Hot Stuff and Caning – –

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Jack’s Wednesday guest blog isn’t what you are thinking – –

I’m a great fan of Indian curries and have attempted over many years to learn how to make them at home with mixed success.

But, about eight or nine years ago Wendy and I taught a week-long course of ballads and folktales at John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina. In addition to being paid and getting bed and board, we were also able to sign up for free for any other week long courses within a year after the one we taught.

We surveyed the catalogue and Wendy saw a course on chair caning, something with which she had also had mixed success. (extra points for no preposition at the end of that sentence). I had a look and saw there was a course during the same week on Indian cooking!

My classes were taught by a lovely woman from India called Ruby, and it was a wonderful experience. She took about a dozen of us through everything from pakoras and samosas, and through a variety of curries, to delicious sweets and drinks.

I have to admit that I only remember some of the recipes, but I do remember her advice to taste as you go and to adjust things like vinegar, lemon juice and sugar to balance sweet and savory.

But, even so, I was still trying to recapture the taste of restaurant curries, while Ruby’s food was more domestic. That was when I discovered that the curry houses make a big batch of ‘base sauce’ and then they add whatever they need to that just beforehand to make anything from tikka masala to vindaloo.

So that’s what I do now and we have many Ziploc bags in our freezers and jars of canned sauce waiting for use. That’s just the start, though, because it’s fairly bland and still awaits all of the necessary spices, veggies and chicken or shrimp.

Despite that I remember Ruby’s lessons and check the taste carefully and often.

As for Wendy, she’s become known as a chair caner and done a roaring trade in barter and cash seats, of course. You can check out her Facebook albums for some of her favorite chairs. Ironically enough, we never seem to keep any of them….

The Monday Book – Crossroads by Jonathan Franzen

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Guest review by Janelle Bailey, retired Literature teacher.

Jonathan Franzen has long been a dependable author for me. I have a number of his books on my shelved have reads as well as a number more in my to-be-read stacks. I do not devour them all at once like I have other authors’ works when I first meet and LOVE them and for a couple of reasons. Franzen’s works are…well, work. Several are of tome-length, and few are upbeat, to say the least, but rather are dives into, as another reading friend put it, the “banality of humanity.” And those are not tomes “for everyone.”

And while this last statement is not true of all Franzen books, it does tend to be the reality of the larger ones—The Corrections, Purity—and that holds true in Crossroads. One has to buck up in ways to dig into another book about Americans who have all sorts of plenty mis-placing their energy in erring up things they could manage much better—parenting, spousing, and more.


I did enjoy the 1970s, Midwestern US setting, and even the “hippie”-ness of the characters. While just a little kid in the 70s myself, I could still identify with and “see” the “older kids” in my neighborhood and at my church, growing up, as the members of Franzen’s “youth group,” Crossroads. And I related as well to how the arrogance and ego of even the best-intentioned people can destroy efforts toward good for all.

While I might argue a few things to be a tad anachronistic, overall Franzen created this community as believable, their faith in the music and story even more than the church and God relate-able, some of their issues and concerns more relevant than others, but overall its addressing beyond faith and religion of topics like parenting, drug abuse, travel, marriage, identity, mental illness, finances, and more to be interesting and thought-provoking. This would be a great book club book, I think, for the discussion that could ensue.

I relish the opportunity to visit about it with some others before finalizing even my own review. Just like most books are better than the movie, many books are better after a good book club discussion…or in lieu of that, a visit with another reader. It is that aspect of reading good to great—heck, even bad!—books with others, having someone with whom to discuss it and who has a different perspective and opinion from one’s own, that really brings my reading of any book to “completion,” even after I’ve written my review.