Of time and tamales

The holidays have come and gone, and the first week of 2013 has passed. Our fuschia hanging baskets are now finally languishing after surviving into the New Year, sporting only slightly shriveled blossoms amid ice and snow. I haven't posted anything on this blog since October. At Thanksgiving, I reworked a blog piece about the 2011 community dinner at the request of the newspaper's new editor published as a guest editorial. A responding letter the following week, originally a Facebook posting, was nasty and viperous rather like Oscar Brown Jr.'s song about the snake, as in receiving a fatal bite after taking it to your bosom to keep it warm. I have somewhat recovered, but am no longer shopping at the store where the letter-writer is manager. Two holiday bazaar booths, two ailing vehicles, two family holiday trips to my sister's, and a new regimen of physical therapy sessions requiring me to shuttle the mama twice a week have had me hopping. Now that we are settling in for a long winter's nap following the surfeit of holidaying, I have managed to resuscitate one of my computers long enough to go online more than a minute at a time. However, if the icestorm I fear is brewing materializes this evening, there may be no power, so I am hastening to post something to indicate I am still breathing. I have been going through old files and notebooks, sorting out the good stuff and corraling old writings to one or two boxes, a good project for a new year. I have more poems than I thought, some good, some not so, plus a wildly disparate collection of writing fragments gleaned from over the years. They include some fiction pieces, essays revealing several facets of complicated times and relationships in my life, song lyrics, plus an entertaining five-page letter from the early San Francisco days and a packet of letters from Alaska. I am cocooning to the degree that I am wallowing in a new, compact recliner that sits where my rocker used to be, and doing another 'She Who Watches' beaded piece. My Obo Addy beaded and appliqued wall hanging was sent last week to his widow, Susan. It took 'honorable mention' at the Artists of the Gorge show in October. I am also being quite nostalgic about food, and have several pending projects planned. Our family is not Hispanic, but for a number of years, making chicken tamales was a holiday tradition, with my Missourian grandmother as the instigator. We did not have masa then, but used some of the broth from simmering a whole bird to cook cornmeal, adding lots of cumin seed crushed by hand. Our tamales were not terrifically spicy, but they often had canned and diced green jalapenos plus some oregano, garlic, onion, bay leaf, etc. The shredded meat was placed in the center after cooked cornmeal was spread on two or three pieced-together soaked cornhusks. We prided ourselves in using thin strips of cornhusk as ties, although I remember kitchen twine in earlier years, or wrapping the tamales in squares of old white sheets when husks weren't available in the frugal old days and the stewed chicken was a sacrificial hen. They were steamed in the big canner. We quit the tradition when the grandkids turned up their noses, to my grandma's disgust. I still love tamales, and occasionally make a mole version. I have a big package of masa, some mole paste, and an itch to get the big canner off the high shelf. At the very least, they freeze well.