Drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain

The late Red Sox clubhouse manager isn't really news, right? I mean, he was accused in '02, pleaded guilty in Florida, the club settled with plaintiffs in '03, he died in '05. I get that the newly identified victims have every right to come forward, and why they might not have before, even. I just don't get why it's news.

Give me a break, please. 

please.

I'm not asking as a member of the public tired of hearing about sexual abuse. I am pleading as a survivor who just needs a rest from reconsidering it all the time.

La di da di dee, La di da di die

The supper fail

With the mrs. out of town for the weekend, I figured I'd welcome her home with a nice dinner.  I'd talked with her more than a week ago about recreating this really great potato chip appetizer we'd had at the Cap City Fine Diner, with hollandaise and Maytag bleu cheese. I thought it was delicious, and was kind of surprised the she'd seemed to like it, too, seeing as she's never liked bleu cheese.

I was a little worried about the hollandaise. I've never made it; whenever I've been tempted before, I've been put off by how tedious and tricky the recipes look.  I'm never very good at patience on this sort of thing.  It seems like I always have too many things going at once to pay enough attention to such a sauce, like it was by its very nature a recipe for failure, and I'm good enough at that without setting myself up for it! But by yesterday I'd forgotten about that history, and found this simpler-looking one that uses a blender to pull things together in way less time. It ended up working pretty well, too, except for the constant splatter through the hole in the blender lid as I was adding the butter.

The next trick was to get out the slicer we inherited from her dad. It needed some cleaning up, but the instructions were clear and, because of dad's great organization, present! I set it a little too thick for the first potato, not factoring in that the raw potato would probably push out on the blade a little. The second one was pervect. I got the slicer cleaned back up, dried and put away, including putting a bag over it so that it probably won't need to be cleaned before the next time we want to use it again.  And the chips came out crispy and tasty!

Finally, I decided on a chuck roast, but wanted a recipe without onion because of how much my daughter hates it. By finally excluding onion from my search, I found this recipe with cranberries; I knew the mrs. probably wouldn't like the cranberries, but as she enjoys jellied sauce I figured she'd enjoy the gravy without any actual berries in it. By the time I got the roast started, I was concerned about getting it done in time, but when the text message announced they were almost home it was apparent that it would be in fine shape.

Aside from the fact that I was cleaning up some spilled albumen when she walked in the door, and was still in scramble mode and needed for her to tend the chips for me while I finished the sauce, everything came together pretty much as planned.

So, where's the fail? Well, it turns out she wasn't as much of a fan of the chips as I'd assumed based on how much she'd consumed at the diner. And that she doesn't like hollandaise any better than bleu cheese. And that the roast was too sweet for her liking. And I suppose the boxes of Christmas decorations that I didn't get squared away because I was busy preparing a meal that she didn't care for and which were therefore cluttering the family room didn't add to her homecoming experience.

I'm afraid that last paragraph might read as if I think she's picky, or even downright bitchy, for not fully appreciating my efforts. That's not the case at all. I'm just disappointed that I wasn't able to please her as I was trying to.

Today's words

thane -  1. a free retainer of an Anglo-Saxon lord; especially : one resembling a feudal baron by holding lands of and performing military service for the king.  2.  a Scottish feudal lord
mana - 1.  the power of the elemental forces of nature embodied in an object or person. 2.  moral authority : prestige (definition 2?)

I can't remember which comic led me to the first word, a comment on which led me to the second.

A useful article

From Dana O'Neil, at ESPN

News cycle

I'm drawn to news from Syracuse and State College like, well, any simile for attraction you can imagine, and probably a lot you don't want to.

Today's word

geniculate - bent abruptly at an angle like a bent knee
 
As a "cradle Catholic," I've known today's word-of-the-day - genuflect - for as long as I can remember.  Can't say that I'd ever heard of this related adjective they mentioned in its write-up. 

Understandable questions, reasonable answers, sensible denial

Edited, 12/1:

A couple questions that arose from a resident of Syracuse regarding her skepticism over the Fine allegations:

"Why give (the tape) to ESPN and not the police?"
The police made clear to Davis that they wouldn't be able to charge Fine even if they had undeniable proof of his alleged abuse of Davis and his stepbrother, due to the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse in the state of New York.

"Why use that tape now and not initially?"
The tape was provided to ESPN years ago, who through long-established standards of journalistic integrity would not run this story without at least one corroborating witness or accuser.  When Davis' stepbrother came forward in the wake of the accusations against Jerry Sandusky at Penn State, they had their corroboration and ran the story.
 
The media have great power, and I don't think any of us want the standards of journalistic integrity tossed aside so that anyone can be publicly accused of such damnable acts without appropriate evidence of their veracity.
 
Why did this woman - indeed, why do we in general - need to ask such questions? Because we don't want to believe such accusations. Because the good part of our nature wants to believe the best of people, and we'd far rather think an accuser lying than that he or she might be telling the truth about the abuser.  Because the heinousness of sexual abuse offends our sensibility, and we misunderstand the nature of abuse and abusers. Because the abuse is evil, and we insist on believing that evil is only perpetrated by evil people. Certainly no one we know well and love could ever do such a thing! But the truth is as Solzhenitsyn observed: the line between good and evil passes right through every human heart.
 
This is the part most of us miss about the mission of Christ, who came not for the righteous (of whom there are none), but sinners.  There are no righteous because each of us has evil within us.  Although we may usually choose righteousness, we often choose some degree of sinfulness in its place, perhaps dismissing it as merely playful "naughtiness."  Although we may not choose such a great evil as to molest a child, we also rarely understand the brokenness that drives such sin.  I do not excuse it, based on that brokenness.  Yet I desire healing for abusers as well as the abused, while still expecting them to face the consequences of their actions and to take every step necessary to prevent ever again repeating them.
 
When we strike a balance between the antipodes of blind denial and retribution, we find healing that astounds.