red and saucey . . .

I am a graduate of Odessa High School and today is the celebration of my graduating class' 50th reunion. After much consideration, I have chosen not to go. Mostly because I knew so few people and of the very small cadre of friends, one is dead and another evidently terminally ill. During my school years, from Antelope, Texas for 1st grade to OHS for 12th grade, I did not attend the same school two years in a row. For me, it was hard to make lasting friendships. It is really from the army that I first met people that became important enough to me that I I continue to think and worry about some of them now (some 40+ years later). Not so for more than perhaps 3-4 people I knew in high school (Permian and Odessa combined) - I attended Odessa High for my sophomore year, Permian High for my junior year (its first year of existence) and back to OHS for my senior year. So, auspicious day or not, I have chosen to be somewhere else doing something else.

I am making tomato sauce to enhance my home-grown eggplants. I enjoy making red sauce (for pasta, eggplant dishes, veggie patties, a whole range of things) more than I can adequately explain. It is one of my favorite routines in the kitchen.

It's Mahatma Gandhi.
It's the top!
It's Napoleon Brandy.
It's the purple light
Of a summer night in Spain,
It's the National Gallery
It's Garbo's salary,
It's cellophane.
It's so sublime.

Or, to paraphrase Kid Sheleen, "it's just swell, the way I figured it would be . . . oh, it is just fine."