Category: Blog Post -THE PIPELINE

Welcome to #RRBC’s 2nd Annual “A DAY IN MY LIFE” 30-Day Blogging Challenge! @RRBC_Org @RRBC_RWISA @Tweets4RWISA @pat_garcia

DAY 10, MARCH 10, 2024, HAPPY PRETZEL SUNDAY!

I’ve established a tradition since becoming single: eating a pretzel with butter on Saturdays and Sundays. The fresh German pretzels I buy in the bakery are delicious. If you get one fresh out of the oven, that is a heavenly delight.

Known as the bretzel in Germany, the pretzel originally stems from Bavaria. However, the Italians also claimed to be the first to make the pretzel, and they date their findings back to 610 when a Monk created them to use dough that was left over. Whether that is true or not, I don’t know.
I had my first pretzel here in Europe, and it was so tasty that my favorite pretzels are made in Germany.

Of course, there are pretzels now in the United States. They have been there for a while. The Germans and Swiss who immigrated to the USA took their recipes with them. Most of them settled in Pennsylvania and became known as the Pennsylvania Dutch.

Nowadays, pretzels in the USA come in all kinds of flavors and toppings like yogurt, strawberry, mustard, chocolate, etc., but I still prefer pretzels with a small scoop of butter on the side.

Thus, if a bakery is near you, go out and buy three or four and enjoy your pretzel time.

It is Sunday, and I am enjoying mine.

I hope you have a lovely day, and I’ll see you tomorrow.

Shalom shalom,

Pat Garcia

A Dream Deferred by Pat Garcia @RRBC_ORG, @RRBC_RWISA

At the age of eight, I wrote and established my first newspaper in our dinky little neighborhood. Staff members-one person. Me. 

Being without a typewriter, I wrote it by hand. Personal computers were a thing of the future. I didn’t tell my parents about it. I desired to spotlight the positive changes in my community and give what I used to call the other people a different light on how they perceived black people. It was a fact that when we made the news, that meant we had done something wrong and was going to jail. 

To get writing materials, I went door to door selling the paper to my neighbors. I charged twenty-five cents a piece for each edition.  

When my parents finally found out about it through a neighbor who was bragging to them about my inquisitiveness and my ideas, needless to say, they were furious, and I received a spanking that I haven’t forgotten until this day. But, on the other hand, my parents were concerned and worried about what would happen to me if I kept thinking about things that I wasn’t supposed to think about. 

Let us fast forward to two thousand and twenty-one. The dream deferred at eight has awoken. It has taken some years. I’ve had to slow my pace when I didn’t want to and quicken the pace when I had found something I like and had no desire to move on. But, the dream was still there. It was deferred but incubating. 

Today, I am happy to say I have the privilege to work with THE PIPELINE Magazine and with the woman who has made this magazine what it is today, Nonnie Jules. Beside her is her very talented Editor, Karen Black, and a lady we all admire whom we call Lady Harriet, Harriet Hodgson, with her own personal column. To work with these three has opened doors that fascinate me and extend my writing ability. 

Harlem

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up

      like a raisin in the sun?

      Or fester like a sore—

      And then run?

      Does it stink like rotten meat?

      Or crust and sugar over—

      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags

      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

I thank God that my deferred dream of writing for a magazine has exploded into something beautiful years later. THE PIPELINE is an RRBC Monthly Publication and can be read by all. The link for the June issue is posted below.

Shalom aleichem,

Pat Garcia

https://therrbcpipeline.wordpress.com

* A Dream Deferred by Langston Hughes was copied from  Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46548/harlem