Capybera Jerky - Not here in time for the Super Bowl

News Flash: The Latin American nation of Bolivia plans to export capybara jerky to neighboring Venezuela, which considers the meat of the world’s largest rodent something of a delicacy.

Capybara jerky is a Bolivian export plan to find a sustainable income for indigenous communities in the country’s eastern lowlands. A group called the Friends of Nature Foundation is spearheading this project. The Friends believe that somewhere between 200 and 500 capybara can be harvested every year while maintaining a sustainable capybara herd, or tribe, or whatever you call a bunch of oversized rats, so don’t figure on finding this delicacy in the snack food section of Walmart in time for Super Bowl Sunday.

However, the story reminded me of one of the tales told to me by Kathleen
“Misti” Wilcox. Misti is one of my editors and also a friend of many years standing. I was delighted that Misti took over the cooking in our household for the summer while she helped me launch my third novel, One Big Itch.

Misti arrived at our summer home base in the San Juan Islands with a truckload of gear, including her private stash of exotic spices and kitchen paraphernalia. Soon Misti will be launch her food blog, She Drives with Knives, a blog that can’t happen soon enough as far as I am concerned. Misti is full of entertaining tales. She’s a gutsy world traveler and a fine cook and Misti happens to be the only person I know who has not only eaten capybara, but cooked one.

A mature capybara weights about 130 pounds, Misti tells me, and it resembles an enormous shaggy guinea pig. Misti, whose former husband was a project director of the World Wildlife Fund operations in Latin America, was once faced with inventing a capybara stew in order to feed a passel of hungry scientists who were working in the forbidding lowland country of Venezuela, Los Llanos, a vast rolling lowland which lies at the foothills of the Andes mountain range to the west, and is drained by the Orinoco river. In the dry season, daytime temperatures hover around 110 degrees. The whole territory has the desiccated smell of one vast bouillon cube Misti says, which strikes me as the type of metaphor only a committed chef would come up with.

The rugged llanero people, Venezuelan cowboys, also have canoes outside their huts, Misti said, which she thought was totally bizarre, until she found out that in the wet season Los Llanos floods, the primitive roads disappear in the deluge. Canoes and--not horses-become the main transportation.

As for the capybara, these huge rodents spend half of their time wallowing in ponds, where they also choose to do their mating dance, Misti said. It was for this reason that in the 16^th century, the Catholic Church ruled that the capybara is a fish, allowing capybara consumption during Lent. Possible starvation of the native population might well have had something to do with this timely decree.

How to cook a capybara? First you have to get rid of the fishy taste, Misti said. “I learned from one of the native women to rub the meat all over with lemon juice.” Misti then winged it by putting the meat into an enormous pot, filling that with liberal quantities of beer laced with every kind of spice she could find, ginger, mustard, and Chinese spices, and stewing it for hours.

What does capybara taste like?

“Not like chicken,” Misti said, laughing. “More like pork. White meat, but mostly capybara tastes like nothing else.”

Except beer?

Lost Things

They’d been on the ground in Atlanta for an hour when he realized he didn’t have his wallet. There was the mad rooting through their luggage, the dash down the long concourse, clear back to the plane they arrived on.  Amazingly the plane they had arrived from Seattle on was still on the ground. There was the scramble to locate a stewardess to accompany them on board, and then the long trudge down the aisle of an empty plane. Ever notice how a big a plane is when you are the last one on it?

There was slide into the window seat at aisle 31 A. The reaching into the seat pocket, which turned up…nothing. Argggg. Embarrassed apologies to the stewardess. Then, a final feel around of the crevice of his seat. And? Success! Wallet found! Nightmare avoided. This time.

We’re fifteen minutes out of SFW. I’m driving, while reliving my son’s nightmare scenario. What a pain to lose a wallet: The lost I.D.? Can’t fly home without it? The ruination of a hard fought for and much needed Florida vacation?

“Not the first time you’ve done that,” I said. “Next time, all you have to do when you get off a plane is feel around for your wallet.” Cut off your tongue, Mama. Shut your mouth. Who are you to talk? Haven’t you been there and done that? Oh yes, which is why when I board a plane I count the bags I’ve got, and count them again every so often, then count them again before I get off.

As a way of commiserating I confess how I a cell phone once noty ten minutes from boarding a flight. I still can’t figure out how I did that. What is the body count on lost cell phones? I wonder. Where do airports put them? You can’t reuse a lost cell phone after all.

His fiancee giggles. I hope she never loses that endearing little laugh, so I entertain her with another tale from my vast store of lost stuff experiences: This hunky old SUV I’m driving? I’m down to one set of very expensive keys. The set that’s lost was the one that was supposed to stay in the car. Plan was, we’d use door keys to get in and out and the ignition keys would perpetually stay in the vehicle.

My son laughs. His fiancée laughs. At least they are not like Big Brother, who lost his wallet yet again last week. What a pain. Getting the I.D. all over again. New debit card and all that.

I thought about my own recent loss of this sort. I’d lost an car! Lost it in the parking lot at Publix. My ultimate humiliation came when a couple of my friends spied me me trudging around behind a grocery cart with what must have been a disoriented bag lady type expression on my face. After three trips through the parking lot I finally found this bus of a thing (this wasn’t some kiddie car I’d lost), faced toward the store, way I always park it, except it was one lane over from the one I routinely park in. The one I hadn’t searched because it was too far over. What was I thinking?  What was I losing? My mind?

No, I refuse to believe that I am any more or less forgetful than I ever was. We lose things when our thoughts race through the ten things we should be doing right this minute instead of going to the grocery store. We have so much to lose all the time. Right now we are losing the senior generation in my family. Last year my mom. Then the letter arrived. The funeral CD and the program. We’ve lost my 104 year old aunt. I can still see my aunt’s serenely sweet face from when I was six and she drew my name in the family Christmas drawing and sent me a tea set the following March.

Yes, we lose track of time. We lose weight, if we are lucky and altitude if we are not.

The things we hate losing most: motivation, direction, interest, time.

And then there’s that one thing I pride myself on never losing: hope, which brings me to the end of this woeful tale. The lost keys from the SUV? Gone since the week we bought the car off a used car lot?

The morning after the nearly lost wallet fiasco, the keys to the SUV turned up. My husband dangled them from his fingers, then teased them away, pocketing them, when I reached out.

“Where did you find them?” I said.

“You never looked,” he sneered.

Oh, but I did. I combed the entire car for them, more than once. “Where were they?”

“In the crevice where you raise the back seat.” He pocketed this new treasure, the lost keys, claiming dominion over my car. “I’ll keep them, since you lose everything,”

I wanted to hoot but restrained myself. I’d lost the battle but not the war. My husband never loses anything. Except his tools. Has anyone seen a table saw? A square bottomed spade? The electric tester? A box of screws?

Forget full Body Scans--How about a Few Brain Scans?

Only luck and the intervention of a heroic passenger--that was all that saved a jetliner from being blown up as it attempted to land in Detroit on Christmas Day. Young Mr. Terrorist has blabbed how he secreted enough lethal powder in the crotch of his underwear to blow the side out of a 747.  Fortunately, the powder failed to ignite. This latest close call has set off a round of soul searching about how we should all give up our privacy to step into a canister designed to reveal EVERYTHING--though masking our faces, the better to protect ourselves before we set foot on a plane.

The scanner makes front page news in the local paper, while President Obama's declaration that our supposed crack security and anti-terror system has failed us yet again is clear back on A4. Turns out young Mr. Abdulmutallab's own father, a prominent Nigerian banker, took it upon himself to warn the U.S. Embassay that he feared his own son was a potential threat to international security. This was back in NOVEMBER. Somehow, nobdody passed the word along. Ho hum. Shades of 911. Does anyone recall how the warnings from the FBI that a group of young Arabs were taking flying lessons in our own flight schools and skipping over the sections on how to land a plane. What needs to be done first is to find out why these warnings can't be taken seriously at the CIA (Central Incompetence Agency).

Before we start scanning the bodies of the rest of the airline passengers in the nation, I suggest we start scanning the brains of the powers that be in the intelligence community. Could it be that most of these people have no brains in their heads?

Sara Williams Discusses Novel "One Big Itch" | AHN

Sara Williams Discusses Novel "One Big Itch" | AHN

The Ornamental Star, a Christmas Story

Here's a charming Christmas Story by "cousin" Tom Williams. He's a Marco Island charter captain and scuba diver and the author of Lost and Found, a fine thriller which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

The Ornamental Star

By Tom Williams

            All of the ornaments knew that Christmas was coming. Most of the decorations tried to remain calm, but as autumn turned to winter, the tension in the storage boxes became unbearable. Almost every ornament could remember the housemother’s sigh when she opened the box and at least one globe had shattered with worry. It happened every year. All the decorations were packed away into the New Year whole, but as the holidays approached, someone always fractured with upcoming tension.

As every ornament knew, each year was different and full of possibilities. On some years, the elderly globes were chosen right away. They were selected first and set atop the highest branches. On other years, the housemother would be younger and the elders would not even be allowed out of the box. On some unfortunate holiday seasons, Christmas trees would end up with day-glow tinsel, or even the humiliation of fake snow flocking.

Everyone, new or old-fashioned, gilded or plain, wanted a good placement on the tree. Higher was always better, but on some years, a lower branch could be your destiny and a dreadful perch within easy reach of a toddler or the house cat on patrol. Every ornament could recall at least one acquaintance, pulled from the tree and shattered on the floor.

Of course, no one wanted to think about the end, the broom, and the dustbin, and most understood that contemplating destruction was not the right attitude when emerging from the box. Every decoration had heard the old stories about the ornaments with optimism; the more the inner glow, the easier it was to shine and capture the housemother’s eye.

This year when the boxes came down, all the decorations were optimistic for higher branches and higher status, but most of all, every ornament and every light, wanted to be near the shining star. Even the less ambitious globes wanted a good place on the tree; but every globe, no matter how large or small, wanted to be away from the lower branches, the little pulling fingers, and the easy reach of the climbing cat and the deadly paws of destruction.

From the moment the housemother opened the box, Bobsled Jangles knew he had a good chance. After all, this was the same housemother as the year before. The very same who carefully considered Bobsled and placed him well above the others.

He had clearly been a favorite, and was able to watch the shining star as she rose from her private package. He had even witnessed the coupling with the electric lights, as she gained her shining radiance.

Everyone knew that the lights thought they were special, but to Bobsled Jangles the artificial glow was no match for a good globes’ inner enthusiasm.

Suddenly, Bobsled shuddered. In the next section, an elderly globe with a blue body and a snowflake pattern was lifted out in pieces, his hanger broken, and his sparkling remains useless.

The housemother reacted in her usual way: a head tilt of regret, a sigh of disappointment, and then a move toward the inevitable dustbin.

Enthusiasm, Bobsled Jangles reminded himself, the inner glow, and the living spirit of Christmas was the true secret and strength of the holidays.

Even as he focused and tried to shine, someone from the corner of the box was lifted: an elongated shiny teardrop, golden with a new hanger. The housemother went to her tiptoes and suddenly the golden teardrop was well above Bobsled’s last position, and hanging on a branch almost at the top.

This housemother was fast, and before Bobsled could focus, another globe was chosen but to everyone’s horror, the new age silver ball was destined for the lowest branch, and a sacrificial position perfect for toddlers and cat’s paws.

Bobsled could see the broom and dustbin, and he shuddered with a little rattle. The unexpected action must have attracted the housemother’s attention, because before he could even concentrate on shining, Bobsled Jangles was out of the box and flying. His hanger held precariously, as one of the dreaded toddlers came running into the room. A hideous cry escaped from the child’s lips and destructive hands reached upward to claw at Bobsled’s bottom.

All thoughts of shining were tossed to the wayside as Bobsled and his gilded snowy path and horse-drawn sleigh dangled in the uncertain future. With an almost shattering whoosh, the housemother bent at the knees and Bobsled plunged downward. Before he could do anything but dangle near the grasping toddler’s fingers, he was up and away and pulled to safety. But not really safe, and still in turmoil, as the housemother appeared to be undecided. Then as the toddler quickly turned to approach her private package, the housemother lifted Bobsled Jangles to the tree’s very center and much higher than ever before.

For the moment, Bobsled was overwhelmed, he had never been so well placed and never so high. He was even safe from the bigger children’s clutches and he was very near the top. When he looked aloft, he could even see the highest branch, the end of the lights, and the very pinnacle where she would ultimately rest.

With typical ornamental nature, the quickened thoughts of believing his placement might be a dream, or that he was precariously hung or destined to fall, quickly evaporated. His place was here, near the top, and he was safely anchored. Only two other globes were higher than Bobsled, but none as large and easy to notice.

When all the others had found their destinies, and when the lights were on and everyone was shining, the housemother opened the package.

“It’s time again Miss Highpoint,” the protective garments rustled.

“Forget it!” the reclining star responded. “They never give me enough time, I’m not finished resting. My prongs are still sore from last year’s tree and I want nothing to do with those sleazy electric lights. Just tell me why I have to go on?”

The protective garments sighed. “Miss Highpoint, you know that Christmas isn’t the same without you. You are the most important, and the pinnacle of the holidays. All the others look up to you!”

“But I don’t want to go! I want to stay in the box. I want nothing to do with this year’s tree!”

“Miss Highpoint, you know that’s not an option.”

“Yes it is! Close this box! I’m not leaving this chamber! Besides, all those other ornaments are so common and boring. I simply can’t be bothered!

“Miss Highpoint, the housemother is coming.” The protective garments settled deeper.

“I can’t go again—not to the top. I’ve developed a fear of heights. That’s it! A fear of heights! Seal this box, I’m not going!”

Then she was out of the package and into the light. This year’s tree looked even pricklier and the odor from the pine boughs stronger than ever; enough to cause a headache even in the most senior of stars.

Again, she was rising, higher and higher, her destination assured. She passed the old, the young, the round and the engraved, the stupid lights that blinked and the ones that heaven forbid: bubbled. Past the middle, where at least, some social order existed, but the higher she rose, it was easier to look down upon the others. Everything was so boring, but just near the top when she was forced to stop and endure the dreadful “plugging in,” Her Celestial Majesty; the First Lady of Highpoint was slightly amused.

Looking at her almost eye to eye was a silly, old blue ornament with a horse-drawn sleigh. As she was being arranged, the blue globe was staring. He was staring as the sleazy electric lights were being coupled, and as the pinnacle of the tree was being prepared to accept her prongs.

“What are you looking at?” the shining star hissed.

“Pardon me Miss Highpoint,” Bobsled jangles stuttered. “But I never even hoped we would meet. I never even dreamed meeting you was possible!”

“You idiot! We haven’t been introduced! Don’t you realize that you and all the commoners are just something beneath me? I’m the true star, and the only real ornament, and—

“Oh my God,” a neighboring ornament gasped when the star was suddenly taken to the top and secured on her perch. “What did she say?” the smaller ornament whispered, “She was too far away, and when she was plugged in and her radiance came, I was star struck! Tell me older brother, what did she say?”

Bobsled Jangles looked first to the little ornament who was questioning, then across to the others who were watching, and finally down to all the less fortunate globes, lights, and lesser ornaments. He then thought about the years of tradition, of high hopes and disappointment, and then the true spirit of the holidays. After a moment, he cautiously whispered.

“She said to be careful what you wish for . . . and to be happy where you are.”

  

            Happy Holidays!

   

Be sure to check out Tom Williams' Website

 

 

 

The Ghost Wore a Kimono

She stood at the foot of the bed. I could make out her shoulder, the way her elbow was bent, her regal posture. Her face was indistinct but even so, a swirl of hair moved about her head. She was a ghost, dressed in a kimono, and I was fascinated and also thrilled to have awakened from a dream and to find her standing in my bedroom on a warm and sultry night in Florida, of all places.


 It is difficult enough for an insomniac such as I am to achieve so much as a dream state, definitely not a good thing for a writer of fiction, and here I was, blessed to be seeing a ghost, a creature straight out of story and legend.

There was nothing threatening about her at all and minutes passed and though she was perfectly still, I could see various aspects of her shape shimmering in the moonlight, but I wanted more from this vision, greedy person that I am, and so I hopped out of bed the better to see her features, at which point her body faded into a lampshade.

Gruntled: Are you there yet?

“Be gruntled. Start building,” screams the full-page newspaper ad by Careerbuilder.com. I’m hooked. Gruntled? What kind of word is that?

Disgruntled is a word we all know, especially in the context of the disgruntled employee who pulls a pistol at the office. Come to think of it, disgruntled doesn’t seem to be widely used in any other context. Had some copywriter coined gruntled, to mean “be satisfied,” or “be happy with your work?”

Gruntled is a word in its own right, or so I found out from my on-line dictionary. However, the closer of the two definitions given says that gruntled means “to calm,” or “still,” which doesn’t quite fit. More apt is probably the WordWeb online definition “to cause to be more favorably inclined.”

There’s also a webside, gruntle.com advertising “what you want when you need it.” Quite possibly what I really need is a softwear product called Gruntle for Windows, where the softwear reads what’s on my screen and interprets my problem, as opposed to the Windows version, where they show what some engineer thinks I should be seeing. Install this device and I would probably have fewer disgruntled moments where I want to throw my laptop through one of my windows.

Another site, gruntle.org, promotes several enticing products written in a quite possibly put-on computer language called python: Check out Madcow;IRC Bot; PyFiglet and Insub.

Gruntle is a very old word, says fantasy writer Anne Ewan, who has a degree in linguistics (http://www.esmerel.com/circle/wordlore/). Gruntle once meant “grumble.” The dis in front of it meant completely. So in a sense our disgruntled employee comes straight out of Dickens. I can see him walking around grumbling rather loudly about his or her situation. Gruntled, Ewan says, came about as a “back formation” where people created gruntled, meaning the opposite of disgruntled, but that’s okay, Ewan says, people do that all the time, so welcome to a gruntled world.

Gruntled might fit into a piece of writing suggesting ancient history or maybe some science fiction setting as in “Merlin gruntled his winged steed,” for instance, where today we would say, “The jockey gentled his mount at the starting gate.”

Who could get away using gruntle? E.L. Doctorow,maybe? Cormac McCarthy, writing about the modern wild west? Dean Koontz writing one of his misfit characters? I become disgruntled simply thinking about how to use gruntled, and so then I told myself to get a grip, as in “Gruntle yourself girl.”

However, if I were looking for a job, I can’t believe I’d sit across from a prospective employer and say that I used to be a disgruntled employee and that my aim in a new job is to gruntle myself. Not unless I was seeking a job as the sorcerer’s apprentice that is. And then I decided to the obvious. I went to Careerbuilder.com and typed “gruntle” into the job search. Nothing came up. Maybe I should try sorcerer’s apprentice?