Cooking galore!

Today was a day devoted to food preparation here at the house. Ellen agreed some time ago to prepare a meal for the homeless shelter which will be delivered Sunday afternoon. It consists a turkey casserole, dressing, waldorf salad, cranberry-apple sauce and pies. Quite a feast! A bit like Thanksgiving. It is for about 40 people. This is in addition to the cake Ellen has been making three times a week for Afghan refugees. She made the dressing yesterday. Today was the day she roasted butternut squash and two large turkeys. She asked that I be available to help, and I was, and I did help some, but it turned out to not be that much. The first thing I did today was to deliver cake to the SIT campus so that she didn't have to do that. After that I helped Jerome do some shopping again and mailed some of ELlen's post cards. Then when I got home, I helped remove cooked squash from the skins and removed the meat from one of the turkeys. I also did some clean-up. Ellen has been so well-organized that it has all gone pretty smoothly. She is getting some help from others with the pies. There was a point today when I wish I had takena picture of the kitchen and dining-room - it was so full of food! But when I'm involved in something I often forget to take pictures. It's all pretty much cleaned up now. Maybe tomorrow when it's ready to be delivered, I can get a picture of that. AFter I did my food work I downloaded the next set of readings for our Uncanny Journeys course, this time the works of Sigmund Freud. There is an essay on "The Uncanny" by Freud; and his Civilization and It's Discontents. I started reading "The Uncanny" out loud while Ellen worked. It's pretty interesting. Our class last Wednesday on Nietzsche was ok, but I was a little disappointed in it. Our teacher, Phil Weinstein, had obviously made the decision to "accentuate the positive." I.e., focus on what makes Nietzsche a highly regarded figure, rather than tackling head-on the aspects of his thought that are repellant. He did not ignore the latter, but he didn't dwell on them. As a result, I think the session failed to really address the depth to which I, and I suspect others as well, were very disturbed by what we had read. I respect the effort to help the class to get past their negative reactions and see things they might not have seen, but I think the negative needed to be given its due. Maybe in the finsl analysis I'm saying that one class session was not enough to deal with Nietzsche adequately. Tomorrow, Guilford is returning to "in-person" church, with some protocols observed. But the new CDC guidelines do affect us - we are in a county where numbers are low and we do not need to wear masks anymore. But I think we will.

Bigger pots than usual on our stove!