We’ve been thinking for a while now about just how this civility thing might go, and all that thinking has produced some ideas. Just to confuse you, here’s our tickler:
Bring your human brain.
Hold opinion lightly at times.
Eat potato salad, make potato salad.
Recognize horse manure before tracking it.
Find the wedge. Lose the wedge.
Fight like Founding Fathers.
Get (un)personal.
Lose the evil “they.”
Build your vocabulary.
Remove punctuation
Meet your batty brain.
Hold discomfort.
Be a comparison shopper.
Elevate substance over symbolism.
Err on the side of laughter.
Next week we will jump right in to discussion about bringing your human brain and leaving your lizard brain at home (when you come to the Village Square AND – we might humbly suggest as long as we’re being bossy – when you drive and when you vote).
Today I was the lucky recipient of the best dang greeting card ever to grace an envelope (pictured above). What you can’t get from the picture is just how glorious that pig is. . . it’s like an accordian that has about fifteen moving pieces and it wobbles in the breeze, just like – well – a flying pig. Until now, The Village Square flying pig was just theory.
You can imagine my glee.
Better yet, the card was from my friends Adam & Lea and came with this note:
“thank you for making us idiots. (no you didn’t do that on your own)
thank you for naming us idiots. (nah, it’s been done before)
thank you for introducing us as idiots to a crowd. . . now that is something to be proud of!”
Aren’t I so lucky to have friends who have such a low bar for gratitude?
If we ever have a fire, it’s the kids & the husband out first, then the pig.
If you weren’t at our first dinner, please learn about “The Village Idiots” here. (Scroll to page 6.)
-Liz
toot’s hot bacon swiss dip
i got the recipe from my sister catherine, my kids call her “toots”,
i call her “princess”. she is the best cook i know and she won’t give
me her pound cake recipe because i am not worthy of it. but a dip
recipe, i can handle…
8 oz. cream cheese
1/2 cup mayo
1 cup grated swiss cheese
2 tbls chopped onions
mix these together in an oven dish
top with 8 slices crisp crumbled bacon
add 1/2 cup ritz crackers crumbled on the top
bake at 350 for 20 minutes until hot and bubbly
serve with crackers, apple slices or fresh baguette
recipe serves 8 self controlled adults OR me and 3 friends….
profiteroles
when i lived in stratford, UK the little old lady that ran the
boarding house made these for dessert one night- they were
incredible! she also made steak and kidney pie once for dinner and i
ran in the snow with no shoes on to the rubbish pail outside to dump
it out before she came back in the dining room. she gave me the
recipe for the profiterole (not the steak and kidney pie), but it
included several items not available to people living in the great
country of america who have their food pasteurized for them. i kind
of made this up and it is almost as good as hers IF you eat it and
speak in the queen’s english and use words from jane austin’s era….
1 package pepperidge farm frozen puff pastry shells
1 1/2 cups heavy whipping cream (this is where it gets yummy)
1 package (6 squares) white baking chocolate
fresh berries
milk chocolate chips
bake pastry shells as indicated on the package. microwave white
chocolate and 1/4 cup of the cream for 30 second burst (stir between
bursts) until melted and creamy. cool to room temp. beat remaining
cream until soft peaks form or your hand cramps. fold whipped cream
and white chocolate mixture together. spoon into pastry shells. lick
the spoon. run your finger along the side of the empty bowl and lick
that too. garnish the shells with berries and drizzle milk chocolate
on top.
serve and say things like, “it vexes me that no one serves
profiteroles any more. they do so set a nice finish to a meal”.
-Lea (because Liz asked nicely)
I get the extreme honor (and the easy part) in RESPONDING to Liz’s introduction to me and I also get a chance to defend my ornament stealing behavior. As if, that kind of zeal and exuberance needs to be defended (and REALLY Liz, you went and bought an ornament to replace the one you stole from someone in a game, REALLY?)…
It would seem from my actions that I am an EXTREMELY competitive person (not to mention that I am looking bad since I didn’t replace anyone’s stolen ornament, again, REALLY Liz?). And the funny part is that I am NOT competitive at all… but there is something about decorations covered in glitter that does it to me. Or maybe it is Fran’s house? Fran also used to host a party where you submitted 5 recipes, Fran compiled a yearly cookbook, you brought one cooked item and we all voted on whose entry was the best, we ate a lot, got a cookbook and went home happy… well, you went home happy, if you were ME because I totally rocked that contest as well. They still talk about my profiteroles and Toot’s hot bacon swiss dip in hushed reverent terms, oh yes they do people. Put me in ANY sports arena and I have NO desire (or ability to win), but a recipe contest and holiday products and well, I am pretty darn lethal. I WILL OWN THE STAR ORNAMENT WITH THE GLITTER, OH YES I WILL, WITH ALL THAT IS HOLY AND SACRED, I MEAN THAT AND DARN IT JUST TASTE THOSE PROFITEROLES.
I am passionate about the things that I care about (and any ornament with a star on it falls into that category). What Liz didn’t cover is that I always strive to bring the BEST ornament to the party as well. I search for weeks for the perfect ornament; I wrap it to entice the choosers. I sometimes stretch the rules (never break, just stretch) by bringing a SET of ornaments. My personal piece de resistance (Republicans can use French too) was the year I brought the really plump, gaudy octopus (because NOTHING says sacred religious holiday like a fat tacky sea creature) that was named “Miss Frannie” in honor of our hostess. I am sure Fran was thrilled that a large octopus was her homage. The point is that I want the ornament I bring to be stolen three times and fought over. I want to be the popular girl at the party (high school anyone?).
I think this behavior has a lot to do with the fact that I want to be RIGHT. I am a Republican after all. I like that I am in the party on the RIGHT. But that is also why the Village Square is so appealing to me. My desire to be RIGHT is less than the desire that to know what is going on and to be a participant in this little process we call LIFE. I don’t want any one to choose my ornaments for me, much less to scream over me about why that ornament MUST be the one i choose whilst showing grainy black and white photos of the OTHER ornament looking really bad to prove that the ornament of THEIR choice is the best one for me. I want to fight for the one that I know is PERFECT for my tree, the one that fits that one little blank space to the right of the drummer boy on the tree. That really has almost nothing to do with politics does it? But I wanted to sound philosophical about my ornament behavior. And I almost had a good point (that may be a theme to my writing… It was ALMOST a good point).
Here is the sad part. I have scoured my 12,000+ digital pictures on my computer and I have NO pictures of the ornaments that I have fought so valiantly for and WON. I do however have this photo of an “ornament” that has hung on my tree for three years. It is the information tag from a new pair of pajamas that one of my children got on Christmas Eve and it got hung on the tree because that was funny. And every year we pack it up with the ornaments, because it is funny. And the next year we put it back on the tree, because (well, certainly you have the idea of this thing now). And I took a picture of it last year, which proves that the ornament I fought to WIN is less important to me than being funny. Which is a good thing for all who read this blog (all three of you and two of you are related to me or roomed with me in college).
Now I will be bringing the profiteroles to go with the spiked punch…
- Lea
I first met Lea at our mutual friend Fran’s annual ornament exchange party, one of those parties where you steal other people’s ornaments, ornaments other people really wanted.
My first vague memory of Lea is that she played that game. While I have no specific memory of her gnawing any arms off for the ornament of her dreams (sorry to disappoint some of my readers on the left), her spirit was magnetic. She’d always have the perfect quip to capture the ridiculousness of the game, as she enthusiastically snatched the object of her affection from its previous owner. It was impossible to not love Lea, she is irresistible.
Lea’s a Republican.
If you can’t tell, Lea has joie de vivre. (Lea, is anything in French a compliment to a conservative?)
In my freshman ornament exchange year (a good decade ago), I swiped a Santa with moveable arms and legs from my friend Michelle, apologizing mid-snatch. I went out the next day and bought another one just like it to mend Michelle’s broken heart.
I’m a Democrat.
PLEASE NOTE: Pictured above is one of my own unapologetically stolen ornaments, to quell press rumor and the resulting headline:
“Lea & Liz blog begins on uncivil note: Democrat calls Republicans thieves.”
(Please also note that anything you have perceived as dust on the chandelier pictured is most certainly dust on your computer screen. Don’t you keep house?)
Since Fran’s ornament exchange party in days of yore, when I paid much more attention to the 7 layer dip & spiked Christmas punch than to anyone’s political persuasion, things have gotten just a wee bit dicey between the politically diverse. But not ones to let a little fussiness deter us (some 5 kids between the 2 of us last time we counted), Lea and I are going to defy the trend and talk politics, talk values, talk religion, talk election, talk – well – everything . . . and we’re going to be doing it right here in front of you.
Entertaining? Sheesh, yes! Mud wrestling has NOTHING on us!
You’ll be running for the spiked punch before you know it. (Save some for the two of us.)
- Liz (the night owl, hereafter “Late shift Liz”)
If you missed The Village Square on the NPR program Perspectives it is now up online here. Click on the “listen now” link for the September 27th show.
Thanks to those of you who filled the house last Tuesday night at St. John’s for our “Dinner at the Square” kickoff. We’re still working on notes, conclusions, analysis, etc and will post it once we’ve pulled it together. For those of you who missed it, you can find information about our speakers here.
Our three knowledgeable speakers came from substantially different backgrounds, yet found significant agreement among them. Stay tuned. . .
Leading into our first big “Dinner at the Square” last Tuesday night, we did the press rounds and from that, I met a new friend who – after hearing us on the radio – sent me a link to a
New York Times op-ed by Patricia Limerick. Limerick writes, four months after her husband’s death, of my favorite Founding Father story – and so much more. . .
Founding a democracy, rather like living in a democracy, can be very tough on friendship.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson began as friends. The tensions and frictions of the early Republic took care of that. Then, after years of silence between them, a mutual friend persuaded them to write to each other. In 1812, they launched into a correspondence that continued until it was ended by their deaths.
That ending point was on their minds and drove their correspondence. As Mr. Adams wrote Mr. Jefferson, “You and I ought not to die, before we have explained ourselves to each other.”
I fell in love with this quotation 30 years ago, about the same time that I fell in love with Jeff Limerick, and for some of the same reasons. Honest, self-aware and articulate, Jeff made “explaining himself” into an art form, but his performance soared past his fellow mortals when it came to the tougher side of this transaction. Jeff had a genius for listening and giving people the best opportunity to explain themselves and to become his friend.
On Feb. 1, 2005, Jeff died of a stroke. Having trained with a master, I carry on with the methods I learned from him.
When I find myself puzzled and even vexed by the opinions and beliefs of other people, I invite them to have lunch. Multiple experiments have supported what we will call, in Jeff’s honor, the Limerick Hypothesis: in the bitter contests of values and political rhetoric that characterize our times, 90 percent of the uproar is noise, and 10 percent is what the scientists call “signal,” or solid, substantive information that will reward study and interpretation. If we could eliminate much of the noise, we might find that the actual, meaningful disagreements are on a scale we can manage.
Limerick tells the story of a present-day seemingly intractable dispute, then admonishes, “It is surely time for lunch.”
A successful outcome would be a vindication of the faith held by Jefferson, Adams and Jeff Limerick. But even if I dine alone, I’ll still hold to the conviction that American citizens have the ability to explain themselves to one another, and to let friendship redeem the Republic.
I like to think that last Tuesday, inside one church, in one city, there were beginnings of just such friendships.