I could appreciate the recycling of that material, and that it was probably somewhat labor intensive to create something out of masses of tangled scrap. Or maybe not, if all the steel was just put in a large smelter and reconstituted.
Aside from the "ingenuity" of it, I found myself feeling saddened and offended, that someone thought it was a good idea to use the World Trade Center remains to make a weapon of war. Under the last of the photos was the caption: "It is the fifth in a new class of warship - designed for missions that include special operations against terrorists. It will carry a crew of 360 sailors and 700 combat-ready Marines to be delivered ashore by helicopters and assault craft." This ship is a massive new weapon in the war on terror. Why don't we realize that war IS terror?
I know my reaction to this is heavily colored by the fact that my next-door-neighbor's brother was killed in the Cantor Fitzgerald offices on 9/11, and her parents were the ones to write the NY Times to say to the whole country, "Don't retaliate in our son's name. Don't bring this kind of pain and anguish to other families." Another one of my friends, who lost her husband on one of the planes that flew into the Trade Center is a founding member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. Through these people, I have met others who lost their loved ones on 9/11, but who have chosen to pursue a pathway to healing through forgiveness. They have worked tirelessly to forge connections with others around the world who are working for peace through understanding and education. They have raised my consciousness regarding the human capacity to forgive, to "love your enemy as yourself," and to witness for peace every day.
Could we have used the 24 tons of steel to build a school or hospitall? Could we have used the steel to build new bridges in this country or to help rebuild the bridges we have wrecked in Iraq? Why did we have to use the wreckage of so many human lives to create another weapon which may be instrumental in wrecking more lives?
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, " Wars make poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." I would amend that to say, "Warships make poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows."
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