Listen to simplicity

A Zen saying.
Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

Soulful Cookery

I enjoy using old pots and pans. Smoothed wooden handles.Generation-seasoned cast iron pans. Rolling pins with handles molded perfectly by use.These are my aged treasures that had prepared past foods with love and expertise.
Aunt Katie's hammered aluminium pots that boiled, mashed or roasted are as dear to me as the old recipes they held. Not all of my beloved kitchenware was handed down by family. I have scored some great things from antique and second hand stores. It is the handprint of time on these culinary tools that give them their soul. And soul is the best seasoning to cook with!

A Roast for My Big Brother Greg

Gregory Gerard was born into a still, pristine child-free household on the 22nd of October 1952. This "First Born" child of proud parents George and Joan, was photographed with paparazzi frenzy. The darling, dimpled cherub's first two years of existence were recorded in baby books with hundreds if not thousands of photographs indexed into heavy volumes.
Greggie on a pony.
Greggie with his Sammy Dog.
Lil Greg on Santa's knee!
"Just how adorable it this!" cried his parents."OH, and so bright!" others exclaimed in hopes that they too would be able to hold the bright,shiny new boy.
I did not mind being born as his younger sister, coming in second. Really. There is absolutely nothing wrong with hand-me-down diapers.I am sure my parents' camera had become misplaced or perhaps broken by December of 1954.
Greg wasn't quite willing to leave the comforts of his crib at the time of my birth. Playpens were much roomier anyway. Mom said it always gave me the opportunity to explore. Of course I can't blame my brother for my confused identity. Boy clothes were fine. A boy's bike? Sure. Except that middle bar was sometimes an ouchy.
No really, wearing my brother's football pads, helmet and jersey for a Halloween costume. Cool.
"No mam. I'm NOT Bobby."
The pristine household? Greg managed to clutter it up with toys and rocks and other such boy messes but hey, he shared. He shared boogers,chicken pox and the gum he stored under the desk.He even let me rub his back if I watched his choice of TV fare.
Yep. I was the number two of our household. But you know what? I wouldn't change it for the world because there is nothing better than having a great older brother! Love you Greg and happy birthday!

Pondering the Me Question

My guess is I started wondering who I was at the age of seven. I was cozy in my family nest but felt outside stirrings. Neighborhood. School. Church. I was incubated in midwestern Iowa. German influenced since 1886 when my great grandparents landed on New York's coast that April.
Rules and regulation.
Somewhat mellowed with three American generations, it is still the moral fiber that makes me who I am. I would never take something that was not mine. I was raised knowing I represented not just myself but my family. I represented my Church. I represented my Town. These were the teachings.Though I find pride in my heart for it even to this day, I find rebellion and the want for change. I image it is the natural progression in life.

The 291st day of 2008

Autumn's leaves, plucked by cool breezy gusts,
dip and swirl to summer's last song
and a fat yellowed moon casts silvery shadows
from the edge of the earth so eerily long.

Spiders and mice and low flying bats
make a search for warmth, comfort and food.
Owls with haunting nocturnal voices
announce the strange and ghostly mood.

I welcome the season of hallowed harvests
of apples, corn and pumpkined vine.
Cheers to this colorful Autumn Season
made of patches in earthtone design.
S.G.Dunn

George F. Gager

Today I rewired a lamp. The last person to rewire it was my dad. He died April 2 of 1999. I thought of him as I disconnected wires, reconnected wires. It brought us back together. Father and daughter. I inherited the knack of being handy from him. He barely taught me such things. Maybe by accident I stood too close to him the day he repaired a flat tire or filed down a sticking door. Maybe I just simply wanted to hang out with my dad and happened to learned something. I don't know. I do know he has some responsibility in who I am today. For that, I am thankful. Love you Dad!

The Sixth Day of the Tenth Month

A warm dry sixth day of October. Threats of a water restriction rumble under clear blue skies while healthy moles frolic under crusty baked Tennessee yards. Even so I do love Autumn. Not death in the year's cycle but a true beginning to one! A time for nature's decay to become the nutrients for spring's growth. Seeds nestle down in warm compost with dreams for April. The start to our earth's gestation. A jubilant time of year!

The Night Marchers of La Perouse Bay HI

On our recent visit to Maui, Charlie and I never thought we would walk into something so foreboding yet alluring.
We decided to see how far we could go driving south on highway 31. Our tourist map showed a dotted line indicating some kind of continuation after the one lane road's terminus. We parked our rented convertible by a stone marker informing us this 'end of the line' was called La Perouse Bay. It seems La Perouse was the first French explorer and Naval Officer to visit Hawaii. He came ashore at this point in 1788 shortly after Maui's volcano Haleakala's last eruption. (This volcano is still considered active) La Preouse's story is fascinating. He is one of history's figures who 's death has never been verified. No body. No date. No ship. We do know his two ships sank in a storm south of the Soloman Islands in that year of 1788.

Getting back to 2008.... Maui's southwestern edge is an eerie gigantic field of black lava rock still seemingly turbulent .You can almost see the thrust and steam, molten red rivers masticating all flora, fauna and human that was most unlucky to be in it's path! We walked gingerly through this land of past carnage staying on a path so faint it came down to guess work. Looking back up toward Haleakala you could recognize the flow patterns, it's ebbs and tides, the spines of valley ridges now cloaked heavy with the dark igneous rock.


You will find that the beach falls away quickly into a dark gnarled entanglement of trees, living and dead. You hear the deafening crash of the Pacific's assault onto land but you no longer see the shoreline. This is not the sunny skies of vacationing Maui. At this point you question if you should go on.
We crossed paths with two women . They seemed relieved to see us but scurried passed with no talk of "oh, where are you staying...have you tried the Ani?" Charlie and I decided to go ahead.
It was sudden! a dark form going at great speed through the gnarled trees .
"Did you see it?"
"What was it?"
"I...I don't know!"
I tried to settle my mind. I didn't know whether to hide from this thing or seek it out. We kept going. A screeching bird lit above us. The crashing waves out to our right kept up it's timeless tide. There it was .
"Charles!' I whispered"I think it's a black goat!"
On further study through the thinning light I could see it was a mountain goat with great horns like the Rockies Mountain Goats. There seemed to be a herd of them. We walked passed keeping our eyes forward but our senses behind. It was at this time we saw the ruins. It seemed to be more than a building. Like a whole city of piled rocks. I lifted one of the ancient rocks that had obviously fallen, back in it's place. I stepped inside the broken down stone walled area.
I don't think you should do that Sue!"Charles warned.
I agreed and stepped out of it. I did not want to anger anyone because I knew whomever I could anger was there! We felt the presence of ages....of times we had no knowledge. Like a shadow of passed time hovering about us, it seemed to want us to leave. We did.
That experience stayed with us and we decided to research the area when we got home. I found there are Huaka'i po, Night Marchers, in the area of Ahihi-kinau Natural area perserve that roam along the hardened lava landscape in search of mischief. Though I read in my research "GhostTours"are available on the island, no one has ever offered to take people through the unmarked trails of Ahihi-kinau. And black mountain goats? Islanders never speak of them.

What part of Representative don't they understand?

The lawmakers who listened to the people they represent by not voting for the bailout are being called the vulnerable members who want to keep their jobs. Isn't that what they are there for? To represent the wants of the people? Who ever had the job to sell the American public on this bill had the sales ability of a slug! In a time of panic and uncertainty who calls it a "BAIL OUT"? They could have sold it to us (and educated us )as it being an investment by the American people to stand behind a Government letting their tax dollars work for correction and seeing it as a patriotic investment . Hey, spin is not bad if it is the truth and gets what is needed.
I must say too that this is a moral issue. It is time to examine and reflect on the reasons why we got here. Credit card companies were offering credit to 18 year old college freshmen!! geez. Gluttony and greed. Everyone IS a Jones so who do we keep up to now?
Settle back. Think. Money DOES NOT buy happiness. The "newness" of anything purchase wears off and all you have left is the monthly payment. Use cash in as many transactions as you can! Paper money is tangible ,credit is intangible.

All fingers should be pointing to Clinton and here's the proof!

New York Times
September 30, 1999
Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending By STEVEN A. HOLMES

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.
The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.
''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''
Demographic information on these borrowers is sketchy. But at least one study indicates that 18 percent of the loans in the subprime market went to black borrowers, compared to 5 per cent of loans in the conventional loan market.
In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.
''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''
Under Fannie Mae's pilot program, consumers who qualify can secure a mortgage with an interest rate one percentage point above that of a conventional, 30-year fixed rate mortgage of less than $240,000 -- a rate that currently averages about 7.76 per cent. If the borrower makes his or her monthly payments on time for two years, the one percentage point premium is dropped.
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, does not lend money directly to consumers. Instead, it purchases loans that banks make on what is called the secondary market. By expanding the type of loans that it will buy, Fannie Mae is hoping to spur banks to make more loans to people with less-than-stellar credit ratings.
Fannie Mae officials stress that the new mortgages will be extended to all potential borrowers who can qualify for a mortgage. But they add that the move is intended in part to increase the number of minority and low income home owners who tend to have worse credit ratings than non-Hispanic whites.
Home ownership has, in fact, exploded among minorities during the economic boom of the 1990's. The number of mortgages extended to Hispanic applicants jumped by 87.2 per cent from 1993 to 1998, according to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. During that same period the number of African Americans who got mortgages to buy a home increased by 71.9 per cent and the number of Asian Americans by 46.3 per cent.
In contrast, the number of non-Hispanic whites who received loans for homes increased by 31.2 per cent.
Despite these gains, home ownership rates for minorities continue to lag behind non-Hispanic whites, in part because blacks and Hispanics in particular tend to have on average worse credit ratings.
In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.
The change in policy also comes at the same time that HUD is investigating allegations of racial discrimination in the automated underwriting systems used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to determine the credit-worthiness of credit applicants.