Wednesday's Words for August 30, 2017

The pictures coming out of Texas beginning last weekend, and over the past few days have been heartbreaking. To see some small towns practically demolished, and the streets of Houston with waist to chest deep water—and rising—is beyond shocking. Entire neighborhoods will have to be leveled, I think. You can’t have homes submerged for so long a period in so much contaminated water, and hope they’ll dry out and be fine. You just can’t.

The disaster that was Hurricane, and now Tropical Storm Harvey truly is unlike any storm we’ve ever seen. Usually a hurricane comes, rages for a day or so, and then goes away. The cost in human lives can be counted almost immediately. When I awoke this morning, it was to news that the death toll had reached 18, doubling overnight. The authorities fear that number will climb, once the water drains away. Hurricane Katrina stole 1,836 lives. We can only pray that is a number never to be matched or exceeded.

In addition to the deaths, thousands of people have and are going through hell. Thousands have escaped with their lives, but have lost everything they possess, save the clothes on their backs. Some arrived at the shelters, shoeless. For the person experiencing it, losing everything is more than a shock, it’s a violation—very similar to the kind of violation one would feel after a physical attack. It’s happened to us twice, through fire, so I know a little of what these people are feeling.

The Houston police chief, Art Acevedo said during the telephone interview that I listened to Monday morning, that he feared the worst was yet to come, and his words have proven true. All of the water brought by the rainfall and flooding in south east Texas will head to the Gulf via Houston. There are over 6 million people in the metropolitan Houston area, a number far too high to have tried to evacuate, given the propensity for flash flooding on many of the roadways leading out of the area. A family of 6 was lost, having perished attempting to evacuate their flooded home.

The Army Corps of Engineers had to release water from two Houston dams into the Buffalo Bayou on Monday morning. This was done to prevent uncontrollable flooding of the Houston Metropolitan area, and to keep the dams from failing. It was a measure taken much sooner than originally planned, because the water in the reservoirs rose so quickly. Some people were not yet flooded until the gates of the reservoirs were opened. And even so, one of those dams, built in the 1930s, still breached it’s banks, spilling water into areas that had previously escaped flooding.

A category 4 Hurricane with no “steering currents” gathering last minute strength from the unusually warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, coming ashore and lingering, wreaking havoc and with the potential for unprecedented rainfall—well, there was simply no real play book to follow for this crisis. They are writing the book for this one as they go along. Another blessing? There was no storm surge in the Houston area.

 This is going to be a very long recovery for the people of south east Texas, and especially, it would seem, for the people of Houston. The storm has moved on but the water will continue to bring heartache until it eventually drains away. What the water hid will then be revealed and the true recovery can begin. Only six days of Harvey, but the rebuilding, the mending of lives, and of spirits, the reconstruction of neighborhoods—that is going to take years.

The one bright light throughout this disaster has been watching neighbors helping neighbors, and strangers helping strangers. People came from far and wide, brought their own boats, and just got to work. Much has been written about the great divide within the United States these days; and yet I am certain no one offering help inquired if the person in need of that help was a democrat or a republican. They didn’t care what color their skin was, or if they might be an immigrant or native born. In the midst of the chaos named Harvey, all those people were Texans, and they were Americans—they were brothers and sisters. And while this tragedy has been hard to watch, and clearly even harder to endure, the affirmation of the greatest of the values for which America stands, has been something we all needed to see—and more, something we all need to emulate.

There are ways we all can help the people devastated by Harvey. Canadians can donate money through the Canadian Red Cross. Here is a link to the designated page on their website: http://www.redcross.ca/about-us/red-cross-stories/2017/red-cross-responds-to-devastation-caused-by-hurricane-harvey

The American Red Cross is, of course, involved in providing assistance. In addition, here is a list I found of resources in need of various donations, for my American friends who want to help: https://www.yahoo.com/news/help-victims-tropical-storm-harvey-212340221.html

You don’t have to give a lot; you might think your five dollars won’t help, but it will. Your five dollars added to the five dollars of thousands of other people means thousands of dollars times five will flow and be used to help put people’s lives back together again.

In the meantime, let’s all send positive thoughts and prayers for the people affected by this disaster. The people of Texas are resilient. They will get through this, and come out stronger. I truly believe this to be so.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for August 23, 2017

When I was younger, I couldn’t help but notice that I had either time, or money, in surplus but not both, never both at the same time. If I was working full time, then I never had time to do the things I enjoyed doing. On those rare occasions when I was out of work, I had lots of time, but not too much in discretionary dollars to spend. During those stretches, I would peruse the farmers’ markets in my area, and buy up bushels of cucumbers or beets, or baskets of peaches, strawberries or blueberries. The more stuff I could make – and in those days, it was cheaper to produce home made – then the more money I could shave off the grocery bill.

In my canning career, I’ve made everything my mother made except for one thing: sauerkraut. That whole process just seems like too much work to me. Plus, she had a marvelous stone crock, and I’ve never had one of those. Truly, for the amount of sauerkraut my husband and I consume here (the kids never cared for it) it’s better all the way around, to just buy it.

But I’ve made lots of jam, as some of my friends will attest. Strawberry, blueberry, cherry, peach, I’ve made them all and in copious quantities. I’ve made bread and butter pickles—and of all the things I have canned they were the most labor intensive to produce. There was the washing (scrubbing) and slicing and then covering them in ice for a few hours. Then packing the jars, interspersing the cucumber pieces with green and red pepper chunks, and pieces of onion. I tried using those tiny onions but oh my goodness, those little suckers are a lot of work to peel.

I’ve made dill pickles more than any other kind of pickled produce, and I’ve made sweet pickled beets.

I’ve also made sweet green relish, sourced from cucumbers. That was one of my mother’s specialties. Recalling the first time I made that after my mother died never fails to put a rueful smile on my face. As the pot full of ground cucs with a few onions, and vinegar and sugar and the “bouquet garni” simmered away, filling my house with that loved, yet dreaded scent of autumn, I stared at the mixture in the pot and began to howl with laughter.

You see, when I was a kid I hated helping mom make the relish, because my job was slicing the cucumbers length-wise and then scraping the seeds out of each half and into a bucket. Bushel after bushel after bushel of those ugly green cucs waited for me and my spoon. And here was my first solo batch of my mother’s recipe sweet green relish—bubbling away slowly, seeds and all. I guess my memory had hidden from me the scraping part, as it would any other past horrible trauma.

The other condiment my mother made, and that my mother-in-law also made, was chili sauce. I’m not sure why it’s called that. Does anyone know? There are no chili peppers in it. There are tomatoes and green and red peppers, and onions; in my mother-in-law’s version, there were also peaches. I’ve incorporated peaches into my sauce. There’s vinegar and salt and sugar and spices: ground cloves, ground allspice, and ground cinnamon. I put everything into a large pot, and let science take over. There is a slow gentle simmering, and an aroma filling the air, an aroma that takes me back in time. The chili sauce only simmers for hours, as opposed to how my mother, and now I, prepared the green relish, which was a slow simmer for 3 or 4 hours for each of 3 or 4 days.

The scent of mom’s relish would sear my nostrils every autumn. I swear it sometimes was absorbed by my bedding, it was so rife throughout the entire the house!

I don’t make much these days, as it really takes a lot out of me. But this past Monday, I decided to make some chili sauce. I used a recipe I found in an old cook book of my mother’s, a book that dates back to the 1940s. It was a large yield recipe and I tried my hand at dividing it into thirds, so I made a third of it. The peaches were a guess, because, as I said, that had been my mother-in-law’s add-in and weren’t included in the original recipe.

The aroma did take me back, as I said, and was pleasant without crossing that line the green sweet relish always crossed in the first hour of its cooking.

And the final product—seeing something I made filling a couple of jars on the table—that was pure satisfaction in and of itself. It always is. That sight was nod to whatever instincts that reside within each of us that hark back to the beginning of time, when we had to live by our wits and our work, the sight of those jars was a signal that I have done my job, I had provided for my family, to help get us through the lean months of the coming winter. That is a kind of satisfaction I have found nowhere else.

The taste test was last night at supper. Mr. Ashbury gave it two thumbs up.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for August 16, 2017

I cannot remain silent. To witness such grotesque injustice, and say nothing, is to agree with it. This past weekend I watched thugs marching in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, spewing hate and Nazi slogans, giving Nazi salutes. That is completely intolerable, completely and unequivocally wrong. I know my history. The United States of America as well as my own country of Canada went to war, not even a century ago, against the evil of Nazism. One cannot claim to be a patriotic American or a patriotic Canadian and be a Nazi. You just can’t. It is not physically, emotionally, or morally possible.

Looking at the bigger picture, I have to ask myself, why do human beings hate?

Why do we allow ourselves to feel the roiling, boiling cauldron of emotions that leave us full of anger, full of rage? Full of hate? Those feelings don’t make us feel good. They don’t create, they don’t uplift, they don’t enhance. Nothing good comes from those emotions. So why do we allow them purchase within our souls, and within our society?

Of all the things we, as a species, permit in our lives, the one I don’t understand is this pervasive, black, crippling hate, the likes of which we all saw on our television screens over this past weekend. I can’t understand it. Am I hopelessly naïve? Oh, more than likely.

So, what makes people hate?

I’ll tell you one thing, I don’t as a rule proselytize in my essays. And I won’t over much, this time, either. But I will say this: I have read the Bible. I state that because I have also heard some of these haters saying they believe in God, and I do not doubt that they do: after all, Satan believes in God, too.

I am a Christian, and hate has no place in my faith. That isn’t my opinion, it’s fact. There is no hate in that Good Book. Jesus did go into the temple with a whip which He made in response to seeing God’s House turned into a ‘den of thieves’. That was anger—righteous anger. That was not hate.

Hate is not the emotion used by God. Hate is the tool of Satan.

So again I ask, why hate? There is absolutely no positive to be gained through hate. See, I told you I was naïve. The only gain these haters are interested in is power. They hope to overthrow democracy, and take over, and “purify” their nation. Their words, not mine. It appears lots of people agree with them. Maybe those people think if there we only white people around, life would somehow be better. More jobs. More money. Just like the good old days!

But that’s not true, not any of it. Those people just want the power for power’s sake. And once they get it, they may decide, hmm. All those blonde people, just you know, being blonde. Those blondes steal our jobs, they’re the reason life is no longer good here. We need to get rid of the blondes! If we got rid of the blondes, life would somehow be better. More jobs. More money. Just like the good old days!

Yeah, that sounds silly, but there is as much logic behind that as there is logic behind their stated goals and motivations now. Those that would have power at any cost will lie to attain it.

Let me say that one sentence again. Those that would have power at any cost will lie to attain it. And they will use any means—stirring up fears, feeding insecurities, whatever it takes—so that their mindless minions will believe, and will do what’s asked of them. And those who are pathological liars just lie because they can’t help themselves.

I believe in the right of all people to protest. I believe in the right of all people to speak their minds, and to have their say and to choose their own beliefs.

However, when people go to a so called “rally” armed with guns, knives, clubs and shields, they’re not there to protest. They’re there to commit violence. They are there to hurt other people. Unarmed people. Ministers, and pastors, and community volunteers. Legal assistants.

And if they drive their car into a crowd of innocent, unarmed people, hoping for a high body count? Why, then they’re terrorists.

We all have the right to protest. We do not have the right to riot, to hurt, to maim or to kill.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for August 9, 2017

This past weekend my husband and I tackled a long overdue job—one that we had to do upstairs. This was supposed to be our bedroom/office area. Unfortunately, the renovations, a joint project between my husband and our second son, were never completed after our son died. My husband simply didn’t have the heart for it. There needs only the finishing work to be done: drywall, and some type of finished flooring. Over the years this space has housed bedrooms for my grandkids, and a place for my daughter and her son when they moved in with us for a couple years.

We also use this area for storage, and what called us up there this past weekend was the task of sorting through the thousands of books we have stored up there—some on bookshelves, some in boxes, and some in a very long, sturdy wooden cedar chest.

Yes, my friends, I said thousands of books. The last time my daughter counted them, there were over 4,000. These are mostly paperbacks, though there were a few hard cover books in the lot. Some of the oldest books dating back to the 1940s and before sadly weren’t in good condition—nor were they when they came into our possession.

Our goal, over this past weekend, was to separate the wheat from the chaff, basically. What books did we really want to keep and which ones could we put in a pile to give away?

I know. You’re all still up there at the 4000. Seriously, I think’s closer to 5000 if you count the more recent books, the ones that are down stairs on our 6 bookshelves. You’re probably wondering where all those books came from.

To preface, I will tell you that we’ve always had books, and to top that off, we have had 2 house fires where we lost virtually everything, including our books. My beloved pointed out in the middle of this weekend’s sorting work, that this was indeed our third collection.

When the kids were younger, when we were struggling, and both of us working, each bi-weekly payday we’d give ourselves 20 dollars a piece as our “allowance”. That total of 40 bucks was our entire entertainment budget. And each payday, we would take ourselves to the bookstore at the plaza in the town where we shopped. There, we would each purchase as many books as possible with our allowance.

 At the time, I’d begun to read romance, and became somewhat hooked on some of the monthly release lines, like Silhouette Desire and Harlequin Loveswept, and other lines, too. Those books were fairly inexpensive. My beloved actually liked historical romance, and he read those long before I did. He’d also buy other action adventure books.

 When we each finished reading our books, we’d often swap and read each other’s. As I said, that was our entertainment. We also bought a fair number of books at garage sales. “You can have the entire box for five bucks!” What a deal that was for us, a deal only topped by the time we bought a four-piece living room suite for 15 dollars at a garage sale—but that is another story.

Sorting began Saturday morning. I know my husband was expecting a battle; I know he somehow thought that I would want to keep a ton of those books. But that was never in my plans. Yes, there were a few books that I’d really loved. And when I would come across those? Why, they went into the keeper box, no question about it. By the time we called it a day on Saturday, David had accepted I wasn’t going to cling overmuch to the past.

I found all of my old favorites except one; I’m going to post on my face book page about that one, because I don’t recall the title or the author, just the plot.

My reading tastes, and yes, my standards have changed. That’s not a slight against the two lines of books I’ve named, not at all. Anyone who’s watched an episode of an old favorite television series will know what I mean. Books and shows over twenty years old seem less sophisticated when you revisit them; as they should because they reflect the society in which they were produced, and times do change. There’s a kind of social innocence to those pre-global terrorism days that one could almost term halcyon.

I’m grateful to the hundreds of authors who wrote thousands of novels, tiny vehicles of escape and relief. Back in the days before I ever believed I would be a published author, I sank into those simple, happy stories and felt uplifted. Those hours of escape were as good as any vacation I later took.

In the end, we kept about four boxes worth of books, and have twenty-two boxes ready to go—hopefully to good, grateful homes.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury

Wednesday's Words for August 2, 2017

One hundred and twelve days, and counting.

As the date of my husband’s retirement draws nearer, the reality of the change we’re about to undergo begins to press home. Sometimes, I’ve been guilty of looking at what’s about to happen to us as we enter this brand new phase of our lives—embracing David’s retirement—through the lens of how it will affect me. I’m working hard to let that go for awhile, and concentrate instead on what this will mean for my beloved.

Something David said the other day really brought this need into focus for me. He said, “For the first time since I was 16, I will not have a boss.”

That admission brought to mind the very real fact that I, myself, have been without a boss since 2002. Over the last fifteen years, I’d pretty much forgotten what a pall it can be to have a boss. I think we can file that realization—that I’d ‘forgotten’ under the heading, “denial is more than a river in Africa”. I spent some time over the last few days recalling just what it was like. I figured this would be a good way to really understand my husband’s state of mind.

In truth, over the course of my working-outside-the-home career, I’ve had a couple of perfectly awful bosses—one who claimed he shouldn’t be subjected to the sight of me with my cane; and one who worked hard to try and make me quit so he could hire a former female co-worker whom he really liked from his previous employer. That last situation was a case of bad pheromones all the way around; he didn’t like me from first sight, which really hurt me at the time. He found his victory when I had my first heart attack; this company had a habit of getting rid of employees who might need to take advantage of their “self-insured” long term disability. My victory was in giving him, on that last day, a list of books on people and leadership skills, pointing out to him that he didn’t have any of either.

To this day, if I think too hard about how either of those people treated me, or of what it was like to put up with their verbal abuse and crap attitudes for as long as I did, I feel a little bit sick to my stomach.

I’m excited for my husband to get to that day of no boss.

David has been at the quarry for nearly forty years. His first boss there, the man who owned the then family business, who took over for his own father—this man just recently passed away. There was no funeral per se, just a “celebration of life” sort of visitation, and of course we attended. This man, though sometimes driving my beloved to curse a blue streak, was nonetheless very good to us. He was always there if an emergency arose, and trust me, we had more than a few of them along the way. He was the first to offer a helping hand when we lost our house to a fire, and much later, when I had to have emergency triple-bypass surgery.

The first two bosses David had after that man sold his family company to a large conglomerate were good, decent men. They were fair, and sought to make the employees under them feel as if they mattered. In turn, they quickly discovered the men now under their supervision would work hard in return for that respect.

That last point leads me to digress: why are corporate managers too stupid to understand this one salient fact of human nature? Give an employee the sense he/she matters, let them know their contribution is important and appreciated, treat them with respect, and the return on that investment of time and attitude will make the corporate bottom line swell! Doesn’t cost a damn penny, but returns thousands. I wish they’d all get a clue.

The next two bosses David had, however, clearly had no people or leadership skills. They completely killed David’s love for his job. That was his largest source of personal pride, and of the way he defined himself in the world. All that, and in the end two exceptionally mediocre “corporate soldiers” took that away from him. The boss he has now is a good man, but for David, once some lines have been crossed, that’s it. His current boss worked his way up through the ranks, and so he is less arrogant than the previous two, more understanding that a company whose product is gravel for the construction and cement industries is really built upon the work done by the men on the floor—and that the quality of their work is directly related to the respect and dignity with which they are treated. In short, he has good people and leadership skills. The men under him feel as if he truly has their best interests at heart. I think he does, because he has argued, successfully, against a plan the company had last year to lay employees off early. It is a seasonal industry and some layoffs are inevitable. Of course, David’s seniority keeps him working the longest, but he had lots of layoffs with the company over the years, especially in the beginning. In that regard, and many others he’s paid his dues.

Right now, he’s at that stage where he really wants to be done. He may have more than forty years in the tank, and only four months left to go, but human nature is what it is. These last few months are beginning to feel like forever to him.

He’s eager for his new beginning.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury