dual personalities

It was a funny week — for the most part, frigid weather left me muffled up at home puttering around the house,  reading, and thinking. I even skipped a department meeting! Yet all has not been blissful coziness. I am on the board of a local church-affiliated charity organization (comprised of several member churches) that runs a thrift shop and food pantry and gives emergency aid to those in need. We are bursting at the seams at our present location, and we  need to find a bigger place. Yesterday a sub-group of us met with a realtor to look at a huge, 8000 square foot property. Some board members want to start a capital campaign to raise money for the purchase. They have ambitious plans to expand our services and they want to run the organization on a business model.

Their enthusiasm is laudable, but I cannot help feeling that we are getting away from our mission, which is to help people in our small catchment area. In my view we should be closer to the widow’s mite than the money lenders. In other words, our operation should concentrate on the human aspect, rather than fiscal growth.

William Teulon Blandford Fletcher’s The Widow’s Mite

Why do we need to act as if we are in a fund-raising competition? And isn’t it true that the bigger we get, the more overhead cost we’ll have? Won’t the money simply go to support the charity and not the people who need help?  Bigger is not necessarily better, right? Perhaps I should remind my colleagues to “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it” (Matthew 7:13) — they mean well, but good intentions without clear thought just get everyone into trouble.

The moral of the story? Easy charity isn’t charity at all. We should always examine our motives and think deeply about the consequences of our actions before we act.

Just in case you are interested in feeding your stomach as well as your soul, I’m going to share the easy and delicious dinner I made last night. Gnocchi with beef and zucchini. Here’s the sauce,

and here’s the gnocchi.

I recommend frying them for crispness but you can also follow the recipe and boil them if you prefer your food soft and mushy. I did not have the chili paste called for in the recipe, so I just added a few red pepper flakes. The mascarpone adds a subtle sweetness, and while the sauce would probably turn out fine with another cheese, try it first with the mascarpone!

Have a great weekend, “And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him” (Colossians 3:17).

A couple of weeks ago my cousin Stephen sent me a marquetry plaque that once hung in my grandfather Cameron’s office.

Here’s a detail:

We can’t be absolutely sure that Bunker made the plaque, but given his penchant for woodworking, it’s a logical conclusion. I did a little digging around and discovered that marquetry kits were quite popular in the 1950s and ’60s, which, coincidentally, is exactly when our grandfather got serious about his carpentry. A typical kit included the backing board, directions and pieces of all the different woods involved.

You’ll notice that all the wood needed cutting, piecing together, gluing down and finishing — not an easy process by any means. On the back of my grandgather’s plaque is a list of all the exotic woods used and their origins, a fact that further supports the kit idea.

I am delighted to have the plaque, whatever its origin, and I have put it up in my newly renovated back hall.

Notice the new stair-rail

It looks a little lost there on the wall at the moment, but I haven’t put the mudroom back together yet. The key holder is a pre-renovation leftover that they guys apparently painted around. Now I dare not move it for fear of wrecking the wallboard and paint work. A small cupboard, which awaits re-painting, goes in that corner by the door and I left room for more pictures. But you get the idea.

My grandfather was a tireless, painstaking craftsman. Alas, I have always tended toward being impatient and slap-dash, but I’m trying to improve. As I work I think of him and of my mother, who was also a perfectionist. The sideboard is almost ready to go into the kitchen.

I have one door to put on and new shelf-paper to put in and then we can move it. I let it sit all week so the paint could cure — does that count as patience? It turned out to be difficult to find the right brass handles, because they are single-post (one attaching screw, rather than the usual two), but I finally found something suitable online at Hardware of the Past, an online restorers supply. I wanted something simple and fairly plain, but that proved a challenge. I could not find the single post Hepplewhite style ones that had been on the cupboard. But I think these look pretty.

As for the kitchen, well, we languish in limbo like a ship stuck in the doldrums. In other words, we have heard nothing and no progress has been made, unless you count the marble-look contact paper that I applied to the plywood so that we could wipe it off more easily.

Someday, when we finally get real counters, they should look somewhat similar. We live in hope…

Have a jolly weekend!

*Johannes Brahms