We are really excited to get a big turn out for this event and can’t wait to see you there!  If you have questions or would like to help out with preparations feel free to email me at laurawithoutlables [at] gmail dot com.

What: Drinking Skepchickally, Pittsburgh
When: Saturday, January 10, 2009 @ 7pm
Where: D’s Six-Pack & Dogs Regent Square 1118 S Braddock Ave Edgewood, PA 15218
Bring: A healthy appetite for food, drink and intellectual discourse! And your Skepchick 2009 calendar (or $20 to buy one there!)

RSVP ON FACEBOOK!

No discourse on James Joyce for Christmas Eve. Instead, I’m offering a menu and suggestions on cooking it to help you celebrate whatever you’re celebrating, including your appetite. This was sort of spontaneous. I had pork chops in the fridge and acorn squash hanging around from the last CSA order at the East End Food Co-Op. So I decided to put them together. You can make this anytime over the holidays.

The nights are long, the weather rainy this year and the holidays can be frenetic. Cooking a low-key meal for yourself and others who appreciate it is the ticket for comfort and relaxation, in my book. This is not a competition. For me it’s a meditative activity (as in chop wood, carry water). And you can enjoy the results (usually). So here goes. Plan on about an hour for the whole thing.

Summary:

• Roasted red, white or a combination of potatoes with fresh garlic, basil and rosemary
• Pork chops with Patak’s spicy ginger and garlic tandoori sauce (could alt. be lentils or your favorite TVP item or Tofurkey, if you’re veggie)
• Acorn squash
• Georges Duboeuf Beaujolais or similar wine

Roasted Rosemary, Garlic and Basil Potatoes

1. Pre-heat the oven to about 450 F.
2. Scrub the potatoes and leave the skins on. Chop in small wedges and toss in a glass baking dish with canola or similar oil.
3. Smash a few garlic cloves in a garlic press and distribute over the potatoes. Sprinkle the potatoes liberally with rosemary, basil, salt and pepper. I added a little smoked paprika, too.
4. Turn over the potatoes with a spatula to distribute the oil and spices.
5. Put the uncovered dish in the oven. Set the timer for one hour.

Acorn Squash

1. Carefully slice a medium-sized acorn squash in half (avoiding your thumb). Scrape out the seeds and fibers as much as possible with a large metal spoon.
2. Place the squash halves open side-up on a second glass dish or metal pan. Pour in a little oil in the hollow of each squash half. Sprinkle liberally to taste with any combination of Penzey’s Galena Rib rub, fresh garlic, brown sugar and cayenne pepper.
3. Cover the dish or pan loosely with aluminum foil and place beside the potatoes in the oven.

Pork Chops

1. Pour a little oil in a frying pan and heat.
2. Add the pork chops and brown each side
3. Lower the heat. Mix the ginger and garlic tandoori sauce with a little balsamic or other vinegar. Spoon the sauce over one side of the pork chops. Flip the chops and spoon the sauce over the other side. Cover and simmer for about ten minutes.

If the timing is right, the potatoes and squash should be done about the same time as the pork chops. You might want to turn down the oven to 400F part way through after the potatoes have browned.

Serve with the wine. I also recommend enjoying with Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (also see Wikipedia reference) as a skeptical diversion.

Bon appetit.

TSA

The discussion at dinner later in the story turns to the loss of great Irish singers of the past. Gabriel notices the gray pallor of his elderly aunt Julia’s face and realizes she will die soon. He observes the mortality of everyone around him. “One by one they were all becoming shades.”

After Gabriel and his wife return to the hotel where they spend the night after the party, Greta confides a youthful passion that a young man named Michael Furey once held for her. Gabriel’s asks sarcastically what happened to the boy, thinking he and his wife were lovers. “He is dead,” she answers. “I think he died for me.”

The Dead, like Dickens’ Christmas Carol, reminds us the departed are with us. They haunt our memories with lost chances and regrets even, if we’re lucky, as they inspire us with happy memories and hope.

The most skeptical among us exchange gifts with friends, relatives and children this time of year. We make the rounds of parties and raise a glass (or two or three) in honor of the hope for peace, joy and redemption for the New Year. Maybe we volunteer our time or spare a compassionate thought to those absent or who have little reason to celebrate this year (perhaps living in a cardboard box or looking forward to a lifetime of drudgery to make ends meet after having lost their life savings in the ongoing financial unpleasantness). Perhaps we are in need ourselves, damaged by our experiences or betrayal by others. We sing the songs and carols out of habit, even if we don’t believe them. Some of the lyrics have a decidedly unfestive air:

Through the years we all will be together if the fates allow… Until then we’ll have to muddle through”

Or

Fast away, the old year passes…

As if we want to move on from the past as quickly as possible. Achieve closure.

But you don’t achieve closure by denying reality. We confront the bitter with the sweet in this world, unless we are especially privileged or well-medicated, It’s not news that the Yuletide message has been perverted and co-opted to benefit commercial interests and consumerism. But believing Yuletide is only about candy canes and Santa Claus robs it of a deeper meaning and more ancient purpose in guiding us through the darker, difficult passages of life and the season. Even most Christians interpret Christmas exclusively as a joyous time filled with angels and presents and birth of the baby Jesus. But the Biblical story is a prologue to Christ’s suffering and death on the cross and the passing of this world. Christmas tradition echoes the Norse and Germanic Yuletide traditions (as well as Greek and Roman myths) recognizing death and dormancy as part of the cycle of the seasons and of life. A time when earth becomes hard as iron and water like a stone. We anticipate the hope of life and rebirth after a long, dark passage.

Our bronze age ancestors venerated the dead by holding a ceremony of bonfires and feasting during the winter solstice. They did this to invoke their help in surviving the long dark, northern winter. We, on the other hand, feed off of our dead in a mercenary fashion. The novels of David Foster Wallace are no doubt selling briskly after his death. Has anyone spared a thought to how Randy Pausch’s wife and children are faring this holiday season without their husband and father? We are happy to exploit the tragedies and sadness of the world as entertainment to make a buck or advance our particular emotional and institutional agenda. (Terry Schiavo springs to mind.) We would do much better exercising our humanity by paying attention to peoples’ lives and acting with humility to the extent we are able while they are here rather than waiting until after they are gone.

I keep a list of the dead, an informal necrology to memorialize the loss of those close to me or with whom I feel an affinity. The list includes my father, who died in 1997. It includes a man with whom I used to go Christmas caroling. It includes a daughter who never got a chance to celebrate her first Christmas. Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is on the list as well. The losses Clemens experienced in his life (including the death of two daughters) resonate with me, even as his humor and humanity provide redemption. Some day perhaps I will be on someone’s list. Or I will be one of the faceless generations dead, unknown and unremembered.

For those of us who feel betrayed by religion, damaged by life, or even actively hostile to the God of our fathers, it is easy to resent the commercial din, the pleas to charity, even the cards we receive from friends and relatives, as palaver designed to get what they can out of us. They’re so seductive: just share a little cup of cheer, they say, in return for the platitudes we’ve heard before. We may feel superior to the poor fools who get suckered in every year by doorbuster holiday sales, saccharine Christmas TV specials, and simplistic sermons even as we yearn for the answers they offer. Perhaps we protest too much against this need for human comfort and connection (however misguided). It’s worth keeping in mind Gabriel’s speech in The Dead:

…we are living in a skeptical and, if I may use the phrase, a thought-tormented age: and sometimes I fear that this new generation, educated or hypereducated as it is, will lack those qualities of humanity, of hospitality, of kindly humour which belonged to an older day.

I hope in our skepticism and emphasis on rationality we do not lose our humanity. The final, somber passage of The Dead is strangely comforting:

Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

We are all becoming shades. But that fact can serve to motivate rather than depress us during this season. We can choose not to become completely enmeshed in the endlessly cheerful and desperate cycle of getting and spending. We don’t need to wait for the birth of a baby to aspire to our better selves. We can be present to a deeper vision as we interact with our fellow human beings. Acknowledging the long dark season ahead is not incompatible with the joys life has to offer with others whose company we find worthwhile today. We gain nothing by denying the fact, and I believe lose a good deal.

Hope to see you there! And bring friends because you’ll need help with whatever appetizer you order. Are you skeptical of this claim? Let’s test this theory!

Quoted from a message from CFIC-Pittsburgh’s Steering Committee Treasurer Chuck Bobich:

CFI Community of Pittsburgh will hold tonight’s general meeting at the Carnegie Science Center, starting at 7:00 PM and lasting to about 9:00. We’ll meet in the Digital Dome, where dome operator Frank Mancuso has outlined a program that promises to be even more spectacular than last year’s, including:

• A brief review/overview of the Digital Sky System – a how and why explanation
• A few updates in the world of Astronomy.
• The Digital Universe fly through with some modifications to make it different from last year, but still “flying out to the edge.”
• “Hubble Views” – a 4 minute tribute utilizing some Hubble Telescope images.

This program goes far beyond what is normally shown to the public. There is no charge to our members for this event. However, we’ll make our normal voluntary collection to cover expenses, plus a twist…in the best secular humanistic tradition, one-half of tonight’s proceeds will be donated to the Pittsburgh Food Bank.

You can track tonight’s event at this link plus get other news from our Community’s website.

CFIC-Pittsburgh is lucky to number a facility like the Carnegie Science Center among its resources. I hope a sizable number of you decide to join us for tonight’s special show.

——

You are also invited to join us at Bettis Grill 36 for a pre-meeting dinner at 5:30!

NPR’s Morning Edition broadcast this story this morning: Defending Vaccines: Actress Dispels Link To Autism which gives a decent overview of this made up controversy that is actually harming children by increasing risk of potentially fatal preventable epidemics of childhood diseases that were on their way to the history books before the anti-vaxer nonsense started. How ridiculous is it that we need celebrities to advise us against seeking expert advice from celebrities? Want more information? You can start your Internet research at the Stop Jenny McCarthy site, and then you follow up by asking your own medical professional.

If all that wasn’t depressing enough, Science Daily posted an article this morning saying “Approximately 38 percent of adults in the United States aged 18 years and over and nearly 12 percent of U.S. children aged 17 years and under use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), according to a new nationwide government survey.” Read all about it.

(Non-burger options available.)

Pre-meeting dinner:
When - Thursday December 11th 5:30-6:30ish
Where - Jerome Bettis’ Grill 36 (ground floor Del Monte Bldg.)
393 North Shore Drive Pittsburgh, PA 15212

Meeting:
When - 7pm-9pm
Where - Buhl Digital Dome, Carnegie Science Center (North Shore Drive)

More Upcoming December CFI Pgh Events:

CFI Pittsburgh’s Structured Discussion will be continuing their look at the historical Jesus, Tuesday December 16th at the Quaker Meeting House in Shadyside. This lecture series by Bart Ehrmann, with discussion led by Victor Bernard has been going on for a bit but you are welcome to jump in.

Movie night will be at our gracious host Bill H’s place the evening of Wednesday December 17th. For information on either and contacts please see the CFI Pittsburgh site.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for hearty Irish pub food!

Join us again at our new location, the awesome Claddagh Irish Pub in the South Side Works, Friday December 19th for drinks and socializing with our big happy extended Pittsburgh Secular Freethinkers/Humanist/Atheist/Agnostic/Skeptical family!

It is very important that I give the restaurant a heads-up with a headcount. We need 20 to keep our private room, and if I know in advance we’ll be a smaller group this month, I can let them know and make other seating arrangements. You can drop an RSVP comment here, or at our Facebook event invite.

The more the merrier — bring friends!

Drinking Skeptically in Pittsburgh has found itself a new home this month and next, as well as a new date during the month.  We have switched to the third Friday’s for November and December to avoid any collision with holiday events. We also found a great space with Claddagh Irish Pub in the South Side Works. They have a great selection of beers (and some seriously delicious onion rings to boot!) and have been more than accommodating with their available spaces. We sure hope you’ll come out and join us this Friday for a cold beer, delicious food and great conversation!

What: Drinking Skeptically in Pittsburgh - November
When: Friday November 21, 2008
Time: Starts at 7:30pm
Where: Claddagh Irish Pub, South Side Works 407 Cinema Drive Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15203