Old fashioned Christmas Tidings ---

From our House to Yours - Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve:

 

Twas the night before Christmas

And all through the house

Not a creature was stirring

Not even a . . . . .

Merry Christmas from the Range:

Brigid, EJ and Sunny D. Lab

On Friendship

I'm not very social, outside of a very small circle of friends with a shared past, some here in Chicago and Indiana, some out West, one in Pennsylvania, and several in South Carolina.  I tend to hole up and write in my spare time; my hobbies are singular.  I'm perfectly happy being by myself for days on end.  But it's always interesting when you meet someone in person that you'd only encountered peripherally, seeing them but not really talking to them.  Then you meet and feel like you have been friends for years. 

I met Partner in Grime after we'd been the best of friends online, having met through family and mutual friends.  That switched to lots of long phone calls for a couple of years. One day, I met him in person. However, I would have never, with my scientist's brain, said "love at first sight." But as I waved to him under the fierce August sun, it was as if the earth had released some secret store of its fiery heart, and I think we both knew. Two years later, we were married.

But there is always that bit of uncertainty when you meet someone where you finally have time to exchange more than pleasant banter.  Sometimes, you find you don't have much in common, and part on a kind note, knowing you likely won't talk much again.  Still, there's some sadness there, as you wanted a connection, yet in meeting them, you felt they had such wonderful things in their heart to say, but you couldn’t decipher the words.

And then, sometimes, you are blessed to discover someone whose life stories mirror your own, not just in some shared deeds and events but in how those things made us into the souls we are today. When you have a moment, between family, rescue dogs, and careers, to sit down and share a meal with them, you realize how truly blessed you are.  

As I sat here last night, watching the moonglow seep like liquid into the newly fallen snow and the spreading crowns of trees outside slowly withdraw into the night, I realized that even if I'm alone this week before Christmas, I’m not alone. I have old and new friends who enrich me in ways I can’t articulate, offering with their kindness a tremendous healing balm to those wounds that a lifetime can lay down and a single year can reopen.  

As people who have lived life fully, sometimes recklessly, sometimes isolated by our own accord, we all have had our hearts broken at one time, sometimes more than once. In that brokenness, so many things can enter our hearts - fear, shame, betrayal, anger, hope, faith.  But when gathered in friendship in a room or at a table and saying our prayer of gratitude, there is only acceptance of those bits of those elements of light and dark that find a home in a human heart.  That is our blessing at our own table, just as it's our forgiveness at the Lord's. - Brigid

The Dogfather

While working on her training, Sunny learned "trade" - when she picked up something she shouldn't have, she would drop it in exchange for a toy.  Wise to it now, she grabbed a good shoe and wouldn't trade it for a toy.  No, she had to have a toy AND a treat.  That's not trade - that's paying for "protection." 

WELCOME TO THE DOGFATHER:

Me: “Come on, Sunny, give me the magazine.”

Sunny: “That was going to be 1 treat; it’s 2 treats now.”

Me: “No, I already paid you.”

Sunny: “Dem's some nice-looking slippers - be a shame if something were to happen to them." 

Me: (sigh) hands over treats.

Fire and Ice

Someone asked me if I was watching the latest in TV law/crime drama.  That would be a ‘no.” Most of them are so removed from reality that they are hardly worth watching.

Yes, forensic teams often show up at the crime scene directly from the opera in their $1500 suits and then stick their faces down into the blood and the gore without even putting on protective masks. I could go on for days, especially regarding how they’ll have DNA evidence in about ten minutes. TV is fantasy; what remains of a life cut short is seldom so pretty. If you don’t suit up properly to protect yourself from the elements, the terrain, or a hoard of nasty biohazards, you will likely join the deceased on the next table. Then again, there are not too many jobs where you can occasionally rappel down a cliff into work.

These thoughts came up when I went for a morning walk and found the bones of a small animal out in the woods. How long had it laid there? Certainly, long enough for the bones to bleach to soft white, the flesh now part of the earth, the eyes—empty sockets of history. The shape was benign, as if the creature stopped quietly and died, unlike other bones that one finds in the wild, like the animals of the tar pits, trapped in the primordial ooze in the posture of shock. Other animals dropped while running, the bones scattered by predators until the remaining pieces were simply laid out like a discarded jigsaw puzzle.

These bones were in the shape of quiet sleep as if the animal lay down to wait when death called its name from behind.

It only takes a few days for an animal to decompose now that the weather is getting warmer. I’ve seen hunters lose their fresh game simply because, in the occasional hot temperatures of Indian summer, a kill left too long can turn quickly. It only takes a few days to return to bone, to the simplest components of life: carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and sulfur. Only bones are left, pressing into the soft, welcoming earth, the soil a rich bed of late summer.

Sometimes, all we find are bones laid bare to the elements or burned clean.

With the right temperature, all things will burn, yet bone itself stubbornly resists all but the hottest of fires. Even when all the carbon is burned, the bone will retain its shape. An insubstantial ghost of itself, it crumbles easily, the last bastion of the person’s being transformed into ash. In that ash remains large pieces, calcined and with the consistency of pumice when held in hand, almost seeming to possess a trace of warmth from within its core.

Even if they cannot speak to us, sometimes what is left gives the forensic technicians a clue. Who was this person? What manner of violence brought about their end? It’s the world few wish to visit, and yet it drives me, the mystery and the puzzle. Perhaps because I realize that the final mystery is within yourself.

Using physical evidence to build a theoretical model of a given crime or accident scene involves several sciences, including the chemistry of death and the engineering of the body. Even in the cold quiet of the woods, I stop and survey the scene, making mental notes in my head. How long had it been lying here? Bones, especially ones that have burned, do not give up a time of death. For that, you need to trace the extent of decomposition in volatile fatty acids, muscle proteins, and amino acids, all usually destroyed in a fire.

Even in the woods, simply surveying my environment, my brain sifts through ideas, timelines, and theories based on white bone.

I’ve been close enough to the aftermath of a violent configuration that just the smell of something burning takes me back. I remember waiting as the firefighters valiantly did their work, my skin almost blistering in the heat. Hoping to get close enough to see a clue before it’s burned and gone, a timeline of life and death lost to the flame.

Fire doesn’t just destroy paper and combustible evidence, it’s disruptive to the analysis of bone trauma, especially separating fragmentation patterns resulting from perimortem trauma, such blunt force, projectile impact, and so forth, from those resulting from postmortem heat and fire modification.

Fire suppression, though necessary even if there is no chance of life remaining, also does its damage. The sudden cooling of hose streams fracture or spall bones that are hot, especially if they’ve gotten hot to the point of delamination of calcination, and it can cause harm that may or may not be salvaged in a laboratory. Then, there’s mechanical damage, direct hose impact, and falling debris.

The tiny pieces of life’s remains that still can speak to us were drowning in water. I stood helplessly by the scene, like a person watching a rescue swimmer who was too late to help, knowing the outcome yet hoping for something from which I could put the case to rest. I wait, not wanting to turn away, as fire roars against the night stars and the deep, dark spaces. I wait while the silent ice drips from the trees, melting in the flame's heat. It is a patient wait, treading carefully on the small broken artifacts of life, part pathology, part engineering, and part going beyond either.

We did not yet know if a body or bodies were inside, so preserving evidence was crucial. After the mechanics of motion have stopped, after human physiology has broken down, and what once was animated life, a heart that loved, and a soul that dreamed is reduced to flesh or ash, decayed or dried bone, the dead will still bear witness.

They can tell us a story.

It is usually not a story that would make a good television show, and it rarely can be wrapped up in a neat sixty minutes, but it is a story that needs to be told.

Tonight, I write these words on my laptop as I gaze at a small fire, tended so that it will warm a house surprisingly cold after another front comes through. I watch the flames twist and sway in their age-old dance. As humans, we are more than our past, yet we are the same, seeking life and comfort, seeking answers. As I write, I gaze at a flame in a fireplace that warms something deep in me, something stirring in memory from the ashes as I return to my work.

For I realize that, here in the healing walls of this home, my heart, beaten and darkened by soot, still contains in its core one small piece untouched that may one day smolder back into life with just the proper breath on it.

Life is ice and fire. You can’t control what you will feel, who you can save, or how they will affect your life. You can take what remains that brings you joy and move forward. It is not the glamorous drama one sees on TV, done for the excitement, the money, or the time off to go to the opera. You do this work because you want to, for no other reason. This mission was not assigned, simply a garment of duty one felt compelled to pick off a bare floor one cold morning.

If another person ever reads my words after I am gone someday, know that the fire burns brightly in you, as it does in me, exposing what is strong and good, what is still useful. You cannot save every heart, but you can save your own heart, diligent in its task, even if wounded in battle.

Diligent, perhaps, because we’ve learned through our work that life is precious. We will all die, but we will not all truly live. In doing this, with the small tools we have and the mind God has given us, we do our part to see that perhaps just one person inherits more than the wind and the dark. No matter how hard the duty is, I live fuller, breathe deeper, and sleep with peace, even as the shades of my night are sometimes singed with regret from those things I could not save.

It's time to put away the tea mug and my thoughts. The scent of ancient woodsmoke remains in my hair, waiting to be breathed in deep, thankful to be alive so that I may speak for the dead and treasure that which remains. Life is a risk, never a possession; love and live accordingly

 - Brigid

I Just Come Here for the Bacon

The shopping days before Christmas and the customary Big Box Home Improvement Store trip.

No, the naked inflatable Santa in the tub is just WRONG. Blitzen is probably thinking of tweeting #Me Too as we speak.

Sorry, Sunny, you drive us nuts with just one puppy-size rawhide treat, but you'll get some nice homemade peanut butter biscuits under the tree.

Then there are the usual traditions - Santa at the PUB? I don't drink, but this place has the best beer-battered fish and chips in the county, and it's within walking distance of the Range, so.. 

But still.  Santa at the PUB?

Santa and the Mrs. are in one room with numerous kiddies, moms, and prams, and the other room is literally wall to wall, standing room only, with drunken football fans or revelers of some sort who apparently came in on the train.  With shouts of "shots and beers," the place was so crowded that the skinny blond "elf" couldn't even make her way through with food orders. Some of the Moms fueled up with Trader Joe's wine before arriving and got into shouting matches with the sports fans, dropping the most F-bombs in front of Junior, who just wanted to ask Santa for an electronic device that costs more than our parents paid for our entire Christmas.

It just shouted out, "Fire code violation," and we left before ordering our lunch and walked back home.

But lunch at home can be as good as lunch in any pub.  A sandwich that anyone would approve of. (serves two)

Chicken Salad with Smoked Bacon and Dates

• 1 cup chicken (cooked *cooled and diced)
• 4 large packaged dates finely chopped (found in the raisin section of the store)
• six - seven  pieces of smoked bacon cooked and roughly chopped
• 1/2 cup mayonnaise
• 1/4 cups pecans 
• a pinch of Chinese Five Spice Powder (a mix of China cassia cinnamon, star anise, anise seed, ginger, and cloves).

*to cook 3-4 chicken breasts for salad or sandwiches that don't dry out - cook whole breasts in an oven casserole dish in about 1/4 cup of water seasoned with a couple pinches of dried vegetable stock seasoning. Cover tightly with foil and cook at 350 degrees F.  for 35-40 minutes until the internal temperature is 165 F. (a food thermometer is always the way to go). Remove breasts from pan and allow to cool on a plate.