The Writing Life (and garlic addendum)

Okay, for those of  you who are wondering, the garlic was a failure. My oven's low temp of 170 farhenheit was too hot. I'm blaming my oven. The chopped-up garlic turned brown, which it mustn't do, brown and hard, yet still gummy on the inside. A dehydrator is a must and I have one somewhere in the cluttered closet of my writer's room, but for now I'm turning my efforts elsewhere: to Old German tomatoes and Italian roasting peppers for salsa, chop chop chop, basil and parsley and....oh, yes, of course garlic! Good thing I have 15 pounds set aside for my October plantings. Then there's my grandma's dark fruitcake to make, no candied fruit, just dates, figs, dried apricots and cherries. Wrapped in brandy-soaked cloth for weeks and week. (Use a low temp for  long baking, not NOT 350 F. my mistake). I have oven issues.

Getting out of the kitchen, I have some writing news. Perseverance pays. My poems (two!) are in the new issue of The Slippery Elm Literary Journal 

And in the new issue of the Midwest Review  (number 9) which will soon be showcased on their site. The Review publishes work from writers in or from the midwest region from where words percolate in obscure places.  

I have more news on the horizon about which I'm excited beyond words, so who needs a dehydrator when Indi publishers and small university journals are flourishing and our libraries are opening to stretch and stir from their pandemic lockdowns. Perseverance is my word of the day. All you writers out there, never never never give up.

Now why on earth is that rooster crowing when there is no tinge of pink in the sky? What is he crowing at? Orion charging across the sky in his new change-of-season finery? I know...he sees the light in my window and thinks I'm about to throw open his door and sow some oats.

Not even close. I have a dehydrator to find and words to write and coffee to brew. 

Over and out

for now.

Thanks

for 

reading

this

impromptu

post.

Garlic!!

My hands smell like garlic. I've chopped and chopped, chopped the house awake. Time to get up! The sun is shinning through the evergreens, cones hanging like coconuts from the top branches. One of our trees lost its top in a straight-line wind two years ago. It's big but no longer the biggest.

Back to garlic. 

Well....I've dried parsley before in the oven, so I know this can be done, this dehydrating process. Thirty minutes at the lowest temp (170 for me) then stir, reset the timer, and repeat.  Repeat until dried and crumbly to the touch, however long that takes. Will it get crumbly? You tell me. Then I'll grind it up (to make my bread)  in my food processor to have my own garlic, um powder? Or just minced dried garlic to put in spaghetti and meatloaf and lasasgna and minestrone and bean soup with pig hocks and all those other things we turn to for comfort when the weather turns to winter.

Check out Poets and Storytellers: "The Season Turns" for seasonal thoughts from Down Under to "Up North". And I'd welcome any suggestions that will improve my chances of success on this Sunday Funday.

God Loves Texas

 

They want to write Thomas Jefferson out of history.

Delete him like a dark chapter

from the annals of American History.

He who coined separation of church and state

is a sword in the side of righteous

who bleed, but not of wine.

 

The Dark Ages weren’t as dark

as the house their Board of Education wants to build.

With the buying power to control content,

America’s children will read what

they want them to read.

 

They soften the image of McCarthy—

His motives were pure.

Switch Jefferson for McCarthy.

There’s only so much room.

Motives justify methods

because God loves Texas.

 

To defame a person,

first misspell his last name.

Sow seeds of doubt.

Rearrange his words and cast credit elsewhere.

Remove Monticello from travel guides

and besmirch the gardens—

the vegetables he grew,

amazed at the temperate zone of a new world.

 

While at it,

rearrange the heads of the founding fathers,

Was that really John Hancock’s John Hancock?

Like the 12 apostles at the dinner table,

Mary Magdalene in the shadows.

            Rub her out

Misquote Paine to justify your actions.

Who will bother to verify?

 

While at it,

rid yourselves of those onerous voting laws

and put the pesky women in their place.

Texas needs more babies brought up right—

            In the spirit of the Lord, white seraphims on high.

Purge history of he who dared to separate

the church from the state.

As if one could take guns from the righteous

guards from the gate

inmates from their prison.

God out of Texas.

 

.

 

 Connected to the Open Link Night at the Poets Pub where the opportunity resides to wax poetic and drink ourselves into the bliss of poetry.