Dos Amigas

Today was our first lunch in July. We had mixed green salad with strawberries, blueberries, orange sections, topped with cubes of roast chicken. Hiding under a sheet of aluminum foil were cheesecake tarts and brownies.

I asked Ann if she made the dessert.

"No, my Mom did. She made lots of them for the family get-together for the Fourth."

I'm going to ask her mother to adopt me, those brownies are that good.

Ann said one of the things her mother told her about cooking that made an impression is that you overbake angel food cake and always underbake brownies. That's going on my refrigerator door, next to the Isaac Asimov quote about writing that my daughter gave me a couple of years ago.

At our last lunch two weeks ago, we decided to pick up the 'bible-cracking' technique the Tres Amigas used to inspire creativity when the well went dry. Only, we didn't use bibles; almost any book will do. We took turns opening a book to random pages, closing our eyes and running a finger down the page, letting it stop wherever felt right. We'd write those words (no articles, prepositions or conjunctions) in a list, then use them to create a piece to be shared at the next meeting.

Ann used the list in two very different poems, to good effect. I started a story about a priest (one of the words) who appears as a witness for the prosecution at a war crimes tribunal. As usual, I waited until the day it was due before starting to write, which usually works out just fine. Not this morning. I think the story is about a quarter done, and it may lead to something longer than 500 words. Maybe I'll submit it to one of the flash fiction sites I read about a few days ago. Maybe it will sit in my bag until next time, though.

We talked about how the brain works and the almost daily new discoveries neurologists and other scientists are making on this fantastic three-pound lump of jiggly stuff. (US News and World Report has a Special Edition devoted the brain, which I took along.)

We covered, briefly, subjects of faith vs Faith, Inc.; American economic woes and where are the jobs for those young people graduating college now (never mind their out-of-work parents and older workers made redundant when manufacturing jobs are off-shored); how this depression is different from the one our parents and grandparents endured, and what, if anything, can be done in the short term to reverse the situation.

Ann, a former reporter/freelance journalist, complained how US papers have become, essentially, mouthpieces (my choice of word, not hers) for corporate America and the military, that two-headed snake Eisenhower warned us about in the '50s: the Military-Industrial Complex. We aren't getting but little bits of the news, and most of it is pablum, designed to keep us quiet and complacent.

I started my rant about how we (and other nations who do business with her) are enabling China to rebuild her military and her nuclear weapons program. The Dragon is stirring in its den, I said, growing stronger, plotting the takeover of the world.

"Look how she is flexing her muscles with Taiwan, Viet Nam and South Korea," I said. When China has completely undermined our economy, thanks to corporate America's greed and obsession with destroying labor unions, she won't have to do much but walk right in the front gate. Then we will become the Western Provinces of the Peoples' Republic of China.

"I know," Ann agreed. "China is rebuilding her Navy, and becoming very friendly with our Middle-Eastern enemies, which should cause a lot more concern, but you don't read much about it anywhere. And, they are buying US seaports!"

Congratulating ourselves for having raised the alarm, even if only in Ann's dining room, we moved on to critiquing the writers group we visited, twice. We think there was more posturing and chest-beating than is necessary, but, then, the Tres Amigas didn't do much of that, being three women of a certain age, disinclined to thump our breasts, anyway, while the G'burg group seems to be men (we haven't met any other women - except for 20s-something Andrea who pronounces her name Ahn-Dray-a, but that's for some other post) of a certain age who appear to need to posture and beat chest, much like gorillas do in establishing dominance or asserting their place in the overall order of things. (Good lord, that was a long sentence!) Of course, we could be wrong about that.

Another brownie beckoned to me, begging me to eat it, which I did.

It was time to make another list of words, so Ann brought out a different book this time, a novel about New York, when it was still a Dutch colony called New Amsterdam. I don't remember the title. We stopped at eighteen words this time, probably so I'll be more likely to actually complete something. That's the trouble when you've been friends with someone for a quarter of a century; they know your shortcomings. If they are good friends (Ann is), they accept you as you are and make allowances.

(In case you are interested the words are: special, talk, boys, distance, goosefeather, money, bowling-green (technically two, but who's counting?), tiles, buttonholes, story, pot, horses, window, work, linen, silk, child and uncanny.)

What would you do with those words? If you want to join us, you have to bring brownies. Or cheesecake tarts...topped with cherries.