Three nights ago, in the space between awareness and sleep, I found myself designing a recipe.  I don’t feel like it came from me so much as I plucked it from the misty shared creative space to which we all have access.  Anyway, what I imagined was a white bean and ground turkey chili, but instead of asking for traditional chili flavorings, this shared creative space told me to spice it with garlic and rosemary.

I had a lunch potluck to attend today, and a pound of ground turkey meat in my freezer, so I decided to test out this near-dreamstate recipe.  In a large pot, I sweated one chopped onion with three pressed cloves of garlic.  When they had softened a little, I added the turkey and scrambled until it was cooked thoroughly and in fairly small chunks.  I added a drained and rinsed can of cannellini beans and three sprigs of chopped rosemary leaves.  Finally I added a little chicken stock that I had in the freezer, to give it some liquid to work with.  I added a little salt and pepper and left it alone to bubble for fifteen minutes over low heat.  When I came back, the beans had nearly dissolved into the meat, creating this thick, rich gravy.  The rosemary was stunningly fragrant and the turkey was tender.

Thankfully, it tasted wonderful other than the few flecks of rosemary, it was decidedly gray.  It is not a dish that is appealing to the eye.  But it was quick, easy and would be terrific over brown rice.  I would recommend a side of broccoli or spinach along with it, something to perk up the color a little.

Sun is pouring into my living room and the plants seem to be reaching out to capture as much of it as they can.  The money plant has a spray of leaves that is pressed up against the glass, like a dog’s nose up against a sliding glass door.

The rules of Random Friday are simple.  Set your pod or other (less asthetically pleasing) digital music device to shuffle/random and report back the first ten songs it spits out.  No skipping, omitting, excusing or obfuscating the pod’s picks.  This is your music, stand tall.

1. Bobcat Tracks, Old Crow Medicine Show (Big Iron World)
2. All I Want is You, U2 (The Best of 1980-1990)
3. Good Day Sunshine, The Beatles (Revolver)
4. Roy Walker, Belle & Sebastian (Dear Catastrophe Waitress)
5. Just Like Jesse James, Cher (Cher Greatest Hits)
6. A Hundred Years, Tracy Chapman (Crossroads)
7. To The Stars, Erin McKeown (Travelling Roadshow)
8. Crazy, Barenaked Ladies (Gordon)
9. Stickshifts and Safetybelts, Cake (Fashion Nuggest)
10. Across the Universe, The Beatles (Past Masters, Vol. 2)

Now this is a *great* set.  At least in my opinion.  I love the near-frame that is created by two Beatles songs.   Have I ever mentioned the years I spent obsessed with the Beatles?  In the fifth grade, while other kids my age were flipping out about New Kids on the Block, I was completely swoony and insane about the Beatles.  I would scream when I saw them on TV, as if channeling one of the girls who made it impossible for the fab four to hear themselves when they played the Ed Sullivan Show.

But when you dig down past the Beatles, you’ve got Erin McKeown and her soaring voice.  Vintage Cher and everyone’s favorite Cake song.  I am very pleased with the manner in which my pod plummed the depths of my musical archive this week.

Need more Random Friday than I can give you?  Check out these folks…
Ben
Ellen
Howard

Monday afternoon I stood at my dining room table, flipping through a splayed out copy of the New York Times, when an obituary caught my eye and made me lean in to better read it. It reported that a ninety-eight year old woman named Ernestine Gilbreth Carey had died. My heart squeezed in a moment of grief as I realized who she was.

When I was growing up, one of my very favorite books was “Cheaper by the Dozen.” Sadly, the name and story have been bastardized in recent years by two god-awful movies starring Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt. The book and it’s sequel “Bells on Their Toes” are the story of the family of a dozen children (although only 11 children lived to adulthood) that Frank and Lillian Gilbreth bore and raised in Montclair, NJ in the early part of the 20th century. Ernestine and her brother Frank were the authors of these books that chronicled their early family life.

For me, these two books opened a window into a world that was 75 years and vast expanses away from the childhood I had with my one sister in Los Angeles and Portland, OR. I read them repeatedly, until my paperback copies were tattered. When I stumble upon them on the shelves a thriftstore, I buy the copies and pass them along to friends. I’m not able to entirely articulate the reasons why the Gilbreth family so captured my attention, but their story is one that I cherish.

So I wish Ernie (as she’s known in the books) well as she makes this transition out of this life, sending my thanks for the many hours of enjoyment her writing gave me.

This afternoon I walked into the Wawa at the corner of 20th and Market to grab a sandwich and a pint of coffee milk before heading home and burying myself in school work. As I made my way back to the dairy case, I noticed a elderly woman slowly walking with a 20 ounce cup of coffee. Her hair was a teased apricot-colored cloud around her head. Hearing aids were tucked into both her ears and her back was bent under the weight of gravity and osteoporosis. She walked in a circle around the island that holds the half and half, sugar packets and tea bags. A confused expression flashed across her face as she started her second loop.

I went over to her and asked if I could help. At 5’2″ I towered over her and she craned her neck to look up at me and asked, “Do you see the lids? I can’t find them.” I reached around her and grabbed two lids, one of each style. She took the one that would seal the cup completely and thanked me for my help. I watched as she applied it to the cup, and before I could stop myself I leaned into help her push it firmly into place. I was a little afraid she’d be offended, but instead she smiled and said, “Thanks dear, you’re a doll.”

I grabbed my milk and headed to the cash register to pay. The elderly woman shuffled into line in front of me. A surly young woman was working the counter and she took her time to notice that anyone was standing in front of her. The clerk rang up the older woman’s coffee, exuding impatience with the elderly woman’s slow and concentrated movements. However, as I watched, the clerk seemed to undergo a transformation. It was as if something inside her recognized something about the elderly woman standing in front of her and she softened. She slowed down, carefully packed the coffee cup into a paper bag and then placed it into a plastic bag. She tied that neatly into rabbit ears and held up the loops so that this tiny old woman could slip it over her wrist.

The clerk took an enormous amount of time to really take care of this one customer who needed a little help and gentleness. It was a moment of grace and I wondered if this little woman in her 80’s was really an angel in disguise, come to help us all learn how to treat strangers with love. I paid for my items and walked out of the store. The old woman with the coffee cup was standing at the corner, waiting for the light. It turned as I approached and I watched her make painfully slow process across the street. She came to rest under the bus shelter at the corner.

As I walked away, I found myself sending wishes of protection after the woman and her cup of coffee. This interaction has increased my awareness of the ways in which I interact with strangers and has left me with the conscious intention to be as loving and kind as I can.

On election day in 1988, I was sitting in my fourth grade classroom focused on a math worksheet, when I heard clicking noises come down the hallway. I looked and saw my mom walking down the hallway with our dog Toasty on a leash. She had come to take me out of class for a couple of minutes so that I could be with her while she voted. Several weeks earlier my parents had taken us to a Dukakis rally and I had my red and blue Dukakis/Benson poster proudly displayed in my bedroom.

I looked up hopefully at my teacher, she smiled and waved me out. Toasty was leapingly thrilled to see me and I bent down to give her a hug before we headed downstairs. As I walked into the voting booth with my mom, I was awed that she was letting me help her with such a grown up thing. I don’t remember exactly what the style of voting was in Portland in those days, I believe it was a punch card system, but I can’t be sure. This was just a few years before Oregon went to a mail-in ballot system.

That moment has become an indelible memory in my life, and plays through my head every time I walk into a voting booth in Philadelphia. I always enjoy voting, each time I do it, I am feel a shiver of excitement that I’m being give an opportunity to participate in the process of government. Despite all that’s happened in the world, I am not able to be disillusioned or jaded when it comes to election time. I am always hopeful that my candidates will win and that it will mean better things for this country. Call me hopelessly naive, but I hope that I never lose my sense of hope.

Looking for a little something more? Check out my election day post from last year.

Last night, my parents had an unusually exciting Sunday evening.  They were watching TV in separate rooms, my dad on the couch in the family room and my mom on floor in the living room (so that she can adjust the volume with her toe on the remoteless set that lives in there) when the lights in the house started to flicker.  The electricity began making funny noises, like the power was being drained or diverted elsewhere.  They ran outside and saw that the electrical box on the house next door was sparking.  My mom dashed for the phone to call 911 and my dad stood there for a moment, not wanting to walk through the enormous puddle at the top of the driveway.  Nothing like a lot of water to make you an electrocution risk.

After a moment, the sparks stopped and the electrical box caught on fire.  He grabbed a towel that had been last used to wipe the dog’s muddy feet, and started hitting the fire, just like Pa Ingalls on Little House on the Prairie would have.  He was able to put it out.  Just after the fire was out, the fire truck came screaming down the street and the owners of the house came home from dinner.

Paul, the guy who owns the house, but currently lives down the street while he’s remodeling this one, said to my dad after the whole story had been told, “I guess we owe you a towel.”

My dad replied, “Don’t worry about it.  I’ve been married long enough to know that you don’t use the good towels for something like this.”

I’m particularly pleased with his choice of towel, as it was from a set of seashell printed ones my mom bought when I was in high school.  I’ve always hated them, and it’s nice to know that one of them was finally put to good use.

I’m finally feeling better, an event for which I am very grateful. I forget how unfun being sick is, especially during times when you are responsible for getting things done regardless of how you feel. It almost makes me miss the times when I was working and had sick days, and could watch crappy TV for a day without guilt or my inner voice preaching, “You should really try to get something done now.”

I’m working on a piece for my journalism class right now about how white men who work blue collar jobs are abandoning the Republican party for the first time since the Reagan years. I’ve done a bunch of interviews in prepartion for it and it feels like it should be a fun thing to write, but I’m finding it very slow going. I keep trying to remind myself that to start out with I just need to tell a story. I can go back a little later and add the data, the facts and figures. But still, I’m struggling a little. I know it will come together, but this is one of those moments when I wish I had an internal lever controlled the flow of words and images from my brain to my fingertips. At this moment it would turned on full blast.

I haven’t left my apartment today. I’ve gone from bed to the couch and back to bed again. I’ve consumed nearly a gallon of tea and came to the conclusion that coffee doesn’t taste very good when you can’t smell it. Riding a burst of energy I had at about 6 pm, I baked some pumpkin bran muffins (I replaced pumpkin with some baked squash I had), but that’s been about it.

I’m hoping for a more inspired, energetic day tomorrow.

It’s Friday, albeit late afternoon, but still Friday all the same and so I’m still within the time period to get a Random Friday set up.  You know the rules, but for the newcomers, I’ll repeat.  Set your iPod or other digital music devise to shuffle/random and report back the first ten songs it spits out.  Do not skip, omit or ignore any songs, we accept all kinds here.

1. Anna (Go To Him), The Beatles (Please Please Me)
2. Slip Slidin’ Away, Simon & Garfunkel (The Concert in Central Park)
3. Lifetime to Prove, BR5-49 (BR5-49)
4. Down by the River, Indigo Girls (1200 Curfews)
5. God’s World Will Never Pass Away, Sister Gertrude Morgan (Let’s Make a Record)
6. She Has No Time, Keane (Hopes and Fears)
7. When I Fall, Barenaked Ladies (Rock Spectacle)
8. No Bravery, James Blunt (Back to Bedlam)
9. Masterplan, My Morning Jacket (It Still Moves)
10. Find the Cost of Freedom, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (4 Way Street)

Favorite Song: Slip Slidin’ Away.  Nothing like a little S&G for a nice singalong.  This is one of those songs that can get stuck in your head, but not in a bad way.

Favorite Album: I’ve become a big fan of BR5-49 in recent days.  I ripped this album from a new friend about a month ago and haven’t been able to stop listening to it.  I heard about the group about a year ago, but never managed to get my hands on their music until recently.  They are a fun country/bluegrass band, just up my alley.

Need a little more Random Friday?  Check these blogs:
Ben
Ellen
Howard
Jess

So, until now, I’ve been completely delinquent in mentioning that I’m participating in NaBloPoMo this month. An alternative to NaNoWriMo, it is a commitment to update your blog with a post of some substance once a day for the month of November. The project is one of the many brainchildren of Eden Kennedy, the blogger behind Fussy.org. There’s even a NaBloPoMo Randomizer, so that one can explore the many other participants. So if you enjoy reading my random little bits, look out, cause they’ll be coming at you everyday this month!

In other news, I’m feeling much better. I talked to my roommate today, and it turns out that he did not enter the apartment yesterday afternoon while I napped, so it seems that it was simply a very active dream. We don’t like to use words like hallucinate around here. I’m continuing to take my store brand medications (can I get a big woohoo for CVS brand Airborne) and I’m getting lots of sleep. Here’s hoping that I’m mostly normal by tomorrow.