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Pies, Bunnies And Christmas Breakfast

4/9/2021

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PIES, BUNNIES AND CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST

My daughter Claire and her mate Miguel,

...and my mate Tom and I,

...made a pact that on the day when we were all safely immunized against COVID-19 - two weeks after the last of us had our second shots, our Freedom Day, so to speak - we'd celebrate with a visit. The day arrived on Friday, April 2, 2021, and so Claire and Miguel planned to fly in to Columbus from Chicago on that day for a quick celebratory Easter weekend visit.
"What would you and Miguel like to eat while you're here?' I asked my daughter.
"Pie," she answered.
"Anything else?" I asked.
"Pie," she said. "Just pie. Oh, and are we doing the bunnies?" she asked.
She was referring to our tradition of rising at dawn on Easter morning and surreptitiously (though I believe that by now everybody in the 'hood pretty much knows it's us) decorating the yards of our neighbors with colored paper bunnies (see post form 4/12/2020, "Bunnies, Bunnies, Bunnies").
"Yep," I replied, "There will be bunnies."
"And can we have Christmas Breakfast, too?" she asked, referring the the meal, also known as The Big Breakfast, that we eat every Christmas morning,

...though said meal is likely to meander on into the the afternoon.

Of course this past year, in the midst of the epidemic, there were only the three of us eating our Christmas Breakfast in our COVID bubble.

But now, with the local members of our tribe all vaccinated against the coronavirus, there was, happily, nothing stopping us from having Christmas Breakfast for Easter.
And so it was decided: Over the course of the weekend we would celebrate with pie, bunnies, Christmas Breakfast, and Saturday night dinner with my son Tommy and his mate Emily.

And so a few days before Miguel and Claire's arrival Tom and I got to work, making pies and cutting out bunnies.

Peach, cherry almond streusel, and apple pies,

...and a blueberry cobbler, hopefully enough pastry to get us through the weekend.

Though their flight was scheduled to land after 10 pm, on the day of their arrival I also fixed their favorite foods: mashed potato casserole, green beans almondine, and hot rolls, and also a new recipe I found for corn pudding,

...just in case they might be hungry when they got here.

Tom and I met Miguel and Claire at the Columbus airport, our first trip to the airport in a year and several months.

The place still touted Columbus as the city of "One of Us" (see post from 4/29/2018, "What's So Funny At The Columbus Airport"),

...and, even though it was after 10 pm, still the place was emptier than I ever remember seeing it.

We met Claire and Miguel at the arrival gate.

...then headed for home, where they opted to dig into the pie right then,

...and save dinner for breakfast the following morning, Saturday morning.

After breakfast Claire and Miguel did some computer work, while Theresa did some bunny work.

...and I worked on a salad for dinner.

When dinner time rolled around we headed over to Tommy and Emily's, Tom's and my first visit to their house in nine months.

Dinner was a couple of most excellent Detroit-style deep dish pizzas from Jet's Pizza,

...with salad,

...and, of course, pies for dessert, peach and cherry almond streusel,

...served with ice cream and whip-cream.

It seemed a most awesomely wonderful meal, the best I could remember having in a long time. But then, maybe it wasn't the food that made it so good.

After dinner we came home and worked on the Easter bunnies.

Watching Claire work with the tape used to secure bamboo skewers to the backs of the bunnies, it occurred to me that she looked like a nurse as she meticulously snipped the tape into half-a-dozen strips at a time, stuck the strips to a nearby tray table in a neat row, taped the skewers to the bunnies, then repeated the process.

We cuonstructed a total of 210 bunnies, 14 for each of the 14 houses on our block and a batch for for Emily and Tommy's house, which we secretly bunnied that evening before leaving.
Bright and early the following morning, Easter Sunday, Tom and I bunnied the neighboring lawns.

After all the lawns on our block were bunnied, it was time to begin working on Christmas Breakfast.

The menu was, by popular demand, scrambled eggs,

...and Chantilly potatoes (not to be confused with the potato casserole I'd made on Friday night - needless to say, we folks around here like our spuds), a creamy mashed potato mélange which involves, among other things, folding whipped heavy cream into cooked potatoes that have been squished through a ricer (a gizmo which I acquired for this very purpose) ,

...then topping said fluffy, creamy, well-buttered potato mélange with parmesan cheese and baking, the outcome being trés magnifique, as potatoes go.

We also had rolls hot from the oven and brie,

...and a cucumber and tomato salad.

For dessert we had fruit salad, cinnamon rolls

...and, of course, left-over pie.
When Tommy and Emily arrived they helped with the finishing touches,

...and when all was ready we sat down and dug into our Easter Christmas Breakfast.

And once again, Christmas Breakfast rolled on into the afternoon.

After breakfast, at the insistence of the oldsters, the youngsters went out for a walk,

...while we stayed home and finished the cleaning up.

We whiled away the afternoon,

Until, too soon, it was time for Miguel and Claire to leave for the airport.

We hated to see this lovely Easter day end.

But it did. And the following morning my mate and I did what we always do the day after Easter: We went around the neighborhood and took down the bunnies.

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The Man On The Sidewalk

4/6/2021

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Dear readers,
If you've read and enjoyed my books, "Equal and Opposite Reactions" and "Hail Mary," I would so appreciate a review from you, just a sentence or two, left on Amazon, Goodreads, or both. Online reviews are the best kind of word-of-mouth for helping an author’s book make it in the world and I would be so grateful for a few words from you.
Thanks!
Patti

THE MAN ON THE SIDEWALK

In my previous post I wrote about being panhandled recently in a Kroger's parking lot (see post from 3/29/2021, "The Woman In The Parking Lot"). Among the comments on the post left on my Facebook page was one by a friend who brought up Mr. Alex, a man who can usually be found in front of the Dunkin Donuts on the corner of a busy commercial thoroughfare in our Columbus, Ohio suburb.
One sees Mr. Alex, a black gentleman who appears to be of middle age, all the time in his same spot surrounded by his few meager possessions. People wave to him when they drive by. He waves back. He seems a nice man. To my memory, Mr. Alex has been in front of the Dunkin Donuts for several years.
I've heard - though I can't verify - that the Dunkin Donuts lets him come inside to sit. I assume that people buy him food - or maybe give him money for it - because there are sometimes bags from the nearby fast food restaurants on the ground by his feet. In truth sometimes his space is a mess of bags, cups, containers, wrappers, and other food-related trash. But I expect he either eventually picks up after himself, or maybe some else comes along and picks up for him.
I don't know Mr. Alex's story, I've never talked to him. But my friend, an avid bicyclist, says on her Facebook comment that she stops to talk to him whenever she can and that he is, in fact, a nice man. She's taken him out to a restaurant for a meal. She says that a local dentist offered to give him some dental work and that several people contributed so that Mr. Alex could stay at the nearby Holiday Inn on the cold nights this past winter. My friend even suggested in her comment that maybe the woman in the Kroger parking lot who wanted me to put her up in a hotel room might have known about Mr. Alex and what had been done for him by community residents and was hoping the same might be done for her.
Now, this last observation by my friend got me to pondering how a homeless street person such as Mr. Alex elicits a different response than a panhandler, who might well also be homeless.
Maybe it's because a run-in with a panhandling stranger can leave one feeling either coerced, shaken down, unnerved, scammed, threatened, all of the above, or at the very least conflicted. But there's no coercion involved in giving to someone who asks for nothing. The decision to give is one's own and whatever is given is given freely and therefore gladly.
Or maybe it's that a person who sits peacefully in the same place, day after day, doing no harm to anyone, becomes a familiar, non-threatening presence, a part of a neighborhood. People have no fear or misgivings about acting on their natural human instinct to be kind and helpful, to provide for someone in need. Such a person's need is obvious, and we are assured that what we give is, in fact, fulfilling that need. A panhandler, on the other hand, not only breaks into our personal space, but engenders suspicion and mistrust: What do they really want money for? Is it really to fix their broken car? Really to get back home? Really to feed and shelter their children? And with the rash of purse snatchings and car jackings that has been plaguing the Columbus area, might this stranger not be a mugger in panhandler's clothing?
And then there's the worry that giving money to a panhandler will not go towards a necessity that will sustain their life, but rather towards a substance that will not only continue to destroy their life but other lives as well. What if the money you hand over is used to buy drugs, money which will then go from the user to the dealer to the members of criminal organizations who enrich themselves by distributing the substances that continue to destroy lives, ruin families, bring danger and violence to communities, and spread human misery?
Not everyone in our community is supportive of Mr. Alex. Some consider his presence a neighborhood blight. There have been complaints about him to the police, who respond that he's breaking no laws.
Others, though, such as my friend, consider his a presence a gift, because being able to give to another, to help another is, after all, the most gratifying of gifts.
Which still doesn't solve the dilemma: What do you do when someone approaches you in the supermarket parking lot and asks you for money?

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The Woman In The Parking Lot

3/29/2021

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THE WOMAN IN THE PARKING LOT

For the past year, and especially over the past few months, there has been a rash of purse snatchings, car jackings, and panhandling here in Columbus, Ohio, especially in supermarket parking lots. Local law enforcement officials have determined the escalating incidence of such events to be fallout from the twin epidemics of COVID-19 and opioid addiction.
I've therefore recently gotten into the habit when leaving the supermarket of being aware of the people around me in the parking lot and, upon reaching my car, of tossing my purse into my car and locking the door before unloading my groceries.
Last week I was at Kroger's and, having duly followed my parking lot safety drill, was loading my groceries into the trunk of my car when I caught sight of a woman heading towards me from across the parking lot. Now, even though I was still in my heightened state of vigilance, the first thought that came to my mind about this woman was not that she was out to panhandle, purse snatch, or car jack me. I expect this was because she was nice-looking and well-dressed in a pair of tailored jeans and a black coat. In truth, she was better dressed than I was at the moment in my baggy jeans and old grey hoodie. Her hair looked cared for and she looked healthy and well-nourished. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties. Maybe a young mom out grocery shopping.
I suppose that's why my first impression of this woman coming towards me was that she must have locked her purse in her car (as I had) and accidentally locked in her keys along with it (as I have been known to do) and was going to ask me if she could use my cell phone (as I've had to ask of a stranger on more than one occasion).
However as she approached my space the look on her face suggested more distress than one would normally expect in a mere case of being locked out of one's car - or perhaps it's just that I've locked myself out of my car too often to be very distressed about it anymore - and now I could see the black straps of a backpack against her black coat. And she was maskless. She is going to panhandle me, I thought. Great.
So in the few seconds left until she reached me I scrambled to decide what I would do. It's always so hard to decide what to do when one is accosted by a panhandler. It's natural human instinct to want to be kind, to help someone in need. But on the other hand, it's far more likely that any money one hands to a panhandler will be used not to provide for a life-sustaining need but to feed a lethal habit.
But there was no denying that this young woman looked different. Different from most panhandlers, that is. What she actually looked like to me was someone more like me.
Which was probably why, as she approached me, in my mind's eye I saw myself unlocking my car door, reaching into my purse and, against what was probably better judgment, handing her a few dollars for whatever she intended to use them for.
Except that, as it turned out, a few dollars wasn't what she wanted from me.
"I'm homeless," she said in the most despondent of voices. "I need a room. Can you help me?"
"A room?" I said.
"A room for the night. A hotel room."
"A hotel room?" I said.
"It's just temporary," she said. "Can you help me?"
It occurred to me that what this woman was up to was far more ambitious and outré than the typical street hustle.  And yet what went thought my head next was that I could  in fact get her a hotel room. After all, I certainly had the wherewithal to transport her to a hotel, a nice hotel, even, and the financial means to pay for a room for the night. And if it were true that one night in a hotel room was really all this girl needed then I could and would gladly put her up. How easy it would be if that were all there was to it. But of course my brain stepped in and advised my heart that one night in a hotel came nowhere near to all there was to it with this girl.
She hung around me while I unloaded my groceries. "Look, there's a church close by," I said, "Just down the block." I pointed the direction for her. "They may be able to help you out."
"I've been to churches, they won't help me, " she said somewhat vehemently. "I just need a hotel room. It's just temporary. Just 'til I start my new job. I mean, just 'til I get my first paycheck."
   Ah, so now the hotel room wasn't just for one night. It was just until she started her new job. Or got her first paycheck. What is your story, child? I wanted to ask.
        But of course there were a million reasons not to ask such a question of a strange young woman begging in a parking lot, among them being that we're in the middle of an epidemic when even those we cherish have to be treated like strangers. And I had a trunk full of perishable groceries.
         She finally gave up on me when I opened my car door to leave, but by the time I'd buckled my seat belt and started the engine she was already in a new conversation, this time with a middle-aged black man in the parking lot on his way to his car. As I drove off I saw the man pointing in the same direction I'd pointed the woman, towards the church. The last I saw of her she was shaking her head, her hands into a gesture of supplication.

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Quick, What's A Preposition?

3/24/2021

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Dear well-loved readers,
If you’ve read and enjoyed either of my books,

...I would so appreciate a review from you – just a sentence or two would do – left on Amazon and/or Goodreads.
Here are the links on which to leave a review
For Amazon:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions":  http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
"Hail Mary":  https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

For Goodreads:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35521059-equal-and-opposite-reactions
"Hail Mary": www.goodreads.com/book/show/53468697-hail-mary

   Online reviews are the best kind of word-of-mouth for helping an author’s book make it in the world and I would be so grateful for a few words from you.

Thanks so much and enjoy today’s Ailantha!

QUICK, WHAT'S A PREPOSITION?

Yesterday I was giving my 7-year-old grand daughter some online help with her grammar homework. The assignment involved learning to identify verbs, adverbs, pronouns, and prepositions and to differenciate one from another.
To this end, the students were given a sheet of paper on which a variety of words were superimposed over a coloring book page which could be colored in after each of the words had been written on a line in the correct word category column at the top of the page.

Before we started the exercise I wanted to make sure my grand daughter was clear on the definition of each word category.
A verb, I explained, is an action, something that you can do. An adverb is a word that tells how or when you're doing the thing you're doing. A pronoun is a word you use for a person or thing when you're not using their name, like I, you, he, she, it, we, you, and they, this, that, these, those. But, I expanded, pronouns can also be used when you're talking about something that belongs to someone, like my, your, his, hers, its, ours, their, theirs.
"I know about all those," my grand daughter interjected while demonstrating for me her prowess with iphone effects.

"But, Grammie," she cried, "what's a preposition?"
"Well," said I, "a preposition is..." And I drew a blank. I could not explain to my grand daughter what a preposition was.
Which, ironically, is not to say that I wouldn't know a preposition if I saw one. In fact, what I have to say about propositions is along the lines of what United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart had to say about obscentiy in the 1964 case of Jacobellis v. Ohio, in which a movie theater owner in the town of Cleveland Heights was convicted on obscentiy charges for showing the film "Les Amants," the award-winning 1958 masterpiece of French director Louis Malle.

The case made its way up to the Supreme Court where the justices decided that, though the movie might be a little much for Cleveland Heights, Ohio, it really wasn't all that bad, in fact they thought it was a pretty good flick, an opinion with which Rotten Tomatoes has more recently concurred, giving "Les Amants" (The Lovers" in English) a 90% rating.

It was while adjucating this case that Justice Stewart gave his famous opinion on the test for obscentiy: he couldn't really describe it, but he knew it when he saw it.
Anyway, that's me and prepositions. I can't describe one but I know one when I see one, thanks to Sister Mary Aquinas, my sixth grade teacher who required her students to memorize the prepositions, which I dutifully did and remember to this day:

The Prepositions
About, above, across, around, at,
Before, behind, beside, between,
By, down, during, except for from
In, into near of off on,
Through, to, towards, up, upon, under, with

As for helping my grand daughter, instead of attempting to define prepositions, I just recited for her the list. Whenever she came across a preposition on the word page, I recited for her the list again. After a few recitations she was able to identifiy the remaining ones on her own. "I remember it from the list," she'd say. And so that took care of that.
I still don't know what a preposition is, though of course I could easily find out in an internet minute. But I've decided not to. Sometimes it's more fun to learn something organically, or just not know it.
And so, to that end here is my question: Does anybody know what a preposition is?

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Blueberry Boggle

3/18/2021

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Dear well-loved readers,
If you’ve read and enjoyed either of my books,

...I would so appreciate a review from you – just a sentence or two would do – left on Amazon and/or Goodreads.
Here are the links on which to leave a review
For Amazon:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
"Hail Mary": https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

For Goodreads:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35521059-equal-and-opposite-reactions
"Hail Mary": www.goodreads.com/book/show/53468697-hail-mary

Online reviews are the best kind of word-of-mouth for helping an author’s book make it in the world and I would be so grateful for a few words from you.

Thanks so much and enjoy today’s Ailantha!

BLUEBERRY BOGGLE

I was in Kroger's the other day, strolling through my favorite part of the store, the produce section.

Now, it's not that I like fruits and vegetables so much more than, say, deli meats and cheeses or baked goods or dairy; it's that I find this to be the most beautiful area of the supermarket.

A well-composed produce section - and some produce sections are definitely laid out more appealingly than others - is like an exhibition of colorful, edible objets d'art,

...that one can handle and acquire,

...then bring home and arrange to the preference of one's own palate.

On this particular day as I was perusing the berries exhibit I saw that there was an exceptionally vast offering of blueberries of various labels and prices.

I do like blueberries, but they're generally so expensive that I usually pass, unless I'm craving blueberries, or if they're on sale, as they appeared to be this day.

I picked up a container of the sale blueberries. It was a pretty small container. Six ounces, according to the label. So that would be twelve ounces for five dollars. I wondered if that was such a good deal after all.
However, by now, after looking at all these blueberries, I found that I was, in fact, in the mood for blueberries. But which among all these options was actually the best price for blueberries? And, as the packages all looked pretty much alike, which package went with which price, anyway?

I sought out a nearby store employee and asked her to help me with my dilemma. The friendly worker accompanied me back to the blueberry case and examined the prices and the berries.
"Um..." she said as she compared containers to price displays, "I think this one...um, goes with...this price...and, uh, this one goes with...that price? You know, let me ask him."
She sought out a nearby fellow employee who did, in fact, seem better acquainted with which berry went with which price.
"But," said I, "some are sold by the ounce and some by the pint. Which is the cheapest?"
The worker laughed as if this were the differential calculus problem of blueberry pricing. In short, he didn't really know.
After I'd thanked the workers and they were out of earshot I muttered, "Well, snap," and knew that I would have to engage my own brain and call on my own considerably meager math aptitude if I wanted to figure out the best price of blueberries.
I knew that 16 oz. equaled one pint, which seemed to make the $4.49 pint the best option.

But then I recalled that there was such a thing as a dry pint. Was a dry pint different from a...I don't know...wet pint? That I couldn't remember. I pulled out my phone.
And what luck: a dry point was actually more than a wet pint!

And yet when I picked up the $4.49 pint the contianer looked suspiciously small. When I compared it in size with the $6.99 18 oz. container it was unequivocally smaller.

...and a whole lot lighter.

Hmmm. Was Kroger's having some truth-in-packaging issues?
I typed into my phone, "How much does a pint of blueberries weigh?"
Turns out that besides a wet pint and a dry pint, there is also a blueberry pint,

...which explained the descrepancy in the sizes of the containers, but also begs the question: does every entity have its own size of pint applicable only to itself?
In any case, having at least three different size definitions of "pint" is confusing enough. As the Lieutenant Colonel would say,

"That's a hell of a way to run an army."
I would agree. I decided to go with the strawberries.

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The Pink Flamingo Mafia

3/11/2021

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I got the flamingo idea from a picture my daughter Maria sent me a couple weeks ago of the two pink flamingos that had mysteriously shown up in her front yard.

Dear well-loved and appreciated readers,
I’m wondering if I might ask you favor.
If you’ve read and enjoyed either of my books,

...would you please take a moment to leave a review – just a sentence or two would do – on Amazon and/or Goodreads?
Here are the links:
For Amazon:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
"Hail Mary": https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

For Goodreads:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35521059-equal-and-opposite-reactions
"Hail Mary": www.goodreads.com/book/show/53468697-hail-mary

Online reviews are the best kind of word-of-mouth for helping an author’s book make it in the world and I would so appreciate a few words from you.
Thanks so much, and enjoy today’s Ailantha!

THE PINK FLAMINGO MAFIA

I got the flamingo idea from a picture my daughter Maria sent me a couple weeks ago of the two pink flamingos that had mysteriously shown up in her front yard.

After a a bit of sleuthing my daughter discovered that it was one of her friends who had flamingoed her.
My initial reaction was that I really wished someone would flamingo me. My second reaction was that I really wanted to flamingo someone else.
Then I was hit with the inspiration: I would pink flamingo The Posse! The Posse - aka The Panera Posse - is my girl group that meets every Wednesday morning, formerly at Panera,

...but in more recent times via Houseparty (see post from 4/10/2020, "The Posse Rides Again").

Yes, I decided, I would plant a pair of pink birds on the lawn of each Posse member.
The only consideration was that there were, beside myself, nine active Posse members. That would mean that I would have to procure 18 flamingos. That was a lot of flamingos. And where, I wondered, does one go in these parts to buy large quantities of flamingos? Where does one to go buy anything at all that one might wish to acquire? Amazon, of course!
So I proceeded to Amazon where I learned that I could buy pink flamingos in bulk parcels of 12 each.

However, as kismet would have it, the day I placed my order the flamingos, by luck, happened to be on sale:

And so I bought two packs of flamingos, and was greatly excited when they arrived last Saturday, March 6.

Since I had a few pink flamingos to spare, I decided that I would do a flamingo hit trial run on the yard of my son Tommy and his girlfriend Emily.

That night around 11:00 pm my daughter Theresa and I drove to Tommy and Emily's house, quickly planted two flamingos, then zipped away undetected.

Our practice hit was a success.
The following morning Tommy called me to ask if I knew about the birdies, and I instantly fessed up. Tommy was glad to hear that I was the pink flamingo perpetrator as neither he nor Emily quite knew what to make of the mysterious birds perched on their lawn. Was it a friendly gesture, they wondered, or perhaps something of a more sinister nature, akin to the marking of a victim's house for identification by a hit man, a scenario they'd once seen on a TV crime show?
"Should we call the police?" Emily wondered.
"How about we call my mom first," Tommy suggested.
Once they learned that it was I, and not the Mafia, behind the escapade they were tickled as pink as the flamingos, and from this first successful hit-and-run was born the Pink Flamingo Mafia. All two of us.

However Emily offered that I might consider from now on attaching friendly little notes to my flamingos so that any future visitation by the Pink Flamingo Mafia might not be mistaken for a visitation from the other Mafia.
I took Emily's advice as I planned our big hit to the lawns of all nine Posse members for that night, Sunday night. I decided that after all the birds were assembled,

...I would cut out cardboard hearts,

...trace and cut out contact paper hearts,

...write a friendly note on each heart,

..stick the contact paper hearts to the cardboard hearts,

...then tie a heart onto one of each pair of flamingos.

When all the flamingos were tagged, boxed, and ready to go, we waited for nightfall to make our move.

In the meantime my Pink flamingo consigliere realized that this night was in fact the night on which she and a few old high school chums had planned a social-distanced get-together. I'd need a new second. I found a recruit (and made him an offer he couldn't refuse) whom I will call The Scoutmaster.

I decided we should move out at 8 pm, a time at which people would probably be settling in to watch their Sunday night TV shows. As the departure time approached, The Scoutmaster donned his neon yellow reflectorized safety hoodie. "It'll be dark out there," he said.
"Aw, for cryin' out loud, Tom," I pouted, "this isn't a Boy Scout function! It's a danged clandestine operation!"
The Scoutmaster rolled his eyes, duly switched to a dark grey hoodie, and loaded up the flamingos.

The locations of the houses of my nine Posse members covered about a nine-mile radius. As I would have two left-over pairs of flamingos after flamingoing my Posse, I decided to flamingo my nephew Randy's and his wife Anusha's house as well, as they were sort of along the way.

Under cover of darkness we hit each front yard with lightening speed, then zipped away, pulses pounding, praying we wouldn't be caught in the act.

"What if somebody sees us and calls the police?" Tom brought up at one point.
"What if they do?" said I. "It's not like if I'm arrested I'll lose my piano-teaching business. I've already lost my piano teaching business to COVID. And it's not like if you're arrested you'll be fired from you're job. You're retired. So even if we are arrested, what difference will it make?"
But luck was on our side, and nobody caught us or called the police.
It took us about an hour of quick work to hit all our precalculated targets. I had one pair of flamingos left over and so I thought I'd do a hit on our front yard, too. But then I thought of one of our neighbors whom I reckoned it would be fun to hit as well. Besides, we did actually already have a cute little flamingo perched in our back yard.

So we did one more lightening strike,

...then we headed home, I, for one, exulting in having pulled off a dozen superlatively-executed flamingo hits in one weekend.
Epilogue:
As of today, Today, March 11, to my knowledge five of the twelve targets of the Pink Flamingo Mafia have solved the mystery of the birds in their yard.
One from among those who still don't know who flamingoed them put up this post on Facebook on the day after the hit:

Among those who do know and to whom I've spoken, surprise and delight, as well as some confusion, were pretty general among their initial responses. Most of them shared with me that they subsequently went online to find out if randomly planting two flamingos in someone's front yard was a thing. One of my friends learned that it was in fact a thing in Vermont.
A couple of recipients decided that they were going to pass the flamingos on to another friend or family member's front yard with an additional attachment stating that whoever recieves the friendly flamingos should then in turn pass them on to someone else's front yard, and so on. I think it's a spendid idea. Maybe the Pink Flamingo Mafia will, in fact, become a thing.

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The Week That Was

3/8/2021

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Dear well-loved and appreciated readers,
I’m wondering if I might ask you favor.
If you’ve read and enjoyed either of my books,

...would you leave a review – just a sentence or two would do – on Amazon and/or Goodreads?
Here are the links:
For Amazon:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
"Hail Mary": https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

For Goodreads:
"Equal and Opposite Reactions": https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35521059-equal-and-opposite-reactions
"Hail Mary": www.goodreads.com/book/show/53468697-hail-mary

Online reviews are the best kind of word-of-mouth for helping an author’s book make it in the world and a few words from you would be much appreciated.
Thanks so much, and enjoy today’s Ailantha!

THE WEEK THAT WAS

It no doubt hit weeks earlier for some Americans and that much later for others depending on the region of the country in which they lived, but for me - and I expect for Ohioans generally - the second week of March, 2020, was the week when the reality of the COVID-19 epidemic swept in and changed life as I used to know it.
Prior to that week I'd felt the undercurrents of anxiety that were all around: We'd been warned that the epidemic was coming, approaching like an invading army, but we weren't sure exactly when it would really happen, how bad it would be, or what we should be doing in the meantime, other than stocking up on cleaning supplies and disinfectants,

...and going to town on the germ-killing,

...and hand sanitizing.

Still, I cancelled with great disappointment my flight, hotel reservations, car rental and RSVP for my son-in-law's niece's March 13 quinceañera in Arizona,

...and wondered if I was being overly cautious and just a tad paranoid about the whole coronavirus thing.
I had a piano recital, for which my students had been preparing for half a year, scheduled for March 19,

...and the unthinkable idea of cancelling our recital even started poking around the edges of my brain.
I even wondered if I should discontinue my daily visits to my 99-year-mother in the memory care unit of the Sunrise senior care facility.

In retrospect, I think that back then it was so unthinkable that the country was actually in the grip of a deadly wildfire epidemic that I couldn't in my mind decipher caution from paranoia. I, for one, needed knowledge, however frightening and troubling that knowledge might be. And I needed to be told what to do so I could bring myself do what needed to be done, whatever that might be.
All the answers came the following week, the week of March 9, 2020, when the COVID-19 epidemic officially arrived in Ohio.
Monday, March 9, was the last time I fetched my mother at Sunrise to take her out to eat. (I recall that at the sign-out desk there was a pen-sanitizer. How optimistically naïve we were back then to think such a little gizmo as this:

...would protect us from this: )

I was in truth nervous about taking my mom to a restaurant - and even going myself - but the Sunrise staff gave permission, and my mom was craving "a really good hamburger," as she put it. So I took her out to the LongHorn Steakhouse,

...where we did, in fact, split a really good burger followed by a most memorable apple dumpling,

...while I angsted the whole time about us catching the coronavirus.
That day, Monday, March 9, was the last time in her life that my mom was at a restaurant. It was also the last time I was at a restaurant.
The following day, Tuesday, March 10, I composed a notification which I handed out to the parents of my piano students ― I teach ―used to teach― in-home lessons ― asking them to please clean their piano keys and to go over them with a disinfectant wipe before my arrival and also to make sure that their children washed their hands immediately before their lessons.
One of the mothers read my note and laughed. "Are you freaking out over this coronavirus thing?" she asked.
I had to admit that I kind of was.
The next day, Wednesday, March 11, our Governor Mike Dewine came on the air and announced that starting the following week all schools in Ohio would be closed for a month.

That day was the last day I taught an in-person piano lesson. I cancelled all lessons until further notice. And I cancelled our piano recital.
Friday, March 13, was the last time I saw my mother in person for months,

...until summer when she turned one-hundred and when weekly half-hour,12-feet apart outdoor visits would be allowed,

...followed, in autumn, by brief weekly indoor visits,

...which ended after my final end-of-life visit.

Saturday, March 14, all non-essential public venues in Ohio were closed, senior care facilities no longer allowed public visitation, and the state was put under quarantine, we its citizens admonished by our Governor and Public Health Director to stay inside our houses and "shelter in place" for our safety.

That was the day when we knew without a doubt that the invasion had begun.
And that beginning marked the end of a week that I will never forget.

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"The Road From Tenancingo"

3/4/2021

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Among the most gripping books I had read in recent years were R. Bruce Logan's two novels based on his own work combating the child sex trafficking industry in Southeast Asia, "Finding Lien" and its sequel "As the Lotus Blooms."

Author and advocate for victims of sex-trafficking, R. Bruce Logan

Despite the harrowing subject matter, both books are highly engaging page-turners, written as fast-paced thrillers full of twists, turns, heart-gripping and heart-stopping moments that tell of daring rescues by members of anti-trafficking organizations of young girls who have been enticed or entrapped then sold to brothels, pimps, or as child brides.
I recently read Logan's third and equally riveting novel in the series, "The Road From Tenancingo,"

...in which he segues from sex slavery in Southeast Asia to dive into the dark, terrifying world of the Mexican trafficking cartels where human flesh is as much a money-making commodity as marijuana, cocaine, or heroin, but more valuable: for drugs can be sold only once, but a woman or a girl can be sold over and over again.
The novel's setting is a real place, the town of Tenancingo in the state of in Tlaxcala in south-eastern Mexico, the hub of the sex industry in Mexico and the leading supplier of female sex slaves to the United States.
In Tenancingo forced prostitution generates a billion dollars a year. The families who own the sex trafficking businesses, passed down from generation to generation, are wealthy citizens who live in palatial homes and are well-respected by local law enforcement, judges, and their parish church. They employ a vast network of pimps, handlers and enforcers in Mexico and the United States. A girl who becomes ensnared by them is as helpless as a fly trapped in a spider's web.
"The Road From Tenancingo" tells the story of one such girl, Juanita, a gifted17-year-old architecture student at the University of Guanajuato with a promising future who is deceived and seduced by Geraldo, a charismatic young pimp posing as a fellow student who is in fact a member of a powerful crime cartel. After dating Juanita for over a month, Geraldo invites her home to meet his family in Tenancingo. To her horror, Juanita is enslaved, forced into prostitution, and becomes just another of the countless anonymous women trafficked by the cartel for sex and moved from city to city and closer to the U.S. border where, if moved across, they may never be found.
But through her despair and her family’s anguish over their missing daughter, there is, unbeknownst to Juanita, a network of dedicated people, from a small village priest to members of Mexican and American anti-trafficking organizations, who are part of the relentless search to find this girl, with the mission of rescuing her from the ruthless criminals who have kidnapped her.
Like Logan's previous books, "The Road From Tenancingo" is an edge-of-your-seat page turner. Once you start the book you won't be able to put it down, and once you've finished reading it you won't be able to stop thinking about it.
Wish you could do something to fight the scourge of global sex-trafficking?

You can. All profits from R.Bruce Logan's books are donated by the author to anti-trafficking efforts. So you can buy his books.

R. Bruce Logan's books are available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle. Here are the links:

"Finding Lien"
https://www.amazon.com/Finding-Lien-R-Bruce-Logan-ebook/dp/B01F9ETB2O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1526000305&sr=8-1&keywords=finding+lien

"As The Lotus Blooms"
https://www.amazon.com/As-Lotus-Blooms-Bruce-Logan-ebook-dp-B07HQK7SVL/dp/B07HQK7SVL/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=1537728654

"The Road From Tenancingo"
https://www.amazon.com/Road-Tenancingo-Trafficking-Book-ebook/dp/B08DHW2NMZ/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=The+Road+From+Tenancingo&qid=1614908048&s=digital-text&sr=1-1

References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenancingo_Municipality,_Tlaxcala

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A Tale Of Two Linguines

3/2/2021

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Dear well-loved and appreciated readers,
I’m wondering if you would do me a favor.
If you’ve read and liked my most recent book,

Would you leave a review – just a sentence or two would do – on Amazon and/or Goodreads?
Here are the links:

For Amazon: https://www.amzn.com/1684334888

And for Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53468697-hail-mary

Online reviews are the best kind of word-of-mouth for helping an author’s book make it in the world and a few words from you would be much appreciated.
Thanks so much, and enjoy today’s Ailantha!

A TALE OF TWO LINGUINES

In a post from last week (2/22/2021,"The COVID Anniversary") I included this picture of the seafood pasta that I made for Tom's and my anniversary dinner.

My niece Tracy, pictured below with her sweet family,

...requested that I share the recipe for the pasta in the picture, which I shall do tout de suite, following a little pasta provenance.
It so happens that this seafood dish is a spin-up of an old perennial family favorite that in my recipe file is entitled Pasta Primavera, but which my family calls Linguine.

Linguine has always been (and continues to be for family get-togethers) one of my children's most-requested dishes. I've been making Linguine - which is actually made with fettuccine, but we've always called it Linguine - for so long that I can't remember from where the recipe came. Did I find it in the food section of the Columbus Dispatch? On the back of a box of pasta or a soup mix package? Did I make it up? This I can no more recall than I can recall why we call it linguine and not fettuccine.
But anyway, it was just recently - since I've been striving to up my home-cooking game during the restaurant-less COVID epidemic - that I came up with the idea of kicking the old Linguine up a notch by shuffling the ingredients. For example, one time I tried tossing in some shrimp. Another time I tried sautéing some chopped onions and garlic in olive oil then adding a can of diced tomatoes and fresh parsley, and then subtracting the broccoli from the standard Linguine recipe and substituting the sauté.
When Tom's and my 44th wedding anniversary rolled around, as going out for a celebration dinner was out of the question in the midst of the still-percolating COVID epidemic, I was pondering what I could make for dinner that would be both celebratory and restaurant-esque.
That's when I decided to try combining the ingredients of my two previous Linguine upgrades - the shrimp and the onion, garlic, and tomato sauté - and adding a a couple more seafood items. I ended up adding some frozen mussels and frozen flaked lobster to the mix, and switching the fettuccine out for spaghetti, just for the sake of novelty.

It was delish.
However, for the sake of those to whom the original linguine recipe might in fact seem more appealing than the seafood version - my children, for example who were scandalized that I would tinker with a family food tradition that they consider sacrosanct, not to mention that most of them are vegetarian or near-vegetarian - I'm going to give the recipe for Linguine as well as for Seafood Linguine, as I've christened the upgraded version. Also, though I'm going to give the recipe using fettuccine as that's what I use, feel free to use spaghetti, as pictured above, or even...linguine.
So then, here are the two linguine recipes, Linguine and Seafood Linguine.

Recipe #1: Linguine

Ingredients:
1 pound cooked buttered fettuccine (or whichever pasta you prefer) seasoned with salt and pepper
1 package Knorr vegetable recipe mix
3 1/2 cups of milk
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup butter or margarine
1 bunch (or as much as you want) cooked broccoli
salt and pepper to taste

Method:
1. Cook one pound of fettuccine.

2. Melt some butter over the cooked fettuccine and season with salt and pepper.

3. In a large pot melt the 1/2 cup of butter.

4. Scald the milk in the microwave while the butter is melting. (This step isn't absolutely necessary but it makes the sauce boil faster if you start with hot milk).

5. Stir the tablespoon of flour and the vegetable recipe mix into the melted butter.

6. Stir in the hot milk.

7. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly (the constant stirring is important!) until the mixture just bubbles.

8. Simmer the sauce for ten minutes longer, stirring from time to time.

9. The broccoli can be cooked while the sauce is simmering, or you can cook the broccoli beforehand.

10. When the sauce is finished simmering add the cooked broccoli,

11. Then add the fettuccine.

12. Toss, add salt to taste, and serve.

Recipe #2: Seafood Linguine

Ingredients:
1 pound cooked buttered fettuccine (or whichever pasta you prefer) seasoned with salt and pepper
1 package Knorr vegetable recipe mix
3 1/2 cups of milk
1 tablespoon flour
1/2 cup butter or margarine
3 or 4 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 an onion, chopped
2 teaspoons bottled minced garlic (or two cloves fresh garlic)
1 14 oz. can diced tomatoes
fresh parsley
1 pound frozen cooked shrimp, tails removed
2 7 oz.packages imitation lobster
salt and pepper to taste
* In the recipe for the pasta pictured in my 2/22/2021 blog and in this blog,

...I used for the seafood ingredients one pound of frozen cooked shrimp, one package (about 1/2 pound) of frozen mussels and one package (about 1/2 pound) of frozen flaked lobster. However when I was shopping for ingredients to recreate the recipe here, I couldn't find any more mussels or frozen flaked lobster, so instead this time I just used 1 pound of frozen shrimp,

...and two 7 oz. bags of frozen imitation lobster pieces.

But you can really use any kind of seafood you'd like - or can find.

Method:
1. Thaw the shrimp (or you can rinse the shrimp for a few minutes under cold water just before you add them to the sauce) and imitation lobster pieces for several hours in the refrigerator.
2. chop the onion.

3. Heat the olive oil in a pan over medium heat.

4. Sauté the onion and garlic for about three minutes, being careful not to burn the garlic.

5. Add the tomatoes, parsley, and salt to taste and simmer for two minutes.

6. Follow steps 1 through 8 of the Linguine recipe.

7. While the sauce is simmering for ten minutes, rinse the shrimp and pull off the tails,

...and you can also during this time cut the imitation lobster chunks into smaller pieces if you wish.

8. During the last 3 minutes of simmering, stir the tomato sauté and the seafood into the sauce.

9. when the sauce has finished simmering stir in the fettuccine, salt and pepper to taste,

...and enjoy your Seafood Linguine!

...or your Linguine,

...this particular batch of which I dispatched to some hungry vegetarians across town.

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American Idolatry

2/28/2021

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If you enjoy reading my writing in Ailantha, why not check out my books?

"Equal and Opposite Reactions" http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
and the sequel, "Hail Mary" https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
Are available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle.
Thanks!

AMERICAN IDOLATRY

While I was scrolling through one of the online news sites yesterday my eye was caught by this picture of a silly-looking golden Donald Trump statue, which I took to be just another piece of Trump lampoon art,

...akin to countless other ghastly Trump-inspired creations, such as the Trump Baby which floated over London for a while,

...or the Naked Donald Trump statues created by an activist street artist that for a while were popping up on streets in cities around the country.

But no. Much to my surprise - and I expect to the surprise of a whole lot of other consumers of internet news - this statue-thing is no mocking satire of a big-headed billionaire former president who is the avatar of self-serving greed and materialism and who is idolized like a false god by his followers. No, it was created, rather, as a tribute to Donald Trump by its proud artist, a Trump zealot named Tommy Zegan,

...to manifest the greater honor and glory of Donald Trump.

The Golden Trump is currently on display as the artistic centerpiece of this year's meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the annual Mecca of the Republican Party,

,...that is taking place this weekend in Orlando Florida in a venue with a stage shaped like the Nordic Rune that was displayed on Nazi uniforms and now shows up on White Supremacist uniforms.

After its run at the CPAC, the statue will be donated by the artist to the Trump Presidential Library if the Library will have it.
And how are the attendees at the CPAC reacting to this ugly, garish piece of gold-colored chrome and fiberglass? Are they appalled, offended, enraged to see their beloved leader caricatured with a gigantic shiny head, a fairy wand, caught without his trousers in over-sized screaming American flag shorts and sporting beach-bum flip-flops on his fat feet?
Hecks, au contraire. They love their ridiculous-looking Golden Trump,

...have thoroughly embraced it,

...absolutely adore it.

Now, I can't shake the suspicion that this so-called Trump-loving artist Tommy Zegan might well be a naughty undercover satirist who is taking CPAC and the whole of the Trump-worshipping Republican Nation for a grand ride. But then again, who knows? Maybe Zegan did in fact create his Golden Trump in full sincerity. There's no denying that Donald Trump has proven to bring out the most unthinkable of human persuasions and behaviors.
Still, one need not be a Biblical scholar to see a certain reference to another famous golden idol that was likewise a big - if temporary - hit in its time.

I can't help but think that the Republicans ought to drag their Golden Trump to the top of a high cliff and throw it over so that it smashes into a thousand pieces. Except of course, that Golden Trump is made of fiberglass and chrome and so it's a pretty indestructable idol that likely wouldn't be broken even if it were bounced down the Denali.
The Republicans are going to spend a long time wandering in the desert.

References
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/feb/27/golden-trump-statue-mexico-cpac

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​PIES, BUNNIES AND CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST

​THE MAN ON THE SIDEWALK

​QUICK, WHAT'S A PREPOSITION?

​BLUEBERRY BOGGLE

​THE PINK FLAMINGO MAFIA

​THE WEEK THAT WAS

​A TALE OF TWO LINGUINES

​AMERICAN IDOLATRY

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PIES, BUNNIES AND CHRISTMAS BREAKFAST

THE MAN ON THE SIDEWALK

QUICK, WHAT'S A PREPOSITION?

BLUEBERRY BOGGLE

THE PINK FLAMINGO MAFIA

THE WEEK THAT WAS

A TALE OF TWO LINGUINES

AMERICAN IDOLATRY