The Meme-Mandated, Semi-Regularly-Updated, Occasionally Coherent Thoughts of G.M. Skarka
So yesterday was Pi Day (3.14, geddit?), and so I decided to try my hand at a new recipe. It went over really, really well (if I do say so myself), and I had some requests (via Twitter, Facebook and email) for the recipe — so I’ve decided to check off another mark in the “blogger cliché checklist” and do a recipe post.
Without further ado:
Jamaican Meat Pies
This Saturday is my Alive Day.
alive day
n. the anniversary of a close escape from death, especially one involving permanent injury. Originally coined by US veterans, and adopted by survivors of accidents, cancer treatments, etc.
Four years since my cancer treatment. No recurrence.
Continue reading “Four Years”
We all have our traditions — this has been one of mine since I started blogging, eight years ago.
A quote from Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which sums up my feelings regarding the holiday:
“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round — apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that — as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”
One of the greatest achievements of Dickens’ classic is the nearly single-handed creation of a sense of reverence in the secular aspects of the holiday season — a celebration of love, family, fellowship and charity, appealing to everyone regardless of their faith. A call to treat each other better, and to value the relationships that connect us to one another. That’s powerful magic.
Merry Christmas, all.