Today, I was at Kaufman's Deli with a friend of mine and our children when somehow the subject of kasha (buckwheat groats) came up. Oh, I know: my friend was ordering a kasha knish and I wondered aloud if she had ever heard of a dish my grandmother used to call 'Seashells and Kasha', my friend having grown up in a Polish home. She had not. I related to the best of my memory what was in it and how it was made (toasted kasha - which my family always called kashi, like the organic cereal - sauteed onion, an egg beaten into it and those little seashell-shaped pasta shells) and I asked the grandmotherly-like person who was checking my friend out at the counter if she had ever heard of it. She hadn't, but likely would have if I had called it by it's common name, kasha varnishkes. My friend remarked that she would have loved to have met my grandmother, and, boy, would she have adored her. It doesn't take much fo me to wax rhapsodic about my grandmother and for some reason, she's been on my mind more than usual lately. To me, she was truly perfect in every way, except that she was not with me for life.
My grandmother was the youngest of six, the daughter of Jews fleeing the pogroms in Russia. Her father was a trunk maker and her mother was a wonderful seamstress according to her daughter, creating beautiful lampshades. As I said, she was the youngest and the only one born in this country, both of which, I think, helped to infuse her with a lifelong spirit of optimism and vitality. If there was one person I admired growing up, it was my grandmother. I was equally devoted to my grandfather, her husband, but how I felt about him was different. He was quiet and mild and content by comparison, always a sweet smile on his face (that is until dementia took hold when I was fourteen); my grandmother, in contrast, always had a funny story, was a dynamo, a flirt with her neighborhood butcher, lit up from within with a contagious lust for life. I have come to understand in retrospect how her indomitable spirit doused my mother's, through no fault of her own. I don't think that my grandmother, who was so natural at winning people over, ever really understood her middle child's quiet resentment. My mother certainly loved my grandmother, but it was complicated. I think that my grandmother was a constant reminder to my mother of what she didn't have, namely, social ease and, far more significantly, a happy, stable marriage. My mother aligned herself more with my grandfather, with whom she enjoyed an uncomplicated, easy commeraderie.
Anyway, my grandmother. I think that she probably taught me more (of the sort of stuff I want to retain, that is) than anyone. She was a feminist without the word, through her confident, unapologetic nature and she had no shame about her voluptuous figure. She treated everyone she was speaking with as the most important person in the room, that is unless that person said something offensive, at which time she would politely remove herself from the conversation. She was exceedingly warm and friendly but also the tough daughter of immigrants: I was by her side when she was almost mugged near Sheridan Road, and she fought her would-be purse snatcher with two furiously protective fists until he ran away. (It was the first and only time I ever heard her say a curse word, which was more shocking to me than that whole potential mugging thing.) She loved to cook, sew, make preserves, all the stuff that the new generation of DIY enthusiasts have embraced and her own daughters rejected as too retro, too "Old World." I think that my love of cooking and my new enthusiasm for pickling and canning stems in some small part from a desire to keep her alive through me, even if her physical body has left. Every time I hang clothes to dry on my laundry line or make jam on my stove in the punishing heat of the summer, it's a way of communing with and connecting with my grandmother again.
I have a photo of my grandmother sitting at her dining room table, her sweet look-alike sister Mary by her side, both with huge smiles on their faces. I wonder who took the photo. Anyway, I look over this photo nearly every time I cook dinner for my own family and it fills me with warmth. [As I said, I am also someone who loves to cook and I long ago rejected (not that I ever accepted it) the notion that cooking for yourself and others is un-feminist somehow.] Her food, though I loved it as a child, is not the kind of food I would eat today. Partly through her example yet again, I have a love of animals and so I am vegan. Food is very deep, though, and it creates lifelong habits and cravings within us; it also helps us to connect with our heritage, our ancestors. To this day, I can remember the smell of the hot oil in her kitchen, cooking the potato pancakes (fluffy on the inside, crispy on the outside) and I can see the little cells of fat floating on the surface of her chicken soup. Clearly, this created an imprint.
When I became a vegetarian at fifteen part of what hurt was my grandmother feeling like I was rejecting her when I would no longer eat the brisket. It was something I had to do, though my grandmother loved to remind me how much I used to love meat. I just couldn't do it anymore, though, and I think that she finally understood it was about me being honest about what my spirit needed. About a dozen years later, I became vegan, thus excising some of the last connections to her food, which was so much a part of her. To me, though, my convictions were a higher calling. I would keep her spirit alive in different ways. I was content to leave it at that.
Not too long ago, though, I got a cookbook by a Brooklyn-based, proudly Jewish chef named Isa Chandra Moskowitz (and co-author Terry Hope Romero) of much acclaim called Vegan With a Vengeance. In its pages are vegan renditions of kugel, knishes, and that beloved Jewish powerhouse, matzoh ball soup. My heart lifted when I saw this recipe: it had been communicated to me that vegan matzoh balls were an quixotic fantasy, that they couldn't be achieved without the leavening action of eggs. Okay, then, I would just content myself with memories of her matzoh balls. Light, fluffy but dense, my grandmothers matzoh balls came to personify her to me in some strange way: they were just the right combination of yielding and strong, that perfect union. My other grandmother (a.k.a, my Mean Grandmother) made matzoh balls too, but they were like her to me: tough, flavorless, hard little balls of anger. When I saw the recipe in Vegan With a Vengeance, my heart lifted that I might be able to experience this little memory of my grandmother again.
It is a painstaking recipe, obviously written by someone who also wanted to create the perfect vegan matzoh ball (which, by the way, is brought into existence with the distinctly non-Jewish addition of silken tofu, but the Jews love Chinese food, right?, and I am not a purist) and worked really hard to achieve it. There are many steps and it takes quite a bit of time, but the recipe does create a more than acceptable vegan facsimile of the classic matzoh ball. The first time I took a bite, it was like Proust's madeleine to me, something that sent me instantly back through the years to my grandmother's cheerful, busy kitchen, sitting at her table with one foot hooked between the other, a spoon in hand, and, most important, my grandmother sitting across from me with her generous smile, easy laugh and impossibly soft, powdered skin. I am so grateful to these vegan chefs for giving me more immediate access to my memories again. The matzoh balls are not quite as perfect as my grandmother's - nothing could be - but they are all I need for them to be.
Ah. I could talk about my grandmother for days on end.
Shalom, everyone.
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
My produce drawer scares me...
It feels like an incredibly privileged thing to complain about (because it is), but my produce drawers are full-to-bursting with assorted items: sweet potatoes, apricots, beets, pickling cucumbers, regular cucumbers, jalapenos, a big ol' bowling ball of a red cabbage. It's always this way this time of year for us when we get a CSA box, which we hadn't for three years so I'm out of practice, in addition to our town's fantastic farmer's market. I've got big plans for it all - pickles, preserves, giardenera - except for the cabbage. I fear that another one is ready to come rolling down the pike at me come Saturday, so I had better make with the choppy-choppy. Myra Kornfeld's excellent Voluptuous Vegan has a recipe for German red cabbage with beer and caraway seeds and that is what I am leaning toward now. I am getting a little nervous about when tomato season officially hits here but I am going to be prepared.
Shalom, everyone.
Shalom, everyone.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
The squirrels are circling...
We have this little back yard, a typical lot size for this area, and a garden that expands a little every year. I remember our first summer here, now four years ago, and we were so proud of the garden we cultivated. Looking back, it was probably about 5X5, but to minds shaped through years of apartment-dwelling, it was an idyllic paradise, thick with basil and echinacea plants. We even had dragonflies and it made my heart swell with pride to see bees choosing our plants - our plants! - to pollinate. I felt like St. Francis, and I imagined myself a benevolent figure, extending my arm to the various flying, jumping and crawling creatures, a gesture to be read by them as, "By all means, please partake."
As this is our forth year, we have a learned maybe a little more about how to coax blossoms and fruit out of our little patch, and that little patch has grown a bit more every year, to the point where it now takes up about a third of our backyard. Last year, we could not get sunflowers to take no matter how hard we tried and I desperately wanted them: as soon as they'd grow a little, they would get unceremoniously beheaded by squirrels, who would leave chewed bits and sad yellow petals behind as something like looked like a warning to me, like something a mafia henchman would do. Why they were warning me, I don't know, and perhaps I'm reading too much aggressiveness into their feasting habits. Couldn't they be a little less greedy, though, and share a little with the goldfinches, bees and dragonflies? And did they have to be so violent?
This year, we started to see some fat stalks rise up out of our garden that we hadn't planted. "If I didn't know better, I'd think these were sunflowers," John said. But we hadn't planted any. Sure enough, within a couple of weeks, green, bulbous tops appeared at the ends and we counted over twenty sunflowers in our tiny garden.
As this is our forth year, we have a learned maybe a little more about how to coax blossoms and fruit out of our little patch, and that little patch has grown a bit more every year, to the point where it now takes up about a third of our backyard. Last year, we could not get sunflowers to take no matter how hard we tried and I desperately wanted them: as soon as they'd grow a little, they would get unceremoniously beheaded by squirrels, who would leave chewed bits and sad yellow petals behind as something like looked like a warning to me, like something a mafia henchman would do. Why they were warning me, I don't know, and perhaps I'm reading too much aggressiveness into their feasting habits. Couldn't they be a little less greedy, though, and share a little with the goldfinches, bees and dragonflies? And did they have to be so violent?
This year, we started to see some fat stalks rise up out of our garden that we hadn't planted. "If I didn't know better, I'd think these were sunflowers," John said. But we hadn't planted any. Sure enough, within a couple of weeks, green, bulbous tops appeared at the ends and we counted over twenty sunflowers in our tiny garden.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Storms...
There were tremendous thunderstorms this evening and I sat in our sunroom working on an article, occasionally looking up to see the roiling black sky suddenly illuminate with a dramatic bolt of lightning. The tornado sirens were wailing, and my son was distressed: he is fascinated by natural phenomena, and he's terrified. He sought reassurance that a tornado was not going to rip apart our home and I tried my best. I told him that tornadoes like to form in rural areas, like where his dad grew up, where there's lots of space between buildings for it to bounce around and build up strength, not in our urban landscape of towering, solid buildings rubbing shoulders together. Cities are not fun for tornadoes, I told him. Mostly I was glad that John was home to deflect this to tonight. Ultimately, my son must have believed us that he was safe because he settled into just being mildly piqued by the whole thing.
I remember what it was like to seek reassurance from my parents during troubling times and, for the most part, come up empty. As a parent, one who seeks to leave the ghosts of my childhood traumas behind, I am often torn between wanting to provide my son with an iron-clad assurance that we will shield him no matter what fire-breathing dragons appear at our doorstep, and the knowledge that this is impossible. I would do anything for my child, but I simply cannot control if thunderstorms turn into tornadoes. All I can do is my very best if a nightmare should materialize.
Tonight, I am grateful for my home, the warmth of my family, the safety I enjoy that's so rare in this world. My thoughts are with those who do not share these privileges and who are so vulnerable to the storms of the world.
Shalom, everyone.
I remember what it was like to seek reassurance from my parents during troubling times and, for the most part, come up empty. As a parent, one who seeks to leave the ghosts of my childhood traumas behind, I am often torn between wanting to provide my son with an iron-clad assurance that we will shield him no matter what fire-breathing dragons appear at our doorstep, and the knowledge that this is impossible. I would do anything for my child, but I simply cannot control if thunderstorms turn into tornadoes. All I can do is my very best if a nightmare should materialize.
Tonight, I am grateful for my home, the warmth of my family, the safety I enjoy that's so rare in this world. My thoughts are with those who do not share these privileges and who are so vulnerable to the storms of the world.
Shalom, everyone.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
It's all about meme...
Since I don't have many blogging buddies yet, I figured that I'd send myself one of those annoying memes you can't help but read and then afterwards calculate roughly how much time you wasted that could have been used toward doing something productive, like saving the world. Since you aren't likely going to save the world in five minutes or less, you may as well read the damn meme. So sit back, relax, stop taking yourself so seriously, and enjoy my self-composed, not to mention utterly self-centered, meme. (As if blogging weren't the height of narcissism, I have to take it that one step farther.)
Introducing my Summertime Meme.
Favorite cold drink: That would have to be the perfect iced tea, which would have lots of ice, a lemon wedge, and must not be too bitter. As bourgeois as this sounds, there's not a lot than annoys me more than ordering iced tea at a restaurant and getting lukewarm, Lipton-y swill with a half a wussy 'cube floating in it. Pah. Mop water.
Favorite (locally grown) summer fruit: Tied between watermelon and blackberries. Has anyone tried the Michigan pawpaw? They're apparently a rare delicacy, but they taste like a cross between mango and banana custard. Or am I confusing this with the durian, another near-mythic fruit? In any case, pawpaws - how can you not love that name? - are supposed to be dee-lish but I haven't tried one yet. Imagine, a tropical-esque fruit from around these parts.
Favorite summer vegetable: Again a tie, this time between broccoli and eggplant. If there's something vegan with eggplant on the menu at a restaurant, even if the rest of it sounds like caca, I have to have it. That's how much I love eggplant.
Least favorite (locally grown) summer fruit: I'm so wishy-washy with these ties, I know, but this time I'm at least spicing it up as a three way (every frat boy reading this, yes, all four million, just got a mini-hard on with the word three way) tie: the Evil Melon Duo, cantaloupe and honeydew, which, really, I am lucky that I'm not dry heaving as I write their loathsome names. It's sad because they're cute names wasted on Melons of Nastiness. (Speaking of, guess who got a, like, fifty-pound cantaloupe in her CSA box this week? I'd just as soon eat a jackalope. John and my son better just make short work of it; I don't want that thing for days on end making my fridge all cantaloupe-y with it's stink-lines emanating.) The third would be the strawberry, sour and sandy to me, but really not worthy of sharing space with The Melons because at least it's tolerable as jam. I am still giving the strawberry the sideways glance, though.
Least favorite summer vegetable: That would have to stand alone: the watery, bland, disturbingly stringy when ill-cooked (and it nearly always is) bottom-feeder known as the summer squash, also known as yellow squash. I think that the flavor - or lack thereof - gets to me, but what really irks me is that you know when you have to go out to dinner once a year with all those family members who get on your nerves for someone's birthday or some such and you're just eye-balling your nearest clock whenever possible (that is, when you're not rolling your eyes at something stupid someone said) and there's no way in hell that these people you're dining with would ever be cool enough to pick a restaurant that had a semi-decent selection for a vegan family so you have to make do with whatever you can cobble together on the menu because you're already known as the Family Troublemaker and you don't want to make veganism look that challenging? Of course you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, these restaurants will always make some pasta with marinara and a side of limp-ass, boiled-to-death vegetables. And when they do, I guarantee it, summer squash will be the sickly star of the show. You'll shovel it in anyway just to not have to converse with these people. So summer squash is perhaps unfairly tied in with family issues, but, still, it's ick.
Favorite summer in memory: Probably that summer I met John, 1993. He was in between careers and freshly divorced and we just had so much fun. The most fun? Seeing the deliciously disgusting Vaginal Cream (Creme?) Davis at the Czar Bar on Division. A bacchanalian good time had by all! I also had a blast the first summer I drove off with this male librarian who wore skirts named Owl to the Rainbow Gathering. I was nineteen and amoral, which I found to be a fruitful combination.
Favorite childhood summer tradition: chasing fireflies every night with my neighborhood peeps. Summer was spent outdoors playing nonstop with occasional meal breaks. I wonder what sort of memories of summer our over-scheduled children will have.
Favorite contemporary summer tradition: chasing fireflies every night with my son.
Song that most reminds you of summer: There are two that really mean summer to me: Saturday In The Park by Chicago (I can't help it, that was popular when I was a kid) and anything from Bob Marley's oeuvre, except Redemption Song, which is certainly a late autumn song. (Also, that Turkey in the Straw song that plays on all the local ice cream trucks, all warped and lovely.) [John and I have a tradition each spring of remarking on the first ice cream truck sighting of the season. Also, the spookiest of the season, like when the hand-painted. dented-to-hell indies - cool kids to the Good Humor goody-two-shoes trucks - can be seen driving very slowly, or very, very quickly, down a side street in the middle of the night, the tinny recording playing all innocent-like.]
Favorite "thing" about summer: the feeling of freedom; being able to ride my bike all the time; not having to run from place to place to avoid freezing my buns off; no more layers; the sound of crickets and, yes, even locusts; the return of my garden; all that great, in season produce; seeing my son bike and splash and gallop about outdoors.
Least favorite "thing" about summer: mosquitoes and excessive heat. I'm a goth girl at heart and I have to protect my ghostly pallor.
And that's it!
Shalom, everyone.
Introducing my Summertime Meme.
Favorite cold drink: That would have to be the perfect iced tea, which would have lots of ice, a lemon wedge, and must not be too bitter. As bourgeois as this sounds, there's not a lot than annoys me more than ordering iced tea at a restaurant and getting lukewarm, Lipton-y swill with a half a wussy 'cube floating in it. Pah. Mop water.
Favorite (locally grown) summer fruit: Tied between watermelon and blackberries. Has anyone tried the Michigan pawpaw? They're apparently a rare delicacy, but they taste like a cross between mango and banana custard. Or am I confusing this with the durian, another near-mythic fruit? In any case, pawpaws - how can you not love that name? - are supposed to be dee-lish but I haven't tried one yet. Imagine, a tropical-esque fruit from around these parts.
Favorite summer vegetable: Again a tie, this time between broccoli and eggplant. If there's something vegan with eggplant on the menu at a restaurant, even if the rest of it sounds like caca, I have to have it. That's how much I love eggplant.
Least favorite (locally grown) summer fruit: I'm so wishy-washy with these ties, I know, but this time I'm at least spicing it up as a three way (every frat boy reading this, yes, all four million, just got a mini-hard on with the word three way) tie: the Evil Melon Duo, cantaloupe and honeydew, which, really, I am lucky that I'm not dry heaving as I write their loathsome names. It's sad because they're cute names wasted on Melons of Nastiness. (Speaking of, guess who got a, like, fifty-pound cantaloupe in her CSA box this week? I'd just as soon eat a jackalope. John and my son better just make short work of it; I don't want that thing for days on end making my fridge all cantaloupe-y with it's stink-lines emanating.) The third would be the strawberry, sour and sandy to me, but really not worthy of sharing space with The Melons because at least it's tolerable as jam. I am still giving the strawberry the sideways glance, though.
Least favorite summer vegetable: That would have to stand alone: the watery, bland, disturbingly stringy when ill-cooked (and it nearly always is) bottom-feeder known as the summer squash, also known as yellow squash. I think that the flavor - or lack thereof - gets to me, but what really irks me is that you know when you have to go out to dinner once a year with all those family members who get on your nerves for someone's birthday or some such and you're just eye-balling your nearest clock whenever possible (that is, when you're not rolling your eyes at something stupid someone said) and there's no way in hell that these people you're dining with would ever be cool enough to pick a restaurant that had a semi-decent selection for a vegan family so you have to make do with whatever you can cobble together on the menu because you're already known as the Family Troublemaker and you don't want to make veganism look that challenging? Of course you know what I'm talking about. Anyway, these restaurants will always make some pasta with marinara and a side of limp-ass, boiled-to-death vegetables. And when they do, I guarantee it, summer squash will be the sickly star of the show. You'll shovel it in anyway just to not have to converse with these people. So summer squash is perhaps unfairly tied in with family issues, but, still, it's ick.
Favorite summer in memory: Probably that summer I met John, 1993. He was in between careers and freshly divorced and we just had so much fun. The most fun? Seeing the deliciously disgusting Vaginal Cream (Creme?) Davis at the Czar Bar on Division. A bacchanalian good time had by all! I also had a blast the first summer I drove off with this male librarian who wore skirts named Owl to the Rainbow Gathering. I was nineteen and amoral, which I found to be a fruitful combination.
Favorite childhood summer tradition: chasing fireflies every night with my neighborhood peeps. Summer was spent outdoors playing nonstop with occasional meal breaks. I wonder what sort of memories of summer our over-scheduled children will have.
Favorite contemporary summer tradition: chasing fireflies every night with my son.
Song that most reminds you of summer: There are two that really mean summer to me: Saturday In The Park by Chicago (I can't help it, that was popular when I was a kid) and anything from Bob Marley's oeuvre, except Redemption Song, which is certainly a late autumn song. (Also, that Turkey in the Straw song that plays on all the local ice cream trucks, all warped and lovely.) [John and I have a tradition each spring of remarking on the first ice cream truck sighting of the season. Also, the spookiest of the season, like when the hand-painted. dented-to-hell indies - cool kids to the Good Humor goody-two-shoes trucks - can be seen driving very slowly, or very, very quickly, down a side street in the middle of the night, the tinny recording playing all innocent-like.]
Favorite "thing" about summer: the feeling of freedom; being able to ride my bike all the time; not having to run from place to place to avoid freezing my buns off; no more layers; the sound of crickets and, yes, even locusts; the return of my garden; all that great, in season produce; seeing my son bike and splash and gallop about outdoors.
Least favorite "thing" about summer: mosquitoes and excessive heat. I'm a goth girl at heart and I have to protect my ghostly pallor.
And that's it!
Shalom, everyone.
Since last we spoke...
So, apparently, I have an avoidance issue with keeping this blog updated. (Least of which is my [admittedly tiresome and predictable] loathing of the "word" blog, but I should probably relax that schoolmarmish pursing of my lips and just go with the flow.) Honestly, in the craziness of my life and the maddening pace in which ideas and activities flow in and out of it, I had forgotten about this little corner of the internet that was all mine. I think that blogging fell out of favor with me originally because I was having problems posting, but it appears that I can again. I mean, how much more do I need to say on this topic? It wasn't you, it was me. Baby, I promise, I'll change. You'll see.
So, let's make with the update.
Since the last time I posted, I have written a novel, which felt a lot like I gave birth, though, thankfully, there are no diapers to change. (Though you might have to change mine when I start the publishing process, which you could interpret to mean that I'll be crying and behaving like an infant or I'll be so old, diapers will be necessary. I'll leave that interpretation up to you, but I am hoping for the former.)
What else? I am keeping up with the freelance writing and it looks like I'll be putting more of a concerted effort into that, especially in pursuing more of the Holy Grail: paying gigs! I am actually so haughty that I am seeking monetary compensation from my precious, painstaking prose. You bet your sweet patootie I am, and that is the latest gripe that's been putting the agitation in my swirling vegan feminist tempest: publishing bodies that don't pay but want to use your work to drive sales. (I'm not talking about websites, which for the most part do not pay. nor am I talking about any magaznes in which I've recently been published, which I adore.) What kind of effed-up voluntary serfdom is that? I mean, I understand and appreciate that we're all trying to get by after, lo, these last eight years of a glorious Republican economy that only smiles upon robber barons, but, still. There's something about the non-compensation of writers that strikes me as one-sided and quasi-abusive. Bah! (I swear, if you met me, you wouldn't believe that someone with such a sunny disposition could write such cranky posts.) Anyway, I can't pay the mortgage with free copies of magazines - I know because I have tried - in which I am published (which, seriously, is offered with a straight-face as compensation for publication) so I am seeking more paying jobs. Was it really necessary for me to be so verbose with that?
Also in the time between posts, we adopted a kitten my son named Clover. She is the cutest, sweetest little white-and-black bundle of feline goodness. I have never had a cat before. My mom, and all the females in her family, is petrified of cats, really, to the point of running in terror if a cat so much as licks a paw in her presence, so we were always a dog family. Later, I got hitched to this guy who has a raging cat allergy. Anyway, we're still hitched, ten years later, but now we've got a kid who desperately wanted an animal to love on. We do have a dog, Buster, a nearly twelve-year-old basset hound who, in defiance of all things basset, is aggressive and ornery and at a point in his life where he is not accepting applications for affection from a six-year-old boy. So we adopted a kitten named Clover and all is well. She is so darn lovable John's allergies were like, "We can't compete with this. Fine. Have a cat." Even Buster with his cold, dark charcoal briquette of a heart has to grudgingly admit that she's eminently lovable. (He just let me know that he's not admitting to anything and that I mistook his temporarily non-bilious behavior for acceptance. He's just laying low whilst he figures out next steps.) Anyway, yes, a cat named Clover.
Gosh, there's so much more. But I think that what I'll do is just update this more often so not as to flood my three readers (shout out to you, Jane!) with posts of Chaucer-like proportions. So stay tuned. There is much to say and comment on this world when you are a vegan, a feminist and an agitator.
Until next time...
So, let's make with the update.
Since the last time I posted, I have written a novel, which felt a lot like I gave birth, though, thankfully, there are no diapers to change. (Though you might have to change mine when I start the publishing process, which you could interpret to mean that I'll be crying and behaving like an infant or I'll be so old, diapers will be necessary. I'll leave that interpretation up to you, but I am hoping for the former.)
What else? I am keeping up with the freelance writing and it looks like I'll be putting more of a concerted effort into that, especially in pursuing more of the Holy Grail: paying gigs! I am actually so haughty that I am seeking monetary compensation from my precious, painstaking prose. You bet your sweet patootie I am, and that is the latest gripe that's been putting the agitation in my swirling vegan feminist tempest: publishing bodies that don't pay but want to use your work to drive sales. (I'm not talking about websites, which for the most part do not pay. nor am I talking about any magaznes in which I've recently been published, which I adore.) What kind of effed-up voluntary serfdom is that? I mean, I understand and appreciate that we're all trying to get by after, lo, these last eight years of a glorious Republican economy that only smiles upon robber barons, but, still. There's something about the non-compensation of writers that strikes me as one-sided and quasi-abusive. Bah! (I swear, if you met me, you wouldn't believe that someone with such a sunny disposition could write such cranky posts.) Anyway, I can't pay the mortgage with free copies of magazines - I know because I have tried - in which I am published (which, seriously, is offered with a straight-face as compensation for publication) so I am seeking more paying jobs. Was it really necessary for me to be so verbose with that?
Also in the time between posts, we adopted a kitten my son named Clover. She is the cutest, sweetest little white-and-black bundle of feline goodness. I have never had a cat before. My mom, and all the females in her family, is petrified of cats, really, to the point of running in terror if a cat so much as licks a paw in her presence, so we were always a dog family. Later, I got hitched to this guy who has a raging cat allergy. Anyway, we're still hitched, ten years later, but now we've got a kid who desperately wanted an animal to love on. We do have a dog, Buster, a nearly twelve-year-old basset hound who, in defiance of all things basset, is aggressive and ornery and at a point in his life where he is not accepting applications for affection from a six-year-old boy. So we adopted a kitten named Clover and all is well. She is so darn lovable John's allergies were like, "We can't compete with this. Fine. Have a cat." Even Buster with his cold, dark charcoal briquette of a heart has to grudgingly admit that she's eminently lovable. (He just let me know that he's not admitting to anything and that I mistook his temporarily non-bilious behavior for acceptance. He's just laying low whilst he figures out next steps.) Anyway, yes, a cat named Clover.
Gosh, there's so much more. But I think that what I'll do is just update this more often so not as to flood my three readers (shout out to you, Jane!) with posts of Chaucer-like proportions. So stay tuned. There is much to say and comment on this world when you are a vegan, a feminist and an agitator.
Until next time...
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Okay...
Is this thing working again? The last time I tried, it made me keep creating new passwords each time I wanted to post something and then it still didn't work, so we'll see.
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