Baked apples are a perfect fruit. Not the only perfect fruit, but when it comes to something that can be a dessert on its own, an essential ingredient in a dessert, a sweet addition to something savory, or just a snack, baked apples are IT for me.

Now, by baked apples, I mean peeled, quartered & cored apples, plonked in a covered deep casserole dish, sprinkled with cinnamon, (and nutmeg if that suits your fancy) and baked until they’re caramel-golden and spoon-cuttably soft. None of this fussy baking them in the skins thing. No, thanks.

Can’t give a baking time because time varies a lot by apple type & oven temp. The higher the temp, the shorter the time, but also the shorter the window between “close to done” and “oops, they’ve dissociated into chunky apple sauce. Which, as failures go, is still entirely edibly yummy, just not the same. Texture matters.

Anyway. It’s midwinter, and I’m baking a lot of apples.

I am over and done with the self-righteous “Quit yer bitchin’, we survived <insert event/activity/behavior here> and we came out fine,” GenX bullies that algorithmic media keeps shoving into my feeds.

First, it’s not true, a lot of folks did not even survive those things, much less come out “fine.” Second, it’s a just a fancy modern spin on all the “When I was your age…” lectures on Right & Proper Behavior that no one younger than that age ever wants to hear. Third, bragging about all the things that people didn’t have didn’t do, and didn’t need “back in the day,” is poor-mouthing bad manners.

Plus, ya know, it is basically equating suffering, deficiencies & even neglect with freedom and insisting they were unalloyed positives. On a related note, I do not accept and cannot respect people who ascribe to the “I had to suffer, you should too” life philosophy. It’s right up there with “I love humor based on being cruel to someone else” on my instant repulsion list.

I don’t count repulsion as an “I would slam the bomb shelter door closed in your face” deal-breaker when it comes to relationships. Some people I otherwise like and respect ascribe to that philosophy and love that kind of humor. But knowing someone feels that way warns me to diligently maintain boundaries with them.

And it saddens me how many examples in my feed are GenX, because while no generation is a monolith, GenX is small and had more collective experiences than any generation since. I always hoped we would do better than the bad example we had

The most underrated aspect of an N95 or similar respirator in wintertime is the way it pre-conditions the air you’re taking in. It’s much easier to stay warm when I’m not sucking frigid air into my lungs with every inhalation. It keeps my nasal passages better-hydrated, too.

(Not to mention recent studies showing cold air suppresses nasal immune response. It’s just a bonus that I’m decreasing my risk of being infected with some bug I might encounter once I go back inside a building. A warm nose is an infection fighting nose!)

So in summer I mask indoors but go barefaced outside. In winter, I mask outside and go barefaced…at home, and in uncrowded spaces where I know the ventilation is up to the task of mitigating airborne ickiness. And where no one is wearing strong perfume or otherwise being stinky. Because cutting down on scent overload/perfume allergy response is another thing I love about respirators.

It occurs to me that those of us born in the mid/late sixties are the Apocalypse Generation. Yes, the Boomers had the whole fear of nuclear war thing before we did, but their childhoods were otherwise defined by Prosperity. Ours has been defined by crises and wars both actual and metaphoric.

I think I was five, the first time I worried about a Big Bad ending civilization. Somewhere around 1969-70. Some kind of tension between the US & Russia got into the news and scared me. Not a decade has passed since then without multiple end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenarios coming and going. Financial, cultural

In the 70’s & 80’s, everything bad became a crisis or a “War On” and the potential dire endings proliferated. The oil crisis, the hostage crisis, the savings and loan crisis, various astronomic doomsdays, nuclear winter, War on Cancer, War on AIDS, War on Drugs, War on Terror. (which yes, was around years before 9/11/2001.)

And that’s just off the top of my head.) It’s accelerated every decade since, or feels that way, anyhow. Hello, Global Financial Crisis, Climate Crisis, War on Women, and, ya know, the country being in a multi-decade actual WAR.

Here’s my take. We’ve only made matters things worse by labeling every Bad Thing as “violent conflict” and “major turning point.” War is a bad metaphor for anything but, well, war, for too many reasons to bother elaborating in one wee blog post. And if an event is going to last longer than, oh, a few days, it isn’t a crisis. By definition, a crisis is a swift change. Things that keep being bad…are just bad.

Words have power. Solutions to big problems take cooperation, connections, cleanup, construction, and caring, not violence, eradication, and limits.

That’s my take, and I’m sticking to it.

Time for a cat pic & a signoff.

Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.

Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:

• Title: Relics From A Traveling Show

• Author: K. M. Herkes

• ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)

  Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.

If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.

I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.

All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.

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