2021 November Blog by Charles Peek
Spoiler:
For 50 million years our biggest problems were too few calories, too little information. For about 50 years our biggest problem has been too many calories, too much information. We have to adjust, and I believe we will really fast. I also believe it will be wicked ugly while we’re adjusting. (Penn Jillette, magician, actor, musician, inventor, television presenter, and author)
The book also makes me think about my things, the objects I hold dear. I am a man of certain age who ha had a recent health scare. What are those who inherit my things to make of them? Will they have meaning, or just stare out in “bare mute blankness” as my grandfather’s branding iron does? Randall M. Howe, “The Things We Leave Behind,” Arizona Attorney May 2021 44-46, courtesy of former student Mark Caldwell)
***
O, the times between the goblins of Halloween USA and the dragons of Chinese New Year can be treacherous—for our waistlines…and more. More and Too Much being the operative words!
In our home, we find ourselves heading into this with a load of birthdays and other celebrations. Maybe put the brakes on. Oh, wait: here come Thanksgiving and Christmas.
We’ll be having turkey and a duck, domestic sadly since none of us hunt anymore, and occasionally we substitute a goose, but that’s a terrible reminder. The verse my mother often repeated, “Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat.” Well, Mom, not just the geese!
On the other hand, after four years athwart the national political direction, it’s nice now to see we are representative Americans after all—privileged enough to overeat. Half gallon slushy, anyone?
And so, since we can’t put on the brakes right now (Oh, when?), we’ve trimmed out some new recipes—a pumpkin soup sounds good, a new layered dessert. And we won’t have to make a plum pudding this year—found a nice one at a Brit shop in Lawrence, Kansas, thanks to Jim and Bev’s directions. (I could swear they said that next door was Omah Shay’s—looked for it but couldn’t spot it. Maybe gone out of business. The new shop is called, what? Au Marché.)
All this makes me recall a beloved Bishop from my childhood, Howard Rasmus Brinker. Gout had made him conscious of his eating and my dad commiserated—it must be tough to go to a different congregation each Sunday and the Bishop’s visit so special there was always a pot-luck. “Oh, George,” the Bishop replied, “it’s not the potlucks. It’s a little something called gluttony!”
One of the things atheists miss out on is church potlucks. Kent Haruf’s description of them may be to blame for converting many non-believers. Although my old friend Roger Bruhn had the answer for that in college—he got on church mailing lists so he could know when the next potluck would help him stretch the dollars in his meager budget! It was such a great idea, we tried it a bit ourselves. Those German Congregationalists know how to cook, too!
People say that when you eat Chinese food, you are hungry an hour later. They’ve never been to China. Our months in China were difficult in some ways but not because of the food. We never ate so well, and months later came home tons lighter. Alas, the blight has hit China and—fed by memories of too little to eat—the Chinese adopted one-too-many western trends—eating too much. Which we did when we got back to the staples of the American fast-food diet.
But food is not all that we ingest. We are moved, for instance, to “read, mark, and inwardly digest” scripture. We feed on books, ideas, conversations, friendships, loves, and hopes. And, while ingesting all that, we surround ourselves with things, our homes often, especially after many years, like cluttered sets on a Victorian stage. No wonder our children prompt us to downsize!
More on this theme coming in the Christmas blog, but for now just a bit of lead in for that.
In addition to the brushless shaving cream tin’s lid we found when we remodeled our kitchen, we found more stuff when we finally had to be rid of an old high back, caned seat chair that had been part of a set that was a hand-me-down when my folks got it in the mid-1950’s. The caning on the seat was finally giving way after years of giving some cushion and shape to the seat, and breaking up the chair for the trash we found the dried-up pages of an old newspaper.
Here is a digest from the articles and ads:
1955, sept and oct One issue 86:7. man stabbed wife to death then gave himself up. Sarah Vaughn, Louis Armstrong, Marilyn Monroe, Edna Ferber, Clark Gable, Van Heflin, Billy Rose. Full-skirted ladies’ housecoats for $29.95. Perry Como, Robert Merrill, Nixon and Harriman on the eve of the nominating conventions for Ike’s second term, still referred to as General Eisenhower. Jack Dempsey, Judy Holliday, Coach Woody Hayes (given his walking papers by the hand of Bill Nester, former Chancellor of UNK). Waldorf’s sweater queens, Yanks/Dodgers series thrills (Martin), and a bizarre drawing with caption: Chubby stenog, who weighs too much and is always on a diet. Brings her lunch, consisting of a tomato, a dab of cottage cheese and a fourth of a grapefruit. Constantly referring to her calorie chart. Sneaks out at 3 P.M. for a candy bar (chocolate).
1955. We’d only been carrying that around for 50 years. That was the year I was to turn 13.
Flash back to 1949-50. Two major events shaped me to this day. I had my tonsils out and we moved from Evanston, Illinois, to Salida, Colorado, leaving behind the love of my little life, Jeannie Armour. Whether the new lease on a healthier life or the trauma of loss was the culprit, I have no idea, but I went from being a thin little tow-head to a very chubby 3rd grader, getting chubbier until 7th grade. A forced diet between elementary school and Junior High cut me down several sizes, although Carpenter’s snack shop just west of the McCook Junior High didn’t help me maintain. Sneaks out at 3 P.Ml for a candy bar, indeed!
The day I got married in 1965, by then inches taller, I weighed the same as I had weighed entering Junior High!
Until Covid, I had not done too badly of recent years, but not well enough to keep my friend Steve Schneider from recommending the diet—no white stuff—that has him back to his old high school trim weight. That and walking his dog twice a day to get in his steps.
I’m actually proud of him, and not just for this; but his brothers would agree with me that all that hasn’t necessarily improved his political thinking!
Which, for almost all of us, is something else we carry around, like a weight from the past. Sometimes something we picked up in the world of 1955 is worth keeping to guide us, sometimes we need a good intellectual diet that clears out old ideas to make way for better ones. I’ll leave that to the little barbs friends and I exchange on Facebook. They charge me with being (horrors) a Progressive—which these days is just a foot-on-a-banana-peel away from being a Communist. I gently remind them of my old debate coach (and later Governor) Ralph Brooks’s mantra: non progressi est regressi. I may have butchered the Latin—but I got the idea.
Now if I could only practice that with my waist line. Well, right after Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Years. Okay, at least for Lent! After all, Lent was designed to deal with gluttony.
Next Blog: our Christmastide reflections and greetings, continuing remarks on what we take with us, what we leave behind. Followed shortly after by our semi-annual (Memorial Day and New Years) remembrance of those we’ve lost.
Kearney, Nebraska / November 18, 2021
capeek 