quiet for a young nun
New York Times World Briefing:
Romania: Prison for Priest and Nuns in Exorcism Death: A court sentenced an Orthodox priest, Daniel Petre Corogeanu, left, to 14 years in prison for killing a 23-year-old nun in a crucifixion exorcism ritual in an isolated monastery in northeastern Tanacu in 2005. The nun, Maricia Irina Cornici, who was said to suffer from schizophrenia, died after spending three days chained to a makeshift cross with no food or water as the priest and nuns prayed to chase out evil spirits they believed possessed her. Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Father Corogeanu. The four nuns arrested with him were sentenced to terms of five and eight years.
crucifixion exorcism
torture towards a transformation or erasure
isolation is dangerous
no sentence shifts the menace of blind faith
and another woman is dead.
Imagine the murmur through the so-called civilized world: “In this day & age?”
Yes, in this day and age, when widows are expected to crawl into the fires of their husband’s funeral pyres, and orphaned children are accused of witchcraft so they can be banished from the impoverished homes of their extended families in socially acceptable ways.
Closer to home – my college girlfriend’s sister, entrapped by her family and hauled up to the altar by her armpits. The church elders exorcising her lesbianism and shaming her entire family before the whole congregation.
I wonder if they would have crucified Maricia if she had been a man or if her mind would have remained steady had she not been born a woman. Maybe her collapse would have taken a different form: she thought the devil was talking to her – naming her “sinful” – and refused to drink their holy water.
Then I wonder – maybe she drove herself crazy living as a nun in northeastern Tanacu. Maybe she fell in love with Mother Superior. Maybe her parents abused her then sent her to be a nun. Maybe she shattered to save some part of herself. Maybe her experience of schizophrenia terrified her. Maybe God was talking to her.
Frightening – to expect happenings like this. I will light candles for you, Maricia. I hope you are at peace.
**
Today’s post-script: one more reason why our government appears such a hypocrite in its efforts to spread peace, democracy, and well-being.
doctored-up tomato soup (for jay)
ingredients
tomato soup – either one box (typically 32 fluid ounces or 1 quart), which does not need water added, or one can of condensed soup (15 fluid ounces), which will need a can of water stirred into it
½ an onion – red or yellow; save the other half for something else
2 cloves of garlic – a bulb is the whole little head you buy; the cloves are the fingers of the garlic fist
paprika – spice
olive oil
Peel and chop the onion. To do this, slice off the scraggly top and the bottom. Sit your onion on one of these flat ends on the cutting board and slice it down the center so you have two halves. Peel off the papery outer layer. Lay each half flat on the cutting board and slice the onion into ribbons then turn the onion half and cut across your slices to make cubes. If you cut the slices very thin, you can just use those and not cut again. That makes for a pretty soup.
Peel and mince the garlic. To do this, rub the outermost papery layer off your garlic bulb. Pull off two cloves (more if you want it really garlicky). Smash the garlic still in its skin under the flat side of your knife. The skin will rumple and be easy to peel right off. Cut off the dry stem end and then chop the garlic finely.
On the stove top, heat a little olive oil (about 2 teaspoons) in a pot over a medium flame. Add about 2 teaspoons of paprika, the garlic and the onion. Stirring every few minutes, cook until the onions are translucent about 10 minutes. Careful about how high the heat is – you don’t want the garlic to brown.
Add the soup, the box or the can & water. Stir, heat and eat!
Of course, this recipe is just an idea. You don’t have to have paprika, right? Leave it out or try other spices or herbs like dried oregano. There are lots of good ways to make simple soup more exciting and use it as a vehicle for more veggies! Try adding spinach, a can of chick peas, or left over broccoli from another dinner.
V-day post script
It is still too close to call, but I might love V-day more than Halloween. Costuming is still an option; most of us get up like tramps for Halloween anyway. Tradition calls for an intimate meal. Crafting is in order. People the world over are relishing chocolates. Women the world over are proclaiming about vaginas. Public space is tarted out in pink, ruffles, and hearts. And…and!…you have the opportunity to mock Purity Day in whatever charming ways your sex-luvin’ little mind can conjure.
Pegging in a red glitter harness with complementary silver glitter dildo would be festive.
Or maybe…treating yourself to The Cone.
Anyway – hope you spent some time being naughty and nice to your fine self.
In the flush of lust, you want dinner as fast and easy as you are. We made hot rosemary & red pepper mashed potatoes and frozen Trader Joe dumplings. Yum.
spicy rosemary mashed potatoes
for two people, use four medium potatoes, and you’ll have leftovers (maybe stuff ‘em in those pastry pockets or flatten & fry them). I used Russets but Yukon Gold make for some good mash. Use a pot just big enough to hold the potatoes, a large saucepan should do. Fill with water and turn the flame on high. While the water comes to a boil, scrub and chop your potatoes into six pieces. Add the potatoes to the boiling water and cook until tender, about 20 minutes. (Note: that’s how I did it last night. This morning – puttering around the web, most sites say to start the water with the potatoes in it.)
With a mortar and pestle, grind together about 1 ½ tablespoons of dried rosemary, 3 teaspoons of red pepper flakes, and 2 teaspoons of sea salt.
Grate about a cup of pecorino.
Poke a piece of potato with a fork and if it goes in easy, they’re done. Drain the potatoes and return them to the pan.
With a mashed potato masher or a wooden spoon (slotted is nice), mash the potatoes, drizzling in olive oil. About 1/4 of a cup, but really this is a to-taste recipe on all fronts. Stir in the spices, add slowly until it is as salty, spicy, roseymaryy as you like.
Stir in a handful of the cheese. Scatter the remainder over the top and give it just a stir and a half.
YUM.
dipping sauce for frozen dumplings
- bragg’s liquid amino acids
- brown spicy mustard
- sesame oil
mix in little bowl. the end.
January 27, 2007
we don’t want to live in fear; we don’t want anyone anywhere in the world to live in fear
The residents of the High Femme House for Wayward Women took the Greyhound to DC to bear witness to the latest anti-war rally (specials running between NYC & DC make Greyhound as cheap as the Chinatown bus. I have a masochistic fondness for the Chinatown bus experience, but Port Authority is an indoor waiting space). I offer you a poem in images:
skeleton drum beat; death marched in many forms
the twin towers are covered in falling soldiers
our elders came. as gaurdians
and angry dancing flowers
and truth speakers.
stop this racist war
the rapture is not an exit strategy
flawed rhetoric; warped ideology
send no more targets to Iraq
the mask of unbearable witnessing
hope for peace
arms are for hugging
i made the apple turnovers described below for our trip & adventure.
eve’s pockets
(because knowledge sustains)
for the pastry
Oh darlings, don’t be daunted by the idea of making pastry. It’s as easy as biscuits! If you haven’t made buttermilk biscuits yet, try it. Serve them with boxed soup. Good for breakfast with honey or maple syrup. But I am digressing into biscuits, and this is pastry pocket dough. The freezer is the tool of miracles for both.
- 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for rolling
- 2/3 cup whole wheat flour
- 16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- about ½ a cup of ice water (let some ice cubes melt into a bit of water as you begin cooking)
Right out of the refrigerator, cut the butter into cubes. Scatter the butter bits on a cookie sheet so they are not touching each other and stash them in the freezer for quarter of an hour.
Sift together the two types of flour with the salt and sugar. Feel free to sift twice. Sifting the dry ingredients adds air’n’fluff to baked treats and is especially important when you are vegan baking (obviously, these butter-filled pastries are far from vegan, but vegan muffin recipes are comin’).
Toss the frozen butter into the flour. Reach in with your hands and rub the bits of butter with the flour between your fingers. It’s sort of a press and slide motion, and I imagine making flat shingles of floured butter that overlap like scales on a fish to form the flakey layers in pastry. Most instructions I’ve read on pastry making say to cut the butter into the flour until it resembles course meal or other grainy sorts of descriptions, but it feels velvetier than that. Error on the side of less handling the first few times you try; over handling makes crusts and biscuits and the like tough.
Freeze the dough again, about another quarter of an hour.
With a wooden spoon, gently stir in enough ice water for the dough to hold together without getting sticky. Scant half a cup, but it will depend on the weather. Humidity and temperature affect the flour’s ability/need to absorb the liquid.
Flour your little paws and kneed the dough. Pat it together into a ball, press down, turn and press and turn and press, working it against the size of the bowl. Kneed long enough for it to come together, about 5 minutes if that. Then rip your dough ball in half, stick on half atop the other and press down. Do this a few times; you can visualize making the elongated layers that flake, flattening them on top of each other. Divide into two thick circles, wrap in plastic, and refrigerate for about an hour.
This dough keeps well, and while it makes for “fancy” desserts, it is an awesome vehicle for a gazillion different leftovers. For example: black beans simmered with green pepper and onion with cheddar cheese cubes; white beans, spinach & ricotta; thick stews; thick chili.
for the filling
- one apple – tart for baking, not mealy; try heirloom varieties
(hint hint: Union Square green market is flush with apples right now) - ¼ cup dried sour cherries
- 2 tablespoons of chopped walnuts
- ¼ cup of sugar
- fresh ginger
- ¼ teaspoon nutmeg
- ½ teaspoon corn starch
- cup apple sauce
- 1 large egg, lightly beaten
- 1 teaspoon milk
pre-heat the oven to 400° and grease a baking sheet.
Peel your apple. Slice it in half, in quarters, then, on an angle, slice out the core with the seeds. Peel and mince about an inch of fresh ginger.
In a medium bowl, mix together apples, sour cherries, and walnuts with the ginger, nutmeg, corn starch, and sugar. I’ve been storing my sugar in this empty lemon, ginger, Echinacea juice jar, and evidently, I did not wash it very well because it’s lemon-ginger-Echinacea-y and delicious in this recipe. Stir in the apple sauce.
Roll out each circle of dough on a lightly floured surface. I don’t have a rolling pin; an empty juice bottle suffices. Roll it out thin – about an eighth of an inch. I roll into an elongated rectangle, following the shape of my cutting board. Trim the edges and slice into rectangles, about four for each circle of dough.
Divide the apple mixture among the cut-outs, leaving a 1-inch border. Fold over the pastries – into triangles if you cut your pastry into squares or into rectangles.
In a small bowl mix the beaten egg with a teaspoon of milk. Use a brush (or your finger or a spoon, but a clean kitchen-use only paint brush or pastry brush works best) to brush the egg mixture on the border of the pastry.
Fold each pastry, enclosing the filling, and crimp the edges with a fork. Brush the tops of the pastries with more of the egg wash. Make 2 or 3 small slashes in the top of the pastry to let the steam escape.
Bake for 20 minutes or until puffed and golden. Cool turnovers to warm before serving.
