Mulling It Over

I am not a person of precision. I enjoy things where there is a little wiggle room. I crochet instead of knitting, because with knitting you have to do it just so or you get a hole. When you crochet you can easily fudge things, and when you have completed the project only the most attentive eye would be able to find the flaw. In English as compared to math, there are many correct ways of doing something; answers, overall, are subjective. If you can convince your reader of your point, whether the point is correct in their mind or not, you still get credit for it. Cooking is something else I enjoy. A little of this, a little of that, taste it - if it is good move on you've done your job.

Now, however, I have come to something that I must conquer. Bread. Bread on the whole seems simple. The actions you take are simple. The ingredients are items most people have in their homes. Wheat is one of the most prevalent things in the world. But bread or at least yeast is fussy. It hates me. Yeast is like a sickly, little kid that needs to be coddled and have it's hand held constantly. I know there are people who can whip up a loaf of bread with ease. I am not one of them.

After working slowly, after following the recipe in a most exact way, I managed to come up with something very similar to bread. It tastes good and looks ok. It still will not rise it the rounded shape that I would like. This may have something to do with the way I shape the dough into loaves. As I had feared this may be one of those aspects of life that requires practice.

So as it may be noticed I've taken a bit of a hiatus from the writing scene, but I am back. I've decided one way to make myself write more is to set mini-goals. One of these is to write a letter to Time every week until they publish me. So here is the first installment.

To the Editor of Time:
I'm a 24 year old biracial woman, and I just want to say "Don Imus I'm not mad at you." Now before anyone gets all heated, let me just say maybe Mr. Imus made a poor decision, but so what? As an English major and a writer, I understand the power of words, and I want the power to say and write them. I believe in free speech. Free speech does not mean you can say what you like as long I agree with you. In fact, I think the beauty for free speech are the opposing views that are aired. We need to move out of this fever of offense that we have all settled into and get a grip. Whatever happened to sticks and stones?

When it comes down to it most people wouldn't have even heard the "offensive statement." if everyone had not gotten all flustered. Racism, hate speech, whatever you want to call it wouldn't be half as powerful if everyone just chill out and stop repeating every little thing they hear that they don't like.

So Don Imus, while I don't support you or what you say I wholly support your right to say it.