Personal
Personal reflections, comments about things I've been doing, etc.
Random Thoughts
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 09/08/2012 - 17:10I am sitting at Bradley International Airport, waiting for a flight to Florida where I will speak about social media and health care advocacy. I am exhausted. Last week has been a long hard week, and the week ahead looks just as challenging.
As I scanned through Facebook, I found an old college friend was talking about a prayer campaign for his church in contrast to a capital campaign. It made me think of the verse from the Psalms,
Unless the LORD builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and stay up late, toiling for food to eat--for he grants sleep to those he loves.
Sleep has been fleeting this past week, as I tried to balance work with my campaign for State Representative and caring for my family. My daughter Fiona started the week throwing up and having abdominal pains. She ended up the week with an appendectomy. It has been particularly hard on my wife Kim, and it has certainly added to my own stress.
I posted about it online and spoke with various friends, and the outpouring of support has been great. It brought another quote from Scripture to mind,
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.
It has been a great week to feel the support of that great cloud of witnesses, and for them to help me persevere. It seems hard to believe that just two weeks ago, we were relaxing on Cape Cod.
As I drove up to the airport, I listened to some radio show on NPR talking about how the environment that an animal lives in affects the brain of the animal. It made me stop and think about how my time on the Cape and my time at works affects my own brain functioning.
Right now, I'm mostly on overload. I'll rest on the flight, and sleep, as well as I can, at the hotel. It will be good to see friends at the conference, and hopefully, I'll find some time for more campaign writing.
Beach Plum Jelly
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 08/29/2012 - 21:28Well, we did it. Our first batch of Beach Plum Jelly. Each morning, during our vacation on Cape Cod, I would walk to the beach. On my way there and back, I would pass beach plum bushes. Initially, most of the plums weren't ripe. Slowly, they ripened and I started picking a few, first for me to eat during my walks, then to share with my wife and daughter. Towards the end of our trip, the many beach plums ripened. I started carrying bags to store the plums in, and ended up gathering about a gallon and a half of beach plums.
Back home, we followed Sean Sullivan's BEACH PLUM JELLY: ORIGINAL GOURMET RECIPE. We put the gallon and a half of beach plums in a crock-pot and let them heat through for the day. In the evening, I strained the juice, ending up with about five cups. If I had been more diligent, I might have been able to get a sixth or even seventh cup out, but instead, I plan on saving the pulp for some further cooking experiments.
We added eight cups of sugar and brought it to a full boil. We then added a little more than a box of pectin, let it work back up to a build again for a little over a minute, and then let it cool. I skimmed off the foam; there wasn't much to skim, and then started putting it into half pint jars. We only had eight half pint jars, and we filled up all of them, and still had jelly left over, so we filled up a different jar which we will use immediately.
The jelly appears to have set nicely and the canning jars appear to have sealed, after flipping them over while they cooled.
We took a little of the remaining pulp, mixed it with vodka, sugar syrup and a little tonic water and had a great cocktail. I'm thinking of adding the rest of the remaining pulp into my first or second batch of hard cider this season. Beach Plum Hard Cider, sounds like it could be a great concoction.
So, that's our first experiment with beach plums.
Unkept Promises
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 08/25/2012 - 14:54"Yes, of course, if it’s fine tomorrow." It was Mrs Dalloway, no Mrs. Ramsey's promise to her son about going to the lighthouse. I am sitting in a trailer in a campground in Truro, MA, not far from a lighthouse, as my wife fulfills a promise to Fiona; taking her shopping in Provincetown. I'm glad my wife has agreed to this, since I really don't like shopping. Also, it gives me a little time to decompress and reflect.
I've been thinking a lot about promises recently and the words from Guys and Dolls comes to mind,
You promise me this, you promise me that
You promise me anything under the sun...
My time on the Cape is an effort to balance two promises. Every year we go to the Cape, and I had promised to spend ten days on the Cape this year. Yet that was before I accepted the nomination as the Democratic Candidate for State Representative in the 114th Assembly District in Connecticut. That acceptance had an implied promise to the people who nominated me, to the people who contributed to my campaign and to everyone who has worked hard in my effort to get elected. I will work hard to get elected and if elected, I will work hard to represent the people of my district.
So, amidst my trips to the beach, I'm spending time contacting people, trying to move my campaign forward. I've worked on fundraising, on setting up my advertising campaign, and refining my positions on various issues. I'll go into more details about some of this later, but today, I want to think more about the promises I've encountered during my campaign.
A lot of people have been telling me, 'if I can do anything to help, let me know." I'm finding that this is too often a brush-off, an unkept promise in the making. It really came home to me when one person said this, and I pointed him to a pile of contribution forms and asked him to contribute to the campaign, even a small contribution. He quickly said, "Yeah, Yeah, I'll contribute" and walked away. I still haven't seen his contribution.
You see, to qualify for the state Citizens Election Program, I need to show that 150 people in the towns in my district are willing to go beyond simply saying they support me, that they are willing to contribute between $5 and $100 dollars. If everyone who had promised me they would contribute had kept their promise, I'd be done with my fundraising now and could spend my time talking with voters about the issues.
But promises are easy to make and easier to break, so I'm still trying to get people to contribute. Yeah, everyone chastises politicians for not keeping promises, and then they go on to break a million promises of their own. Don't believe me? Let's do lunch sometime. How many times have you heard or said that unkept promise?
"But, it won't be fine," Mr. Ramsey said. He was honest, brutally honest, so much so that his son could have killed him if there had been an axe handy. How do we balance honesty and compassion and keep as many of our promises as we can? Like others, I'm still trying to work that out, but perhaps struggling with these little issues, each and every day, instead of just shrugging them off is an important part of what makes life full and meaningful.
A Summer Cold
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 07/12/2012 - 17:57I curl up in the blankets like a sick animal in a pile of dry leaves, hoping a predator doesn't come by. It is another beautiful hot summer day. It's in the upper eighties in the bedroom, and I alternate between sweating and shivering. Outside, the leaves rustle in the breeze. The dog wanders the perimeter of the property barking at anything that might dare breech the boarder. He doesn't know that a member of his flock is sick and barks with abandon.
If I had more of a headache, it might annoy me, but my headache is mild and the barking reassures me. I get a drink of water and roll over to sleep some more. It's been like this for twenty-four hours. Sleep. Wake up, drink some water and fall back asleep. The fever ebbs and flows based on the amount of ibuprofen in my system.
At times, I have enough energy to get up and check an email, but that's about it.
Now, it's time to go back to sleep.
Even in Death, Forming a More Perfect Union
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 07/07/2012 - 07:14It was a beautiful hot summer morning. The white clouds had piled up in the deep blue sky without a threatening tint of grey yet. The songbirds added their commentary as flies buzzed nearly and in the distance a lawn crew started their buzzing machines.
A large group of people gathered in the carefully manicured grass next to a gaping hole in the ground. The crowd was filled with dignitaries. The Lt. Governor, a former Lt. Governor. a former Secretary of the State, and a former State Senator who was now the head of the state Democratic Party. There was a State Representative, many activists and far more that I did not recognize.
My mind drifted to that great quote from the movie Norma Rae.
Also present were eight hundred and sixty-two members of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers and Cloth, Hat and Cap Makers' Union. Also members of his family. In death as in life, they stood at his side. They had fought battles with him, bound the wounds of battle with him, had earned bread together and had broken it together. When they spoke, they spoke in one voice, and they were heard. They were black, they were white, they were Irish, they were Polish, they were Catholic, they were Jews, they were one. That's what a union is: one
Yes, the union was there. There may have been representatives of one local or another, but it was the more perfect union that was there. These were people who had worked side by side
to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It's how I had met Win, the mourning husband, as well as many of the others gathered to note the passing of his wife.
Traditions were observed and family members spoke. A woman sang a show tune from South Pacific that she had often sung with now deceased sister.
Dites-moi Pourquoi La vie est belle. Dies-moi Pourquoi La vie est gai, Dites-moi Pourquoi, Chere Mad'moiselle, Est-ce que Parce que Vous m'aimez?
Why is life beautiful and gay? Because of the love we have for one another; even in death.
There were the comments about the different deaths. The death of the body and the death of being forgotten. Carol was well remember at the service and my mind went to "Samuel Mendelsson: A Man Who Must Not Be Forgotten". It is a book about a man who died in the holocaust which was given to me by his great granddaughter.
The Kaddish was recited and my thoughts went to Allen Ginsburg's poem of the same name
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village….
We formed two lines as the mourners passed between us, on their way back to their daily lives. But first, we all gathered for food. As one friend once said to me, all of Jewish history can be summed up in the phrase, "We faced great odds. We prevailed. Let's eat."
So as we ate, we talked about the great odds we continue to face in forming a more perfect union, the struggles for justice and domestic tranquility, and how we can best promote the general welfare.
Rest in Peace, Carol. Your life is well reflected in your loving husband, siblings and children.
