Thankful for Cream of Wheat and Other Tests of Character

This week Jean found herself traveling from Dickensian orphanages to Appalachian foster homes, with a detour through a bowl of Cream of Wheat and a Mahjong Mixer she somehow survived as chief organizer. Along the way she discovered that good books can make modern comforts seem miraculous, and that running an event is mostly an exercise in pretending not to notice the few things that almost went wrong. In the end, both experiences left her grateful for resilience, whether found in the pages of a novel or around a table full of determined Mahjong players….AI

I’ve been reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver. Or I should say I’ve been listening to this month’s book club selection. Listening rather than reading for the club is something I started doing a year or more ago because I can multitask at the same time. (Question for grammar nerds: is it redundant to add “at the same time” after the word multitask? I suppose it is.) Either way, I do have the hard copy version of the book and the inside cover says, “Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society.” It goes on to say the problems haven’t been solved in all these years since 1850 when he wrote that book.

I found Demon Copperhead a spell-bounding, fast-paced story about the foster care and opioid addiction crisis in Southern Appalachia. One negative reviewer said it was a book “filled with metaphors after metaphors” as if that was bad thing. But the metaphors were one of the things I loved about the way the story unfolded as it follows the timeline of a boy born in a single-wide trailer to a teenage, single mother who died from an overdose. A lot of dark humor comes from those metaphors. This 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winning book is written in first-person using an often witty and warm voice of the boy, Demon, as he goes from one foster care place to another, used and abused, to a brief success in high school as football player to addiction. One reviewer called it “an epic tale of survival” and I would agree wholeheartedly with that.

There’s a line written by Dickens that describes the orphans in his time as getting "three meals of thin gruel a day, with an onion twice a week and half a roll on Sunday." Demon also didn’t get enough to eat. While reading Demon Copperhead I ran across that quote while googling the word “gruel” which I did because I was wondering if gruel was the same thing as Cream of Wheat. Since I’ve been on a high protein diet I’ve been eating Cream of Wheat Instead Protein for breakfast until it threatens to come out my ears. Gruel, in case anyone else is curious, is a watery porridge made by “boiling coarsely ground oats, wheat, rye, rice, barley, millet, or hemp.” Even acorns in times of scarcity. This morning when I emptied my pouch of Cream of Wheat in a bowl with 2/3 cup of water and popped in the microwave for 25 seconds—not 30 seconds as the directions call for so it wouldn’t boil over—I thanked the gods of good luck that I wasn’t eating grounded-up acorns. That’s one of the super powers that comes with reading good books...you get to “experience” living a different kind of life without actually having to suffer living through the hardships of others who were born into different circumstances.

Change of topic: Last week I promised a report on the Mahjong Mixer I planned between my campus and our sister campus. We had twenty-four in attendance and all but one person seems happy with the experience. The woman was not happy to be playing at a table with a man from her campus because, she said, “He should be playing at the novice table and I should be at an intermediate play table.” I said, “I’m sorry, but we had to change some things around.” But the kicker is that it was the other campus’s counterpart to me who rated the playing style of their players, not me. So I can’t claim that as a mistake on my part that they both got rated as playing at the same speed.

The two other hiccups we had were also not my fault. (Right or wrong I’m not claiming them even though I suppose ‘the buck stops here’ rule should apply since I was in charge. But in my defense, all the committees had their responsibilities outlined in writing.) Hiccup number one happened because the woman in charge of the cookies and water forgot to get the bottled water so we ended up at the last minute having to have pitchers of ice water and glasses. Not ideal to use on tables where players can accidentally knock over a water container. We might not have had any water at the event if I hadn't checked the refrigerator and found it empty several hours before the event. But no one but she and I knew about the slip-up so I told myself to put my control freak in a box and don’t let her out for fear I'd say something that would embarrass us both.

The other hiccup came when it was time for the MC to do a short reading at the end of the event where she was to name the committee members, to thank them. (I had written her script for both the opening and closing, printed them out for her on two sheets of paper, and gave them to her four days ahead.) But when it was time for her to do the wrap up, she didn’t. So I reminded her it was time and she said, “Oh, I never saw the second sheet!” that was still paper-clipped to the first. But I picked her for MC for a reason and she carried it off without anyone but the two of us knowing that it was her first read through of the closing remarks.

God save me from being in charge of any future committees. I spent too much of my work life depending on just myself, and trusting others was freaking scary. Especially senior citizens who have a built-in excuse for not doing what they didn’t do. But I told myself that the people who played in the Mixer didn’t see the slip-ups that I saw. “All’s well that ends well” ran through my head as well as other platitudes to make excuses for the Mixer not going perfectly. But everyone seemed to have a good time, liked the prizes they won, and I even won two games. ©

Back on the Bench in Old Peopleville

Jean returned to her favorite lakeside bench this week, armed with a notebook, a healing foot, and good intentions. Along the way she found swans, a suspiciously friendly chipmunk, proof that autumn has arrived, and another reminder that organizing people is far more complicated than stacking Mahjong tiles. What began as a search for inspiration turned into a meditation on recovery, community, and the surprising amount of material available for yet another episode from Old Peopleville…. AI

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood, to steal a line from the theme song written by Fred Rogers for his TV show, which needs no introduction among my demographic of readers. The sun was shining. The temperature was in the high 60s, and the distant landscape was filled with soft corals, bright reds, oranges, and lemon yellow, dotted here and there with the dark greens of conifers.

I was sitting down by our lake, watching a single swan on the still surface as it dined on weeds pulled from the bottom of the shallow water along the shore. I don't know where the six other swans were that made up the bevy the last time I sat on the same bench. That was back in the first week of September when I started going to the Wound Center and was told to cut back on my walking because of the open wounds at the base of my toes.

This past Tuesday I got some good news on that front. They scheduled me for two weeks out, instead of one, and said they think my toe woes will be healed by then. They also gave me the green light to start walking again, which was helping with my stalled mission to lose weight. I hope I can get a few weeks of outdoor walking in before the temperatures dip. I'm always cold, even in the summer, but fellow residents who walk the halls here in our Independent Living facility say I can rack up 7,000 steps if I include the underground parking level. As boring as that sounds, I'll be doing it.

As I sat by the lake writing in my notebook, I heard a rustling in the dried leaves at my feet. When I looked down, a chipmunk had one paw on my shoe and was looking right at me.

We both froze.

The spell was broken when I said, "Hi, Chippy," a nickname my mom used for these little guys who came to her ground feeder. My voice had the chipmunk hightailing it to the nearby cattails. I was glad he ran that way instead of up my leg, which at first I thought he was poised to do... or maybe he could smell the therapeutic honey on the wound dressing on my toes and was about to chew his way through my shoe. My second thought was that someone else must sit on that bench and feed those little guys. Why else would he get so close?

What was I writing when the chippy interrupted me?

I was looking for inspiration for this blog post, but all I could come up with was how busy my week had been, a sharp contrast to the tranquil view in front of me. One reason it was a busy week is that the facility threw a huge and lavish party for us to celebrate its fifth anniversary. The bar was open and free, and a lot of residents took full advantage of that. Not me. Nor did I indulge in the large chocolate bars made in the shape of letters that spelled out the name of the place. And I'm proud to say I didn't even look at the desserts. I stuck to the veggie station, the cheese station, and the kebabs.

The usual suspects got up and made speeches that had them choking back tears. All of them mentioned what a lovely family we've created here. We also had a Frank Sinatra impersonator for entertainment. It was fun watching everyone in their fancy clothes. A few people got a little tipsy and sang along with Fake Frank.

But the main thing that kept me busy this week was the Mahjong Mixer I've been planning for next week between our campus and our sister campus across town. We've got twenty-three players signed up, five of them from the Newbie class I've been teaching for the past month and a half.

This will be our third joint Mahjong event, and it was my brainchild from the very beginning. But this is the first year I've allowed others to help. I would have preferred to do it alone again, but I'm not going to live forever, and the best chance of having the event continue after I'm gone is not being the only one who knows what to do and when to do it. So I formed a committee of four, outlined the tasks that needed doing, and let them take their pick.

I could have done everything easier and faster by myself than by holding meetings and checking back to track progress. For example, one woman who was tasked with buying part of the prizes bought items and then changed her mind several times. She'd ask my opinion about what she'd purchased and I'd try to be positive, saying, "If you like it, so will others." But one prize was a potted plant that might be awkward if the winner has to take it home on the campus bus. I didn't tell her that. Another prize was a tea towel, which I dearly hope doesn't end up going to one of the guys.

The last time I took this walk down by the lake it was very much still summer. In addition to the color in the distant landscape, now the walnuts have fallen from the trees, as have the pine cones, The cattails have busted out their brown cases and are balls of fluff and squirrels were busy burying their winter dinners. The Canada geese are gone off the lake and walking trail. I missed seeing their swaddling butts in front of me as they try to get out of my way. It always makes me feel like I am herding stock. "Git along, little dogies! Whoopie Ti Yi Yo." Can you tell I grew up watching Spaghetti westerns?

And sadly all the stone carins I built on a large boulder were gone. Here I thought I was one of several people who maintained them after the wind, the pull of gravity, or little boys knocked them over. I built two more and am anxious to see whether anyone adds to them before the next time I walk what I call the lake route.

At the end of my walk, I sat on the bench by the water long enough with my notebook that the whole swan family of seven appeared from who knows where they were hiding which was my clue to get back to my apartment while I could still read my own handwriting to feed this blog post to my computer. 

Come back next Wednesday for another fill-in-the-blank episode from Old Peopleville. © 

The Year the World Tilted

Some weeks the past taps you on the shoulder, and other weeks it drags you straight down the Rabbit Hole — the deep, winding kind that only long‑time bloggers know. Jean’s been keeping this blog for over a decade, which became her archive and a time capsule that she didn’t realize she was curating. And every so often, an old post rises to the surface and reminds her of who she was, what the world was doing, and how much life has shifted since then. But the year the world tilted isn’t just about Jean’s experience, it was everyone's, too...AI

Sometimes I go through the Rabbit Hole of reading my past posts. This blog goes back to 2012, so that rabbit hole is pretty deep — and with my failing memory, I end up reading about a lot of things I’d forgotten. That happened this week when a post titled Going Rogue popped up in my sidebar. It was written in April of 2020 during the height of the global COVID‑19 pandemic, when there was a toilet paper shortage and non‑essential shopping was forbidden by law.

I ended up reading all my pandemic posts and was reminded of things like going to my first Zoom meeting — a funeral for a close relative — and my brother spending weeks on end in a COVID hospital miles away from his family, not that the miles mattered because visitors were not allowed. I wrote about the refrigerated 18‑wheelers parked outside hospitals to hold the bodies the funeral industry couldn’t keep up with. At least those people didn’t end up in mass graves the way they did during the Flu Epidemic of 1918. My grandmother was among them, along with an estimated one‑third of the globe’s population.

We all went through a lot of hardships in our nationwide effort to prevent the spread of COVID‑19. Even with all the mask‑wearing, social distancing, limited places we could go, and businesses that shut down, the accumulated deaths due to the virus are recorded at 1,219,487 nationwide. It was the third leading cause of death in 2020 and 2021 behind heart disease and cancer, according to AI. And it would have been worse if not for Dr. Fauci standing firm against Trump pushing back against the precautions we were mandated to take. Remember Trump suggesting we should “drink bleach to kill the virus?”

I still find it hard to believe that some people would trust a president with no background in healthcare over a man who headed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly 40 years. A man who saw us through HIV/AIDS, SARS, the Swine Flu, MERS, and Ebola. A man who served under six presidents as the government’s leading expert on infectious diseases. To this day, Dr. Fauci says if we had started “mitigation" earlier, more lives could have been saved. But MAGA Republicans are still trying to discredit him because paranoid Trump thought Fauci was working for the Democrats to make him look bad. He seemed to think if no one mentioned the pandemic, we wouldn’t notice people in our communities dying like flying insects on a bug zapper. It saddens me that the administration is still trying to punish a man who gave most of his life to public service.

I didn’t want to just rehash day‑old news, so I Googled the phrase “good things that came out of the pandemic” and found these:

1. Remote working from home, which allows more flexibility for working moms.

2. The expansion of telehealth opportunities.

3. Curbside grocery pickup and online ordering for home delivery.

4. Expanded use of Zoom for public hearings, business meetings, and court proceedings.

5. A surge of new businesses and entrepreneurship that created new jobs.

6. Rapid funding to accelerate vaccine technology and research across the globe.

7. And last but not least, the pandemic allowed many people to reconnect with hobbies and family time. For example, people took up baking bread in such large numbers that flour and yeast were in short supply. Pet adoptions soared, and YouTube channels were born to teach us all kinds of things and keep us entertained.

Revisiting those old pandemic posts may seem self‑indulgent, but doing so reminded me — and anyone who cares to go down that rabbit hole — how fragile “normal life” really is. Those posts and their reader comments give us a peek into the lives and thought processes of ordinary people adapting to changes during extraordinary times.

Little by little, life filled itself in again. We went back to restaurants, back to concerts, back to hugging people without thinking twice. We learned how to live with the memory of what happened without letting it swallow us whole. We discovered how resilient we are. But the pandemic, hopefully, also taught us that public health isn’t a one‑and‑done chapter. The recent measles outbreaks — a disease we once had nearly eliminated — proves that the debate over vaccines, science, and community responsibility is still very much alive. ©