A Few Words About Fruitcake

by Pa Rock
Holiday Muncher

My friend Don, a newspaperman in Florida, sent me an article last week about fruitcake.  Actually it was about a group of Trappist monks in southern Missouri who make fruitcakes on a year-round basis to support their monastic way of life.  The monks at Assumption Abbey in Ava, Missouri, bake 25,000 two-pound fruitcakes each year, pray over each one individually, and then ship them out to happy consumers for a modest $31.00 each.

I know Ava, Missouri, quite well but have never been to the locally-famous abbey.  Perhaps next year I will order one of their signature fruitcakes.  This year I bought one from Costco - and it is delicious.

Many of my friends get their noses out-of-joint when the holiday staple of fruitcake is brought up in a conversation.  If the cakes are carefully crafted, such as the one that I got at Costco, then I am a fan.   A fruitcake represents a wonderful mix of tastes and textures that is heavy on fruits and nuts and stickiness, and short on cake.

Fruitcake originated in ancient Rome, and it was one of the foods that the crusaders took on their long trips from Europe to the Holy Land.  At one point in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church got involved  in a conflict over fruitcakes and decreed that butter could not be used in the recipe because it interfered with proper fasting.  Pope Innocent VIII felt the need to issue a "Butter Letter" or "Butterbrief" in which he extricated the Church from the fruitcake controversy.

Alcohol has also been a common ingredient in fruitcakes, and I have sampled many wonderful ones that were liberally soaked in rum.   Not only does the alcohol taste good, it is medicinal (really!) and fruitcakes with a healthy dose of alcohol will, according to Wikipedia, remain edible for many years.

Surely the survivalists and preppers are well aware of that.  And fruitcake sounds so much better than jerky and dehydrated vegetables!

Rent-a-Cops Don't Belong in America's Schools

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

The National Rifle Association stayed politely quiet during the first week following the child massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut - but yesterday, one week exactly after the shooting that left twenty-eight dead - including twenty first graders - NRA mouthpiece Wayne LaPierre finally made his way to a microphone.  The NRA had promised to make a significant contribution to the national discussion following the shooting.  Sadly, the gun lobby's contribution amounted to one bumper sticker slogan ("The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is with a good guy with a gun.") and a recommendation that every school in America be staffed with an armed rent-a-cop.

LaPierre, who reportedly makes a cool million dollars a year trying to put a human face on the gun industry, suggested that these rent-a-cops could be paid for by the federal government.

Really, Wayne?  Is that all there is to the NRA solution?  Put a Barney Fife, or worse yet a George Zimmerman, in every school in America and arm them?  You sir, are nuts!  There was a reason that Andy made Barney keep the bullet in his shirt pocket.  And if Congress saw fit to enact your wacko recommendation into law, why should the American public have to fund it.  Right now we are failing miserably at even funding basic education.  No, if guns are the problem - and despite your sloganeering, they certainly are - then the gun industry and gun users should fund the plan - through taxes on weapon and ammunition production and sales.

But the plan sucks.  Rent-a-cops will serve only to increase the level of danger in schools.  There are better ways to make schools safer - and most involve putting some basic commonsense controls on the gun industry.

If Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association have nothing helpful to contribute to the national discussion on gun violence other than pitching slogans and pointing fingers,  perhaps they should sit back and let the adults address the issue.   Yes, there are some very basic things that can be done which will not interfere with the "right" to be armed - an effective ban on automatic weapons, elimination of monster gun clips, and getting rid of the gun show loophole are three no-brainers - and a room full of responsible citizens will probably come up with more.

America's schools must not become shooting galleries.  Our children deserve schools that are as safe and as welcoming as their homes.

Apocalypse Now?

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

I’m beginning to think that this whole apocalypse thing is nothing but a sham to sell guns, water purification systems, and dried foods.    It is, in other words, just one more tentacle of the ever-expanding American marketplace. 

I mean, here it is going on late afternoon in the American West on the day of the supposed Mayan Apocalypse – and has the world ended, or even belched?  Hell no!  It would appear that once again the prophets of doom have either been the victims of their own naiveté (or stupidity) – or they have lied to us for attention or personal gain.

I have not heard reports of even one righteously intolerant Christian fundamentalist floating off to Heaven.  It is so disappointing.

According to the Book of Wikipedia, a pagan gospel, today marks the fifteenth apocalyptic prediction (with a specific date) since the start of the new millennium - a brief thirteen years ago.  Here is a short rundown of the finales that fizzled.

·       January 1, 2000:   Various prognosticators saw this as the date on which the world would end.  Notable among them were Christian fiction authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins who felt that the Y2K bug would instigate an economic collapse that would give the Antichrist elbow room to do his thing.   It didn’t happen, of course, but the two typists did manage to sell quite a few books to their true believers.    Evangelist and television huckster Jerry Falwell also predicted the world would end on this date.

 ·       April 6, 2000:  James Harmston, the leader of the True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days (try saying that three times stoned!) said Jesus would be returning on this day.  (Perhaps he did – then took a look around and got the hell out of Dodge!) 

 ·       May 5, 2000:   A movement calling itself the “Nuwaubian Nation”  said that the planetary lineup on this day would cause a “star holocaust” that would pull the planets toward the sun. 

 ·       October 9, 2000:  A bible teacher named Grant Jeffrey thought this particular date was likely to be the “termination point for the last days.” 

 ·       November 29, 2003:  A Japanese cult named “Aum Shinrikyo” said that the world would be destroyed by nuclear war between October 30 and November 29, 2003. 

 ·       June 6, 2006:  An assortment of Christian doomsayers felt that the world would certainly end on 666. 

 ·       September 12, 2006:  Yisrayl Hawkins (love that name!), a leader of the House of Yahwah in Abilene, Texas, predicted that a nuclear war would occur on this date. 

 ·       April 29, 2007:  Televangelist and shameless beggar Pat Robertson predicted in a 1990 book that the world would be destroyed on this date.  (Poor Pat was showing signs of senility even then!)

 ·       September 10, 2008:  Several groups predicted that the world would be sucked into a black hole when the Large Hadron Collider went on line in Switzerland. 

 ·       May 21, 2011:  Radio minister and conman Harold Camping predicted the Rapture and devastating earthquakes for this date. 

 ·       September 29, 2011:  Ronald Weinland, an Internet minister and convicted tax evader, said that Jesus Christ would return on this date, and that his arrival would be heralded by nuclear explosions in U. S. port cities.  

 ·       October 21, 2011:  Harold Camping  (again!) predicted the Rapture and the end of the world on this date. 

 ·       May 27, 2012:  Ronald Weinland (again – these guys just keep on guessing!) said that Jesus would surely come and the world would surely end on this date.  (Strike two, Ron!) 

 ·       June 30, 2012:  Jose Luis de Jesus Miranda, a minister in Florida who claims to be both Jesus Christ and the Antichrist, said that the world’s governments and economies would collapse on this date.    He also said that he and his followers would undergo a miraculous transformation that would give them the power to fly and walk through walls.    

 ·       December 21, 2012:  Ah yes, those pesky Mayan Apocalypse believers.

So where do we go from here?  Don’t get too comfortable because the predictions of global doom appear with the regularity and abundance of the annual walnut crop.  Ronald Weinland has now placed his apocalyptic chips on May 19, 2013 – a scant five months from now.    The late psychic (and Christian astrologer) Jeane Dixon put her chips on a seventeen-year spread between 2020 and 2037.  No word yet on the odds that she got on that bet, but they had to be less than a person would get for placing the whole pile on one specific day.   (Jeane Dixon had tried the limited approach earlier with a prediction of February 4, 1962 – but she got burned on that one!)

I just checked outside and found that there are still no bigoted zealots floating by.  It is so very disappointing!

Udaho

by Pa Rock
Cynic

There are some libertarian billionaires planning to build an independent nation of artificial islands off of the coast of California.  One of their primary goals appears to be tax evasion.   These manmade islands will supposedly be constructed around structures similar to oil derricks.  They ought to be safe from the ravages of big storms brought on by global warming because these yahoos don’t believe in global warming. 

Several states, Arizona and Texas being two fine examples, recently witnessed thousands of their citizens petitioning the federal government for the right to secede.  They, too, would like to be independent nations, free of all of the restraints that the government of the United States so liberally imposes upon them. 

And then let’s not forget the “preppers” and other fantasy survivalists who salivate at the prospect of rushing off into the hills and defeating the evil government with a heady arsenal of automatic weapons, Krugerrands, and homemade meth.  The “preppers” seem to be guided by a “the world is ending, or else” philosophy – which may make sense to them.  (I had not even heard the term “prepper” until the school massacre in Newtown.  The shooter’s mother was a “prepper “ – she was going to be safe because she was armed to the eyeballs with automatic weapons.  How did that work out for you, Nancy?)

The love of guns is an obvious commonality among these malcontents, and one might suspect that there is also some racial prejudice at play because the election and re-election of a black President seems to have energized them to a level of rabid insanity.

The other commonality is that they all believe that they know what is best for themselves and want to live life on their own terms.  I don’t have a problem with communes or even independent countries of crazies – as long as I don’t have to step over them to get to work.  But instead of putting up with these people nationally, like so many pockets of cancer, why not just give them a big piece of federal land for their nation - and then build a really big fence around it.  (These guys totally love big fences!)

Arizona would be a logical location.  It’s sort of like the Badlands, only worse, and filled with rattlesnakes, scorpions, and blue-haired lunatics.  But, on second thought, I would hate to see the Grand Canyon filled to the brim with bald tires and dead refrigerators.  A combination of Idaho and Utah, which are contiguous, might also be a possibility.  The fledgling crackpot nation could conceivably be completely fenced and guarded – on both sides.

How about “Udaho” as a name for the new country – and “So’s Your Granny” for the state motto?

Of course, it’s probably all academic anyway because sometime very late tonight or early tomorrow is supposedly the Mayan Apocalypse.  I may celebrate the terminal event with some cold beer and a paint ball gun – so I can bid the fundamentalist nut burgers good riddance as they float by heading off to the Rapture.

It doesn’t take much to amuse me!

'S Wonderful, 'S Flawless

by Pa Rock
'S Clueless

Last Saturday I treated myself to a night out at the theatre.  The event was a lively musical built around the songs of George and Ira Gershwin.    ‘S Wonderful is the current production of the Phoenix Theatre Company, and as the title promises, it is a wonderful musical experience.    Five skilled performers (Kaitlynn Kleinman, Kyle Erickson Hewitt, Jenny Hintze, Jenn Taber, and Toby Yatso) sing, dance, and act their way across several decades of Gershwin music – and they do it wonderfully!

I expected to be highly impressed with the show, and I was.  I also expected to catch myself whistling tunes from the show for the next few days, and I have been.  The Gershin’s wrote a significant piece of the American soundtrack, songs that linger long after the curtain calls have ended.

The production was perfect, and part of me says that for a minimum of fifty bucks a seat it should have been perfect.  In fact, all of the professional performances that I have seen at the Phoenix Theatre – or those by the Arizona Theatre Company at the Herberger Theatre, for that matter – have been flawless. 

That is great  - Broadway caliber productions right here in the Scorpion State.   But a part of me misses the oddball screw-ups of community theatres that add an element of unpredictability and surprise to what is happening on stage – flubbed lines, missed cues, whole pages of dialogue inadvertently deleted or rewritten as they were being spoken.  

Years ago as an untrained high school drama teacher I directed some plays that were, to put it as politely as possible, interesting in places where they should not have been interesting.  Often those gaffes made for some of the more memorable and talked-about segments of the shows.  (One example that leaps to mind was a play that our student drama group put on where one character hid behind a couch for a few minutes until he had an opportunity to escape undetected.  His hiding place was in full view of the audience, and the poor kid missed his cue to exit and had to remain in hiding for the remainder of the play.  The audience recognized his goof and thought it was hilarious – and the actor, a bit player, thought it was cool that he was suddenly the star.

At another time, I was the screw-up.   Community theatres, particularly in rural areas, often have a shortage of male actors, and as a result, I have been drafted a few times in years past to be one of the actors.    At a production of the classic Our Town put on by a local community college in Missouri,  I was playing the doctor.    Somehow I walked onto the stage a full minute or two prior to my cue to do so (it felt like an hour or two), and I had to just stand in the background looking more stupid than usual until the narrator finished his opening monologue.

The Phoenix Theatre will be performing Our Town in May.   It will be a flawless production.  Needless to say, I won’t be in it!

Aloha, Senator Inouye

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

America lost one of its most reasonable political voices yesterday with the passing of Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii.  Inouye served continuously in Congress since the day Hawaii became a state in 1959.  He initially was in the House of Representatives for three years before moving to the U.S. Senate n 1963.  He gained a degree of notice in the Senate for his service on the Watergate Committee and later on the Senate committee that investigated the Iran Contra affair.

Senator Inouye was the senior member of the current Senate and served as the Senate Pro Tempore, a position earmarked by the Constitution to be third in line to the Presidency (behind the Vice President and the Speaker of the House).    The only other person in U.S. history to have served longer than Senator Inouye in the nation’s upper legislative chamber was the late Robert Byrd of West Virginia.

Inouye, a Japanese American and the son of Japanese immigrants, was eager to fight in World War II, but the nation was distrustful of Japanese and regarded the immigrants as suspect while it waged war on the Japanese Empire.  Inouye and his young friends petitioned the government to serve in uniform, and eventually many were allowed to fight in Europe where they would not blend in with enemy combatants.

That was a shameful time in our history when many of the Japanese Americans were hustled off into “interment” camps even as their sons fought courageously and with distinction in Europe.  Daniel Inouye was a brave fighter, taking out multiple German machine gun nests during battles in Italy.  He lost an arm in military service and was eventually awarded the country’s highest honor for military service, the Congressional Medal of Honor.

When I learned of Senator Inouye’s death yesterday, it immediately put me in mind of a book that I read several years ago, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.  That 1994 award-winning novel (which later became a movie) dealt with the treatment of Japanese Americans during the war and in the decade that followed.   It’s an amazing story that helped me to understand that unique era in American history – and era that Daniel Inouye experienced from a first-hand perspective.

Today, for the first time since becoming a state over half-a-century ago, Hawaii is not represented in the halls of Congress by Daniel Inouye.  His calm and gentle spirit is sure to be sorely missed on Capitol Hill.  News reports indicated that his parting word was “Aloha.”

Aloha, Senator Inouye.  Rest in well deserved peace, old warrior.