Sally is a friend and a published and accomplished author with a style and personality all her own.
Sally M. Chetwynd
Brass Castle Arts
P. O. Box 1916
Wakefield, MA 01880
781-224-0530 (h)
781-548-9519 (cell)
brasscastlearts@gmail.com
http://brasscastlearts.blogspot.com
Sally's 07 15 Post on Writing as a way of spiritual healing.
Hi, ll
I subscribe to Tricia Lott Williford's blog. She's a Christian writer with an interesting take on life and joy. Several years ago, her husband died in her arms after an incredibly brief, sudden, and unexpected illness. She wrote her way out of that tragedy ("And Life Comes Back"), and has since found a new love, a second husband who adores her and her two little boys.
Here, she's announcing an upcoming weekend of writing workshops, "The Pen and the Page," in which those attending learn that in writing out memories, they pull old, unresolved wounds to the surface so they can be processed and healed.
https://www.tricialottwilliford.com/2018/07/introducing-the-pen-and-the-page/
It seems to me to be a useful tool, spiritual or not, to draw out material from life experiences that may have drifted into the dust kitties of our memories, material that may enhance any given scene we might be writing.
Sally
This post from Sally in response to Sunday Morning Coming Down, The Gravy
Sally from Sally’s Corner on website.
Hi, Dom,
Your ode to The Gravy makes me think of the Friday supper fish fries of my youth. I raise them to the same heights of your Gravy.
Like you, I was raised Catholic, so again, there was no eating on Sunday until we got back from church. My mother usually put a roast into the oven before we left, on low heat, so it would be fall-apart and succulent, sticky and moist, when we got home. Then it was just a matter of boiling potatoes and cooking up a vegetable or two, and the meal was ready, generally around 2 pm.
But Friday's fish fry! Now, just the thought of that makes my mouth water today. We lived in South Berwick, Maine, a small town (then and now), and we were two miles out in the country. We had a milk man (whose name I don't remember), an egg man (Mr. Schindler who lived half a mile away), a vegetable man (a jolly Russian from down the road whom we called Angie, who came around with his cart during the summer), and a fish man who came in his truck on Friday mornings. I don't remember his name either, but he'd pull into the driveway and my mother would go out and inspect his wares. He'd scale the whole fish and fillet what she wanted, right there on the tailgate of the truck. During the summer, we kids would all be home and we'd gather around, too, for he'd give us the tails of the fish to play with. For some reason, my brothers and I thought it really cool to put those tails into our mouths and run around the yard pretending to be fish swimming backwards. When the scales got too much in our mouths, we'd rinse out at the spigot, wash the tails, and do it again.
Back to the fish fry: We weren't wealthy (we weren't poor, either), so my mother got the more economical fish - haddock went for 17 cents a pound at that time. She'd get several pounds (a dollar or two expense), cut the fish into square chunks, and deep-fry the whole mess, so there'd be a stack of golden blocks piled a foot high on a large platter come supper-time. We could eat our fill and the pile would hardly diminish. The remainder lived in the fridge for another couple days, available to any of us needing a snack at any time. Oh, glorious, fried fish!
This post by Sally is in response to a June 6 posting on parents' violating Child Labor Laws.
Dear Dom,
(Your comment-email address link didn't work, so I'm posting this to you directly.)
Kudos to you for illustrating such a need to encourage common sense, to promote the idea that parents know better how to raise their children than does the government! Thank you for finding a way to work legally within the system and providing such a service to youngsters eager to contribute to their world.
In northern Maine, children have worked the potato harvest for generations. They start school a month early so they can take September off when the potatoes must be harvested. Quite a number of years ago, the government stepped in to restrict or elliminate the practice on grounds of child labor law abuse. The children objected, informing the government that this was the only way they had to earn money to pay for school supplies and clothing for the next year.
Your point of having children work alongside their parents is invaluable. How else will they learn self-discipline and a work ethic? How else will they see their parents leading by example, especially in this day and age? I agree with your dictum to refuse to abdicate the raising of your children to government or other authorities. If we see parents in trouble, we should step forward to provide whatever help or support we can as encouragement, even if it's only listening to vented frustration. And we need to listen to the children, who often know more than we what they need at any given time.
I love the story Wendell Berry tells, in his "A Native Hill" essay, of taking his 5-year-old granddaughter out into his fields in a horse-drawn cart one winter day on his farm in Kentucky. They worked together in the chill, and he found the child most quiet on the ride back at dusk. Her silence made him wonder if she was too cold to speak, or perhaps angry or frustrated at having to be with him all day. While he worried about this, the girl piped up and said, sleepily but cheerfully, "Grampa, we did good work today, didn't we?"
Work defines us. We are never too young (or old) to learn.
Sally
Web Meister Responds:
Well said! My dear.
As to the google email not working, I fixed the link. Sorry. Numerous complaints.
This post by Sally is in response to Sammy Viscione's post of Commando Shea, dated 05 23 18.
Gee, Mr. Shea sounds like the twin brother of Mr. Woodhead, my high school chemistry teacher. I have no idea if Mr. Woodhead served in the military, but his intimacy with the bottle was well-known to every student. He may have been approaching retirement (it was hard to tell: he was one of those whose thick head of hair had been prematurely white since before most of us were born), and he may have been a dynamic and inspiring teacher once (or maybe not).
By the time I sat in his class, he had reduced himself to two teaching measures: 1) having us conduct various scripted experiments using recycled mimeographed worksheets so old that the blue text was faded almost entirely away (that great, sweet, heady alcohol smell hadn't even been a memory for at least a decade), to say nothing of the acid stains in the paper that had burned away a third of the instructions, and 2) playing 12-cel film strips that he made sure lasted the entire class period, each image up on the screen for four minutes, while the badly coordinated vinyl record player provided the sound that was supposed to go with the film strip. (Talk about a cure for insomnia...)
Our notably military-style high school teacher was Mr. Kazura, nicknamed Kamikazi Joe, who taught biology. I don't know if he had served in the military either, but he was a force to be reckoned with and a phenomenal teacher. In the relaxed study hall he ran, he instructed us to make paper airplanes, but demanded that we come up with unique designs to see how they'd work, to learn whether or not we could ignore Bernoulli's principle with impunity.
We had quite a cavalcade of teachers, most of them highly dedicated and more than capable of maintaining some kind of order among some pretty crazy kids. I keep in touch still with my sophomore English teacher, one of the best I've ever had, whose daughter is a renowned novelist. I cherish the lessons I learned from her. I also hold dear the dirt-poor nuns whose elementary school education became so much a part of my fabric that I see the value of their work in me every day. I am blessed.
Sally
Re: Dom's Post on Trusting Children: Did My Son Prevent a School Shooting?
Dear Dom,
We can never know what may or may not have happened as a result of our embracing of those less fortunate. There are those proverbial ripples from the stone thrown into the pond. Thinking and speaking out about these things can only remind us of how the smallest acts may have the biggest effects to others – positively and negatively. Thank you for your compassion for “John.” It’s a lesson your son no doubt absorbed, consciously or otherwise.
In this vein, Sidney Poitier’s autobiography, “The Measure of a Man,” is a thought-provoking read. I was impressed with him before I read it. I was even more so afterward. I happened to read it in tandem with a book recently released by a friend of mine from my high school days, and found many parallels. Michael Ward writes beautifully about life lessons in character, integrity, and dignity he received from his father, the inner-city-NY family being the first blacks to live in Lee and Exeter, NH, back in the late 1950s. The book, the first in Mike’s series called “Sketches of Lee,” is called “A Colored Man in Exeter.” I am humbled.
Sally
Re: Dom's Post on Melatonin:
Dear Dom,
The reason the doctors never recommended that you try melatonin is because they couldn't make any money off it. That's why they pooh-pooh vitamin and mineral supplements. Simple things that can save a life. Research has found that ingesting coconut oil has sometimes reversed Alzheimer's disease. Magnesium has eliminated depression. Calcium has eliminated menstrual cramps. Raw honey has eliminated athlete's foot fungus. There are loads of studies out there that are not publicized because Big Pharma, in whose pockets many doctors reside (usually, these days, by government edict), can't make money from Joe Common Man treating or preventing ailments with ordinary, healthful, readily available foodstuffs. The medical industry must keep us on multiple drugs, most of which are prescribed to fix the problems that were created by other drugs that only marginally address the original problem.
Sally M. Chetwynd
Brass Castle Arts
P. O. Box 1916
Wakefield, MA 01880
781-224-0530 (h)
781-548-9519 (cell)
http://brasscastlearts.blogspot.com
I have come to believe, more and more in these latter days, that it is a conspiracy to keep us sick - Big Pharma, the food industry, and the govenment. If we are distracted by disorder and disease, we don't have the mental and physical resources (energy) to tackle the other problems that beset our cultures and communities. It's no different from the days of slavery - keep the blacks ignorant so they can be controlled. Sorry, I ain't buyin' it. I've seen different and I know different.
I take my supplements religiously and most of my friends wonder where I get so much energy. No prescriptions, except for the occasional antibiotic for something like a tick bite. I haven't had a cold in at least five years - it's been long enough that I can't remember - and I've never got a flu shot because I've never had the flu. I'm sixty-four years old and am physically able to spend all day, if that's what it takes, shoveling snow, when we get dumped with 3 or 4 feet of the stuff. (I'm blessed to have inherited mostly my mother's genes, her family known for longevity. She's 93 and still can wear me out. She refuses the flu shot, too. On the other hand, my father, never robust, died at age 67.) But genetic heredity aside, I try to be responsible about taking care of my body and my health, for the best genes in the world don't stand a chance against chronic abuse inflicted by junk food, addictions, neglect, and the deliberate (although usually unconscious) decision to remain ignorant of one's body's needs.
Yes, I get tired, but it's usually an honest weariness resulting from engagement in lots of activities. Sometimes I get overloaded, which is usually my own fault, when I keep saying "yes" to those things that interest me, to the neglect of those things that I really need to square away (and that are not going to go away!). But I'll fall back and regroup, assess my priorities, and get on with it.
So much for today's soap box rant...
Post Date: 05 10 18
Dear Dom,
Definitely render, save, and use your duck fat! I saw it in Whole Foods the other day for $14 per pound! (I don't frequent WF, so I am ignorant of such things.)
I have rendered, saved, and used chicken and turkey fat for many years - I even have a recipe for "Chicken Fat Brownies." Properly rendered and cleaned, it obviously has no poultry flavor. With this in mind, when my husband and I were planning an open house, I wanted to make a cookie that one of my nephews could eat, he being highly allergic to any dairy element at all. I thought of snickerdoodles and substituted turkey fat for real butter, and they came out so short and crisp that I have never made them again with butter.
I don't usually have the time to render fat separately, so I let the bird roast, then pour off the broth and fat, chill it, and peel off the solid fat. When I have time and have collected a fair amount of fat, I boil it in water - 1 part fat to 2 parts water - into which food particles and seasonings fall. I pour off the water, then strain the fat to catch any wayward remnants. I do this with pork fat as well, for other culinary use. My mother and I have prepared fat this way for many years with all kinds of meat fat, for making soap. Unfortunately, we can't find pure lye anymore - what we have found in recent years is full of various additives that do weird things to the soap and prevent it from hardening.
I have a nice Native American recipe for stuffing duck - chunks of apples, whole cloves of garlic, chunks of onion, grapes, pecans, and mushrooms, all in about equal quantities, mixed with various herbs and spices - as well as a spinach-based stuffing for when I bone a duck whole so it will serve six or eight (as opposed to just Phillip and me). (Gee, I haven't done a duck in quite a while...)
Where on earth does your friend Richard find a super-sized sundae for $2.50? A one-scoop cone at the local-dairy ice cream stands around here costs at least $3.75!
Sally