Debi Simons, Author at Respect Food Roles

Beware of “The China Syndrome.”

December 20, 2017October 6, 2016 by Debi Simons

Highly polished table set with elegant china Yet another cadged idea from my Top Three Sources. I could probably do a post a week based on Gretchen Rubin’s podcast that she does with her sister, “Happier with Gretchen Rubin.” Before I get to the above subject let me encourage you to listen to this week’s episode and, if nothing else, start at about minute 19 and listen to Liz explain how she gave a very tactless gift to her mother-in-law. Gretchen just loses it. I would challenge you to keep a straight face during this segment. I had to ask myself, Didn’t Gretchen know that Liz would tell this story? Don’t they plan the podcast out in advance? It sounds completely genuine.

Anyway, be that as it may, what’s the “China Syndrome”? It has nothing to do with China the country and everything to do with the china that you put on your table–or, as so often happen, the china that you keep on the top shelf of your kitchen cabinets. It’s the idea that by having something you’ll automatically do something. If I have nice china, then I’ll automatically give great dinner parties, with a beautiful table and great food and fascinating conversations. (Not to toot my own horn here, as I have lots of China Syndrome failures in other areas of my life–I actually do this dinner party thing sometimes. Not as often as I should, but sometimes.) Guess what? You have to plan the menu, and do the shopping, and drag that china off the shelf and set the table, and figure out when to cook what, and oh yes, invite some people over, and then sit down and enjoy the occasion. (I write in the “procrastination” chapter in my book that there have been times when I couldn’t do that last item because I’d had so much to do at the last minute and was so tired that all I wanted my guests to do was to go home.)

The China Syndrome is alive and well in every area of life. Right now I have one of those big spring mix containers sitting in the fridge. I bought it Tuesday, telling myself, “If you buy this you have to commit to eating it up.” How many salads have I made from it? One. Every single time I buy one of these containers I end up throwing most of it away. Just having the stuff in the fridge doesn’t mean that I’ll go to the trouble of making a salad and, you know, actually eating it.

Pretty trivial to worry about a few bucks’ worth of salad greens, right? It’s a symptom, though, of a bigger problem: failure to execute. We make all these grandiose plans but we don’t carry them through. We think that buying something, or joining something, or even just getting older, will mean that we’ll actually carry through on whatever it is. “I’ll buy this book on marriage and my marriage will be better.” “I’ll join a gym and get fit.” “Next spring I’ll turn ____ and then I’ll be motivated to ____.” Right now I’m going through my usual procrastinating about learning the music for our upcoming Cherry Creek Chorale concert. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to buckle down and do this, since I love being in the Chorale so much. I really want to know the music well; I’m particularly aware of my need to learn the clapping pattern in our arrangement of “Get Along Home, Cindy.” That sort of thing just drives me nuts! And if I don’t learn it, and I’m the only one up there who’s off, it’s going to be pretty embarrassing. (There a video of the Parker Chorale on YouTube that shows me being off four times in the course of a few measures in our performance of “Age of Aquarius.” Two of my nephews watched it with me and just about fell through the floor laughing. Thank goodness it’s only had 79 views. But if you want to watch something really funny I’ll embed it below even though that may mean upping the views. Hey, if it brightens your day I guess it’ll be worth it. This concert was back in the early days of that Chorale; they’re now in a very snazzy venue at the Parker Arts Center and a much bigger and better group.)

Well, better quit and make myself some salad for lunch. Where in your life to do you see the China Syndrome?

What’s Down in the Well . . .

December 20, 2017October 4, 2016 by Debi Simons

will come up in the bucket.

I am a shameless cadger of ideas, with the three primary ones being:

1. My pastor.
2. Gretchen Rubin.
3. The teaching leader at the Bible study I attend.

Today’s idea is from #3. And how I got to hear her say this is a story in itself. Remember my post about my three mottoes? One of them was “enlarge my coast,” a prayer that God would, in His will and timing, give me more opportunities to serve. So last week there was an announcement that a couple of group leaders were needed. ‘Wow,’ I thought, ‘I could do that.’ So I turned in my name. got a phone call, met with the teaching leader, and yesterday had the great privilege of going to the leadership meeting. Boy howdy, they don’t mess around! I got involved in a similar group back in Virginia but only lasted a year because of all the wasted time in meetings. Can’t say the same about these. Two hours and fifteen minutes of focused attention on the focus of attention, which is our study of the Gospel of John. No getting coffee and chit-chatting. No little “devotional.”

The statement of the day here was just a little throwaway line. So obvious, and yet so true. You can’t draw up something that isn’t in the well in the first place; you can’t give out what isn’t in your own heart. A great reminder!

A Much-Needed Call for Civility and Culture

December 20, 2017September 30, 2016 by Debi Simons

Book cover for: A return to Christian culture: Or, Why avoid the cult of the slob A Return to Christian Culture: or, Why Avoid “the Cult of the Slob” by Richard S. Taylor, originally published in 1973, now available in several formats through Amazon and other outlets. Most books I review are available at the public library , and that is always my first choice. I’ve just done some looking, though, and this one is not available through my library system or through its second-tier search capabilities. So I’d recommend your purchasing it, and, if you’d be so kind, to do so by clicking on the Amazon link above. You will then be taken to my “store” page and given the opportunity to purchase the book through my site. Those Amazon links are so-called “affiliate links,” and I get a small commission at no cost to you if you use them. You can get the Kindle edition for only $2.99 and a paperback for as little as around $2. The subtitle is different in some of the editions; I don’t know why they thought “a sagging society” was a better word picture than “cult of the slob.” I believe that this little book should be on every Christian’s bookshelf and be re-read periodically. What would Dr. Taylor think of American society now, ten years after his death? If he weren’t such a gentleman, his words would probably be, “I told you so!”

If I didn’t know the date of publication I’d think this book was written yesterday. In fact, the excesses in every area of life that he addresses are writ large today. I want to delve into three of them in some detail, hoping that you’ll want to read the whole book. And I will point out that, unlike some of the books I write about, this one is very short, less than 100 pages.

I’ll start with an idea sadly lacking in our increasingly divisive and divided society: tolerance and respect, indeed enjoyment, of people who are different from us. I’m going to quote at some length here and will then have to restrain myself from using very many of Taylor’s words in the other sections, as I don’t want to exceed my “fair use” limit:

It should not be supposed, however, that one’s enjoyment of this world must be confined to the beauties of nature and invention. The true Christian shares with God His love for men also. And in this love there is some degree of simple, unembarrassed liking for people as people. This wonder and excitement in people transcends their moral worthiness or spiritual condition. We should know how to enjoy people simply because all of us share in a common humanity. This does not imply indifference to the evil of men, or a complacency with people as they are. We will love them as God loves them, first as the created image of Himself, and second as the subject of His redemptive sufferings. This will make our love costly, and blend enjoyment with tears and delight with grief–sometimes anger. But too often we have had the anger for the sinner and reserved the enjoyment for the saint. In a sense this is natural and inevitable, for the saint is our spiritual kin while between us and the sinner is a gulf of spiritual alienation. We hesitate to bridge the gulf because the same gulf exists between him and God and we choose to be on God’s side. But in taking God’s side it is easy to call down fire from heaven on wicked men, and thus fail to be like God, who makes the sun shine and the rain fall on them all. (p. 65 of the 1975 paperback edition)

Isn’t that a great passage? Would that it were drilled into every heart. I am so weary of hearing one group bash another, especially during this election year, with seemingly no recognition that we are all human beings created by God, that we all have worth in His eyes, that only by showing love for each other can we ever, as Christians, win others to Christ.

Okay, second idea: that enjoyment of legitimate earthly pleasures can be a way to showcase our faith, that we aren’t glorifying God by going around in rags. The Bible does not teach austerity for its own sake. This idea resonates with me quite a bit, as I always feel a little torn about spending money on items that are just for show. After all, we don’t have to have curtains on the windows; we could just tape up garbage bags. We don’t have to have pictures on the walls or matching plates on the table. Taylor tells a story about Brother Andrew, the man who spent many years of his life smuggling Bibles into closed countries. He and his wife felt that they couldn’t spend any money on themselves and for years dressed themselves out of the so-called “missionary barrels.” Finally their eyes were opened by the words of a donor, who said, “God will send you what your family needs and what your work needs too. You are a mature Christian, Brother Andrew. Act like one.” Brother Andrew was indeed a mature Christian, so much so that he could accept this criticism: “Suddenly I saw that this was part of a whole pattern of poverty into which we had fallen, a dark, brooding, pinched attitude that hardly went with the Christ of the open heart that we were preaching to others.” (Taylor is quoting from the book God’s Smuggler here, another book I would highly recommend. This book and the Anne Ortlund one mentioned below are also linked to my affiliate page but are available at the library.) Obviously there is a balance; we aren’t called to be extravagant. But we don’t have to look like, as my mother used to say, “the ragpicker’s children.” (What is a ragpicker? I’m not sure.) There is a balance to be found, and we are called to more or less deprivation in our lives. Taylor mentions Charles Wesley, who felt drawn to a life of poverty but who was able to do so because he could be housed by prosperous Methodists.

Third idea: that good taste obeys certain principles and that we shouldn’t “settle for junk.” Taylor tells the story of how he and his wife bought an old house and carefully furnished and decorated it. They were not spending money unnecessarily and not trying to impress others but were instead, and I hope this isn’t too grandiose of a term, honoring the house’s “homeyness and dignity.” Taylor tells a funny story about having his devotions one morning and realizing during his prayer time that a chair needed to be moved to another area of the room. So he did a little rearranging, and when his wife came down and saw the change she said, “Of course! Why didn’t we see that before!” They were discovering what worked in their lovely old house. And I would say here that one of the nicest homes I’ve ever visited was furnished pretty much entirely from garage sales. It’s not a matter of money per se but of taste.

I will close with a quotation from another wonderful and short book, Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman by Anne Ortlund: “Look quality, think quality, talk quality.”

Save

“Me, I’m Gonna Stay Right Here at Home . . .

February 16, 2018September 28, 2016 by Debi Simons

trowel stuck into the dirt with my little garden spade and keep scraping at the thing that confuses me.” Sarah Koenig of Serial, Season One.

Don’t have any idea who Sarah Koenig is, or what Serial is? Then stop reading this post right now and head on over to the Serial Season One website. When you’ve come back up for air you can return here. How I envy you if you somehow managed

A Conservative Two-Fer.

December 21, 2017September 22, 2016 by Debi Simons

bookcover for Liberal Fascism, showing a smiley face with a Hitler moustache

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change by Jonah Goldberg, available on Amazon and other outlets in several formats, originally published in 2008.

Witness: A True Story of Soviet Spies in America and the Trial that Captivated the Nation by Whittaker Chambers, available on Amazon and other outlets in several formats, originally published in 1952.

First of all, let me say that I think the words “secret history” should be banned from all written communications whatsoever, if for no other reason than they are a reminder of the terrible Dinesh D’Souza movie. And in the case of Goldberg’s book (written well before the DDM came out) the words don’t really apply to his subject anyway. I’m a little surprised that a writer of as much wit and precision as Goldberg would use such a sloppy term. He should have called it “The Little-Known History” or perhaps “The History That People Too Lazy to Read History Missed Out On.” But maybe that’s a little clunky?

Anyway, I have to be honest here: I didn’t finish listening to the audiobook; I bogged down about one-fourth of the way through, when Goldberg said something along the lines that “Although FDR had fascistic ideas, he himself was not a fascist.” I just tried to find that line in the online version of the book and gave up, so you’ll have to take my word for it. Although I’ve fallen in love with audiobooks (my current one is the George Tenet memoir; look for that one soon), they work best when the book has a narrative spine. While Goldberg does start with Woodrow Wilson and World War I and moves on to the present day, his organizing principle is philosophical rather than historical. The book is very dense, and many of his ideas are so complicated that you have to go back and re-read them. Trying to re-listen to a section on audio can be very frustrating. But I’m not promoting a book that I haven’t finished, because I realized quite early on that I had indeed read it back when if first came out, but I remembered the title as The Happy Fascist. You can see from the cover art why that would be. I found it to be fascinating then and remember discussing it with my husband. So if you like challenging ideas that force you to re-think preconceived notions, I would say to get the print or digital version and go with that.

But perhaps you’d like something with a little more of a personal touch. Then I’d recommend the Chambers book. I was very much reminded of this one while struggling through Goldberg’s. Why? Because both men present the idea that it’s a mistake to talk about the “right” and the “left” in political philosophy. (Did you know, by the way, that those terms are completely accidental? They stem from the seating arrangement of the National Assembly in France at the time of the French Revolution; those in support of the king sat on the speaker’s right and those in favor of revolution sat on his left. These divisions continued and became entrenched in the language of politics.) It’s more correct to think of political and philosophical positions as a circle. As you move away from classic liberalism and true democratic ideals you’re going down either side of a circle that meets at the bottom; whether it’s socialism shading into communism into Bolshevism or authoritarianism shading into totalitarianism, the end result is the same: the elimination of personal freedom and the total control of the government in every area of life. I remember trying to explain this concept to my American history class at the time I read Witness, but I wasn’t very successful. My students were looking at each other and muttering, “What’s she talking about?”

Whittaker Chambers joined the American Communist Party as a young man and participated in some espionage activities during the 1930’s. He became a Christian, broke with the party, and ended up accusing a number of US government officials, including Alger Hiss in the State Department, of feeding him information. The Hiss case has been hotly debated ever since, although documents that surfaced during the early 2000’s showed Hiss was almost certainly guilty. Chambers could have kept his mouth shut and avoided all the controversy, but as he saw world events in 1939 he felt that he had to speak up. My most vivid recollections of the book (I read it 30 years ago) is of Chambers leading FBI agents to a stash of papers hidden in a field inside, of all things, a pumpkin. How the papers weren’t all mildewed is beyond me; maybe they were. And then, either in that stash or another, there were some microfilmed items showing Hiss’s involvement. But no, officials said, Chambers’ story couldn’t be true, because that type of film wasn’t being manufactured at the time of the documents. Chambers had to have faked them. Chambers said when confronted with this evidence, “God has deserted me.” But then it turned out that Kodak had indeed made that film for a short time that fit in with the dates of the documents.

As I’m sitting here writing about this book I read so long ago and being reminded of how powerfully it affected me, I’ve decided that I’ll give it another shot, this time on audio. It’s available through Hoopla, I’ve just discovered. So I’ve added it to my account. After I finish the Tenet book I’ll go on to this one and report back. It’s not quite as long as the Trollope book I reviewed last week; that one is 34 hours, this one is only 30. And I’m reading in physical form the book on the Benghazi attacks, 13 Hours, in my efforts to pull together a coherent narrative of what actually happened to bring about that tragedy and its aftermath. So I have plenty to keep me occupied, even without all of my podcasts and my reading about the election. (Be sure to migrate over to Intentional Conservative if you’re interested in my ideas about this totally bonkers election season.)

What’s occupying your mind these days?

Did I Follow My Own Advice

December 21, 2017September 20, 2016 by Debi Simons

Pile of potstickers on a white plate

I wrote on Friday about how I was going to use a to-do list for this past weekend’s festivities and would report back on how it all went. So . . . so-so. I gave up at about 9:00 Saturday evening on getting anything more done, depending on the ol’ get-up-insanely-early scenario. And I did get up, and I did get quite a bit done before I left for church. And planned out how to get everything else done between lunch and the game. My dear sister-in-law helped me assemble the potstickers and the empanadas, and I have to say that it went very smoothly. (The picture isn’t mine, although ours didn’t look all that different.)

Did I Follow My Own Advice?

December 21, 2017September 20, 2016 by Debi Simons

But I can’t say that I set out any kind of absolute timetable or list. I fell back on carrying it all around in my head, and so I ended up having to get stuff done during the game and missed both Broncos touchdowns. It ain’t the same watching it on instant replay! At some point I found myself thinking, “Why am I still working like a dog in here? I thought I had everything done!” And the kitchen was a complete and total mess. Again, said sister-in-law bailed me out by washing a mountain of things in the sink, or I would have been trapped in a pile of rubble, unable to move. Thanks, Joyce!

Everyone had a great time, though, which is always the most important thing. I had given some thought to feeding people lunch as well as dinner and that worked out well. One nephew and his girlfriend came by briefly and we were able to have them join us for sandwiches before they had to leave. My husband and son, as always, pitched in. Gideon baked the rolls for the sandwiches and did a first round of kitchen cleanup. We ended up with nine adults and two adorable children around the dinner table for the official celebratory dinner (Gideon is now 22) of potstickers, empanadas, cabbage/pepper/scallion salad with cilantro-lime vinaigrette, and chocolate banana bread pudding with caramel sauce. It took quite awhile to get the kitchen back to normal, but I finally finished that up last evening, telling myself that no, I did not have time to sit and watch part 2 of the documentary on the JonBenet Ramsey case. (This year is the 20th anniversary of that horrible tragedy, so everyone’s jumping on the bandwagon about it. I could pretty much tell where they were going with their solution after I watched part 1, and I think they’re probably right, incredibly awful as that solution is.)

So what’s next on the to-do list? Well, I’ve set up Swipes to list my daily jobs . . . every day. There are still items on that, as well as some tasks left over from Friday. My little timer just buzzed. I had set it for 30 minutes and have now used that up, so I guess I’ll quit. As I’m finding more and more to be true, it’s not enough to have a great tool; you must use it.

How do you keep track of what you need to do? I’d be so interested to hear your ideas!

The Happiness of a To-Do List

December 21, 2017September 16, 2016 by Debi Simons

Watch and to-do list on smartphone Have you been listening to the Gretchen Rubin podcast, “Happier”? Whyever not? I keep pushing it!

So, just in case you missed my earlier nagging, Rubin, the author of three wonderful books, teamed up with her sister about a year and a half ago to do a podcast. Liz is a TV writer and producer in LA, Gretchen lives in New York City, and they discuss their lives, take listener questions, give a “happiness hack,” and award a happiness demerit and gold star each week. It’s fun and light but always has something in it to make me think.

A Lovely Novel by the “Daily Hercules”

December 21, 2017September 13, 2016 by Debi Simons

Cover for The Last Chronicle of Barset, shows a mother and her children

The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope, available in numerous editions from numerous sources. You can get it on Kindle for free.

The candidate for this week’s book review was Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg, but I’m still wading through it. Don’t get me wrong: it is an important book, I might say even an essential book. But it will have to wait until next week. I can only absorb a little of it at a time and am now just four and a half hours into a 16-hour audio version.

For some reason I was reminded of Trollope’s masterpiece and decided that it would be a good stand-in, even though it has nothing to do with geopolitics. Instead, I guess you could say that it has much to do with personal politics. I have read it at least twice and probably more; I love it and can hardly believe that Trollope ground it out, under pressure and deadline, just as he did all of his novels. But more of that in a minute.

First let me say that if you do not fall madly in love with the character of Lily Dale, and mourn for Johnny Eames, and want to strangle Mr. Crawley, well, I just don’t know about you. These characters are as real to me as . . . Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane. As you might gather from the title, the novel is part of a series and is indeed the last one. But you don’t have to have read the other five to enjoy this one, although if you’d like to get more of the backstory you could read The Small House at Allington, the one immediately preceding Last Chronicle.

I am amazed at writers who seem to have an inexhaustible geyser of creativity gushing out of them. (Perhaps not the best image.) Where does all of this come from? How do you just create these people, and these events, and these entire societies, out of your own imagination? It boggles me. I’m a very slow writer myself, and if I ever manage to get down on paper the one novel I keep saying I’m going to write it will probably be finished on my deathbed. Trollope is known not only for the quality and quantity of his output but also for his methodology. He paid a servant on his estate five pounds a year to wake him up at 5:00 every morning–the man was not to give up until Trollope was out of bed–and sat at his desk from 5:30 to 8:30, churning out 250 words every 15 minutes. If he finished one novel before his time on a certain morning was up he started on a new one. (It’s tempting to take all this with a grain of salt. Did the man never do any revising? Still, those 47 novels, plus travel writing and an autobiography, didn’t come out of nowhere.) The truly amazing aspect of Trollope’s writing is not its volume; people have churned out so-called “potboilers” by the gross ever since it was possible to get paid by the word. (The term refers to literary output done simply to pay the bills, or to keep the pot boiling.) His portrayals of character are remarkable, particularly those of women. (I just leafed through a few pages and was reminded of Mrs. Proudie, yet another great Trollopian creation.)

Great quote from Trollope: “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.” So true.

I know, I know. My edition runs to almost 900 pages of small type. Audible.com has the audiobook available, although it’s kind of expensive. My library system, Arapahoe Libraries, has it on Hoopla. Hey, it’s only thirty-four hours! Think of all the needlepoint you could get done in that amount of time!

Save

Don’t Stumble at the Finish Line!

December 21, 2017September 12, 2016 by Debi Simons

Two small but telling incidents from the weekend:

1. For lack of planning exactly how much time I needed Saturday morning to bake my breakfast casseroles for the Cherry Creek Chorale‘s retreat/ rehearsal, I ended up with one beautifully-baked set and one goopy set. I always say, “Oh, they’re so easy–all you have to do is open cans!” But that’s not really true. You have to grate cheese, and whisk together eggs and milk, and open cans, and even opening cans takes some time.