The awesome work of my amazingly talented wife featured in USA Today’s College publication:

Susan Dawson, a training specialist from Genworth Financial gave a presentation that ran through the events each student had attended, goading them to spill what they had learned with tacky prizes of beer cozies and datebooks. She awarded points for connections made, cards received, coffee dates secured, and follow ups sent.

…

Before dinner, Macewan had called Q-Camp “life-changing.” When Dawson announced that Joe led all the top 120 business students at the university in points, Q-Camp really started to change his life. He had awoken, but was just beginning to emerge.

via Summer camp for business kids | USA TODAY College.

What is it they say about stuff? You don’t own it, it owns you. I get that. Did I mention we hired an organizational specialist recently? But sometimes there are things which do matter in our lives. Quality things. Important things. Sentimental things.

I’m a big fan of quality in stuff. Sure, who buys junk, right? Maybe I’m a little more obsessive than most. When I get into something, I tend to research the heck out of it. I keep buying the same make and model of car because I did my research and really like how well it is made. I wear one brand of dress shirt because after 10 years the first one I bought still looks crisp and presentable. I’m a Mac because they tend to break less than other computers I’ve owned.

Quality doesn’t have to mean expensive. In fact, some of the best made things may be the least expensive. Take cooking, you can spend $300 on a single pan (don’t ask me how I know). Lately, I’ve been cooking on cast iron… like a lot. Cast iron is cheap, you can get a great Lodge brand pan at your local hardware or Amazon for $20. Its thick, heavy and feels substantial. You know the handle isn’t going to melt in the oven or break off. When properly seasoned, they are better than any nonstick pan for eggs. You can crank the heat all the way up on cast iron pan and never worry about it warping or discoloring. You can smash garlic or pepper corns with the bottom, turn it upside down to heat up tortillas, take it camping and stick it in the fire… see what I mean? These things rock!

By the way, I’m not alone in my adoration of cast iron cookware. Cast iron, like bacon, has become the topic of twitter exchanges in some circles.

I have memories of staying with my mother’s parents in the summers as a kid for a week or two each year. My grandmother got up every morning at 4:30 AM. She made breakfast, worked a crossword… well, I’m not entirely sure what all she did. I don’t think I’ve ever been up at 4:30.

By the time I was a kid, biscuits came in vacuum tubes and pancakes in boxes. I think my grandmother probably used those store bought items. I’ve often lamented the current state of packaged foods as an interesting mix of marketing, generational apathy (get off my lawn!) and connivence. If there was a time when my grandmother got up at 4:30 AM to make biscuits, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because she enjoyed being up that early. Making biscuits is hard work and takes time. When someone came along and put them in that fun , explosive tube, well, game over, sign us up, no more kneading dough! Still, doing things the right way matters. You can’t really make southern biscuits without cast iron and you can’t really fry a catfish in anything else.

A few months ago my grandfather passed away. He had not been well and I’m truly sure he is in a better place. My grandmother had passed a few years before. When it was time to clean out their home I was asked if there was anything I wanted. “Find me the cast iron pan please.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nope, just the pan.”

Truthfully, I don’t know if my grandmother ever made biscuits in this pan or if grandaddy ever fried a fish in it. It may not be that old, although the markings suggest it is. It was pretty banged up and in need of some care. I ran it through the self clean cycle of my oven and have begun the process of “re-seasoning” it. Its not my only cast iron pan – I have lots. But I find myself using it more than the others. Maybe its the size, maybe its the memories; it just feels right.

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Oh, and so this properly qualifies as a food post for me…

The other  night I made the most amazing lamb’s liver in the pan. I find lamb’s liver is pretty mild and doesn’t need a soaking. Sprinkle with sel gris, and dust really well with flour. It helps to really push the flour in like in this pork chop recipe. Let it rest for 10 minutes while you render some pancetta and melt the onions in the pan. Remove the pancetta and onions. Crank the heat to high. Use the pancetta grease in the pan and lay the liver in. When you see crimson pools of blood just starting on the uncooked side, give it a flip. You want liver to be rare; anything else is chalky and tough. When you see crimson on the cooked side, take it out of the pan.

I reduced the heat, splashed in some port and sherry vinegar, added the pancetta, onions and some home cured sauerkraut and warmed it through.

Imagine having the compassion to change everything in your life because of love; because it would heal a family, because it was the right thing to do. Curtis Pugh gave up nights on the town, drag racing and following Frank Sinatra shows to marry a strong, kind, widow, with five children. Pauline lost her beleaguered first husband, and father of her children, as a victim of a liquor store robbery.

I know what you are thinking, find me a young romantic who hasn’t fallen on the sword of good times for salvation of love. But how many freewheeling spirits give it all up to change not only their lives, but the lives of six others and generations to come? When Curtis married Pauline he didn’t just marry the love of his life, he became a father, a healer and savior.

Curtis Pugh traded the raucous life of a young man in exchange for the love of a whole family. When he married Pauline he also adopted her four daughters, and son. It wasn’t a happy ever ever tale, at least not at fist. The Pughs, despite hard work and love faced more hardship. Their son, Jerry, passed away from leukemia as a young man, before the age of 16. Pauline, no stranger to grief, with as Curts her compassionate bedrock, worked hard to raise the girls in a loving home.

He once told me a story about his ‘wild days’: “We’d drink a little and go out running in these old cars… they were tin back then and when we’d go ‘round a curve too fast and one or two of our cars would roll over…” You’ve never seen a smile like that, I promise. “We’d just get out, dust ourselves off and all together push ‘em back over!” Curtis had a chuckle which was infectious in the best possible way. It was hard not to laugh at the mental image. I heard Duane Eddy’s Rebel Rouser playing in my imagination and saw classic cars, men in white under shirts and work pants racing around dirt roads, laughing and carrying on. “… but that’s all over now, the day I married Paulie, I never wanted a drink again.”

And he didn’t. He spent the rest of his life impossibly devoted to Pauline and her girls. They had another daughter, Robin, 11 grand children, five great grand children, three great great grand children and an immeasurable impact of kindness and compassion on their world.

I didn’t know Curtis in his rebel rouser days. Fast forward a few years later, he and I would spend quality time possum hunting. At dusk, the two of us would stake out from the house, armed with only flashlights, prematurely boasting about what was to be the biggest possum hunt ever. We walked down the over-grown middle of the gravel drive so our shoes didn’t crunch on the rocks. We’d creep past the old red woodshed, resting on its side like it had been there long enough to be tired, our landmark for entering native possum territory. I don’t remember how many we ever caught. Light is a powerful weapon against possums just as night is the enemy of sleepy young scallywags. I don’t remember how those hunts ended, but I suspect it was with me on his shoulders fast asleep.

I don’t know a lot about sacrifice. Not granddad’s kind. Sacrifice is different than compromise. That’s not self depreciation or humility, its honesty. How many young men in my generation opt out their care free lives, into full time caring for others? Curtis Pugh made a choice in his life which has profoundly, profusely and positively affected four generations so far. I know the example he set will continue to be my golden standard of kindness and love for the rest of my life.

When I think about his choices, I wonder who saved whom…

Goodbye Grandaddy, you will always be one of the best men I’ve ever known.

Four years ago my grandmother got a phone call. “Is this Grace Dawson?, the Grace Dawson?” Calling from Florida was a voice of a family member she had never met but was nonetheless inescapably tied to. Greg Dawson had set out to write the story of his mother and her sister – a story which had been partially told in our family for years. That version went as follows:

As young girls Zhanna and her sister Frina were separated from their Ukrainian Jewish parents during WWII. At the end of the war the two talented musicians who were discovered by a US government official, my grandfather, himself a devoted music lover. Larry Dawson helped arrange for them to travel to the United States. They were proceeded by only a letter to my grandmother. There was a lot of speculation about the trauma the two hand endured but few detailed had survived the years.

After living for a period with my Grandmother and her young children, both girls went on to attend the prestigious Julliard school of music in New York. Zhanna eventually married Larry’s brother.

Now the full heartfelt and moving story is being told;  how the girls were able to survive and how music played such an important role in their survival. Greg Dawson has published Hiding In The Spotlight. As a family we could not be more proud of this story and wish Greg much success.

Greg will be in Richmond Virginia, speaking at the Library of Virginia on Friday June 18th from 6:00pm – 7:00pm to speak about his book and the increadable story of Zhanna and Frina. Details can be found on Greg’s site here.