One Hundred Things My Mother Taught Me A Million Times – Chapter 46

#46 - “Always clean your kitchen while you cook. 
It should be clean when you sit down to eat.”

Just when I think I’ve finalized the list of one hundred things my mom taught me a million times, another one springs into my consciousness. Like a car running a red light, it appears as a blur in the corner of my eye causing me to stomp my break and blurt out an expletive!  Sure enough, last week, just as I always do before I take my hubby his dinner plate and sit down for dinner, I was putting up food, and cleaning the kitchen counter and stove top, when a thought bubble popped up over my head, “Oh my gaud! Another of mom’s lessons.”

This one of one hundred conjures one question and one fact:
1.  Does everyone clean their kitchen while they cook?
2.  My husband doesn’t.

I worship Food Channel star Giada De Laurentiis. When she cooks in her “church of the immaculate kitchen,” it looks like a high-tech clean room. I strive for her virgin white kitchen ethic; but in reality, Rachael Ray is really more my style, sloppy and colorful. Of course both have minions to come along and clean up after them during commercials, so no reality there.

I should probably clarify that I like to leave a clean stove and countertop, but washing dishes is right up there with cockroaches on my list of things to hate. I say this with a complete lack of irony. I will do almost anything to avoid washing dishes. Which brings me to my husband. Click on Read More Below...

South of Broad by Pat Conroy

Set in Charleston, South of Broad is one of those panoptic novels about a generation of family, friends, marriage, class distinction, prejudice, fortune, mental illness, the glory of sports, AIDS, murder, child abuse, marital infidelity, religion, long-held secrets, and just about everything else you can cram into a book, including a natural disaster (hurricane).  It would take a page of writing just to tell you the plot details, so I won’t. If you must know, check out another review, or read the book, which won’t be a waste of time.

Pat Conroy can sure spin a melodramatic tale though. And his writing is occasionally exquisite. Every now and then he’d pour out something that made me bang my head with my fist and say, “why-can’t-I-write-like-that!” But the problem was, it almost felt like he was in a good mood one day and decided to focus on writing beautifully. Then all the other days he just felt like developing characters. It didn’t read like a colorful and seamless tapestry of story woven through characters. His characters are absolutely the meat of this book, and juicy they were, but they also didn’t feel real. They were too perfect or too bad or too smart, simply designed to spice up the story.

Good writers tell stories. Exceptional writers make you think and feel. The only thing South of Broad made me think was, “Gaud, what next? A Mars invasion?” and “For christ sake, just tell us why Leo’s brother offed himself,” although the reason is pretty transparent from the very beginning. And feel, well South of Broad made me feel like I’d just had a meal at Luby’s Cafeteria – everything looked so yummy, but was mostly bland, except the coconut pie, which was excellent!

Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen by Jimmy McDonough

Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen starts and ends with bizarre letters to Tammy from author Jimmy McDonough, which just felt creepy, and nearly derailed me from reading the book altogether.  But fortunately, it quickly moved on to the engaging story of Wynette’s upbringing, first marriage (of five), young motherhood, and her tenacious pursuit of a career in country music. Unfortunately, what began as a truly inspiring life quickly turned into a horror story when Tammy got rich and her health went to hell in a handbag.

There were, however, several things I learned about Tammy that made this book well worth the read. For example, I didn’t know that Tammy was the first country artist to produce a platinum-selling album. And McDonough’s tales of how Billy Sherrill and Wynette wrote, recorded and produced her music made we want to go back and listen to the music, words and phrasing. I also really enjoyed reading about Tammy’s marriage to Jones, which was apparently born of infidelity and true love and filled with passion and craziness. What was most disturbing to me about Wynette’s life was her distant relationship with her children. She obviously loved them, but at the same time, neglected them horribly. Friends described Wynette’s children as being uncared for, dirty, unfed and emotionally detached from their mom.


Wynette’s life ends in horribly poor health, a suspicious death, a conniving last husband, and little left of her legacy other than, “Stand By Your Man.”  To this day, one of her kids supports herself cleaning houses. What a sad epitaph. 

If you are interested in the history of country music or Tammy Wynette, I think you’ll enjoy Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, just know that it all ends, well… tragically. 

Empire of the Summer Moon: Quanah Parker and the Rise and Fall of the Comanches, the Most Powerful Indian Tribe in American History by S. C. Gwynne

The entire time I was reading this book I kept coming back to the fact that my dad was a grown man (25 years old), when Quanah Parker died and therefore lived in the era of the Native American genocide! Wow! For those of you who don’t know, Quanah Parker was the last chief of the Comanches, and son of Cynthia Ann Parker, a captive white girl, and Comanche Chief Peta Nocona. Although I know almost nothing about my dad’s side of the family, there are three things that make me think that there’s some Native American blood running through my veins. First, my dad had Native American facial features. Second, he was from Oklahoma, and third, I vaguely recall my mom saying something about her in-laws being "a bunch of Indians," insinuating something like hillbillies.  I tend to romanticize about Native Americans, and although I think that their genocide by European American and Mexican settlers was horrible, humanity has always had, and probably always will have, a propensity for “running off” whoever has something they want. Not to condone it, but history also tells us that Native American tribes fought over territory as well. As war-prone as humanity has always been, evolution seems more about survival of the "fight-est" than than the fittest! Click on Read More Below...

The Woman Behind The New Deal – The Life and Legacy of Francis Perkins, Social Security, Unemployment Insurance and the Minimum Wage by Kristin Downey

Francis (Fanny) Coralie Perkins was the first woman appointed to the Presidential Cabinet, serving as Secretary of Labor for 13 years under Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Her fate as a founder of many of the social services we now take for granted may have been predetermined, but I think that it was sealed on March 24, 1911, the day she witnessed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire in New York, which caused the death of 146 garment workers, almost all of them women, who either died from the fire or jumped from the fatal height. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York until September 11.

“It is a great historic irony,” says author Kristin Downey, “that Frances is now virtually unknown. Factory and office occupancy codes, fire escapes and other fire-prevention mechanisms are her legacy. About 44 million people collect Social Security checks each month; millions receive unemployment and worker’s compensation or the minimum wage; others get to go home after an eight-hour day because of the Fair Labor Standards Act. Very few know the name of the woman responsible for their benefits.” Click on Read More Below...