jack.

L to R: Uncle Doug, Uncle Steve, Uncle Mark, Aunt Mary, my mom, Leslie, (aka the girl that looks like Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird) and Grandma Helen. not pictured/photographer: Grandpa Jack.

For my Grandpa Jack's (Mom's dad) 50th high school reunion he wrote the following notes for his classmates:

Family: Married May 1952 to Helen Hughes. For children see note above.

Work: John D. Hankey & Associates, Appleton, WI 1977-1989. I turned my business over to Doug and Steve in 1989. Helen and I are now employed by them. I never worked so hard in my life!

Interests and Hobbies: fishing, hunting, camping, golf, flower gardening, bridge, work, being grandpa.

Memories of School Days:
1.Class night of 1940. Class of '41 being called on stage by the class of '40 and asked some smart ass questions. Who up-staged whom?

2. The time in class that I asked Dorothy Stoddard who she would like to see win the World Series. Dorothy looked at me with disdain and replied, "Why the United States of course!" That reply was an original and made the school paper.

He wrote this 19 years ago on the eve of his death in 2010.

Tomorrow will mark two years since he's left us.

Raise your class to the Protestant Englishman.

Paper Folders

Creativity is not so much more than problem solving. - Cousin Becky


Part of the same family -- my aunt Susie is a wonderful quilter, my cousin Becky is a professional potter, my mom makes costumes and sets and other large-scale decorations. There is a lot of artistic or at least craft talent on my mom's side of the family. But I want to talk about my cousin Aaron and my uncle Jim in particular.

Uncle Jim has been folding Origami for a long time. When my family would go to Indiana for Christmas he would teach us, as kids, how to fold stars and boxes, and he'd make us rings out of dollar bills. When Aaron was old enough and got interested, Jim's interest also picked up. They joined a folding group -- IRON Folders (Indiana Regional Origami Network of Folders), and they occasionally go to conventions or to meet with the authors of origami books.

I wanted to get them to talk more about their hobby, since to me it seems sort of obscure. (I was not one of the cousins to pick up a profound interest or talent in it.) And Jim talked about how he didn't consider himself creative or artistic -- he is an engineer by trade. He just likes to fold.

He talked about a guy, Robert Lang, who was a physicist and well-known folder, who NASA contacted. They needed him to find a way to fold a large lens into a rocket so they could send it into space.

He talked about when my cousin Angie (Aaron's mom) was in the hospital. "For sanitary reasons, we weren't allowed to bring in any real flowers or fruit for decoration. But we could bring in paper," he said. Jim knows dozens of ways to fold flowers.

"I guess that's when paper folding became more important to me."

Corrections

First, see Jon Fox's post.

Jonathan Franzen in his book, Corrections, writes the Lambert family into existence. He does this in such seriousness that I felt like he pushed me into the skin and consciousness of each character. The Lamberts are a nice Iowan family, and like most families they are terrifying.

For years, my family would go on summer camping trips with others from our church. We'd roll into KOAs within a two-state radius in our mini vans and pulling our pop-up campers, aluminum boxes whose lids lifted connected to canvas walls and had beds that would pull out of either end. We were all Good Christian families. Parked in adjacent spots with our water and electricity hooked up and a tree in the yard if we were lucky, I could hear the late-night arguments and comments from where I slept on the end of the pull out next to my mom.

Families bring out the worst in people. Chip Lambert feels he could handle his parents if someone would have sex with him a fraction of each minute they were around. Denise gets along great with her mother... for the first twelve hours. Each character has his and her aggressions, agendas, and illusions to uphold, and each will use harm to uphold them.

I grew up in the same city as the Focus on the Family headquarters. In FOTF's pamphlets and magazines there'd be photos of serene people spending time together. The woman would have an aura of fluffy bangs. The children would be seated attentive and wearing clothes in navy blue, forest green, and ivory white.

I'd ask people about what they wanted out of life, and they'd say wistfully, "I'd like to, you know, start a family someday." Like it was the most relaxing way they could think of spending fifty years.

Why not interact with people from a reasonable distance? It gives everyone the space to be charming, shiny, and pleasant. The intimacy of families brings out personal ugliness and vulnerabilities. What's there for it?______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (Not rhetorical, please fill in your answer above.)

Moving with the former Riverside trifecta brought me back to the days of my dad shouting at me to stay put and help set up the pop up. And me sobbing, "But I want to go fucking rollerblading."

In the last week and a half, we suffered some casualties. Christa's hand shook as she drank her lemon drop. I withdrew into a catatonic haze. We sweat a lot, had to share the same towel, moved so many boxes, half heartedly ate dinner. It was very familial.

The morning we left John and Christa in St Paul, Mitch drove because I was hung over from the screwdrivers we drank and cards we played the night before (Hungover Amy). Wisconsin sun over us, Mitch reached across the cab and caught my fingers in his hand. Sweetness engulfed me like we were being cast in amber.

Food in the Midwest

My mom's side of the family lives in Indiana, and my family has been coming here (Indianapolis) every Christmas since I was born. I hadn't thought about how Midwestern cuisine could be different than that of Colorado or the Northwest until I was reading in Bill Bryson's "The Lost Continent." Or at least I think that's where I was reading about it.

Bryson said something about Midwestern fair consisting of depression-era food: odd casseroles, white bread, plates of lunch meat, and every meal adorned with green olives. The olive part was what really caught my attention. Every supper we eat (and it's called "supper") is buffet-style with an option of olives and sweet pickles. I thought my grandpa bought them because I like them (and that may still be the case), but Bryson knew about the olives! Maybe it's cultural.

I spent a half hour looking through the book to find the exact quote without success. According to Google there is no use of the words "olive", "olives", "pickle", or "pickles" in the entire book. (What would olives have to do with the Depression anyway?)

We had cheeseburger pie two nights ago. It's hamburger, tomato paste, onion, and Italian seasoning covered in mozzarella cheese. All this happens in a pie tin, hence the name, and is drizzled with a tomato-paste sauce according to the diner's taste.

Spaghetti noodles make unexpected appearances. We had lunch and opened presents with Mitch's mom's side of the family. There was a spaghetti-based pasta salad. And my favorite food at Grandma's is her chili with tomato paste, hamburger, chili pepper, and spaghetti noodles.

Midwesterners like their beer light and macro brewed. It wouldn't make sense for them to drink anything that would take their attention off the Colts game they're watching. Even Fat Tire has only made a recent and slight appearance in this area. Mitch's cousin allegedly doesn't care for hops.

In an attempt to spread the canned-food love, I have made my beloved cherry-pineapple pie (quick-acting tapioca balls, a can of sour pitted cherries, canned pineapple, sugar, almond extract) for Washingtonian housemates without much success.

I'll be spending a rare New Year's outside of Indiana and intend to make the traditional and delicious Polish Mistakes: sausage cooked in Velveeta cheese placed on pieces of rye bread and baked in the oven.

I had thought it a bit extreme that the second thing anybody would say about Mitch's cousin was, "She's a vegan. She doesn't eat anything." Veganism: more restricting than vegitarianism, but not unheard of. It took me writing this blog to realize that a Midwest meal is never without meat, cheese, and eggs--sometimes all three in the same dish. A vegan from the Midwest is kind of like a cow that only eats strawberries.