About Ron Fritsch

Ron grew up in rural northern Illinois. His father and mother were poor but hard-working tenant farmers who loved to read. So did the rest of the family.
Planting and harvesting, they lived by the seasons as much as our prehistoric ancestors had.

Because he inherited the gift of a good memory he obtained a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Illinois (major: history; minor: English literature) and a law degree cum laude from Harvard Law School.

Early in his career, the persons in charge of the prestigious law firm where I worked became aware that I was gay. They’d insisted to him how “liberal” they were, but he soon realized—beyond the veil of a “farm boy” innocence he’d willfully kept in place too long—they were apparently still very much stuck in their times.

After his abrupt dismissal from the upper reaches of the legal profession, he became a public-service attorney representing indigent and disabled persons, and—at the end and most challenging part of his work—abused and neglected children.

All during his life as a lawyer, he spent most of his time writing arguments on behalf of his clients, in the trial courts as well as the higher appeals courts. Despite his careful legal reasoning, which he considered my trump card, he wasn’t above resorting to sarcasm and ridicule—sometimes, perhaps, excessively.

He’s writing and publishing a tetralogy asking whether history and civilization might’ve begun and proceeded differently than they did. He’s doing it not because he hopes to become rich and famous but because he wishes to share his story with the world.

For more information about Ron, you can visit his website at www.promisedvalley.com

Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

I’m throwing a dinner party and can invite five people. It’s easy for me to decide who my guests will be: five of the main characters from my novel, Promised Valley Rebellion. I’ll want Rose Leaf and the prince, Morning Sun, to attend for sure. They’re determined they’ll marry and have children together even though the king and queen have repeatedly made it clear to them they may not do that. I’ll also invite Rose Leaf’s brother, Blue Sky, and his friends Spring Rain and Many Numbers. The latter two live together in an ivy-covered house, the only house of its kind in the Promised Valley. Maybe I’ll ask them if I can host the dinner at their place. They’re gay, and so is Blue Sky, but they don’t use that term. They simply “go with” men, as some women do with women.

Why do I choose these five persons to be my dinner guests? That’s an easy question to answer. They’re the leaders of the rebellion triggered not only by the king’s refusal to allow the marriage of the prince to Rose Leaf but also by the corruption and brutality of the king’s high officials.

I’ll serve what my guests would expect to be served on such an occasion: roast beef, raw onion, and freshly baked bread. I might start out the meal with a lentil soup, and I’ll gently cook some roots and tubers in a cheese sauce as a side dish. I’ll join my guests in soaking their bread with the hot drippings from the beef, and I won’t say anything about overdoing the saturated fat and cholesterol in this meal. My young guests, even the prince, spend so much of their days engaged in hard physical labor that they don’t need to worry about putting on excess weight. They’ve never heard anybody speak of saturated fat and cholesterol anyway. The bread will be whole-grain, since white bread hasn’t been invented yet.

Because money also hasn’t been invented yet, I’ll need to barter for the food and the jugs of wine I’ll serve with it. I’ll offer some good hand-made pottery and salt. Because their own pottery doesn’t last long, they often trade their excess wheat, barley, leather, cheese, wine, meat, and other goods to the river people, whose pottery can take a lot of use and abuse before it breaks. They also trade with the river people for salt, which they use principally to preserve their meat. In addition, they’ve found that their cattle like to lick blocks of salt, and they seem healthier for doing so. The valley people themselves occasionally sprinkle salt on their food. If the artisan who makes the pottery puts her or his name on the bottoms of the pieces, the valley people will think the letters are some form of decoration. Writing is something else that hasn’t been invented yet.

I’ll enjoy watching and hearing my guests sing and dance after the meal. They wouldn’t care much for my singing and dancing, but that will be alright with me. I’ll be too busy talking — gossiping, you might even say — with my guests. I’ll have all sorts of questions for them. They’re not just my guests. They’re five individuals I’ve fallen deeply in love with.

About Promised Valley Rebellion

Prehistoric farmers inhabit a fertile river valley they believe their gods promised them in return for their good behavior and obedience. Their enemies, hunters roaming the mostly barren hills beyond the mountains enclosing the valley, believe their gods gave it to them.
When the farmers’ king refuses to allow the marriage of the coming-of-age prince to the daughter of the farmer who saved the king’s life in the last war with the hunters, her brother decides he has to help his sister and the prince, his boyhood friend, correct the flagrant injustice.

The Common Denominator

By Steff Deschenes

A 365 Project is something photographers do to hone their craft.  They pick a theme and every day for an entire year take a photo related to that topic.  I’m no photographer, but the idea both intrigued and inspired me.  I also thought it would make for an interesting social experiment, while both documenting and allowing me to reflect on my life as a twenty-something captured in a year.  And what a better year to do it then one in which I’ll spend the majority being a quarter-century old?  It would be fun to find out who my year involved, where I may have travelled, new things I might’ve tried, and life changes that may have occurred.

I knew exactly what I wanted my theme to be: me at dinner.  Because not only did I love food and was excited to have become a vegetarian only a few months prior; but, in my opinion, there’s nothing as personal and intimate as eating.  It’s one of the few things as humans we’ve always done and will always do, and that connects every single person regardless of race, gender, geography, or culture.

My only parameters were that the picture had to show me, what I was eating, and if applicable, who I was eating with.  I started taking pictures of myself on January 1^st of this year.  By January 2^nd I felt stupid taking and posting these pictures online.  But today, entering the last third of the calendar year, I have never been more proud or have felt more rewarded from something I’ve created than my 365 Project.

Personally, it’s been an amazing testament to my lifestyle choice of becoming a vegetarian.  Not only have I been strengthened in my faith as an herbivore and have had my own boundaries and reservations in the kitchen stretched and expanded (I only started cooking a few months before this project started!); but, the positive ripple-effect in other people’s lives was something I could have never predicted.

Family, friends, and people I don’t even know have been inspired by my persistence to the Project and to my gastronomical choices with the dishes I’ve made.  They’ve realized that healthy, sustainable, and compassionate eating isn’t bland, boring, stereotypical or scary at all.  I’ve actually converted people to vegetarianism; have helped people dramatically reduce not only their intake of animal products but also of other mass-manufactured items; and, most importantly, have simply gotten people to think about how what they eat can harm themselves and the environment.

It’s also brought me closer to some friends who I had drifted away from – after hearing about the project, and despite not seeing me for months or even years, these people went out of their way to meet-up with me so that they could have their picture taken with me at dinner.

And all I set out to do was take some (probably very silly) pictures of myself eating!

Despite having a universe of the internet between us, the Project has reaffirmed my belief that food is something that helps us be an interconnected people; it strengthens relationships and tears down differences and brings us all to a common ground.

Such is the power of sustenance!

About Steff Deschenes

Despite a failed attempt at majoring in ice cream in college, Steff Deschenes is a self-taught ice-cream guru. After publishing the now twelve-time award-winning The Ice Cream Theory, she began exploring food on a more universal level. As a result, she now photo blogs daily herself at dinner and the challenges of being a vegetarian in a predominantly seafood-oriented state. Steff also writes two articles a week entitled “Maybe It’s Me” (personal essays and reflection on life and the living of it) and “Fact Is Better” (real life conversations she couldn’t make up if she tried); all of which can be found at www.steffdeschenes.com. You can also visit her at www.theicecreamtheory.com.

About The Ice Cream Theory

The Ice Cream Theory is ice-cream guru Steff Deschenes’s charming exploration of the parallels between human personalities and ice-cream flavors, a tongue-in-cheek celebration of the variety inherent in a well-lived life.

The Theory was hatched when Deschenes was trying to make sense of her first heartbreak.  In the midst of that grief, she realized that, in the same way humans have ice-cream preferences, humans have people preferences. Like ice cream flavors, social preferences shift based on age, experience, even mood. There are exotic flavors that one craves when feeling daring, comforting flavors to fall back on, flavors long-enjoyed that eventually wear out their welcome, and those unique flavors that require an acquired taste. Like people, no ice cream flavor is perfect every single time . . . and it is in this realization that the crux of Deschenes’s theory lies.

Deschenes neatly brings together anecdotes from her own adventures with broader-reaching social commentary to help others recognize the wisdom and joy inherent in a beloved dessert.

With its cheeky self-help slant, The Ice Cream Theory is an endearing and light-hearted addition to any bookshelf.  It’s a must read for anyone bruised by life’s tough lessons and in need of a cheerful pick me up!