Amy C Collins

chili and football

My sister in Prague asked in an email, in reference to last week's post, "Can we get a Snow Cone?," if spending time with my friend's children made me want some of my own. I answered decisively, "No. But it did make me realize how many hours there are in a day." It also made me want to get back to cooking.

Evidently young children need to eat frequently. It seemed much of the day revolved around preparing the next meal, kids eat first, then adults. Keely and Mordecai are both great cooks. We have always been into food and drink and in the good old days we each spent time in our respective kitchens, though it's Keely's baking - biscuits and brownies in their Brooklyn apartment - I remember most. Two January's ago I tapered off my cooking habits to pour all my energy into establishing good writing habits. The trifecta of confidence in this new habit, an inspiring visit with K&M, and the cooling weather had me playing in the kitchen quite a bit last week.

Always a little dimissive of pesto, I followed Mordecai's prompting and enthusiasm for the condiment, and made a fabulous batch of my own with raw pecans I bought from Marilyn at the Sale Barn last Spring (which is to say, local produce), extra garlic and a mess of 'pesto perpetuo' basil, a plant I bought from Territorial Seed Company. It's a beautiful variegated basil I've loved having in the garden for its color contrast and texture. Turns out it is really great for pesto, too. 

For the record, I also grilled a fennel & mint rubbed pork tenderloin, hamburgers and devised a black bean green tomato chili for football Saturday. 

 

Forward Pass

This weekend marked the beginning of SEC football, every game played so far was only exhibition, and some diehards argue, doesn't even count. Long time readers will know I pull for Alabama, (even if Ole Miss needs the support more, and yes, despite my being a Florida native). A 38-14 win over Arkansas made for a well spent afternoon. But it was Marquis Maze's 83-yard punt return touchdown that made it all worthwhile. When an athlete can out run, zigzag, pace and zip again past enemy lines, well, that's cause for an eye-watering celebration of the human ability. Stellar athletic prowess makes me cry.

I am a season ticket holder to the University of North Alabama football games and Saturday night was the big homecoming battle against long time rivalry Harding. We won, 28-20 in the fourth quarter after a 14-20 trail. Luck was on our side.

Friday was a the first day of Fall and the garden is in accord; three-inch tall collards and kale have pushed up through the soil, perennial ornamental look relieved in the cool, damp air and the Sheffield Pinks (mums) are full of buds. Seems we're all excited about the new season, the change in atmosphere. In case anyone is curious, I'm sharing my new (delicious) recipe below. Ah, the domestic in me reaches out.

 

Black Bean & Green Tomato Chili 

1 lb ground beef

1 onion chopped

3 green tomatoes chopped & seeded

2-3 cloves garlic minced

2-3 jalapenos chopped

3 cups cooked black beans (one cup dried, slow or pressure cooked with a tbls of olive oil & reserve cooking liquid with beans)

2 tbls chili powder

2-3 teaspoons ground cumin

1-2 teaspoons ground coriander

1/2-1 teaspoon cayenne, for heat

Salt, preferably Kosher 

 

Heat pot on medium-high heat and cook ground beef. When fat begins to cook out add onions. Cook a minute or two and add seasoning.

Add tomatoes, garlic and jalapenos. Simmer a few minutes, lowering heat so it's not rapidly bubbling, and add black beans with about one cup of cooking liquid, depending on how saucy you like it. The green tomatoes will not release as much liquid as ripe tomatoes would so don't count on the concoction becoming much thinner than it is at this point. 

Simmer 30 minutes to 1 hour depending on tenderness of beans and tomatoes as per your personal preference. After a half hour I dropped the heat to low and let it sit, stirring every 20-30 minutes, for about an hour. Top with sour cream and cheddar or Mexican queso. 

 

can we get a snowcone?

It's not seven o'clock in the evening and I'm exhausted. Though it doesn't seem I've done so much today. It could be the happy hour glass of white wine followed by the the warm, lazing body of a sleepy child draped across my lap as I read her a book about a kitten who has mistaken the full moon for a bowl of milk. Or it could be this unusual evening activity has come at the end of 48 hours spent with two energetic young children, the high pitched laughter and screams and intermittent tantrums, the chasing, the make believe, the endless pleading for whatever their mother has under no uncertain terms said "no", that has me right exhausted. OK, not exhausted, for I have found the inspiration and energy (the desire) to write this post, on location, in the presence of another, off my schedule and over 600 miles from home.

This was some what of an impetuous visit, decided only three days before embarking, to see friends from college I've recently re-connected with on, of all unnatural places, Facebook. We haven't seen each other in eight or nine years. It has been so great to be here with Mordecai and Keely again, so exactly what was needed. We've studied together in Boone, argued in Italy, partied in Brooklyn. Everything is just as it's always been, only with the addition of three children, all of which are now tucked into bed, hopefully sound asleep, or at least fast approaching.

As I write this, Keely sits across from me grading her university student's papers and I'm wondering how the hell she does this, how she keeps from beating her children into silent submission, exists on little sleep (much less than I am accustomed), and holds a full time job without having become a miserable, hateful person, or succumbed to heavy medication. I am earnestly astounded as I realize I live the life of a princess.

I'm digging down, reaching for a touch more energy. It seems to me there might be more hours in my friend's day than mine. She accomplishes so much! My hours spent writing, those quiet, unbroken (on the best occasions), stretched out mornings, are so filled with the slow movement of building word after word, searching out the next turn in a paragraph, that my life suddenly seems foreign, as if lived in a different language. Maybe I'm just jet lagged right now.

We're all trying to figure out how to make more money these days and Keely may be on to something. For a nominal fee, she suggests, she will offer a weekend at her house as birth control, hormone-free, no medication required (unless you count the alcohol you will undoubtedly want to drink). And I'm starting to understand my mother's exhaustive outbursts when we were growing up. Hats off to you, ladies.

A line or two about the little ones

I love these kids. Cash, Tallulah and Imogene, each carrying a family name, are incredibly loving, neat and entertaining souls. Imogene, the baby, is an angel. She can do no wrong. Even an unexpected dump in the bathtub is defendable - she just had dinner, the water is so warm, who wouldn't give up control to their bowels? The 7 and 5 year olds are wild. And they have so fully accepted me into their lives, asking me to read to them, open their party favor ring pops (though I did not get the requested first lick), hold their hand and get them a cup of ice water. I feel so loved!

I do not spend much time around children. I just don't have any friends near by who keep them around. So I drove 650 miles to see these, and I've made a few observations.

They ask repeatedly, in the sweetest voices, the same question, hoping for a different answer, a give in, a give up. I asked Keely, "is it wrong to tell them they are unlikable when they behave this way?" "No," she said before I could finish my question. "I wish it worked."

2. Shameful to admit but true, their exuberance and cacophonous laughter can be more annoying than their individual tearful protests.

3. Honeyed whispers and cherubic faces are near impossible to deny.

4. They are innovative, cunning, ingenious creatures. Everything is for the first time, even when hearing "no" or "a little later" to the same question (like, "Can we get a snow cone?"). Their simple observations are nothing short of astute epiphanies.

5. Infants are like dogs; they eat, they sleep, they get up and run around, get into things, they eat, they sleep, repeat.

Well, It's after one Monday afternoon and I am still tired, though armed with plenty of coffee and the promise of a another column soon completed. Tallulah wants to play solitaire on my iPhone with me, a constant request since I awoke this morning. I started playing to keep myself awake last night before they went to bed. Oh well, I'm leaving in the morning, happy to have made this journey and suspicious I will deeply miss them once I've gone.

a decade and a day

Monday afternoon September 10th, 2001, I rode the elevator to the 107th floor in the North Tower of the World Trade Center for a wine class. It was a promising time for me. I'd returned to New York a few weeks before from a month-long adventure in San Francisco where I thought I might move (though realized quickly I was still in love with New York). I took a chance as an administrative assistant with the American Sommelier Association, an organization that teaches aspiring wine professionals the basics of wine growing regions across the world and prepares them to be restaurant sommeliers. The class met that semester in a private room at the Windows on the World restaurant.

I was trying to redirect my life, to get out of the table-waiting business and pursue a more challenging path. There was no way I could live on the salary promised, but was determined to try. If I were writing this as fiction I might play the stature of the towers, steel urban aviaries, climbing icons of opportunity, as metaphor for my perceived upward mobility. While students quietly took their weekly quiz that Monday, I waited, paced, daydreamed. Through floor to ceiling windows one could see the outer boroughs across the river, a clear horizon, life below so tiny and toy-like it might have been make-believe. Too long at the glass provoked vertigo. But the view, spectacular and titanic, was impossible to relinquish. 

 

*********

The association's office was on Broadway near Prince Street, roughly fifteen blocks north of the financial district. I was still sleepy from the early rise, accustomed to late nights and missed mornings, at quarter to nine Tuesday. I crossed Broadway at an angle and did not see the first plane hit the building, the pillars rising stolid and immutable, a landmark at the base of Broadway behind me. A woman on the elevator asked our small crowd, "did you see that? A plane just hit the World Trade Center." Panic was in her voice. I thought, someone's lost control of his single engine, bounced off the side. There was not in my mind a possibility of greater damage. The towers were indestructable. Fire-proof. Storm-proof. I'd just been there!  

The rest of the day unfolded much like most of the world's. We stayed glued to a radio, a television. I remained downtown with my new boss and his wife, his brother-in-law and a colleague from Chicago, who had both run up from the Millennium Hotel immediately following the first hit. We all had friends or family we needed desperately to contact, those who worked in or near the towers, who lived around the corner. We needed to call home to let our families know we were okay, so many of us New Yorkers from some place else. We did not know what to think; what to feel. I spent the day numb. 

 

*********

When I started to write this column on Saturday I was surprised how difficult it was. I have still the New York Times from September 12th, 2001 and as I reread the front page article I broke down. It was the first time I cried over the events of that day. A decade later. 

For the last week radio and news personalities ask again for the significance of that day. Have we had enough time to fully digest? What does it mean? The simplest answer is no. And evil exists. 

My memory of that day is fogged and confused. What did I witness and what did I absorb? I may have been only blocks away but I watched with the world television footage over and over and over, so that we might have all been there, running for our lives, together. From the moment the first plane hit we could not imagine a worse action. Yet it kept getting worse. America had never been so vulnerable, the absoluteness of an unknown destiny slapped in our faces and palpable.

Is this why teachers are not talking about 9/11? Because what we saw was so heinous it can not be repeated in mixed company? How do you explain it to a fifth grader? How do we in good conscience rob a child of an innocence that was robbed from us? The resonating horrors have changed the landscape of our collective Psyche irreversibly. I can not dismiss the eerie suspicion no digital clock ever counted one second of 9:11 before that day. 

I thought to skip the column this week, to issue a plea of silence for those lost and for those who lost, for a city forever recovering. I am hesitant even now to write these words, to dare consider again what has been the greatest tragedy of my lifetime. C.S. Lewis is contributed with having said, "we do not write to be understood. We write to understand."

I am trying to understand.

A decade and a day later I am, upon hitting "publish," relieved to move on, to put this out of my mind for a while. There is so much beauty in the world, so much wonder. I am daily astounded and awed. Creation surrounds us, grows innately in us; it is Kryptonite and tonic to destruction.

New York, I love you. 

 

 

my destiny, my choice

In The last year the local university has weathered a division controversy, to remain a Division II school or move up to Division I A. The students, the roughly 30% that actually cast a ballot, voted against it. For a school that is heavily reliant on a commuting student body, the fee increase required to off-set the cost of moving up, is substantial. The university president was against it, voicing a concern for academic boosts over athletic prowess. Alumni do not typically donate monies for high GPAs and award winning intellectual pursuits. They buy tickets to ball games. They buy t-shirts and hats to wear to the games. They support athletics. 

Perhaps surprisingly, many alumni were against the move. For many folks this university represents a standard in a close community, a place of both education and character building. Many of them attended the university, even played a sport for the university. In turn, they keep up with local high school athletes, watch neighbors grow into young men and women, and they want to watch these kids in their college careers as well. It’s a village mentality. We’re raising adults.

A move to Division I A would likely brush aside many of these hometown athletes. The present football team is notorious already for bringing in the thugs of SEC teams, players that have been arrested numerous times or made prominent showings in front of student conduct committees, and have been kicked off the team as a result. Still, the board of trustees voted to make the move and so we’re moving on up.

But it’s not really the controversy that interests or ails me. I buy season tickets to the football and basketball games and try to attend the women’s soccer games when I can (I used to play), but I did not go to school there and have no personal stake in what division we compete. It’s the new slogan the school dawns I object to. I have a Philosophical complaint. 

 

The chosen slogan:   Division I Athletics: Destiny by Choice

A gentle reminder - 

 

destiny |ˈdestinē|

noun ( pl. destinies )

• the events that will necessarily happen to a particular person or thing in the future: she was unable to control her own destiny.

• the hidden power believed to control what will happen in the future; fate: he believes in destiny.

 

We can not choose our destinies (hellooo, hidden power!). The future is unseen, unpredicted, unknown. Yes, quantum mechanics argues you can create your future, that by imagining the day or week ahead you can build your own reality, the material reality around you, after all, is an illusion. Thusly, not only can we move to Division I but we can also win every game for the next five years, if we collectively imagine so. National Championships - what are we waiting for!  

 The PR campaign is not totally out of step with the move. An unpopular vote requires a strong follow up, sure conviction. How about, Destiny by Force? That’s a good one for any number of third world country dictators. Or an alternative placement for the one they’ve chosen? An image of a meth addict, missing teeth, gaunt cheeks, dark eyes and open sores across the forehead and chin, the slogan pasted above: Destiny by Choice.

If only all of life’s pursuits were as guaranteed as picking up a meth habit.