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Show notes –
Spark My Muse podcast: Episode 6 – The Skinny on Wine Spritzers and Friendship as Creative Fuel
Photo by Brett Bastello – Personal Creations (click for link)
Today’s episode covers the skinny on wine spritzers and also how friendship fuels our creative muse.
This episode is brought to you by the book Dog in the Gap 10 essays inspired by the life lessons learned while befriending with the family canine. Heart warming, full of wonderful photography and good humor. Click the links to learn more to get a copy.
The Bonus Edition is just a $1 more and it contains lots of extras and goodies.
——
What is a wine spritzer exactly and why now is a good time to make one?
First, what’s up with the word “spritzer”?
The word “spritzer” comes from the German spritzen “spatter, squirt, spray, sprinkle”.
(additional note: just saying it involves some spritzing, right?)
The wine sprizter is just a simple drink combination of chilled wine and something that sparkles, such as sparkling mineral water, club soda, or seltzer water.
It’s consumed more for refreshment than anything else!
(It’s easy on the liver.)
• Drinking wine in warm weather or in the hot sun is always a bad idea. The spritzer is a good choice for summer because of its lower alcohol content, less calories, and being less inexpensive than straight wine consumption. Serving them is a great a way for you or your guests to not drink too much before the hambergers are ready at your cookout.
Too much wine (or any alcohol) during the summer will dehydrate you and you can quickly feel tired or ill.
Spritzers are mixed in various ratios and sometimes fruit juice is added. The two most common are 50/50 or, 1/2 cup club soda to 1 cup of wine.
• The Spanish use red wine, fruit, and lemon soda. That sounds delicious!
I think wine or juice Spritzers are the go-to outdoor party beverage that provides a less expensive refreshing treat for outdoor entertaining and outdoor fun, sunny get-togethers, and bonding with friends. (They can be made without alcohol for teetotalers or children too–just skip the wine and add more fruit juice.)
• For parties, you can fill a punch bowl with the right ratios.
Some of my favorite wine spritzer recipes!
The Super Simple Spritzer
Just two ingredients:
6 ounces of a reasonably priced of white wine – or a blush wine–
plus 6 ounces of 7-Up (or try sprite or ginger ale).
Sublime Citrus Spritzer
2 lemon slices, 2 lime slices, 5 ice cubes.
4 ounces of your your favorite white wine and 2 ounces of lemon-lime seltzer.
Peach Dream Party Bowl Spritzer
6 quartered peaches and 2 tablespoons of honey.
Mix into a blender and puree. Place in a pitcher and chill for about two hours, then mix in a bottle of white wine, and stir well.
Finally, add a liter of cold sparkling water or seltzer.
Garnish with mint and extra slices of peach.
Citrus Ice Cube Party Pitcher Spritzer
2 lemons, zested
2 small oranges, zested (or 1 large orange, zested)
1 bottle white or blush wine
3 cups sparkling water
Directions:
Place the zest as a mixture into an empty ice cube tray, add water and freeze for 3 to 5 hours.
In a large pitcher, combine the wine and the sparkling water and then the citrus zest ice cubes.
Stir and serve.
White Wine and Fruity Sweet Party Spritzer
1 bottle of sweet white wine
3/4 cup white grape juice or apple juice
1 liter bottle desired-flavor low-calorie sparkling water, chilled.
(optional and delicious Assorted fresh fruits (such as raspberries, blackberries, pineapple, sliced kiwifruit, blueberries, lemon slices, lime slices, halved strawberries, or red grapes)
Directions
1 In a large punch bowl combine wine and grape juice.
Just before serving, slowly pour in sparkling water.
If desired, garnish individual servings with fruit. Makes 10 (6-ounce) servings
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Friendship is a mirror to presence and a testament to forgiveness. Friendship not only helps us see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us for our trespasses as we must find it in ourselves to forgive them in turn. A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them. An undercurrent of real friendship is a blessing exactly because its elemental form is rediscovered again and again through understanding and mercy. All friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness. Without tolerance and mercy all friendships die.
Friendship, unlike cooperation, is unnecessary to human survival.
Friendship, like philosophy and art is one of the things that gives value to survival.
how friendship differs from the other three types of love by focusing on its central question: “Do you see the same truth.”
Anne Lamott
In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, the leading creative edge of their incarnation, thus subtly discouraging what makes them smaller, less generous, less of themselves.
My essay:
Pertaining to sparking one’s muse. Good friends, that offer selflessly the balance of honesty and gentleness, toughness and acceptance, encouragement and motivation breath life into our lives and our art. Being social creatures, as humans, we crave social bonds even though they inevitably cause us pain at times. Isolated, for too long, we shrink into ourselves with self-delusion, self-absorption, unwarranted loathing and aggrandizement.
Aloneness is a dread for many or a craving for those misfit. And even those misfit hope, sometimes, to find someone else in the dark that might recognize him and name him and finally tell him he is well enough and valuable. Only in the mirror of friendship can we have solid footing and might be drawn out into our best selves. Erotic love has too much fire and entanglement for that. Agape love too much work and abdication. Brotherly love too much responsibility and duty. Only a soul friend can birth you into your actualization most purely.
Friends and confidants help us be continually born into the next stage of development. We risk with them and they with us and the synergy makes us stronger. At its best it is a fountain of grace sourced in Originator of Love and Goodness.
Do you have a question or do you have an idea for the show? Please let me know! :)
I used to dread the coming of winter and the long cold months that encased the landscape–making it bleached and barren.
I still find winter difficult. I need the colors of nature to brighten my day and lift my mood. I like wearing sandals and not layers of clothes. But, I’ve finally lived long enough to experience winter as a few uncomfortable months, instead of a dreaded expanse of time.
It seems we experience time in a kind of frozen way. At the time, Winter seems like the only season that exists and the memory of warm weather fades and seems unreal from within the time table in which we find our selves. Time is not a stretch. It is a bubble. Each moment is a short pop away from not existing. Freezing bubbles isn’t possible…at least not completely (though the picture above would suggest otherwise, right?)
Once March comes, I feel much better about the new year. Here’s to brighter days and warm nights and enjoying each moment no matter what.
Again, last night I heard from a man about my age whose been locked up for more than 20 years. Plenty of the men I encounter have spent more time behind bars than outside them.
PLEASE, try to imagine that for a moment.
Want the truth? For some, the thought of going back “to the streets” as they call it, fills them with true dread and anxiety. The world outside of prison is full of unknowns and it’s absent of structure (like 3 meals a day, concrete expectations, and consistent scheduling). There are hazards and temptations, and of course, a bleak outlook employment for future employment. They have little or no ways for doing legitimate work. (Would YOU hire a felon?) Some inmates are so fearful of the outside and paralyzed by their prospects that they will purposefully break rules, hurt others, or commit crimes in prison to lengthen their sentence.
Imagine picking to be in prison rather that choosing to start over anew in freedom.
It seems insane, perhaps, until you realize the terrific poignancy:
Captivity is primarily is located in the mind.
This is just as true for non felons. • Too many of us walk around is prisons of our own making. We see closed doors instead of open ones. We let our past tell us a story about ourselves that can continue to enact. We feel trapped or confined with no way to truly free ourselves. We stay oppressed by sin, soul sickness, and slow forms of dying.
We all need healing to find the fruition of Justice.
True justice involves restoration and rehabilitation for re-entry into community and renewed relationships.
Even the Federal Government realizes this. Prisoners need to prepare ahead of time for release and transform their ways of thinking and doing things. New programs have launched that focus on acquiring skills and tools for successful re-entry into communities were a return to crime and old ways becomes less probable. Building more prisons isn’t working. Many of these re-entry programs focus on drawing from a deeper spiritual place and making choices based on the highest of morals to ensure that the best outcomes are the result. They rely on volunteers to help. Amazing that more resources aren’t carved out for something so important, huh? As a volunteer, I’m working multiple times per week teaching and guiding inmates to prepare them for their eventual release.
But God has put something else on my heart.
• I want my brothers behind bars to be missionaries to fellow-inmates. • I want them to be lights in that dark place. • I want them to pray for others and be sources of support and encouragement. • I want them to be vehicles of God’s love and rays of hope for everyone they encounter. Last night, I told them out loud. As I shared my vision with them, the excitement was palpable. They started smiling. They nodded in agreement. Some laughed because they had been thinking the same thing. God has been at work long before I showed up. They want to be a part of what God is doing. They want to be a part of something bigger in the family of God, now, and in the Kingdom of God past, present, and future. It’s a kingdom that was inaugurated fully with Jesus the King more than 2,000 years. It’s a Kingdom that will continue, as is has all over the world, all the way into eternity. Forever and ever, Amen.
In sharing a vision, where others can use their gifts and talents for a greater purpose, we inject meaning and hope. What power that has!
These men are men who are having their hope renewed.
How do you spell oppression? …maybe E-I-E-I-O. Today it almost looks like we’re down on the farm!
Let’s look at some names, shall we?
HEIFER/COW – connotation towards female: “a fat woman”
(actual meaning: a female cow who has not borne a calf/female cow)
VIXEN – connotation toward females (according to the dictionary) “a spiteful and querrelsome women” (but a google search turns up very racy photos indeed)
(actual meaning: a female fox)
SOW -connotation toward females: “a female police officer, or a degrading name for a woman”
(actual meaning: a female pig)
NANNY– connotation toward females: “a female caretaker of children”
NITTANY LION – a pedophile named Jerry Sandusky (okay that one is just a joke I heard)
MADAM: connotation toward female: “a woman in charge of prostituting women”
(actual meaning: a formal way to address a women in respect)
SIR: A polite way to refer to a man.
MISS: An unmarried woman
MISTRESS: connotation toward females: “A woman having an illicit sexual relationship”
(actual meaning: The prefix of a formal name referring to a married woman or the female head of a household. Abbreviated as Mrs.)
MISTER: A formal way of referring to a man, and sometimes used humorously. Abbreviated as Mr.
(And finally, my least favorite. Scientific studies show that this word is also typically the one men most dread being called. Seriously.)
By now, you probably have noticed some commonalities. And maybe you can even think of further examples I left out.
What surprised you most?
To me, it doesn’t seem that language favors women. Not the English one anyway.
It also seems that if a man is degraded or thought of an less than, a woman serves as a reference point of that inferiority. This is male privilege in action–every. single. day.
The standard of male as apex not only supports male dominance and heralds masculinity as the preferred societal and ontological ideal, but also works to continually degrade women as inferior. Since language is spoken everyday, every day we learn and re-learn the expectations and norms.
With many names women are highlighted as having defective qualities sexually, morally, physically and are routinely animalized (reduced to sub-man/sub-human) in a hugely disproportionate ways as compared with males. Yes?
Our language reinforces power structures and privilege, and sustains oppression. We should be honest about this. We should be aware.
People will refer to a women as a “girl” but rarely to a man as a “boy”. Plenty of other examples or preference exist.
So, now what can we do to make things better?
…how do we turn this around? I’m taking your suggestions.
Oh, and what’s with all the cat comparisons anyway, right?
![The Fog of Worry [SSL170]](https://lisadelay.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/worry-825x510.png)
Again, last night I heard from a man about my age whose been locked up for more than 20 years. Plenty of the men I encounter have spent more time behind bars than outside them. 
