White Poppies
I wish there was somewhere in Saskatoon where I could buy a white poppy for Remembrance Day. The only poppy available here is, of course, the Red Poppy. For those of you not in the know, the white poppy symbolizes peace. The Red Poppy is for remembrance of the war dead. The White Poppy movement started in the United Kingdom, in 1926, as the No More War Movement. I have no problem supporting the troops and remembering those lives, both military and civilian, lost to war. I’m just not comfortable supporting war as a way to deal with conflict. There HAS to be a better way!
Let me start with a little background, for those of you who don’t know me. My dad joined the air force, I assume, just after he finished school. I do know that by the time he was twenty-five, he had a wife and four kids. I was the third daughter and was born when he was stationed on an army base in Germany. My older sisters were born on bases in Canada. My mom was an unhappy army wife, alone and ignored in a foreign country. Not soon after I was born my Dad was out of the service… I’ve heard rumours of a dishonourable discharge. Nobody’s ever discussed it with me. He left us soon after to start over with a new family. Alcoholism ran rampant in his life.
My mother’s father grew up somewhere in Poland, he told me tales of being conscripted into the Russian Army (WWI I do believe), of riding horses during this war, and of starving in Russia & eating tomatoes for the first time. He ate his tomatoes with sugar, which was the way he ate them to the day he died. He hadn’t eaten tomatoes before as he had been told they were poisonous. He didn’t make war sound adventurous or fun or noble.
Most of my siblings, at some point in their life joined the Cadets. The eldest and youngest were active for years. The youngest got her pilot’s license because of the Cadets. My stepmother has been, and still is, very active in this organization. I lasted a week. Didn’t like the marching, the guns, being told what to do and when to do it. It was never an organization where I felt validated or safe.
I can understand the lure of joining the military. It provides you with structure, shelter, and food. It can give you a community to belong to and believe in. A younger brother and niece both joined out of family obligation. Neither lasted. My brother did basic training and was back home shortly after; why it didn’t work out I was never told. My niece went overseas with the Cadets and was sent home early, again I don’t know why. Maybe this is why I have a problem with the military, it seems overridden with secrets.
I am also concerned about who makes up the majority of most armies. By that I mean who is on the frontlines shooting and getting shot at. “We are the dead” as it says in the poem; In Flanders Field. It is the poor and disenfranchised who make up the majority of the dying in both the military and civilian ranks.
This military culture, we (society) glorify scares me. I know this culture. It is a culture that results in a reckless lifestyle that leads to too much drinking and abuse. The ads should say see the world, kill those more disenfranchised than you and escape from your life and responsibilities. Can’t we hope to achieve peace without waging war?
I want a chance to show that I’m tired of this mindset. I want to stand for peace. I want a white poppy to wear.
Weird and Wonderful
Yesterday was Halloween (Samhain) and today and tomorrow I will be in the midst of El Día de los Muertos. This time of year I reflect and honour the goth within. You may have noticed this from last week’s post. I’m continuing the theme this week as I participate in two different memes today and answer them both in a roundabout way!
The memes are from Art on the Darkside and Weekly Geeks.
First off, w
e have a fall, harvest, halloweeny picture for you. He looks a bit bored, don’t you think. I don’t know how many Trick or Treaters he saw but I had none. This is one of the perils of living in a downtown apartment. Most people with children are in the suburbs! I didn’t put him up. I just took his picture and cropped it for my own pleasure.
It seems strange to have Halloween on a Saturday. I don’t remember weekend Halloweens as a child. I don’t even remember Trick or Treating in the light. In my memories Halloween is always dark. I remember rushing home from school, grabbing a pillowcase (that was our treat bag – it was a small town and we planned on hitting every house) and going out with my friends and my younger brother and his friends. The next day was spent in a sugar hangover from all the treats we didn’t normally have.
I have a bit of a sugar hangover today. I saw coloured popcorn at the Farmer’s Market yesterday and just had to have some. 
Grandma Katie (she wasn’t related to us, she lived next door until we moved when I was thirteen) always made coloured popcorn for special occasions. It’s what she gave out for Halloween. Her house was always our first stop. Every child in town got a small lunch bag full of popcorn; the bags were probably six inches tall. She must have made popcorn all October so that she would have enough. It’s a shame that Treats are no longer homemade! So, the popcorn I bought yesterday was way too sweet – Grandma Katie’s popcorn wasn’t sugar flavoured, just coloured. 
El Día de los Muertos is a new tradition. I discovered it when I was in Montreal. I’ve always been a bit on the goth side. My best friend and I use to hang out in Graveyards and I still love a quiet afternoon in an old graveyard. I think it’s important that we remember who came before us and that some day we will be gone. Then all that our loved ones will have will be memories or stories or the odd picture (I hate having my picture taken – always have).
I love the fact that you can buy skeleton paraphernalia that depict your dead friends and relatives. I want to make a skeleton reading a book, hiding in the corner, surrounded by her cat and dog. This would be me; this is how I would want to be remembered even though the image is old. That was me over forty years ago though, on second thought, it’s me now too minus the cat and dog. Though I wish I could have a cat here in my apartment. Oh, how I ramble on!
So, Weekly Geeks asks are things getting a little more weird and creepy than usual. My answer would be no. My life has always been weird and creepy. I was a child in the sixties when trolls were a popular childhood toy, a teen in the seventies when Stephen King started writing horror but then again I’ve always been drawn to the Gothic. Never had the money for the wardrobe but horror is something I read widely in. And I covet the clothes.
Right now, I’m listening to Wicked and I must say my sympathies lie with Elphaba.
This weekend remember all of us are only here for a moment and can only hope that someone will remember us as we really were. Me, I’m weird and goth and like to hang out in graveyards.
First Snow and Fall Suppers
We had our first snow on Thursday. It started falling in the late morning. By the time I went out for lunch, there were big fluffy, flakes floating in the air and settling on all the green that just days before had been basking in the warmth of the sun.
Hopefully, it will warm up again and all this snow will melt before Halloween. We barely got any Fall; Fall only officially started here at 1:18 pm CST on Tuesday, September 22. That was, what, less than three weeks ago?
I do not have pictures of this. I really should keep my camera with me. I envisioned many lovely compositions on Thursday and now we shall never see how they would have turned out.
Here are a few pictures I took Friday morning on my walk to work…when it was minus 14 degrees Celsius with a wind chill. Brrr. (For you Americans that means the temperature was 6 degrees Fahrenheit.)
Here is a picture of birds (wrens? swallows?) foraging that morning in the park.
Don’t they look cold? Okay, maybe I’m projecting here. I was feeling very cold when I took that picture. It was about half-way through my walk. And I was worried the birds wouldn’t show up in the picture. (It’s a new camera – I’m still getting used to it.)
The next picture is of our Hollyhock plants here at work. They don’t look as cold. Perhaps, because they have such a warm snowy quilt covering them. 
In the world I grew up in it seemed that fall suppers were ubiquitous. They were everywhere. I recall that we could go to one, every weekend, from the start of school till Halloween. I’m sure, now, that this memory if false. Firstly, because, of course, Fall Suppers could not start until after the harvest was done. A Fall Supper is a community affair, everyone contributes something. Secondly, of course, they probably stopped at Thanksgiving (which, here in Canada, is this weekend) because by then everyone was tired of turkey.
Their name is debatable. Is it Fall Supper, because they are held in the Fall? Is it Fowl Supper, because the main meat is turkey? As long as it is not Foul Supper (a colleague jokes – LOL).
Traditionally, the small town I grew up in would have five separate suppers. Each church, Catholic, Lutheran, United, Pentecostal, would sponsor one and the school would also sponsor one. Now, we are down to one – only the school can still muster up enough workers and food. Coming from a small town, having left as so many of us did, I do wonder who will carry on these traditions. The church women, who use to do the cooking, are getting older. The churches, in small towns, are consolidating so that there are fewer churches. The children mostly leave or work outside the community.
This time of the year, I yearn for Fall Suppers. Weekends filled with turkey, community and camaraderie.
Here is a true bounty. There are groaning platters of turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, jellied salads, vegetables and desserts. The tables glow with pies and cakes and home-made delicacies. I could go on forever praising this liturgy of food and love.
I want to be a small child again, running in and out of the hall. I want to be a young teen reading the names off the tombstones in the cemetery next to the hall. I want to be the one cooking and cleaning and gossiping in the kitchen. I was never the mother corralling the young-uns – this I did as an aunt. I will never be the crone sitting and reminiscing as I sip my tea; unless I move back.
I am glad it is Thanksgiving. I am happy to be going to my sister’s for turkey and gossip. I could do without the cold. I will end now, with a final picture from Friday. When I went to work in the morning this tree had all its leaves. When I came home it had shivered and shook all its leaves off. There they are blanketing the ground. Poor tree, it was not ready for the cold weather either.
Asking For It…The Sequel
It’s hard to believe but I’ve been blogging for almost a year. My first post was September 22, 2008.
As of last week, I have posted 54 times. You would think that it was a little early for a sequel.
;-0
But, that’s what I have for today…a sequel.
I don’t know. Is it technically a sequel?
A sequel is – something that is complete in it self but continues the narrative of a previous work.
So, yes, this is a sequel.
Back on April 20, 2009 I wrote about how I have trouble asking for things, both the material and the immaterial.
That post is here!
It was basically about how I wanted blinds for my window, and even though my apartment manager had some she was willing to give me, I had trouble asking for them.
Well, as I’m sure you guessed by now, I asked and I got.
Sometime in May or June I do believe…
Then, over the long weekend in May, my landlord tried to put them up. Horrors, they were too long. And, once again, I vacillated for weeks on what to do and who could cut them for me.
Just before Father’s Day, inspiration struck. I could buy big shears and cut them myself!
I got shears for under $10.00 and set out one weekend, shortly after Father’s Day to cut them myself.
I was apprehensive. I am not a crafty person. There was much potential for disaster.
But, I gritted my teeth and gathered my tools together.
We have here the blinds (blue – hooray they match my current colour scheme), the shears, a ruler and green masking tape. The original idea was to lay out the blinds, measure them and then cut.
As you can see here, I changed my mind. I decided to just go ahead and cut and cut. And cut some more!
And cut … This was harder then it looked.
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Thankfully,
the blind was plastic and not metal or something else hard to cut.
This job was turning out to be harder than initially thought.
Good thing the shears were sharp. Good thing I didn’t cut myself or the floor when I dropped them!
An hour later, and two or three trips to measure them against my window, the blinds were finished. There was only a mess to clean up. Not a big mess, thankfully. 
Just one dust pan full…
And to think this was the quickest part of getting the blinds hung. They sat on my windowsill, in my bedroom, from June until the August 1st long weekend when my landlord could find time to hang them (again).
Finally, the blinds were up. The summer sun could be blocked (kind of)
Below are my bedroom curtains. I use two cloth shower curtains, back to back. I am cheap – this was less expensive then buying real curtains. And they work just as well. And I like them. The front one is a Paris scene and the back (liner) is the night sky.
Okay, I will admit they are not the best at blocking the sun. Put they are pretty and I like how my window looks.
And isn’t that what matters most?
And I learnt how to be brave and to ask for what I need. Yeah me…
Father’s Day
I don’t have as many fathers in my life as I do mothers. For some reason, I have much stormier relationships with men than I do with women. Ironys of ironys, I sit here writing this Father’s Day morning as a storm brews up outside.
In order of importance, my fathers are:
My Pseudo-stepdad. Now not pseudo as in pretended, false, fake but as in almost. My mother and him have been a couple for over twenty-five years. They are each others business contacts and support. They do not share a house: she’s usually in town, he’s usually out at the farm. I didn’t start calling him my stepdad, not even in my head, until recently. The family crisis I wrote about at the end of March dealt with him. This crisis made me clarify my feelings about my pseudo-stepdad. He’s always treated us fairly; treated my brother’s kids, better than their own grandfather did. He saw them more for one. This year, I sent him a Father’s Day card even before I sent one to my own father.
Which brings me to my biological Father. Yes, I choose this term carefully. Nine times out of ten this is how I see him. He impregnated my mother with four children and then left when my younger brother was a few months old and I was barely a year and a half. I didn’t see him again until I was twelve or so. He contacted my mother because the Catholic Church needed her to sign off on her marriage to him before he could marry my stepmother in the church.
After that, we spent occasional summers with him and his new family. In my adulthood, after I graduated with my MLIS and was in my thirties, I lived with him, my stepmother, my youngest half-sister (who was also an adult) and her child. I got to know my father better, got to see him as human and flawed and myself the same way. I can understand why he had to leave my mother (they are very ill suited). I’m not sure I can ever understand why he gave up on being part of my childhood.
This concerns me because I see my brother and nephews repeating this pattern. At least one of them is only being a Baby Daddy. For those of you unfamiliar with this concept, a Baby Daddy is “the father of the child, not currently involved with the mother.and more than likely not supporting, or involved, with the child.” Those last two points are the ones that upset me the most. I believe anyone, male or female, who participates in creating a child needs to be involved, financially, legally, absolutely, in that child’s life.
I will admit that I am confused on what the roles of a father should be. No, I believe, that after birth, the role of the father should not differ from what is expected of the mother. That both parents need to raise their child and both need to be involved financially, legally and absolutely in that child’s life.
There was no familial male authority figure involved in my childhood. My mother did not date until after all her children had finished high school. I saw my grandparents mainly on holidays even though one lived, on the farm, less than two miles from town. I don’t know why he wasn’t more involved. Okay, maybe I do – my father was not his favorite child (and maybe not even his if I choose to believe the rumours) and my father was his mother’s favorite. On the other side, I was named after my father so my mother’s mother had problems with that. Thus, no close male authority figure to observe and learn from.
My mother was the primary “Bread winner” during my childhood. The government provided the major support and my grandparents provided what they thought we needed. As did neighbours, it was a small town, this help usually centered around holidays and charity. I remember it being an issue when one of my older sister wore something to school and a classmate pointed out, to everyone, that it use to be hers. After that, my mother and a friend traded skills – she sewed for us so that we would have clothes that were unique to us. (And that’s a whole other story about me and my sister’s hand-me-downs ).
When I did see my father, he was a strict disciplinarian. Mostly for all his children but he does have favorites and it’s easy to figure out who they are. Out of his first family, only my eldest sister and I contact him regularly (and will send him greetings today). This story would be greatly different told from her point of view; she was almost five when he left. I know she has a different view of him: we’ve talked.
Growing up my father had no legal responsibility for us. He was a deadbeat dad. When he did come back into our lives, to get a legal divorce and moral annulment from my mother, the courts ordered him to pay child support of $2.00 a month. Yes, that is correct; fifty cents per child per month. Which I think he paid maybe twice! The reasoning behind this was partly that my mother was on government support and partly the reality that he was not able to financially support both families. But still!
As you can tell, this annoys me. Where are my role models? Men confound me! My father didn’t care enough to be there. My grandfathers let emotion get in the way. My mother’s father I had to cajole and placate into loving me; my father’s father saw me as a quiet, loner who preferred to be off reading a book. Not wrong, but still, they could have tried to get to know me on a one to one basis. My father’s father took his favorites to Scotland with him. The plan, he told us, was always to take each of us eventually but he got sick before this happened (and then why did his favorite grandchild get to go twice before he died?).
This is why I am child-free. I am not strong enough, financially and emotionally, to put a child first. And I believe that this is what a good parent must do. A parent needs to be strong enough to work with their co-partner, whether in the same household or not, to raise a healthy, mostly well adjusted child that knows that both parents love them and will do their best to raise them to be happy productive adults. Who will be there, no matter what, to love them.
I chosen very consciously to not have children. I choose very consciously to love and support my nieces and nephews, as I can, both actually and financially. I know what I’ve chosen to lose and why. There are still too many knots in my upbringing for me to untangle so that I can raise both a healthy me and a healthy child. Perhaps, I’m being selfish by choosing me. Perhaps, I’m not.
No one is asking “How much do you love me? Do you love me?
No one is asking the questions I wish I had the courage to ask my parents.
Cooking
I cook for no one. Not even myself.
I make food. I do the basics well. Meat, potatoes, vegetables. I make a mean chili. It’s my signature dish. I mean how can you go wrong with chili; throw in some meat, tomatoes, spices and whatever else you have kicking around the house. It’s a great clean the fridge type of meal!
I eat. I know I have to eat. But nothing I make inspires me or tickles my taste buds.
I don’t care what anything tastes like right now. Except maybe raspberries.
When I was married, my husband cooked. This was during my brief Hollywood marriage. (We knew each other for five years and were married for two). I worked days, he worked nights. I loved not having to think about meals. I would come home to good, basic meals and would then be left with the clean-up. Which, honestly, I felt to be a fair trade. He was much more excited by food and meal prep than I ever was.
He made a mean Farmer’s Breakfast. For those of you not familiar with this dish, you need a cast iron frying pan, eggs and leftovers. You beat up the eggs, pour them into the frying pan, slice up leftovers (potatoes, onions etc) into the mixture, fry it on the burner until the bottom is somewhat firm and then put the frying pan into a 350 degree oven until it is baked and firm. (I take no responsibility for if or how this turns out if you try to make it based on these directions. Remember, I don’t cook!) Bliss. And always different.
My boyfriend, in Montreal, F cooked about half the time. He lived at home and had never been responsible for meals on a regular basis so was quite excited to experiment with flavors and textures.
I still remember him making a sauce, out of the leftover cherry wine that I had in my cupboard, for the pork chops. The wine came from his older sister, whom I never did meet, as a housewarming gift for my new apartment. I had barely drank any of it so it sat in the cupboard for at least a year before F used it to enliven the pork chops.
Not something I would have thought of. Wine was not something my family cooked with. For one, we never had any sitting around the house as it was too expensive and two, booze was for drinking not cooking. Another reason it was not in my mother’s house as my father was an alcoholic and when he left the booze left also.
I started being responsible for meals as a young teen. We depended on our garden for most of our food. Thus, potatoes were plentiful as were vegetables. Meat came from the local farms, usually provided through the grandparents or barter, so usually consisted of beef or pork. Fish was constant, as well, because there were many lakes nearby and my mother’s father loved to fish.
I learnt that meals consisted of plenty of potatoes (boiled, fried, bland); vegetables (boiled, bland) and meat that got the heck fried or baked out of it. No rare meat ever sat on my childhood table.
So, I can throw a bland meal together in a matter of minutes and then cook the heck out of it. I always burnt the hamburgers and the fried potatoes. As the local delivery persons could attest to – the delivery schedule coincided with our supper schedule. I’m a book worm and would try to read and cook at the same time; oh alright, I still do this. Feeding my mind has always been more tempting then feeding my body.
I never really enjoyed food as a pleasure until I moved to Montreal. Good, cheap food was plentiful and easy to find. The local bakery provided over ten different breads and bagels and pastries. There was a Chinese grocery a block from my home. Montreal was the first time I shopped in a delicatessen, ate smoked meat, had bagels and lox and the first time I had to buy fish that someone I didn’t know caught.
In Montreal, I tried authentic Indian food and more varieties of Chinese then I could find at home. I grew up in a small Saskatchewan town so I already was familiar with authentic Mandarin as this was where our local Chinese family had immigrated from and she would cook us authentic meals as she and my mom were best friends both struggling to raise kids alone (she was widowed, Mom was divorced).
You will notice, however, that all this variety did not inspire me to experiment in cooking for myself. I like my food to come as prepared as possible. I am not a cook; I do not aspire to be a chef.
I do read food blogs. Such pretty, pretty pictures. I do have around ten recipes bookmarked that I like enough that I may try them some day. Some day when I not too busy reading or there is someone coming for a meal that I really, really want to impress. The Queen perhaps.
Here are the some links if you are interested:
Cheddar and Blueberry Pancakes, Chocolate Apple Pie, Coconut Cream Popsicle, Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal, and Hot Toddy Pudding Cake. Enjoy
A cook is the first person I will hire when I finally make enough money to have such disposable income or if I win the lottery. This is how I will know I am rich – I will have someone else making all my meals for me!
gigi (not necessarily)
How Many Mothers?
How many mothers do you have?
I have one mother. She is very different from me. She is all sunshine & mornings & friends & family. She is social.
I am grey.
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I have one stepmother. She was young when she met my father. She & I are more alike. We understand each other.
I did not like her, at first, and now I can see that there are many times that she “gets” me better than my mother does.
My mother thinks I am her…my stepmother knows I am not.
I love them both. <3
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I have at least four grandmothers. My mother’s mother, my father’s mother, my stepmother’s mother, my mother’s aunt (her mother’s sister), two adopted grandmothers, my sister’s mother-in-law and on and on…
I call them grandmother except for my mother’s aunt who was Tanta.
None of them had cats. LOL. They all kept busy and knew how to cook – which I am trying to learn.
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All of my mother figures have let themselves grow old naturally. No face lifts or wrinkle creams for them. My eldest sister, not a grandmother yet, recently let her black hair go salt & pepper. I think she looks tres magnificent!
My grandmother role models plant flowers and cultivate their own gardens.
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One of my elderly next door neighbours (an adopted grandmother) had the most beautiful garden from May to October. She made us coloured popcorn every holiday and let me and my friends use her oven to bake imaginary cookies made up of peanut butter & oatmeal.
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I also have many aunts. I am an aunt.
I am the type of aunt who bakes cookies & sends you packages through the mail.
My aunts were the sort who listened and treated you the same as they treated their own children.
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My aunts mostly lived on farms. They were farm wives. They knew how to milk cows & make butter. They appreciated the beauty of sunrises and sunsets. They were early risers – I was not. They reinforced my belief that I was not suited to farm life!
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These women – mothers, stepmothers, aunts, grandmothers – introduced me to many things I would not have been able to experience if I had only my poor, divorced mother to raise me.
My other adopted grandmother,another neighbour, had a summer cottage. I did not think such a luxury was possible. To have both a house in town and a house by the blissful, quiet lake.
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I am a city aunt. I would like to be seen as an Auntie Mame. Someone who would take you to plays & festivals & magnificent stores.
This is what I aspire to.
I am not there yet.
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I have no flower gardens. I only have memories of gardens & sunshine & happiness.
I have no cottage. I only have memories of soft breezes & warm mornings & laughter.
I have no children. I will never be a mother.
I am an ant {:-O} I am lucky in having had a multitude of mothers to teach me and love me and nurture the very essence of me.
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How many mothers do you have? Count them
Asking For It
I can’t ask for things. Objects, time, help. I was trained early to be ultra-independent, to rely on no one but myself. My father left before I turned two; my mother was left to raise four children, under the age of five, by herself. She couldn’t cope. It was the sixties so the medical community’s solution was happy pills. My father’s parents favourite grandchildren were not us and my mother’s parents held a grudge against my father, who I am named after.
Emotionally, no one ever gave me what I needed. So I learnt early not to ask. Instead I became the perfect child and made no demands. It is a hard habit to break.
Right now, I need bedroom blinds. My bedroom is too light, too early, now that it is Spring. My building manager has mentioned there are blinds available. I can’t get around to asking about them. Even simple questions like “what size are they”. Harder questions, like “how much would they cost” or “could the landlord put them up for me” are impossible to ask.
It would be easier to buy my own blinds and put them up myself. But the cost stops me, not knowing how to hang blinds stops me. But I’m tired of waking up too early and tired of being scared and indecisive. Tired of being independent.
I wish I knew how to do this. Intellectually, I do know how. You start small, you ask a small non-important question. You ask for a small favour. And you get what you want; what you need. Except I don’t think I will (ever) get what I want or what I need unless I do (get) it for myself.
And thus the self-fulfilling prophecy continues.
Tradition
Today is the end of the Easter weekend. One of those times that religion/christianity is constantly niggling at my subconscious. For me, it is a time of year ripe with tradition. (Hum Tradition from Fiddler on the Roof here. LOL)
Tradition according to the dictionary means a specific practice of long standing, or the handing down of beliefs, customs, and information from generation to generation, usually by word of mouth or by practice.
What you need to know is that I no longer count Christianity as my only religion. My spiritual beliefs are much more far reaching than any one doctrine. I believe in many things. For me, the Bible offers guidelines not certainties.
However, no matter where I am I expect certain things to occur on this weekend. Even though I am no longer religious I enjoy viewing the mythology that is the basis of Easter.
This weekend is not just about Easter but also occurs close to Passover. So, I expect that The Ten Commandments will be on TV at some point, usually Saturday. The Charlton Heston version, of course. More than four hours on the story of Moses and the legend of Passover. No, I don’t watch it all but I do like to be there for the parting of the Red Sea to look for fishes. For being filmed in 1956, there are some amazing special effects. And no, no glimpses of fishes this year.
On Palm Sunday or Good Friday there is usually a showing or two of Jesus Christ Superstar. I’m partial to the 1973 version; I was thirteen when I first saw it and my grandparents hated it. Too modern. This movie showed me that other interpretations of a story could be seen as valid. I loved the way the story was told; how the music brought it all together. How the movie dealt with greater moral values also intrigued me. How much of a pawn was Judas? How culpable was the crowd, made out of ordinary, everyday people just like me? What would I have done? At thirteen, I wanted to be an apostle and was dismayed that no women could apply for the task of spreading the gospel. Thankfully, this has changed within many denominations of Christianity.
Then, there are the little surprises in the movie. Such as, Holly Hunter as a reporter in the crowd scene after Jesus’s arrest at Gethsemane. Okay, after a brief tour through the interwebs, I can’t prove this. Plus, if it is her she would have been around 15 years old according to her biography. So, those of you familiar with the movie tell me what you think. Is that Holly Hunter in the crowd of news reporters asking questions (she does ask a question) or not? I”d love proof one way or another.
If I have to go to church, on Easter Sunday, let it be a sunrise service. After a long winter, it is nice to wake early to watch the sun rise and sing a blessing to spring and new awakenings.
So, what was this post about again? Oh yeah, my Easter traditions
As a single person, I get to pick and choose my traditions. Yearly, if I so choose. This year, I challenged myself to give up something for Lent.
I choose to give up Junk Chocolate. Yes, that adjective is important. I buy at least one chocolate bar a day. I don’t always enjoy them and I definetely don’t need that much junk chocolate in my system. I didn’t think this was a habit I could break. Forty days without junk chocolate in my life seemed like forever. It wasn’t. I did it except for one slip-up on St. Patrick’s day. There was a new mint Three Muskateers bar out and I had to have one.
To reward myself I bought a small box of Bernard Callebaut chocolates just for me from the Easter bunny, plus a small bag of Jelly candies and had hard boiled eggs for breakfast. No, I didn’t dye them. It seemed too much work to just dye two eggs. Though next year, I may try something traditional, like this:
I hope you had a good Easter weekends and enjoyed your traditions whether they were new or old or a combination of both
My Button Jar
I started a button jar today. This is a time honoured family tradition on my mother’s side of the family. My mother has a button jar. My grandmother had a button tin. I’ll bet my grandmother’s mother had some sort of container for buttons.
Up until today, I had buttons strewn about in various places. You know how it is…you buy a new shirt, you get a spare button or two. So today I had an empty jar. A teeny, tiny jar. Which was okay because I don’t have a lot of buttons. Just a pittance of buttons, not a multitude, can be found at my apartment.
My buttons are not pretty like the buttons in this picture. They are more monochrome. I have a lot of navy buttons, a few beige ones and one bright peacock blue button that is from my only silk shirt.
This is the size of my button jar. It is much smaller than a pint jar. It is much smaller than my mother’s button jar. It held, when it was full of jam, about 4 ounces. My mother’s buttons are stored in an empty Kraft Cheez Whiz jar. This is the type of jar I store pens in. The biggest Cheez Whiz jar is perfect for storing pens. My grandmother’s buttons were stored in a shortbread tin. A Walkers shortbread tin. Which seems strange to me now because this is my mother’s mother, who was Polish. It was my father’s mother who was from Scotland (the land of shortbread cookies. LOL).
So here are the button jars. You’re going to have to imagine them full of buttons. I’m not that technically advanced yet.
It seems to me that containers for buttons might be something universally rendered. What do you think? Did your mother have a button jar? Or a button box? Did your grandmother? Do your sisters? Or brothers? Do you?
I think Neil Gaiman’s mother had a button jar/box. How else could he have come up with the other mother in Coraline? A collection of buttons, stored all together, definitely makes one realize how scary button eyes staring into your own eyes would be.
There will probably not be a post next week as I have family issues to deal with. See you in two weeks.
