Revelations about Revolutions

For the last two years, popular culture has been increasingly influenced by the musical, Hamilton. First, at the Public, then the Richard Rodgers Theatres in New York and now on its first national tour, Hamilton has garnered more acclaim, and awards than any show in recent memory (I think the last show to pick up the Pulitzer, as well as the Tony and the Grammy for Best Musical was How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying).  Nevertheless, this polished, game-changing production did not appear, full-blown overnight. Hamilton had a long, slow, evolutionary journey, and the story its creation is almost as fascinating and complex as the subject, itself. Thanks to its composer, Linn-Manuel Miranda, and columnist/critic Jeremy McCarter, we have an insight into that creative journey through the book, Hamilton, the Revolution.  Reading it doesn't leave you thinking (ala The Grateful Dead), "What a long, strange, trip it's been."  It reminds us how good minds, and generous natures, can create works of genius.

Take one feature of this revolutionary musical, its employment of Hip Hop and Rap. These were chosen, not just because the composer knew and loved the mediums but because he knew they were the best modes to use for this musical.  As McCarter points out, before the American Revolution was a battle of weapons, it was a battle of words and ideas with essayists like Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson leading the attack.  To recapture the feeling of those verbal Molotov Cocktails and set them to music would require a text-heavy medium, something Hamilton's composer well understood. Add this to the edgy, street-wise intelligence omnipresent in Rap and Hip Hop, and you have a revolutionary form of music to tell a revolutionary story.  Like some genius concepts, we only see in hindsight, how obvious this is.  

However, as gifted as Mr. Miranda is, his creative partners should not be slighted.  When I first saw the images of the musical's set, I assumed it was a "bare bones" stage. All you see, if you Google these, (Sorry, I don't own any I can add) are roughed in brick walls, wooden catwalks, some ropes and a pair of movable staircases.  It turns out this was an intentional choice the set designer came up with through research.  He learned early colonists built their first shelters with materials and techniques borrowed from ship-building.  Consequently, the first act's set suggests a site still underway and under construction.  By moving a few walls and removing the ropes during intermission, the second act set lets us know we're at a New World, both bigger and a little more settled.  

The reader learns every choice in the Hamilton production was intentional, including costumes, casting, and props.  There were debates, and disagreements, and mistakes on the way as well as a ton of revision.  The personal lives of the cast and production team often align with the musical, sometimes in heartbreaking ways.  Through it all, the composer and his creative team focus on each moment of the show, making it stronger, swifter and more focused.  If nothing else, Hamilton the Revolution reminds theatre-goers that plays and musicals aren't the static dramatic pieces we know so well.  Those are simply the final, evolutionary results.  There is a world of story and song behind each one that ended up on the cutting-room floor.

So, before you put the soundtrack of Hamilton back into rotation or start the Herculean labor necessary to get tickets, open a copy of Hamilton, the Revolution and get to know the story behind this show.  Sondheim and Lapine wrote that "Art isn't Easy".  This book shows that Art is still worth the work.

In Alabama, April can be the CRAZIEST month!

Looks warm but this was a 45
degree morning!

One of the local jokes is, "If you don't like this weather, just wait five minutes.  It's due to change." In April, that isn't a joke, it's the damn truth. Days when the mercury touches 85, are followed by fronts containing frost warnings.  Gardners, who put in plants weeks ago, get chilblains covering up seedlings and cursing the cold snap that just showed up in the forecast. On its seesaw course from late winter to spring, the weather here defies prediction, not just from day-to-day, but hour to hour. This is especially hard on GRITS (aka Girls Raised in the South).  Southern Women are raised to believe despite, limited income, energy and time, they must always appear "dressed for the weather." This means April can drive a girl plumb crazy.  I'll show you what I mean

6 a.m - 45 degrees (F)  - forget the sundress you set out last night and reach for the fleece hoodie and corduroy slacks you've been wearing since November.

10 a.m. - 65 degrees - You are smothering in corduroy and fleece, and you look like an idiot next to the spring

flowers.  Go back and change to slacks, short-sleeve blouse, and a cardigan.

1 p.m.- the thermometer says 72, but it feels so much warmer, you ditch the cardigan and swap the slacks for a skirt.

2 p.m. 75 degrees in the shade, feels more like 80 out here in the sun. Time to change to a halter and shorts. Why don't they go ahead and open the swimming pool?

4 p.m.  Where in the hell did the sun go?  Temp's dropping.  Better change back to a pencil skirt

6 p.m.  When people can see goose pimples on your calves and thighs, it's too cold for skirts. Where's Global Warming when you need it?

8 p.m.  I'd climb back into those damn corduroys if I could find them under this pile of clothes!

Now, this is just April on a day-to-day basis.  Add in this two occasions with sartorial significance that often fall in this period and add to a female's distraction.  EASTER and PROM.

GRITS take both Easter and Prom seriously.  These events can take weeks of dress shopping and preparation.  The problem is, the weather rarely cooperates.  High school girls skin themselves into bare-shouldered, skin-tight gowns on a night when it's chilly or downright freezing!  And nothing says Easter down here, like the faithful rising for a sunrise service that takes place in the rain. Heck, we've seen snow on April first, tornados on Palm Sunday, and hot sweats on April 15th that had nothing to do with taxes, but everything to do with the heat pump failing.  In the meantime, the weeds are growing a foot every day, allergy sufferers are on their last legs, and the peach farmers are begging James Spann to keep the cold away from their blossoming trees.  We can't count on anything, weather-wise, much this side of Memorial Day.

When the lizards start matching the leaves,
Winter has probably turned. Watch out for tornados!

So if you see an Alabamian talking to him or herself, give the poor soul a break.  Chances are they're not obsessed by Economic Woes or the Fragile State of the World.  They're not contemplating the latest public scandal or their rich, troubled heritage.  The problem is a lot simpler and more immediate than that.  We're all just trying to survive April.

The Story My Mom Would Have Loved

How to talk about a story with the improbable title of The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society?  That question's been baffling me for days.  I have to talk about it because it's the best book I've picked up in recent memory, and it has not one but several stories worth telling.  I want to talk about it because it refers to may subjects I hold dear.  But, more than anything, I want to say this is one book my mom would have loved.

As a girl, my mom spent two years in England, before the Beatles but after the War.  To say those years made an impression on her is like saying the Colorado River had an effect on some of the topography in Arizona.  For the rest of her life, she maintained a lively and affectionate interest in the fortunes of Great Britain and everyone who had ever lived there.  But, even though she saw England recovering from World War II, I don't think she knew about what happened to the Channel Islands during the conflict.  I know she never mentioned it to me.  That's one reason why The Guernsey Literary And Potato Peel Pie Society is so important.

We all know that the Third Reich's armies marched west across Europe until they reached Dunkirk/Dunkerque, France.  Did you know they didn't stop at the French edge of the Channel? Nope, neither did I. They continued their mainland invasion onto the Channel Islands which became the only British Territory occupied by the Nazis during WWII.  Once the invading force landed, all of the communication and shipping lines between the Islands and England were cut.  Islanders who evacuated their children to England didn't know if their kids were living or dead, sometimes for years.  Between the blockade cutting off their usual supply lines, and the food and livestock commandeered by the occupying army, those who stayed had very little to eat. Germans shipped the Jewish Island dwellers to concentration camps and brought in their own prisoner/slave laborers to be worked to death there instead. Residents of Guernsey and Jersey and more had to find a way to survive five years worth of this misery. It wasn't easy.  This book remembers part of that story.

The GL&PPPS is also about life after the war and how people learn to live with their memories. Everyone in the book has experienced loss and traumatic memories that many of them would rather forget.   Of course, such things cannot be forgotten, but some of these folks learn to work through their pain with the wisdom they accidently saw in some book.  GL&PPS is, in many ways, a love letter to the books, and readers, and writers that get us through the rough times.  Even the story behind the book is enchanting.

If you notice, the cover art in the picture above says Mary Ann Shaffer is this story's sole author but the cover here says it was written by two people: Ms. Shaffer and one Annie Barrows.  The epilog, I'd guess you'd say, of GL&PPS, is the story of these two, and a story that was too good to die. I'm won't tell you more, except to say the tale is good and warming enough to be included in the GL&PPS.

My mom and I didn't agree on everything. In fact, I think we fought through my entire adolescence. I didn't always understand her. Still, she was my first teacher and my touchstone on a great many things and that hasn't changed in the years since her death. I know she would have loved this tale of survival and serendipity, and how books can help you during the worst of times. And she'd want everyone else in the world to read it.  

Updating the voice of a Racing Thriller : A Plea to the Estate of Dick Francis

Mr. E. Williams
Johnson & Alcock Ltd.
Bloomsbury House
74-77 Great Russell Street
London, WC1B 3DA

Dear Sir:

As the literary agent for the estate of Dick Francis, you probably receive too many letters concerning his novels and I apologize for adding one more.  However, this letter is not to ask for licensing, reprinting, film or merchandising rights; nor does it demand Felix Francis be locked away until he creates six new books.  It is a request that some of Dick Francis's thrillers be re-recorded and released as audiobooks in order to protect the stories as well as their prospective audience.

I realize book recordings were probably something of a publication afterthought when these books were originally released, and the process involved little more than recorded speech.  I know, I just spent an excruciating weekend listening to Odds Against being read like it was a shopping list.  All of the tension, terror, irony and humanity was drained from the narrative and although each character had an individual accent, they all spoke at the same rate and pitch. As a suspense novel, this recording it could have been marketed as an effective sleep-aid medication. I'm female, American, and an amateur performer but I could have done a better job reading than that!

Now, Wikipedia and Amazon/Audible's web-sites show the same actor recorded at least seven Dick Francis novels, including the great nail-biters Enquiry and Smokescreen.  The audio samples of these sound like literary pablum. Not a bit of crisp, cool, British, reserve but boredom and distinct enunciation of every "t".  Such recordings will not bring any new Francis readers to the fold or harvest many pounds from the older, willing fans who miss their jockey-turned-author.  For the sake of stories and the fan-base his name still commands, can new recordings of these stories be made with an actor and production team who knows their business? 

Incidentally, although Mr. Francis wrote more than 40 books, I notice a large percentage of them are not available in e-format, at least here in America.  Can that be changed?  These may be 20th-century tales but they need not be confined to that period's technology. New fans would appreciate the convenience of e-reader formats for the old stories and older fans would appreciate the chance to carry their entire Francis collection without developing arm strain.   Trust me.  40+ books begin to add up in weight, even when half of them are paperbacks.

Thank you for your attention and time; I wish you well through the snarls of Brexit.

Sincerely,

1 Year, 100 Pounds: A Report Card of Sorts

Me at the Beginning: Hair washed,
earrings in place and a pan-fried disaster

This time, a year ago, I weighed 285. I'm not whining about this, and I'm certainly not bragging; I'm just stating a fact.  A year ago my extra weight brought my life crashing to a halt.  This seems like a good time to take stock.

If you had asked me, back then, if I could lose 100 pounds in a year, I would have cried and told you "No." It takes energy to burn extra pounds off, and I didn't have the "oomph" to clean my house or keep up at work, much less exercise. My house and yard needed cleaning and maintenance, my in-box was 7 inches thick, and  I was in the middle of the disaster area, exhausted and overwhelmed. Get my life and my world back on track?  I wasn't sure how to begin!

That's me on the left at 30 pounds down.
I can tell even if you can't!

I couldn't have made it through those first few months without the help of Weight Watchers.  They didn't judge me, they taught me to consider what I ate, and they rejoiced over every ounce I dropped.  They're still there today, full of helpful hints and encouragement and I look forward to seeing "my gals" at every meeting.  My writing teacher, Javacia, says we each need to find "our tribe" and when we do, love them hard.  Weight Watchers is my tribe, and I love Y'all.  You keep me focused.

Fitbit was my sister's idea, just what you'd expect from an athletic, skinny woman.  (Actually, she's perfect, but don't tell her I said so!)  Fitbit gets me up and keeps me going, always looking out for ways to cram in more activity.  I cleaned my closets to increased my Fitbit steps.  I sanded and repainted my porch for the same reason.  Each activity improved my health and my world, and because Fitbit always zeroes out at midnight, I can never rest on my laurels.  Between Fitbit and WeightWatchers, I dropped the first 60 pounds.  By then, I was ready for bigger measures.

1-month post surgery:
2 chins still but
now a hint of a waist.

I don't think weight-loss surgery is for everyone, but it's been a wonder for me.  Over the years, I had overeaten so much, my stomach had stretched, and I never felt full, even though I chased food like it was going out of style.  Dr. Cameron Askew's gastric sleeve operation gives me a new lease on life, especially whenever we eat out.  Three bites and then I start getting full; five bites and I'm done.  I still have the curse of the emotional eater; the mindless drive to graze when I'm unhappy, but the surgery has done its work.  I've dropped enough pounds to tackle bigger projects like replanting the garden and cutting back the trees that grew up while my weight tied me down.

1 year later

Now, none of this has been "easy" weight loss so far, and the journey is far from done.  I can tell you what it's like to lose 30 pounds, walk into a store and find nothing large enough to fit me; about waking up stiff and sore from yesterday's workout to find the scale numbers went up, not down. I've outlasted at least two weight-loss plateaus. And it turns out I've got an ungodly allergy to poison oak. But on Tuesday, the reading on the scale was 184.5. One hundred pounds in a year.  All of the sudden, I wasn't tired or itchy.

I still have fifty pounds to drop, bald spots on my lawn, and a second career that has yet to take off.  But I'd be lying if I said life isn't better or I'm not a healthier or happier person. And, after everything's been said and done, I'm thrilled about what can change in a year.

The Mystery of the Mystery Lady

Sorry if you've missed updates of this blog for the past week or two.  The combination of seasonal affective depression, a back injury and poison oak knocked me out for a bit.  Hope you enjoy the return!

Civilization's changed a lot in the last hundred years. (That's an understatement, wouldn't you say?) We've gone from flimsy, barely airborne planes to walking on the moon and probes exploring the solar system; wooden wall phones for the well-to-do to computer smartphones attached to practically everyone; tiny circles of close friends and family to global communities.  With all of that change, a lot of formerly private life have become increasingly public.  I'm not sure if Elizabeth MacKintosh would have liked the world today.  As a mystery writer, she was better than average, but the best enigma she ever created was her life.

You say you've never heard of Elizabeth MacKintosh?  Tell you the truth, I hadn't much either until I ran into J. M Henderson's Josephine Tey: A Life.  And that is the name mystery lovers recognize.  Josephine Tey, the creator of the Alan Grant mysteries and Brat Farrar.  The lady who entertained us by breaking the rules laid out by other mystery writers.  The author who included insights into girls colleges and "the life theatrical" in some of her books but never explained how she got the knowledge.  The answer is, they came from other, undisclosed parts of her life.

As Elizabeth MacKintosh, she trained at a girl's college and taught in England until her mother's death and her sisters' marriages returned her to Scotland.  To Inverness, she remained ever after Miss MacKintosh, her father's housekeeper and one of those women who lost a sweetheart in "The War."  Under this cover, Elizabeth began to publish under the name Gordon Daviot: first stories, then plays.

In Miss Pym Disposes, the title character has accidentally become a best-selling authoress.  Gordon Daviot's hit play, Richard of Bordeaux brought the same level of success and consternation to its author.  The money from it paid for the occasional bit independence from Scotland and her father's home, but now Gordon Daviot was supposed to be a writer of historical plays.  So Gordon continued to write for the stage, a dozen plays over the next quarter century.  And with a new pseudonym, Josephine Tey began to publish well-known mysteries at the same time.

How compartmentalized did Elizabeth MacKintosh's life get?  During the last year of her life, she was terribly ill but never released the news. Her death came as a shock to the celebrated actors who didn't know "Gordon" was sick, and the Josephine Tey fans who (at least) got one more "Alan Grant" story: The Singing Sands, found in her papers and published posthumously.

Henderson's biography helps flesh out some of the details hinted at in her subject's work and the research adds some sorely needed context, but in the end, we only learn what Miss MacKintosh experienced during her life, not what she thought or how she felt about it.  Those impressions were not available to the public under any name.  They remain the private property of Elizabeth MacKintosh  / Gordon Daviot  / Josephine Tey.  And maybe, that's as it should be.

Murder Amongst the Scribblers

One of the things fiction readers love is something Stephen King described as "pulling aside the curtain".  Grisham fans get a peek at the lives of lawyers because that's the world their author had known before he picked up a pen.  Val McDermid and Patricia Cornwell delight devotees with their stories of police and forensic detection because, as former crime journalists, they knew the turf.  But it takes someone like Josephine Tey to pull aside the curtain on that most nefarious tribe - the writers - and give readers an eyeball into the world of professional scribblers.  To Love and Be Wise may be sixty-seven years old but when it comes to describing the workings of a writer's community, this story feels like a vat of fresh, hot, gossip.

The plot is simple: Leslie Searle, an American photographer, has gone missing.  Since Leslie Searle is a celebrated photographer, no one is surprised he was staying at Salcott St. Mary, an English-Village-turned-Artist-Colony, when he disappeared. What is striking is how this unassuming, interesting, attractive young man managed to upset every creative mind within its borders!

It isn't enough for Toby Tullis, that imperious and pompous playwright, that the young and attractive Mr. Searle isn't familiar with his (Toby's) work or his house. Even worse, Searle's not impressed when they were mentioned! Silas Weekly, that third-rate imitator of D. H. Lawrence, might loathe Searle on principle (Weekly hates anything not ugly or covered in muck) and Serge Ratoff might despise him as a "middle-west Lucifer" but even harmless, sweet, romance writer, Lavinia Fitch feels disturbed by Leslie Searle's presence. In the middle of dictating her latest best-selling Harlequin story (Think the late Barbara Cartland) Lavinia wonders if Searle isn't perhaps, a little mad. Still, Walter Whitmore is the writer with the "Most Likely Suspect" award. That chronicler of rural English life was the last person actually seen with Searle, seen having an argument with the photographer. Now Searle is missing, everyone has a motive, and Scotland Yard is moving in.

Alan Grant, Josephine Tey's fictional detective, travels to this village that's a British cross between Martha's Vinyard and Yaddo to figure out which writer put the poison pen to Searle.  We follow Grant through his interviews and get a "behind-the-scenes" gander at the spots where writers work or malinger. It doesn't matter that these authors are fictional characters themselves.  There's a ring of truth in all of their scenes.

There should be.  When Josephine Tey published To Love and Be Wise, she'd been a successful author and playwright for more than two decades.  She knew the literary and theatrical worlds as well as the major players in them.  And, by all accounts, she liked to keep them at a distance.  Art, as work, needs to be taken seriously but it's hard to look at some artists for long without laughing. Without ever giving the game away, or leaving herself open to libel, Tey makes it clear she understands this world and how silly its inhabitants can be.

So, if you are in the late dregs of winter and longing for warmth and sunlight, imagine yourself in Salcott St Mary.  Come watch the artists at play. You'll have fun. Just stay away from the river, especially if you've irritated one of the locals. We wouldn't want you to disappear.

The Goal Skirt - A Weight Loss Story

I fell in love with it the first time I saw it.

My faux suede
skirt circa 2008

There, in the 2008 autumn catalog from Coldwater Creek, was the kind of skirt I've dreamed of most of my life.  Long. Full. So Western in style it could have been used on Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. (Okay, so my fashion sense is cuckoo.) Draped on the model with a Squash blossom necklace, it was the essential Southwestern Dream, or so I thought. And, of course, it looked great in the picture. Even better, although the skirt looked and felt like suede, it was made of washable material.  Even though it cost an outrageous amount, I ached to have it.

That was the year I gave up carbohydrates and lost about 40 pounds.  I intended to lose more but as a partial reward, I bought myself the skirt and for the next few years, measured my self-worth by it.  If the skirt fits me comfortably, I am a terrific human being.  If I can, at least, manage to zip it, my overeating isn't that bad.  If I have to wear a sweater over the waistband to cover an inch of unzipped zipper, I need to lose weight.  Anything more and I was the worst person on earth.  For five years the skirt stayed in my closet while I stayed the worst person on earth.

So, last March, one of my hopeless hopes was that I'd wear the faux suede skirt again.  I really didn't believe it would happen, but my weight was so out of control, I knew I had to try something.  And I knew if I wanted to succeed, I had to have a tangible goal.  So I remembered the skirt.

Occasionally I would pull it out in the closet to measure my weight loss success.  In June, the skirt didn't come close to closing close but at least I got the zipper more than half way up.  By September, I could almost get the zip to stay closed but the waistband cut me in half. I kept at it, and in November the stars aligned, and, after years, I was back in the skirt.

Me and Goal Skirt at our last outing. 

I wore that darn skirt wherever I could, convinced I was the hottest thing in shoe leather.  I didn't care that it weighed a ton or was miles out of date.  By January, I didn't even care that the skirt no longer set squarely at my waist.  I cinched the skirt in with an elastic belt and kept on going to town.

Then this month I got a chance to see some photographs of a recent event where I'd worn "the skirt".  Know what I saw?  There I was, unconsciously clutching the buckle of the elastic belt, making sure it kept the skirt in place.  The extra fabric, bunched up under the belt, puckered out over my rear, making it look even larger.  The photos made clear what I didn't want to see: - my skirt didn't fit again. This time, it was too big for me. I either had to stop losing weight or I had to find a new goal.

So, last Thursday, I showed the skirt off one more time, to the wonderful folks in my weight-loss support group.  I told them the story.  And I explained why it was important for "Goal Skirt" to have a new home.  Sure enough, one of the members there saw what I saw years ago and she owns Goal Skirt now.  I think they'll look good together.

I never really understood, until then, the meaning of that old phrase, "If you love something, set it free." Goal Skirt is free to go on to a new life now.  And, happily, so am I.

The Best Rejection I've Ever Received

I guess it's no secret I've finished writing a book.  Well, up till last week, I thought it was finished. After 5 years of slaving away on paragraphs and polishing each sentence, I thought The Plucky Orflings was complete.  I liked it, my sister liked it, and my friends loved it, so I figured it was just a matter of time until some agent agreed.  Well, if so, that time isn't now.

Now, I suspect most agents are decent people.  They work incredibly hard in a difficult industry that gets more challenging by the day.  And, so far, not one of those that turned me down has said the dreaded words, "You can't write."  But none of them are interested in representing my book.  They say, it's "not right for us" or "not what we're looking for" and then they wish me well finding somebody else.  Since I only write to agents who work in the genre my story falls within (Historical Fiction for Middle-Grade readers), I had no idea why my book was wrong.  It's like being told you aren't some guy's type when you resemble his last three girlfriends.  Okay, what am I doing wrong?

Last month, my rejected novel moved one baby step forward. An agent I had written to asked to see more of the manuscript. (If you don't know, agents specify how much of your work they want to read, and you'd better give them just what they're looking for if you want their attention.)  After jumping up and down for fifteen minutes, I pulled up the material she requested, re-read and polished it for the umpteenth time and sent it off, fingers crossed through the email. 

Eight days later, she turned me down.

But this rejection letter was different from the rest.  Instead of the usual "thanks, but no thanks," this agent told me what problems she saw.  How the book focused on a supporting character for too much time before the main players took the stage.  How I built expectations on the first few pages that weren't supported later on. That the main conflict wasn't all that conflicted.  As many times as I've read these pages, I didn't see all this.  But I looked again and what the agent said is true.

So, I'm going back to the drawing board, to re-write the darn story again and this time I've got some help. Even if I end up publishing The Plucky Orflings without an agent, it will still be a better book than it is right now.  And it will be better because an agent that turned me down.  I may not like rejection letters but this one feels pretty darn good.

Confessions of a Kitchen Clutter Monkey

I used to feel so sorry for the people on that A&E show, Hoarders .  There they were, self-imprisoned victims, overwhelmed by their obsessions with trash.  Most of them knew they were sick but, because of their illness, couldn't find the way to heal themselves. I'd sit in my mostly tidy living room and pity these folks, sure I didn't have a problem like theirs.  Well, I do and it's appeared in a very odd place.  I seem to be a kitchen clutter monkey.

This all started last Thursday when the leader of my weight-loss group talked about how "stuff" fills up our kitchen pantries.  Along with the staples we use on an everyday basis, people often store groceries they never use.  As everyone in the meeting began nodding, I got an idea. "Hey, let's all clean out our pantries and bring the extras to the next meeting so we can donate it to a food bank!"  Everyone agreed so I had to clean out my own shelves.  I wasn't prepared for what I found!

What was hiding in the pantry

Found: flea collar for the dog
that passed away more
than 15 years ago!

This is what came from my two-tier, under-cabinet, Lazy Susan pantry.  Yes, all of that was stacked on two tiers.  Frankly, with all that weight, the Lazy Susan had trouble spinning.  And, despite that cornucopia of cans, we rarely found what we wanted in that cupboard. So, Rog or I would run back to the market and end up buying more stuff.  Well, as of today, that practice was ending.  I was going to get us back to the items we wanted and needed!

The first step in sorting out this mess was to take out all of the unhealthy out-of-date food which, in itself, was an unpleasant surprise.  Some of these were souvenirs of an earlier time when we were eating some dish regularly. Others, like the sugar-free, Irish-Cream syrup that didn't taste like Irish Creme,  were food experiments that failed.  A few items fell into the "What was I thinking?" category.  Turnip greens? Watermelon Jello? Organic Grits? Rutabagas? Roger and I would never eat these unless we faced nuclear winter, so how did they end up in our pantry? (Seriously, who carried Rutabagas into my house?) As it is, some of them have been in this pantry almost as long as we've lived here. Well, they're going now!

Food too old to eat or share - I hate this kind of waste!

Once the bad choices and the oldy-moldy-goldy cans were sequestered, it was time to sort for the food bank's benefit.  Now, I don't want to sound selfish but I do need to be practical.  Giving away Roger's favorite pears may delight some hungry people but it won't fix my pantry space problem because Rog will just go get more pears.  So, what went to the food bank? The collard greens, the wax beans, the extra cans of chicken soup. (no one needs that much chicken soup!) The cake and muffin mixes I'm never going to bake; the unopened bottles of salad dressing.  My food bank donations ended up filling a laundry hamper.

Charlie has to get in front of the hamper of food-bank donations.

Of course, the cupboard clean-out held some good surprises as well.  An unopened box of one of my favorite teas had hidden itself in the cabinet. Behind the remaindered pumpkin, I found a jar of butternut squash soup.  These went back with the "keeper" groceries and would you believe the result?

Finally, a Lazy Susan that spins and shows me what we have at a glance!  It took a couple of hours and more cleaning than I'd like to admit but my pantry is, once again, tidy. So, I may be a Kitchen Clutter Monkey but I'm in recovery right now. And I'm no longer eligible to star in my own episode of "Hoarders."