Month: April 2011

The Lydster, Part 85: Peanut free

What’s odd is that, as a kid, I LOVED peanut butter. But I must have ODed on it, because the smell now makes me nauseous.

As some of you know, the daughter has a peanut allergy, discovered when she was given a peanut butter cookie shortly before she was three. Interestingly, she didn’t have the typical symptoms of swelling. Instead, she vomited – several times. And she has been tested about a year ago, and she is still allergic.

I’ve noted here in the past that there are basically two kinds of people when it comes to food allergy safety; people who have a family member with an allergy, and the pretty much oblivious. Because there’s so much cross-pollination with them, the daughter avoids tree nuts as well as peanuts, even though she is not specifically allergic to them.

I remember a couple of years ago that we were invited to the house of a friend for lunch. We gave the hostess the information beforehand. What did she serve? Nutella sandwiches with nut bread we couldn’t let her eat either.

Likewise, at a party Lydia attended just a couple of weeks ago, the cake had no peanuts or nuts but was processed in a plant with nuts. Fortunately, we always pack alternatives for such an occasion.

Fortunately, she’s not allergic to airborne peanuts, as some people are. The first time Lydia ever flew on a plane, a couple of years ago, the flight attendant, passing out peanuts and another snack, practically passed out when I mentioned my daughter’s allergy. I was appalled by this story about a restaurant chef lying about the fact that the foods were “gluten-free” when, in fact, they were not; highly irresponsible.

I am comforted by the fact that, at least at this point, she won’t take peanut butter deliberately. She was writing her homework, and she had to just WRITE the words “peanut butter” and she complained how awful it tasted, even though she hadn’t ingested it in over four years.

What’s odd is that, as a kid, I LOVED peanut butter. But I must have ODed on it because the smell now makes me nauseous. Meanwhile, my wife really rakes in the Halloween candy, just on the peanut butter products alone.

Pictures c 2009 by Alexandria Green-House

O is for Occupants of Outer Space

Golden phonograph record designed to “contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them.”

“In March 1953 an organization known as the International Flying Saucer Bureau sent a bulletin to all its members urging them to participate in an experiment termed ‘World Contact Day’ whereby, on March 15 at a predetermined time, they would attempt to collectively send out a telepathic message to visitors from outer space. The message began with the words…’Calling occupants of interplanetary craft!'”

Apparently, no one replied.

But the old news story inspired a Canadian band to form with the peculiar name of Klaatu. The group name came from the science-fiction classic 1951 film “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” in which the immortal phrase “Klaatu Barada Nikto” is uttered to stop the robot Gort from destroying the earth after the humanoid Klaatu (Michael Rennie) is shot and (temporarily) killed. Obviously, Ringo Starr copped the imagery for his 1974 album, which helped fuel the rumor that Klaatu was really the Beatles.

In the mid-1970s, Klaatu wrote and recorded the song Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft (The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day), or Calling Occupants on the label. Here’s a verse:

Please come in peace we beseech you
Only a landing will teach them
Our earth may never survive
So do come we beg you
Please interstellar policemen
Won’t you give us a sign
Give us a sign that we’ve reached you

And here’s a link to the single.

The song was covered by the Carpenters(!), who took it to #32 in the US charts in 1977.

Coincidentally, two both Voyager spacecraft were launched in 1977, each with a golden phonograph record designed to “contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for future humans, who may find them.”

There are, of course, plenty of movies of visitors from another planet; here’s somebody’s top 10 list. Conversely, the 50th anniversary of an Earth human actually going out into space is this month.

As we know more about the universe, it becomes increasingly doubtful, at least to me, that there isn’t intelligent life SOMEWHERE out there. Although I was a bit distressed by the fact that 1/3 of the Russians and 1/5 of the Americans on THIS planet believe the sun goes around the earth. Oy.

 

ABC Wednesday – Round 8

Hallelujah

One of the songs on the album was Hallelujah from Christ on the Mount of Olives by Beethoven, and it was amazingly competent for 12- and 13-year-olds.

When I was in high school in Binghamton (upstate NY) in the late 1960s, my sister Leslie, another black teenage girl, and I were invited to visit the classroom of the junior high school in suburban Vestal. The reason, if I’m remembering correctly (and it was over 40 years ago) was that the only black teenagers they saw were ones on television, and in those days, that was mighty few.

Interestingly, the male teacher of this music class was black, who was likely the only one, and therefore one more than there was at the time at Binghamton Central HS.

We sat and talked and answered questions, and the session seemingly did what it was intended to do, i.e., to let the Vestal kids get to know us as people. This was neither the first nor the last time my sister and I were involved in such an ambassadorship.

What was most interesting to me, though, is that they had put out an album of music, pressed onto vinyl. It was mostly classical and public domain folk tunes. The cover, though, was blank. they gave us each a copy and I remember coloring it with a bunch of geometric designs. And while I’m not sure I still have my copy, my sister definitely has hers.

One of the songs on the album was Hallelujah from Christ on the Mount of Olives by Beethoven, and it was amazingly competent for 12- and 13-year-olds. I thought of that today because it’s one of the songs we are performing for Easter this morning.

Here are a few versions:
Piano and choir
With orchestra- soft (crank it up!)
With orchestra
Solo organ
More like we’ll sound like

 

MIRACLES post

went home, never heard from any of those people again, and this event had almost no long-term impact on my life.

Copyright 2006 by Sidney Harris

Have you ever experienced something that no rational explanation can describe? I did once.

I was living in Schenectady near Albany in the spring of 1978, and I asked out this amazingly beautiful young woman who worked at Albany Savings Bank; at least one parent was from Brazil. Her response was that I could go to church with her sometime.

So one Sunday afternoon, she and some friends picked me up and took me to a church in Troy, a really eclectic group of congregants.

At some point in this LONG service, the pastor went around and asked each person if they had been saved by the blood of Jesus Christ. Though I had had a “saved” experience when I was nine, I was in my theologically doubting period, so I didn’t raise my hand.

After this, the folks converged on us unwashed folks. We went to the altar, and they began chanting GEEEE-ZUS GEEEE-ZUS. And in a relatively short time, I was talking in a language I did not understand; apparently, I was speaking in tongues! And they gave me some clothes to change into so that I could have a full-emersion baptism downstairs.

I went home, never heard from any of those people again, and this event had almost no long-term impact on my life.

So do you have any events in your life you cannot explain?

***

The Miracles－Love Machine

 

Blame/Guilt in the Liturgy

Damn thing tears me up every time. EVERY TIME.

When I was growing up in the AME Zion church, there was a part of the liturgy called the Prayer of Humble Access, which we said every time we had communion; in our church, that was the first Sunday of the month. The prayer has long Anglican roots; the 1662 revision, which is at least a century after the original, reads: We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen. I have to say that that line about the crumbs under the Table always bothered me as a child. It’s supposed to be a humble prayer, not a groveling one.

Conversely, there’s a good Lenten hymn called Ah, Holy Jesus. The second verse: Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee! ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I was denied thee; I crucified thee. Damn thing tears me up every time. EVERY TIME. I have to wonder if it’s the music that makes it more moving for me, whereas I find the prayer pedantic.

Probably. We do a lot of music in our current service, such as the psalter, and while I’m quite fond of it, at least one woman in the congregation finds it stressful because she’s trying to get it right.

 

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