morsels & sauces

Time now for the second annual gratitude post .  It is going to read a lot like the first. I love Thanksgiving.  I love all that it stands for.  Gratitude.  Food.  Family.  Friends.  It does make me miss my family back in Illinois, but I am always so glad to be able to spend it with this family I have married into out here in beautiful California. Here is what I am most thankful for from this year: 1. Teaching--I so enjoyed team teaching a class on Steinbeck and the history of the 1930s with a friend this year.  We took a group of students to Monterey, we rifted off one another in class, we learned a lot about our own craft of teaching, and we lightened the heavy load for each other.  It was great fun as well as professionally satisfying.   2. The Road Trip:  I love road trips.  I just do.  I love being trapped in a car and singing at the top of my lungs and telling the same stories and stopping at diners and putting my feet on the dashboard (when I am not driving,

A little over a week ago, a dear friend of mine passed away.  He was a good man with the faux-surliness of a scientist that he used to mask what was quite possibly the sentimental heart of a poet.  When I came to California, he took me under his wing, teaching me the ins and outs of my new job at a new school.  For years, the husband and I celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving with him, his wife, and other dear friends. On those thanksgivings in a condo up Clarewood Lane, the Canadian flag would hang outside the front door limply (it was never very windy) but proudly.  Before dinner, there would be a standing rendition of the Canadian national anthem, with many of us just mouthing the words we didn't entirely know even though they were printed on cheat sheets for us.  Usually at some point, he would switch to the French and then chastise us more for not knowing those lyrics.  Once we settled into our chairs, he and his wife would serve the requisite turkey and mashed potatoes