Beef with Onion in a Mustard Cream Sauce

 

Beef with Onions, Garlic, Mustard, and Sour Cream...

For a quick and easy lunch:

1/2 pound beef stew meat

1 medium or large onion

1/4 cup butter

1 tablespoon of a red wine

6 cloves of garlic

2 tablespoons Dijon Mustard

1/4 cup sour cream

black pepper and salt to taste

In a stainless steel sauté pan, add beef stew meat, and chopped or sliced onion, peeled and chopped garlic, butter, and salt and black pepper. Cook on low to medium heat. Add red wine in the process. Test the beef to see when cooked, do not overcook. Remove the beef from the pan to finish the sauce. Add in mustard and sour cream, more butter if desired, and sauté the onions to desired completion. Warm the beef in the pan. Mix with the sauce. Pour the sauce on top of the beef if not mixed before. Enjoy your lunch!

Servings: One. For two, double the amounts.

Moving On from The Humane Part 2

I have yet another upcoming phone interview with a transient company wanting to hire at a rate that will not even pay for the mileage accumulated to do the job. I'll listen, I'll discuss, but it may be as futile as expecting a reboot of the American senate or house of representatives in my lifetime. It's not going to happen. 

It is startling that a company can offer such a job. It means that there are people who work jobs that send them into an economic spiral, and a departure from everything standard. It is an accelerated phenomenon, for a greater percentage of the populous, to a point that it cannot be explained away. It is discussed in private circles, amongst neighbors, in the not-so-blessed economic potholes on the highway to decadent wealth.

I live in a region shadowed by this prevalence. It is called Appalachia. It is a geographic region and cultural region, the latter mainly because of the former and the effects that such topography inflicts on the inhabitants.

Instead of economic expansion, companies shrink or disappear. Emigration exceeds immigration. The sad song, like a dark version of "Jolene," tells you all you need to know. You may try, but someone has already taken your dream. They are in the flatlands, a cultural wasteland where wealth and debt work together to create a stability. While the mountaineer has a faith in the supernatural, the urbanite has a blind faith in a man-made economy based upon premises that don't work in the region, mainly because Appalachians own less resources than those who parasitically take from them. 

And while Appalachia suffers from this tragedy, many other areas, in between the money-debt system centers, share the same fate. The same lack of economic incentive. And it is not just in the countryside. There are hundreds of thousands of ex-urban migrants escaping to campers and mobile homes because their prospects have disappeared in the technological change shaping the entire nation. While the unaffected, including those broadcasting a particular narrative for the country, enjoy the benefits of that increasingly technocentric system, there are many migrating into a survival mode that would terrify the ones who retain wealth now.

But as technocentrism touches nearly all industries, will the ones who acquired such vast wealth be the next victims of the ever-changing paradigm, or will their businesses be excluded from the purge destined to come when more humans within the system are replaced?

Moving on from the humane

 I've spent a significant amount of time interacting with people of all sorts of professions- from truckdrivers to Dollar General cashiers- in the past two weeks. Also, I've been blessed to be part of discussions with thousands who have suffered from a changing economic landscape threatening the economic safety of hundreds of thousands of American citizens. These have been targeted by an increasingly hostile, anti-human agenda, proliferated by a technocentric advancement. 

Companies, in this environment, care less about workers and more about technological advancements that squeeze out human labor, and human-dependence, and bypass them with apps and advanced technologies. Instead of a cashier doing her job at the grocery store, I am forced to do her job. 

At the same time, those who have benefited from technological advances in their profession or those who have isolated themselves from human interaction, now pay insane fees to be able to sit at home and have a driving servant class bring their meals directly to them. Most of these making money from this relationship are currently humans; however, many companies have been using drones or robotic delivery in other areas to extricate the humane from the economic transaction.

Those replaced by an automation, or a new paradigm (making the customer work for the company they are paying for a service), find themselves in a world few predicted. Standard fields of employment disappear...often shocking quick, with no warning. 

Many end up still employed, but so underemployed that they cannot make ends meet. And lately, I have heard from so many of these. I have heard their heartbreaking stories. More than ever before, men and women in their 50's and early 60's, who cannot retire with full social security benefits even though their employers have collapsed or are collapsing under the weight of this technocentric change. 

Instead of paying people back for what they put into the social security system- they, and their employers- the government has taken years away from prospective retirees, shortchanging them, and putting restrictions on them while making money off of the taxpayer's own income.

In response, many have sold their homes, land, and resources and gone off to live a simpler life that the rest of the first world would not recognize as "an American lifestyle." There are whole communities of RVs, campers, and tiny homes scattered across the Rockies, the West, and even scattered here and there between the cities in every state. They live that way because they have lost everything to an out-of-control Pharmacological Elite who can and will surgically remove your savings from you while charging you medically incorrect billing from people coding at 2 AM in a little house down the road. (From one of those I personally met and would never trust to handle my hospital bill).

But that is only one aspect of the story. One slice of what is causing a great country to become more divided and more out of control than ever before.

Part 1

When Cultures Collide

 Pork Dijon With Wild Leeks

When you're an American, it is easy to mix cultural influences. Ask anyone, staring in the refrigerator after returning home from the grocery store....or as most Americans would say, "the grocery stores." The world feels like smaller place when one can dine on Korean food one day, Amish the next, and Phillipine cuisine the next day at lunch. And, with a touch of creativity, whatever you find in the grocery stores can create a new world of flavor.

Even if you reside somewhere else in the first world. And sometimes the second world... maybe even the third world.

Today, after planting some new Peppermint plants in the garden, I returned home to a small butcher-paper-wrapped set of pork butterfly chops (not made of butterflies) waiting on me in the refrigerator. I had a hankerin' for something with country Dijon mustard. In the fridge, I had some Ramps (wild mountain leeks- a delicacy here), some regular leeks, garlic, and peppers (capiscum  for some of you). The result of today's lunch creation is in this recipe.

1 set of Pork Chops

1 Leek

2 Ramps (or more Leek)

2 cloves of Garlic

1 Medium Pepper

Olive Oil

Fresh Parsley

1/4 cup of Dijon Mustard (Country Style)

French Tarragon

Cut your pork into small strips, place into steel sauté pan and add olive oil, garlic, fresh chopped or sprigs of parsley, sliced leek, sliced pepper, Tarragon to taste, and diced Ramps (one may substitute with a stronger tasting ingredient like more garlic) Cook, attended, adding the 1/4 cup Dijon Mustard about five minutes after starting the meal. Continue until pork is thoroughly cooked

and hopefully, your meal looks something like mine.

the appearance of the holy fire

This Saturday, on the day before Orthodox Easter, in the Holy Sepulcher Church in Jerusalem, which supposedly has a small entrance to Christ's tomb, Orthodox Christians claim a white fire miraculously appears from inside that opening. An Orthodox patriarch, using an oil lamp in the opening, waits. After a humble prayer, the holy fire appears. 

The holy fire is then passed to candles. Eyewitnesses state that for the first 33 minutes, the holy fire does not burn human skin, nor human hair. 

On the internet, videos circulate showing the fire causing pain 34 minutes after the miracle appears. 

So, what is this and why have so many within the Christian tradition never heard of this? 

Within the chronicles of Orthodox history, there are supposed references dating back to the first century. But while that may be enough for a traditional Eastern Orthodox, what can be said from other sources. Are there any? 

Throughout documented history, the Greek Orthodox authorities have been involved in the tradition. There have been dates where it did not happen, although rare. There were a thousand years ago. Those dates usually corresponded to a religious tension between Christian groups. 

There are plenty of doubters. The patriarch is hiding his hand inside the tomb opening, so could it be manipulated inside the tomb? Could the flame be ignited from planted phosphorous from inside the tomb? And why is it that the Greek Orthodox patriarch is favored? 

Whatever the truth, the "holy fire" that allegedly appears has more believers than you might first assume. Among others, there was at one time a tradition among Lutheran churches to have an "eternal flame" hanging somewhere in the sanctuary. I can attest to this as I witnessed this in my childhood. But, I was a child and found the mystery of the "eternal flame" just that, a mystery for others to discuss. 

  

The Senior Citizen Dictionary

Every once in a while, a new generation creates a compendium of useful words, notably a slang or associated vernacular, which is then classified by their generation. Those within that generation might understand one another better than those who had formative experiences in another time period.

These anomalies of formalized language tend to be most pronounced during youth or during a maturing phase of life. Sadly, the language of a Senior, or Senior Citizen, may be misinterpreted by earlier generations.

One way to solve this, would be to compile a "Senior Citizen Dictionary" that would explain the world as it might be viewed by your man or won 65 and older. I say this as one who would know.

The Senior Citizen Dictionary, which I believe could be as successful as the "mansplainer," would contain dictionary entries solely based on relative senior experiences.

For example, under "Golden" (Noun):

1. The stream running down your leg because you did not make it to the bathroom 2. the color of your urine because of dyes in your medicine.

3. The false idea that your latter years in life will be filled with smiles, happiness, and massive discounts on everything from steaks to new gutters. SEE Golden Buckeye Card fraud.

These definitions would require "as used in a sentence" sentences, like when we were in school.

TEACHER: Can you give an example of that in a sentence?

9 YEAR OLD: Yes, I can.

TEACHER: Give me a sentence with the word used correctly.

9 YEAR OLD: He correctly her mouth.

TEACHER: That is not a sentence.

9 YEAR OLD: It is too.

TEACHER: You are incorrect.

9 YEAR OLD: I know you are, but what am I?

Included in said dictionary would be words like "Epizoodie," which some old codger used to ramble on about to you...and now that you have gray or white hair, you have been dwelling on that word, wondering what in the blazes it means. So, of course, it goes into the Senior Citizen Dictionary.

It would be colored by your great grandmother who used the word incorrectly, spelled it incorrectly, but it was "a thing" to her...and very awful...so it goes in the dictionary...

Epizoodie (Noun, adjective)- Your grandmother's term for a horrible thing, likely a deadly disease. "I swear she got the epizoodie last week and it plumb near killed her."

This grandmother did not know there is a term "epizoodic." Hence, it appears in the Senior Citizens Dictionary as used by the senior citizen.

Slang words from the 1940s might appear because your mother used them. Since she called the stupid guy who dropped a pass from the quarterback a "dumbbunny," that entry would go into the Senior Citizen Dictionary. Forget about it being a word that shouldn't belong in the standard dictionary. The Senior Citizen Dictionary should supersede such a "narrow view."

As you can plainly see, this proposal would very likely be a best-selling reference text, right up there with The Oxford Dictionary of Verse and The Toilet Seat Reference Tool. 

Perhaps, I will go to Wix, Squarespace, or another website builder and craft a slick-looking site to market and sell the new dictionary, offering a free T-shirt with every sale. I am sure we could make big money...mucho dinero...but right now, it is 10:59 PM and I've one minute before my bedtime and all those pills and I have to strain my urine for the doctor and i have to gargle with salt water and i have to check my oxygen level, so i've no time for it. Besides, I have to eat a handful of nuts before bed, 'cause Momma always said if you don't eat nuts before you go to bed, you won't be able to poop in the morning.

 

  

where is your treasure?

 

when the mud is so thick

and the world is so cold

look to the Heaven

to that city of Gold,

your reward awaits you

for all those long nights

you prayed for a miracle

for wrongs to become rights,

for all those long seasons

when hope kept you from fear

and you walked in the grey-light

your angels were there near,

for God has been watching,

indeed, God has been true,

so keep your eyes on Heaven 

until God sees you through.

 

The way forward

 In a tech-centric world, the creative arts are tolerated. They are for those who do not fit the maze-like mentality of the Program Nirvana. Their talents lie outside the future of the global circular hive.

Consider the vast millions freed from box-like thinking, from a box-like world. Forty years ago, we peasants of the pen were still struggling with typewriters and word processors that slowed our creative geniuses crafting word-painted works. 

Technology freed us from those containers, then stifled us by hiding us in the toy closet. Too many grown-ups gravitated toward that which would not be composed of word-pictures. Unless the screen observant followed code, the creative could not come out to play in the sand box, nor in the arcade. The code enforcers tolerated us, even enjoyed our works, but did not value nor compensate us with a superior value set.

Twenty-six years on from the aftermath of the Y2K embarrassment, the tech elite have not learned from their failures, nor their hubris. When word-painters are relegated to the fringes of "contemporary culture," a systematic decline is inevitable.

The AI Revolution, or "Data Center Revolution," is unraveling. The glaring holes in reliability have been exposed. When Wikipedia, Instagram, and You Tube are elevated as "factual data," rather than what they are, your AI entity becomes less reliable than the factual standards solidified in the age of the dictionary, encyclopedia, and statistical-based standard reliability source. Why do we need "data centers" where deviance is glorified as statistical?

Meanwhile, those seeking to enlighten the populace with stories illuminating the truth of human nature and reality, encouraging the creative, stirring the soul, find too many potential audiences mesmerized by the less human, the less kind and gentle, the less compassionate. As authors, driven by creativity, we need to offer them a positive alternative to the Narcissistic, an alternative to soul-less culture. So, let us throw off every obstacle, and create a compassionate alternative, a spirit-driven soul-filled excellence that artificial intelligence can never create. And in the end, the populace will open their eyes and see the world as realists, not those manipulated by a soul-less revolution seeking the degradation of the human spirit.

While February Lingers

 Gray consumes the air and sky, and blankets the land with white, the wintry one refusing to leave my doorsteps. I labor yet another hour to stay awake, knee-deep in yawning in place, drugged by the power of dim lights and darkening days.

Sleep is like a tender-hearted woman come to cuddle me. But when I wake the chill in my room reminds me that my cocoon is so thick the blankets wrap me tight. Waking is sometimes severe; I am reminded of the tales of old men and old women who lose feeling in their arms, legs and other extremities, as if death slowly creeps up from the toes and feet...which I did watch when my wife's grandmother finished dashing between the veils and settled for the slow inevitable slipping beyond the material.

When I do venture out in the arctic air stream, breathing is an invigorating exercise. Bundled in layers upon layers, I feel like a fat walrus. But the cold quickly becomes a friend if I can survive the therapy. There will be no more yawning in place there, as I discover sobriety, released from stupor. Inside too long, stiff and sedentary, one's own society vanishing like a vapor, February's fingers, caresses the aged to sleep, into a fog of the numbing, the pungent, and the loss of control. 

why i cannot sleep tonight

if only one- the one who has been on my mind half the night- reads this, and it changes her, then it has been worth it all. but, if this is for you, another, because God will not allow me to go to sleep tonight without writing this, then accept it.

when faced with what happened in your life...the heartbreaking childhood...because other people made horrible life decisions that could have ruined the entirety of your childhood...and your life...you must compose the story of your survival. the brutal truth. it is there because you must compose- write, interpret, sing, dance- the truth. not a religious blanket thrown over your life so that it looks like everything is fine now. No, you must face every last sentence of it. it does no good to write platitudes, to write around the subject. we do not want your rubbish. you can make it a poetic journey, yet it reflects nothing. vacuous. what does that accomplish? do you think that God is impressed by a piece of Art, a book, or a random collection of something that is not your heart and soul? 

i lie awake because i had to repent. i tried writing someone else's story. that isn't my job. you have to go back and find out what really happened to you...not what you remember happened to you, but all that you went through, including the truth about your parents. 

one of the key verses in scripture reveals that the Spirit of the Living God can and will reveal everything to you. every point, every angle, every place each character in your story has played. even those who have died. and certainly, those who left you confused. God is not the author of confusion. You may have yelled up at Him as you wandered around, and you can be sure He heard your heart. But, did you hear His heart? He wants to tell the Whole story. What good is it if only part of the story is conveyed? 

God wants you to tell the story. All of it. Good night.

An Interlude

 While I am working on my novel, I shall share with you a series of stories in a series called "The Speckled Seagull." Although I have written a fair number of these, I have not returned much to them in several years. I am revising them, re-orienting them more toward the central character- a woman extracted from her childhood in a different land, where she daily enjoyed the seashore, her father's nurturing love, and a time she desperately longs for. The story deals with her life as a woman, a mother,  a wife, and a 'speckled bird," not the common bird. Enjoy these short pieces.

a day in the school house

 she sharpened her pencil...until it filed down to a mere nub. but she was not there, she was watching a movie in her head...remembering the early days when she would walk with her father, hand-in-hand, her wee little one in his- down along the strand...in the days before America. before she lost him. and he lost her.

it was not the best of times, nor the worst, nor the in-between. not, in a sense, much different from anyone else growing up along the seacoast. she expected nothing but his big clammy hand, a cup of the warm stuff, and always that scrumptious-wool-blanket when the nights chilled her father's features so.

she played by the sea, took in it's breath, drank deep of it, and lived in those salty breezes, but as the pencil stub fell from her hand, she forgot herself and fell back into the present, in her place of exile. and as she cupped the pencil shavings in her hand, she glanced at the boys in the back of the classroom and smiled. for one day, they might grow up to be as tender as her father...

the ruddy-cheeked boy in row 4 raised a hand and the girls around him giggled.

"Uh...may I go to the restroom?"

"Why, of course, Billy. Take the pass and don't forget to sign out," she chirped.

the ruddy-cheeked boy left the room and the class continued working on a mathematics assignment meant to stimulate their secular side. she moved up and down the aisles, careful not to brush any chairs. the students worked feverishly, their pencils squeaking.

"You have ten minutes."

the ruddy-faced boy opened the classroom door, but it did not close. for behind it stood a man in a white collar, and that ubiquitous black outfit they all knew too well. for here at Saint Anne's Preparatory School, the children expected the bellowing voice to find their room, one time of the day or the other.

Father McCallister loved every one of them like his own children. but even more, he loved to read to them, just as his father had read to him. and when he saw the face of the still lovely teacher, he sighed. for she too knew what would come next...every one of them would try to finish early, and their scores might not be as good as the next class. they would enjoy themselves, listening to his tales as he spun them wildly through the air, and they were taken back to a time even he did not remember...a time when sailors sailed into ports of distant lands...

and that made her happy. happier than she had been for years. happy, remembering her childhood...before the boat, the nun, and the long voyage away from Prince Edward Island...

but when the bell rang, and she grabbed her purse and Doctor Scholls from under the teacher desk, she remembered to where she was returning, and why. and she held the purse tightly, her hands clasped like fingers around a throat, and she had a flashback...and saw the face of the child...her child...and the face of the stranger she had once called "love." 

An adolescent's dream

 written during my adolescence

It whispers down on angel's wings,

 raising hands to the shattered sky

this wintry canopy of velvet white

leaves a spark of tears in my eye

the snow globe whirls round and round

like dream and song and sigh

but far from here you are, my dear 

so in my heart, my very soul, i cry.

If you will but seek your inner desire

you'll find that the longing is there

for i am deep inside your heart

embodied in my every prayer.

So come away from where you hide

And join me so that we may be One

And we can leave our pain behind

Like the setting of every sun.

A Note

 Just a quick note to say I will not be posting political pieces anymore as my audience clearly does not like them. It was an attempt to provide a steadier stream of prose while I am composing poetic fiction.

 I'll return with poetry, prose and poetic fiction another time. Currently, I am writing a novel. Later, this summer, I will hopefully have an author website and a creative project available there.

 Until next time, enjoy the 100 plus posts I have written.

Daithi

  

Can you see life in scenes?

if we are observant, we can reflect on the past and re-imagine scenes, memories written and internal, that tell the story of our stories. many of those scenes have primary and secondary veins running through them, like a complete organ or system that one can visualize as part, section, whole, and even sinew. The latter is our bridge, or connection, between the perceived scenes that, like a chain, make up that story.

everything from our experience can be a relatable story for an audience. so, each scene that teaches a lesson, reflects a truth, or encourages one, we can add that scene to our testimony of life lessons.

the same is true for fiction- written or oral. every author tries to tell a story that has continuity, or what we used to call "flow." It is crucial, for the audience, if the story flows...every paragraph slipping into the next, with or without transitory images, words, or phrases. 

so, in the revision process, we can look at those scenes we write where the story "went off" and figure out if we can place one or two, or all of those scenes somewhere within our story.

someone older and more experienced argued that nothing written cannot be used for that story. it may not be in the first five minutes, the first chapter, the first 10 pages, but the idea, or the entire scene may be useful. and upon further reflection, you may find that the scene or idea is better suited for something you composed earlier. That has happened to me multiple times, including a scene that was dramatically creative but did not fit my current novel. Instead, it fit a series of off-the-wall pieces I have strung together as a skeleton for another novel, a comic piece like Catcher In The Rye.

we need not contain this revelation to literary writing either. the idea can be applied to long speeches, business proposals, policy statements, or bills for congress...

Waking up in the Accelerated World

 Like waking up from a dream where you had to fight a fire with whatever clothes could suffocate the flames...I woke up with a sense of urgency to put words on a screen. There is a fire awaiting our graduates and there is no mechanism to put out the flames. No mechanism that does not come with hard work not gathered from the statistical and analytical interpretation of printed pages. 

We are now living in "The Accelerated World." We can no longer just print off a page of whatever Google, ChatGPT, or Grok...an AI entity...responded to our queries. We not only have to interpret that dissemination, we have to do it in a way that defines our answers, that expands our parameters, and that leaves us a loci to build upon a theme. That may sit well with those of us who have accumulated a particular vocabulary or developed a deep sense of analytical discernment, but not those fed a juvenile education lacking those elements enabling the student of life a modus operandi to assimilate themselves into a world where the answers to the questions we ask are beyond their comprehension.

Why am I racing to put out the fire in the dream? Because we have a vast under-achieving class of people who cannot enter the level of thinking necessary to master the AI-influenced world. The system will inherently fail on a greater level as the new world accelerates. Without a rebuilding of the education system in light of that new revolution, we will be producing that underclass, that peasantry, that settles in the basement of the performance charts. 

Because learners are at such a dark disadvantage, those individuals must take the reigns of their own education. The teacher, without proper re-education, cannot be the agent of change since they have been wedded to a now failing approach. The way to enable the graduates of tomorrow to reach the level necessary to succeed in this new world requires critical analysis skills developed from a much more sophisticated and rigorous vocabulary development, with a reading level no educator proposed before. The student must read not two levels more but at least ten levels more than any graduate level entry student. They must reach a vocabulary level and critical analysis skill set we now expect from our doctoral-level students. Unfortunately, for today's secondary teacher, it requires that the intransigent system be removed from the equation so the student may excel. 

The fire is upon us, students, and your goal is to put it out with knowledge you must assimilate. You must rise above the copy and paste and build an intellectual base within that will weather the coming times when intelligence is paramount...or you will be relegated to the peasant class.

the endless melody

 when the music still surrounds 

then envelopes

the lines of your heart...

the cross beat

yours...and mine

shard-white shatters

scattered strands

cold silver tables

side by side by side

breath and bone 

the white cotton and the linen garment

one rising one settling both surrendering

one passing into another

one taste of afterlife

one drop of finality

passage.

Slicing into emotion- a layer beyond

sounds often have a hidden sharpness- combined or alone- as alliteration cuts to the core of an emotion. like a knife she slices open a surface glance, opening a wound, a vale, within. 

the word "sceal" (shkeel) in Irish implies a tale, a story. But "scian" (shkeeun), knife, cuts sharp like sceal. in one sight, those sounds work in conjunction, giving the American, or English-speaking, reader a sense of going deeper. And that is where most poets want to go...beneath the surface.

but it isn't so with much of what i read from other poets...when i do tunnel into that realm i generally avoid- other people's writings. these, too often, are populated by prosaic formulas that read like my failed college compositions and dark attempts at Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright.

Like a last-minute colonoscopy, these wet morsels of old soggy remnants come out, ejected from my system. The shock can be mildly nauseating. The verbiage in these wet morsels reminds me of speed dating...a terse word on one line, followed by two or three, followed by sequences not making a lick of sense. 

suffice to say, if you find yourself creating something not aligned with  fellow creatives in your field, you might want to avoid consuming much of their creations, lest you descend into post-modernism or pseduo-Nihilism. Rather, continue to write your own narrative, sing your own song, create as only you were gifted to create. 

I will, therefore, not compose senseless work of "art" lacking emotion and clarity...unless it is stream of consciousness or soundscript. Neither is in vogue, so I will spare you from such ventures. 

To end this chocolate-enriched dialogue just before midnight, I shall bid you adieu, leaving you with these dipping crumbs to add to your mental soup...if you are going to write poetry, for the sake of decency, please write something that cuts into the skin, rather than reads like the label on a GMO cereal box.