I fashion a fruit creation for Progressive Salem potluck

I’m a terrible cook. My best dishes are either microwaved frozen dinners or take-out food. Left to my own cooking devices, I rely heavily on tofu and brown rice. Not even slow-cooked brown rice. Three-minute microwaved frozen packaged brown rice from Trader Joe’s.

So when I needed to bring something to the Progressive Salem potluck at Woodmansee Park today, my first (and also last) thought was to buy some organic fruit. I settled on strawberries and blackberries.

This morning I labored for a whole five minutes or so, rinsing the fruit, slicing the tops off of the strawberries, and then arranging the berries on a paper plate in what I hoped would be an artistic fashion.

Behold… my fruit creation. (Hey, it isn’t much; but when you’re as bad at preparing food as I am, a little bit of success fills me with a strange amount of pride.)

In my admittedly grandiose mind, I consider that the fruit creation has a pleasing, almost mystical, feel of a mandala. The concentric (more or less) circles of red and black draw in the eye, reminding the beholder of the inherent interdependence of life as causes and conditions endlessly repeat in ever-changing patterns of cosmic creativity.

Or, if you’re more into Zen simplicity, it’s a bunch of strawberries and blackberries on a plate.

Regarding the Progressive Salem potluck, the turnout at a Woodmansee Park shelter was pretty good, considering how unseasonably cool and rainy it was today. This photo that I copied from the Progressive Salem Facebook page shows Chris Hoy, former mayor of Salem and current president of Progressive Salem, speaking to the group about the current state of local politics.

Hoy stressed a lesson from the recent May primary election: every vote matters.

He said that Micki Varney, the incumbent progressive Ward 8 (West Salem) city councilor, failed to win her race outright by only ten votes, falling just short of the 50% +1 threshold to avoid a November runoff against her opponent. While Varney got five more votes, fourteen write-in votes left her at 49.95%, just shy of the 50% +1.

Of course, if her opponent had been able to get just a few more votes out of what I recall were about 7,000 total votes, then he would have won outright. Just goes to show that when people say, “I don’t cast a ballot because it doesn’t make a difference,” actually it does. Margins of victory or defeat always matter. And they matter a lot in very close elections like the Ward 8 race.