Red's Wrap
Happiness. It's relative.
Heavyweight Week Friday Round-Up
We were gifted two cans of salmon. Thus, I am making salmon patties for dinner and remembering my mother’s salmon patties made with a can of salmon mixed with crumbled Saltines. They were oddly yummy notwithstanding the wee circular bones that popped up occasionally. My salmon patties have ten ingredients including garlic and green pepper and paprika but they’re going to taste like my mom’s, you have to know that.
I am reading 1619. It is a masterpiece of scholarship, curation, and writing. The dots that are connected make my head spin, and spin it should. You might think you know American history, but I’m betting you just know slices. Learn more about the whole complicated, tangled, knotted pie by reading 1619.
One wonders how a soldier, having blasted missiles to destroy buildings holding civilians, will live with that anonymous death on his hands for the rest of his life. We don’t hear much about the Russian soldiers, they’ve been described as unwitting conscripts. Maybe.They’re not so unwitting that they don’t recognize the color red on their hands. Oh, to live with that for eternity – to have bombed the building that had “Children” written all over it.
There isn’t weather that is too bad to go out in. Perhaps a really hard driving rain, but little else. One thing I have learned is that I will absolutely feel better – physically and emotionally – if I spend some good time outside. Today, there was a significant wind, rain enough to soak my waterproof parka, and mud that sucked up my boots. Dogs running through puddles and coming back to the truck with their paws thick with mud. It was lovely.
This has been a week of being proud of being an American – thanks to Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson and President Joe Biden. For years, folks have bemoaned “this is not who we are.” Well, now, I truly feel that “this IS who we are” and it’s a miracle and a gift that we have gotten to this point. Not that this landed out of the heavens – so many have worked so hard to get here. I’m glad that American democracy is, at least partially, righting itself. Thankful and willing to keep working at it.
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Listen to Jan read her essay “Billy” presented on WUWM’s Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “At the Breakfast Bar” on WUWM Lake Effect
Jan’s essay “The Parish Hall,” on WUWM Lake Effect
“Fury Cannot Touch Me,” Modern Love, NYT, 9/29/11
Red's Wrap 
When I was a young poor newly wed I adjusted and used canned mackerel instead of salmon. At the time it was 39cents a can. I haven’t checked in 40 years to see if they have managed to make it desirable and expensive.
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I grew up on Salmon Loaf- canned salmon, crumbled saltines and milk to moisten smashed into a bread pan and baked until the outside was crispy brown and the inside like a puffy cloud. I always got to have tarter sauce with it. It was heaven. It took me a long time to actually enjoy a piece of salmon-unadorned and without the crispy crust. Now I think I need to make salmon loaf again.
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My mother made salmon patties too, except using matzo meal rather than saltines. THEY were yummy too and considering that my mother was a really terrible cook, it was nothing short of a miracle that she made one meal that actually delicious. I have a can of salmon. I think I’ll try doing something with it. I’m really tired of everything else.
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