Roasted Asparagus

I've had asparagus in many forms: soup, curry, blanched, boiled, and so on. But my very, very favorite recipe for asparagus is one that I made again today: oven-roasted asparagus with garlic. There is a marvelous flavor to asparagus when it's slow roasted in the oven that makes it hard to stop picking up just one more piece ... and then another ... and popping it into your mouth.

You wanted the recipe, didn't you? Here it is:

4 bunches of asparagus
chopped garlic (I buy a jar of chopped garlic and keep it in the fridge for times like this)
olive oil
salt

Preheat oven to 250 degrees.

Prepare the asparagus by bending it until it snaps. Save the softer lengths and discard the woody lengths.

Chop the asparagus in 1- to 2-inch lengths. Lay it out in a couple of baking pans, just deep enough to cover the bottom of the pan.

Sprinkle chopped garlic across the asparagus. Be fairly generous.

Drizzle with olive oil.

Sprinkle with salt, then pop the pans in the oven.

Turn/stir and re-spread the asparagus about every half hour until done.

Eat while still warm. Yum.

Distracting Feet

I've written here about the fact that I'm the pianist for a men's chorus in our valley. It's something so different from what I do every day, and the men are so affirming and appreciative, that I really enjoy doing it (as long as I don't turn two pages at once).

This past weekend we performed for a church in town. The men sounded good, and I didn't serve up any major musical disasters, for which I was thankful.

As a postscript: I'm getting to know all the different pianos in the valley, and this one sounded nice ... but it's too short. I was wearing low heels, but I'm fairly tall, and I just couldn't get my knees under the keyboard. So I slipped my shoes off and -- Voila! -- my legs fit just right.

It was only later that a parishioner chuckled as he told me about noticing "those toes on the pedal." Hey. A girl's gotta do what she's gotta do!

Tranquility, Part VI

The fool folds his hands and ruins himself.
Better one handful with tranquillity
than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

~~Ecclesiastes 4:5,6

Tranquility, Part V

At the edge of a tidepool, Oregon CoastThere is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense. ~~Thomas Hobbes, British philosopher

Tranquility, Part IV

Jellyfish found washed up on the Oregon Coast, March 2009We must do our business faithfully, without trouble or disquiet, recalling our mind to God mildly, and with tranquility, as often as we find it wandering from him. ~~Brother Lawrence, 17th century mystic

Tranquility, Part III

Sand pattern at the beach, Oregon CoastThe more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. ~~James Allen, author

Tranquility, Part II

Bennington LakeDo not let trifles disturb your tranquility of mind. The little pin-pricks of daily life when dwelt upon and magnified, may do great damage, but if ignored or dismissed from thought, will disappear from inanition [lack of nourishment]. ~~Grenville Kleiser

Tranquility, Part I

Our new fountainIt's been seven years since Husband and I first talked about getting a fountain in our home. He did buy a little table-top fountain for our bedroom, and that was nice, but it seemed to gather dust and dry out.

There are considerations to buying a fountain (or wind chimes), the most crucial of which is tone. There are some fountains that sound sonorous, some sound flat and two dimensional, and some sound like, uh, someone ridding themselves of excess fluids. I wanted something with a deeper tone to it.

Today I was on an errand to the hardware store, and I passed by boxes of pre-fabricated fountains. Ahhhhh... It was just too much for me. I brought one home.

It creates a peaceful feeling, sitting in the recliner in the room in which we spend most of our time, listening to the alto gurgle of our new fountain. Barnaby the cat has already inspected it and given his paws-up. The other two cats have shown no interest.

The lights under the moving water reflect into ever-moving patterns on the ceiling. It reminds me of the water features we saw in the big hotels in Singapore in the 70s, when our high school group would go out for a banquets. There's a feeling of both fascination and well-being that settles in, watching and listening to the play of light and water.

In that frame of mind, I have decided to dedicate this week to daily pictures and sayings depicting tranquility. I imagine we could all use a bit more of it. Here's today's quote:

Great tranquility of heart is his who cares neither for praise or blame. ~~Thomas à Kempis

Triple Dead Cockroach

When I was in Maryland this past weekend, Cousin Dave suggested to his two young lads that they demonstrate the "triple dead cockroach" for me. Down they all went on the carpet of Uncle and Auntie's living room, piled one upon the other, and not necessarily in order of descending age. As you can see, the result is a clearly imaginative rendition of a Triple Dead Cockroach.

I chuckled at their creativity. What fun when a dad is playful with his kids! It's one of the things I most enjoyed observing when I taught at the lower elementary level: children are naturally playful, turning imagination and creativity into all kinds of fun interactions and unexpected ideas.

Playfulness is also one of the things I enjoy watching in Husband. He plays with words. He plays with the cats. He plays with ideas. He involves his kids in play when they're around. He plays with his cooking. He just knows how to play like an expert. Had he been there to see the Triple Dead Cockroach, I think he would have been as amused as I.

I've been reading a book recently about leadership through the lens of family systems theory. It's The Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, by Edwin H. Friedman. The book practically makes my hair stand on end as I'm reading a totally different approach to leadership, one that rings clear and true with my observations over the years ... only Friedman says it better than I ever could.

One of the things Friedman noted in the passage I was reading a couple of days ago was the importance of playfulness. The lack of it is a symptom, he says. When you can't be playful in an organization (be it a family, a church, a school, or a governmental organization), that's a clear signal that dysfunction has set in.

I know there are people at my place of work who would scoff at this--so if they're reading, they can just go away now and study their Bibles or write policies--but I think my university could use a bit more play. Like the wearing of tiaras. And croquet on the front lawn. And playing with words until everyone is laughing. And matching your tie to your lecture topic for the day (my friend Pedrito!). And chuckles over Bible stories that God put there for us to chuckle at. And the telling of vivid, fun stories. And laughing at ourselves as we observe our own irrational oddities. And a Piggy-themed Party to celebrate the end of the swine flu scare. And maybe even a bit more of the Triple Dead Cockroach.

That's all I have to say about that.

Placeholder

Busy, busy right now. But I wanted my gracious readers to have something pretty to look at while I'm meeting my responsibilities. So here's yesterday's shot of our backyard lilacs. Enjoy!

Turning Two Pages at Once

Today I was playing the piano, accompanying our valley men's chorus as they performed five songs before a church audience of about 500 people. I wasn't able to practice with them this past week because I was in Denver for a strategic planning committee. A substitute pianist had used my music and accompanied the group during the rehearsal. I was a bit uneasy about going into the performance having not run the songs for a dozen days.

The performance had gone well so far, and we were on the next to last piece. I noticed that the substitute pianist had dogeared the pages so she could more easily turn them. I came to the end of the third page of music and flipped the page just as the song was approaching a key change ... and flipped two pages without realizing it.

It took only a hundredth of an instant for me to realize that the music was not what I should be playing. I scrambled to turn back a page and flipped two back instead of one. In the meantime the 25 or so men had arrived at the key change with no accompanying lead-in.

It was a mess. A few brave souls remembered how the music should go and led the others into the new key. I finally caught up. But we were all so rattled that the rest of the piece was a disaster, ending with my utter massacre of a three-octave riff. It was ugly, with not only the audience but live TV cameras recording the whole pile-up. The director grimaced, and I slunk home afterwards, not staying for the rest of the program.

Turning two pages at once: it puts you in a place that you should have arrived at much later. You miss key transitions along the way. You foreshorten the natural development of the song's trajectory.

It reminds me of when I first started dating Husband. I went on a forest walk in northern California with my pastor, and she listened to my enthused tales of this fine man who was stealing my heart. "Ginger," she cautioned me, "don't try to speed up the natural development of this relationship. Let it take time. It's like letting a fetus grow to full term before birthing it. Every relationship needs time to develop naturally."

At an earlier time, I wanted a leadership job in an academic department in which I worked. It was time to consider the leadership rotation, and I was a little disappointed when the decision was made to continue with the current leader, although my name had been proposed. Looking back on it, I needed those years to continue learning and developing by observing; I would not have done so well had I been thrust into the leadership as soon as I wanted it to happen.

Over and over I have observed this: It doesn't go so well when you "turn two pages at once" in life. A natural development and rhythm has to take place, and we're not such great judges of what that pace should be. There are also key transitions that are necessary to the arc of one's story, smoothing it out and bringing it to satisfying places.

In a world where life rushes by, where children meet adult themes too soon, where celebrity is expected in the course of a 20-week TV season, where people flog their bodies with stress and a lifetime of workload in half the years of their life, perhaps it would be wisest to seek to turn only one page at a time.

Deceptive Evil

Barnaby the Evil Feline tries to look irresistable while he drops his white hairs down our plumbingThis is Barnaby the Evil Feline (Stepson's cat). As with the most evil things in our world, he looks rather attractive and sweet, but then he destroys and terrorizes.

The "destroys" part? He gets in the big potted plant in our bedroom and throws dirt out and around on the cream-colored carpet. He leaves long white hairs everywhere but especially on chairs, causing me to Grrrr and spit invectives as I'm in a hurry to get out the door and have to stop to "roller" my black pants, skirt or coat. And he destroys the peace by meowing incessantly at times, an annoying little high-pitched whiny meow. He could make even the most saintly soul want to whap him.

The "terrorizes" part? My sweet little Moca (who does not drop hairs, fling dirt or meow annoyingly, should you care to make note of it) can be sitting on a chair minding her own business, and Barnaby comes snarking about, creeping toward her and then lunging in full attack mode. She flees in terror and he thunders after her. This is a daily occurrence, ending up with sweet Moca treed atop the bathroom cabinets or spitting and growling from the back of one of our recliner chairs.

We've taken to two defense mechanisms: either have the squirt bottle nearby to help us point out to Barnaby that his stalking habits are criminal, or shut him or Moca up in a bedroom. I'm not fond of isolating MY cat because of this bully's behavior.

This all may sound funny, but I'll be frank: I don't like Barnaby, not a bit. When it comes to a living organism being worth more than the bother it causes (I've seen some colleagues apply this test to bothersome employees, as well), Barnaby does not make the cut. His cuteness doesn't render his other behaviors worth enduring. He doesn't wear well. But we seem to be stuck with him for the time being.

That, I think, is also how it works all too often with Evil.

Barnaby in his pseudo-intelligent pose while he leaves a million white hairs on my black grand piano.