Beets are super good for you, and like most things that are super good for you, they do their best to trick you into thinking they’re poisonous. Growing up, I thought beets were the practical-joke version of cranberry sauce; they came out of a can, but instead of tasting fruity like Jell-O they tasted like old socks and potting soil. I’ve served this soup to several people now, and only my wife (she of the sensitive palate) has said that it tasted of dirt. I think she said “earthy” which was polite but I knew what she meant. As a general rule, beets are one of those ingredients you go out of your way not to mention lest people think your dish is going to be gross. Hence the generic name “Roasted Root Soup”. Don’t let me scare you from trying it, though. Most folks didn’t even suspect I was feeding them something healthy!

Time saving tip: this is a pureed soup, so don’t bother fine dicing your ingredients. Just rough chop into equal size chunks small enough to cook evenly.

Here’s the ingredients I used to make about 4-6 servings:

3 beets
1 medium yam
2 medium carrots
3 cloves garlic (peeled)
Thyme, Sage, and Rosemary for roasting these
————–
2 cups good quality stock (chicken or veggie)
2 ribs celery
1 large shallot
2 sticks lemongrass
Braggs ™ Liquid Amino
Good quality Hot Sauce (I used a home-made a friend gave me), to taste
Salt & Pepper
Smoked Paprika
Pinches of dried Orange Peel, Cardamom and Ginger, to taste
½ to 1 cup whole milk or almond milk to finish (optional)

Step one (and this is so crucial I put it right in the name) is you HAVE to roast your root veggies at ◦375F for about 45 minutes or so. Quarter the beets and yam, and chop the carrot. Drizzle with olive oil and top with some diced thyme, rosemary, and sage.The roasting is going to add a real richness to the finished product, so I don’t recommend skipping it. Let it go in the oven while you finish the rest of the chopping. (I roast the garlic cloves as well; if you don’t like strong garlic flavor, add it later or omit.)

Rough chop your celery and shallot. Sweat them in some olive oil, salt, pepper, smoked paprika and cayenne flakes in a large stock pot until translucent. I like to add a splash of Bragg’s Liquid Amino at this stage. (Bragg’s is a soy-based sauce that adds meatiness to vegetable dishes. You can use a splash of soy sauce or Worcestershire in a pinch.) Add your roasted vegetables, warmed stock, hot sauce, and pinches of aromatics, and bring to a good simmer. Carefully puree with an immersion blender, reduce heat, and add warmed milk or almond milk if desired. Bruise the two sticks of lemon grass and drop them into the pot and simmer for as long as you like, taking them out before serving. Feel free to experiment with the choice of herbs and aromatics. This can easily be made vegan, is gluten-free, super good for you, and does not taste like dirt.

I should end all of my recipe posts with that statement.

More is more these days, even if it’s more of less. I hope that makes sense.

It would seem that audiences are at least slightly more difficult to exploit than programming directors and advertising executives would admit, however. In attempting to walk the fine-line between airing American Idol commercials in the news hour and actually covering American Idol DURING the news as if it’s news, the cynical Hollywood types might have under-estimated their audience. At very least, they’ve over-estimated how blatantly the audience is willing to have their intelligence insulted. Polls show that Americans are coming to feel that members of the news media are no more to be trusted with the facts than are advertisers or entertainers. Perhaps this is because Americans are beginning to look at members of the news media AS advertisers and entertainers.

A powerful and fearless media is important to the cause of freedom. That sounds over-wrought, but it’s true. The people should have the right to know what politicians and leaders do on their behalf, whether the politicians and leaders want them to or not. If the media does not protect this right for the people, who will?

It only follows, of course, to ask who will protect the media from the people. I, for one, despair a little at disturbing trends such as calls from the private sector and the Right to cut funding for public radio and television programming. These trends threaten one of the last remaining bastions of unbiased reporting left minimally influenced by commercial considerations. On the other hand, one can at least take solace in the idea that the internet will create a new paradigm for the dissemination of ideas which will help render irrelevant such considerations as monetization and distribution.

The traditional idea of news coverage sponsored by advertising and other means of commercial monetization may simply have become too broken to fix; market-pressures have rendered the end-product a bastardized committee hodge-podge of celebrity gossip, entertainment news, sports, and opinion pieces. Those who are looking for easy entertainment have a million places other than the nightly news to find it. Those who are looking for actual news aren’t even looking to traditional media any more, and traditional media doesn’t yet seem to notice.

The only way for the media to gain back the respect of its audience then is to do the opposite of what the market tells them to do: the programmers must refuse to give the public what the advertising department tells them the public wants; instead it must give them quality news programming based on solid journalistic principles and ethics. If news anchors today are not trusted as Cronkite was, it stands to reason that either the public no longer wants a trustworthy person such as him delivering the news, or the news is no longer being delivered by a trustworthy person such as Cronkite. We should examine which of these is the case, and why it is so; then we’ll know how to get back the respect the Fourth Estate has earned.

that quiet night together
with our friend will never end

that night is on my mind again

i’ve gone with you from where you came
i know you as we were the same
your beauty bent the bounderies
of the thing i thought was love

just one night with you
made me see my dreams come true
if i try and if i fail
and nothing comes of me at all

if i’m nothing
i’ll be nothing loved by you

Sweat bullets and weep

Broke down this morning

Shaking

Seeing my Daddy

Hearing Him speaking

Dreaming becomes

Awakening

It was my day off. I had no prior intention to do anything but catch a buzz and go to the market for some groceries, and then came the fucking blinky light. It mocked me. It insulted my one-day vacation and my assumptions of what I might do with that day. It loudly insisted that I pull in to the nearest garage so it could be acknowledged.

The garage into which I pulled was dedicated entirely to tire replacement/repair and alignment work. I thought I had gotten lucky living so near to just such a place; that were it not for my luck I might have had to drive my car on flat tires and risk warping my wheels.

I pulled my car as close to the garage as I could, carefully navigating the mass of parked-car detritus that was the shop’s unfinished back-log. Ominous orchestral music ensued.

“Think I’ve got a nail in my tire – think you can soap it up and check it?” I said, hopefully.

“Sure gimme the keys.” said the attendant, drunkenly. Obviously, obscenely, drunkenly.

Oh dear.

It was (seriously) 98 degrees in our “fair” city that day in August, and I was not of the mindset to take my wife, my car, and myself someplace else to have this particular service rendered.

Besides, it’d be bad for the car, right?

My wife and I were ushered into the “office”, which was a 10′ x 10′ minimally air-conditioned shoe-box in back of the maintenance bays. We sat for a moment fiddling with our phones and making small-talk before noticing a fracas outside. People were yelling.

Not “Woo-Hoo” yelling. More like “I fucking hate you and I will kill you” yelling.

We decided to stay put in the “office”, considering we had no keys to our only means of escape from the situation and that it was really damned hot out there. But it kept getting worse.

After 45 minutes, we began to worry. More yelling. No word from the mechanic. Yet more yelling.

Finally, as I am ostensibly the one with balls in my marriage, I decided to venture out and figure what the hold-up might have been preventing the pulling out of a nail from my tire. (Actually, it was my wife who decided I would do this; forget what I said about the balls.)

I emerged from the office only to find the drunk person to whom I’d given my keys drunkenly screaming at an old man whom I can only assume was his father; screaming about how he’d already checked the fucking tires, dammit, and didn’t find a leak or appreciate being talked to that way. And then he began to approach me to explain all of this to me, his valued customer.

He tripped. He cursed. He re-started his approach.

I tried not to laugh at the large drunk man who had the keys to my car in his hand.

He dropped the keys.

He said something to me, but it didn’t really elucidate the matter in any helpful way. It was, as they say, incoherent.

I nodded, as you do when large threatening drunk people say incoherent things to you.

The father approached, apologized profusely for keeping us waiting nearly an hour, and told me that he hadn’t found any leaks in our tires. He explained patiently and quietly that the tires had probably just gradually deflated due to the extreme heat, and he was sorry to have kept us waiting so long.

Then, I swear to god, he smacked his very large, very drunk son across the head.

I winced. I prepared to sprint, briefly thinking that I was leaving something behind, perhaps my car, perhaps my wife. I really don’t know what went through my head, but my hind-brain told me to be prepared to bolt.

The son turned around and walked away, in a huff.

“No charge.” said the father, and walked away.

“You sure?” I said, contritely and with more than a little confusion in my voice.

“Shoulda been done in five minutes. That fucking kid can’t do nothing.”

I didn’t disagree, but I tried not to agree either. I identified with the kid in some way, but also with the father. The kid probably didn’t want to be working at the tire-repair shop, and got drunk that morning as a way to cope with his situation. He probably felt conflicted whether to help out the family business or whether to do something else with his life.

As for the father, well I really felt for him. He had built a business, devoted his life to it, and here was his little shit-head son being drunk and not giving a flying flip, failing at changing tires. I’ve not yet done anything truly exceptional with my life, but I never got the feeling my father was disappointed in me. This fellow was disappointed. And yelling a lot.

I was not always good at the things my father tried to teach me. I still don’t know how to drive a standard transmission. I once shot him in the hand with a nail-gun during house repairs.

(It was an accident; shut up. I was also crap at gardening, but my wife’s tomatoes made up for it.)

My Dad can’t hear me now, but I’m gonna try harder. I won’t be like that guy. I will try.

You’re not here to read this so I don’t feel the need to mince words:

I Hate You For Dying.

Fuck you, you selfish, drug-addled prick. I nursed you back to health through your morphine addiction. You slept on my couch for months and I welcomed it, all because I thought I was helping you. I thought you’d get better. What did I know?

I loved you. You and I connected with each other in a way I can’t explain. We made it through a hit and run together, quietly. We killed prostitutes, loudly. I sang at your wedding, poorly.

In that particular instance, I was cut off by the minister because I played too long and too much; I wanted to show both of you how much I cared. You two walked down the isle a bit  too quickly, and I didn’t even notice that you’d reached the altar. Not that it mattered.

The marriage failed after a few months, and I don’t think you ever recovered.

It failed, and then you failed.

You could have gone on, though. You could have made it. YOU COULD HAVE COME THROUGH.

I hate your irresponsibility. I hate the fact that you died of an overdose. I hate that you died alone without a soul-mate to guide you through some of the darkest times in your life. I hate myself for being so much better off. I hate the fact that I was more lucky than you in finding a mate who suited me and with whom I could live a happy life.

I hate you for making me feel responsible for your death.

I miss you like crazy.

I love you, and always will…

/ah

Two of my friends are leaving at once
But not in the way I’d expected them to

Slidell’s far away, sorry to say
Three hour round-trips irregular, few

No one will miss y’all the way that I will
None of them need y’all the way I do

I’ll miss you Mama, from Baby Boy
Keep in touch, Come and see me, Thank You

It’s killing me slowly
Or is it? (We’ll see)
Seems cliche, maybe
Some say it’s art

I try and try
Can’t deny I’m drowning
Slowly in several different ways

Indulgence, sobriety
Delusions of piety
Nothing much more left to say

Asking why, whining
Reaching, pining away
For something I can’t call by name

I’m lacking a reason to get through the day

Drinking is boring me

Smoking is killing me

Who looks for work when there’s death by play?

You only know that something didn’t fit
And good luck, I guess, in finding it
You didn’t see what we had
My friend, I’m afraid that you were blind

You left me
Because I used
Too Many
Big Words

You left me
Because you had no clue
What to do
When I Puzzled You

You left me because
Bless Your Heart
You don’t know
No better

I’m very bitter
Because
Of what we’ve lost
And what it cost

You don’t know what you want
But you know you don’t want me
I couldn’t boil down the sentiment
Any more painfully or succinctly

I know that you don’t wanna hear
My words or ideas any more
Six months spent in a fucking basement
What did I spend that for?

Only to be shown
the fucking door…

We were rich men together, my friends,
But Alone, I am not poor…