Enough
I visited an old haunt of mine, a coffee shop I used to frequent a few years ago. I once was a regular there, but moved on because the crowd is mostly young folks -- teens, mostly -- and the shop allows smoking. I had business a few blocks away, and I'm friends with the people who own the place, so I stopped in for a quick cuppa.

And I saw a bastard I used to know.

I try my best not judge people. I've had many friends and aquaintances that were hardcore criminals: con artists, drug addicts, prostitutes and even murderers. In my line of work, you have to deal with folks who have done bad things and still treat them with decency and respect.

But there are people I have a difficult time accepting: abusers. I'm not talking about people who blow up one day and do something stupid; I'm talking about those who systematically seek out someone they can exercise power over and then commence verbal, sexual and/or physical abuse of that person.

There are a lot of reasons for my inability to tolerate this type of criminal, but I think the biggest one is that I don't believe that most of them ever really change. With most criminals, I believe that there is a chance of reformation, but abusers -- I just don't see it.

And this guy is an abuser. I know this because he battered a friend of mine for a long time. He lived with her, took her money and beat her up.

Repeatedly.

As I said, he's a bastard.

She broke free of him, and moved far away years ago. I lost track of him. He's a low-level criminal -- small-time drugs and violence -- and I assumed that he was in jail or even prison for a while. I haven't seen him in years.

Until this morning, that is. He was sitting at the bar of this coffee shop, working his charm on a young woman who was flattered by the attention.

Now I haven't seen this man in years, as I said before. I have no idea what he's gone through -- maybe he's reformed, maybe he's found Jesus or something.

But I doubt it. He was working her -- therapists call it grooming her with flattery, sensitive talk, gentle laughter and just being the ultimate nice guy. He looks like a thug, but he comes off as a sensitive soul who is tough on the outside. You know the type: the right woman could change him and help the world see that he's really a great guy; he's just misunderstood is all.

I looked him straight in the eye. I sent all kinds of nonverbal messages to him, letting him know that I knew who and what he was.

He wasn't doing anything illegal. He wasn't breaking a law or an ordinance or any written rule. He was just working whatever magic he has to worm his way into another woman's life.

I wanted to pound him. I wanted to tell everyone what I knew, make everyone aware that this is a toxic, dangerous man.

But he wasn't doing anything wrong. All he was doing was drinking coffee, laughing, and making his move on a woman who was definitely interested in him.

I don't believe this man has changed. I know that's judgemental, narrow-minded and unforgiving. But as I watched him -- touching her arm just that way as she leaned into him smiling and laughing -- I thought about my friend and the possiblity that this woman might be next.

I drank my coffee. What to do? I have no authority, no evidence to bring to anyone who has authority, and no proof against him except the past -- and that sick feeling I get in my soul when I watch an abuser work his mark.

There wasn't a lot I could do, so I once again made eye contact with him. I think I connected with him. I like to think that he knew I was totally on to him.

I hope it was enough. I hope that he knew that I remembered him, that someone was aware of his game and that at least one person was watching him. Predators sometimes care about getting caught, and I hope he's one of those.

I hope I did enough.

The Holy Grail


I used to collect comics, even though I was probably the world's worst collector. See, I actually read my comics. I read them all the time, re-read them, carried them around with me, fell asleep reading them, spilled pop on them, rolled them up and put them in my pocket -- all the stuff you're not supposed to do, I did with my comics. But man, I loved them.

And my favorite hero was Captain America. He still is my favorite.

Though I don't collect comics any more, I still read them occasionally, and I keep in touch with some friends who are active collectors. And I still have a little bit of the collecting bug.

I want something -- anything -- from the World War II era that features Captain America. The picture above is the Captain America Sentinel of Liberty Membership Kit. If I had a Holy Grail to search for, this would be it.

But I would settle for just about anything from the 1940's with Captain America on it -- an ashtray, a airline barf bag, a cereal box. I don't care.

And it's not the money; I don't care what something is "worth". I just think Cap is cool, and I would like to possess something historical, something from that era.

I've done a lot of traveling, and I have been looking for Captain America memorabilia for a long time. There's not a lot out there, folks. The membership kits -- if you can find someone who will part with one -- run about $3000.

So that's out. I would have a hard time justifying the investment of that kind of money in something like that.

But if money didn't matter, I would have one of those kits hanging on my office wall.

Call Me Crazy

I'm crazy. Not because I listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, even though I disagree with about 90% of what they say and get mad while I'm listening to them.

Not because I like to play Pounce with my kitties. Yeah, that's right. I'm 44, and I chase my cats around the house yelling "Pounce!" at them. And then I let them chase me for a while. Got a problem with that?

I'm not crazy because I do those things. I'm crazy because I'm going to once again attempt to write a fifty thousand word novel in the month of November. It's that time of year again -- time for National Novel Writers Month.

I was able to actually do it three years ago, with the story Send Them Home. I tried last year and the year before, but gave up after a few days. Life just got too hectic, and I fell behind in my word count. And I really wasn't too inspired by the story.

This year, I've got everything pretty much plotted out. I'm working again with my characters from the first story: Evan Johnson, news reporter for an alternative paper based in Uptown Minneapolis is the main character. Joining him is his girlfriend Jesse, and the young Minneapolis power couple Vi Kuhlman and Rover.

-------------------------------------

Pierce River has a rich history -- but not one the citizens are proud of. The town was terrorized in the summer of 1886 by someone known only as "The Woman In Black". Things started out harmlessly enough, with bizarre pranks - - but soon progressed to window peekings, muggings, strange thefts and outright attacks that led to murder.

One person was arrested, but the case was thrown out of court for lack of evidence, and the case has been unsolved for one hundred and twenty years.

The citizens of Pierce River want to forget the whole thing, but someone is re-enacting the pranks and people are scared. The arrival of an old man who claims that he was there 120 years before throws the whole town in an uproar. He says that he's back to stop The Woman In Black, because he can't die until the murderer is brought to justice.

Can a bike-riding, Scrabble playing outsider figure out the truth before someone else ends up dead?

-----------------------------------

So that's it. I'll serialize it somewhere so people can see how it all plays out. I've got the whole thing plotted, and broken down into scenes. I know whodunnit, why they did it and what Jesse's deep dark secret is.

And I'm crazy enough to actually write this puppy.

My Favorite Muppet
When I heard that the Muppets -- not the ones on Sesame Street, but the ones from the show -- were getting their own stamps, my first thought was to my absolute favorite muppet.

He'll never get his own stamp, especially considering today's intolerance for people who like to blow things up. So that leaves out Crazy Harry -- not to mention his exploding boomerang fish. In case you've forgotten what he looks like, here are a couple of pictures:

On The Menu for today
Maybe it's all my eating issues, but when I am under the weather, I think about food a lot.

I've had what my mom used to call "The Creeping Crud" for about five days now. I'm not really sick, and I'm not at all well. I'm in the twilight zone between. I fight the symptoms with lots of liquid, some cold medicine and sleep.

I also cook more than normal, and that brings me to today's menu. AngryTeen is going to be mad about it (it contains lots of veggies, and she don't like veggies).

I'm making Stewed Tomatoes with Zucchini and Mushrooms over pasta. It's basically a vegetarian spaghetti sauce, thick and hearty with lots of tomatoes, garlic, basil and parsely.

I figure if AngryTeen covers it with enough parmesan cheese, she'll be just fine.

Here's the recipe:

2 cups of vegetable broth (I made my own with onions, celery, carrots, pepper, garlic and potatoes. Put this in a 5-quart Dutch oven with enough water to fill it and bring to a boil. Simmer it for a couple of hours and strain it. I use it about half strength for soups.)

2-4 cups water. (Depends on the size pan used. I use a 5-quart Dutch oven.)

Bring the water/broth to a boil. As it boils, toss in 5 fresh tomatoes for a couple of minutes. Remove the tomatoes and plunge them into cold water. This will take off the skins.

Turn down the heat on the boiling water. As the tomatoes cool, chop up 1/2 of a small onion and add it to the pan. At this time, also add 1 or 2 cloves of garlic. (The sauce will smell pretty strong for a while, but the zucchini we're adding later will absorb most of that, so don't be scared.)

Add 1 tbsp each of parsely and basil. If the water is still boiling, bring down the heat. We want it to simmer, not boil.

By now, the tomatoes should be cool enough to work with. Remove the skin and crush up the tomato, leaving some good-sized chunks. Add the tomatoes to the pan of broth.

Do I need to remind you to stir the sauce? Use a wooden spoon, and stir it up. This is the time to start figuring out how to make this recipe your own. If you like a thinner sauce, add some veggie broth, canned tomato sauce, white wine, or water. If you want your sauce to thicken, turn the heat up a little and reduce it a bit. You might also want to add some spice to it.

I used 1/2 t oregano and about two shakes of cumin. And pepper to taste. I like pepper, and I probably add more than you would. Taste it, roll your eyes and announce to the world how good it is, and then add enough pepper for your personal taste.

And for Pete's sake, use a clean spoon every time you taste the sauce.

Let this stuff simmer for a while while you chop up some zucchini and mushrooms.

I used 2 cups of diced zucchini, and 8 ounces of fresh mushrooms. Most of the time, canned mushrooms work just fine, but I use fresh with this because I like texture.

This sauce can be in a crock pot for a while, but you have to keep it on low. This is also a base for my minestrone soup. Instead of zucchini, I add 1 cup each of beans and chunks of beef. And I'll also toss in about a cup of beef broth. (Or two cups of broth, depending on how thin the sauce is.)

For the pasta, I am using egg noodles tossed with a little olive oil and parmesan cheese.

The Big Secret
As some of you may have guessed, I love to cook. I especially like to make soups of all kinds, but chicken soup in particular.

But if the truth were to be told my wonderful, Most Patient Wife really doesn't like my soup.

Especially my chicken soup.

Okay, she'll eat it and not complain. But she don't like it, and for the sake of my marriage (cuz I'm not giving up soupmaking, folks!) I have to come up with a way to make my soup in way that my wife will really enjoy. So far, the solution has eluded me.

That is, until this last batch I made the other day. MPW really liked that soup, almost as much as I liked making it. And I think I've figured out The Big Secret: what is in my soup that she doesn't like.

Normally, when I make soup, I use homemade broth. For chicken, I stew a whole bird -- giblets and all. I fill up a pot with water, the chicken and veggies and simmer it all day until the veggies are almost liquified and the meat is falling off the bones. Then I strain the whole thing, cool it in the refrigerator and skim off the fat.

MPW hates dark meat on chicken and turkey. My broth is chock full of dark meat. It's rich and full of flavor -- but the broth is made up of stuff she doesn't like.

So...the solution is to buy chicken broth (which I'm politically opposed to unless I'm sick), or to attempt to make broth with only white meat. So the next time I make soup, I know what I'm going to do.

While this may not be the most scintillating blog entry EVER for you guys, I'm loving it.

'Cuz I'm a soup geek.

The Lost Weekend
Somewhere between the flu-like symptoms, the medicine I took to relieve them and just being really super busy, I misplaced the past couple of days. Have you seen them? 'Cuz I'd really like to find that weekend.

One of the few benefits of me getting sick is that I have the excuse to make homemade soup. Here's the soup I made on Saturday:

Mike's Chicken Vegetable Noodle Soup For When He's Sick

2 whole cloves garlic, peeled -- chop it if you wanna. (I don't.)
1 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp basil

microwave for four minutes (Don't be snooty about the microwave, either; just saute it in a pan if you want. It'll take about ten minutes. But for this, I like the microwave, because the garlic gets soft and aromatic.)

Pour the sauted garlic and oil into a 5 quart Dutch oven and break up the chunks with a wooden spoon.

Add chicken broth* until pan is about 3/4 full. Bring this to a boil. But keep cooking and adding stuff to the broth as it boils.

Toss in some parsley and peppercorns. I use a lot of them, much to the dismay of Most Patient Wife and AngryTeen. But hey, I was the one who was sick, so this is my soup. So there! (When I make soup for them when they are sick, and I do it the way they like then.)

2 chicken breasts -- I used our George Foreman grill (set at 375) for about twelve minutes to cook these, but they had bones. If you use the boneless, skinless breasts, I'd guess you grill them about 8 minutes. The point is, they should be cooked through, but not dry. The juice coming out should be clear -- but there should still be juice.

After they cook, dice 'em up and add them to the broth in the pan.

As the chicken breasts cook, Cut up a cup of celery and at least a cup -- I use TWO cups -- of carrots. Cut them small, so they cook up quickly.

By this time, the soup should be boiling. As soon as it turns to a boil, bring down that heat and simmer the soup for about a half an hour. If you let it simmer too long, the veggies get mushy.

About ten minutes before you want to serve this soup, throw in some pasta. I used 4 ounces of angel hair pasta that I broke up into three-inch pieces. (We use whole-grain pasta, but you don't have to.)

This soup goes great with garlic bread, and it tastes even better the next day.

*Most of the time, I make my own chicken broth. But as I say, I wasn't feeling too good, so I used fat-free, low sodium canned broth. Sue me.

Blog Bizzness:

I added JD Long to my blog roll. JD and his family live in Texas. We "met" each other about 20 years ago when we were part of a snail mail writing group.

Check out his blog!

The closest thing to a hero ....
General Honore takes over a press conference in New Orleans where the reporters keep asking questions instead of listening to the statements the people in charge of evacuating citizens and says the following:

You're asking last storm questions for people who are concerned about the future storm. Don't get stuck on stupid, reporters. We are moving forward. And don't confuse the people please. You are part of the public message. So help us get the message straight. And if you don't understand, maybe you'll confuse it to the people. That's why we like follow-up questions. But right now, it's the convention center, and move on.

Male reporter: General, a little bit more about why that's happening this time, though, and did not have that last time...

Honore: You are stuck on stupid. I'm not going to answer that question. We are going to deal with Rita. This is public information that people are depending on the government to put out. This is the way we've got to do it. So please. I apologize to you, but let's talk about the future. Rita is happening. And right now, we need to get good, clean information out to the people that they can use. And we can have a conversation on the side about the past, in a couple of months.

I laughed when I heard this, because as much as I like having a free press that nails the authorities to the wall, I would like to believe that we can all work together sometimes and put our agendas aside.

If there are buses to get people out of the way of a natural disaster, let the folks know. There's plenty of time to blame and tear down everyone later. For right now, let's save some damned lives.

Thanks to Robyn for pointing me in the right direction on this.

Don't Get Stuck On Stupid. Heh...could be a presidential campaign slogan! (Although there are lots of folks who think we've been stuck with stupid for a while now...)

Pardon Me While I Laugh My Butt Off
That Louis Farrakhan just makes me laugh. The guy's an idiot. For a taste of this man's lunacy, here's what he said yesterday about the flooding of New Orleans:

I heard from a very reliable source that under that levee, there was a 25-foot hole, which suggested that it may have been blown up, so that the water would destroy the black part of town, and where the whites were, it would be dry. I am sure that some good is being done, but not nearly enough to answer the cry.

Okay. Now who doesn't think that's funny? I mean, let's face it: racists bombed a levee so that black people would drown?

How this guy gets anyone to listen to him is a mystery to me. But then, one of his supporters describes him thusly:

"...a better orator than Martin Luther King Jr., a better author than Norman Mailer, a better diplomat than Henry Kissinger, and more handsome than Muhammad Ali."

And he's funnier than Bill Cosby!

That's all, folks.

Been kinda quiet...
I have been stunned lately by the events on the Gulf Coast, and haven't felt much like writing.

I'm rather outraged by the politicization of the storm and the aftermath, all the finger pointing and accusations and people not stepping up and saying, "Here's where we could have done better."

I'm disappointed in all the people who are supposed to be leaders -- from the mayor of New Orleans to President Bush. Although this whole mess brings to mind something that has long been one of my core beliefs:

America isn't great because of our government; what makes this country great the everyday, rank and file people.

And the people have stepped up with money and goods and services. They've opened their homes, their wallets and their workplaces. When it comes right down to it, I am disappointed right now because I was looking to our government to take care of things -- and like much of the time, the government failed. At every level.

AngryTeen and I were talking about the polticians and the elected officials who are all yelling and screaming about who did and didn't do what and why.

She is just 15, and she has her troubles (like most teens), but I have to tell you that she understands a basic truth: humans do everything they can to get what they want, and once they have it, they will will anything to keep it. The behavior of our political leaders -- in both parties -- has shown this to be truer now than ever before.

I love politics, normally. I was looking forward to the presidential race in '08, but I can tell you right now that it's going to be more of the same -- people peddling the politics of fear and don't vote for the other guy because he's conservative or liberal or Democrat or Republican.

They'll belch out a bunch of hot air, and bicker and blame. No one will advance any new ideas for the future; we won't dream or plan for anything good.

We'll all vote because we're afraid we're going to lose something, instead of putting the best people in office. And everything will remain the same.

It used to be that politicians would promise anything to get elected; now it seems that the strategy isn't to offer anything but protection from the other guy -- or his party.

I'm tired of all of it, and it hasn't really even started yet. I've already made up my mind about for whom I will vote, provided that this person is an eligible candidate. So I might just check out of the next political season altogether and start watching General Hospital again or something.

To end this on a lighter note, I just want to send out props to Linda Larson, whom I am acquainted with through the Times Writers Group. She has written a book called Grow It. Eat It, and it's going on sale soon. Linda has a nice, folksy style of writing, with gentle humor and subtle wit and wisdom.

Lastly, I want to thank Dave Brooks and a couple of drivers at Taxi Plus. I drove cab last Saturday night, and collected all my tips for hurricane relief. Dave and the other drivers matched my donation, and together we raised $150.

Every time I mentioned to the customers that I was donating my tips to hurricane relief, they tossed a few extra bucks my way. It was a good night, and the cheerful giving of everyday people restored my faith a little.

So I got that going for me then.