Virtual-Doug

Heather’s Hoedown (Part II)

(If you have not read the previous post, do that before reading this one.)

Of course, you can’t have a party, eat barbeque, and drink beer without music.  At this kind of a party, the music has to be country music.  And it was a live band.  Of course, they donated their time.  As a part of giving, a local radio station also contributed time and money to the fund raiser.  The band would play a song or two, then the announcer would use the microphone to encourage people to join the auction and help raise even more money for Heather.

The auctions.  People and businesses donated a huge number of items to be sold to raise money. They were laid out on tables for viewing – and all kinds of things were for sale, from fishing poles to bird houses to brush-busting grills for pickup trucks to bottles of wine.  If you liked it, and you wanted it, then you promised to pay for it if you offered most money. 

Auctions can be a lot of fun.  One person stands up front and asks people how much they would pay for an item.  If you are want to buy it, you raise your hand.  But, somebody else may want it too, so they may offer more money.  A third person may want it even more, until finally, somebody offers money that nobody else is willing to pay.  Once again, people donate the items to be sold.  In this case, the grandmother of the cancer victim’s husband offered a quilt.  Handmade, it had been in the family for generations, but she was willing to have it sold to help someone else.

The party lasted for four hours.  People had a good time, but in the back of their minds, they knew they were helping somebody else.

How much did the community raise?

Would you believe $87,000!

One last thought about volunteerism in America.  Obviously, Americans like to help one another – but they aren’t always so crazy about receiving help.  You see  - - they want to do things themselves.

But they always want to help others.  In this case, Heather and her husband have decided to “pay it forward.”  Since she cannot bear children – they will adopt, and the money will help do that.

One more person helped.

(A note to my Vietnamese friends.  Barbeque is both a verb and a noun.  To “barbeque” meat is to cook it very slowly, usually over a wood fire of mesquite or other fragrant wood.  As a noun, it refers to the meat, either pork or beef, covered with barbeque sauce.  Everybody has their own recipe for barbeque sauce, but it is usually a spicy tomato-based blend.

Country music is very popular in America.  It is not necessary that you live in the countryside to enjoy country music.  Think of it as a different kind of music to differentiate it from rock n’ roll, or rap, or classical, or ethnic music.

Hoedown is an old word.  It derived from a time in the early pioneer days of America when farmers worked hard all day.  If they had been out in the fields using a hoe, putting the hoe down meant it was time to stop work.  A “hoedown” became a term that meant a gathering of neighbors for music, food, and talk.)

Heather’s Hoedown (Part I)

Alexis de Tocqueville,  Democracy in America,  circa  1830

Although private interest directs the greater part of human actions in the United States as well as elsewhere, it does not regulate them all. I must say that I have often seen Americans make great and real sacrifices to the public welfare; and I have noticed a hundred instances in which they hardly ever failed to lend faithful support to one another. The free institutions which the inhabitants of the United States possess, and the political rights of which they make so much use, remind every citizen, and in a thousand ways, that he lives in society. They every instant impress upon his mind the notion that it is the duty as well as the interest of men to make themselves useful to their fellow creatures; and as he sees no particular ground of animosity to them, since he is never either their master or their slave, his heart readily leans to the side of kindness. Men attend to the interests of the public, first by necessity, afterwards by choice; what was intentional becomes an instinct, and by dint of working for the good of one's fellow citizens, the habit and the taste for serving them are at length acquired.

De Tocqueville took stock of America’s fledgling democracy when it was only 50 years old, yet 175 years later, many of his observations still ring true.  The above quote is one of them – Americans help each other.

American’s are strange beasts. We are both brutally competitive and tenderly caring at the same time.  America has a welfare system that many other countries envy, yet we also expect people to got off welfare and “be on their own two feet.”  We love to do things ourselves, yet bind together in strong community when the need arises.

This is an example of how Americans help each other out. 

The young lady had only been married a short time when cancer was discovered.  Surgery relieved the immediate danger but also eliminated the possibility she would ever bear children.  The cancer was aggressive, and she needed more treatment – include chemo-therapy, which some people describe as a cure worse than the disease.  She lost her hair, vomited for days, was (and still is) chronically fatigued, and has many other bad reactions to the chemicals intended to kill the cancer.  Her husband and her brother are both stalwart enough to shave their heads in sympathy with her having lost her own hair.

Like most people in America, she has health insurance - - but that doesn’t cover such items as having a place to stay when in The Big City for her treatments, nor the time away from work, nor the travel – and certainly there are huge bills for medicines and procedures not covered by the insurance.  If not paid, the debt would cripple the young marriage.

So what did the folks of deep south Texas do?  They raised some money to help out – and they did it with a party.

A Texas kind of party.  A hoedown.  Over 500 people came to eat barbeque, drink beer, dance to country music, and buy donated auctioned items.  They paid $50 per person – and some paid extra just because they wanted to help.

(As always, be sure to click on the photos to see a larger version.)

When I say “Texas”, I mean things were as Texas as can be.  You knew you were in Texas while still in the parking lot – there was nothing but pickup trucks and SUVs.  Texans love to drive trucks.  Even those who live in cities love to drive pickup trucks, though they seldom carry anything in the back of the truck.

Inside the big hall, there was food aplenty.  Heaping plates of barbeque, with beans, onions, bread, Spanish rice, and other goodies.  Big appetites were welcome to come back for more.  Sit down with your friends, wash all that food down with a beer (or two), and enjoy the company of friendly people.

(To be continued in the next post.)

Back in the Kitchen

One of the things the Mystery Guest Blogger missed most while in Việt Nam was her kitchen.  The woman loves to cook.  That’s how I achieved my “prosperous” appearance.  The biggest difference I can see between her kitchen and a Vietnamese kitchen is an oven – Vietnamese women do not bake.  She also has running potable water, which most Vietnamese cooks lack.  Vietnamese kitchens have gas burners powered by propane, which is common in America too, though this stove uses electric burners.

Americans love sweet food.  Cookies are a favorite, and are considered “comfort food.”  Mothers give their kids cookies and milk, so adults love cookies as well.  When you’ve had a bad day, eating some food that your mother used to make for you helps you feel a little better.  Comfort food.   

The MGB has wanted one kitchen tool for a long time – the Kitchen Aid mixer seen here.  This is a serious piece of equipment that does everything except eat the food for you, but with its myriad attachments, it can do a lot tasks well.  By the way – notice her Palm Pilot on the counter – that’s where she keeps her recipes.

After mixing all the “stuff” together, MGB makes nice neat little balls of the dough and places those on a large tray.  No – they won’t stay neat little balls – they will flatten out in the heat of the oven.  And, she made many trays like this.  As she was preparing one tray, she would put another in the over.  When one was finished baking, she took the tray out and put another one in.

After all this work, there are only two more things to do:

Clean up the kitchen, and eat cookies!.

The Supermarket

The adventure continues as she works hard at learning something new.  Twenty years of familiarity are gone, replaced by a much smaller home that has to contain all the memories.  Decisions to be made:  what picture goes where, how to make the favorite sofa fit, how to find the important photo albums, what to give to the church rummage sale.  Days of work have culminated in a house a little neater – a little more like home.

Time to go to the supermarket for the first time.

The grocery list she made was written in her usual impeccable penmanship:  milk, yellow, green box food, candy, coffee, and candy (black, blue) (sic).

So, off she went with her son.  Like most men, the son is not entirely familiar with the supermarket, so when he offered some advice, he got this reprimand:

“You’re a man. You don’t know anything about shopping.”

Her confusion was evident, but there was no way she was going to let on.  When she found the milk, she didn’t know whether she wanted whole milk, fat free, or skim – but she knew the color of the cap should be blue.  The selection in the juice section was a bit overwhelming, so it was easier to just get something orange in a box.

Gentle Readers may assume that this is a lady who needs a lot of help, but I take a different view.  Short term memory loss does not mean she is helpless – she just needs time to absorb new information.  The next trip will be a little easier, and with each successive trip, things will become a bit more familiar.

Her son was given a task appropriate for his gender as he carried her wares to the car.  Her first shopping trip was successful.  She did pick up a few more items that were not on the shopping list, but we never did find “green box food.”

The next adventure.  She will sleep in her new home tonight rather than in her son and daughter-in-law’s home. 

And her son is not worried.

Agriculture is Still King

For all its pretensions to being a major metropolitan area, the McAllen, Texas, area is still primarily agricultural.  Though international trade is the new driving economic force, the fact remains many people earn their living growing things.  The area is laced with many irrigation canals (most built in the early to mid 20th century)  that bring in water from two reservoirs upstream on the Rio Grande, the river that serves as the boundary between Texas and Mexico.

Two of the pictures have houses in the background.  Small farming plots are checkerboarded with housing subdivisions, indicative of an city expanding fast into farm areas.  This large sorghum field is next to houses – and I’m sure the homes get dusty at plowing time.  Citrus is another major crop.  Most people associate oranges and grapefruit with either Florida or California, but both Arizona and Texas are major producers.  Citrus groves are irrigated by opening gates from the canals, allowing the water to flood the grove inside the little dikes that surround it.  Another major crop is cotton – and you can see some of the emerging bolls in these plants even though harvest is months from now.  Most of the cotton grown here is not the smooth fancy kind, but rather the kind of strong cotton found in blue jeans.

There is a fair amount of fruits and vegetables grown in the area, though the veggies grow in the winter when there is a demand in the colder parts of America.  But notice something in all these pictures:  there are no people.  Agriculture is highly mechanized in America, though you will see large numbers of people at harvest time.  These people neither own the land nor care for it year-round as most of the farmers of the world do – they are migrants, moving from harvest to harvest as the need arises.

And that is a cue for a whole series of postings, eh?  The migrant farm workers of America.

Reflections on a Life

She sits quietly, though confused by the hurry and rush around her.  At the age of ninety, she watches uneasily as her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren pack up the belongings acquired during her life – belongings that hold memories and create meaning for her.  She has lived more than twenty years in this home.  She has been a widow for more years than her husband was with her, so she has been affirming her independence for a very long time.  On one evening, her family celebrated her 90th birthday with a cake complete with 90 candles.  Her 9 year old great granddaughter beside her, she pondered her new life.  The next day, the same loving family packed up her home.

Independence for the elderly is peculiar to the American culture.   Most older people have no desire to live with their children, but age brings infirmities that inevitably lead to having to give up some level of self-reliance.  She no longer can drive an automobile, and that means she has less freedom – she is less self-reliant.  But she can still live in her own home – though it will be much smaller.  She will be able to prepare her own breakfast, then eat the other two meals with her son and daughter-in-law.

This is the first posting in a new category.  I will post this to The Mom Report as well as to Retirement.  My intention is not so much to chronicle my mother per se, but to show life as it is for one elderly American.

Women’s Rowing

After watching them for two hours, I just had to ask:

“Let me see if I understand you correctly.  You are a group of nine, grown, adult women,  who pay good money to come down here before dawn in order to work to the point of exhaustion and have some man yell at you.  Is that correct?”

With a quick laugh, the 53 year old athlete wiped her forehead, and told me I understood perfectly.  Such is the world of women’s rowing, a fairly unusual endurance sport that is popular in some parts of America.  (As always, be sure to click on the picture to see a larger version.)

Americans love sports.  The oft-repeated complaint is that Americans just love to watch sports, but I’m not so sure.  There are many who participate – and some participate in difficult sports.  Rowing (often known as crew) is one of them.

Their practice session began before the sun rose over the glass-smooth lake in Central Florida.  They carried their shell (what rowers call their craft) out of its boat house, waded into the water, and waited for their coach.  This “pleasant” gentleman rode in his power boat yelling instructions, criticisms, and encouragement at the crew.  He emphasized hard work in the present so races could be won in the future.  His coaching was directed towards the mind and the body – how to concentrate when the body wants to quit.

And work hard they did.  After some warm-up drills intended to improve technique and loosen up muscle, they began parts of the practice intended to simulate race conditions.  The coach called these parts “pieces”, and he would instruct the coxswain (the non-rower in the back of the boat who steers and coordinates the rowers’ strokes) on how he wanted the next piece done.  Sometimes he wanted them to work on their mental focus when the body is tired and the mind wanders.  Other times he wanted them to work on that last sprint to the finish line.  These intense sessions were interspersed with short periods of rest – but the coach also used those times to analyze and critique their efforts.

The morning shadows were still long when the two hour practice was over and they carried their boat back to storage.  These women have a lot invested in their sport:  they own the boat (which costs somewhere around $15-20,000), they practice two days a week, and they work out  four days a week as well.   Oh yes – when they enter a race, they pay their own way, tow the boat on a trailer, and pay for their own lodging and food.  Remember the guy who yells at them?  The coach?  They pay him too.  But they love to compete – and love to win, no matter the coast.  I spotted this paraphrase of Nietzsche painted on the side of the coach’s megaphone.

They want to be strong.