The Leslie Show

Solar Death Ray and SuperDickery

I have found two web sites (courtesy of The Straight Dope's Weird Earl section) that are just so awesome: Solar Death Ray features a guy who built...well...a device which focuses the sun's energy into a ray that has the intesity of 112 suns! He burns stuff. it's sweet.

Second is SuperDickery.com, which shows just what a dick Superman can really be! Check it out.

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

Oh, man, you have GOT to see this. It charts baby names over the last century. I could play with this program for hours. (Must have Java to run)The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager

Stupid Casseroles

My husband and I had separated.  My heart was torn in two.  My world?  Upside-down.  I told a long-distance friend about it.  “Damn,” she said.  “I feel terrible.  I wish I could help.  I wish I could bake you a stupid casserole.”

Perhaps she was just being funny.  Trying to make me laugh.  And she did.  Yet, her words went right to my heart:  A stupid casserole was exactly what I wanted.

They’re symbolic medicine, these “stupid” casseroles.  There’s so much more than just the ingredients that hold them together.  I mean, who eats casseroles anymore these days?  In this age of fast food, frozen dinners and salad in a bag, does anybody bother with casseroles anymore?  What, exactly, do they mean?

I’ve made three of them in the past year.  On three different occasions I have been the bearer of the stupid casserole.  I can tell you exactly what they mean.

The first was the hardest.  A child had died.  Unexpectedly, in the night, death had come and snatched my friend’s baby away.  What horror.  Pure shock.  I didn’t know this woman very well, but we had exchanged pleasantries.  She had been kind to me, and I to her.  We liked each other and had always meant to spend more time together.  But the kids, the busy-ness ...

We neighborhood women would rally around, and do what we could.  We couldn’t bring the baby back.  Painfully singed by the nearness of the lightning bolt that had devastated our community we were left awestruck.  What could we do? 

We could create.  We could nourish.  We could heal.  As women this was our gift.  This was our cry against the darkness.  We couldn’t bring the baby back.  But we could rally 'round and protect the living.  Feed them.  Shelter them. 

I didn’t know what this family liked.  They were from a different part of the world.  What should I make?  I went with a creamed chicken casserole.  Something mild, not too spicy (so the kids would eat it).  Something simple and homey and comforting in an uncomfort-able time. 

The second was also a surprise.  There had been a road closure, one day.  A terrible car accident had happened, with a semi-truck squashing some poor sap in his car.  I learned later that week that the poor sap was my next-door neighbor, whom I had hardly spoken with in the four years we’d lived near each other:  Hello-goodbye nods if we happened out our driveway at the same time.  Invitations to our annual party unanswered.  I knew their names, they knew ours.  But we never socialized.  They had needed to use the Jaws of Life to get him out of his car.  He had been in intensive care for a week.  He couldn’t walk.

“What can I do?” I asked the neighbor who was keeping me apprised of their situation.  “I know.  I’ll bring them dinner.”  Then a question suddenly struck me.  “They don’t happen to be vegetarian, do they?”  I just had a feeling.

“Actually, they are” she told me. 

One vegetarian lasagna and a “call if you need anything” card later, I had a new relationship with my neighbor (who has since mended nicely).

Tonight’s was as unique as any other.  A family we know from school’s mom has breast cancer, which has spread to her liver.  One of the other neighborhood moms (a breast cancer survivor herself and a woman who’s dynamic energy knows no bounds) has organized a several-weeks-long rotation for people to bring meals to this family of five while mom goes through chemotherapy.  Tonight was also lasagna, but a great big meat-and-cheese-filled one for a family with three active teenagers.  Plus a salad and some cookies.

So, why a casserole?  Why the trouble of making these relatively complicated little concoctions for families in need?  Why not just bring them a bucket of fried chicken?

Because I am awed by their perserverence.  Because I am humbled by their strength.  Because I want to hold them and let some of their pain and burden come into me, to ease their load just a little.  But I can’t. 

What I can do is chop the onions, stir the sauce, layer the noodles, wrap it in tinfoil and handwrite directions for preparation on a little card.  It’s not for them, this silly offering.  It’s for me.  It’s for me because I can’t stop babies dying and I can’t stop car accidents and I can’t prevent cancer from metastasizing…..but I can create….I can love…and I can be humbled and honored by these real-life moments that bring us to our knees and teach us what’s really important.  These casseroles aren’t stupid.  They’re sacred offerings.