Don’t Worry…

…Be _________

Something new! I’ll be sharing some of my very favorite recipes with you here since most of us eat food. You can follow my recipes by subscribing to this blog and I’ll treat you to my magical touch in the kitchen!

Today’s recipe is my infamous Pomme sans Peau. I started here with half of apple that was in the icebox. Then I delicately and thinly slice the darkened part off. Then I gently remove the hard core and seeds, and from there, deftly peel off the outer skin, all of which I then compost. Our bunnies in the yard tend to eat most of the compost which is a pleasurable component of this recipe. Then I like to slice the wedges into smaller bite-size chunks. Serve and eat. Preparation time: 2.3 minutes. Difficulty level: 1 (out of 10) Bon appétit!

And related in terms of apple pie and patriotism, one of the strangest stories of last year was the mini-replica of Mount Rushmore with the Orange-Man-Who-Would-Not-Go-Away’s likeness carved in. The Daily Beast reported that South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem commissioned the work as a tribute to his highness when he delivered a speech at a controversial Mount Rushmore celebration on July 3, 2020. The sculptors were Lee Leuning and Sherri Treeby, a South Dakota sculpting team with scores of pieces on display in the state and across the Midwest, and ardent Orange Man supporters. Leuning told the Daily Beast The pieces are “bookshelf-sized,” 27 inches wide, 12 inches high, and 8-1/2 inches deep.

Leuning also said about Rushmore “It’s a fabulous job. It’s an amazing job. There’s not one iota of racism in it.” Truth or fiction? Borglum, the sculptor, had ties to the Ku Klux Klan. He worked on Stone Mountain in Georgia, a massive tribute to Confederate leaders Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, before coming to South Dakota. He departed Georgia after a dispute and his work was blasted off the mountain. And, of course, everyone knows that Washington and Jefferson were both slaveholders. But as PBS reported, the icing on the cake was In the Treaty of 1868, the U.S. government promised the Sioux territory that included the Black Hills in perpetuity. Perpetuity lasted only until  gold was found in the mountains and prospectors migrated there in the 1870s. The federal government then forced the Sioux to relinquish the Black Hills portion of their reservation.

The insult of Rushmore to some Sioux is at least three-fold:

1. It was built on land the government took from them.
2. The Black Hills in particular are considered sacred ground.
3. The monument celebrates the European settlers who killed so many Native Americans and appropriated their land.

Oy.

One more thought today…some friends were bantering around the idea of happiness recently. I’m not sure that ‘happiness’ is a thing that can be pursued. Perhaps it’s more of a consequence of actions that have some meaning to you, whether it’s for the welfare of others or taking care of your own needs and desires. Not being ‘happy’ every minute, like the folks on the sitcoms we grew up watching because their lives were always much more desirable than any life we are/were living, is unattainable and can only lead to worry and anxiety, which leads to less happiness. Maybe Robert McFerrin, Jr. had it right equating happiness with not worrying so much. I would add that family, faith, and community are words that have different meanings for different cultures and belief systems. Those words are often used as weapons of propaganda, not unlike ‘patriotism’, to herd the sheep into group mentality to benefit other groups or individuals. Blah, blah, blah…I’d say more but I need to go and make my morning ‘happiness’ smoooothie. Oh, and feel free to share your thoughts on this subject in the comments!

Cheers, and welcome to 2022!