Trips Coming Up; Time to Sign on to Change Your Life, Maybe

Everyone: My Jan and Feb trips are sorely needing clients. Please pass the word: I've got a trip in Jan and another in Feb. Both are 9 1/2 day Jungle Intensives. Both are fantastic. There is a lot of Jungle Medicine, from Ayahuasca to local Shrooms to the Matses' medicines Sapo and Nu-Nu. There is also riverboat travel, walks in pristine high jungle and a primordial swamp that might blow your mind; night canoeing on a beautiful tributary of the Amazon way, way deep in the jungle. There is wild food collecting with the Matses, bows and arrows, medicine walks and a whole lot more. It's the best package of fantastic things to do that I can come up with after more than 30 years playing in that jungle. The 9 1/2 days will feel like a year's worth of growth. The trips are costly at $2200, but past airfare and walking around money, which you supply, there are no other costs. And there are a couple of scholarships, which are worth $400, making the trip cost $1800, available for those to whom it means coming or not coming.
    You've got to decide. A lot of you have already been with me on these. You know the value. This is real jungle and no one else is offering it. It's also well protected because the trips are small and my team always outnumbers the guests. So if you've been thinking about ayahuasca and the jungle, or if you just want to see and be in and feel real Amazon jungle, deep jungle, then the time is here to jump in, spend your savings, borrow a couple of bucks on your credit cards and get with the program. These are very unusual and wonderful and eye opening and sometimes life-changing trips. No fooling.
   But if you hesitate, you lose. So contact me at peterg9 at yahoo.com or at info@pgorman.com and jump into it! You got nothing to lose and a whole heck of a lot to gain. More detailed info at pgorman.com under the TOURS button.

Fear Plays Badly with Us

I have been reading what the Republican candidates for the presidency have been saying about President Obama's having agreed to accept 10,000 Syrian refugees in the next year. They are now, after the terrible and heartbreaking and heart wrenching and punk coward attacks in Paris, all claiming that it would be crazy, or worse, to allow those refugees to find refuge on our shores and soil. Ben Carson mentioned 200,000 refugees; Ted Cruz talked about the "tens of thousands" of refugees; Donald Trump talked about the "Trojan Horse" these refugees could be; Jeb Bush said we should only accept Christian refugees, not Muslims; Carly Fiorina talked about Obama's plan to "unilaterally" allow refugees to enter the US.
    These are phony talking points. Just lies. The plan calls for 10,000 over the course of a year, all carefully screened--which probably means no males between the ages of 12 through 40--not 200,000, and certainly not unilaterally, without screening.
   I recognize the terror that terrorists create. I recognize that several related/coordinated murderous events can make it seem as if the whole world is on the brink of falling apart. But I don't think it is. But I agree with the one or two pundits who say that the entire plan of ISIL is to provoke enough rage at all Muslims that Europe and the U.S and Canada and Australia and others will refuse refuge to the refugees who are leaving everything behind in order to escape the violence in their homelands. If those Muslims can be denied refuge or marginalized into refugee camps, they will certainly grow bitter, or a lot of them will. Some of those will then become terrorists. Others who already have citizenship in the various Western countries will see their refugee brethren isolated or eliminated out of fear sown by attacks like those in Paris and they too might become terrorists. Fear plays into the hands of terrorists; everyone becomes a potential enemy when you're afraid of your shadow. And, of course, the truism remains true: The only thing to fear is fear itself. Fear is what builds up the walls between people. Fear causes isolation, not acceptance. And that, particularly now, would play very, very directly into the terrorists' hands.

Sausage, Pepper and Onions

So I was in the mood to feel like a (pardon me, we used to be allowed to say this when I grew up in Queens, NY) Guinea, someone from Sicily today and wanted sausage and peppers.
    So I went to the store, bought two pounds of fresh HOT sausage, 4 green peppers, 3 red peppers, 2 large onions, 2 large tomatoes.
    I got home, stabbed all the sausage on both sides, maybe 10 times, then put them in a pot of water and put it on high. I wanted to get rid of the excess fat which comes out like a cloud on the boiling water the sausages are in.
    Then I cleaned and sliced three heads of garlic and put it in olive oil. About three tablespoons of oil for all that chopped garlic.
    Then I washed and cleaned 4 large green peppers and three large red peppers and two large red onions.
    I slided the peppers and onions into thin slices--no, not julienne, just thin slices that non-anorexics might use--and did the same with a huge beefsteak tomato and three Roma tomatoes (what I had).
    When the sausage was done, I pulled it, cooled it and sliced it into round sausage pieces. I put that on a hot stove burner in garlic and olive oil to brown both sides. Then I added the onion, then I added the peppers, and finally the tomato slices. Then salt and pepper--sea salt and butcher ground black pepper. It's simmering now.
    I've got rice, nice basmati rice, cooling down.
    When the rice is done, the sausage and peppers will be done. If it needs seasoning, I'll figure out something. But meanwhile, it's a basic, traditional recipe that will not steer you wrong.
Bon Appetit!

New cover story in the Fort Worth Weekly

We've been over-incarcerating for decades in the USA. That's beginning to change. Here's my new cover story from the Fort Worth Weekly newspaper on that subject. It's important, so spend a few minutes and read the thing. Thanks.
http://www.fwweekly.com/2015/11/11/not-another-brick-in-the-wall/

I evidently don't know how to make a live link, so here's the whole darned story:

Not another brick in the wall

After nearly 40 years of stuffing prisons with nonviolent offenders, some states and the U.S. government are beginning to see the light.

0

Posted November 11, 2015 by Peter Gorman in News

Not Another Brick in the Wall? Illustration by Vlad Alvarez.

Jason Hernandez began selling marijuana in his McKinney neighborhood in 1992, when he was 15. At first, it was baggies, but within a couple of years he moved up to moving pounds. From there he moved on to selling crack cocaine, and by his own admission he was good at it.

“It’s what I did,” he said. “It’s what everyone in my neighborhood did at that time.”

And everything was working nicely for him until March 16, 1998, just about a month after his 21st birthday. That’s when the police came and arrested him. His crime? Conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine and methamphetamine, along with several other conspiracy charges.

But there wasn’t a speck of cocaine, crack, methamphetamine, or any other illegal drug on Hernandez, who thought it odd that the cops simply patted him down and didn’t search his place or car. “I didn’t have anything, but it turned out I wasn’t really the one they were after.”

Other dealers in the neighborhood had been picked up by the police, and when asked who their supplier was, many named Hernandez.

The feds took the case, and he was offered eight years if he would testify against another dealer. He wouldn’t. He went to trial, and a dozen people testified against him.

Jason Hernandez at age 23 with his 3 year old son. Courtesy of Jason Hernandez.

“I’m not going to deny what I did,” he told the Fort Worth Weekly. “I did sell drugs, but they didn’t catch me with any. It was a dry conspiracy.”

His sentence as a first-time offender convicted of a conspiracy in which no drugs were found? Life without parole. Plus 20 years. And another 20. And another 20. And another 20. And then 40 more years, and 40 more, and then 60 years on top of that, all to be served consecutively. And then eight years of parole and a $6,000 fine, just in case he outlived life without parole and the additional 200 years.

Hernandez’ case is not unique, though the sentence was unusually harsh. Hundreds of people around the country are serving life-without parole for first-time nonviolent drug offenses. Some are serving in state penitentiaries, some in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Hundreds of thousands of other offenders are serving lesser but still harsh sentences for nonviolent drug offenses.

Jason Hernandez: “I’ve got to do well out here, so that other people get the chance.” Courtesy of Jason Hernandez

How such harsh drug sentencing came about is a mosaic of fear mongering, political expediency, and the tenor of the times. Its roots run deep, from the first anti-opium laws, aimed at the Chinese population in San Francisco near the end of the 19th century, through newspaper publisher William Randolph Hurst’s relentless war on marijuana that culminated in its being made illegal in 1937. President Richard Nixon declared a war on all illegal drugs in 1971 and then created the Drug Enforcement Administration to fight that war. That same year, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller signed into law the harshest drug sentences in the United States. Politicians began outdoing one another to appear tough on drug crime. Add to that the federal mandatory minimum sentencing for drug crimes that was put in place in the 1980s, and several states’ Three-Strikes-You’re-Out laws in the 1900s, and the elimination of federal parole, and by the turn of the century, the United States had become incarceration nation.

Despite having both the highest percentage of its population behind bars and the highest total number of people in the criminal justice system, crime in the United States didn’t slow down at all. The harsh sentences didn’t appear to be a deterrent to drug crimes. The loss of early release on the federal level and the removal of safety nets once prisoners were released — including a ban on food stamps and the use of federally subsidized housing for felons — only caused recidivism rates to rise, which in turn led to prison over-crowding. The vast amounts of public monies being spent on keeping prisoners in prison were cut back on the rehabilitation end of the criminal justice system: In many prisons, libraries, GED classes, job training, and drug and alcohol therapy were frequently eviscerated or eliminated. Prisoners were being released with fewer and fewer options with which to successfully reintegrate to society.

It all came to a head in 2007 in Texas, when the state was faced with either building new prisons or finding out some other way to handle criminal justice. Surprisingly, Texas politicians said no to new prisons and embarked on changing their approach to incarceration. Other states and the feds took notice. In 2014, changes in federal sentencing laws allowed some drug felons to get out a couple of years early. In 2013, President Barack Obama stepped into the fray and commuted the sentences of eight drug offenders. And a bipartisan bill that would allow thousands of offenders to avoid prison altogether is expected to become federal law in early 2016.

“Somewhere in all of this, we, as a country, have modified our thinking and approach to criminal imprisonment,” said Mary Price, general counsel for Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), an organization fighting to eliminate mandatory drug sentencing. “And that’s partly because we’ve learned that public safety is not harmed when we don’t use prisons to address all these issues.”

Hernandez was one of 21 people granted clemency by Obama in November 2013. Of those, 13 were full pardons for people who had already finished serving their sentences, mostly for minor drug crimes. The other eight, which included Hernandez, were all sentence commutations for people serving at least 20 years — mostly life without parole — all for crack. Hernandez, who was serving time at the medium security federal penitentiary in El Reno, Okla., was overjoyed.

“I had written to so many people about my case and about eight other inmates who were in prison with me,” Hernandez said, “almost all of whom were serving life without parole for nonviolent first-time drug offenses. Most people wouldn’t believe we were all serving those sentences for nonviolent drug crimes.”

One who did was Michelle Alexander, an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.

Alexander connected Hernandez with the ACLU, with whom she had worked for several years with the Racial Justice Project in Northern California.

“The ACLU really led the charge for me,” Hernandez said. “And then I got the notice that my sentence was being commuted to 20 years, plus my parole and the $6,000 fine. I held that paper with President Obama’s signature on it for two days. I wouldn’t let it go. I was afraid it would disappear.”

Hernandez was moved to a halfway house in Hutchins, Texas, for a year and then released on August 11, 2015.

“I was the lucky one out of the El Reno group,” he said. “None of the other guys got their sentences reduced.”

Obama has since upped the ante on commuting sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. He commuted eight more in December 2014, and then 46 more in July 2015. All of them had served more than 10 years in prison. Many, like Hernandez, were due to die behind bars.

But before Obama began commuting a handful of the unduly harsh sentences levied against first-time non-violent drug offenders, several states had already begun making changes in incarceration policies for the same type of criminals. Surprisingly, the state that’s led the charge is Texas.

 ******

“Texas has certainly led the way,” said Holly Harris, executive director of the Justice Action Network, a national nonprofit devoted to reforming the criminal justice system. “What has been found during the decades of mass incarceration is that being tough on crime does not make us safer. The opposite is true. And Texas is the gold standard on this. Since they began implementing reforms in about 2007, most of Texas has the lowest crime rate it’s had since 1968.”

Douglas Smith: “Incarceration has decimated entire communities in Texas.”

Douglas Smith, a policy analyst with the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes smart justice policies in Texas, knows that mass incarceration is not the answer.

“Incarceration has decimated entire communities in Texas,” he told the Weekly. “We’ve got over 700 people per 100,000 in our prisons in Texas, about seven times the incarceration rate of the U.K., which has the highest incarceration rate in Europe. But Texas recognized that it went too far.”

In 1993, a tough-on-crime penal code went into effect in Texas, which saw the number of people behind bars in the state skyrocket from 64,000 to 156,000 in 2007. That year, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice asked the legislature for $523 million to build three new prisons to account for the anticipated influx of new prisoners by 2012. It seemed like a no-brainer. The Chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, John Whitmire, a conservative Democrat from Houston, had helped usher in those tough-on-crime codes. In the House, Jerry Madden, a Republican from Plano, was chairman of the House Criminal Justice Committee.

“But they surprised everyone and didn’t do it,” Smith marveled. “They didn’t build the prisons.”

What they did, according to Governing.com, a website covering state and local governments, was team up and convince the legislature, Governor Rick Perry, and Lt. Governor David Dewhurst “to spend $241 million on treatment, mental health, and rehabilitation instead.”

Among the changes implemented with those funds, Smith said, was providing funding to county drug-diversion courts that try to steer people with nonviolent drug felonies toward rehabilitation rather than prison.

“Texas lawmakers also expanded the number of substance abuse and DWI treatment beds in the in-prison therapeutic communities, particularly for the longer treatment programs,” Smith said. “And then they also increased the number of halfway houses for those prisoners on release and increased after-care for them once they were released from the halfway houses.”

The result of those changes was a 30 percent reduction in parole revocations.

“We are still sitting on about 150,000 people in Texas prisons,” Smith said, “so we’ve got a very long way to go. But that might have been more than 170,000 by now if those changes hadn’t been implemented. Add to that vocational training, helping prisoners earn their GEDs, [and] helping them get jobs on the outside, and the result is less crime and fewer people in prison.”

What needs to happen next in Texas, Smith said, is to address the probation system in the state.

“Probation revocation is absolutely one of the drivers of mass incarceration in Texas,” he said. “Why? Because if you are poor, unemployed, a drug addict, or faced with overcoming mental illness, you don’t stand a chance on probation. The demands are simply too great. You have to pay for probation itself, pay a portion of your monitoring costs and a portion of your own classes. Too many probation departments in the state rely on those fees to pay the salaries of the people in those departments.”

Probation, Smith said, is supposed to be a time to partake in community service, address the reasons you committed your crime, and think about ways you can change your behavior.

“Unfortunately,” Smith said, “a major part of the probation meeting is ‘Did you bring the money?’ not ‘How is the job search going, and can I help you with anything?’ ”

While Texas still has a way to go, according to the Justice Action Network’s Harris, 30 other states have implemented Texas’ reforms and have seen similar successes –– and only eight years after Texas’ plan got underway.

The federal government also has begun to move in a similar direction.

“The first major change in the federal system involved the Inspector General of the Department of Justice placing the reduction of federal prison overcrowding on a short list of management challenges three or four years ago,” said FAMM’s Price.

“What was happening was that lawmakers realized we were spending money to lock people up that could be better spent on deterrents to those crimes. Every dollar spent on incarceration was a dollar that could not be spent on prosecuting really bad guys or keeping people out of jail. And we know now that it’s bad for public safety if everybody just gets locked up rather than dealing with drug offenders by getting them off drugs. We needed to spend our criminal justice dollars more wisely.”

Marc Mauer: “Not everyone who is applying is getting approved.”

The first major policy change in that direction occurred in 2014, when the Sentencing Commission, an independent agency in the judicial branch of government that sets sentencing guidelines and policies for federal courts, made a key alteration in drug sentencing policy. While the commission could not reduce mandatory minimum sentences below the 5-10-20-year structured plateaus, the group was able to eliminate some sentencing enhancements that gave someone with five years a seven- or eight-year sentence.

Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit working for reforms in sentencing law and alternatives to incarceration, explained: “Only the enhancement guidelines are affected. You cannot go below the mandatory minimum in your case. But if you had a 10-year mandatory minimum, and it was enhanced by two years, it can now be dropped back to the basic 10 years.”

Shortly after the commission made the change, the group made it retroactive. The result: Roughly 46,000 drug offenders in the federal prison system will be eligible to apply for early release — most will get one or two years, but some might get a four-year reduction — in the next several years. A little more than 6,000 of those offenders were released over the weekend of October 30 and November 2, with another 8,550 up for release by November 1, 2016.

In the first group of 6,000, roughly two-thirds were sent to halfway houses or placed under house arrest. The other 2,000 are foreigners, who will quickly be deported. Almost 600 of those prisoners were released in Texas, leading some people to bemoan the fact that our streets will be overrun with criminals. But Smith scoffs at that.

“I believe 578 of those released are returning to Texas,” he said, “but the Texas Department of Criminal Justice releases more than 70,000 per year, so the difference won’t be noticed.”

Smith does concede that with reentry resources extremely limited and with no new federal programs in place to help those released early, any additional influx will strain the community. “But the number is so relatively small,” he said, “I don’t think it will be a huge issue.”

Surprisingly, there has been little pushback against the reformed guidelines. New York City Police Commissioner Bill Bratton has voiced his concern that the mass release will put dangerous criminals on the streets. On a recent radio broadcast with John Catsimatidis, Bratton said, “One of the issues of concern is when people go to jail, oftentimes they go to jail with negotiated charges, if you will, so that somebody that is in jail [who] seems like they’re a nonviolent drug offender may in fact have crimes of violence in their record.”

Bratton pointed to the case of Tyrone Howard, a young man with a record of 28 arrests who shot and killed New York City Police Detective Randolph Holder on October 20. Howard had been arrested for a shooting in 2009 — he was not indicted for that — but he was sent to a drug diversion program rather than prison for a recent drug bust.

The Sentencing Commission is hoping such horror stories do not play out now. To avoid any potential problems, each prisoner will have to apply for his or her sentence reduction. Their histories will be evaluated.

“Every one of these prisoners has to be approved by a judge,” Mauer said. “And not everyone who is applying is getting approved. Thus far, about three out of four have been approved, but that other 25 percent has been denied. So they are getting some scrutiny.”

The early release of some drug offenders is a very good start, Mauer said, but it’s only a start: “It’s symbolically very significant because it’s the federal system, but it’s also only a start because it only affects the federal system. We need to do it in every state as well. And then the mandatory minimum issue needs to be addressed as well.”

Bob Libal of Grassroots Leadership, an organization working to eliminate private prisons, agreed with Mauer’s assessment: “It is a very good start toward drawing down the extremely punitive way we’ve treated people for drug offenses. Drug issues are representative of how we lock people up for so many things in our society, from addiction to mental health issues, to poverty. But we’re going to need changes on the state and local levels as well as the federal level.”

 ******

The bill is largely based on the Corrections Act that Sens. John Cornyn (above) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced earlier this year.

The biggest change in the federal approach to sentencing may arrive in early 2016. Authored by Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015 recently made it out of committee and will likely be voted on early in the 2016 session of Congress. According to a press release by Texas Senator John Cornyn, the bill is “largely based on the Corrections Act [that] Sens. Cornyn and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced earlier this year that builds on successful reforms implemented in Texas that reduced crime and saved taxpayers more than $2 billion.”

Among the bill’s provisions, it reduces enhanced penalties for repeat drug offenders and eliminates the three-strike mandatory-life provision for all but offenders with serious violent priors. It also will allow low-level drug offenders, even ones facing a 10-year minimum, to be placed in treatment rather than prison.

Just as importantly, the bill will require the Department of Justice to “conduct risk assessments to classify all federal inmates and to use the results to assign inmates to appropriate recidivism reduction programs, including work and education programs, drug rehabilitation, job training, and faith-based programs.”

Those prisoners who complete those programs can see their sentences reduced and spend as much as the last quarter of their sentences in home confinement or a halfway house.

Libby Hambleton, Cornyn’s deputy press secretary, told the Weekly that the bill “will make it mandatory for federal prisoners to be offered vocational training, schooling, and a host of other programs that will make their transition to the world outside of prison a less turbulent experience and one which would arm those former prisoners with better tools to help succeed and lower recidivism.”

With the backing of a wide swath of conservatives and liberals in Congress, as well as the blessing of both the ACLU and the Koch brothers’ political arm, ALEC, the bill is expected to meet little resistance on its way to passage. If passed, it would be the first real chink in the mandatory minimum wall.

Matt Simpson, an ACLU attorney, sees the bill as an important step: “Pulling people from their community and incarcerating them creates reentry problems for them down the road. But if you can keep them on probation or in a treatment center and in their community, it will sidestep undermining their social support network. There are major benefits to avoid incarceration.”

One of the key elements to the bill that struck Smith deals with reintegration: “The bill says the prison has to work with someone for at least six months prior to their release to plan on their reentry into the non-prison world. That’s the most crucial time if you want to prevent the person from coming back to prison. You need to help them plan for the transition because they’re about to face major barriers with housing and employment while they’re trying to reintegrate.”

Jason Hernandez knows he’s one of the lucky ones. His mother and father were still alive when he got out in August, and they welcomed him home. “Having a place to stay is so important,” he said. “If I didn’t have them, I’d probably be living on the street. And if you don’t have a place to stay, well, they can revoke your parole.”

Hernandez doesn’t claim the world is perfect for him: “It’s not like life is going beautifully for me, because it’s not. I have my down times. But compared to waking up every day for the last 17 years thinking I was going to die in prison, it’s great. But there’s lots of jobs I can’t get, and some girls who won’t date me once they find out I’ve been in prison.”

Hernandez said that some of the people getting out of prison, even with good tools, are going to reoffend. “But what’s the solution? Just letting them die in prison? It’s hard to get back into life, and not everyone is going to make it.”

The absence of safety nets for former prisoners bothers Hernandez a great deal, although even that is beginning to move in a positive direction: while food stamps were federally banned for drug felons in 1996, most states have since loosened those laws, but the SNAP benefits generally come with strings. In Texas, first time drug felons regained the right to receive the benefits on Sept 1 of this year, though a parole violation gets them suspended for two years, and a second drug conviction reinstates the lifetime ban. Federal educational grants have become available for most drug offenders as well, but come with qualifiers that many cannot meet.

  

“Look, we’re all but banned from getting Section 8 housing. And if you don’t have a place to live, you’re in trouble,” said Hernandez. “And we often owe 10-15 years of back child support on top of whatever fines we have to pay. There are some churches that might help you out, but other than that there is basically nothing. You’re on your own.”

He was particularly happy to hear Obama say that he was banning the box on applications for federal employment that asks if a person has ever been convicted of a felony: “I didn’t get a single interview from any application where I checked that box. It was only when I got to meet someone face-to-face, and he said, ‘Hey, you look like a pretty good guy. I’ll give you a chance,’ that I got a job. Banning the box is fantastic. At least get to meet the person before you find out they have a prison record.”

Society, Hernandez said, should offer everyone coming out of prison the basics: food, housing, and a chance at a job. He has a full-time job as a welder and works part-time as a kitchen mentor at Café Momentum in Dallas, whose owners hire only formerly incarcerated youngsters and train them in all aspects of restaurant work during a year-long program. Hernandez also talks to at-risk kids about his life experience.

“I know how lucky I am,” he said. “And I know I’ve got to do well out here, so that other people get the chance.”

Others will get the chance, FAMM”s Price said: “I think the momentum from impossibly harsh sentencing for nonviolent drug crimes has changed. I don’t think we’ll go back to the way we did it again.”

Cover Story Due, Thinking Meatloaf, Making Chicken...

You know, I had this freaking great cover story due on the 25 of November. I started collecting my info, making my "people to call" list, doing a few interview. Nice and easy. Started to prep my office/living space for painting with a nice new bright pink and then I get notice that my story has been moved up two weeks and can I get 4500 words down on paper for a cover in 5 days. HAHAHAHA! Yeah, sure.
   But of course, yeah, sure. I'm a freaking gunslinger when it comes to getting good material out and I love to be challenged. This story is about the changes to our approach to incarceration and sentencing that have been happening for a couple of years on the state and federal level. And though lots of writers have taken on one or two of the key elements, I have not seen any story that takes on all of them. That's the beauty of being a weekly: We get to look at the story from a distance since we're not competing to get the scoop generally. Our vision from that distance makes its own scoop.
   So I kicked butt, made the calls, made more calls, typed the phone interviews till my fingers were falling off and then today, the day before the story is due, and the day before it's going to press--there is no margin of error here--I was back on the phone at 8:30 AM and then again at 9AM. All good. Got what I want in the bag. Problem? How to turn the 14,000 words of interviews with 15 people plus the six official government papers, plus the 27 newpaper and internet clips into a story in less than 24 hours.
   So what could I do? I volunteered to drive Madeleina to school 90- minutes away, which killed three hours but gave me time to ruminate. Then I sat down and plunked out 1,400 words, the opening section, and outlined the next three sections and the end.
   Then my sister wrote to say she was making a meatloaf lover a meatloaf and did the recipe she took a picture of measure up? It was a good recipe, actually. But then I gave her mine, with all measures in general common sense. If I say garlic and onions minced and sauteed, obviously, for 2 1/2 pounds of meat I mean about 4 tablespoons of minced garlic in olive oil and one large red onion, maybe 12 ounces. Common sense, right?
So this is what I gave her:
My basic meatloaf:
Beef and pork, mix. About 1 1/2 pounds of ground chuck; 1 pound of ground pork (I used to do veal until I stopped using veal)
Saute pan: chopped garlic, onion and two sticks cerely; saute in olive oil if you have it; salt and pepper, add two diced roma tomatoes and cook thoroughly, then add all to the raw meat in a bowl.
Add breadcrumbs—maybe a cup or so—two whole eggs, some ketchup and a bit of Worstershire. Mustard or mustard powder if you like. A little sage or fresh parsley (chopped) if you like. Mix all thoroughly. Check for salt and pepper.
   Put in baking dish, cover with three/four slices bacon, put in oven (on silver foil so it won't drip into oven when it rises).
   Bake at 350 for about 70 minutes, turn down to 300 for last 20 minutes. pull from oven, pour off fat, let cool a bit before slicing and serving with mashed or boiled potatoes and a good green veg.

Of course, now that I'm starving for meatloaf, I'm making simple chicken thighs, dressed in olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper, served with a bit of basmati rice, a salad, and broccoli. It's gonna be good, but not as good at the meatloaf. And I hope my editor doesn't see this or he'll think I'm goofing off!!!! I think of it as meditation time.
Bon Appetite!

Keystone XL Denied

On Friday, Nov. 6, President Obama gave the word that the Keystone XL pipeline, intended to carry tar sands bitumen from Alberta, Canada to Cushing, OK, would not be approved. In announcing the decision, President Obama, speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House said simply: “The State Department has decided that the Keystone XL pipeline would not serve the national interest of the United States. I agree with that decision.”

The pipeline would have carried the bitumen from Canada to Cushing, then on to Houston’s refineries and from there to Port Arthur, a tax-free zone, for shipment to China and other foreign ports. TransCanada, the energy giant, has acknowledged that the tar sands bitumen was slated for overseas markets, and that once the pipeline was built would produce only 35 or 40 permanent jobs in the U.S.

Environmentalists around the country and world cheered the pipeline rejection because of the dangers the pipeline. The material is almost impossible to clean up and the line would have passed over the Ogallala aquifer, which supplies fresh water for the breadbasket of the U.S. Others cheered because the pipeline would have given a foreign company the right of eminent domain for profit. Still others cheered the line’s rejection because the pipe would have produced nothing—fuel or jobs or taxes—for the U.S., while TransCanada and the Koch brothers, who have a potential $100 billion windfall invested in Canadian tar sands, would have made enormous amounts of money at the risk of U.S. taxpayers who would be responsible for any spill clean up.

Despite all those drawbacks with no upside, Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan called the decision by the State Department and President Obama “sickening”.

Two days prior to Obama’s announcement, TransCanada had asked that their request for the pipeline permit be suspended, which would have allowed them to activate it at a future date. Secretary of State John Kerry denied that request. That denial is significant: it means that if TransCanada decides to pursue the Keystone XL in the future, it will be starting from ground zero in the permitting process.

So Tired of Being Fat

I am so tired of being fat. I am serious. I spent my life as an athlete. A mediocre athlete, but an athlete none the less. I was playing street handball till I was near 50 (before we moved to Texas and there are no damned courts here) two hours, twice or three times a week. I rode my bike on NYC streets 10 miles daily. When I gave that up I fast-walked five miles daily. I played shortstop for the High Times Bonghitters and we won the journalism softball league two years in a row. I did sit ups, pushups and basic stuff.
    Then my body went nuts: intestine exploded, setting me back a lot; then the septic spider bite set me back for months; then the freaking flesh-eating leg disorder came around and set me back again. Now I'm fat. And I'm gonna be on television in January or December and I'm gonna talk and be cool but I'm gonna be fat!!! And I don't like it. I just drink too much wine. My food diet is great. Even last night, when I felt like indulging, I had 1/2 of a rib eye steak sauteed in garlic with onions, grilled tomatoes, salad with a balsamic vinagrette (2-1 balsamic vinager to oil), and mushrooms in the pan juice. No starch. C'mon, I'm not supposed to get fat from that. I had three glasses of wine for goodness sake. I didn't eat in the middle of the night.
   I know it's my fault, my doing. If I cut out all alcohol, cut out sweet and low with my coffee, and added an hour or two of exercise I'd lose weight. But I've already cut out candy--years ago--Ice cream is a once-a-month thing, I have starch maybe 3 times a week--generally basmati rice or potatoes in a dish, with bread once a week. I have almost cut out mayonaise entirely. So it must be the wine. But I'm not even drinking enough to get high! So I object!
   Worse, I'm gonna be subjected to being on tv as a fat pig in the next couple of months. Rrrrrrrrrrr. Time to do something about that.

Well, I just talked myself out of a good gig...

I don't always operate in my best financial interests. I tend to make enough to get by, then give it away as fast as I can. Finish the mortgage and you'd think I'd have that extra $1400 a month in my pocket. No chance. Give some to my wife/ex-wife; give a bunch to my beautiful daughter Madeleina so she's got spending bucks at college. Bring a lot of people into the house and feed them hysterically well and refuse any recompense. There goes that $1,400.
   That's just one example of thousands. I'm still drinking my wine, so I'm obviously not giving it all away, but probably more than I have to give away.
   And over the last week or two, I gave away a possible gift horse. It was the right thing to do, so I'm not going to regret it, but there are little pangs running through me like razor blades this second.
   What's going on is that two friends who have been on trips with me to Peru decided to start a business there. During conversations with them I suggested that a restaurant with me at the helm might help bring clients to their other businesses and keep a cash flow going. They liked it and liked the restaurant I've been secretly planning for some time.
    I made a couple of other suggestions as well, all as adjuncts to their plans--and no, I'm not going to go into their plans here cause that's nobody's business but theirs.
   Then they went their way and I went mine.
   The two of them showed up at my house about two weeks ago. They were excited, full of moxy and energy and ready to go with a business plan that would revolve around Peter Gorman. There would be the Gorman restaurant; a Gorman club, some Gorman products; Gorman tours; Gorman executive trips to the Amazon--all sorts of all things Gorman. It sounded very sweet and was a tremendous ego stroke.
   Until I realized that I had to be straight with them. I said that everything I'd suggested would work in conjunction with their plans, but that given my experience in Peru, none of what I suggested would individually or even aggregately pay for 4 gringo salaries, space rental, space preparation, apartment rental for those four gringos, etc. No business in Iquitos can do that. I pointed to the successful restaurants in Iquitos that serve tourists and Peruvians with enough money to pay for high end food: Three are owned by gringos who are married to smart Peruvian women; three are owned by Peruvians. None of them have to support four gringos, and none of them could. Their restaurants pay for themselves and make a nice living for the owners but none could do what our restaurant would have to do to support itself with that many gringos feeding at the trough.
   I gave them numbers. I had them use calculators: The end result was that our restaurant would need more dinner clients than any of the successful tourist-aimed restaurants currently serve. And with Iquitos being charming because it's difficult to reach, your tourist volume isn't going to get any bigger with walk-ins.
  It took me several days of going over different aspects of Gorman world and how each project I proposed was part of a puzzle that would succeed, but each would succeed on a limited scope because of the potential number of clients in town at a given time. Iquitos is not New York City with 100,000 people walking past your doors daily.
  And they concluded that I was right. And so the work I was going to start next week was canceled. And they were smart to do that. I've lost a good opportunity. I did the right thing, and I will sleep better knowing that I didn't talk my friends into spending money they could not recoup. And I'm glad I did, but it somehow still feels like I gave myself a raw deal.

All Hat, No Cattle

Okay, I admit it, I wrote this on FaceB and then realized I should have written it here. I was reminded of the old Texas description of a dumb cowboy: All Hat, No Cattle. So here goes:
Last few days I've gotten several pics of President Barack Obama and his wife with the general title of: "Only 15 more months till they're gone. Like if you agree. Let's get a good Republican in there."
My response is to write HAHAHAHA! Lincoln and Roosevelt (Teddy), are long gone. And even Goldwater would not be accepted by the current crew of zanies. Who do they want? Dimwitted Carson who looks to be on so many meds you WANT to forgive him from being so completely stupid on every stinking issue; You want Trump? The New York loudmouth who functions well in NYC but would have this country in hot water with 30 countries in a week if president, and then would try to send national guard into the homes where suspected illegals live. Wow. Or completely crazy Cruz, who is proof positive that affirmative action occasionally fails with his Harvard presence; Rubio? The little Cubano whose father fought WITH Castro but talks about how his father escaped Castro in order to capture the Miami Cuban votes? Maybe Fiorina, whose claim to fame is running two companies into the dirt, killing tens of thousand of jobs, and walking away with a pile of money the companies gave her to disappear before she did more damage. Or Santorum, whose name on the internet perfectly describes this utterly phony Catholic; Or do they want Christie, who has never resisted an impulse in his life, to have the red phone at 3 AM if someone calls to interrupt him while he's eating a bacon and mayo sandwich? Let's go with Jeb Bush, who destroyed Florida and is trying to convince us that his brother kept us safe by invading Iraq at the behest of Dick Cheney and Haliburton? 
I would not invite any of these people to a block party, much less to a presidential debate. Hell, Lindsay "I'm not gay, just effeminate" Graham, is better than all of those people. And effeminate is his best feature! Hell, even Kasich, if you don't look at his religious-right belief, sounds better than all of them. YIKES! What the hell are republicans thinking with this motley crew of absolute dumb ass losers? They are certainly not thinking about the well-being of this country!

Crazy World

So I was thinking about some things today, some serious stuff, when the cover of my book, Sapo in My Soul, popped into my head. It probably popped into my head because an Italian publisher is going to print a copy in Italian and he'd asked for the photo files.
    When this thought popped into my head, I had to write to Morgan Maher, the designer of the book and a guy who has several of his photos in the book, including the cover picture. (To see it, go to amazon dot com and punch in Peter Gorman in books and the cover will pop up.) And this is what I wrote him:
Morgan: Crazy, right? Some things just pop into my head insanely. Like this: You are probably the first person in the history of the world as we know it who has ever put a picture of a stretched out frog while it was being milked for its venom on the cover of a book. 

   First person in the history of the world. Whew! We waited 6-8-40 billion years for you to come along and do that. And there you were and did it. Another first in a world where people don't think there is anything new under the sun. HA!

Gor

   There is lots of new stuff under the sun. Go out and be part of it everybody. It's a damned exhilarating feeling!

Saying Goodbye to My Surgeon

This might seem silly to most of you, but yesterday my surgeon and I said goodbye. We both didn't like it. Neither one of us was looking forward to it. Here's the deal. When I first met Dr. Ronny Ford from Huguley Hospital it was shortly before surgery on my right calf, which was being absolutely destroyed by four flesh-eating viruses—basically, I think, a staph cocktail that was out of control. He took care of that in July, 2013, with two operations. By luck, and with his help, and the help of the staff, my leg and life were saved.
    In January or Feb of 2014, Dr. Ford gave me a skin graft from flesh he took off my upper right thigh. That measured about 6" by 10 ". During most of those months, I was seeing him as I got better every week or two. After the skin graft I also saw him every week or two. He's nice and his assistant Anne is nice and I always enjoyed the visits. Evette at the front desk is also nice: Everybody gets 5-Star ratings from me.
   We started spacing the visits to once a month about six months after the graft, but one year later, in Feb of 2015, the leg reinfected and I've been seeing him every week since then, except for my time in Peru.
   But yesterday, we both had to admit, it's better. Nothing to be done. And you know what? That was sort of sad. I love my visits to Dr. Ford. I'll miss Annie's Irish elfin sense of humor as she tells me my blood pressure isn't so bad, but that I should take it easy on the wine. I'll miss the couple of minutes a week when Dr. Ford scraped the Sh.t out of my leg and I had to bite my tongue sometimes to keep from screaming.
   Crazy, right? I mean, just a habit, right?
   Yes, both of those. But it was also a connection with a few very special healers, who heal in a very immediate world of surgery. And they did it with style and substance and character and fun and that is a great combination. And that's why I was sad when we had to say goodbye yesterday. My leg doesn't need him anymore. But my spirit still does! Damnit!

Another Glorious Food Leftovers Piece

Ah, so this is going to be another food blog? Another leftover food blog? Why does this guy keep writing stuff like this? Can't he stick to politics or ayahuasca or even his family? How are his damned dogs anyway?
    Thanks for asking. The dogs are find. Boots got joined by Blackie a couple of months ago. He came, he stayed, we fed him. Now a younger version of Blackie has come along--so alike that I think she may be Blackie's daughter--out of nowhere and appears likely to stay awhile as well. So now I have to cook a lot of chicken legs daily.
   But those are not the leftovers here. What happened was a friend came in Thursday for several days. From Arizona, I think. Then another friend flew in on Friday from New York, just about the time that Madeleina got home from college for the weekend.
   Not sure what people would want considering the hour, I made a batch of good taco ground beef--yeah, I'm making a lot of that lately to make up for all the years I never did--and got a good head of organic iceberg lettuce, a nice avocado, some shredded cheddar, taco sauce, and hard taco shells. That would cover me if Chepa and the girls came over, if Italo came over, or Marco, or whomever. To go with that, I made a spaghetti squash. Baked it with a bit of butter, and when it was done put it in a saute pan that had lots of garlic and diced red pepper in it, added a bit more butter and voila!
   Then I made a large pan of Uncle Clem's Chicken--Madeleina's favorite treat. You take chicken breasts, cut them into smallish--siingle bite--pieces, flour them and sear them in olive oil with a bit of garlic, good cracked black pepper and pink sea salt. Then you get an absurd amount of broccoli and cut that into a couple of hundred bite-sized florets. You steam or par boil those. Then you put the broccoli on the bottom of a good baking pan, put the chicken on that, add the secret sauce to cover all, then top with sliced fresh mozzarella. Bake till the cheese is golden brown, serve over rice.
   Now on Saturday, the out of town friends were going to do medicine, and we were joined by a third friend, from Texas. They could only have one meal of the day, then had to fast (and do lots of yard work to get rid of the food in their systems) and it had to be fairly light, so I made them a large salmon filet. Stove top in olive oil, skin up, high heat, till the meat side was a beautiful dark brown. Flipped it so skin side was down, then put thin sliced zuccini, yellow squash, diced Roma tomatoes and chopped scallions all around the fish in the pan and let it cook away. It was a large piece of fish, good and thick, so that was probably 15 minutes. Then I took out the fish and put it aside. Added some organic vegetable stock to the veggies and pan juices, stirred em up, put them in a bowl. I put a bunch, big bunch, of spinach in the pan with what little pan juice was left until it wilted. Put the spinach as a bed on the plates, put a nice slice of salmon on that, put the veggies next to the salmon, with some of them just falling over the thin end of the meat, then put rice next to those. Good meal.
    No food for anyone for dinner that night, just ceremony.
    The next morning all were ravished, so I made home fries with onions, cooked up a mess of scrambled eggs with cheese, and fried some good ham slices for breakfast for them.
   But then, see, two more friends were coming over in the afternoon. What to make them? And what if Chepa and the kids came over? So I put eight chicken thighs in the oven after searing them stove, then tossed in three boneless beef ribs in a homemade barbeque sauce and got them baking. Put together a nice guacamole and then sliced a beautiful papaya and drenched it in fresh lime juice.
   We wound up using a little of everything and since the Giants were playing I didn't put anything away before the game ended and I went to sleep.
    So I woke up to a table filled with left overs: There was a small bowl of taco beef and a couple of taco shells and nearby some shredded cheddar. The guacamole sat near the plate of ribs, which was next to the remaining chicken thighs, and Uncle Clem's Chicken, and not far from the last of the spaghetti squash, which shared a plate with a bit of the home fries. Rice was on the stove; a plate with a tiny bit of salmon was still wrapped in the oven.
   The ice cream hadn't been touched. I guess the food was good. And I think the dogs are going to have a great mosh of a meal later!

Small Perks of Small Town Living

I loved living in New York. I loved my tenement apartments, even, and especially the first, which had a bathtub in the kitchen and no sink in the toilet-only bathroom. But I moved to Texas after a stint in Peru, and it was pretty country out here. You always smelled skunk when you came close to Joshua, a town of about 4,000 at the time, between the county seat of Cleburne and Burleson, the last suburb of Fort Worth.
    I never made friends here. The neighbors all had pretty good plots: The guy next to me, Ty, had an acre; to my left, the guy had about 3.5 acres. Across the street, the guy had about 40 acres. Next to him a woman had 55 acres but didn't live on the property. So it wasn't like just running into people. And it wasn't like New York: Johnson County was a dry town, so if you wanted a drink you had to go to Fort Worth, and what's the fun of driving 20 miles for a drink if you have to leave after having two because you have to drive another 20 miles to go home? So I didn't make those drinking buddy friends, either.
   Now I did like my neighbors, and we often said hello, and if I was doing a project they might come to check it out and have a beer, and vice-versa, but I don't think I was ever in any of their houses and I know they were never in mine. No matter. I had my friend Lynn, over in Irving, and we'd talk on the phone and see one another every couple of weeks. And over the years I've made friends with Mike and Dian and they come over every couple of weeks; and Pat comes over now and then. And then I've got lots of former guests from the jungle who stop by for a few days, and some people who want a little healing--so I end up with lots of company, even though that company is not normally nearby. This week I've got two friends, one from Oregon, one from New York, coming in for a few days. And then Mike and Dian are coming on Sunday for dinner. So I don't lack for company, I just don't have friends nearby like I did in New York.
   But now and then, I get surprised at people who know me. Now I know some people in the police department, and the crew at the jail and a couple of judges know me, because I've written about the corruption in this town and county quite a bit and gotten some jailers fired and clipped the wings of a constable what was doing bad shit to single women late at night, and helped get a few state laws changed along the way with regards to criminalizing school truancy and such. But then that kind of being known isn't always the best, because it means you have to be so clean, so straight, that you don't give anyone the chance to come at you--knowing that some people would love to do just that.
   Okay, all of that preamble is much longer than the real story. The story was that yesterday, while in the Post Office, the guy behind the counter greeted me with: "Hello, Mr. Gorman, what can I help you with?" and then helped tape up a package I was sending while we talked a little about an upcoming surgery he's facing at the VA. Good guy. I once bought him and one of the women who work there a couple of Dairy Queen ice creams and I guess they didn't forget that. But they'd earned them, putting up with me sending a lot of books out when my books first got published.
    While I was talking with the Post Office man, Madeleina's piano teacher came in and said: "Why, hello, Peter Gorman! I haven't seen you for some time? How's my Madeleina? Off to college?"
    Nice, right?
    Then this morning I was doing the manly job of taking the garbage to the dump. There was a line of cars maybe 12 deep waiting for a space to get to dump their garbage. But the guy who registers you in and weighs your truck before and after you dump to know how much to charge you, told me to skip the line and put my garbage in a big metal container off to the side instead. "You don't need to be waiting in line. You've probably got better things to do." He's a nice guy. We've talked about his blood pressure and how sometimes the blood pressure pills just make you have to pee like crazy right after you take them.
    So I went over to the big dumpster and got out of the truck and tossed the first bag high into the air to get over its 8' walls. Then I heard a beep behind me. I turned. It was the neighbor with the 3.5 acres who works at the dump. He was in a good sized Caterpillar right behind my truck and indicated that I should just toss my trash into the huge machine's maw. That meant I didn't have to toss the garbage into the air. When I was done, he lifted the arm and dumped the mess into the dumpster. Cool.
   Then I went around to the scale, waited on line and when it was my turn the high blood pressure guy said: "I'm not gonna charge you today. Free. Have a good one!" And then I rode off.
   There are some perks to living out here in a small town. For a day or two it felt like I was a mafia don, people being so nice to me for no reason. Yo! Where's my crew?

Left Over Heaven

So I had people come in last week. Several of them. Some came for a visit, some came for medicine and a visit, some just needed to know they were not alone in the universe. Then Madeleina showed up unexpectedly on Friday and hung out till Monday morning when I drove her back to school.
   Most of the people gave scant warning and I didn't know if they were coming for an hour or overnight--except for one old friend who came for a couple of nights with plenty of warning. So I did what I do: I erred on the side of precaution with food and made enough each night to cover several people. Which left me a lot of left overs. I didn't realize how many left overs I had until my oldest son, Italo, said he wanted me to cook him something great for breakfast. So I looked in the fridge. Low and behold: I had a large bowl of pasta--thin spaghetti--with a shrimp and clam white sauce. I had a nice bowl of well-seasoned taco beef I made for Chepa and the kids one night. I had lime chicken, about three pieces. Lime chicken is one of my old dishes: Take a half of a chicken breast, slice it in two and then open each one of those halves-of-halves up so that they are thin pieces of breast. Bread them in a mix of breadcrumbs and parmesan cheese, saute till golden brown on one side, transfer to an oven dish, put more parmesan on the chicken and squeeze the juice of a whole lime on each, then bake till glistening at 325--about 8-10 minutes. Man, that is good stuff.
   Then there were the ribs I made that no one ate. I pulled the meat from the baby back ribs and put it in a bowl. Heated up garlic and olive oil in a saute pan, tossed in a diced onion, threw in three diced Roma tomatoes, put the pulled pork into that, added a good quality spicy barbeque sauce (I was too lazy to make my own that day) and wound up with wonderful pulled pork left over. Then there was the sausage and peppers and onions I made the night before Italo wanted breakfast. Good hot Italian sausages, first stabbed then boiled (the stabbing allows the fat to escape into the water); then baked till brown, then sliced into pieces and cooked with garlic, olive oil, onions (sliced, not diced), and red and green sliced peppers. Lots of good cracked black pepper. Just like you get in Little Italy in the old days in New York City.
   So Italo had a freaking feast for breakfast. He skipped the pasta, which I eventually served the dogs, but had some of each of the rest. He went back for seconds. And while he was eating he asked why we couldn't go to a restaurant that would serve food this good that was left over. Or this good when it was first made. I told him we could if we opened another restaurant. But until then, if he wants my style cooking, well, he's got to come to my house to eat.

This Pope is Dope!

Pope Francis has had people reeling since he arrived on U.S. soil. He’s pushed love, forgiveness, decency, and climate change awareness,. He’s discussed corporate greed and economic inequality, calling out those who ignore the poorest among us. He’s reprimanded bishops who have swept pedophilia among their priests under the rug. He’s got some people saying he’s talking like a leftie, and others accusing him of being a socialist. Good for him. He’s just talking common sense stuff.

No, he hasn’t been perfect. He has not called for women to be allowed to become priests. No, he has not said that over-population is a serious problem and it’s time that Catholics worldwide embrace birth control. And no, he’s not come out pro-choice.

But he’s been on the money most of the time, and has shown great courage in not just being a religious leader, but a political leader as well.

On Sunday, he went one better, when he visited a prison in Philadelphia and immediately decried our prison system and any other prison system like ours. After embracing a prisoner, Francis called it, “painful when we see prison systems which are not concerned to care for wounds, to soothe pain, to offer new possibilities. It is painful when we see people who think that only others need to be cleansed, purified, and do not recognize that their weariness, pain and wounds are also the weariness, pain and wounds of society.”

That sentiment echoed what he told the U.S. Congress on Thursday, when he said: “just and necessary punishment must never exclude the dimension of hope and the goal of rehabilitation.”

That’s the sort of courage every politician ought to have, but few do, and the sort of courage that great statesmen always have. Good for you, Pope Francis.

Story About Moi! in Roads and Kingdoms

I thought I'd posted this but apparently I have not. This is a story about me, of all the damned things, that a writer named Jared Johnson wrote for RoadsandKingdoms.com, a fantastic on line magazine of travel stories. Not your normal travel stories, these are interesting enough that now that I know it exists, I shoot over to roadsandkingdoms.com once a week to see what new material they've put up. Do it, you won't be disappointed.
    But just for the ego/ego-smashing of it all, here's a link to Jared Johnson's Under the Texas Sun.

http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2015/under-the-texan-sun/

My Kid, Italo, is the Greatest!

Not to besmirch my other kids, cause they're all the greatest, but right now I'm thinking about my oldest son, Italo, and thinking that he's the greatest. The other kids are the greatest too, but this second it's Italo's turn. Why? Because he can fix anything I break. I break every freaking thing that has electricity associated with it. $900 ovens burn out in 6 months with me. $300 Microwaves burst into flames after 3 months with me. I spent 20 minutes trying to start my damned electrical push mower yesterday and it wouldn't turn over and he shows up today and it roared into action on the first pull of the toggle! Then he borrowed my Home Depot card to buy something for his mother, the beautiful Chepa, my wife/ex-wife who always seems to need to borrow my cards to get things or pay bills, and he also bought a new battery for my riding lawn mower.
    So I called him to invite him to take home some baby back ribs for dinner. He was on the way to the dentist with my granddaughter, Taylor Rain, so I told him just to stop by on the way back and pick up the ribs because they'll be ready. And he laughed and asked me what jobs needed doing at my house. And I said I wasn't going to start crying just because I loved him, and then I told him to pick up the damned ribs and a couple of baked potatoes and that was that. And he laughed again and said, "thanks, pops, see you in a while," and then I wrote this and right now I think he's the greatest ally a person could have. Just saying. And I feel the same about Marco and Madeleina and Chepa and Sierra and Alexa and Taylor Rain. But right now, it's Italo's turn. I love you, buddy. Thanks for being my kid. How lucky I got!

Raking Leaves, Eating Shrimp

So yesterday I was pulling into the Two Bucks liquor store parking lot to get two mini-bottles (airplane bottles) of James Beam and just before I entered I had the sickening revelation that before I left the parking lot--about two minutes total, including the store time--I was going to have a flat tire. And dammit, as I started to drive off, I felt the rear left thumping along. I turned around and went back into the lot and sure enough, there was the flat I knew was coming.
   The people at the store know me so it was no problem to use the phone to call Chepa to have her text Italo to come and save me. I wouldn't have needed to phone if the spare was in the car along with a jack, but there was neither. And since I just bought this car from Italo and he's so meticulous about those sorts of things, it never occurred to me to double check. [Note to self: Even though your son Italo is fantastic, check things like spare tires when you buy another car from him cause he ain't perfect.]
   Anyway, the work I was going to get done didn't get done with the loss of a couple of hours, as I wound up getting home at 7ish rather than 5ish. Which meant it was dinner time. What to make?
   I looked through the stores. Two hours twiddling my thumbs--and I was really, really glad when Italo showed up, brought me to a meeting place where his wife, Sarah, was waiting to take me home--and I was in the mood for red meat. I had none.
   So I took out some fresh (formerly frozen) shrimp, maybe 16-25s (16-to-25 to a pound), from the fridge, pulled out 11 of them, cleaned them, cut them open. In a nice sauté pan I put olive oil with garlic. When that was hot I put in the shrimp and salted and peppered them with good pink sea salt and cracked black pepper. While they sizzled, I cut and trimmed five scallions and diced one Roma tomato. When I pulled the shrimp I put the scallions and tomato into the sizzling hot pan, added a touch of a good light soy sauce and 1 tablespoon of butter (that was to replace my meat fix for available fat). Veggies cooked I pulled them, then put a huge handful of organic spinach in the pot with a bit of white vinegar to pull out any pan bits, sauteed that till just done, put that on a plate, covered it with the shrimp, then tossed on the veggies. No starch as it was too late in the evening.
   Man, that meal took all of 10 minutes but was really good. Every bite a epicurian delight. Try it. I'm not lying.
   Then today, after we got the wheel with the flat from the car at Two Bucks, brought it back to Joshua and had a new tire put on and then brought that back to Fort Worth and got the car in running shape, I stopped at the store. I was still dying for that red meat I wanted yesterday. So I bought a good full-inch-thick rib eye for tonight. But I also bought some chicken drumsticks just in case--and hoping--that Chepa and the girls would come for dinner. They did. So I quickly put on good Jasmine rice, put the dogs' food--chicken backs and necks today--in the oven, put on a large sauté pan--a rock solid pan I've used almost daily for more than 20 years as it was a wedding present back in 1994--put in vegetable oil and got that good and hot--about 8 1/2 on my hottest burner with 10 being the hottest. While that was warming up, I washed the drumsticks then dredged them in organic flour, then sauteed them till a lovely brown. When I got all 12 drumsticks done--made the whole flat because Chepa might want to bring a couple home for Marco and Sarah might want to bring a couple home to Italo--I put them in a good glass Corningware pan and put that into the oven at 350. They should be done in 20 minutes. All the flavor of fried chicken without the grease. Rice should be done at the same time. Kids can eat early. I've lost my appetite from the cooking so I can skip a meal tonight--or just have a good salad--and I can stand to lose a meal now and then.
    So life's perfect, right? I mean, one night it's shrimp, one night chicken drumsticks, one night skip food. I try to remember to thank the universe every day that in this incarnation I came here poor but middle-class poor, not poor, poor, and I came here smart and I came with a good set of parents and a great brother and four great sisters, the whole shebang. Not everybody gets that by a long shot. I know I won the Earth Being Lottery and I'm very thankful. A couple of billion of us did not win that lottery. I hope they find enough to eat. I hope I put in my fair share to help make that a reality. Because my kids eat and a lot of parents cannot say that, and it's not their fault. They just did not have the same beginnings I had. Dammit, this was a story about a busted tire and food, and now it's taken the right hand fork in the road into something else. But that's okay. Everytime we eat, and eat what we choose to eat, not what we can find, we ought to remember that someone else doesn't have that choice and that's not generally because that's their choice. That's what they were dealt. Thanks Universe. And I will try to keep remembering to share what I've got.
 

Braised Short Ribs

On the continuing quest for interesting things to eat while I eat alone because Madeleina's away at college--Tarleton State U--and having a blast, tonight I just put short ribs in the oven. Normally I just sear them and put them in with some sea salt and cracked black pepper with garlic and olive oil, but tonight I'm going differently because I have some lawn to cut and won't be in the house for an hour or so.
     So first thing after I bought the short ribs was to pick up a decent ($30) dutch oven. Not the best, but a pretty good one. Funny that I could not find mine. I'll bet I could if I looked in Chepa's cabinets, but I've given up on that sort of thing. It doesn't make anyone happy. Hell, last week I raided her garage, took two shovels, a good branch parer, a sledge hammer, my sythe and several other tools she's borrowed, or my sons have borrowed on her behalf, in the not too distant past and the next thing you know I'm being asked why I'm stealing all her stuff? I said, what stuff? It's all mine. She said, I'm still your wife. Everything you own is mine, so it's my stuff and you're stealing it, trying to make me look like a poor lady.
   So I'm not looking for missing pots, bowls, cups, silverware. Because she's right, in a crazy way: She owns me till I'm dead, and I work more than her, and if she needs stuff she takes it and if I need that stuff again I should go buy it.
   So I did.
   Home, I heated up my fantastic large saute pan, put a couple of tablespoons of olive oil into it, floured the short ribs, then browned them on all sides with good salt and pepper. Then I took out the ribs, added a diced onion, five sliced scallions, lots of garlic in not-so-much olive oil, and when that was all done, tossed in two over-ripe diced tomatoes.
   When that was all scalding and smelling like dinner, I poured in two glasses of decent cabernet sauvignon and scraped all the pan material, then added two cups of organic vegetable broth and let that boil and let the flavors marry for a few minutes.
   Then I put a touch of olive oil in the new dutch oven, put in the meat, and covered it all with the wine and veggies. Then I tossed in some organic baby carrots, two diced organic celery stalks, a couple of rosemary stems I had in my freezer, added a bit more pepper, covered that baby, and put her in the oven at 315 degrees. I won't even look at her for two hours--now one hour and 30 minutes. And when I do, I'll be looking at a few bites of the ripest meat in the world. I know it's horrible to eat meat, but short ribs, done right, are something else. And I swear I'll let the cows eat me when I'm dying. Or kill me and eat me. Promise.
   So I'm gonna have that with a nice salad, as usual, and broccoli and cauliflower florets, par-boiled then seared in olive oil with garlic--the olive oil drained before serving. No rice, no potato, no bread, no starch. Meal's rich enough without that. (Besides, I had that last night when I made myself a nice hot Virginia ham and baby Swiss cheese sandwich on super fresh French bread.)
   I hope all of you have a few minutes to plan and execute a fantastic meal for yourselves tonight and every night. Try to make the time. It beats fast food and doesn't cost much more. And if anybody's hungry, come on over, I'm sure there is enough to share.