Pickering "Affair" Is Getting Really Creepy

The Pickering lawsuit was first broken by Ipse Blogit, who has done an outstanding job of following through on what was an initial piece of good luck. As I read more about the case, I became intrigued with "C Street" - the place where Pickering lived while in Congress.

Initially, it seemed C Street was a place where like minded Congressmen shared a residence - no big deal. Then it came out they were all Christians. Aside from the hypocrisy of family values Christians committing adultery, still no big deal.

Then it was revealed that C Street was in fact legally a church and tax exempt. Hmmm - the tax payers are paying for these politicians to have a place to stay? Didn't seem right to me.

But it gets worse - much worse. C Street is owned by a group called The Family - a secret religious organization whose goal is to control the world. Now they've got my attention! Who are these guys?

It turns out that we know a lot more about The Family than they would like us to - thanks to a religious scholar and writer named Jeff Sharlet. Because of his interest in religion, he was invited in 2002 by a friend to join The Family - and out of intellectual curiosity, he decided to give it a try. He moved into one of their houses where they train new members. It's fair to say he was shocked by what he learned while he was there. When he left after several weeks, he wrote an exceptionally well researched book entitled The Family, which was published in 2008 and is now out in paperback. I haven't read it yet, but I've ordered it.

However, he wrote an article for Harper's that gives an idea of this group - and sends shivers up your spine. Or if you want a quick summary, look up The Family in Wikipedia - which also give you a long list of references. Because of the association of the adulterous members of Congress (Ensign, Sanford, Pickering, Vitter) with C Street, the media is beginning to pay attention.

Here are just a few glimpses of the horror: Members refer to Manhattan's Ground Zero as "the ruins of secularism". A leader tells a dozen men living there, "You guys are here to learn how to rule the world". This same leader repeatedly urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that he compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded from his followers. Some of the other heroes are Genghis Khan, Stalin, Osama bin Laden, and others who know how to control people. The Family urges the US government to establish close ties to cruel dictators around the world, who are also members of the group. It goes on and on. It's just horrible beyond words.

But here's the worst part - at least to me. They do not think they can do anything wrong - because they are the "Chosen". Morality is for the rest of us - not for them. One of their leaders, David Coe, in one of the training sessions said: "King David liked to do really, really bad things. Here's this guy who slept with another man's wife — Bathsheba, right? — and then basically murdered her husband. And this guy is one of our heroes. I mean, Jiminy Christmas, God likes this guy! What is that all about?" The answer: "Because he was chosen." He even gives the example of someone who has raped three little girls. Is this unbelievable? At least we can understand why all these so called Christian members of Congress associated with this group think they can commit adultery without any problem.

The Family is a super secret group that's been around since the 1930s. The members are all rich or powerful or both, and they meet in secret cells all over the world. They're all men - women's only role in their world is to serve them. Remember that their goal is "to rule the world" - and they've been doing a pretty good job of it. Now that a spotlight has been cast on this group, the question is whether the rest of us will do anything about it. I'm not optimistic.

Why Congressman Pickering Didn't Become a Senator

WOW! We have a little soap opera going on.

Our former Congressman Chip Pickering chose not to run for reelection and was not appointed to Trent Lott's US Senate seat when he resigned - even though it was always assumed that Chip was being groomed for that seat. There was a lot of discussion in these parts about why. Well, now we have a possible explanation.

On Tuesday, Chip's wife Leisha filed a complaint against one Elizabeth Creekmore Byrd (of the Cellular South family) for "alienation of affections". Don't you just love these legal terms? What she really meant was that Elizabeth stole her husband Chip. Leisha claims she has suffered emotional distress, and she is suing for damages.

As you read through the complaint (which I encourage you to do since it is quite entertaining) you are definitely left with the feeling that Chip is some poor nincompoop with no brains who is totally led around by the evil Elizabeth. These suits are always phrased like this. Does Leisha really think Chip had nothing to do with this adulterous behavior? Why is it always "the other woman's" fault? Why didn't Leisha just sue the nincompoop directly? I'm sure there is some legal reason for filing this, but it sure does illustrate the idiocy of some legal actions.

The most interesting part of this complaint is that (according to Leisha) Governor Haley Barbour did offer the US Senate seat to Chip - which was certainly never made public. (Anyone want to bet that Barbour will deny it?) Leisha says that Elizabeth told Chip he would have to give up his "public life" in order to continue his relationship with her. That's a no brainer. A family values Republican might have a little trouble getting elected while he's carrying on with a woman who's not his wife - even in Mississippi.

This Elizabeth must be one bodacious woman - since Chip gave up his family (five kids!) and his career for her. Usually these relationships do not live up to their expectations. I hope this one runs true to form, because this a**hole certainly deserves to suffer. Eventually, Leisha will learn she - and her children - are much better off without him. I'm proud to say that I always saw his true colors and never voted for him.

I found out about this complaint from two legal/political blogs that I follow: Ipse Blogit and North Mississippi Commentor. But it's all over the regular media now.

UPDATE from Ipse Blogit:

Cellular South parent company (where Elizabeth is on the Board) and Capitol Resources (a lobbying firm representing Cellular South and Chip's employer) have been added to the complaint.

C Street Complex where Chip lived in Washington was apparently the DC residence of Senators John Ensign and David Vitter and Governor Mark Sanford. Must be something in the water!

Crickets chirping under my bedroom window

I moved away from Mississippi about 20 years ago, and one of the things I'd always missed were crickets chirping underneath my bedroom window at night. The sound sort of soothed me when I was a kid.

I came to England to find there were no crickets. The evening was too quiet -- no life out there at night. But I got used to it. (I also missed fireflies -- a lot. But that's another story.)

Today I read in the paper that due to global warming crickets are migrating north and have discovered England. I guess I won't have to wait too long to hear the comforting sounds of crickets chirping outside my bedroom window again.

"The sound of English summer is changing as the skylark is drowned out by chirruping crickets. Global warming has let two species, the long-winged conehead and Roesel's bush cricket spread north."

Another transplanted Southerner in England worries that poisonous snakes might hear of the crickets' discovery of England and migrate north also. Now that's one thing I haven't missed from Mississippi.

Life is a bowl (or two) of cherries

We've talked about tomatoes on the blog, but not about cherries. This must be rectified.

Every summer I look forward to the cherry season. I think I could live on these things. They are only in the British supermarkets for a brief time so I go wild buying and eating them for those few weeks.

Last year, I discovered the rainier cherry - it's got a yellow skin and is incredibly delicious (and expensive).


These cherries are very sensitive to temperature, wind, and rain. About 1/3 of a Rainier cherry orchard's crop is eaten by birds.

Rainiers are considered the "cream of the crop", selling for $5 dollars a pound or more in the USA and as much as a dollar each in Japan.

Here are five things to do with cherries:

Tipsy cherries
Marinate cherries in kirsch and serve with ice cream or chocolate desserts.

Cherry and plum crumble
Mix 250g each of stoned cherries and plums, 3tbsp sugar and 4tbsp water in an ovenproof dish. Rub 75g butter into 150g plain flour, stir in 4tbsp each of oats and crushed almonds and 2tbsp sugar. Spoon over the fruit and bake at 180/gas 4 for 25 minutes until golden.

A sauce for roast duck
Bring 150ml each of chicken stock and red wine to the boil, then turn down the heat. Add 250g stoned cherries and simmer for about 15 minutes until thickened.

Cherry pie
Mix 500g stoned cherries with 1tbsp cornflour and 25g sugar. Line a pie dish with sweet shortcrust pastry, add the cherry mixture, top with pastry and seal the edges. Make a hole in the centre, brush with milk and sugar and bake at 180/gas 4 for 40 minutes until golden.

Instant trifle
Marinate stoned cherries in kirsch. Spoon some crushed amaretti biscuits into glasses. Top with marinated cherries, ready made custard, whipped cream and finish with toasted almonds.

What is your favorite summer fruit or vegetable?

My husband the oil mogul

When my grandmother died a few years ago, I inherited about 1/500th of an oil well in Mississippi. My husband, a poor English boy who grew up watching Dallas on television, almost died himself of happiness.

"Relax," I said. "I didn't really inherit a complete oil well. We aren't moguls now." The checks I get from the oil company might be up to $100 a month but then I have to pay a share of the operating expenses too so that takes a lot out of it. So basically we might get 20 bucks a month out of it.

But my husband is so happy being an oil mogul -- he pores over any statement we get, just like he is JR Ewing.

Today we got papers about investing in some new deep-drilling operation. Mel is in heaven right now, looking over seismic surveys of the area, aerial maps of the proposed site and mineral leases.

I thought it was cute how excited he gets over nothing so took a pic.

Public enemies

The release of the new movie about John Dillinger reminded me of secret family history that I wanted to make sure I told my daughter so the information wasn't lost.

I had a great-aunt who fell in love with one of the Dillingers -- Frank -- got pregnant and wanted to marry him. My great grandfather was so mortified that she would think she could marry into the mobster family (when John Dillinger was Public Enemy Number 1) that he refused and made her give the baby up for adoption. This destroyed her; she was never the same again.

Isn't that sad that she would have to give up the love of her life and her baby because of public opinion against the family? I wonder what happened to her child. She must have worried about the baby for the rest of her life.

What happened with her and the Dillinger boy was considered so terrible, however, that no one spoke of it in the family, and it wasn't until the funeral of one of the elder members of my family that someone told me so I would keep the information alive for another generation.

Gone with the Wind published on this day in 1936

Gone with the Wind was published on this day in 1936. Every Southern girl of my generation knows the story well. And as we know today, and here I am quoting a source on the Internet: "Many historians regard the book as having a strong ideological commitment to the cause of the Confederacy and a romanticized view of the culture of the antebellum South."

Whatever you think about the book, Southerners know it well so I thought some background trivia would be appropriate today.

"As several elements of Gone with the Wind have parallels with Margaret Mitchell's own life, her experiences may have provided some inspiration for the story. Mitchell's understanding of life and hardship during the American Civil War, for example, came from elderly relatives and neighbors passing war stories to her generation.

While Margaret Mitchell used to say that her Gone with the Wind characters were not based on real people, modern researchers have found similarities to some of the people in Mitchell's own life as well as to individuals she knew or she heard of.

Mitchell's maternal grandmother, Annie Fitzgerald Stephens, was born in 1845; she was the daughter of an Irish immigrant, who owned a large plantation on Tara Road in Clayton County, south of Atlanta, and who married an American woman named Ellen, and had several children, all daughters.

Researchers believed Rhett Butler to be based on Mitchell's first husband, Red Upshaw. She divorced him after she learned he was a bootlegger. Other historical evidence suggests the Butler character to be based on George Trenholm, a famous blockade-runner.

Martha Bulloch Roosevelt, the mother of US president Theodore Roosevelt may have been an inspiration for Scarlett O'Hara. Roosevelt biographer David McCullough discovered that Mitchell, as a reporter for The Atlanta Journal, conducted an interview with one of Martha's closest friends and bridesmaid, Evelyn King Williams, then 87. In that interview, she described Martha's physical appearance, beauty, grace, and intelligence in great detail. The similarities between Martha and the Scarlett character are striking."

Tomorrow is another day.

The Evolution of a Tomato

(This was an email sent to my kids and a few others and one of those "others" asked me to share on the blog.) 

Okay.  You may find this trivial ...but, I'm so proud of this tomato because I grew it and it was a solitary, independent enterprise. And, this is the prettiest tomato I've ever seen: perfect in size, shape, color. 

 

Not the first time I've been involved in tomato growing but this time it was just me doing the planting and growing, watering and watching.  You recall I'm a BFFG (bona fide farm girl) and my childhood summers were a glorious mix of tractor-driving, sand-dune excursions (looking for and finding arrowheads) and vegetable-growing and picking.  Mom kept tiny salt shakers and we'd pull tomatoes off the vine and eat them right there in the garden.  I also remember that at least one time we drove to town and sold produce on the street corner in tiny Hugoton, Kansas.  Mom canned those tomatoes so Dad would have them for his fried potatoes in the winter months.  She also made ketchup in addition to the canning, and jelly and jam processing.  What an industrious, talented and smart woman!  

 

Well, I must give you the facts on this particular tomato.  It weighed in at 10oz, 3 3/4" in diameter and retained the prettiest little crown of green stem, with not a blemish on its shiny red surface.  And, get this:  Its texture upon eating is firm and has that "just right" tomato taste.  

 

I'd been dreading the thought of taking the knife to this tomato.  I just didn't want to cut it; I wanted to find a county fair and put it on exhibit and win the 1st place Purple Ribbon.  But, this was the day to experience it's culinary glory ... just right for eating...so I had to do it.   

 

Sorry you can't be here to have a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich.

 

What we would be wearing in 2000 as predicted in 1930s

Check this video out. It was made in the 1930s to predict what we would be wearing in the year 2000. I would love to wear a glass dress, and wearing a flashlight on your head to search for an honest man seems like a good idea too.

Gotta Love the Natchez Life

Today I was reminded why I love the life in Natchez.

This afternoon I went to a magnificent duo piano concert at First Presbyterian Church, which is impressive in its own right. These two world class pianists were brought to Natchez through connections with a church member. It was truly awe inspiring.

I could have gone to a poetry reading at an art gallery or a opera presentation at an antebellum home. But instead I went to a neighbor's, who serves scrumptious homemade ice cream on her porch every Sunday evening in the summer. This was the opening night, and it was standing room only - all the porch rockers were full.

It's summertime - and the living is easy.

Demise of an Oak

I was walking my dog along the Natchez bluff this morning when I noticed an oak tree had recently been cut down. I know the city lost many trees during the recent storm, but I don't think this tree was a victim of that, other than possibly losing a few small rotten limbs. The tree trunk and limbs, that lay on the ground, appeared healthy, so was chopping it down absolutely necessary? Wouldn't a simple pruning of the rotten limbs be a more efficient solution to preserving this tree?








I noticed a few weeks ago someone parked under this particular tree, on a Saturday night (I guess while at Bowie's Tavern) and a limb fell through the sun roof, into the car, cracking the front windshield--oops! What bad timing. I hope this wasn't the reason for cutting down this large old oak tree; isn't parking on the bluff illegal?




I also noticed two Mockingbirds sitting on the branches, now laying on the ground, refusing to abandon the oak. If you look closely, you can see the Mockingbird sitting on the tip of the limb:


I know it's sometimes necessary to cut down trees, if severely damaged or rotten, so I hope the city had an appropriate reason. We need to preserve these beautiful oaks on the bluff whenever possible. Trees not only enhance our landscape and provide shade on these blistering summer days, but they help the environment as well. Trees absorb CO2 while emitting oxygen. Trees subdue noise pollution and reduce erosion by storing water and breaking the force of rain that falls. So I hope the city exhausted all options before chopping down this lovely oak.

Happy Equal Pay Day!

Today is Equal Pay Day, and the American Association of University Women (AAUW) has just released a new state by state earnings comparison by gender. And guess what? Mississippi is not last! In fact, we're ranked 40th in earnings ratio between male and female full time workers, age 16 and older, all educational levels . Since they consider DC in their results, that means we didn't even make the bottom 10. YEAH!

However, looking at the earnings ratio between male and female full time, college educated workers, age 25 and older, Mississippi moves into more familiar territory - a ranking of 49th. Hmmm. What does this mean? Should women in Mississippi not bother going to college since it won't benefit us much financially? On the other hand, it might motivate some of those sexist good ole boys to go to college, since they're virtually assured of earning more than those uppity women.

Along these same lines, did you know that the United Nations has had a Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women since 1979? Over 90% of the nations belonging to the UN have signed on. Guess who hasn't? The United States! Guess those guys in Washington are just too intimidated.

"Must Do" Events for the Weekend & More

Greetings All... Just taking an opportunity to do a little community broadcast for those of you who aren't traveling to the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival this weekend and are wringing your hands over what to do instead. Well, the Symphony of Gardens Tour is this weekend, rain or shine, and the highlight of the event takes place on Friday evening at 6 p.m. in the Natchez City Auditorium. HGTV's gardening guru, P. Allen Smith, will be giving a talk on How to get more from your garden than a backache. I don't know about you but I don't profess to have a green thumb, just maybe two left ones, so I plan to go find out what I can do with the flower bed I built in front of my house last year to make it work and not die. I love those brilliant colored snap dragons, but good grief, they're everywhere; give me variety or give me...oh you know the speech! Tickets are just $10 for P. Allen and are available at the Natchz Visitor Center (but you can also buy them at the door). Information about the rest of the weekend's garden extravaganza can be found on the tour's website at http://www.symphonyofgardenstour.com/. So that takes care of Friday night for you.
On Saturday, Shannon Brennan-Mayeaux will be sharing a compelling story over Grits & Grillades at Natchez Coffee Company on Franklin St. She is indeed a member of the infamous Brennan's that seem to own every dining establishment in the Crescent City, but she's coming to Natchez to share her life changing experience gained when she visited Medjugorje in 1987. To purchase tickets, learn more about Shannon or the event itself, please contact Hedy Boelte at 601-446-7700 or drop her an e-mail at hedykboelte@aol.com The event is being held to benefit the Natchez Festival of Music.
Jumping a tad ahead, on May 7th, bridge fans (the kind you play, not the kind you cross), are in for an all day treat as Monmouth Plantation hosts A Hand of Bridge and a Delightful Lunch. As you dine and play, you'll be treated to an array of Broadway hits as performed by some of this year's festival talent. Tickets are $60 for Lunch & Bridge, $50 for Senior Citizens, or $35.00 for just lunch and music. The proceeds for this event will also go to The Natchez Festival of Music. Please give Frances Trosclair a call for tickets and more information. If you'd like to learn more about what this year's Festival of Music has to offer throughout the month of May, logon to their newly refurbished website at http://www.natchezopera.com/ for showtimes, locations, and more. If you poker fans feel a little left out, don't fret because the NFoM is putting together a fund-raiser for you guys & gals too.
You can also call the Natchez Convention & Visitors Bureau for information on these events as well. Call 601-446-6345.

English pubs are dying

I read this article on a US website. It certainly romanticizes English pubs. The ones in London can be really nice but, lemme tell you, the ones near where I live are gross things, full of unhealthy people where fights break out and property is damaged.

In the old days, English men used pubs to avoid family life. You can still see them doing this today. On Saturday mornings when 'the wife' is shopping for the family, the husband will be in the pub, drinking pints and reading the paper or playing darts.

Here's the article, and you can see what you think:

LONDON -- Nothing can stay the same forever although Britain is one country where they try like the Dickens to fight that basic truth. The lyric of an old World War I song said it best:

There'll always be an England
While there's a country lane,
Wherever there's a cottage small
Beside a field of grain.

And down the lane from that cottage beside the field of grain there will always be a pub serving imperial pints (20 ounces) of beer. Well, that is changing rapidly.(Although you can still find some authentic pubs.)

Rural life is unrecognizable from 20 years ago and British drinking habits have undergone a sea change, as well. Both of these factors have led to a crisis for British pubs. Thirty-nine a week are going out of business forever.

Jogging our memories

You know you totally forget about something then someone else brings it up as a meaningful memory then you can suddenly recall a slice of your past life vividly?

That happened to me when I read about Kevin Sessum's memoir, Mississippi Sissy.

Here's a summary of the book from some literary website:

"...the stunning memoir from Kevin Sessums, a celebrity journalist who grew up scaring other children, hiding terrible secrets, pretending to be Arlene Frances and running wild in the South. As he grew up in Forest, Mississippi, befriended by the family maid, Mattie May, he became a young man who turned the word "sissy" on its head, just as his mother taught him. In Jackson, he is befriended by Eudora Welty and journalist Frank Hains, but when Hains is brutally murdered in his antebellum mansion, Kevin's long road north towards celebrity begins."


Here's an excerpt from the first chapter:

“Fuck,” said Frank Hains. “I knew I shouldn’t have given that last bourbon to Eudora.”

It had taken me almost a decade after that day of my mother’s funeral, but I had finally found the only equivalent that Mississippi offered to a What’s My Line? life. Frank — a John Daly–like presence in Jackson — was the arts editor of the state’s afternoon newspaper, for which he also wrote a column called “On Stage.” Eudora was writer Eudora Welty. We were at a cast party for New Stage Theatre’s latest production, Long Day’s Journey into Night, starring Geraldine Fitzgerald as Mary Tyrone. Frank and Miss Welty were active members of New Stage, and he was playing host that night at Bleak House, the name given facetiously to his antebellum home by the local literati of Jackson. The Dickensian nickname derived from the house’s outward appearance of haunted dilapidation where it sat, rather spookily, on a hill opposite Jackson’s lone Jewish cemetery....

Frank would often allude to his “dusky endeavors,” as they had come to refer politely to his interest in young African Americans, some of whom had touched him deeply with their aspirations and narratives of maternal love. Miss Welty welcomed these stories of nuanced carnality, as Frank was careful not to tell her the details.

I was in high school when Frank Hains was murdered, and he'd just directed a play in Vicksburg, Mississippi, that my brother and a friend were in. We used to sit there as he'd explain his inspired plans for the set, and we thought he was so sophisticated.

Then he was murdered. Everyone was shocked. My father, a forensic pathologist, told me that the crime scene indicated that it was a homosexual murder. I was additionally shocked by that news.

My brother then started a gag where some of us would go around confessing that we were the murderer of Frank Hains. (The crime was unsolved.)

A friend from high school recalls how my brother would "creep around muttering, 'I murdered Frank Hains.' It was SO funny because we'd be watching TV or making cookies, or whatever, and he would suddenly appear and say that, in a sepulchral voice, then just walk off."

Also a friend from Jackson recalls actually attending the party that Sessums writes about. She wrote: "Do you remember the very first page of the book, when he describes that party where Eudora Welty got drunk, and Frank Hains was oozing around hosting so urbanely? I wuz thar (as Tom Joad would say.) That very exact party, for the cast of Long Day's Journey into Night. I felt mighty sassy and grown-up, there among the big folks, rubbing shoulders with Geraldine Fitzgerald and all. It made me feel better to read that Miss Welty was so drunk that Kevin had to drive her home because she was horribly rude to me that night. It never occurred to me that she was full of bourbon---I was so naive I didn't think old ladies drank anything but coffee."

I enjoyed the whole experience of thinking about something again that I'd forgotten, and the memories of others from that time rounding out the story for me. Hope someone else is out there writing a memoir that will jog my memory again soon.

The sky's the soft blue of a work shirt

Isn't this a beautiful poem that my friend just sent me:

Today, the sky's the soft blue of a work shirt washed
a thousand times. The journey of a thousand miles
begins with a single step. On the interstate listening
to NPR, I heard a Hubble scientist
say, "The universe is not only stranger than we
think, it's stranger than we can think." I think
I've driven into spring, as the woods revive
with a loud shout, redbud trees, their gaudy
scarves flung over bark's bare limbs. Barely doing
sixty, I pass a tractor trailer called Glory Bound,
and aren't we just? Just yesterday,
I read Li Po: "There is no end of things
in the heart," but it seems like things
are always ending—vacation or childhood,
relationships, stores going out of business,
like the one that sold jeans that really fit—
And where do we fit in? How can we get up
in the morning, knowing what we do? But we do,
put one foot after the other, open the window,
make coffee, watch the steam curl up
and disappear. At night, the scent of phlox curls
in the open window, while the sky turns red violet,
lavender, thistle, a box of spilled crayons.
The moon spills its milk on the black tabletop
for the thousandth time.


"Poem on a Line by Anne Sexton, 'We are All Writing God's Poem'" by Barbara Crooker

Have you ever put a lampshade on your head when tipsy?

In a speech to Irish leaders on St. Patrick's Day, Barack Obama jokingly urged the audience to go easy on the spirits. "Stay as long as you want, try to avoid putting any lampshades on your head, because there are a lot of photographers here," he said. When did putting a lampshade on your head become a universal symbol of drunkenness?

Probably in the 1910s or 1920s. While it's impossible to pinpoint the first instance of a man donning a lampshade at a party, the image most likely came out of vaudeville and was popularized in early silent films. In The Adventurer (1917), Charlie Chaplin plays a rich yachtsman who, pursued by the police, puts a lampshade over his head and stands still as the cops pass by. While that example is more about disguise than inebriation, the lampshade on the head had become a drunk gag by 1928, when the Baltimore Evening Sun ran a satirical piece called "The Life of the Party": "It is usually customary for the life of the party about the middle of the evening to put a lampshade on his head and give an impersonation of [Scottish soprano] Mary Garden, after which he tells a joke that is not meant for mixed company."

Me again: I think I have put a lampshade on my head once after too much champagne. Sort of embarrassing to recall, but I think I am guilty of this one. Are you?

Scanwiches

Check this site out, and be sure and scan your next sandwich for the site.

Scanwiches



My sandwiches are too boring to scan. I get a turkey, cheese and lettuce sandwich every day at the office. The deli staff at Nokia (I work for the cellphone maker in their European headquarters outside London) start making my sandwich when they see me come down the stairs (11:45, so I can get the sandwich before the line forms, then I wrap it up and leave it until I come back from the gym). I don't even have to speak to them, they just make it and hand it to me.

It's the same with my skinny lattes too. They see me come downstairs first thing in the morning, they start making my latte.

If only the rest of my life could be so simple.

They do say to me, "Don't you get bored having the same sandwich year in and year out?" But I say it's too much to ask me to choose a different sandwich every day. I can only handle so much excitement in my life.

Stuck at Rowan Oak

I made one of my mother's staple recipes recently, Salmon Cakes. They are easy, delicious and nutritious. My family fights over them -- they are that tasty. Here's how to make them:

Can of salmon, drained, and thrown into a mixing bowl. Add bread crumbs or crackers in a zip lock bag that you've whacked with a rolling pin so they are crumbly. Add an egg to bind it together, worcestershire sauce, salt & pepper and any other spices -- I put paprika or anything with a zippy flavor. Mix them up with your hands and shallow fry in a pan. Delish.

Now I know that my friend Brenda would say to add some mashed-up potato to this mix because William Faulkner's nephew told her to do that. But I say keep it pure.

My friend and I went to Faulkner's home Rowan Oak in Oxford one November day a few years ago for a nostalgia tour. It was there in 1979 that we first visited as students, and her car got stuck in the mud. I mean hopelessly stuck. We went asking people at Rowan Oak for help -- among them Shelby Foote and other Faulkner scholars who were there for a reception. Did they help? No. They left us to die out there while they drank mint juleps and talked about books.

So we went back to Rowan Oak in 2000 to remember those days. We went into the house, and surprisingly there was William Faulkner's nephew, Jim, and he was telling visitors interesting little-known facts about his uncle. (Jimmy Faulkner wrote a book about his uncle called Across the Creek .)

Anyway, I don't know how the subject got on to salmon cakes but Jimmy said William F loved them with potato in them, but I'm sure my mother's way is superior. Faulkner might have been a Nobel-Prize winning author but I'm sure my mother knew best about salmon.

Who's Buying Natchez Regional?

Around September, we learned that Natchez Regional was up for sale and towards the end of the year, we learned there was a secret buyer. In early January, we were supposed to hear who that was. Well, we're still waiting. In the meantime, NRMC has filed for bankruptcy - which was somehow a good thing. We recently learned that our secret buyer is also interested in buying Community Hospital, although they deny knowing anything about it. This whole thing is beyond bizarre.

Today I ran across a blog article that claimed Essent Healthcare in Nashville was planning to buy NRMC. This blog is written by some current or former employee of one of their hospitals, who is not fond of Essent, who has filed a lawsuit against the blog, which doesn't seem to be worried. I have no idea how reliable this information is, but it's worth looking into. Kevin Cooper, are you listening?