Boze's Dictionary..........#1

Friend...........someone who regards you as worthwhile in spite of the fact that he or she has seen who and what you really are. As opposed to someone that likes who and what you need him or her to believe you are.

Thus endeth the entry......

Suzie can't spell............

...........little Johnnie can't read, and, apparently, neither one can count to twenty with their shoes on.

As I've indicated in a recent post, since the beginning of the school year, I've spent evenings with my five year old grand-daughter while my daughter works second shift at a medical facility in nearby Peoria.

Cheyenne is in kindergarten and is learning to read. At last count she can read and spell 44 words and knows the difference between a period and an exclamation point. We practice her "sight words" (on flash cards that she makes out) and read for at least a little while every night. We rarely watch television. Thursday night of every week is our library night. From there we go to McDonald's and then home to watch a movie that she has selected from the library.

I have jokingly remarked, that based on what I've seen on the internet, Cheyenne's level of skill with the english language is now on a par with many college students.
I've seriously considered helping her set up an on line journal using the library computers.

As I've scanned through the morning papers in the past week, I've gleaned the following tidbits:
Last year, the federal government spent $35 billion to assist higher education.
(and on the same page)
The pentagon is asking for $100 billion more to finance its current war-making efforts......bringing the total since the invasion of Afghanistan (remember that one?) to nearly half a trillion dollars.

These items were the seminal inspirations for this post....having given rise to the immediate thought: "Well, gee golly, I feel much safer now."

......But what really clinched it was an article found in Friday's paper,under the headline; "Study shows 11 million adults are illiterate" (the full text of which may be read here.)

What struck me most was paragraph five which reads:

"So even as more people get a formal education, the literacy rate is not rising. Federal officials say this trend is puzzling and worthy of research."

Hey............the feds are on it.......not a problem.

Thus endeth the entry...........

Thanksgiving.......

The passing of the Torch

I cooked my first Thanksgiving turkey in 1975. I had recently acquired a Weber kettle, was anxious to try it out in the "indirect" mode, so I volunteered to cook the bird for that years' family meal. It turned out so much more moist and tender than any turkey that I'd ever tasted.....(my apologies to my mother, who really was a good cook) that I became hooked.

When my Dad retired my folks moved to southern Indiana ,near where my Mother grew up. This was in 1981. They came back to visit every Christmas and I held our family get togethers and dinners at my place.........thus it was that the task of holiday cooking came to be primarily my responsibility.

As a railroader, I had no holidays........period. There were 6 paid holidays in each year, but all that meant was that if you worked on those days you got an extra days pay...you didn't arbitrarily get the day off.....class one railroads don't shut down for anything except natural disasters and accidents. If you wanted a day off, you had to "mark off" and eat the loss of pay. Insofar as Christmas is a kind of "one-shot" deal.....particularly with children (how do you tell a child that Santa Claus doesn't come to railroaders' houses until the day after Christmas?), I always took time off for that event. In the event of Thanksgiving and birthday celebrations, however, we scheduled meals and parties for the next convenient day after the arbitrary date for everyone to get together and for me to cook.

This coupled with new realities that have evolved over the course of the past two or three years have wrought some significant changes in the way our family deals with holiday meals and get-togethers in general.

Thus it has come to pass that we have been gathering at Casey's outpost for most of these events......as chronicled here and in Cooking With Gutz.

I didn't know what was going to transpire for Thanksgiving this year.........and I was preparing myself for the prospect of having it just kind of fade out. I assumed that Casey and his family would gather with his fiancee's family and that Cassie and Cheyenne would hold forth at her Mother's.

So, it was a pleasant surprise when Casey called, shortly before Thanksgiving, and told me that he was planning to have a meal at his house on the Saturday following the holiday and that he was going to do the cooking. All he needed were some recipes, a little help with the grocery list, and some technical/how-to advice on things like the ingredients, timing, equipment and preparation for the stuffing and the cranberry salad.

We worked out a plan, Casey laid in the supplies and did some of the advance work (like laying out the bread to dry and defrosting the bird) and I showed up at a comfortable hour on the appointed day with a few items that we would need and a couple of salads that I threw together the night before in a bit less than 2 hrs. Cassie and Cheyenne arrived later in the day and pitched in with some of the, intermediate clean up and last minute chores like potato mashing. Diane had prepared nibblers and munchies and dips to keep up our strength. It being a first time effort, there were some clashes in style, a bit of mis-timing, and other minor glitches............there was a time or two that Casey and I must have looked like Stan and Ollie as we worked around each other, but all in all it went swimmingly. Everyone got to take an occasional break, we all took turns with aspects of kid-tending and herding and we all sat down to a gorgeous groaning board that would have done the pilgrims proud within a tolerable margin of the target hour.

My only real regret is the lack of pictures of the event to post here....my camera got put in a kid safe place in the unpacking process and I assumed that I had just forgotten to bring it. By the time I found it, the meal was over and we were half way through the clean up. No one thought to get a picture of the loaded table before we lit into it. This was Casey and Diane's first Boze holiday table....primarily hosted and provided by them as a couple.......and it's a shame that there is no picture of it.These words and all our memories are going to have to suffice as a rememberance.

The significance of this is that the "torch has been passed" in our family. I've got a way to go before full "retirement", but things are changing into what they will be and it pleases me that my son and daughter are stepping into the roles that I have held for so many years......They are not "kids" any more.

We are starting to talk about Christmas, orchestrating where we all need to be and what we can do to contribute. Again, Casey and Diane are going to be host and hostess and chief cooks and bottle washers. Cassie and I will do what we can to help and contribute and distribute the load of effort so as to allow everyone time to enjoy family before during and after the meal. It really is a big adjustment for me to relax and let someone else handle it, .........but I think I'm up to the challenge.......*grins*.

A big, proud, Captn Dad's thank you and well done to Casey and Diane.....

In other news.....

Cooking With Gutz has come out of its hiatus (coma)with a new posting......hopefully to be followed with some recipes and tips that you can use for the upcoming Holiday season. Enjoy!

Thus endeth the entry......

1.......2.......3............

"For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"

from Maud Muller by John Greenleaf Whittier

I posted the following in June of last year......

"The regret is in wishing that you had......and knowing that it's too late and you never will.

I know that need drives you, darlin...........but don't wonder what my hands feel like forever."

You have made a good first step....and I acknowledge and appreciate it if, indeed, that is what it was intended to be and honestly was.

If you believe that I am as good as can be found........then don't risk losing me for fear of taking a second or a third step.....or however many it takes.

I can't tell you how to proceed from here (if that is what you decide to do) and even if I could, you have to know that it wouldn't be in either of our interests for me to do so.

I can say that my feelings were genuine and remain so.

I can say that I never went anywhere.....I'm still here.

I can give you this.......if the situation were reversed, what would you need to say and ask and hear? What would it take to make you as ecstatically happy to finally meet me as you would have been .....and I, you?

I really don't know how else to respond.......or if I should. It's been a long time....a little longer shouldn't change anything.

By the way.....where exactly is that tatoo? *grins*

Thus endeth the entry..........

The Mother of All Updates.......or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I'm not going to beleaguer the denizens of the Blogoverse with the whys and wherefores of my long absence from and negligence of this website......what I am willing to put some effort into is bringing you up to speed on some of the better aspects of the past several months and move on from there.

Prologue

Years ago, Kodak ran a series of TV spots featuring a singer in the background doing this weepy sort of ballad about how it seems one just "turns around" and one's children are all grown up........the point of it all being to sell film, of course, and I actually believe it was rather effective. In any event, I've had a number of these "turn around" moments these past several months and I'm going to share them with you.

Turn around.....Cassie

On July 15, my daughter graduated with an associates degree in Applied Science as a licensed Radiographer. On Aug 1st she started full time work at an outpatient clinic run by a local
hospital. These, in and of themselves, are flat and succint enough statements of fact from which to derive a sense of achievement on her part and a sense of pride on mine......but that doesn't begin to give it the real weight and import that it deserves. Just how to write and describe those aspects, of this and other of the vignettes I planned to include here, have delayed the posting of this entry for over two months. Each time I sat down with my "mental notepad" and started to compose, I've run squarely into how far back some of these things go in regard to both my children.......and how intimately personal are some of the details necessary to understanding the path they had to tread to get to where they are. Time and again I've come squarely against the realization that some of these details are too personal, on the one hand, and not mine, on the other, to tell.

What is mine to say about this and some of the other moments reported here is that, when in public, I used the camera to hide brimming eyes behind as much as I did to record the event. Perhaps if I knew you really well (and I trusted you very much) I could begin to impart how proud of her I am or how huge an accomplishment this is for her,and why. For the here and now, let me simply say that metaphor and hyperbole aren't enough.....that language alone doesn't possess the power or device adequate to the task of wrapping it in a large enough package.

Turn around .......Cheyenne

On August 17th my oldest grandchild, Cheyenne, started school. She was up bright and early, dressed in pink (her favorite color) and bearing "squeaky" new supplies in an immaculate new pink Barbie bookbag. It was another of those times that the camera served a dual purpose for PaPa as she waited for and boarded the bus. Her mother's employment is on second shift, and since she began that service, I have had the privelege of being there when Cheyenne gets off the bus and spending the evening with her. As such I've gotten to share with her the excitement of learning to read and discover books, helping her with her homework, and sharing in shaping her environment in a way that wouldn't have been possible if I were working.... (did someone say "silver lining" or "close one door and open another"?)
We make flash cards for her sight words (as she learned her alphabet, she insisted on making her own flash cards for the new words she gets every week), and as we read nightly I stop at each incidence of these words in the text of what we are reading, she reads the word and we continue. The real excitement came when she got enough sight words to make simple sentences and we have spent whole nights with all her cards laid out on the floor and her finding the words and arranging them into the sentences we make.
The public library held a series of reading nights for her age group on Thursday of each week until just before Thanksgiving (which will resume in February), but when those ended we continued to make Thursday our library night.
She will pick out words and spell them for me and ask me what they are (incessantly)and write out sentences and make cards, asking me how to spell each word that she wants to include...........and if you ever wanted to define patience for yourself, have someone do that to you for one or two hours a night for a couple of weeks!
She will pick up one of my books and look for the pictures and make up stories or ask questions ........"PaPa, why do they have pom-pom trees on this boat?" (about a depiction of an ancient Nile pleasure barge....ok, I never said my tastes or interests were either normal or ordinary) and she seems to have a keen interest in maps and a pretty fair idea of what they represent, which is pretty remarkable at her age.

Turn Around......Hallie

My second grandchild, Hallie, turned two years old on August 26th. Due to scheduling of other events we celebrated her birthday at a party on August 13th. Which later sequed quite nicely into an adult, kids-are-in-bed-grilled-food-and-beer, celebration of Cassie's birthday (the 15th).
Hallie is of course walking (and running) and starting to talk up a storm at this point, and adores her older cousin. She spent the day stuck to her side like glue, following her from room to room and saying "Shine, Shine, Shine....(Cheyenne in Hallie-ese)" over and over.
She calls me "Pop-Pop"...which I think is pretty cool, way cool as a matter of fact. The circumstances of my situation and Casey's distant residence have conspired to diminish the time I've been able to spend around Hallie. This is something that I have been trying to remedy by making a pilgrimage every other Tuesday with Cheyenne and cooking up as many excuses for weekend get togethers as I can. Shy of me at first, Hallie has begun to get used to me and the last time I went over (at Thanksgiving) I got the best reward that a grandpa can have......she ran to me when she saw me at the door, shouted Pop Pop,threw herself into my arms.....and when I scooped her up, she gave me a big ol' hug and kiss. (Insert image of the Captn with a big dopey grin on his face here......)!

Turn Around......Casey

I wasn't there, of course, to record the event on film, but it still counts as a milestone in Casey's life and one of those unmanly, "misty moments" for me to contemplate. Again, considering the example that was set and the
experiences that have shaped his perspectives, (the part I played, for good and ill, and the knowlege I have of these things) I find myself more deeply moved by the fact that it happened at all.
On August 6th, Casey and Diane took a trip to Chicago whch included dinner in the posh surrounds of the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the Hancock building on Chicago's lakefront.
There, my son....the man my little boy turned into...proposed to the mother of his children and the woman that he loves and wants no more than to share the rest of his life with.

Announcing......Colton

On September 23, 2005, at 1243pm, weighing in at 8 lbs 9.75 oz and 20 inches in length ...... Colton Osiris Boze was born. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, Citizens of the Blog-o-verse. I present to you my third grandchild and my first grandson ......! Counting from 1892, the fourth C.O. Boze in five generations and the third in a line starting with me. (I was named after my grandfather.....he having named his first-born Cecil Clare Boze).

Afterword

There is more I want to post about my "lost months, but these are the most monumental events that occurred in those times and deserve to be a stand alone post for a few days, to be read and digested and savored before I move along to other things.
I want to revive Cooking With Gutz with a post, featuring a guest assistant chef (zut alores......who can it be????), and be timely in here with a post about Thanksgiving. Which, in its own right, took on a more than ritual significance in our family as a sort of point of separation of what was from what will be. These followed by posts of holiday recipes in Cooking, and some tidying up bits and pieces from the "lost months". At that point I should be caught up suffiently to follow along with a typical running stream of monologue, diatribe, rant, musings and observation.

It's good to be back......

Thus endeth the entry.......