Three Beautiful Things 09-26-2022: Barley Casserole, Listening While Cooking, I Hear from Deborah and Rita

 1. In our lower cabinet, featuring two circular rotating trays, day after day after day I see we have a container of long unused barley. Today I decided to cook Debbie and me a casserole built around barley.

So, I got out the Dutch oven and melted a slab of butter. I chopped up an onion and cooked it in the butter for about seven minutes and then added chopped celery to the onions and cooked them together for another seven to eight minutes. To this mixture, I added a cup of uncooked barley and stirred it until butter covered the barley. I folded eight ounces of chopped mushrooms and a chopped green pepper into this mixture and added a can of drained black beans and seasoned the casserole with cumin, salt, and pepper. 

I poured just over two cups of chicken stock over the barley, vegetables, and beans and brought it to a boil.

I had preheated the oven at 350 degrees. I put the lid on the Dutch oven and baked the casserole covered for half an hour and then uncovered for fifteen minutes. 

That's it. The casserole was ready when Debbie arrived home from work. 

I also chopped up some cucumber, tomatoes, and Walla Walla sweet onion. Debbie dressed them with vinegar, oil, salt, and pepper.

We enjoyed a hearty dinner with plenty left over for Debbie's lunch on Tuesday.

2. While I cooked dinner, I put Godfather, Part II on my laptop and played the sound over my wireless speaker. The sweep of this movie stuns me, even after multiple viewings -- or, today, a partial listening. 

3. Today, lifelong friend and fellow Whitworth alum, Deborah, called my attention to an article that appeared in the online edition of The New Yorker. It focused on now retired Whitworth professor, Kathy Lee. For years, Prof. Lee kept it to herself while working at Whitworth that she's gay, but late in her career decided to let her sexual identity be known at Whitworth. The article tells her story and it tells the larger story of how member colleges and universities of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities do or do not confront the reality of L.G.Q.B.T. students, faculty, and staff at their institutions, and how these students, faculty, and staff are affected by the institutions' practices, and how their differing stances affect hiring, especially of faculty. 

You can read the article, here. 

Reading this article and exchanging emails with Deborah brought a lot of my memories and feelings to the surface, memories and feelings related to students who trusted me with their stories at Whitworth, the University of Oregon, and Lane Community College and feelings I have about those stories and the institutional systems that make life so difficult for L.G.Q.B.T. people, especially in Christian colleges and universities or in the church. 

I wasn't expecting to be faced with these feelings tonight, but I welcomed them, especially as Deborah and I exchanged emails and wished we could meet in person to talk about what we think and feel. That the systems at work at Whitworth and in churches are so entrenched in long held positions, doctrines, policies, and practices, well, it leaves me feeling little hope that these institutions will change much. But, it does uplift me when I can exchange emails with Deborah and I always know that my friends in the Westminster Study Group share my outlook, frustrations, and hopes -- and that we'll always talk openly about our thoughts and feelings. Likewise, I've had many superb experiences discussing these matters with fellow Episcopalians, many whose views I share and several who sees things differently. 

Later in the evening, I got a call from Rita who told me she'd had a heart attack and stent surgery.

All things considered, Rita sounded pretty good -- her mind is definitely sharp and she has a firm and realistic grasp of her condition. She has a project in mind having, in part, to do with writing assignments she and I used to give when we team taught and that she gave on her own. It's possible I'll be traveling to Oregon in about a month and our hope is to get together and see what Rita's got and, if nothing else, enjoy the memories of ways we used to have our students synthesize what our courses covered by giving them creative and sometimes outlandish writing assignments to complete.