Must cook black-eyed peas for good luck on New Year’s Day. I have this much left over from last year, so I’ll use another cup this year. I’ll make my version of “Hoppin’ John,” because I think plain, black-eyed peas are pretty awful.

I should use andouille sausage, but I use Polish sausage instead. (Kielbasa. Remember my mother-in-law’s maiden name was Osinski!) Onions. Garlic. The sausage. And some kind of greens. Collards would be authentic. You’re supposed to rinse the peas and soak them overnight. Some places you can buy them in a can or frozen. The winter I lived in Buffalo, I couldn’t get them in any form at all. Florence Osinski Urbanski thought I was a weird girl from “The South.” True.

I’m delivering some to Susan who is from Georgia.  Being Susan, she researched the story and symbolism in Hoppin’ John.  She readily admits, much of it may be a folk tale. I’ll also deliver some to Barb who planned to come over and have supper with me but has a bad cold. I can’t help but think about how neither of them will be in my life if I live into my 90’s. Auld lang Syne.

Make some cornbread to go with. Good luck and Happy New Year.

And  into Wyoming a bit too. Fauna domestic and wild, food porn, coziness.

One day, we went to Livingston to the dog park where Juno and Fern met up with some friends and had a great time next to the beautiful Yellowstone River.  Then into town to browse our favorite thrift store and to have amazing pizza at Gil’s.

Next day from the dog’s hike, Elizabeth brought home lots of greenery.  We had juniper covered with lots of blue berries  and red rose hips.

That interesting 2×4 from the bannister to the window sill deserves an explanation.  It’s an actual catwalk.  The kitties use it to get to their window ledge lookout.

And a Christmas corner

That star in the window was a find in the thrift shop.

Next day we drove into Yellowstone and had lunch in the lodge in Mammoth .

Christmas tree in the lodge.

Delicious lunch before heading south into the park to see all kinds of amazing wildlife.

Emigrant Peak from Elizabeth’s place in Pray, Montana

Wonderful fauna back home too. Fern, the newest family member, loves to look out at the goats and chickens next door.

Spent lots of time in front of the fire.

Cheered on the Chiefs to no avail.

Lots of home-cooked food.   Some of it eaten on vintage Currier and Ives dishes.

Yummy salad with home-sourced pumpkin, arugula, feta, bacon, pomegranate.

My corn pudding was a complete failure at that altitude.

Nevertheless, hunger did not play a part.

Making the Bučhe de Noël

And then, before I knew it, It was time to head home.  Amazingly, all the details of a complicated trip went like clockwork.  When I got back home, it all seemed surreal.

Jiggity Jig.

I grew up in a sweet little house on a dirt road in Oklahoma.  The only live music I ever heard was the high school marching band.

One weekend when I was about twelve, we were taken to Oklahoma City on a big yellow school bus for a “cultural” field trip.  I heard an orchestra for the first time.  Tears rolled down my face.  I didn’t move.  I didn’t want my classmates to think I was a complete idiot.  I was already viewed as a very odd child.

Last night, my dear friend Marion decided to stay home and gave me her symphony ticket.  I was delighted!  It was a program I really wanted to hear, but symphony tickets aren’t really in my budget.

Politics aside, I am blown away when, with no announcement, the orchestra begins to play “The Star Spangled Banner” and everyone stands up and sings.  It is mostly an old audience here in Salem when the Oregon Symphony performs here so we all know the words.  The big auditorium at Willamette is always sold out.

And when the orchestra began to play their opening number there were those same awed, girlish tears.

I’m glad that’s still who I am.

In the 1993 remake of the classic movie Born Yesterday, the ditzy Melanie Griffith character teaches the Bill of Rights to a table of dignitaries using a silly song.  The First Amendment is boiled down to ““say any crazy thing you like.”  That’s pretty accurate.

She barely touches on the Second Amendment.  It’s hard to be light-hearted about guns. What the 2nd actually says about weapons is intended to protect the colonists from the tyrannical king they had emigrated to escape.  A “well-ordered militia” meant civilians could arm themselves and shoot at the Red Coats.

Today, it means I could own guns if I wanted to. I don’t.  But I could. My former neighbor did, and, if wandered out into my front yard in the middle of the night to admire the moon, he could easily have mistaken me for a Red Coat and blown me to bits with his 10-gauge shotgun. That wouldn’t make him a murderer. Just someone who had aged-out of being a responsible gun owner.  Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Last week a murderer, a sniper, murdered a man who exercised free speech.  I am deeply offended by both these men.  Everyone hates a sniper.  And the murdered man is now a martyr.  Honestly, I had never heard of him until he was killed.  Since then I have researched some of the things he said.  As a woman, I am both saddened and horrified both by what he said and that he died because of it.

For a bunch of old, rich, white men, the founding fathers were brilliant in writing the Constitution and providing for amendments that serve us well to this day.  How we morally and ethically interpret them today is complex.

I can say any crazy thing I like, but I am very careful in what company I share my craziness. People who dare to say any thing negative about  this “martyr” are being threatened .

And not everybody should have lethal weapons. Recently, in two different states, grade-schoolers toted guns to school in their backpacks. Just put me in a room with their parents or with that sniper. I have a few things I would like to say to them.

During my married life, which was most of my adult life, I was not in charge of anything. I pretty much had all the responsibility but none of the authority. When the person who was in charge was out of town, which was a lot of the time, often I had to assume charge. Like calling a plumber. Then forever thereafter, he was referred to as “your” plumber and I was blamed if any of the work he had done didn’t measure up.

I also did not have the authority or the wherewithal to maintain the car I drove to get me and the children to school and to work. For a long time it was a big Oldsmobile diesel station wagon. (I loved that car!) And reliable maintenance did not occur. During that period, we pretty much drove our cars into the ground.

Yesterday, I had the Subaru into the dealership for its semi-annual oil change and check up. You know, tires rotated, fluids topped off. They printed out a list for me of pending services in order of need. I opted not to replace a tiny red plastic reflector on the rear bumper for $120, including labor. I came home and ordered one from Amazon for $15. If I can’t do it myself, I can return it to Amazon, no questions asked. The power steering fluid is “discolored.” I think I’l research that on Chat GPT. I can probably do that myself. Usually, this time of year, I have everything on the list done prior to my road trip to Montana. Not traveling this year, so I deferred a number of things. Nevertheless, I plan to maintain my old red Subaru with the kayak racks optimistically waiting on top. My plan is not to drive it into the ground but to drive it into the sunset.

Brand new.  No kayak racks on yet.

Dave’s and my boats loaded up.  We were  heading out .