Immigrants Make America Great!

We went to the zoo yesterday.  The weather was beautiful:  blue sky, not too hot, not humid.  A gorgeous summer day.  We decided to take the metro in so D could ride on it.  He loves trains and riding on the metro.  But apparently a lot of other people had this same idea, to ride the metro and go to the zoo.  We saw way more people than animals.  I forgot that I don't like going to the zoo in the summer for this very reason.  I hadn't gone anyway in six years, I think. 

Anyway, the people visiting the Washington DC zoo are of every stripe and color.  You can hear people speaking any kind of language, English (with Australian accents - we overheard), Spanish, Hindi, German and all sorts of others.  Skin tone ranged from the very darkest to pale with white-blond hair and every shade in between.  I even saw three or four interracial couples. And everybody was there with their kids, their buddies, their significant other, or with grandma pushing her in a wheelchair, all trying to get a good look at an animal or two.  I saw a couple of people wearing the above t-shirt. 

The rise of anti-immigration, racism and antisemitism is so anti-American.  We really are a nation of immigrants.  The important thing to be an American is to uphold the Constitution.  That's what counts.  We have a terrible legacy of racism against African-Americans, but we also have a legacy of abolition and civil rights.  And the second legacy is more reflective of our noble national goals than the first.  Antisemitism has always been around but there is a reason why there are more Jews in the USA than anywhere else.  Why they have been able to flourish here. 

This whole border thing has been whipped up for political gain.  The very wealthy, like Trump who have taken advantage of immigrants from the south of the border.  We've been so bad at managing all this because corporate american ran on cheap immigrant labor.  They work in slaughterhouses, pick our lettuce, dig our ditches, mow our lawns, clean our houses and wash the dishes you eat from at restaurants.    Big industrial farms use illegal immigrants to get around farm worker unions.  The very industry that Donald Trump represents is one of the worst exploiters.  What a blustering hypocrite he is!   People can get really worked up about race, as we know from history.  Think of Rwanda where the Dutch colonialists literally made up the two races of Tutsi and Hutu that didn't exist before they entered the picture.  That hatred was whipped up over the air by hate talk radio. 

I am not for open borders, actually.  I do think governments need to know where their authority ends.  And we are living in an age of illegal drug cartels, international gangs and terrorism.  We need a competent organization that works to keep us safe and also has compassion on those who seek refuge here.  Who realizes that human beings are actually what make up a country. They are our greatest resource and treasure. 

Poor J and S have twice now had to rent a sailboat to a well known white supremacist who lives in our area.  J didn't recognize him but S has a morbid interest in the issue and recognized him from some youtube video.  So my two very Jewish looking boys had to rent this sailboat to this clown.  The funny thing is S was so rattled that he forgot to warn him of where the shallows were.  The guy and his friends got stuck in the mud and then my half Jewish sons had to go out and rescue the a**hole.  LOL. 

A Convenient Hatred

It has been a heavy time for a lot of reasons.  Trump and the horrible political climate right now is one contributor.  And then I've been obsessively reading about Cardinal McCarrick and his predatory behavior towards his seminarians for decades.  And the ongoing revelations that there are many active homosexual priests and bishops.  This has been deep in the hierarchy for generations.  Pope Francis, the one I love so much in so many ways, doesn't seem to be great at handling this stuff.  Though I am so ignorant of what can and can't be done about it, so what do I know.  But it has really shaken me up.  I've been collecting all the sordid articles.  I managed to make it through the pedophile catastrophe, which of course is still playing out, but it turns out it goes even deeper than that.  The Church I love is horribly corrupt.

And all the while I've been reading this book on the history of antisemitism.  And the Church was horrible there too.  It was so depressing to read just how much evil the Church perpetuated.  At times, it did try to speak out.  A pope would say something at some point to try to control the violence and cruelty.  But then another pope would help perpetuate it.  It was too little and too ineffectual.  Evil is an amazing thing.  The blind hate of antisemitism is almost bizarre in how it reappears over and over again throughout history based on lies, misunderstanding, fear of 'others' and a weird blaming of Jews, collectively for the death of Christ.

This book is a very well written narrative of the history of antisemitism.  The writing style is clear and succinct.  It is not polemical at all.  The authors are quite dispassionate and I think come off as being rather heroically objective and fair.  They begin at the beginning, biblically, move into explaining the long antagonism by Christians against Jews and the various ways this was expressed by Western and Eastern Christian churches.  Time and again they were persecuted, attacked and finally expelled from various nations at different times throughout the ages.  And it all culminated in the Holocaust.  Even after the Holocaust when you'd think people would be aghast with shame at what horror their bigotry had caused, people were still rejecting the Jews.  Then came the whole founding of Israel.  Even before that there had always been difficulty in Muslim lands.  Even though there was the concept of 'dhimmi' for people of the book, they still were treated as second class citizens and taxed for not being Muslim.  And how they were treated depended on the whim of whoever the local leader happened to be.  The whole rise of Zionism and Anti-Zionism put another layer over everything.

At the same time I was reading this book, I tried to listen to a book by Mark Kurlansky on audio.  I have read his books Salt,  and The Basque History of the World, both of which I enjoyed immensely.  So I was looking forward to his book on Non-Violence.  However, I found it a really hostile book!  I mean it was the angriest book ever on non-violence!  LOL.  Kurlansky had it really in for the Catholic Church in a way that I never felt from A Convenient Hatred.  He just kept making snide, jeering remarks.  Maybe it was Richard Dreyfuss' reading of it.  His voice is abrasive to me, rather too nasal and irritating.  Anyway, the book on Antisemitism was a better sell for non-violence then the bitterly resentful Kurlansky, who is so pissed off that nobody ever stuck to nonviolent principles.  We've all let him down!  So in contrast to that book, A Convenient Hatred comes off as possessing a lot of integrity and a real respect for its readers, no matter who they might be, Jewish, Christian or Muslim.  It is tough stuff to read, but important to acknowledge.  The authors are obviously sympathetic to Israel.

For more book reviews, go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.

A Good Thursday

Yesterday was a good day.  I'd been feeling so blue.  I still can't believe Tillie is gone though.  I am astonished at my own grief.  R and I are both kind of amazed at just how sad we are.  I mean I know it is in no way the same as losing a human you love, but it has taken me aback a bit.

The first Thursday of the month, my parish supplies lunch to a local homeless shelter.  Usually, I just make chicken for 16, but because of the summer, no one signed up for rice or veggies either.  So they sent out a last minute can anyone help notice.  So I said I could.  I got up early yesterday morning and ran to Giant because it turns out I was fresh out of rice and I never buy frozen veggies anymore (trying to avoid plastic packaging).  So I wound up buying a big plastic bag of rice (usually I buy bulk but I didn't have time) and a big plastic bag of mixed veggies.  Came home and cooked up 5 cups of rice.  The only way I could do this was by using a big casserole dish and baking the rice.  I don't usually cook rice this way but it turned out really well!  However, it was exceedingly hot outside yesterday so I really didn't like having to put the oven on.  Oh well.  I just cooked up the veggies in the microwave and then cooled them a bit and put homemade vinaigrette over them.  I then took a quick shower and headed over to the shelter to deliver the food. 

Then I took off to Manassas where I was scheduled to meet up with the Latin 2 teacher at the co-op where I've been teaching Latin 1 for the last few years.  He's doing this weekly summer meet up at a Panera there at 11:30 a.m. to sit and translate a Latin text.  I am not even sure of the text.  I think it is a recounting of Erasmus' Lives of the Apostles or De Vitis Apostolorum.  He wound up being a half hour late though.  He is sandwiching this in between work and family and errands.  He hopes that some of the Latin students will want to participate.  But I think I am the only one to show interest.  So we sat there with our laptops open so we could consult on line Latin dictionaries and managed to translate the first paragraph.  He is way, way further along than I am in Latin so he'd say things like so what case is that word in?  Or what is the tense, mood and voice of that verb?  It was challenging but I actually got most of it right!  I find translating so hard but then when it clicks, it is so satisfying!  It's like solving a puzzle! I get that same sense of triumph.  So that was fun.

Then I had pre-arranged to meet with another homeschooling mom at the same Panera right after the Latin session.  She and I are planning a Not Back to School Catholic Family Camp Out & Conference for 2019.  This has been something I've had in my imagination for years and I decided as I leave the homeschooling world, as my kids age out, this would be my last hurrah.  We wound up talking over coffee for almost 2.5 hours.  It was really enjoyable and exciting.

Then I drove home and relaxed for a bit.  Then I made dinner:  I cooked up more chicken in bbq sauce on the stove.  I boiled up some more corn and I sliced up a watermelon and that was dinner.

There's other stuff going on too, but I won't detail them here. 

Today's agenda:
Plastic Free October campaign meeting at 10:30
B to math tutor at 12:00; pick up at 1:30
Make veggie chili
Adoration hour is 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.

4th of July Meals

I am skipping Tuesday.  Everyone just came ate whatever for breakfast, if they even ate breakfast.  And it turned out everyone was out and about at lunch time, including myself, so everyone just got something out.  And then I ate something (Chipotle) which has never done this to me before, but I had horrible heartburn all afternoon, well into the evening.  So V wound up making the rice and salmon cakes.  No veggies.  We didn't even get food on the table until about 8 p.m.

Today was better.  We were tentatively planning to go to a parade in the morning, but then everybody slept in.  So I made a brunch of Applegate chicken maple sausage patties, scrambled eggs with goat cheese and lots of seasoning and a beautiful fruit salad of lots of mango, kiwi, plums and blueberries.  We didn't eat until almost noon.

Then since we had such a late brunch we just had dinner around 6:30.

Rick grilled steak

Turn your head sideways!

And crab legs

I did not partake of this.  I do not understand why people enjoy cracking crab shells.  I'm fine with crab cakes and crab chowder and stuff.  But I don't want to have to work so hard to actually eat the crab.

And chicken kabobs (with peach bbq sauce) and pineapple (marinated in Earth Balance, brown sugar and cinnamon)

You can't tell from this photo but the darker, more orange-y food to the left is chicken and the yellower to the right is grilled pineapple.

I also sauteed up a big zucchini, two small yellow squashes, half a green pepper, half an onion and a tomato.

And I boiled up some corn.  First corn of the summer!  It was delicious!

A good feast.  I managed to avoid going to see fireworks (which frankly I have never enjoyed).  Instead I am staying home and cooking up the chicken to deliver to the homeless shelter tomorrow.

Happy Independence Day!

Monday's Meals

I forgot to take photos.

Breakfast:  I made eggs for R, but B had this delicious but expensive nut free granola from Michel's Granola.  I've got to figure out how to replicate it at home.  Instead of nuts, it's got sunflower, hemp and flax seeds.  And maybe pumpkin.  I forget.  It's delicious.  She mixed it with some berry goat yogurt.  I had a banana, coffee and snacked on some dry granola.  I also ate a small helping of the fruit cobbler.

Lunch - There were leftover fried green tomatoes and some meatloaf, so I heated them up and ate them for lunch.  Also, a little more cobbler.

Dinner - I made delicious pork roast in the slow cooker.   I put in a cup of water, a splash of red wine vinegar, a couple of tablespoons of honey, a big dollop of minced garlic, 1/3 cup of coco amino acids, cumin seed, tumeric, salt and pepper and half of a big onion, sliced.  It cooked all day and was really good!  I also steamed the new potatoes from the CSA then I just sprinkled salt and drizzled a little olive oil over them.  I also made a big tossed salad with CSA lettuce, green onions, red bell pepper, cucumber, carrot, beets.  I made a simple vinaigrette to put over it.

Agenda for Tuesday:
B needs to do literature, history and math
I am going to deep clean the kitchen and vacuum my room.
I never made Haymaker's punch yesterday, so I'll do that.
Chip away some more at S's room.  Probably tidy surfaces and dust today.
Need to take Suburu in to get dent and dings repair estimated.
Need to set up B's voice lessons for times over the remaining summer.  I think we've got 6 sessions.
Call St. M and get Latin study group room and time scheduled.
Prepare meals

Need to contact Mom's organic to find out about food donation for Plastic Free October forum (need to do this before Friday a.m.)

For my own pleasure:  watch Latin lectures to wake my brain up so I am better prepared for my first Latin reading group meeting on Thursday a.m.
Just started watching Great Courses lectures on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy - very interesting.  Watch next lecture.
Read - I've got three books going on right now.
It's so hot out I am going to exercise via dvd Walk at Home.

Food Week

CSA Haul:  beets, lettuce, yellow squash and zucchini, a dozen fresh eggs, cucumbers, blueberries, parsley, bok choy and new potatoes.

In an effort to cheer myself up and get myself eating better again, I'm going to focus this week on food.

While B was gone to work camp all week, I totally dropped the anti-inflammatory diet I had gone on in solidarity with her.  I ate gluten, dairy and junk food with abandon.  I also got two migraines a
nd felt like crap all the week.  Towards the end of the week, I'd lie in bed and ache all over.  Every joint was aching.  It dawned on me that maybe the diet does work.  It's not a cure all, but I think it really does help.

So I am back to clean eating. 

Sunday - I had coffee and a banana before church.  I really need to cut down on coffee.

Brunch was a big omelet made from local pastured eggs, goat and sheep cheese (I grated this up because this cheese doesn't melt as quickly as cow's or just plain goat cheese does), a few leaves of fresh basil chopped and a chopped tomato.  Along with this we had locally produced pork sausage and some leftover grilled veggies (green, yellow and purple peppers, sweet potato, red onion and broccoli) from the Whole Foods hot bar (leftover from Friday). 

Dinner - R grilled hamburgers (grass fed with slices of goat cheese melted on top.  So delicious!) and hot dogs, I had my burger on a gf bun.  I sliced up two cucumbers from the CSA haul and made a vinaigrette to pour over them.  The best thing though was the fruit cobbler I made.  I had a box of blueberries and a box of blackberries and two peaches from the CSA.  I used Jules Gluten Free All Purpose Flour which is the best flour I've found.  Everything I make with it seems to turn out really well.  I actually made crepes earlier in the week for the first time in my life.  And they were so easy!  And delicious.

And instead of letting the beets from the CSA go soft in the fridge all week before I remembered to do something with them, I boiled them right away.  I plan to just slice them up and add them to salads as the week goes by. 

Dinners for the week:
Monday - pork shoulder slow cooker roast
Tuesday - salmon patties (gotta get our salmon in and everybody likes these)
Wednesday - chicken (also need to cook up chicken for shelter)
Thursday - creative leftovers! (I'm thinking of using leftover chicken to make savory crepes).
Friday - veggie chili

I also plan to make Haymaker's Punch today to get a little probiotic fermentation into my system. 

Our Sheltie Passed Away

I'm too lazy to hunt for a photo of her.   Our dog of 10 years, Tillie, got sick and died this week.  I noticed she wasn't feeling well on Monday afternoon, but I had to go make pb&j sandwiches for work camp and then babysit D that night while V was in class.  Tuesday I had to deliver the sandwiches to the work camp site about 2 hours from here.  I then did shower security duty (when the girls get back from the work site they shower before dinner).  I didn't get back home until after 9:00 p.m.  Tillie had had bad diarrhea.  I thought, oh gosh, I have to clean her off before I can take her to the vet.  But Wednesday I woke up with a terrible migraine.  I was completely out of commission all day.  She was acting pretty sick.

So then Thursday morning I managed to trim and bathe her.  She seemed better after that.  She ate a little raw ground beef.  So I thought, I think she's on the mend and didn't take her to the vet.

Friday morning I had another appointment in the a.m. and then I had to make cole slaw for the potluck return home dinner for the work campers.  Josh was home from work on Friday.  He came downstairs iin the afternoon, took one look at Tillie and announced he was taking her to the vet.  She had had a little water that morning but she was barely moving.

The vet told Josh Tillie was basically dying.  It looked to him like she was in kidney failure.  But it could be bladder or kidney stones so he wanted to x-ray her.  Well they did and there were no stones and she was definitely in kidney failure.  Saturday morning I woke with another migraine.  We had the garden planning guy here and I couldn't even meet with him, but after he left I felt well enough that we went to the vet's and they basically told us to say good bye to Tillie.  We could take her home with us but she only had hours left and she'd probably start having seizures soon.  She looked terrible.  So miserable and bloated looking and she smelled really bad. Basically she was being poisoned to death by her own toxins.  So we said please put her out of her misery.  We didn't want to watch.  We said goodbye.  I struggled very hard not to lose it.  R was the same.

I am still in shock.  I've got this darn cat here who is slowly dying.  I thought she'd be the next pet to go after Milky died of a stroke last year.   We asked the vet if we had taken Tillie in earlier, if she would have survived.  I felt so guilty that I had been so preoccupied all week.  She said she doubted it.  When they did the x-rays her kidneys were unusually small.  She thought that maybe her kidneys had been functioning only partially to begin with and then something happened that put her over the edge.  And dogs can't handle kidney failure the way cats can.  They just go into rapid decline.

I know I need to clean up everything.  Her dish is still there, her leash is still out.  I've still got the dog shampoo in my shower.  There's open cans of dog food in the fridge.  I have a big case of cans of libby's pumpkin, I would supplement her food with.  What to do with that?

R is grilling Sunday dinner.  Tillie used to get so excited when he did that and follow him in and out, in and out.

Poor Tillie.