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Crime isn’t Anonymous

23 Monday Jul 2012

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Monday morning, we start the work week by going around the table and sharing a highlight from our weekend. I’m always quick to share what I harvested from our garden. Others relate enjoyable get-togethers with family and friends.

This morning, however, our zeal for sharing quickly fizzled. A designer in New York lamented she’d had a difficult weekend. She blurted out she knew the man who was celebrating his birthday when he was shot at the premier of the new Batman movie in an Aurora, Colorado theater.

Having read numerous articles about the horrific tragedy, I knew she was referring to 27-year old Alex Sullivan.

Crime isn’t anonymous.

When I heard about the shooting on Friday evening, I drew a mental picture of Colorado, many states away. Just a few days later, the distance drew closer, hearing the angst from a woman, across the nation in New York.

And this evening, I learned my stepson’s sister who lives in Colorado had a friend who was planning to go to the premier. She changed her mind at the last-minute.

No crime is anonymous.

Invocation #15: September 11, 1984

27 Wednesday Jun 2012

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In today’s world, O Lord, our ears are constantly assailed with reports of corruption, greed, self-serving, and our eyes with the sight of violence, moral degradation, self-destruction, and we despair for the fate of humankind.

Yet, in this room, is a group of women who after years of homemaking, child rearing, and labors in the marketplace, are now devoting their selves, their time, and their effort to working for the common good.

And here too, is a roomful of faithful supporters.

Give us, O Lord, groups of dedicated workers, and rooms full of willing helpers to place all over your land, and you will not despair for your humankind.

It will survive. With honor.

My grandmother wrote this invocation 17 years before September 11, 2001. Humankind has survived, and continues to thrive, but not without the violence, moral degradation, self-destruction, and despair.

Planes were high jacked. Buildings toppled. Lives lost, and wars begun in retaliation.

Groups of dedicated workers and rooms full of willing helpers, from around the world, rushed to help. But not because of honor, but because humans, for the most part, are altruistic. They recognize their obligation to each other.

The problem is humans inherently split into groups, becoming more loyal to its members than the entirety of mankind. Terrorists are loyal to their factions’ dogmas, and resolve to preserve their ways-of-life, and safety and sanctity of their communities and families.

In this vein, they are no different than other groups of people who align themselves based on their ethnicity, religion, socio-economic standing, neighborhood, country, political bend, job role, and myriad of other defining characteristics and demographics.

Unless people look beyond themselves and the groups in which they’re aligned, there will continue to be despair for humankind.

Ten Cupcakes for Ten Years

26 Tuesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Entertainment, Sailing, Seattle

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Last Thursday, Rich and I celebrated our ten year “civil” wedding anniversary. In 2002, we had a “shotgun-like” wedding a week before Rich left for Austin, Texas. Two months later, we had a formal wedding at the Broetje House, in Milwaukie, Oregon.

Prior to leaving for Texas, Rich was getting push-back from IBM about our not yet being married. He feared they won’t my home furnishings unless there was a wedding band on my finger. Hence, three weeks after we’d jointly proposed to each other, in rinky-dink Mexican restaurant in a strip mall, Rich call me at Intel where I managed and wrote the Intel Home Computing website. He was going to pick me up in an hour to get our wedding license, and he’d made arrangements for us to get married the following afternoon at the county courthouse in Hillsboro, Oregon.

To this day, I don’t know how he had the correct paperwork, such as my birth certificate. Needless to say, I giggled all the way to the courthouse, and didn’t stop until the clerk handed us the license.

The next day, June 21st, summer solstice, was sticky and unusually hot. After work, with two hapless co-workers in tow, I changed into a sleeveless, green dress with large rust-colored roses, twisted my hair into a chignon, and firmly clutched my grandmother’s wedding ring and my father’s wedding band, which I’d taken out of storage the night before.

Rich wore a pale green, patterned silk shirt with off-white pants. He’d zipped by grocery store on the way to the courthouse to get a bouquet of flowers, sprayed green, and a matching boutonniere. They were tacky and fabulous at the same time.

Having forgotten his camera, Mike Jastad, his friend from IBM, and best man at both of our weddings, purchased a disposable camera.

We were married by Judge Don Letourneau who was gracious and understanding as we fumbled the rings (my grandmother’s was a bit too tight for my finger). Fifteen minutes later, we were husband and wife. Eck!

We thanked the three people who witnessed the wedding, celebrated by having Thai food, rushed back to Rich’s house, put on grungy clothing, and then stayed up until the wee hours, preparing for a yard sale we had the next day. As a married couple, our first order of business, which we achieved, was to sell stuff we didn’t need, including my beloved 12-year old Red Toyota Corolla. It didn’t have air conditioning so we decided sell it and not bring it to Texas.

Ten years later, we’re no less harried.

On Thursday, I’d planned to leave work earlier, but at the last minute had a call with a company who was making me a job offer (stay tuned for the details). After accepting the offer, and squealing in delight, I drove home.

Pinkabella cupcakesEarlier in the day, I’d stopped at Pinka Bella Cupcakes in Redmond Town Center to purchase ten different cupcakes to celebrate ten years of wedding bliss. Okay, ten years of adventures. Pinka Bella makes the most decadent, delectable, imaginatively decorated cupcakes in the entire Seattle/eastside area.

As I’m approaching our house, my cell phone rang. It was agency I hired to help with my mother. They’d had a home visit that afternoon and wanted to discuss the visit. I pulled into our driveway and started talking. As soon as I hung up, the woman whose been helping with my mother for the past few years called, wanting to report on what took place that afternoon.

Rich, realizing I was in the driveway, jumped into action, pulling my car into the garage and unloading my bags, including the cupcakes, which I had planned to present on the crystal platter that once held our wedding cake. I’d cleverly placed the platter in the back of my car the night before!

Deciphering Rich’s hand signals that we were running late, I said “good-bye” and rushed into the house. Rich then instructed me on what to wear for our celebratory evening. He was pulled clothes off the hanger, as I removed one set and put on another… jeans, two shirts, jacket, Converses…

We then scurried out the door, camera-in-hand, and headed towards downtown Seattle. When we parked near the water, I knew we’d be taking a boat. Sure enough, after scrumptious chowder in a hollowed-out sourdough bowl from Ivar’s, we walked to Pier 54 to take a sunset cruise on the 70-foot Obsession sailboat.

It was a beautiful night so I knew it was going to be a great experience. What I didn’t know is they’d allow Rich to sail the boat… for most of the trip! He had an amazing time, sailing in strong winds, through the Thursday night sailboat races near Shilshole Bay Marina, and then back to Pier 54.

After getting home, we split two cupcakes, raised our forks, and toasted ten years of adventure, accomplishments, and most of all love.

Inspired by Friends

13 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Rose's Writings

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A friend may help you “get there,” but an enemy will goad you into getting there faster and further.

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A friend’s co-worker, heartbroken just short weeks earlier because his wife divorced him, is now ready and eager to marry a divorcee he met in a bar. Rose_cropped

When he made the announcement, my friend was shocked and later repeated to me this conversation with him.

She asked, “Is that the place to go looking for a woman to marry? In a bar?”

He explained, “Why not? It’s a good a place as any. She’s lonesome, she’s got problems. She comes in for a few drinks, and to forget things for a while. I’m lonesome too. Two lonesome people met in a bar. So what?”

She inquired further, “Why don’t you join a club or go to church? You could meet a nice woman there.”

And he responded, “There are just as many fine people in bars as in church. Look at me. I’m a fine person.”

I’m inclined to second my friend’s attitude, but frankly, I’m not sure. Am I being too prim? Too intolerant?

Rose Ridnor

Julie-Approved Pizza

11 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by in Food and drink

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In an attempt to get Rich to eat more whole grains, I cunningly substitute brown rice for white, quinoa for orzo, and whole wheat for regular pasta. Of course, he always notices, and loudly protests, which does little to deter me from further trying to trick him into eating healthier!

One challenge was pizza. We’d been using the pizza mix from WinCo Foods, which comes in bulk. You simply measure three cups of the mix, add yeast, warm water, let proof, and then roll out. It’s simple to use, but made from enriched white flour.

The solution to healthy pizza came several months ago. While waiting for a meeting to begin, a vendor and I were chatting about food. He mentioned he regularly makes pizza dough from scratch. I commented it takes too long to proof, which is why I use the WinCo pizza mix.

“Ah,” he exclaimed, “Use BreadMachine RapidRise yeast.” According to him, it takes only an hour to proof, and can be done on the counter, rather than warm oven. He shared his recipe. I jotted down the ingredients and method, but didn’t write the proportions. Instead I’ve been using my “approximation” methods. He’s the recipe (more or less):

  • Add to a food processor:
    • 1.5 cups of whole wheat flour
    • 1.5 cups of white flour
    • Sugar (tablespoon or so)
    • Salt (teaspoon or so, I use Alaea sea salt from Hawaii)
    • Splash of olive oil
    • Italian seasoning (tablespoon or so, the mix I have contains thyme, garlic, marjoram, onion, rosemary, oregano, basil, savory, and sage
    • Heaping tablespoon of BreadMachine RapidRise yeast
    • Cup or so of warm water
  • Process until it forms a ball.
  • Let sit a few minutes.
  • Process again for a few seconds. The dough should be firm, but not sticky. Add more flour if sticky. Add more water if it’s too firm.
  • Dump into a large bowl with a bit of olive oil, roll into a ball and coat with olive oil.
  • Place in a warmed oven for an hour or cover with a towel on the counter.
  • Roll into a large round on a marble slab with flour, place on cookie sheet dusted with corn meal or pizza pan with holes.
  • Brush crust with finely chopped garlic and olive oil, and then sprinkle with more Italian seasoning.
  • Top with sauce, vegetables, cheese, meats, etc.
  • Bake at 425-degrees for 20 minutes.
  • Enjoy, knowing the crust is at least 50% whole wheat!

Check out above the pizza we made on Sunday and the proud chef! We topped the pizza with red, yellow and green peppers, scallions, red onions, tomatoes, mushrooms, kalamata olives, garlic, New York Style sausage, mozzarella cheese, and a bit of cheddar cheese for color.

There’s No Sense When It Comes to Westboro

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by in Seattle

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While driving to work this morning, I heard members of the homophobic Westboro Baptist Church will be picketing at the funeral of Gloria Koch Leonidas, a Bellevue woman who was killed last Wednesday during Ian Stawicki’s shooting rampage in downtown Seattle.

It’s unusual for church members to venture so far north to spread their message of hatred and intolerance. If I hadn’t lived in Texas, I may not have been aware of the Westboro Church and their determination to not only disrupt, but exacerbate the grief of mourners by picketing at memorial services and espousing everything from “god hates gays,” to “Jews killed Jesus,” and “Obama is the beast.”

I saw their impact on a sticky June afternoon. After ordering a cake for Rich’s and my anniversary, I was heading back to the Dell West Parmer campus. There were several cemeteries along the way, and as I approached one, I saw a long line of cars with police escorts. I noticed several cars pulling over and I did the same.

I remembered a funeral was being held that day for a young man who’d been killed in Iraq. It was early in the war when every death was significant, and not a regular occurrence. People still believed we’d be in-and-out of the country within months, Saddam Hussein brought to justice, ally troops hailed as heroes, a new president elected, and the country rebuilt and restored as a democracy.

With the air conditioning blasting, I watched as the motorcade drove by, half dozen motorcycle officers, followed by the hearse, several town cars, a long line of cars… and then a contingent of noisy motorcyclists, wearing black leather jackets, embroidered with the name of their groups. Dozens and dozens of cyclists. Clean-shaven and bearded men. Some with helmets and some with bandanas on their heads. Mixed in with the large, acoustically distinct Harley Davidsons were small bikes, some with women on them.

My first thought was of sadness. Sadness for the family that had to be burdened with knowing the Westboro Baptist Church was planning to show up at their son’s funeral. They suffered from the heartbreak of losing a child who was only a few years out of high school.

I was saddened the motorcyclists had to gather, perhaps missing work or neglecting obligations, to selflessly rev up their motorcycles’ engines to drown out the rants of the picketers.

And then I was angry.

A funeral should be a private affair. It’s a time to reflect on someone’s life, and based on one’s beliefs or relationship to the deceased, silently mourn, turn to others for support, or perhaps toast to a life well-lived.

The funeral procession I observed had swelled in size, not because people knew the young soldier, but to create a distraction, a noise barrier between the egotists from a church thousands of miles away who felt the need to force their misguided beliefs on others, the conviction “military funerals have become pagan orgies of idolatrous blasphemy, where they pray to the dunghill gods of Sodom & play taps to a fallen fool.”

As I watched the last motorcycle pass, I sat for a few minutes, the sun glaring through the window, and tried to make sense of the lunacy. But there was none.

As my days in Texas passed, I saw several motorcades for fallen soldiers, usually consisting of a brigade of motorcyclists, a growing necessity for high profile military funerals.

And now, the ugliness of the Westboro Church is coming to Seattle. Tomorrow, they will arrive, ready to spew their hatred, at the funeral for a mother of two. It simply doesn’t make sense.

Invocation #14: September 1984

31 Thursday May 2012

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It is said that we are the captain of our soul. That we alone plot the course, set the sail, and steer the tiller.

That is not so, we do not stand free to follow our charts. Our lives are entwined with the lives, the needs, even the demands of others.

There are times we are called upon to go where we don’t want to go; do what we don’t want to do; give more than is fair; be denied more than is just; to ask for less than we need; even to bear another’s burden.

As such times, O Lord, help us to hold back our angers; to accept, with grace and without rancor, what we cannot reject; to bend without breaking, and through it all to hold fast to the sanctity of our being, the worthiness of our lives, and to never relinquish to the full our station as captain of our soul — to hold onto the very last shred.

My grandmother was a remarkable deep thinker who after arriving at a philosophical conclusion spent considerable time come up with profound ways of expressing it. It’s sad that after so much effort, her writings were usually shuffled aside, or like this invocation, delivered to an audience, and then forgotten within minutes.

Her last statement, however, “to hold onto the very last shred,” is a thesis on her approach to life. When she broke her shoulder, late in life, she forged ahead, pushing through the pain and following through with her physical therapy plan until the shoulder healed and she returned to fully using both arms.

As her eyesight faded, with thick felt-tip pen in hand, she scribbled out her thoughts on large pads of paper. Much of what she wrote, in the last few years of her life, was impossible to read, her handwriting, reduced to jagged scrawls. But, she held on, determined to put her feelings on paper until her ship was no more.

Even though my grandparents had a long, peaceful marriage, dying within a year of each other, my grandmother at times, probably put on a “smiling face,” accepting with grace the station of her life, that of an adoring wife, mother, and skipper of the house. She bore the burdens of her husband’s seven eccentric sisters, and the melancholy of her three sisters, one who never married, another who tended to her handicapped son, the result of a suicide attempt gone wrong, and a third, contently married, but subdued by a well-meaning, but vivacious man whose personality, interests, and needs overpowered hers.

My grandmother’s brother, Ted Powell, was shuffled from household-to-household after her mother died, and her father, Solomon Powell, remarried the cousin of his first wife, Dora Sparks. Two more boys were born. The oldest, and undoubtedly smartest, Milton Powell, married young, had three children, and out of necessity, settled into a blue-collar job at a shipyard.

The youngest, Arthur L. Powell, went off to college (the only one in the family), found his fortune as a real estate developer (Kravco) and ended up developing the King of Prussia Mall, the largest shopping mall on the east coast, now part of the Simon Property Group. No one on the east coast was aware of Arthur’s success until recently when he wrote an autobiography of his life.

Of the seven children bore by Solomon Powell, only one truly plotted a course, set sail, steered the tiller, and became not only the captain of his soul, but a captain of industry. The rest, their lives caught up in circumstances, accepted what they couldn’t change… and like my grandmother wrote below, denied themselves, sometimes the simple pleasures in life.

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The first time Grandpa and I broke away from the kids and went to the movies by ourselves, we saw “You Can’t Take it With You.” I enjoyed it so much that it wasn’t until both children had seen the picture for themselves that I could stop regretting we had not taken them along.

And Grandpa and I never went alone to the movies until the kids had divorced themselves from us for “dates.” Silly, wasn’t it?

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The hen who cackles the loudest doesn’t necessarily lay the most eggs, but the rooster sure is going to know she’s around.

Invocation #13: August 1984

23 Wednesday May 2012

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Who’s living to long!

The young woman protests: The old live too long; they take too much; they deprive the young of life’s limited goods and services.

She is young, O Lord; has not yet the vision to see down the long road, or the wisdom to interpret what she sees.

She does not realize that no person comes into life with the proviso that they depart at a given time. On the contrary, nature endows us with the instinct for self-preservation; to hold on to life, doing whatever it take to prolong it.

If that means hospital beds, doctors, continuing care, who had the right to forbid it?

Living equates with consuming, needing; food, shelter, services. That equates to jobs and income for others; a contribution to society. Once dead the needs stop; contributions stop.

Today’s youth is tomorrow’s oldster. At what age will my young friend think she has lived long enough, and be willing to go?

O Lord, let not this young women begrudge us our years. Help her to see that, even to the last breath, the old contribute to life, and take nothing away.

For weeks, I’ve started to write the response to this invocation, but I keep returning to the premise that perhaps the “young woman” was me who thoughtlessly told my grandmother, “The old live too long; they take too much, they deprive the young of life’s limited goods and services.”

Eck!

I’ve become “today’s youth” who is rapidly turning into “tomorrow’s oldster,” and as such, clinging to the desire to appear spry enough to be a valued employee in a sea of younger, more desired workers. When a waiters calls my “madam,” I cringe. And my need “touch of my roots” is becoming a regular occurrence now that my lightly salt-and-peppered hair has turned into streaks of gray.

Even though Rich and I are frugal, and probably in no danger of ever becoming indigent, we worry constantly about whether our money will stretch enough to provide the food, shelter, services, and more importantly, healthcare we might need should we live into our eighties or with luck, nineties.

And ironically, few days pass when I don’t pine for my grandmother, yearning to speak with her, if only for a few minutes. But towards the end of her 90-years of life, when she’d grown frustrated with her failing eye sight, inability to write, and dwindling strength, I avoided calling her.

During this time, when we did talk, usually Sunday afternoons, she told me of her dreams, of winged angels. I told her to follow the angels, knowing they could free her from the anxiety of waking, and wondering what affliction would await her next.

And now, regrettably, I understand what she meant, when she wrote, “even to the last breath, the old contribute to live, and take nothing away.” I wish I’d told her just one more time how much she contributed to my life, and how little she asked for in return.

What to Do with a Nagging Cat

23 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in Rose's Writings

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If you have never been nagged by a cat, you cannot know what nagging is.

When a child gets on your nerves, you can threaten all sorts of dire punishment. Wait ‘til Daddy gets home; no dessert tonight; no TV; no going to Johnny’s birthday party.

All of which the child knows, from previous experience, you won’t carry out, but it grants him a moment to weigh the worthiness of his misbehavior.Rose_cropped

Or you can order, “Go to your room!” “Stand in the corner!” You can even turn him over and administer a spanking, which will smart your hand more than his rear-end, but at least the tension in you will be broken (to be replaced by self-nagging of reproach).

But what you can you do about a cat? Spank it? Stand it in a corner?

I might put him outdoors, but he will stand there raising such a howl, Siamese are extremely vocal, that for the sake of the neighbors, I’ll have to pull him in again.

So, I just lock myself in my room!

Rose Ridnor