STORYTIME TAPESTRY

The Newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world

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Sept 24, 2005? 

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Update on Laura and James Brace??™s condition in Texas:?  James is boarding up the windows and we are looking to see if the roads have cleared.?  We are packed and will leave if the time slot is long enough to get out and the roads are clear enough.?  Thanks so much for all your prayers.?  ? 

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Now on to the good stuff..........

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Today's Queue Stories
~**~**~**~

???Rice And Beans??? (Arroz Y Habichuelas)

Gregory Hernandez

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Rice:?  the boiling steam of it, the subtle scent of it, the crunch of uncooked grains of it, the gee-it??™s-hot-why-am-I-cooking-this-on-a-summer-day-of-it; the memory of it.

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I remember standing in the kitchen, waiting around as my mother would cook some rice and beans, a typical Puerto Rican dish.?  The kitchen was small and I was five or six ??“ or heck, ANY age, up until the time I was 33 years old.?  Like my Mom, I would pop uncooked grains of rice in my mouth and crunch them (I??™d do this with spaghetti too, don??™t know if she did).?  The scent of rice cooking is a subtle thing, barely there, but indistinguishable.?  I had a friend in school once who hailed from the island of Tobago and he would tell me how his fellow islanders would also cook rice as one of their staple dishes, but the tendency would be to cook it in a pressure cooker (???presha cookah??? as he would pronounce it ??“ I still hear his voice in my head saying that phrase even as I write this); anyway, all I could think of was how that would cut off that wonderful smell.?  Now, like I say, being Puerto Rican, you say ???rice??? to me and I complete the thought with ???and beans???, ???arroz y habichuelas???.?  No need to specify what KIND of beans, either, to a Puerto Rican, there is only one kind of beans that go with the rice:?  red kidney beans; if there??™s another kind of beans , or it??™s made another way, well, then you get specific and say rice with white beans or red rice or whatever:?  but ???rice and beans??? that??™s one thing and one thing only.

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But of course, it??™s not.?  I started off being a fairly typical bachelor, not knowing how to cook much, and subsisting (when I was on my own or away from home) on whatever was around.?  The first time I was away from home was to spend some time with my father and his family.?  His new wife was Mexican.?  When THEY say ???beans??? they mean refried, and they mean at every meal.?  That took some getting used to.?  And when I lived with a woman, she was American and when she made rice, it came from a box, and it had an assortment of flavors, and ???and beans??? was not one of ???em.?  Over time, I??™ve been with, and lived with, a number of different women, and have learned to cook somewhat myself.?  And many times I??™ve had rice (and sometimes beans as well), but they??™ve never had the taste, the texture or the warm smell of the ???rice and beans??? I grew up with.?  And my Mom??  She??™s not around to make it for me anymore.?  And my Grandmom is closing on her hundredth birth day, has one leg now, and hasn??™t cooked in years.?  If there??™s one regret I have is that I??™ve never learned to cook rice and beans the way they made it.?  But that taste, and that hot kitchen (all those kitchen have become one kitchen in my mind), they linger like the smell of spring or the memories of childhood.

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Gregory Hernandez (gregory499@yahoo.com)?  is one half of the NYC songwriting duo Riverglass. He has been a published writer, has appeared as a model in a national magazine, and produced Flash animations for several sites featuring the characters of renowned fantasist Michael Moorcock. Recently he has discovered the world of online fiction and has had stories appear on such fanfiction sites as Multiverse.org, Omniverse, and Marvel Dark Design. In the real world, he has had stories appear in various small press publications.

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~**~**~? 

? Just Imagine

Michael T. Smith

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When I married Ginny, I gained a new son, daughter and four grandsons. I
became an instant grandpa. Over the July 4th Holiday, I got to meet my new daughter
and her three boys for the first time.
It took a day for my new grandsons to warm up to me. The first day they stared
at me, perhaps wondering what they were suppose to do with this man, who they were
told is "grandpa." I waited patiently. I knew boys like to play. They'd come to me in their
own time.
On day two the oldest two were doing summersaults over my lap. The youngest,
Ben, took a little longer, but yesterday he raced me across the yard thirty times and won
every time.
The weekend brought back memories of my own childhood. We had such
imaginations. In our minds, a tree was a tower to spot approaching bad guys, a big rock became
mountain, a fallen log a space ship headed to the stars. We had toys, but we
had to use our imagination, not like the new toys I see my grandkids with. Our toys didn't
talk, and if they did, you pulled a string to make it work. We had blocks to build,
crayons to create, trucks and cars to push. They were simple toys that required
imagination.
I thought about the toys in my garage, the ones I saved, when my children
outgrew them. They were simple and needed their imagination to work. "Mr. Potato
Head" allowed them to learn parts of the body and giggle at the funny face with an ear
where it's mouth should have been.
I still have an old plastic phone. It has a dial to turn, a bell that rings when you
push a button, and that's it. It doesn't talk, squawk, beep or move around the room. It's
simple and was used when they played house, nurse, doctor, and secretary.
I have a toy doctor's bag, with all the plastic doctor's tools. I remember all the
broken bones, cuts, bangs, scratches and aches my daughter repaired as I lay in her office
moaning.
Most toys today do it all. We don't need imagination, it comes in a box: video
games that take us into another world or reality, talking toys, with vocabularies better
than most people; computerized toys to teach the alphabet. Kids sit and have imagination
brought to them. The teaching toys are great, but children tire of them; it's like being in
school.
When my son was young and tired of his toys, he would come to me, "Dad,
I'm bored."
"Go find something to do." I'd reply.
"I don't know what to do."
"Go outside and find a friend."
"Naaa! I don't want to do that."
"Use your imagination."
"Huh?" he asked.
"Well, when I was young......" You know the routine.
Sports is the same. We're entertained for hours watching someone else have fun
doing what they're good at. Wouldn't it be better to be playing yourself? If we don't like
the sports available to watch, we create new ones. It doesn't matter what, people will pay
to see it, because they need to be entertained. I haven't heard of world championship worm
digging, but if someone offered a large cash price, people would buy tickets to
scream at the contestants.
I worry.
Are we becoming a society that needs outside influence to have fun? I think I'll
go climb a tree. Maybe there's pirate ship on the horizon or someone is attacking my
castle.
Just imagine?

Michael T. Smith

mtsmith@qwestonline.com

? Fort Lee, NJ
Read my Stories at http://heartsandhumor.com/blog/

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? ~**~**~

ValueSpeak
A Weekly Column
By Joseph Walker
valuespeak@msn.com

GOOD SAMARITAN SUSPECT

Mom always used to say, "No good deed goes unpunished."
I'm sure she was quoting Ben Franklin or someone, but as far as I'm
concerned it was Mom's saying.?  And until recently, I didn't have any idea
what it means.
On the surface it seems kind of dumb.?  People don't receive punishment for
doing good things, do they??  Of course, there was the time that colleague
accused me of being "patronizing" when I held an office door open for her.? 
And the time those teenage boys unitedly gave me a one-finger salute after I
let them pass in front of me on a crowded interstate.?  And the many times
people wrote "who do you think you are?" letters to me during my years as a
TV critic after I thought I was doing them a service by trying to warn them
against wasting their time watching "Dallas."
"No good deed goes unpunished" - especially if J.R. Ewing is involved.
Then my nephew Mike told me what happened to him recently.?  Mike is a
police officer who has recently found himself involved in an inordinate
number of high speed foot chases.?  Normally, this wouldn't be such a bad
thing for Mike.?  He was a high school hurdles champion, so running at full
speed and jumping over and around stuff is second nature to him.?  But Mike's
getting a little older, and neither he nor his wife, Rebecca, have had a
full night's sleep since the twins were born a few months ago.?  So all this
running just makes him . . . you know . . . tired.
Still, when another suspect took off on foot a few weeks ago, Mike had no
choice but to give chase.?  "You don't have time to think about how tired you
are," Mike told me.?  "You just react.?  It's all instinct and Adrenalin."
Instinct and Adrenalin were enough to help Mike keep the suspect in sight.? 
In fact, he was starting to gain on his target when suddenly, inexplicably
his legs went out from under him and he tumbled to the ground.
Hard.
And noisily.
So hard and so noisily, in fact, that the suspect stopped running, turned
and jogged back to where Mike was writhing on the street in agony.
"Hey," the suspect asked in between gasps for air, "are you OK?"
Mike thought maybe the shock of pain in his leg was making him hallucinate.
?  Suspects don't usually come back to check on you if you fall while chasing
them.
"Our training covers pretty much everything," Mike said, "but we never
talked about what to do when the guy you're trying to catch comes back to
make sure you're OK."
So he did the only thing he could think of to do in the situation: he pulled
his gun and ordered the suspect to join him on the ground while he called
for back up to take care of both of them.
"To tell you the truth, he looked as surprised as I was," Mike said.?  "I
don't think he really thought about what he was doing.?  He just reacted -
like I did."
And now he's being punished for his good deed - just like Mom said.
And so, come to think of it, is Mike, who is not only recuperating from the
painful injuries he sustained during the fall, but who must also put up with
incessant ribbing from his brothers and sisters in blue.?  For some reason,
they don't think it's fair that he gets credit for a collar that only
happened because he fell down while chasing a suspect who turned out to be
the Good Samaritan.
Somehow, somewhere, you just know Mom and Ben Franklin are enjoying this.

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~**~**~

? The Story of My Grandfather as My Grandmother remembers it

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Saskia Nienna Steidel

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His hands always work. He is not giving them a rest. Even if he is not working, he is playing with his hand, overstretching the fingers. Sometimes I believe he is hurting them. But why?

His right hand looks especially awful. If you look down on it, it looks damaged. Something is not right with the bone. He hurt it wittingly.?  Or not wittingly? He wanted to abreact himself and he accepted that he could get hurt bad. But did he want to live with this consequences? Did he even think about the consequences? Do you think if you are desperate?

He clenched his hand to a fist and he ram the fist against the wall. Why?

Letting the anger out. Did it help? If he would have thought about it before acting, he would have understood that it is the purpose of abreacting, to let something out, so you can let it sink to the ground of the lake of forgetting.

But because of what he did he will never be able to forget. He cannot even oust it. His hand, the damaged bone ??“ they remember him. And they remember me. But that is another story.

The story of his hands is the story of a boy, who learned in young age to work and to be content. It is the story of a boy who got trained to forget his hunger ??“ every kind of hunger. The hunger for nourishment, the hunger for life, the hunger for love, the hunger for fun, the hunger for more. He was showed early, that life is made of deprivations. I am sure life is easier, if you can deal with deprivation. But why? What for? It is the hunger for more that is propelling the humans ??“ in bad as in good ways. The hunger for more is neutral. What we make with it, which way we choose ??“ that is the question that changes the world. Good or bad? Positive or negative?

His hands got to know the bad side of hunger. They have been so young, when they showed them how to hold a weapon. So young and violate, but they showed him that there is more in the world then girls, summer nights, dancing nights and family. Hands have to work, hands have to salute, hands have to obey.

Sometimes hands have to do things they do not want to do. Hands have to go to war. The heart can stay at home. It will not be needed. That is what he learned! His hands did obey!

If I think about it right, the story of his hands is the story about a generation of young guys. Them all they took the chalk and the schoolbooks out of their hands and changed those things against weapons. They took their hands out of the hair of their girls to show them how to unlock a hand grenade. They took their hands away from the bodies of their girls to make them trench fosses, so they can hide form the work of other young mans hands. The bullets and the grenades.

Some hands maybe liked to salute. Some hands were maybe proud to hold a weapon. Other hands suffered and worked, like they asked them to do.

And what did the hands of their girls do, after they took away the hands of their young friends? They wrote. So many love letters full of pain and sorrow. Is the friend still alive? What happened? What are his hands doing now? Where are they?

The girls missed to get hold. That is how I felt. My hands sometimes just touched my hear; something he always did. Sometimes they also hit desperate against the walls, if they did not know what to do anymore, if I did not know how much I could still take. And they worked, as the expected the hands of the young women to. But my hands had never to go through that much pain and deprivation as his. My fianc?©. He was part of the war. He was too young. They took the love out of his hands to make space for fear and anger. I was not able to give the love back to him. Well, yes, I was. But the love I gave him was different, it was not innocent anymore, not restive, not hopeful or ingenuous. His hands have never been sheer since then, because he believed that they could never be sheer. How often did he wash this poor hands? All the blood. He wanted to wash it away. It did not work.

When he came back to me, after the war, he often just sat their to hold me. Just to simply hold me. His hands laid motionless on my back or on my arms, just as he would have to proof himself that it was really me, he was holding, and not the dead body of a friend. His hands have always been cold since war. Numb as his innocent dreams. They have always been on a journey to find warmth since then. My body was the warmth, so they often stayed with me. But his hands got violate. They got wound. Chafed skin, dry skin. Is there not a saying, that you see the soul in the skin? Well, his skin wanted to regenerate, just like his soul. His hands, they have been so ready for a change. But even the warmth of my body was not able to give him the change. I was scared to hurt him. Even hugs were difficult. He was yearning for them, but not like the time before, not just because of flippancy or because of reverie; or just because of a passing fancy. Now he was yearning for it, because he was yearning for a hold; because he needed a home. Something, that was there. Something, he did not feel the fear that it could be gone or dead the next day. This fear I was not able to take away from him. He never talked much about war. Especially not about bad memories. I think he wanted to make them undone while locking them up inside. But his hands did talk to me!

What else do we see in hands? How much do we see through them? Maybe nobody ever learned how to understand their language? There are books of gesticulation; I read some of them. But his hands speak their own language, a special language. They want to create and to build. I think most of all they want that: To build something, not to destroy something!

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But now, thank God, I was able to give him something that can make his hands sheen again. I already see the change. His hands are more quiet, relaxed. They are still strong, but now they are also soft. And they do not shake anymore. They hold.

Two days ago, I took the fear out of his hands and made space for the hope. I took the past out of his cold hands and gave him the warm life: Our daughter!

She looks so little in his big hands. She asks him to share kindness and affection, she asks for food, for hands that clean her and hold her. She is asking for a hold! And for the first time since years, this big hands are not on a journey anymore. They found a purpose the heart does agree.

I watch him, as he sits in the chair with our daughter in his arms. He is singing for her. He sings about life ??“ about life that will be, how it will be ??¦.. With our daughter a shadow falls from him. I know, that the wounds will never totally heal. The bone of his right hand will always be damaged ??“ but now a new life begins. A child means a new world, that we can help to create.

Everything begins again. And the love is back in our hands; in mine, in his, and in the little fatty fingers, that reach out for ours.

Once there was a thought, and the thought became a voice that called me. I heard it, I felt it.

Saskia Nienna Streidel

saskiaofthewoods@yahoo.de

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My name is Saskia Steidel, I am born the? 17.10.1981 in Germany. I live in a small?  village in the middle of the woods and love to write. Right now I study learn therapy and music therapy and I just quit my job as a ticket manager in the administration of an soccer club, to have more time to study and to write and to work as a Nanny, what I really love. So far I published poems and some other pieces in different books and published one book called "Am Ende der Nebel". Right now I am writing on a children??™s book.

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Writers Feedback

Jodi Flesberg Lilly??™s story was simply beautiful,? 

louise

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Prayer Requests and Updates

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My prayers are with those people in the path of Rita

Natalie

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