Slow-Food

I'm in Florida and my wife's sister Millie greeted us with some Puerto
Rican "Pasteles".

A slow-food!

 The ingredients are: pork cooked in a sofsrito sauce: olives, onions, green peppers, garlic, cilantro, chick peas and raisins, then wrapped and tied in dry banana leaves and pasteles paper and boiled for 45 minutes. This process takes several hours to a whole day depending on how many you are making.

As I was enjoying my Pasteles I was remembering all the slow-foods my mother and two grandmothers made.

Enough said?

I purpose a national Slow-Food Day. The other guys are required to close, all microwaves must be unplugged and we dine only on slow-foods all day that must be eaten around a table.

In the meantime find and cook an old family slow-food recipe – you may have as much fun making it as you do eating it.

From my tub to yours–
Carpe Diem,
Carl

Nashville

 Nashville and" The Grand Ol Opera" what more can I say?

From my tub to yours–

Carpe Diem,

Carl

Inheritance

Slave Cabin on Andrew Jackson's "Hermitage" Plantation

Andrew Jackson champion of the common man, father of  “Jacksonian Democracy”.
Andrew Jackson champion of the slave economy, father of “The Trail of Tears”.

Freedom for those like you, slavery for those who are different. The fanatic belief that you are inherently superior to those who are different.

Prejudice!

Hermitage Mansion

All prejudices are based not on real superiority, but on a fear and insecurity, that requires the perpetual dehumanization of the “other” and a smug profound self-conceit in inherited superiority.

Before we smugly condemn the prejudices of the past, we should consider the present inherited political religious fanatic beliefs the afflict us today. They are the bane of the 21st Century and will determine what our children will inherit, just as, today, we have inherited the benefits of “Jacksonian Democracy” and the shame of “The Trail of Tears”.

From my tub to yours –
Carpe Diem
Carl

From Generation To Gereration

I'm in Graceland outside Memphis, Tennessee. Thirty-seven years ago I was at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri. undergoing combat engineer training. That was after Elvis had released his hit "Love Me Tender", in 1956, and my buddies were singing it in the barracks.

Today my grandson Ian Hardy is in his 2nd week of combat engineer training at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri.

In 1944 I, with my mother and two younger brothers were scraping by in a cold basement apartment in Logan, Utah while my father was in the army. One of my uncles was preparing to be in the second wave, as radio operator aboard a half-track, in the invasion of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines on Oct 23. Another uncle was in a rifle company somewhere in France as part of Patton's 3rd Army.

On Feb 28, 1968 my cozen Ray Grant Jenkins was killed in Ba Xugen Province, South Vietnam while racing to his helicopter during a Vietcong rocket attack.

My great-great-great grandfather Thomas Rich fought in the American Revolutionary War.

And so it goes from generation to generation.

In the 1960's there was a movement in this country to change our national anthem to another song claiming that a song about war was inappropriate.

But, it is appropriate because:

There will always be those, in different forms and colors, who will try to take our freedom from us. Every generation will have "bombs bursting in air" and must fight to keep: "out flag is still there".

From my tub to yours–
Carpe Diem,
Carl

Fifty-six years ago

Staying on the Arkansas river in downtown Little Rock across from the Clinton Presidential Library and not far from Central High School where in 1957 President Eisenhower ordered the 101Airborne Division to protect 9 black students and enforce integration.     

Oklahoma: Two Trails of Tears

I'm in Oklahoma City and not I'm not remembering the Oklahoma City Bombing or the musical Oklahoma but instead the: "Trail of Tears" in 1831– the forced relocation and movement of Native American nations from their farms in the southeastern states to Oklahoma, and the Dust Bowl one-hundred years later that forced the "Okies" to leave.

The first group forced to live here and the second forced to leave. Two ironic trails of tears.

Carpe Diem
Carl

On the Road Again in Texas

On the road again crossing the Flat! Texas panhandle where mountains are forgotten replaced by A sky-dome in the land of bigness.

Route 66 The Adventure

When I was growing up I was enthralled with the stories of the pioneers trekking west on the wagon trails in the 19th Century. It seemed to be a great romantic adventure that could not be equaled.

Today, I'm backing-tracking over another route via US40 that parallels the old Route 66. A 20th Century motor trail that during my life time populated southern California.

I can sense the effect that journey had on the migrants, riding in cars with no air conditioning carrying extra water for drinking and overheated car radiators while  dreaming of opportunity just as their 19 Century predecessors had, ending up in a land of sunshine, orange groves, beaches and movie stars. It was A 20th Century romantic adventure.

They created the unique California culture free of eastern formalities. A culture that today is being replace by a new migration from the south.

And now my romantic adventure continues.

Carpe Diem
Carl

Land of Exceptions

A trip across the Southwest US is a lesson in exceptions. The exceptional hardness of the desert Southwest where human habitations only exist in the exceptions to this hardness. The exceptions among the Native Americans were the first to find these exceptions. The settlers who followed could only do so if they were also exceptions.

Carpe Diem
Carl

The Journey Begins

I've put my tub wheels, heading east, cross country, from the central coast of  California – alive with adventure – now that I'm older and have time to be young. 

Join me. 

Carpe Diem