Birthdays, turkey day, and elections

There he is—Ford Hudgeons, newly twelve years old, in the TCU shirt I sent him. Ford is in the middle of my grandchildren, neither the oldest nor the youngest. But he is distinguished by being the absolute best TCU fan in the bunch. For some time, his ambition was to play soccer for TCU, but he has played so many sports—including on the Austin all-city baseball team—that I don’t know what sport he’ll choose for college. But I sure am encouraging those TCU leanings. We have occasional happy weekends when his mom brings him to Fort Worth for a TCU game of one kind of another. His dad and brother stay behind and do dumb things like go off in desert country and shoot at targets.

It’s getting close to Thanksgiving. I was leafing through the November Bon Appetit today and was struck by the editor’s story of the year his mom introduced a new stuffing. She was severely chastised and threatened not to do that again. Actually, I don’t care a lot about stuffing. I grew up on “northern” white bread stuffing and like it with some gravy. But I’ve fallen into a family of southern girls who make cornbread stuffing, and I’m not crazy about the texture. The magazine had a recipe for stuffing with apricots and mushrooms—now I could go for that. We never “stuff” the bird anymore—it’s a side dish, just like mashed potatoes, green bean casserole.

One of my southern girls also changes the traditional green bean casserole recipe—heresy! Her version is good, but I long for the plain old green beans, mushroom soup, and French’s fried onion rings. In his opening essay, the editor suggested that Thanksgiving is 90% about cooking and 10% about eating. I think that’s true. I’m just never the one in charge of the kitchen anymore—a benefit/problem of old age. I remember when I was the head cook.

One thing I wondered as I read the magazine: why is everything charred these days? I don’t like a burnt taste. They had recipes for chicken soup with charred cabbage—okay I could happily eat chicken soup with cabbage, but the charred doesn’t appeal. Or shaved carrots with charred garlic? I read that as burnt garlic. Even my grandkids used to accuse me of burning things—and now people do it on purpose?

And then there’s politics, more so these days as the election draws closer. I am distressed by the vitriolic posts on Facebook, and I long to have a reasonable discussion with someone. Instead, I am told I’m an idiot for my opinions and even questions I raise. I have had several messages that call President Obama a POS and one that declares he and Hillary collaborated to murder Judge Scalia in a plot to put a Democrat on the Supreme Court. Really? I’d love to see the evidence. I’d like to ask someone why they’ll vote for Cruz and why they accept trump’s dismissal of the Khashoggi torture/murder and his hyper-tweets that place Middle Eastern terrorists in the midst of the immigrant caravan. My favorite meme of the day: Middle Eastern terrorists who want to slip into the country always fly into Honduras and walk the rest of the way.

What has happened to civility and common sense? I was delighted that the Dallas Morning News endorse Beto O’Rourke for his efforts to bring unity to the country. Remember the words of Lincoln: A house divided against itself cannot stand.