The Tomball Alters: Lisa, standing behind her mom,
who is seated next to Morgan, then Colin, and high school junior Kegan.
A fine family.
Morgan Helene Alter of Tomball
celebrated her eighteenth birthday by going off to college, which strikes me as
particularly appropriate. Specifically, she and her parents drove to Lubbock where
she will be a freshman at Texas Tech and where a special guy was waiting for
her to join him. Morgan is the third and last of my granddaughters—the other
two are Maddie, who has graduated and is working at a genius bar in Denver and
Eden who begins her junior year at UCLA. I’m so proud of these girls, and so
sure their boy cousins will catch up soon. To show how much things have changed
since my day: Morgan’s parents, Colin and Lisa, drove her in Morgan’s car. They’ll
fly back home tomorrow.
We had a visitor just now—a possum.
All summer I’ve known there is a possum who likes our property. If a garbage
bag gets left out overnight, it’s chewed and its contents scattered. Sophie has
occasionally let loose with her “There’s a critter bark.” Tonight, she gave two
little yelps, but then I saw Jordan bustling around on the deck. She sent me
pictures of our guy, who looks cautious but not particularly scared. I am
delighted to have him as a resident because he eats ticks and fleas and
mosquitoes and other worrisome insects. I think he needs a name, and for no
good reason Charlie comes to mind.
Charlie, the possum.
Today was again a cooking Saturday,
but I may have bitten off more than I wanted to chew. I’d been prowling through
old recipes—a file I’d stuck away in a cabinet in my closet when I downsized. This
was a recipe for a chicken casserole with tomatillo sauce—and the sauce nearly
did me in. Cooking two lbs. tomatillos in chicken broth was no problem, nor was
chopping two cups green onions and two cups cilantro. Or even peeling ten
garlic cloves. All tedious but easily done. But when it came to putting that
whole mess in the processor, I stumbled.
By trial and error and
mistake, I realized I couldn’t put ingredients in the processor bowl and then
add the blade—it wouldn’t go down to be properly seated. Duh! Should have taken
me half a minute to figure that out. I did realize that I would have to process
the sauce in two batches, so I used a fork to pitch half the tortillas in. But
then I had to add half the liquid and other ingredients, which meany standing
up to dump them in and risking losing my balance because I need one hand to steady
myself on something—or sitting and raising the bowl far over my head, which was
a pain. I finally got it done, with only one major spill. I call that a triumph,
but my arms are sore from stretching and lifting.
The casserole was delicious,
and we have enough left for at least one more meal, which is a good thing
because I warned the Burtons I would not be making it soon again. The good
thing is there was a lot of tomatillo sauce left which is now hardening in my
freezer, and we can use it on chicken breasts.
I have always been a believer
in the extreme threat posed to our earth by climate change, and in this summer,
which is unbearably hot even for Texas, I think the danger signs are clear. We
must act yesterday—I applaud President Biden’s efforts in that direction and
decry idiots like Senator Tommy Tubervlle who said he’s seen it hot on the
football field and this is just summer. That’s what you get when you elected a coach to the Senate. (Don’t get me started on
Tuberville and his hold on military promotions—what a grandstanding idiot.)
Eastern Canada had huge fires
earlier in the summer, and now British Columbia is fighting large wildfires.
The world is still stunned by the destruction of Lahaina on Maui. Granted, the
investigation of that fire is not complete and won’t be for a while, but it may
well turn out that human error and mismanagement were part of the cause, if not
for igniting it then for the inability to control it. That certainly has been the
case with some destructive fires in California. I saw a meme today that said in
effect while the earth burns, we may thank these people: and it listed, with
pictures, millionaire CEOs of fossil fuel industries. Reading that, it struck
me that the world really may disappear by fire. And so, tonight, I leave you
with Robert Frost’s poem, “Fire and Ice.”
“Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.”
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