The New Joys of Jello Chronicles Part 2

NSP Meditations

The New Joys of Jello begins with a lemony gold paragraph:

The joys of Jello gelatin are never ending. The same Jello gelatin that made a cool dessert many years ago is still a shimmering example of versatility. Make it simple or elegant. Make it dessert or salad. Make it for family or for special occasion. In any form, Jello gelatin has a light, refreshing, fresh fruity taste.

No writer of this brilliant passage is credited. I liked this omission as a crime against the literature of food. Who was this literary genius of Jello?

The premise of this book is obvious: Jello should go into everything edible because it makes everything more colorful and fun, including the following recipe, which I conclude must have been intended as a laxative.

Jellied Prune Whip

1 package Jello (orange or lemon)

1 cup boiling water

¾ cup cold water

¼ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon grated orange rind

¼ cup sugar

1 ½ cups chopped prune pulp

I’ll spare you all the cooking directions and just hit the highlights:

“Fold prune pulp into whipped gelatin…pile into sherbet glasses…serve with custard sauce or light cream…”

They forgot to add, “Consume, wait several hours, and then dump elegantly and comfortably…”

The New Joys of Jello (as opposed to the old joys) is positively giddy about demonstrating creative ways to integrate jello into every element of cuisine, and as shown above, maintaining personal health. The inventors of these recipes, (who were these mad chefs working secretly in gleaming test kitchens?) even presented ways to party with Jello, I mean really party with panache. This idea seemingly started out with good intentions, but somewhere along the line, devolved into the cultural horror now practiced gracelessly around America known as the Jello shot.

The New Joys of Jello Chronicles Part 1

NSP Meditations

My friend Gary gifted me an old book his ex wife left behind. Gary, his partner Linda and I had discussed the subject of this book several times in a dive bar with some hilarious nostalgia.

I opened the slim hardback New Joys of Jello. Hardback! That alone should have tipped me off to the tome’s delicious historical value I opened the New Joys of Jello and thus opened a slippery portal that transported me to 1979 when Jello was King, Queen, Jester, cool, far out, groovy and…yes, sexy. It was also that brief moment in time when Jello escaped Christian potlucks, funerals and holiday gatherings to get out and strut. Oh yes, what a golden gelatinous era that was—Jello could get you laid! Let me repeat that in all caps: JELLO COULD GET YOU LAID! I might add it was a time when one could eat the equivalent of a ham and egg sandwich in the form of a Jello dish with actual ham and egg suspended inside. Now that dish might not have gotten you laid at a swingers party, but it would have got you somewhere. I might also add that certain Jello dishes might have even made you better pass bowel movements, and in a suave way, too! Nothing like a laxative served in sherbet glasses!

It occurs to me that I am most likely the only writer in the world writing about the halcyon days of Jello.

It also occurs to me that if you are an American of a certain generation, you will have a good or bad Jello story. God do I have one! It involved green Jello and a booze cruise, I think. I was pretty drunk at the time.

I might add that a story about something that happened in connection to consuming Jello shots (a total vulgarity of a phrase) in a bar or party or camp out is not a Jello story that interests me in the least. Those are fraternity and fishermen stories of Fireball-infused Jello that bore me to death. They are not sexy or suave like Jello once was.

So on with the New Joys of Jello Chronicles, which will chronicle my mind meandering through this choice little book to speculate here and there where we once were as a culture and where we are now.

A final note: I haven’t eaten Jello in over 25 years and have never consumed a Jello shot.

Oregon Coast Christmas Tales

NSP Meditations, Oregon Coast_History, Writing , , , ,

Friends of Nestucca Spit Press:

I present Oregon Christmas Tales, my latest book from Nestucca Spit Press, a perfect literary gift for the holiday season.

So many people suffer as the holidays approach . . . A neglected boy. A struggling single mom. An addled nurse. A depressed urban couple. A greedy developer. A suicidal young woman. A meth addict. A phony writer. A table of Trump fanatics. A forlorn newspaper staff. A homeless man in a wheelchair. A frustrated teacher. A teenager who has never seen the ocean. Thirteen stories of despair, delusion and dislocation.

They all desperately need some Christmas magic for total transformations of mind, body and spirit. The Oregon Coast will deliver it.

In Oregon Coast Christmas Tales, I tour readers through the lives of the troubled and unfulfilled, the mighty and the marginalized, the lost and the loveless, and lights up their souls with the spirit of Christmas.

The book costs $20 (with $5 for shipping). I also have a special price for purchasing two copies. If you buy directly from the website, you receive a signed edition, special bookmark and a bonus Christmas story called “Psilocybin Santa.”

You can purchase via Paypal via the Nestucca Spit Press website at nestuccaspitpress.com, through this blog, or make arrangements to pay by cash or check or some form of barter by emailing or messaging me directly. The book is also available at select independent Oregon bookstores. A print and e-book version are also available through Amazon.

Thank you for supporting an independent Oregon publisher and keeping my writing and publishing dreams alive.

A Friend’s Meditations on Dementia

NSP Correspondents, NSP Meditations

A good friend of mine has started a unique program where she reads her meditations about her experience working with dementia patients. It’s an astonishing program that taught me a lot.

More information on the show and the link below. Please check it out and share with friends and family suffering in one form or another from the effects of dementia.

Kelly Callahan shares lessons from her work at “the center,” an adult day program for families affected by dementia. The link between dementia and meditation? Life in the present moment! Connection and awareness! Absolute acceptance! Spontaneous poetry! She holds a Master of Arts degree in Linguistics and a Master of Science degree in Clinical Linguistics. Kelly was certified as a Brain Longevity Specialist by the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation in October 2019.

https://insighttimer.com/kacallahan

The Imminent Disappearance of a Fort

Driftwood Forts, NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

Foamy waves were whipping in tall and loud. I stood back and watched them assault a driftwood fort I had built six months ago, an unusually long time for the lifespan of a fort on the Oregon Coast.

Everything around me was gray and white. Rain sprinkled down. Dead kelp soldiers lay strewn about.

Years and years ago I had seen the ocean swallow one of my forts. I had dogs then and we were just off to the side, and then the fort was gone. I liked watching it collapse it vanish into the water.

I sat down on a driftlog and waited. I took a couple of photographs. I wished I had a dog with me. I need one. I’ve got to make it happen.

The waves kept coming. They wrapped around the fort. It wouldn’t be long now and I anticipated the beauty of the destruction, and then of course, starting over the next day. Or not. There might be nothing left except sand.

The Throw

NSP Meditations, Oregon Beaches

Not too long ago I saw a middle age woman in obvious psychic distress at the beach. How did I know? I just know. I’ve seen so many times in women and men at the beach in my 23 of living at the Oregon Coast that I know it when I see it.

She was just sitting on a bench facing the ocean and staring. It wasn’t a tourist kind of stare. It all brought to mind an incident I observed well over a decade ago that has always stayed with me. I wrote it years ago for a book that was never published. Here it is, somewhat amended:

Suffering from a slight red wine hangover and feeling exiled off Main Street, I hit Nestucca Spit at dawn on a Saturday without the dogs to clear my head and detoxify my mind.

The salt and brine smell especially stiff this morning. It makes me think of the bloody Mary I don’t want. For five minutes I walk south down the Spit and gaze upon the incoming tide’s multiple white layers. My hangover begins to ebb, but I keep walking. The dogs do their unusual non-hangover things and make me smile.

I turn around to take in Haystack Rock and Cape Kiwanda and see a smallish barefooted woman on the Spit, one hundred yards away. I see her saunter at angles toward the waves. She almost appears to dance. I clearly see her remove a ring from her left hand and clasp it with her right. She stops at the water’s edge, lets the tide rush over her feet, hesitates for a moment, then cocks her right arm back and throws the ring west with all her might. I know the throw didn’t come from a jilted fiance. Only married people throw like this. Or soon to be unmarried people.

After the throw, the woman stares west for thirty seconds and then retreats from the water, no longer sauntering. After a bit more time, she vanishes into the dunes to return from wherever she came, but, of course, without a ring.

I wonder how she will explain its absence.

«‹ 145 146 147 148›»