Bread, Wine, Salt

There is no quiet at the beach, because the ocean roars at you from across the dunes, says good morning before you can even see it. I’m not the first person out. I pass a man with a baby strapped to his chest. The baby is watching the ocean. The man walks, eyes front. I wonder if the mom is sleeping in for once, or if he’s always up early, or if the mom is actually another dad instead. Did the baby sleep well last night and wake early? Or did no one sleep well last night and this is a desperate attempt to get someone some sleep. The dogs are almost certainly not allowed on the beach, but there’s no one out to tell the owner to leave as he throws tennis balls into the ocean. The dogs race out into the surf. The bolder, stronger swimmer goes past the crashing waves, while the more timid one is tossed under wave. They race back with their prizes, tails wagging, ready to go again. There are fewer joggers than I expected, but more fishermen. Fathers and sons, brothers, men alo...

I have a problem, which is that I have a fear of talking about my book because people might think it's incredibly lame that I have written a book.  So for the last couple of days when I've seen people in real life and they ask me what's been going on I'm all, "Oh, you know, the usual . . . " and then we nod at each other like "Yep, the usual, yep."  I don't say "Hey, I wrote a book, and I'm going to get serious about publishing it soon and I'm very excited and nervous and some other things, too." But it's true. I did get serious. I had it professionally edited and then professionally formatted so that it would look nice in people's e-readers and I swallowed hard and I sent it out into the world. And then I told Facebook about it and not one of my friends said "It's incredibly lame that you have written a book." At least none of them said it out loud, to me. What they said to me was that they thought it wa...

In June we had house guests. Since the last time we'd seen them they converted to the paleo diet. (Short version: no grains, no dairy, no legumes, lots of meats, veggies, nuts, and fruits, limited raw honey, dark chocolate.) We had to feed them, while also feeding my older son who won't eat meat unless it's bacon. Almost as soon as they were gone I had vegetarian friends come over for a play date, and I had to feed them lunch. And then the next day my mostly vegetarian friend and her utterly carnivorous husband and son came for a visit and I had to feed them, too.  I say "had to feed them" as if it were a trauma, which is wasn't. I like feeding people. I say "had to" because they were in my home over mealtimes so I was required by the laws of hospitality to offer them sustenance. Basic hospitality also required that I provide food that was acceptable to them. Hospitality doesn't say anything about judging their dietary choices. Why they ea...

Mary Bailey: Bread so that this house may never know hunger. Salt so that life may always have flavor. George Bailey: Wine that joy and prosperity may reign forever. Bread, Salt and Wine are traditional housewarming gifts.  We all know this because we've seen "It's a Wonderful Life." Perhaps some of us assumed that it exists because of "It's a Wonderful Life."  But the tradition goes back to a time before Frank Capra, and it's a lovely idea, one I'm in favor of keeping alive. Depending on who you ask, the tradition is either Russian, Polish, Jewish, or Italian, unless it's Lithuanian, or something else.  Of course it's possible, that similar traditions grew up in different places.  Many cultures value bread, salt and wine. It was a Russian folk custom for local merchants to present the gift of a round loaf of bread covered in salt to the visiting emperor as a sign of hospitality. In many cultures bread, salt and wine are given ...

Lunch in the Park , a novel about love and family, is available for sale in multiple electronic formats at Smashwords , for the Kindle at Amazon.com and for the Nook at BN.com Wherever you buy it, it is DRM-free . The delicious recipes that Kate and Jeff cook up are right here on my blog. I hope you'll read Lunch in the Park , you'll love it, and you'll feel the overwhelming urge to write a review on one or more of the sites above. And of course I'd love to hear from you here on the blog, too.   Sometimes I'm here talking about food.  Sometimes I'm chasing my kids around.  Sometimes I'm serving women in labor . If I'm not doing any of those things I might be checking in on the lives of the fictional people who live in my head. Before you run away, no, I'm not hearing voices.  I've just always have a story or two that I'm writing in my  head.  If I have a few minutes I try to get the story out of my head and onto paper.  Sometimes ...

There's been a lot of press about bullies lately, and the children and young adults who suffer from bullying. Sometimes we don't call the perpetrators bullies. We call them bigots, especially when the people being bullied are homosexual. Those young men weren't being bullied just because they were gay, they were being bullied because they were reduced to a single word. In the case of suicides that have been getting press recently, the word was “gay” (or maybe one of the other less attractive words for the same thing.) But the word can be different. It can be “geek” or “skinny” or “ugly” or “stupid.” When we reduce a person to a single word we dehumanize them. “Ugly” isn't a person, and “Gay” isn't a person and so it's okay to treat them as less than human. (As an aside, sometimes that word is “girl” in which a person is reduced to a word describing her gender and is therefore not interesting as anything other than the sum of her body parts as use...

I thought I was going to write about books, and how reading education is getting it all wrong. Certainly I was writing about reading books when I began composing this in my head. But, as is often the case with the things in my head, I didn't end up exactly where was expecting to. So this is not about books. I will write about books tomorrow, maybe. We are lonesome animals. We spend all our life trying to be less lonesome. One of our ancient methods is to tell a story begging the listener to say — and to feel — “Yes, that’s the way it is, or at least that’s the way I feel it. You’re not as alone as you thought.” ~John Steinbeck If you wish to annoy me, utter the phrase “just a story.” Mostly I hear it about the Bible, but people use it to deride almost anything with a narrative. “Just a story” is supposed to mean that we don't have to take it seriously because it's not REAL. Of course, anyone who has read The Velveteen Rabbit knows that real is a fluid construct. ...