Category: Uncategorized

10 ridiculous family games that need no equipment

This Christmas vacation, all 10 of my kids were are under one roof! I don’t know how many more times this is likely to happen; but while it lasts, we’re going to enjoy it. One thing we like doing is playing games — video games, certainly, and board games, sometimes. But my favorites are the ones we can play without any equipment except our own goofy brains. Here are some of them:

  1. STINKY PINKIES

A rhyming riddle game that you can play at all different levels, with kids who just barely know how to rhyme, to people with complex and mysterious brains. My seven-year-old loves to play this in the car. One person thinks of two words that rhyme and have the same number of syllables, and supplies hints, and everyone else has to guess. Whoever guesses correctly first gets to think of the next riddle. If the words have two syllables each, you say you have a stinky pinky. If they have three syllables each, it’s a stinkity pinkity. Four syllables, a stink-inkity pink-inkity; and so one. One syllable word pairs are a stink pink, of course.

A simple example:  A stink pink that’s a container for an orange animal with a big tail. The answer is: Fox box.

A more complicated one: What’s a wild, irresponsible string of pearls? Answer: a reckless necklace. I asked my son this one, and he guessed “unruly jewelry,” which doesn’t scan right, but is pretty good! I also gave him the hint of something that fastens pants and goes upside down, with “zipper flipper” in mind, but he guessed “suspender up-ender.”

  1. EXCUSES, EXCUSES
 
Charades mashed up with ‘The Office’ can entertain the whole families for hours.

This one involves getting out of your chair, unfortunately. It’s good for ages 6 to adult, and it’s very easy to drop in and out of, and is very entertaining to watch other people play.

The set-up:  one person is the boss, one person is the employee who is late for work, and one person is the co-worker.  The boss faces the employee, and the co-worker stands behind the boss, so the employee can see him, but the boss cannot.

The boss barks at the employee, “Why were you late?”  The employee starts to make his excuses — but he has to describe what the co-worker is miming.  Remember, the boss can’t see him.

So the co-worker is marching, dancing, swatting imaginary flies, being strangled, fighting invisible gorillas, etc., and the employee is narrating it.

Then the boss, at any point he wants to, whips his head around to and yells at the co-worker, “What are you doing?”  And the co-worker has to instantly come up with a plausible, office-appropriate explanation for whatever he was caught doing.  If he was acting out “killing a bear with my teeth,” for instance, he might say, “Oh, I was just eating one of these crullers.  Thanks for the crullers, boss!”

If the boss likes the excuse, he says, “Okay,” and the game resumes.  But if he doesn’t, he says, “You’re fired!” and the next person gets to be the co-worker

  1. FICTIONARY

Okay, just for this one, you do need some equipment, but I had to include it because I love it so. You will need a thick dictionary and a bunch of paper and pens.  It’s best for players at least 8 years old and up, and you need at least four players to make it fun. More is better.

The person who’s “it” finds a word that no one is familiar with, and he writes down the real definition. Everyone else writes down a fake definition. The person who is “it” reads them all out loud, and everyone but “it” has to guess which one is real.

Then “it” reveals the true definition. You get a point if you guess the real one, if someone votes for your fake one, or if you’re “it” and no one guesses the real one. Everyone gets a turn being “it” to complete one round of play.

Proper nouns, foreign language words, acronyms, and abbreviations are out. Spell and pronounce the word for everyone, and say what part of speech it is. If you’re “it,” you can simplify the real definition a bit, as long as you don’t significantly change it. Read all the definitions over silently to make sure you understand and can pronounce everything before reading them aloud. Be sure to shuffle them before reading aloud, so there are no clues about who wrote what.

You can’t vote for your own definition. The person who’s “it” does not vote. If there is one person who is head and shoulders above all the others when it comes to guessing, that person can vote last, so as not to influence the others.

The brilliance of this game is the psychology that goes into it. You have to use your knowledge of the people involved, not just your knowledge of language. And there’s always that one person who doesn’t care about the score and just wants to mess with people.

  1. GHOST

A spelling game, but it’s more fun than it sounds, and also involves more psychology than you’d think. A group of people spells a word out loud together, one letter at a time. The goal is to draw the word out as long as possible without being the one who says the last letter. So the person who starts will say, for instance, “R.” Then the next person will add the next letter — say, “E.” Then the next person will say “S.”

The hard part is, you have to supply a letter that doesn’t spell an entire word; but you have to have a real word in mind, that you’re working on spelling. The idea is to force someone else into ending the word. So if I am thinking of the word “restaurant,” and I supply the “T” when it’s my turn, then the round is over, because I’ve spelled “rest.”

But if someone supplies a letter that doesn’t spell a word — say “A” — and you can’t figure out what word they could possibly be working on (“‘Resa?’ What word starts with ‘resa?’” you’re thinking, because you keep thinking about “reservation,” but of course the word is “resale,” silly) you may challenge that person to reveal what the heck kind of ridiculous word they’re thinking of.

If they’re bluffing and it’s not a word, but they’re just trying to make it difficult for the next person with the letter they’ve chosen, then they’re out; but if they’re actually spelling a word, then they win.

  1. GET DOWN, MR. PRESIDENT!

This is a game that only works if no one announces that you’re playing it. It replicates the experience of being a member of the secret service whose job it is to protect the president. I know you guys have a prime minister or whatever, but work with me, here. One person begins by holding two fingers up against his ear as if listening intently to some intel coming through an earpiece.

If you notice someone is doing this, you will realize that the game is in session, and you must silently begin to also hold up two fingers against your ear. One by one, everyone in the room begins to realize what is happening, and stifles giggles while exchanging significant looks. When there is only one clueless person remaining who hasn’t noticed what is going on, then that is the president, and everyone else can simultaneously shriek, “GET DOWN, MR. PRESIDENT!” and tackle that person to the floor.

It’s so much fun, and hardly anyone ever dies of terror. Note: Husbands generally don’t care for this game, so act accordingly.

  1. IN THE MANNER OF THE ADVERB

One person thinks of an adverb, and everyone else has to guess what it is, by watching him do things in the manner of that adverb.

For instance, say I’m thinking about “bitterly.” The other shout, “Make some biscuits in the manner of the adverb!” so you commence muttering resentfully about the stupid butter not being cold enough, and how everybody else has a pastry blender, but you have to get along with two pathetic butter knives, and how you certainly hope they appreciate how much trouble you went to, but it doesn’t seem likely, and so on. And they shout out words like “Resentfully?” or “Angrily?” until someone guesses it. This is a good game for finding out whether or not your kids really know what an adverb is, or how biscuits are made.

  1. JEBRAHAMADIAH AND BALTHAZAR (also called “Master and Servant”)

Another role-playing/narrative game, but you can sit down for this one. I am not sure why my kids call this one “Jebrahamadiah and Balthazar,” except that (a) it has something to do with the Jeb! flyers we kept getting in the mail when Jeb Bush was running for president, and (b) they are weirdos.

One person gives orders, the other person explains why he can’t carry them out. The answer has to be part of a consistent narrative — you can’t just make up a new excuse for each command.

Here is an abbreviated example. The longer you can draw it out, the funnier it gets:

Jebrahamadiah! Go get me a glass of water.
I would, but I just broke the last glass.
Then go get me a cup of water.
I would, but when I broke the glass, I cut my finger, and I can’t use my hand.
Well, use your other hand.
I would, but when I was searching for a Band-aid for my one hand, I slammed the medicine chest door on my finger, and now both hands are useless.
Then call an ambulance.
I can’t, because, if you’ll recall, my hands don’t work.
Then use the speaker phone.
I would, but when I slammed the medicine chest door, some nail polish remover fell on my phone and now the speaker doesn’t work.
Then just shout out the window for help.
I would, but the neighbors saw me wrecking my phone, and he’s a big jerk, and laughed so hard that he drove off the road and now he’s in a coma.
Well, shout out the other window on the other side of the house.
I would, but when the other neighbor drove off the road, he knocked a utility pole down, and a live wire landed on the house on the other side and now it’s on fire, so I don’t want to bother them.
Well . . . okay, fine, I’ll get my own water.

  1. SHATNER!

This one can be played all day long, while cooking, while setting the table, during the meal, and so on, until you put your foot down and tell them to knock it off or you’re going to strangle somebody.

THE RULES: Life goes on as normal, until someone shouts, “Shatner!” — and then everyone has to do what they’re doing as William Shatner.

I actually stink at this game, but my kids are horrifyingly good at it.

8a. Companion game: DUCHOVNY

The opposite of Shatner. You respond in such an understated way that people have to fight the urge to check your vital signs.

  1. PLURALIZE

You sing a song, except everyone in it becomes two people. Thus, Moana’s cri de couer:

We are some girls who love our islands
We are some girls who love the sea
It calls us
We are the daughters of the village chiefs
We are descended from voyagers
Who found their way across the world
They call us
We’ve delivered us to where we are
We have journeyed farther
We are everything we’ve learned and more
Still it calls us
And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside us
It’s like the tide; always falling and rising
We will carry you here in our hearts you’ll remind us
That come what may
We know the way
We are Moanas!

  1. GREG

This one benefits more than others from either having a few glasses of wine in you, or being eleven years old (I cannot recommend both).

THE RULES: You sing songs, but instead of “I,” “me,” or “mine,” you say “Greg.”

There’s “With or Without Greg” by U2; “Amazing Grace” (How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like Greg); and who can forget that sentimental ballad from The Music Man, “Till There Was Greg.”

Extra points if someone in the house is actually named Greg.

 

Image: From Wikihow Play Charades (Creative Commons)

Game review: Snake Oil

Our summer library reading program ended not with a bang, but a howl, then a whimper, then ice cream, and then more howling. It was an unfortunate combination of overtired kids, high expectations, generalized raffle anxiety, and a hideous game which I don’t know who thought was a good idea, where you tie balloons to your ankles and run around getting stomped at by bigger, faster kids. I guess there was a bang and a whimper for that part, come to think of it.

There were also some bad feelings among the other moms when I stepped forward to claim the grand prize (two movie tickets and a pizza dinner) on behalf of my two-year-old, who won fair and square by having some books read to her.  Too bad! The kid has really been looking forward to a night out with her husband, but she just can’t justify it in the budget right now. Fair’s fair.

There was one good thing, though: one of my kids won a card game called Snake Oil, and the whole family has been playing it steadily all week. Yay, no glowing screen!

One person is the customer. He chooses a customer card and announces his profession or state in life: nurse, billionaire, cheerleader, zombie, plumber, witch, etc.

All the other players get six word cards each.  So you might get: death, balloon, burp, button, lightning, water; or flag, coffin, glove, cheese, leg, regret. From these, you must pick two words to invent a product that the customer would want to buy. Everyone makes a persuasive sales pitch

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to the alert, bright-eyed customer

 

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and the customer awards his card to the person with the best product. (Pardon the rubble in the background; I am halfway through painting the living room!)

My kids are good improvisers, and huge hams.

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The teenagers like playing, too, and so do I. It says “ages 10+” but it’s pretty easy to let the illiterate ones be “partners,” so really everyone can play this game, and the older ones are so full of ideas that they are willing to help out the little guys.

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I can imagine it being fun for all adults, with enough liquor in them.  And you can do a full game in about twenty minutes! And best of all, we now have a new running joke to carry us through the next few months, courtesy of my slightly morbid eight-year-old daughter, who was hawking Water Snakes to a grave robber: “Pop! Out comes the corpse!” (She won that round.)

“One of the lucky ones”: A testimony on the trauma inherent in adoption

November is National Adoption Month.  Last week, I talked to Wendy, a Canadian mental health professional who was adopted in the early 80’s and met her first mother at the age of 29. Wendy is Black, and her adoptive parents are white.
 
Our conversation (which has been edited for length and clarity) began when I first asked her if my perception was accurate, that we’re much more likely to hear the testimony of adoptive parents, than the stories of adoptees. 
 
W: Yes. Among the adoptee community, that is our biggest complaint, esepcially during National Adoption Awareness Month. Did anybody ask us?
 
It’s quite appalling, the extent to which people who are hoping to adopt only want to hear the positive side; they only want to hear the fairy tale. And if you say, “That’s not the whole story,” they don’t want to hear it. We are called names, we’re gaslit, we’re told to get therapy.
 
On certain platforms, whenever I open my mouth to say, “Okay, but adoption is not a fairy tale” at 8:30 in the morning, I put my phone down, and by lunch time there are twenty-five people calling me bitter, angry, and ungrateful. Here we go, another day on social media as an adopted adult. 
 

Why are people so unwilling to hear it?

 

W: Adoption is an industry. The industry has to advertise itself.
 

As an entire society, we have really bought hard into this “adoption is a beautiful option,” especially in pro-life circles. It’s, “If you can’t parent, here’s this almost uncomplicated, beautiful option.” 
 
If I say to an adoptive parents, “No, it’s not beautiful, and it’s very complicated,” what they’re not saying, but what I hear, is, “I thought we were doing a good thing, and you’re telling me we’re not. If you’re telling me all of this is true about adoption, then all of this is true of what my child has experienced. But my child is happy to be adopted, and my child is well-adjusted.”
 
I would have told you the same thing until I was 34 years old. 
 
What happened?
 
W: We have this phrase called “coming out of the fog.” In oversimplified terms, it refers to realizing adoption is not a fairy tale. As an adopted person, you get this narrative growing up: “We chose you from all the other children to be part of our family; isn’t that special?” You have to explain it to children in a way they can digest, and people want to make it a good story for a child. They tell it as a fairy tale, so you grow up thinking, yup, it’s a fairy tale. 
 
The other part of the story for me is, I am a transracial adoptee, which means I’m of a different race from my adoptive parents. My adoption is very visible. I’m a Black woman with a very Irish last name. 
 
Growing up, people ask you, “Are you adopted?” It’s amazing the questions people think they have a right to ask. You’re coached to answer the questions as a fairy tale. Looking back, those were very intrustive questions they had no right to ask, but I was encouraged to answer them, because it’s such a beautiful story. That’s the lens I had for the longest time. 
 
Even while having that lens, there were times, from the age of 11 or 12, that I would have these very negative emotions that didn’t seem to be attached to anything. My life is fine; why am I feeling like this? 
 
I was 20 or 21 and I realized I was not a big fan of my birthday. On the day, I didn’t want anyone to talk to me, I didn’t want to make a big deal of it, and I didn’t understand what that was.
 
Finally, years later, I said to a friend of mine: “As an adopted person, that’s the day I lost my first mother, and I do not feel like celebrating it.” 
 

How did she react?

 

W: She was able to take it on board. Some people really are not. Some adoptive parents can’t get their heads around it. They want to celebrate their child’s life. But whether your child has realized it or not, it’s a day that marks loss. Of course, not every child feels like that; maybe not every adult feels like that. 

Did you know other adoptees? When did you start realizing this was a common experience? 
 
W: Other than three cousins, also adoptees — they are indigenous. The Sixties Scoop  is most likely how they came into our family. I don’t have a lot of contact with them. One is not alive anymore. We’ve never had a conversation about adoption as adults.
 

It was as an adult, and it was on social media, that I had my first honest conversations about adoption. It’s interseting now to see new people come out of the fog, and the response you see over and over is, “I’m not weird; I’m not messed up. Everyone is telling me adoption is this beautiful thing, and I just thought there was something wrong with me.” No, there’s a whole other side to this.

What are some things your parents could have done differently, that would have given you a different experience? Or is it almost a rite of passage that everybody who’s adopted has to come to terms with at a certain age?

 
W: When I’m getting that backlash, the implication is that I should be grateful, and a lot of people want to run to the defense of my parents. They put a roof over my head and treated me like their own.
 
The thing that was missing is the realization that every single child who has been adopted, especially if it was not a kinship adoption [placement with relatives], has been traumatized by the separation from the first mother. The story started with trauma. 
 
The phrase that’s often used is “Adoption is trauma.” Yes, it’s the trauma of separation. The more I think about it, the deeper I realize it goes.
 
People will say, “But you don’t remember. It’s not like you were five and dragged screaming away from your mother. You were a baby.” But if you know trauma, you know about preverbal trauma. You don’t have to be old enough to have a narrative of it, for it to affect you. It shows up in the body. I can’t tell you a story of what’s troubling me, but I’m feeling a certain way. 
 
Then recently I was led to think about the effects of prenatal trauma. If a woman is pregnant and is she is abused, or is experiencing poverty or food insecurity or is homeless … what’s the effect on the child she’s carrying? 
 
It’s not so much what my parents could have done differently, it’s what the agency and adoption professionals could have done differently. I would bet my bottom dollar [my parents] were told, “Love will be enough. Take this child into your family and love her as your own, and everything will be fine.”
 
But if the trauma is there, and it absolutely is, you can’t love it away. But if you’re informed about how trauma works, and what a traumatized child needs, you can parent differently. When that trauma starts showing up, if you know why, maybe you don’t take it personally as parents. 
 
A hopeful adoptive parent recently told me all she hears about adoption lately is trauma.  She asked me if she should adopt. What I said is, If you’re not prepared for your child to look you in the face, a child you did your best to love and provide for, and for that child to say, “You’re not my real mother,” you’re not ready to adopt. If you can’t sit still for that, please don’t adopt.  
 
Are you concerned that this will scare people away? That children who would get homes are not going to get homes, because of your cautions?
 
W: Maybe this is callous, but if my speaking honestly scares you off, you’re not suitable to adopt.
 
And I absolutely believe that. Until we get to a conversation where we can say adopted children carry the trauma of separation, and until this conversation is happening at the industry level, we’re gonna get people who are surprised by this. We’re gonna get people who hear this talk about trauma and are scared away. 
 

So what do we do about that?

This hopeful adoptive parent I was talking to said, “It sounds like you’re saying the whole system is rotten.”

 
I said, “Yeah, it’s rotten to the core.” 
 
I say this because vulnerable women who approach adoption professionals, some health care professionals, some mental health professionals,  are pressured and often shamed to give up their babies for a promise of a “better life” with other parents, instead of having a conversation about whether she wants to parent, what supports she would need in order to parent, whether there is any way to involve family or community so that she can keep her child.
 
There are many cases, more than most people know, and more than “adoption professionals” will admit, where a mother or the mother’s family could have cared for the child if supported to do so.  But instead, we terminate parental rights, change the baby’s name, alter the birth certificate and put the child in someone else’s arms.  It’s rotten to the core. 
 
But until we arrive at adoption reform, this system is what we have. There are children who cannot safely remain with their parents.  There are children who have already endured that trauma of separation, and are in foster care, and right now adoption is the way we provide care and permanency.
 
I don’t think adoption, the way we do it right now, is a good thing. Why do you need to erase someone’s indentity, ancestry, and history to provide them with stability and care? You don’t. But that’s what the adoption industry does.  The unspoken idea is that if you erase a child’s history and identity, they can be easily inserted into a new family, and be “one of them” the way a biological chid is.   But that adopted child already had a family and an ancestral history.   That doesn’t cease to exist because someone altered some paperwork.
 
So for right now, it is what it is. There are kids that need care and permanency, and right now, we do that through the adoption system.
 
That’s my quandary, as a mental health professional. If you can’t recognize and support a traumatized child, you should not be parenting an adopted child. I will die on that hill. So what do we do with these children who are already in care and experiencing this instability? They need a solution. The current way we do adoption is not it.
 
What I hear a lot from foster parents is, “You might think you have to be the perfect parent and know exactly what to do, but you don’t. You just have to do your best, and be there for that child.” Are they wrong? Or is that situation just too different from adoption? 
 
W: It’s in the same broad circle. The idea that you don’t have to be perfect, you just have to do the best you can, there is absolutely a lot to that. 
 
You can’t go back and make that separation not happen. I think the best an adoptive parent can do is be willing to learn about the trauma that is inherent in adoption, and be willing to do the work to understand how to support a child who has been traumatized by the process.
 
That’s where the thick skin comes in. Do the work. Go to your own therapy. Talk to adopted adults. There are things you can to.
 
As a mental health professional, I get to have this moment where someone is sitting in front of me, and they’re experiencing depression or anxiety or OCD, and by the time they get to me, someone’s already given them a diagnosis, but no one has talked to them about what it means. I get to say to them: “Here’s what it means. Here’s what you might be experiencng.”
 
The facial expression, the relief in their voices: “You get it. You said it. It’s real. Someone understands.” I didn’t cure your depression; I just told you you weren’t going crazy.   And so, with adoption, you can’t erase the trauna, but you can acknowledge it and support your child through it.
 
Can you tell me some more about your own circumstances, your birth mother? 
 
W: I’m “one of the lucky ones.” I’m in reunion with my first mother. 
 
Sorry, it’s “first mother,” not “birth mother?” How did you land with that term? 
 
W: If I say “birth mother,” that feels like that’s the body I came out of, and then she ceased to matter. Well, she didn’t. Her absence mattered to me, and will matter until the day I die. And my absence mattered to her, from the day I was born, and will contine to matter to her until the day she dies. 
 
“First mother” is like: I have a mother in the mother who raised me. But I had a mother before her, as well. 
 
So you’re in reunion with your first mother? When did that happen?
 
W: I was able to contact her in 2011. I had just turned 28.
 
Did you express any interest in meeting her growing up? 
 
W: Yes, but even when I was a kid, I could sense there was some discomfort around that. When it came out was when I was angry or upset: “You’re not my real family. I’m gonna go find my real family.”
 
But in addition to that, my parents had a very surprise baby when I was ten, and there were all these conversations about who that child looks like and takes after. I didn’t have any of that. I didn’t look like anyone. 
 
I met my first half sister in 2002. We have similar mannarisms and similar brains, but we don’t look like sisters. Whereas my other half sister, I couldn’t stop staring at her. I was 28, and I had to say, “I’m sorry I keep staring at you, but you have my face.”
 

And growing up, what was it like, thinking about your first mother? Was there a longing?

 

W: A longing, and a wondering. I don’t think I uttered the phrase “you’re not my real parents” after the age of about 8, because I realized that it landed, and really landed really hurtfully. In a way an eight-year-old can, I realized that whatever else was going on, don’t say that. 

But until I entered reunion, there was that longing. That’s really what I was feeling on my birthday, before I even realized it. That date brought it home.  

 
How was it, meeting your first mother? It must have been a lot. 
 

W: It was a lot. I don’t think I processed how much it was. I think I’m still processing how much it was.

We met in person in the summer of 2012. It was just so strange. Because so much of it was so normal. But meeting your first mother you’ve never met until the age of 29 is not normal. It’s not a normal thing to do. Yet all that happened was she hopped on a train and came to the city where I lived, and I met her outside this random building. I walked up to this woman, and this city does not have a lot of Black folks, so I knew who it was, even if I hadn’t seen her close enough up to realize she looks exactly like me.
 
I’m trying not to fall apart. We’re in the middle of the public square. I was physically shaking. She was extremely stoic; I was not. I was crying, but trying to hold it together. We embraced.  We didn’t speak in the first moments.  I bought her lunch, after. We just sat there and chatted. It was very strange that we were doing such normal things. I just kept looking at her, like, is this happening? Is this real?
 

It will never not be strange. Here’s the thing about reunion. It’s beautiful, and wonderful, and absolutely terrible, and heartwrenching, all at the same time. The intensity of it. Nothing else I’ve experienced has the strange intensity of being in reunion.

One of my sisters and I didn’t undersand how to be in each other’s lives. We fought, and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. Fighting with a sibling after being in reunion, it was terrible. We have to be very careful now. 
 
It’s nature and nurture. We are both people who will argue that the grass is blue and the sky is green if we think we can carry it off. We have to be right. When two people like this get in a fight, it’s freaking ugly. And so at a certain point, I said, “I can’t talk to you. I’m in danger of saying something unforgiveable, and if I don’t, you will; so we’re not going to talk right now.” We didn’t talk for a year and a half. 
 
You’ve had this longing for connection, authentic connection and belonging —  the belonging is a really big piece — and then to fight with the person you finally experience it with? No thank you. 
 
When that relationship went wrong, did it make you feel like there was something wrong with you, like maybe you don’t know how to have relationships with people?
 
W: This fighting was happening before I came out of the fog. I got the fairy tale ending with the reunion; how did this go so wrong? Is it me? Is there something wrong with me?
 
I’ve said to my first mother, “You and I, we cannot fight. We have to be able to have a conversation before it turns into a fight.”
 
There have been times when we had a miscommunication or missed contact] and I was having a reaction like, “You’re leaving me again!” and I’m in a panic. And I have said to her, “We can’t have a fight, because I will go out of my mind.
 
 Is your first mother motherly to you? Does she perform the function of a mother, or is it a different kind of relationship?
 
W: This is one of the griefs I carry. When we have those moments when she’s acting in a motherly way, that brings into sharp relief the relationship we lost. Even though we have those moments, we can’t get back what we lost. She is my first mother, but she wasn’t my mother for 28 years. You can’t come into somebody’s life when they’re twenty-eight and be their mother, you just can’t. 
 

This may be a loaded question, but do you call yourself a pro-lifer?

W: I consider myself pro-life. I’m not a huge fan of that term. That has more to do with what comes out of the mouths of other people that associate themselves with that term. One of the arguments pro-lifers come at me with is, “Well, would you rather have been aborted?” No, and if you see those two options in such a black and white dichotomy, you’re not very intellectually flexible, are you? 

I’ll say that, as a Catholic and someone who is pro-life and as an adopted person, and someone who sees this tension and the trauma that is inherent, I find myself in a very precarious position. 
 
The adult adoptee community are vehemently prochoice. I can see exactly why. For some adopted people, they’ve been so affected by this trauma, some will say, “Yeah, it might have been better for me if I had never been born, than to live in this much pain.” And then there’s the concern that if someone does not want to carry a child and give birth, they should not be forced to; they should have that option to terminate. And from a bodily automomy perspective, I can see that. But as a Catholic, I see that new life, that soul.  If I weren’t Catholic, I would probably be pro-choice. I probably wouldn’t have been, until I came out of the fog.  
 
I am the only practicing Catholic in my immediate family, one of two in my extended family. The story of my Catholicism is a whole other story. The bottom line is, by the time I came out of the fog, if I hadn’t been Catholic, that would have been the end of me being prolife.  And though I am, I make a lot of Catholics angry by saying I don’t think legal prohibition of abortion is a good answer.
 
 As vehemently as I am prolife, I can absolutely see the other side. I can see both sides, and when both sides dig in their heels, this is how we don’t make progress. Both sides are busy screaming at each other and vilifying each other. 
 
Wendy, I appreciate you sharing all these personal things with me.
 
W: Well, nobody’s been telling me to get therapy or calling me a horrible ungrateful wretch, so this is new, this is good. The funny thing about the “get therapy” thing is that good therapy is the reason I’m able to have this conversation in this way.
 
That’s one of my things. Adoptive parents, go to therapy. I know you don’t think you need it, but you freaking do. Don’t you dare adopt a child until you’ve been to therapy. 
 
That surprises me. I would kind of assume that people would. 
 
W: I don’t know what the process is like now, when someone approaches an agency to adopt a child. I’m so interested to know if it’s suggested, strongly suggested, required? 
 
When the older of my half sisters and I first connected, before we were allowed to talk to each other, we were supposed to have 4 or 6 separate [therapy] sessions about this reunion experience. Then there was this other option, where they would send you all this reading material, and you had to sign sworn statement that you had read it and don’t have questions. I’m waiving any right to say I was harmed by this process, because I’ve chosen not to do the therapy. 

Who required this?

 

W: Family and Children’s Services. You could ask to be named on the adoption registery, and if someone else who they could trace as being related to you was also named, you would get this official letter that this relative has also registestered. If you‘d  like to have contact, you can. 

There was a social worker assigned to our case. She could talk to my sister and she could talk to me, but we weren’t allowed to talk to each other until either the therapy was complete, or we’d signed that waiver. I called the social worker one time, and my sister was in the office, but it was against the law to talk to each other. It’s against the law for me to talk to my flesh and blood sister.
 

There was another time. I got what’s referred to as “non identifying information about my first mother and her family. It was biographical information without identifying details, and it was like, pastimes and hobbies and how tall they were. No medical information; why would I need that? That’s another fun thing, when you have medical mysteries going on, and you go to the doctor and they say, “Do you have a family history of this?” and you say, “I don’t freaking know.”

The other time this weird gate keeping happened, was I was already in reuinion with my first mother, and I thought, what happens now if I ask for non-identifying information? Because the one I had from when my parents requested was so redacted, whole paragraphs were missing. 

 

So I requested it again in 2011. I called the F and CS office in my hometown and was told, “When you come in and pick it up, we’ll have you sit down with a counsellor. There’s information you might find distressing.”

I told her, “Let me tell you, I have met my first mother, and she told me the story, and yeah, it’s pretty damn distressing. Whatever’s in that document, I already know about it, because she told me. If I have to get therapy, I’ll get therapy. I live five hours away; I’m not coming in to do therapy five hours away.  Mail the documents, please.”

 
Finally I had to write a whole letter saying I understand there’s distressing information in this file, I probably aready know it, and I’m releasing you from any liability if I’m emotionally damaged; now give me my freaking documents.
 
And they were still redacted.
 
It’s your history, and they’re keeping it from you. That must feel so strange.
 

W: You get that growing up. I knew my parents knew more than they were telilng me, because of this non-identifying information.

It’s my information; how am I not ready to have it? Some of it would have been pretty difficult to find an age appropriate way to say that, but by the time I was thirteen or fifteen. Tell me something. 

 
When people say, “Why are you so angry?” I am.  It’s that erasure of history. That erasure of ancestry. That erasure of identity. It’s actually not necessary to provide care and stability to someone. But the adoption industry wouldn’t thrive without it. Because it has to be the fairytale where you live happily ever after with a new family.  No one wants to talk about what you lost, first.
 
 
 
 
***
Image via Pxfuel 

Christmas Gifts our 10 kids loved: The 2021 list

By request, here is the annual Fisher Christmas present gift idea list: 40ish things our family actually bought for each other and actually enjoyed. Our kids are now ages 6, 9, 12, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 22, and 23, so Christmas morning is not the toy-a-palooza that it once was (although we did break down and buy some of those insane life-sized stuffed unicorns and dragons from Walmart, and I haven’t seen the bedroom floor since).

If you want present lists geared more toward younger kids, you can check out previous years’ lists at the end of the post, and the further back you go, the younger ages the list will be geared toward. (I’m sorry about that sentence. It has been a week.)

Last year, we bought customized masks as stocking stuffers. If you are looking for excellent, well-crafted, comfortable masks with the most interesting fabrics, I heartily recommend browsing around in Door Number 9 or Stitchcraft Yarns. 

Okay, here’s the present list! Random as heck, hope you like it. 

Light up wireless karaoke microphone

Not gonna lie, this is a terrible product, in that it works very well, is very loud and bright, and is hard to break. It’s a real, heavy microphone, not a toy, with a speaker built into it, and puts on a little light show when the music plays. Links up to your smartphone. It’s just terribly obnoxious. The kids love it. You can also use it just as a wireless speaker.

Corrie had a mania for “disco parties” for a while, so this was for her,  paired with:

Plug-in disco light:

Casts multi-colored razzle dazzle moving lights all over the room. It’s a small device but does a serviceable job. The cord is not very long but works fine otherwise. 

Stainless steel french press

A pretty, shiny french press, works like it’s supposed to. 

Day 6 K-pop mini posters and stickers

I don’t even know. I think they grew these guys in a lab. 

Beginner’s acoustic guitar set

We got two of these, one in black and one in blue:

Also comes in pink, red, and other shades. 

Gonna be honest, I don’t know anything about guitars, but two of our kids taught themselves how to pick out some songs using this exact set-up, so it definitely comes with everything you need to get started, for a very reasonable price. 

For an older kid, who already plays:

Beatles chord songbook:

This also comes in normal book binding, but the spiral is nice because it opens up flat. If you’re not learning how to play Beatles songs, then what are you even doing with a guitar? 

*

Embossing rolling pin

A small-sized rolling pin, makes pretty repeating designs in cookie or pie dough, as shown. Click through for other designs.

*

Reversible skater dress

Two for one! A thick, somewhat shiny, stretchy material, fully reversible. Cute idea, runs small. Click through for other pattern combinations. 

*

National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Night Sky

paired with:

Celestron beginner astronomy binoculars

These binoculars are designed specifically for night viewing. 7X magnification, easy to use. 

*

Several of our kids got into knitting over the pandemic, so there were a lot of miscellaneous knitting notions and supplies:

tapestry needles

for finishing up the ends, I guess? I don’t know, I don’t knit. 

rainbow stork scissors

Rosewood yarn bowl

A lovely handmade item, decorative and useful. Keep your yarn from getting tangled while you knit. You can feed more than one strand out at a time. 

Yarn tote and organizer

lots of handy pockets and compartments with a drawstring closure on top and a little hole to feed the yarn through, similar to the yarn bowl above. 

*

For the film buff:

Fast, Cheap, and Under Control: Lessons Learned from the Greatest Low-Budget Movies of All Time by John Gaspard

paired with a subscription to The Criterion Channel.

*

I think this was actually a birthday present: Tweed handmade Irish wool wrap 

Amazingly soft, subtle, and adaptable to dress up or down. Lots of colors and varieties at the site, but this one has little bits of different colors in it, so it goes with anything.  For Christmas, we paired it with:

this copper scarf/cloak/hair pin

Even nicer in person, very generously sized, very bright and cleverly made. A lovely piece that can be worn many ways. 

*

For the DIY guy:

Make: Props and Costume Armor: Create Realistic Science Fiction & Fantasy Weapons, Armor, and Accessories

paired with a Michael’s gift card, which you can also buy on Amazon because it’s a weird world.

*

Nice little stuffed pink axolotl 

21 inches. Has a friendly little face, as an axolotl should.

*

Swiss army knife

I wonder how many of these we’ve bought over the years? The red ones are the best ones. 

*

Clear plastic BTS tote bag

If someone in your household wants one of these, you don’t need an explanation. If no one wants one, there can be no explanation. 

*

A little baking set we put together:

Set of three silicone heart-shaped cake pans to make a fancy layer cake

These are unusually deep cake pans.

Cat paws oven mitts

Super thick and protective, very cute. Big enough for an adult to wear. And now for the star attraction:

Personalized chef’s hat and apron

A huge hit. They will personalize it however you like, and it’s a sturdy, well-made, authentic-looking chef’s hat that stands up nicely on the head. Adorable. Comes with a plain apron. 

*

Gazebo bird feeder

A very large bird feeder. Easy to fill, easy to hang on a sturdy wire loop. 

*

J-Hope BTS doll

This is a representative sample. We bought so many of these stupid dolls over the course of the year. It’s fine. BTS is fine. These are detailed little guys who will sit on your shelf and not make any trouble. 

*

Working On a Song: The Lyrics of Hadestown

Hadestown! Can’t get enough of that tragical stuff!

*

Kalimba (thumb piano)

a sweet little portable instrument for picking out quiet tunes or accompanying singers. Click through for a little video to hear how it sounds. 

*

Book-shaped book lamp

Closes up and looks like a real book; opens up and lights up. Just a pleasant little lamp. Not super sturdy for little kids, but better made than we were expecting. 

*

Fannie Farmer Cookbook

For our first kid who moved out. This is a great cookbook to launch you with all kinds of basic recipes, as well as general information about how to select, prep, and store food. Marion Cunningham has a reassuring, no-nonsense style that’s great for young people learning how to cook and bake. Includes recipes I’ve been using for thirty years or more. 

*

Heart diffraction glasses

A big hit. Put these magical glasses on and wherever you look, light sources turn into heart shapes, so the world is swimming in multicolored hearts. The more lights, the more hearts, hooray! The glasses themselves are quite sturdy, and are large enough for an adult to wear. They look like sunglasses in the picture, but in real life the glass is clear like reading glasses. 

*

Dino chompster hoodie

As you can see, this is one of those hoodies where you bend your elbows in front of you and, if you move them right, they become the chomping, slavering jaws of a hungry dinosaur! Amazing! Chomp chomp chomp! Thick nylon material, runs rather large. 

*

Surfing Bigfoot Hawaiian shirt

For that special weirdo. 

*

Fit and flare bird print dress

Just an elegant little dress with realistic birds of various kinds. Thick, soft stretchy knit material, falls gracefully, plenty of fabric in the skirt so it flares prettily when you spin. We bought an adult size small for our nine-year-old and it fit her nicely. 

*

K-pop “I love you” hat

As advertised. Click through for a number of color choices. Thick, warm hat, runs a bit small. 

*

Smith and Wesson 8-inch folding knife

For when they’ve outgrown the little red Swiss Army Knife, above, and are maybe a young woman going to college and you never know who might need stabulatin’. (I jest. These are handy for opening packages and cutting fruit and whatnot, though, and are satisfyingly heavy knives that fold up with a good snap.)

*

Ballerina jewelry box

Not a deluxe model, but it plays the requisite tune from “Swan Lake” and the little ballerina spins around. The other thing every little girl should have, besides a Smith and Wesson folding knife. 

*

plush Darkwing Duck

For that one kid who has, for reasons unknown, latched on to this rather mediocre show and loves it. This is actually a heavy, well-made plushie. 

***

And there it is! Hope you found something that might work for your family that is not a life-sized stuffed unicorn. 

Here are my lists from previous years:

The 2020 list (25 presents)

The 2019 list (25 presents)

The 2018 list (50 presents)
 
The 2017 list (50 presents)
 
The 2016 list (50 presents)
 
The 2015 list (25 presents under $50)
 
The 2014 list (50 presents)

Good luck! 

One awkward final note: I used make a little commission every time someone bought something using my links, and boy, would I clean up! Heating oil all winter long, let me tell you! Tragically, I fell out of Amazon’s good graces, and don’t earn commissions anymore. So if you do happen to go through this list and think, “Dang, Simcha really saved my bacon this year with that idea about the kalimba!” you could always drop a tip in . . . honest to goodness, I thought I had a tip jar on this site. Well, my PayPal address is simchafisher@gmail.com, my Venmo is @Simcha-Fisher, and it’s gauche as heck, but I’m definitely accepting tips, if the spirit moves you. And of course if you want to become a regular patron of the site, that’s excellent. 

Who funded Kari Beckman’s fall from grace?

By Simcha and Damien Fisher

Kari Beckman was going to build Veritatis Splendor, a village of Catholic “true believers” in the heart of Texas. Now, after acknowledging an illicit relationship, reportedly with Texas Right to Life head and Regina Caeli board member Jim Graham, she’s moved out of the property’s luxury ranch and back to Atlanta, and has stepped down as executive director of Regina Caeli Academy and Veritatis Splendor. 

As for the village, one $3 million loan later, not a single structure has yet been built on the land, and the members of Regina Caeli across the nation are left wondering if their homeschool tuition fees and bake sale fundraising dollars paid for the grandiose Tyler, Texas project, or for any of  Beckman’s other, more clandestine activities of the past year.

Beckman, who founded the homeschool hybrid Regina Caeli Academy in 2003, sent a letter to the members of Regina Caeli at the end of last week acknowledging “a terrible lapse in judgment with a personal relationship.” Multiple sources confirmed the relationship was with Jim Graham. Beckman and Graham are both married. Beckman said she immediately sought forgiveness through the sacrament of confession, and then, months later, confessed to her husband. She said that she and her husband then both went to the board of Regina Caeli and told them “what had occurred,” and then stepped down as Executive Director. 

Shortly before she stepped down, the Board of Directors received an anonymous letter alleging Beckman had carried on an illicit sexual relationship with Graham.  Graham was also, until recently, on the Board of Regina Caeli, but his name has recently been removed from that site, along with Kari Beckman’s name. Beckman’s husband remains listed as a board member. Three other board members are no longer listed on the site, and Nicole Juba has been named acting Executive Director.  

Texas Right to Life is the organization that launched prolifewhistleblower.com, the tipline website that lets people report abortions in hopes of collecting a $10,000 bounty under the controversial new “Texas Heartbeat Act” (SB8), and Jim Graham has been instrumental in the Texas pro-life movement’s hard shift toward the right. The website has gone offline twice, and now redirects to the Texas Right to Life site, but does not currently function as a tipline. The law, which has undergone several legal challenges, has been unpopular even within some factions of the conservative pro-life community, some of whom view it as anything from distasteful to politically reckless to counter-productive.

Graham, who appears in a fundraising video for Veritatis Splendor along with Beckman, has been Executive Director of Texas Right to Life, which was founded by his father, since 1994. Neither Graham nor the media representative for the Texas Right to Life returned phone calls seeking comment.

“This is two heads of very Catholic organizations. We literally do hold ourselves to a higher standard. And to be lectured about virtue while this was going on . . . unbelievable,” said one Regina Caeli Academy parent and former tutor. She asked not to be identified, for fear of reprisal. 

The parent is referring to the fact that Regina Caeli and Veritatis Splendor, including in the very video in which Beckman and Graham both appear, both explicitly framed their organizations as a refuge from the immorality of the secular world. Parents flocked to Regina Caeli in part because it emphasizes the development of personal virtues and traditional values like chastity and self-control. 

“The fact that my kids’ tuition was funding their affair,” the parent said, and then attached a “vomit” emoji to their message. 

 

“We essentially bought them a ranch.”

But it’s not merely a matter of spiritual hypocrisy that distresses this and other Regina Caeli families. The anonymous letter-writer told us they also filed two complaints with the IRS on November 12 asking for an investigation of Beckman’s possible financial misuse of Regina Caeli funds. The complaints accused Regina Caeli of “using assets for personal gain” and “questionable fundraising practices.”

As one RCA parent put it, “We essentially bought them a ranch.”

But the alleged financial malfeasance goes deeper than that. The letter-writer alleged, “Mrs. Beckman uses Regina Caeli as her personal bank account” and that Beckman hand-selected the board to do her bidding, and deliberately hid her financial activities from the families who supplied the money she allegedly spent. Regina Caeli’s most recent tax forms list their total assets in 2018 at $4.2 million, with $3.4 million in liabilities.

The letter to the IRS enumerates four major complaints involving Regina Caeli Academy and Veritatis Splendor:

-That Regina Caeli Academy employees were pulled from their RCA jobs to launch and raise funds for Veritatis Splendor;

-that RCA borrowed over $3 million from an RCA board member to finance the property for Veritatis Splendor;

-that the RCA board approved the purchase of a $45,000 Chevy Tahoe for Veritatis Splendor, and has been paying for its insurance, even though the vehicle does not serve Regina Caeli in any way;

-and that the property, purchased by RCA, contains a luxury lodge in which the Beckman family has been living for many months.

The complaint says:

 “Fundraising at Regina Caeli was of the utmost importance. Families were required to fundraise in a variety of ways, and were always told that this fundraising was to support the education and mission of Regina Caeli. Of the $423,509.79 that was fundraised between Oct. 20, 2020 and May 21, 2021, how much of that was used for Regina Caeli? How much was used to purchase a piece of land in Winona, Texas so Mrs. Beckman could form a cult?”

The person filing the complaint also had further questions:

“When Regina Caeli Academy used travel and hotel rewards programs for training, campus visits, etc, who reaped the benefits of those massive rewards points? Were those put on Regina Caeli rewards cards, or Mrs. Beckman’s personal rewards cards? Did the Beckman family travel and vacation using those points? 

“Is Regina Caeli going to provide Board meeting minutes for the Board meetings where Jim Graham was present as a member of the Board, while the affair was taking place? 

“Is Regina Caeli planning to undergo a financial audit? If Mrs. Beckman had such a major lapse in judgement with regards to her personal life, what would prevent her from having a lapse in judgement in the financial affairs of the organization?”

 

No board member has responded to our repeated calls for comment. Kari Beckman, Rich Beckman, Jim Graham, Nicole Juba, and Regina Caeli and Vertitatis Splendor’s communications offices have not responded to our repeated calls for comment. Bishop Joseph Strickland, an outspoken booster of Veritatis Splendor, was not available for comment.

 

When Regina Caeli members were first abruptly informed that their school was now an umbrella organization for a quasi-religious megadevelopment in Texas, some complained. 

One member said that she and her husband were assured that, at some point, the finances of Regina Caeli Academy and Veritatis Splendor would be separated, but that “these things take time.”

“When I and many other families expressed our surprise and displeasure at this being sprung on us out of nowhere, we were basically told, ‘It’s our organization and we can do whatever the heck we want, and if you don’t like it, there’s the door,'” one former tutor said. 

 

Regina Caeli families were, however, offered the opportunity to buy land at Veritatis Splendor. On August 4, RCA families received a letter from Kari Beckman claiming there has been a “HUGE and overwhelming response to those interested in purchasing lots” which range in price from $90,000 to $140,000 and are between 2 and 5 acres. Beckman reminded prospective buyers that, while the lots are selling quickly, there is no need to build right away after purchasing one, and that lots may be purchased “for primary or vacation/retreat homes.” 

The former tutor confirms that she knows just one family who invested $90,000 in Veritatis Splendor land, but said jokingly that the rest of her RCA friends had no interest in accepting Kari Beckman as the head of their homeowner’s association.

“No way, Jose,” she said. 

Talking sideways

 

This isn’t the first time Regina Caeli has been accused of a lack of financial transparency. In 2016, a former RCA member filed a lawsuit alleging that, when he asked to review financial information so he could determine how the school was spending the money their group raised and solicited, the director responded that “it was not RCA’s ‘style’ to provide any financial information, other than the IRS form 990’s.” The suit alleges RCA then retaliated against the entire family for their inquiry. The suit also alleged that RCA ran afoul of Michigan charitable fundraising laws. The lawsuit was settled out of court.

While it’s rare for a member to muster a lawsuit against RCA, it’s common for members and former members to complain that their concerns go unheard, and that they’re routinely bullied into silence under the guise of christian charity. 

The school explicitly forbids what it called “murmuring,” allegedly to discourage a spirit of gossip among the families involved. 

 

“Conflict is viewed through a religious lens,” said one former employee. “Instead of taking [complaints] seriously on their merits, this spiritual lens means if you disagree, you’re not just wrong; you’re bad.

 

“It starts with totally appropriate conflict resolution based on [the book of] Matthew: Go to your brother, etc. Keep things in the proper channels of communication. As a first principle, this is good. However, that morphs into culture. There is this total obsession with not ‘talking sideways’ or gossiping. Don’t talk to anybody about any issues you have, from small to big.

 

“But most of the families are also employees. So if I have an issue, I only have one person I’m supposed to talk to, and their next person up is Kari, or one person down from up. There is a near obsession with, ‘Who have you talked to about this?’ If you’re mad, talk to that person. That’s good. But it morphs into a hierarchical obsession with being quiet,” the former employee said. 

 

At the same time, the school exerted a tight micromanagement of its members — sometimes insisting on puritanical standards that contrast starkly with what members now know about Beckman’s private behavior.

 

The school cracked down on staffers who shared photos of themselves in tank tops on social media. There are bizarre stories of moral panic over innocent outings with even the whiff of immorality. A group of Regina Caeli families travelled together to see a production of The Nutcracker, and although it was not an official school outing, they had used the school email to communicate about it, and Regina Caeli heads considered the trip problematic because the tutus worn by the dancers were too short, and deemed the show “soft porn.”

 

The former employee said that she remembers how Beckman once saw a staff member post on social media about decorating her house for Christmas, and Beckman contacted her to chide her, saying that visible Christmas decorations during the Advent season could cause scandal.
 

This pervasive straight-laced environment has made the revelations of extramarital misconduct especially hard for RCA members to stomach. Several members recalled that, when they applied to teach for Regina Caeli, they were required to sign a statement of fidelity to the magisterium, and that, during their interview, Regina Caeli recruiters asked them if their marriage was canonically valid, and whether they use contraception. 

“Apparently, the sexual ethics of one family was so critical to the culture of the organization, but the fact that the executive director is sleeping with a board member is something that can just be chalked up to spiritual attack,” said one former RCA family who had a position in national leadership. 

Multiple sources told us they were willing to speak on the record, but only anonymously, because they feared social or even legal retaliation for what would be perceived as disloyalty. Some RCA families have become adept in creating secret groups to communicate with each under the radar. More than one source has expressed concern that their emails to us may be monitored. 

 

Still worth saving?

 

While members are reeling from the recent revelations, many hope the good fruits of the school can be rescued from Beckman’s influence. Many parents have described the school as something of a godsend, allowing them both the freedom of homeschooling and the structure of the traditional classroom. Mothers of small children often teach with their babies and toddlers in tow, allowing them to be fully involved with their children’s education while leaning on a supportive and nurturing community. 

 

But others believe the very structure of the program routinely becomes exploitative, and is, in practice, uncomfortably close to a multi-level marketing scheme. 

In Regina Caeli’s program, paying members homeschool their own children for three days a week, using a standardized curriculum, and the school provides support and access to tutors and extracurricular activities. Parents who are also tutors receive a discount on the entire program, and all members are expected to fundraise and to recruit new members, in addition to paying tuition. Tuition, which covers two classroom days (for which uniforms are required), ranges from $2,800 per PreK student for a half day to $4,500 per high school student. 

There are twenty-three RCA satellite schools throughout the country, and they are all run on precisely the same plan, down to minutiae of how to dress and how to have parties. In practice, a family of four children will tote up a bill of over $10,000 as a base, not counting curriculum or uniforms. Parents can knock that total down by several thousand dollars by working for minimum wage for what can end up being as much as sixty hours a week, not counting the volunteer and fundraising work the family is expected to provide. 

 

As exhausting, frustrating, and dissatisfied as parents were, and despite how frustrated they became with the school’s lack of transparency over how tuition and fundraising money was spent, several parents reported feeling like they had no choice but to continue with the school. A family’s entire educational, social, and spiritual community would be at the school; and they have been told repeatedly that their children’s souls will be in danger if they attempt some other form of schooling. And even if they suspected that wasn’t true, they knew there would be reprisals if they questioned it. 

 

“If you have your seven kids and this is their school, and their friends, the only way you can make it work is by working as a tutor,” said a former employee. “You get paid minimum wage plus a fat tuition discount, and the only way you can make it work is to work there, so you’re really afraid to rock the boat, because it will affect your children.”

 

The former tutor quoted above said that several moms have told her, “I feel like a battered woman, going back every year.”
 

A spiritual bouquet and a meal train for Beckman

 

But Beckman and her supporters have done their best to portray her as the victim in the current scandal. 

 

She said in her letter to RCA members that keeping the secret of her relationship “left me feeling despondent and it began to take a physical toll on my mind and my body.”

She said, “I have been in therapy and have been receiving daily spiritual direction in order to get strong enough to face my shame.  My therapist has diagnosed me with Complex PTSD due to the circumstances which led to my fall.”

 

She said, “I do not expect your forgiveness nor do I expect your understanding.  I am struggling to forgive myself and to make sense of what I did.  I am sorry this did not come sooner, but honestly, I was not in an emotional place to make good decisions.”
 

On October 25, RCA families and staff received an email from Nicole Juba, who had at that point asked for increased prayers for Beckman. 

 

“As Mrs. Beckman has started her journey towards recovery, the RCA Board of Directors has become aware of a serious spiritual matter that is the underlying basis for her current physical and emotional suffering. Accordingly, the Board has asked her to take additional time away for both physical and spiritual healing and counseling,” the letter said. 

 

They also requested a meal train for the Beckman family. 

Many RCA members are less concerned with Beckman’s personal suffering, though, and more concerned with the fate of Regina Caeli Academy going forward. The anonymous letter writer has written a second letter to the board on November 14, urging them to divest themselves completely of Beckman’s influence. 

“Although I am relieved to hear of her separation from the organization, there must be follow up from you specifying that her retirement is permanent and irrevocable. She should no longer have access to her email account. There is no need for her to supervise or have any role in the transition,” the letter said. 

The letter calls for Kari Beckman’s husband Rich Beckman to step down as Chairman of the Board, because “many Regina Caeli families have for years believed that the Board of Directors is in place simply to do Mrs. Beckman’s bidding.” The letter writer believes that Kari Beckman is likely to attempt to continue to run Regina Caeli by proxy. 

“Board members must be stewards of community trust. The Board has a fiduciary duty to the members of the organization – not to Mrs. Beckman personally. Can all the members of the Board claim they have always acted in the best interest of the mission of Regina Caeli?” the letter asks.

 

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Hadestown review: Original Broadway cast vs. touring cast!

Last weekend, we were lucky enough to see Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown for the second time — the first time for my husband and my oldest daughter and son (for whom the trip was a birthday present), and the second time for me and my third oldest daughter. We saw it in the summer of 2019 on Broadway and I gave it a short review here. (If you’re not familiar with the show, you might want to click through there first, which actually discusses the plot and themes.)

This review will contain spoilers, but the whole thing of Hadestown is that we already know how the story turns out. It’s many thousands of years old, for one thing; and also, this is what humans do: We enter into stories that we know are tragedies, thinking maybe it will turn out different this time. So there really aren’t any spoilers. 

Well, I had such a magnificent experience with the original cast that, when I was waiting for this show with the touring cast to begin, I was telling myself very sternly that it’s normal and right for a different cast to put their own mark on their roles. It’s also true that Hadestown, while a profoundly emotional work, is not emotionally manipulative, and doesn’t deliver the same experience every time anyway. So it wasn’t going to be exactly the same.

That said, I couldn’t help comparing the two casts and productions in my head as we watched, so here is what I thought.

First, we saw the original Broadway production at the Walter Kerr Theater, which is much smaller and more intimate. Here was our view of the stage in NYC in 2019:

and here was the view from our seats in Boston last weekend:

So you can see, it was going to be a different experience anyway. 

There were some minor changes to the set and the way it moved around and lit, although it was hard to put my finger on what. The main thing I noticed was that, after Orpheus turns and Eurydice disappears away into the underworld, in this production she is swallowed up by a mouth-like aperture in the back (which also served as a train platform and other set pieces), rather than sinking down via a round platform built into the center of the stage (which is how they did it in NY). This arrangement, the aperture in the back, was surprisingly much more effective, and possibly done because it was bigger theater and, if they used the floor trick, the audience might see Eurydice scooting out a trap door (as I did from the balcony when they staged it this way at Walter Kerr!). It was very clear that Orpheus was within inches of reaching fresh air and sunshine when he stopped and turned, and Eurydice was gobbled up by the dark underworld, so it worked well (which didn’t stop the teenage girl in front of me from whisper-shouting, “Wait, wha happened?” right at that shattering moment when everyone in the theater momentarily died of grief. oh well!).

So: Original Broadway cast vs. touring cast! 

The original Hermes was André De Shields; the touring Hermes was Levi Kreis. Ahem. Partly due to my very poor eyesight, my face blindness, and just my general confusion as I encounter life, I was fairly sure they had switched actors halfway through the production, and I couldn’t wait to talk about how weird it was that they did it without saying anything about it. When nobody wanted to talk about it, I gradually surmised that it was actually Levi Kreis all the way through; he had simply taken his hat off. It’s a trial, being me. But still, that will tell you something about this actor. He was fine, but not especially memorable, and did not do much to convey that he had been around for millennia and had seen some stuff (but could still be moved). He was just sort of a ringmaster. 

Orpheus: Reeve Carney is the original. I preferred the new guy, Nicholas Barasch, but I could go either way with this role. Barasch’s voice was bigger and more sturdy and he came across as a little less weird, but still sufficiently lost and earnest, and sufficiently otherworldly. I think Carney did more with his body to convey who he was, and Barasch did more with his voice. Both very affecting. He made me cry (not that I’m made of stone).

Hades is Patrick Page in the original cast,  Kevyn Morrow for touring. This is the only one that I felt really just couldn’t possibly be a fair comparison. Patrick Page was just preternaturally . . . Hadeslike. His voice penetrates in a way that most human voices don’t. Morrow had a thundering voice and a commanding, sinister, predatory presence, and when he heard Orpheus’ song and it reached him, and when he reconciled with Persephone, you believed it. The lyrics were a little indistinct sometimes, which is a shame. But in any other universe, without the comparison, he would have brought the house down. Really, no complaints. 

The original Persephone Amber Gray; the touring, Kimberly Marable. This is the only touring performance I thought was lacking. Marable just didn’t make much of an impression on me, and she really must! She’s Our Lady of the Underground! It is a very difficult, strange role, no mistake. But Marable’s Persephone came across mainly as frustrated and vulgar, without much depth. Again, maybe it’s just unfair to have to follow Amber Gray, whose Persephone is so many-layered and delicately demented. Amber Gray defied gravity when she danced; Marable was merely very energetic. However, the critic in my head mostly shut up about halfway through, and by the time the story shifted to the relationship between Hades and Persephone, I was totally with them. It’s a good story. 

The original Eurydice was Eva Noblezada, and the touring one is Morgan Siobhan Green. This was a clear improvement. Noblezada’s voice and acting struck me as understudy quality, and not on the same par with the rest of that cast. Green, though, was stellar. Her voice was piercing, and it and her body language added an awkward and frantic tone that helped round out her character a bit, making her more than just a drama girl. 

The Fates were scary and great. I’m afraid I didn’t notice much difference between the two casts here. They’re malevolent and otherworldly and funny and mean, and their harmonies were just impeccable. Maybe the original cast were slightly more skilled dancers, but I don’t know. 

Let’s talk about Eurydice! Orpheus is . . . poetry, basically, right? He’s the thing that makes you weep, rather than the thing that brings you bread and a roof over your head. But people need him desperately, because when they go without him and his songs, they end up, you know, dead, and/or stomping around in a circle wearing dirty overalls and building a wall for no reason. (My kids thought they pushed the “let’s unionize, everybody!” aspect of this production a little too hard, and said that “If It’s True” was basically a scene from Newsies, but I thought it was easy enough to take or leave, and you could certainly read it as being just about humanity, and not necessarily political).  

Anyway, I was struck this time around by how strange it is that Orpheus is the one who’s put to the test at the end, rather than Eurydice. She is, after all, the reason they’re in this pickle. She signs away her soul just for a mouthful of food; so why isn’t she the one being tested at the end, to win their escape? But of course the reason she was lost was that she called and called on Orpheus, and he didn’t hear her, because he was too busy writing his dang song that would save the world. Pff, poets. Players. (But . . . he wasn’t just imagining it! He really could write such a song! And it really did change the world, and change the course of the story, maybe, or it might, next time, come winter . . . )

Anyway, as I understand it, the original score, which got taken out of the stage version, included more about Orpheus majorly overpromising things to Eurydice and then spectacularly failing to deliver, which explains their dynamic a little better. As it is, I think there’s a bit of a hole in the plot, or a bit of a hole in the character of Eurydice as written. This is my one and only quibble with the way the story is put together: That Eurydice’s actions make the least sense, and yet she’s the one whose actions get explicitly explained the most.

But, as the fates remind us, it’s easy to criticize when you have a full belly. Maybe next time, in a different frame of mind, I’ll come back to this show and her choice will make perfect sense to me. That’s the kind of show it is. 

Overall, I adored it. Damien and the kids who hadn’t seen it yet were blown away. It’s a revolutionary piece of musical theater, and I believe people will be performing it for hundreds of years. If you can possibly see it performed by either cast, do so!

A final note on the Boston Opera House, for what it’s worth: Everyone was required to wear masks, and they were requiring proof of vaccination to get in, but they were pretty lenient about what counted as proof. I somehow lost my vaccination card, so they let me show ID and let Damien vouch that I had been vaccinated along with him. (We kind of felt like anyone paying money to see an Anaïs Mitchell show is probably vaccinated.)

The Boston Opera House is just a few blocks away from Chinatown, so we grabbed a quick dinner at The Dumpling Cafe and YOU GUYS. I may drive back to Boston just to get more duck buns. DUCK BUNS. I was so sad we didn’t have time to sit there for three hours ordering everything on the menu, because it was spectacular. Definitely go there, too. 

Wrestling w skeleton thoughts

The other day, I was feeling a little low. One of my children suggested I go out and buy myself a nice new skeleton. She was right; it would have cheered me up.

I love skeletons. Lots of people do, and why not? They grin so cheerfully, and they’re so accommodating: You can bend them and tote them around them and make them do whatever you want. This year I set up a skeleton climbing a ladder up the side of the house, and one lounging in a chair by the mailbox, waving to traffic. It’s amazing what you can make them do with zip ties.

The novelist Joyce Carol Oates made herself look a little silly on Twitter a few weeks ago, responding to a photo of a house similarly decorated for Halloween.  She tweeted, “(you can always recognize a place in which no one is feeling much or any grief for a lost loved one & death, dying, & everyone you love decomposing to bones is just a joke).”

Several people hooted in response, “No one tell her about Mexico!” Other readers with a longer memory pointed out that Oates had in fact written a story based on the death of an actual specific human being, and when the friends of the dead man complained at her callous co-opting of his personal life, she was dismissive.  And a few folks felt a moment of pity, pity for the poor old bat. Someone named “JustLuisa” said kindly, “My 5 am hot take is that people should be nice to Joyce Carol Oates about the skeleton thing. She’s a freakin’ octogenarian; why are we making fun of the old lady wrestling w skeleton thoughts.”

Why indeed. This year, when I hauled my plastic skeletons out of the attic, I had a bad time for a few minutes. They really weren’t funny, for a few minutes. What are you smiling about! Effing skeletons, what’s so funny? How many times had I pictured my own father and my own mother with their hollow eyes down in the ground, on their way to being just bones, of all things. You think you know these things, but it turns out you weren’t quite there yet. You believe in the resurrection of the body, but still. There is that time, under the ground. It’s a bad time. 

“Nobody tell her about Mexico,” some people said. I have heard about some cultures, in Mexico and elsewhere, that not only celebrate and remember the dead, and skelly it up with sugar cookies and masks and paper banners, but they actually go and dig them up. They wait three years, or seven years, and they dig the corpses up, clean them off, dress them, and have a little party.

I wonder what that does to the living, knowing this day is coming. You wouldn’t be able to just walk away in a straight line, after somebody dies. You couldn’t just progress neatly through the stages of grief, getting further and further away from their death as the date wanes into the past. You couldn’t just say goodbye and have that be the end of it.

That’s a joke, of course. You can’t do that anyway, with or without the corpse party. Even if you go full-on American, and pump your loved one full of preservatives, seal them up in airtight caskets that look like tiny little posh hotel rooms, and expect them to stay there forever, there are no straight lines away from death. There’s a lot of staggering and slumping and backtracking involved, believe me. Look at poor Joyce, 83 years old and still struggling with skeletons, and it’s not because she hasn’t had a chance to think about it.

Every so often, I have the urge to write about my dead parents. I always wonder if I’m doing it too often, and I always wonder if what I’m doing is remembering them, or exploiting them. Is it for them, or for me? I pray for them, of course, but the writing is for me, assuredly. But for what purpose? Why am I dragging them out of the attic again? You look at the calendar, you see it’s the season for memento mori again, so you dig the old folks up, brush them off, and get 800 words out of it. 

Not that my parents would mind. It doesn’t do them any harm. But I do try not to tote them around too much, or pose them in any ways that would be too foreign to who they were, as I knew them. Which is only as my parents, which is by no means all of who they were. And bones is not who they are now.

But still. I try not to make the zip ties too tight if I can help it, when I set them up for another pose. I can’t seem to help wrestling with skeletons every so often, but I try to be gentle. And I’m sure I’ll be back again, because there is not a straight line away from death. 

 

What’s for supper? Vol. 271: Babagnope

On this year of our lord, 2021, I got the Halloween costumes completely finished and packed into bags a full four days before Halloween. You know what my secret is: It’s not having babies. Or, more precisely, it’s doing everything while having babies for years and years, and then suddenly not having babies, and by contrast, everything is so easy. It’s like shaving your legs right before the big swim meet. Zoop! 

I made this nifty pirate belt buckle out of foam-core cardboard, hot glue and glitter. 

I hot glued a loop of tape on the back, so it can be easily slipped onto a regular belt. This is very easy to make! You draw the design you want on a piece of paper, hot glue over it, let it dry, spray paint it, and peel the paper off. Then you glue it onto whatever you want. The eyes are little blobs of hot glue with glitter shaken over them, poked with a fingertip.

I was also pleased with this helmet.

Corrie’s head still barrrrrely fits inside a milk jug. Here she is wearing it before I fixed the crest and painted it, side by side with the inspiration.

I snipped away the parts of the milk jug that I didn’t want and filled in some extra bits with a paper plate, and taped them on the inside with packing tape. Then I cut a crest out of foam core poster board, leaving a little extra to cut into tabs to hold it in place. I cut a slit in the top of the helmet, forced the crest in and taped the tabs in place, and then spray painted the helmet using Rustoleum “Hammered” spray paint. 

Clara sewed a pirate skirt for Benny, and the rest of her costume was all stuff we had. I made a spear for Corrie with PVC pipe, black and gold duct tape, and poster board, and an aegis which turned out hilarious. She’s got it on at school right now; will take pics later. It has little wired snakes with googly eyes dangling off it. She absolutely loves it. 

Anyway, here’s what we ate this week:

SATURDAY
Italian sandwiches

Saturday seems like so very long ago. Damien shopped for and made sandwiches while I did something or other, I don’t even remember. The sandwiches were delicious. 

Baguettes with various salamis, prosciutto, gabagool (I know it’s pretentious to call it that and I don’t care! It’s fun!), cheese, tomatoes, red pesto. We still have plenty of that good olive oil.

Damien also picked up some potato sticks, in memory of my dad, who is the only person in the world who was enthusiastic about potato sticks, rather than just resigned to them because that’s what your dad picked up for dinner. This is a food item that has very clearly something swept up from the factory floor after the actual product has been made. They’re broken. Look at them! 

SUNDAY
Domino’s pizza

Sunday we went to a corn maze/fall fun extravaganza situation. You can see my photos on Facebook here. Came home exhausted and were very grateful we had already planned to get Domino’s.

MONDAY
Corn dogs, chips

Dinner of champions. The first half of the week was mmmmmphhhh rather stressful, because my REALLY QUITE NEW car was in the shop getting new front and rear brakes and new front struts, so I had to do the school driving in the car that my three working college kids use to get around, and also drive the college kids around, and that was a lot of driving, and eventually I wrote a check for nearly $2500, and guess what? The car is still making a weird noise! So a dinner of corn dogs and Swedish fish was the emotionally responsible course to take. 

Here is our festive October table

I always like to have a nice seasonal centerpiece. Is it necessary? No. It’s just one of those little nice things that makes life more civilized, and I won’t apologize for it. 

TUESDAY
Tortellini soup, giant quesadilla

Tuesday was rainy and blowy, so I said to myself, “They cannot deny me my weekly soup. They cannot!” I had bought some dried spinach and cheese tortellini a few weeks ago, and I had some ground pork, so away we went. I came up with a basic but very pleasant recipe, cozy and old fashioned with plenty of colorful vegetables and garlic.

Jump to Recipe

Next time I’ll probably add more broth, as it was absolutely crowded with all that meat and tortellini and tomatoes and whatnot. Not necessarily a bad thing! Just crowded. 

Isn’t that pretty? Looks like a peasant wedding or something. 

Image source

Follow me for more tips on which famous works of art your soup reminds me of. 

Oh, my big sadness is that the giant sheet pan quesadilla has already been sunsetted. We hardly knew ye. 

I thought I had hit upon a brilliant, cheap, easy side dish I could throw together, that people would happily eat, and it would keep them from complaining when I served soup for supper. Turns out I could serve it twice, and that it. They’re now tired of it, and I was the only one who ate it when I served it this week. 

I thought it was delicious, though. So flat and hot, with the nice little chili lime powder on top! Oh well. Sic transit gloria quesadilla slab.  

WEDNESDAY
Grilled ham and cheese, roast Brussels sprouts and butternut squash

I managed to overcook or undercook each sandwich. I just never got the hang of anything this week. Except the pirate belt buckle. I nailed that. 

The roast veg turned out okay. I was gratified to find that no one was (at least vocally) mad that the side was vegetables, and not fries or chips, anyway. I drizzled them with olive oil, honey, and some garlic infused wine vinegar (that I bought because someone needed that shape of bottle for Halloween), and sprinkled them with salt and pepper and roasted them until they were sizzling. Pretty good stuff.

THURSDAY
Cumin chicken and chickpeas, yogurt sauce and pita, baba ganoush

Last weekend, Damien and I went to an amazing restaurant in the middle of Nowhereseville, NH. Specifically, Hillsborough, and the restaurant is called Mediterrano Turkish and Mediterranean Cuisine. Possibly because of covid but possibly not, everything was served on flimsy disposable plates and cutlery, and the restaurant itself was inside a house that had Turkish decorations up, but still pretty much looked like a house, and it was very dark in there.

BUT OH THE FOOD. OH THE FOOD.

OH.

Here’s the first round we ordered:

Some stuffed gape leaves, hummus, babaganoush, “mediterranean salsa,” olives, cheese, and lavash bread. It was all tremendously good, but the bread and cheese SENT ME. Like I made an absolute fool of myself with that cheese.

Exactly like that, and I hadn’t even been trying to get home for twenty years. I asked the waiter, and it turned out to be Bulgarian feta. So salty and lively and melty and light and fluffy and tender. Oh yes, we ordered more. We also ordered more of that extraordinary lavash bread, which came to the table piping hot, pillowy soft, and smelling like paradise.

I had lamb doner with rice and Damien had lamb kebab, I think. We both had some kind of silly cocktail called an Instanbul Mark (gin, rum, ginger juice, and grenadine), and then another. Damien had Turkish coffee, which just about leaped out of the cup at him, looking for a fight

It came with a piece of turkish delight on a little covered platter.  Then we had dessert, because we were in too deep to stop. Sweet flaky baklava and a dish of sutlach, which is a wonderful fragrant rice pudding. 

Well, what a lovely experience. The waiter was very friendly and everything was just remarkable. I wish it weren’t so far away, but it was totally worth the drive.

So, I couldn’t stop thinking about levantine food. I originally hoped to make stuffed grape leaves this week, but I was just too busy, so I settled on chicken and chickpeas, which is usually popular. 

I also had a jar of preserved lemons to try.

I thought they would have a predominantly sour, citrusy taste — uh, like lemon — but they turned out to be overwhelmingly salty, so that was a surprise. I wasn’t sure what to make with them. Lots of people had suggested tagine, but that just doesn’t sound like a dish my family would go for, so I threw the lemons in the food processor

and added some so the cumin chicken marinade, and some to the yogurt sauce.

Jump to Recipe

Verdict? You could barely taste it! Oh well. Next time I’ll mince it, maybe, or use it it something with fewer other ingredients, so you can taste it better. Or just move along with my life. 

I also made baba ganoush for the first time, and this was such a disappointment! I used this recipe, and it tasted wonderful, just smashing, when I made it in the morning.

Then something happened, and by dinner time, it had become bitter. I was really crushed. I couldn’t even eat it. What happened?? Any ideas? The ingredients are eggplant, tahini, garlic, salt, and lemon juice, and since I cooked it inside rather than grilling it, a few drops of liquid smoke. 

Anyway, it was a good meal otherwise. This chicken always turns out so lovely, very moist inside, and the skin is wonderfully toothsome and crisp around the edges. 

If I hadn’t been starving to death, I would have cooked the chickpeas a little crisper, but they were good, too, and you don’t want to skip the lemony red onions to mix in, with a little dab of yogurt sauce on each forkful. Yummy yummy yummy meal. I forgot to buy cilantro. 

FRIDAY
Tuna noodle/ravioli/whatnot

Crap, I have to get going.  Halloween parade. Also I forgot to buy noodles. 

Print

Tortellini soup

Ingredients

  • 1 lb loose Italian sausage or ground pork
  • 1 med-lg onion, diced
  • 3-4 carrots, chopped
  • 6 cloves garlic, crushed
  • salt and pepper
  • red pepper flakes
  • oregano
  • 2-3 bay leaves
  • 6 oz tomato paste
  • 28 oz diced tomatoes with juice
  • 8+ cups beef bouillon
  • 2 cups raw kale, chopped
  • 1/2 lb dry tortellini

Instructions

  1. In a heavy pot, brown the meat, breaking into pieces, until fully cooked.

  2. Drain excess oil, leaving about a tablespoon in the pot. Add the diced carrots and onions and cook a few minutes until the vegetables soften. Add the garlic and cook a few minutes more.

  3. Add the salt and pepper, red pepper, oregano, and bay leaves. If you're using unseasoned pork, use more seasonings. Stir.

  4. Stir in the tomato paste, diced tomatoes and juice, and beef bouillon. Bring to a simmer and add the kale. If you're eating the soup immediately, add the tortellini at this point. Continue simmering, loosely covered, for 15-18 minutes, until tortellini are cooked through. If you're planning to eat later, just add the kale and keep the soup warm, and then add the tortellini closer to mealtime.

 

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Balsamic roast vegetables

All kinds of vegetables are good roasted. I like butternut squash, brussels sprouts, carrots, and red potatoes

Ingredients

  • 1 med butternut squash, cubed
  • 3 lbs red potatoes, skin on, cubed
  • 1 lb baby cut carrots
  • 2 lbs Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved

balsamic dressing

  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
  • kosher salt
  • pepper
  • oregano
  • dried basil

Instructions

  1. Preheat the oven to 400.

  2. Lightly grease a shallow pan or two, enough to spread out the vegetables in a single layer.

  3. Combine the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and honey in a bowl and pour over the vegetables. Sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.

 

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Cumin chicken thighs with chickpeas in yogurt sauce

A one-pan dish, but you won't want to skip the sides. Make with red onions and cilantro in lemon juice, pita bread and yogurt sauce, and pomegranates, grapes, or maybe fried eggplant. 

Ingredients

  • 18 chicken thighs
  • 32 oz full fat yogurt, preferably Greek
  • 4 Tbsp lemon juice
  • 3 Tbsp cumin, divided
  • 4-6 cans chickpeas
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper
  • 2 red onions, sliced thinly

For garnishes:

  • 2 red onions sliced thinly
  • lemon juice
  • salt and pepper
  • a bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
  • 32 oz Greek yogurt for dipping sauce
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced or crushed

Instructions

  1. Make the marinade early in the day or the night before. Mix full fat Greek yogurt and with lemon juice, four tablespoons of water, and two tablespoons of cumin, and mix this marinade up with chicken parts, thighs or wings. Marinate several hours. 

    About an hour before dinner, preheat the oven to 425.

    Drain and rinse four or five 15-oz cans of chickpeas and mix them up with a few glugs of olive oil, the remaining tablespoon of cumin, salt and pepper, and two large red onions sliced thin.

    Spread the seasoned chickpeas in a single layer on two large sheet pans, then make room among the chickpeas for the marinated chicken (shake or scrape the extra marinade off the chicken if it’s too gloppy). Then it goes in the oven for almost an hour. That’s it for the main part.

    The chickpeas and the onions may start to blacken a bit, and this is a-ok. You want the chickpeas to be crunchy, and the skin of the chicken to be a deep golden brown, and crisp. The top pan was done first, and then I moved the other one up to finish browning as we started to eat. Sometimes when I make this, I put the chickpeas back in the oven after we start eating, so some of them get crunchy and nutty all the way through.

Garnishes:

  1. While the chicken is cooking, you prepare your three garnishes:

     -Chop up some cilantro for sprinkling if people like.

     -Slice another two red onions nice and thin, and mix them in a dish with a few glugs of lemon juice and salt and pepper and more cilantro. 

     -Then take the rest of the tub of Greek yogurt and mix it up in another bowl with lemon juice, a generous amount of minced garlic, salt, and pepper. 

Happy 79th to my father

Happy 79th birthday to my father, his second birthday since he died. Shortly after he died, I got a very clear image — constructed, no doubt, out of wishful thinking and imagination, although who knows — of him climbing upward with a very familiar expression of elation on his face.  Just climbing up, really excited about something he saw up ahead, heading over to find out more about it.

His basic personality was not what you would call sunny, for most of his life. Someone once told my mother he had the most purely melancholic temperament she had ever seen. He gravitated toward autumn and winter, toward requiems and memento mori. But he did light up when an idea caught his fancy, something about music or history or astronomy or evolution, or yes, politics (which we eventually agreed to stop talking about).

I remember being half an hour late for fifth grade once, because there was a weird-looking rainbow hanging over Hanover Street, and as he drove me to school he got very caught up in the explanation for how it had been formed. He had a way of pausing with his eyes wide open and his mouth wide open, making strange stuttering sounds as he collected his next thought, which I thought was hilarious as a kid, like he was some kind of cerebral monster, frozen in the act of gobbling up an idea. And then sometimes, after he had gone through (or listened to) an elaborate, arcane explanation of something very complex, he would just pause, beam, and say, ” . . . Cool!” He was content for that to be the final word, at least for now. 

I haven’t really met anybody else like him. A unique proprietary blend of intellectual and corporeal curiosities, wrapped up in one Brooklyn Jew, who ended up dealing books from his dilapidated Victorian home in New Hampshire for something like forty years. He loved Jesus, although I know he had some bones to pick with him along the way. He screwed up a lot, and he knew it. He loved his children and worried about them until the day he died. He left many of us with a certain amount to forgive, as fathers will. We all miss him. The house he left goes up for auction next week, the proceeds pay back the state for the care of my mother, and that’s the end of that. Cool, I guess. I’m glad I have more than the house to remember. 

I miss him a lot. He really did look like a little kid opening a present when he talked about something that excited him, and that’s what his face looked like in my mind after he died. I remember that expression so clearly: Like he was on his way to go see something really good. God will it. 

 

Halloween roundup! Samhain, witch burning, pumpkin carving, werewolf movies, and SPOOKY MISC.

I’ve made my annual pilgrimage to Walmart to get more hot glue sticks while wearing embarrassing pajamas, so I guess I’m just about ready for Halloween. Last night I made progress on an Athena costume (helmet, spear, and aegis) for Corrie, and Clara saved the day by sewing a pirate skirt for Benny. I did my part by buying bootlaces that don’t perpetually untie themselves, and honestly, that may have saved Halloween, too. 

I’ve been saving up a few interesting bits of reading to share, more or less Halloween related:

Is Halloween ackshully pagan? 

Samhain photo by Robin Canfield on Unsplash 

Short answer: No. Long answer: No, it’s Catholic, always has been, you absolute shoehorning no-history-knowing nits. So says Tim O’Neill of History for Atheists, and he has the goods. The idea that religious people stole Samhain or some other pre-christian tradition from pagans is popular but completely without historical merit. A longish and fascinating read from a guy who can’t be accused of having a religious agenda.

Sorta related: Who burned the witches? This is an older article by Salon co-founder Laura Miller published in 2005, challenging the idea that, when we say “witch burning,” we mean some concerted effort by the big bad church to quash rebellious wise women who knew too much about how to gather healing herbs and whatnot.

Photo by Evgeniy Kletsov on Unsplash 

Nobody really comes out looking especially awesome in the witch trial era, but it really seems to have been mostly a case of people being like people be, which is horrible enough in itself:

The mass of detail can be numbing, but what it reveals is important: not a sweeping, coordinated effort to exert control by a major historical player, but something more like what Hannah Arendt called the “banality of evil.” Witch hunts were a collaboration between lower-level authorities and commonfolk succumbing to garden-variety pettiness, vindictiveness, superstition and hysteria. Seen that way, it’s a pattern that recurs over and over again in various forms throughout human history, whether or not an evil international church or a ruthless patriarchy is involved, in places as different as Seattle and Rwanda.

This is, in fact, more or less how it was taught to us in public school when I was growing up. I appreciate the attempt to bring some balance to the conversation, which, if anything, has gotten dumber since this article came out. And I wish people would be willing to consider this less conspiratorial, more mundane explanation more often for . . . everything. When we can explain everything bad with a conspiracy, that’s thrilling and satisfying, and lets us imagine that there are clear cut bad guys who aren’t us; but it’s far more likely that people everywhere are petty and vengeful and prone to letting their bad impulses get out of control. Nobody wants to hear it, because it means it’s something we’re all susceptible to. 
 
What else? Pumpkins! Just a few more days until we get our dining room table back. 
 
 
If I put the pumpkins outside now, they’ll be freezing cold when we bring them in to scoop them out. And I also haven’t super duper found spots for all the frost-damaged plants I brought in, yet. So this is how we live. At least the cookie is happy. Somewhere in there is a spool of wire I bought to make the snakes for Athena’s aegis, but I can’t find it, so I got more in my pajamas.
 
I finally got my anxious paws on those pumpkins yesterday, after searching no fewer than seven stores and coming up empty and getting more and more nervous about having to carve, like, cauliflowers for Halloween this year. I told the Home Depot lady that probably Covid made people sad, which made them want to decorate more, which made them buy extra pumpkins, and she said that sounded exactly right, but even I could tell it was stupid. In real life, I blame the Masons, or possibly the Jews. Anyway, now we have ten lovely fat pumpkins to carve. I got a Dremel for Christmas last year, and I’ve barely used it, so I think I will make something splendid this year.  Check out #11. Okay, realistically speaking, I will make a sloppy attempt at it, and my family will be really supportive and nice about it. I can live with this. 
 
 
And finally, a Halloween family watching suggestion, not a new one but a solid choice: Over the Garden Wall. 
 

I’m still amazed it got broadcast, because it’s so weird and beautiful and thoughtful. It’s an animated miniseries of 12 short episodes, and every one is gorgeous, creepy, funny, and strangely moving, with crazy, memorable music.

Two half-brothers find themselves lost in the woods on Halloween, and as they try to make their way home, they become entangled in some terrifying otherworldly business. It’s loosely inspired by The Divine Comedy, but I wouldn’t push that too far. 

Each episode is about 11 minutes, so you can watch the entire series in about two hours. We split it into two nights. Here’s the first episode, which is pretty representative:

It’s rated PG, but some of the characters and situations are extremely creepy, so while we did let our six-year-old watch it, she has a very high tolerance for scary stuff, and some kids under the age of eight or nine could find it too scary. (Here’s a specific list of creepy stuff.) There is a lot of very silly and hilarious stuff that fixes you right up when you get creeped out. No gore, graphic violence, or sex. There is a persistent melancholy tone, but all the relationships in the show get worked out very satisfactorily, and familial love is the true theme of the miniseries, and all is restored in the end. 

This show also contains one of the most realistic depictions of a goofy little boy we’ve ever seen. We’ve come to burgle your turts! Lots of quotes and songs have become part of our family culture.

Here’s a beast costume

a Wirt costume

and a Wirt and Greg cake:

The whole thing is crowded with allusions and suggestions and portents, and you can either pursue them or just enjoy them. It originally ran on Cartoon Network in 2014. It doesn’t appear to be streaming for free anywhere right now. We bought it to stream on Amazon.

We haven’t settled on a scary movie to watch on Halloween night. We’ve seen Young Frankenstein too recently. We’ve seen Army of Darkness a million times. I may push for renting Silver Bullet (1985), which is the only good werewolf movie ever made. FIGHT ME. Here’s where you can watch it (nowhere for free right now, that I can see.)
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1dClCykQys
 
And I guess that’s it. We have never managed to do anything for All Saint’s Day, but if you do, here’s my list of costumes that will do double duty, and work for saints and their spookier counterparts as well. I should update it to add Matt Swaim’s suggestion:
 

And if you’re really ahead of the game, here is my All Soul’s Day cheat sheet: A recipe for eggs in purgatory, a recipe for soul cakes, and a quick prayer for the dead. Donezo.