Mock Spirooli Demo

Allow me to introduce (pull the curtains back, please) the magnificent, the one and only, the amazing…veggie-transformer!  Welcome please, the…..SPIROOLI! 

(applause, cheers, and wolf whistles erupt from audience)

Thank you, thank you. Now for a quick demonstration to show-off the spirooli’s unrivaled performance!

(demonstrator waves hands mystically, like a magician, and pulls a small white appliance from beneath a cape)

Here it is…my nifty hand-crank spirooli that spiral-slices veggies into shapes like long strands of curly spaghetti.  I literally impale a solid veggie (not hollow veggies, like peppers) on the shaft – something like this zucchini, for instance – and then push it from behind with a built-in plunger handle while cranking away with my other hand.  See how easy?  Out come lovely strands of raw zucchini that are SO fun to eat!

Please note this one majorly important spirooli-fact (drum roll, please): raw zucchini sliced this way no longer tastes like zucchini.  Honestly.  It’s a mysterious fact, and yet…zucchini evolves into something close to an exotic seaweed grown off the shores of some tranquil, remote island in the tropics.  (This is obviously a mind game, but feel free to play along with me.)

I suppose this perception is mostly the result of a change in “mouth feel” – that illusive quality that makes round steak seem different than ground round (burger), or baked potatoes different from mashed.  Spirooli-ed zucchini?  It becomes very exciting, and so INTERESTING.  Yes.  Zucchini.   Exciting.  Interesting. Try using a spirooli in your kitchen; you won’t be sorry!

Last night I made a salad to take to today’s buffet luncheon with friends – a spirooli zucchini salad.  Here’s the finished salad garnished with freshly grated asiago cheese and spirooli-cut, curly-q carrot ringlets.  They loved it!  Exotic?  Absolutely.

Lexiphile Exposed!

Lexiphile: what a creepy-sounding word.  AND, guess what?  A friend recently used it in an email…gulp…to define ME! 

Really?  Yes, REALLY.  It sounded suspicious and probably incriminating as well, starting with a sinister L-E-X. The very first thing that came to mind was Lex Luthor,  the fictitious power-hungry super villain and brilliant evil scientist who plots to kill Superman and dominate the world.  Verbalizing the name Lex sounds almost like a hissing snake: LEX-S-S-S-S-s-s-s-s-s….

And what of the rest of the word, the suffix “phile”?  Doesn’t that have to do with some sort of obsession or affinity to something?  Isn’t a word with “phile” in it rubbing elbows with a phobia?  Shudder.  A phobia with Lex Luthor.  I’m doomed.

This word, lexiphile, creeped me out, I tell you.  But alas, I’d been dubbed with a new title, and so felt compelled to verify its meaning.  Good or bad, I had to KNOW.

Google is such a good friend, and so quick to set things straight!  Thank-you Google, for always being at my fingertips – literally.  You explained to me that a lexiphile is not someone obsessed with Lex Luthor after all, but rather a person who is a lover of words and word-plays!  Ah.  The lex must come from a linguistics point of view.  Now I remember: the lexicon of a language is its vocabulary, including both words and expressions.

So.  Lexiphile.  Maybe that would be me after all.

Following is a list of sentences that might interest anyone reading this who might be flirting with lexiphilian tendancies:

The guy who fell onto an upholstery machine was fully re-covered.

Those who get too big for their britches will be exposed in the end.

You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuna fish.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger, then it hit me.

 To write with a broken pencil is pointless.

When fish are in schools they sometimes take debate.

A thief who stole a calendar got twelve months.

The professor discovered her theory of earthquakes was on shaky ground.

The batteries were given out free of charge.

After a dentist and a manicurist married, they fought tooth and nail.

A will is a dead give-away.

A boiled egg is hard to beat.

When you’ve seen one shopping center, you’ve seen a mall.

A bicycle can’t stand alone; it is two-tired.

Macho-Men

Tonight at a family birthday party we celebrated with streamers, a sumptuous dinner, gifts, and a raspberry-filled chocolate cake….oh, and homemade hats, those old-fashioned pirate-style party hats made from folded newspaper.  I found the men in our midst especially stunning, don’t you agree?

Christmas is Coming - with More

A sparkly blanket of crystalline snow covers the ground.  The lake’s inlet wears a thin sheet of ice.  An annoyingly cute squirrel insists on raiding sunflower seeds from our birdfeeder.  It is cold.  It is winter.

But even more, it is the season of Advent. Christmas is coming, ready or not: gifts or not; cards or not; carols or not; cookies, wassail, roasted chestnuts, turkey and pumpkin pie or not.  Christmas is coming, ready or not: hardened or quickened hearts or not; questing or self-absorbed hearts or not; hopeful or despairing hearts or not. Christmas will soon be here.

For so long, I didn’t get it. Christmas stood alone as the well-lit, decorated season of goodwill and cheer - a time to share good things, good wishes, good food, and good times with others.  The time for pretty tinsel, beautiful china, flickering candles, and aromatic smells in the kitchen.  I didn’t know the much, much larger story. I didn’t understand how the first Christmas altered the world forever with long-awaited, long-predicted, long-expected hope.  How it changed the course of history.  How it promised to rewrite the end of the story for humanity.

Perhaps I’m just beginning to get it, because every year there’s more.  More humility, wonder, and awe. More grace, mercy, and compassion.  More understanding, insight, and heart-stirrings.  More mystery, and more faith to match it.  More confidence, and more willingness to share it.

Christmas is coming, bringing more than before.  More life, more light.  More for me.  More for you.

At sunset just now, shadows crawled across our deck.  Darkness is coming, but eternal night will not prevail.  “When Jesus spoke again to the people, He said, ‘I am the light of the world.  Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.’”  John 8:12

A Reformed Grinch

A couple of days ago I chauffeured our 3-year-old granddaughter to weekly library story hour, our weekly ritual.

A repeat visitor, a stuffed version of Dr. Seuss’ Christmas Grinch, joined our little group.  He was a pleasant little green gentleman - a respectful listener, not prone to disturbance or interruption, and generally exemplary in social skills - although he did end up staring absent-mindedly at the ceiling for a portion of the storytelling, perhaps lost in his own reverie.  

Overall, he was part of the gang.  Polite and eager to share his Santa hat with his little friends.  Available, outgoing, and hardly shy. Willing to be dragged around, propped up, stepped on, talked to, and fed imaginary bites of pumpkin muffin (snack du jour). All exemplary qualities.

I guess he’d already learned his lesson on that fateful day back in Whoville when his heart “grew three sizes,” as the story says.  I mean just look at that face with its crooked but winsome smile!  He seemed a very big-hearted fellow who had learned the necessity and value of repentance and no longer relied on excuses like, “I can’t help it” or “God made me this way, it’s not my fault.” (I’ve heard those things, and said them myself, too many times.)  Rather, he identified and turned from his weaknesses.  That’s what repentance means. We would do well to follow his example.

Breaking the Glass

I woke this morning to still more thoughts about the nighthawks painting and poem I rediscovered last night (see yesterday’s blog for clarification).  The image and accompanying words just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I decided to investigate further.

Google's resources pointed out that actual nighthawks inhabit mountains and open country, but also cities and towns where they forage for insects near streetlights. These mottled black-and-gray birds are nocturnal and quite active at dusk, which fits with the artist’s renditions and the poet’s commentary. Their beaks are curved but small – not unlike the man’s nose in the painting – although those beaks belie the capacity of their large predator mouths. 

Something continued to nag at me, a wondering and compulsion to find out what others have said about Edward Hopper’s painting that inspired Samuel Yellen’s poem.  I went back to Google, and found Ed’s wife, Jo, kept a diary that explained some of her husband’s behind-the-scenes thoughts.  Other commentators have also exposed layers beneath the surface, some of whom have also quoted Jo.

Here’s a link to a commentary that contains a picture of the painting: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/H/hopper/nighthwk.jpg.html   I found this commentary informative, and quoted it below:

"Apparently, there was a period when every college dormitory in the country had on its walls a poster of Hopper's Nighthawks; it had become an icon. It is easy to understand its appeal. This is not just an image of big-city loneliness, but of existential loneliness: the sense that we have (perhaps overwhelmingly in late adolescence) of being on our own in the human condition. When we look at that dark New York street, we would expect the fluorescent-lit cafe to be welcoming, but it is not. There is no way to enter it, no door. The extreme brightness means that the people inside are held, exposed and vulnerable. They hunch their shoulders defensively. Hopper did not actually observe them, because he used himself as a model for both the seated men, as if he perceived men in this situation as clones. He modeled the woman, as he did all of his female characters, on his wife Jo. He was a difficult man, and Jo was far more emotionally involved with him than he with her; one of her methods of keeping him with her was to insist that only she would be his model.

"From Jo's diaries we learn that Hopper described this work as a painting of "three characters." The man behind the counter, though imprisoned in the triangle, is in fact free. He has a job, a home, he can come and go; he can look at the customers with a half-smile. It is the customers who are the nighthawks. Nighthawks are predators - but are the men there to prey on the woman, or has she come in to prey on the men? To my mind, the man and woman are a couple, as the position of their hands suggests, but they are a couple so lost in misery that they cannot communicate; they have nothing to give each other. I see the nighthawks of the picture not so much as birds of prey, but simply as birds: great winged creatures that should be free in the sky, but instead are shut in, dazed and miserable, with their heads constantly banging against the glass of the world's callousness. In his Last Poems, A. E. Housman (1859-1936) speaks of being ‘a stranger and afraid/In a world I never made.’ That was what Hopper felt - and what he conveys so bitterly."

Wow.  With all of this said, I began rethinking the whole episode last night – how I wandered into an impersonal super-store, hungry and tired and yet grateful for the reason I was hungry and tired, to be confronted by a huge mural of this famous painting and a wrap-around quote from the equally famous poem.  Looking back, it was as if I became a symbolic traveler who stumbled into the midst of collective individuals covered by a brash, if largely unnoticed, existential blanket.  Blinding fluorescent lights and artificial holiday hype only heightened the impression.

I still can see the faces of those people who jumped out at me last night – the exhausted-but-patient man doing a good work with his active herd of bi-racial kids, but even more, the three preoccupied employees eating in the deli area who seemed trapped by inner pain as much as outer circumstances. 

As I ponder all of this, I want to grab a sledgehammer and smash whatever figurative glass might be holding them captive.  Numb loneliness is not God’s intent for those He created in His image.  But when left to our own limited understanding we can become, as the commentator above suggests, like those “great winged creatures that should be free in the sky, but instead are shut in, dazed and miserable, with their heads constantly banging against the glass of the world's callousness.”

Although I can envision myself crowded into that diner with humanity in general (for we’re all on a journey, and searching to find our true selves), I also know a better way – a way of freedom predicted by the prophet Isaiah that came to pass in the person of Jesus Christ.  This is radical freedom that transforms our hearts at the deepest level of our being, not just pie-in-the-sky positive thinking.  From Isaiah 61:1,2 (prediction in the Old Testament) and restated in Luke 4:18,19 (fulfillment in New Testament):

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor…”

Good news.  Healing for the brokenhearted. Freedom.  Release.  Favor.   In the grocery store deli.  In the human heart, whatever its state. I have come to know some measure of this, and I want others to know it too.

Nighthawks

Nighthawks

After Christmas shopping all afternoon, I finally pulled into the grocery parking lot – my final stop. It was late, and I wondered who else was out and about at this hour buying milk and hamburger and paper towels.  

As I entered the store, I made mental note of a weary but focused-looking man in his 40's rounding up a small herd of children of various mixed nationalities.  He spoke firmly but quietly to encourage everyone to stay together, which caused a flurry of obedient little feet.  Even though my observance of this family was short-lived, I noticed something – perhaps strength of character - emanating from this manly shepherd.  I wondered about his life, the lives of the kids, and what their day had been like.

My stomach had been growling for a couple of hours, so I wandered over to the deli, purchased a salad, and plopped at a coffee-stained café table in a small dining area before doing my shopping.  Although I’d lost track of time, I noticed he clock on the wall said 8:15.

Several employees wearing embroidered red shirts were taking breaks as well.  One young woman stared blankly at the wall while munching on a plate piled with something that had been breaded and deep-fried.  A young man sat on the opposite side of the room inhaling an entire bag of chips and a large soda, tapping his foot nervously as if keeping time to some inner jazz band gone berserk.  An older gentleman hunched over his plate with seemingly arthritic fingers that pecked at the remains of a sandwich.  What were these people thinking and feeling? How did they live?  Were they on a countdown to get out of here, or were they grateful for this little hideaway in the corner of the busy store?

I ate my Asian chicken salad in silence except for the crunch-crunch of the lettuce and almonds, and mindlessly reviewed my list of groceries.

At some point however, I noticed huge painted letters on the wall.  I was shocked to realize they wrapped around the three walls of this eating area, since I’d totally overlooked them earlier.  In front me, I read the following:

We who peer through that curve of plate glass

Count three nighthawks seated there …”

I turned to continue reading behind me:

“… patrons of life:

The counterman will be with you in a jiffy,

The thick white mugs were never meant for demitasse.”  -Samuel Yellen

I turned back around to face the plastic container holding the rest of my salad, and tried to wrap my mind around this quote.  Who were the nighthawks?  Why were they out so late? Where did the counterman work? A tiny spark ignited in my mind - had I read this as an English major in college many years before?

It still didn’t make much sense until I rose, dumped my trash in the appropriate bin, and prepared to leave.  Then I saw it.  The painting.  It practically covered the back wall, like a mural.  And yet I hadn’t even noticed it AT ALL before.

After arriving home and doing a little research, I discovered Samuel Yellen’s poem entitled Nighthawks was written in response to Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting by the same name.  The painting portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night, and is considered Hopper’s most famous painting. It has hung since its completion in the Art Institute of Chicago.  When I read Samuel Yellen’s poem in its entirety, it rang a bell in my memory:

NIGHTHAWKS

By Samuel Yellen

The place is the corner of Empty and Bleak,

The time is night’s most desolate hour,

The scene is Al’s Coffee Cup or the Hamburger Tower,

The persons in this drama do not speak.

We who peer through that curve of plate glass

Count three nighthawks seated there – patrons of life.

The counterman will be with you in a jiff.

The thick white mugs were never meant for demitasse.

The single man whose hunched back we see

Once put a gun to his head in Russian Bank,

Whirled the chamber, pulled the trigger, drew a blank,

And now lives out his x years guarantee.

And facing us, the two central characters

Have finished their coffee, and have lit

A contemplative cigarette,

His hand lies close but not touching hers.

Not long ago together in a darkened room,

Mouth burned mouth, flesh beat and ground

On ravaged flesh, and yet they found

No local habitation and no name.

Oh, are we not lucky to be none of these!

We can look on with complacent eye:

Our satisfactions satisfy,

Our pleasures, our pleasures please.

As I sat in my peaceful home with a bulging refrigerator and bags upon bags of Christmas gifts scattered on the living room floor, I found this such a powerful commentary - one that spoke to me and my experience, and to the questions I had about the people I’d seen in my shopping trip at the grocery this evening.