#72 A WOMAN'S BRIEFS -- COOKIES, COFFEE, AND CONCERN 7-10-25
It had to have been this Christmas last when my daughter made these cookies.
You can’t tell here (neither could she) that before they were baked, they lay separated on the pan, each in the perfect shape of Washington state. Once baked, they failed to hold that shape. She sent me the picture, and we laughed. We aren’t laughing easily in this summer month of July, reeling still from her husband’s death in April.
I’ve neglected this blog for a while, and even now might be not a good time for me to be writing. If my close friend looked over my shoulder and saw where my mind is going, they might say, Nah, now’s not a good time for you to be blogging. You’re listening to Nana Mouskouri sing about love, a story older than the sea, and with that cabaret voice she’s put you in a reflective mood. Pathetic, really. This might get you in trouble.
My friend would be right. I listen, and I remember Marc Beacco, guitar player in Nana’s band back in the 80s when my husband and I were traveling to catch her shows in Canada. Marc was a crazy fun young Italian Frenchman who by serendipity became a part of our family, became the voice coach to the French President Hollande, and best friend to our eldest son, and then way too soon, died of a brain tumor. Like Kim’s cookies, that didn’t turn out the way we intended.
I read an article this morning about coffee. I’m a coffee drinker. Did you know that coffee plants around the world are being threatened by drought and heat? Climate change deniers might poo-poo this but just wait till they start being offered Ovaltine. Aaron Davis, head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London takes all this seriously. He’s been searching the world for stenophylla, a wild coffee that may be resistant to increasing heat and drought. Christian Bunn, a coffee researcher says that the global area suitable for growing coffee could be slashed in half by 2050.
No one’s real sure how people started drinking coffee, but Ethiopian folklore says it began in the mid-ninth century when a goatherd saw his goats leaping about after consuming the small red berries. So, naturally, he tried them, and found himself dancing with his goats for hours. Naturally, the news, and the use, spread. Like my daughter’s cookies, this climate stuff isn’t turning out the way we wish. Those floods in Texas, those tornados in the middle of the land, those polluted rivers and oceans, those fires in the west. Who stirred up that brew? Is Mother Nature saying, “Don’t blame me!”?
In his book, The Monk of Mokha, Dave Eggers says coffee was “born in Arabia, specifically in what the Romans had called Arabia . . . This was Yemen.” Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the world, is a country we Americans bombed recently to keep a shipping lane open. Like the ordinary person subject to Hamas in Gaza, like the resident near cartel centers in Mexico, the very poor people near Houthis rebels in northern Yemen suffer what they did not shape and cannot escape. Wouldn’t sending some foods have been a nice way for us to say we were sorry for having to do that bombing?
Today might not have been the best day for me to have reached page seventy-seven of the most essential and sobering book, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, by Omar El Akkad. He’s speaking of the atrocities committed against the people of Gaza who are being called to pay for the grievous sins of their leaders (leaders smart enough to provide hospitals and schools and food while they schemed brutalities against Israel). It’s hard, isn’t it? It’s hard to ignore the wrongs enacted against Palestinian people. We can begin in 1948 when the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into of separate Jewish and Arab states.
Only, oops, the Arab state never got established. We’re talking about that planned state for Arab people whose ancestors had been in the land at least since 637 CE when Muslim rule was established in Gaza. And if you’ve done any reading at all about the treatment of Palestinians under the rule of Israel, you can understand the bitterness baking in that Palestinian land. Like my daughter’s cookies, things didn’t turn out as planned.
Akkad’s book, One Day, Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, speaks of civilized people, we who are so good at distinguishing between them and us. Someday, regardless of how our biases lean, regardless of what we are doing now, all of us will have always been against genocide, against beheading babies, bombing hospitals, against polluting rivers and ruining oceans. Maybe we American Christians will put down this crazy idea called, “The Seven Mountains Mandate” where all will be well with America when Christians control, got that word? Control – every aspect of society. God help us. Christianity was my cradle, my nanny, my profession, my delight. I know better than to think we should “have dominion.”
Maybe we good Americans will finally agree to feel shame over Viet Nam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and over our treatment since 2002 of 780 men and boys held Guantanamo prison. Nearly as I can find, in all that time, seven men have been convicted. Those things just didn’t turn out as we planned, did they (I suggest the film, The Mauritanian).
Here I am at my desk hearing Nana sing songs of love, remembering that on the Fourth of July the president of my country repeated his oft sung song of hatred toward Democrats. He’s angry that Democrats didn’t embrace his Big Beautiful Bill. Fortunately, I’m not a registered Democrat, so I don’t feel personally offended, but I do remember what he carefully placed on the pan back in 2016. He said, “To all Republicans and Democrats and Independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.” I’m not sure what happened to that idea when it was put in the oven to bake, but it seems to have come out much like my daughter’s cookies. The difference between the president and my daughter is their reaction to not getting what they wanted.
That darned creative Kim. Look what she did. Just look what can be done! She remedied; she rejected ruin; she saw value, she brought value, in things that appeared discardable. Oh, look! There’s Washington state in the upper right side of the pan.
