The Character of a Man

That's what happen when you start every pot of soup with one diced onion. There is no point in making a fractional soup: half an onion, three-quarters of a carrot, maybe one parsnipette. . . .

Winter demands soup. Summer can get by on a salad or a sandwich, but winter, even in Tucson, requires a pot of soup. The whole problem is that there are only two of us. The other part of the problem is that the refrigerator is not amenable to a large pot of soup. Life was simpler in Minnesota. In winter--that is to say, in months that are not spelled "July" or "August"--I just put the soup pot out on the north deck. The lid snapped into place as if it were frozen there, the pot scrunched itself up around the contents, and the whole pot welded itself to the snow-covered deck. When I wanted soup, all I had to do was find the crow bar, and bring the pot in for thawing.

There is a 9,000 foot mountain defining the north edge of Tucson, but the truth is that freezing nights, in town, are a sometime thing, so sometimes when it freezes, or even comes close, I put the soup pot out on the patio.

Traditions are important. They define a style of life. Some traditions make it possible to begin a pot of soup with a whole onion. A man's character shows through the traditions he observes. Fortunately, there is a fence around our back yard, or the javelinas would eat my tradition and my character and my onion.

A man with character never forgets where and how he used to live, even when he moves to a desert.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. ...

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer. We do have an answer. We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...

SmokeSound

Search This Blog