Noticing the Big Picture: Long Term Ramifications as Seen Through a Sort of Mustard Seed Philosophy

By S.R. Coleyon

Noticing the Big Picture is a collection of five essays originally put into motion as a result of the application process for an MFA--a Masters in Fine Arts. The nature of these assignments created pieces of a puzzle for the author to collect and assemble. An exercise that catapulted S.R. Coleyon into a new realm. One of greater self-empowerment, greater awareness and higher consciousness. Whether young or old, readers will most likely identify with the struggles and triumphs within, and they just may be able to take greater ownership of their futures as a result.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483572055

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accomplished.

The Ginger Can Take Anything

An updated version of a seventh grade essay about gingersnaps, United States history, possible misinformation about AC vs. DC presidents and that fragile house of cards

The Splendid Table began interestingly enough. The radio show, a cooking program on National Public Radio hosted by Lynne Rossetto Kasper, received a call from a listener eager and excited about surprising a friend recently appointed as one of just a few female Blackhawk pilots. This meant the caller’s friend would be deployed to Kuwait for an entire year. What kind of edible can I tuck into my friend’s knapsack? the caller asked. I want it to be incognito, and I need something that can withstand the trip in-tact. Not be affected by the climate. It should stay fresh until my friend discovers it while unpacking. The enamored woman added that M&Ms—a candy invented for soldiers on the field because they melt in your mouth not in your hand—just wouldn’t do the trick. She wanted something that would communicate more thoughtfulness. Something that could be made with her own hands. Something made with tender love and care.

I have just the thing, Kasper’s voice was crisp, cool, kind and comforting all rolled into one. Ginger Snaps! she said with excitement.

There was a pause. The ginger snap Kasper proclaimed, can take anything!

Right then and there I dropped the dishtowel I was using to dry my plates and erupted into laughter at the host’s very firm declaration about this time-tested and traditionally baked product. The reasons are many and layered, but I will start with two. One: The ginger snap, personified, seemed as if it would be representing tough cookies everywhere on the frontlines of war, armed to the hilt, not a crumb out of place, and that Lynn Rossetto Kasper was very serious about this probable fact.

Two: the ginger snap’s inherent indestructibility is something I, myself, contemplated deeply with childlike fascination much earlier in life during long car trips from Delaware to Florida. A trip my mom, sister and I took many a summer during the 70s to visit our grandmother.

Every year, we piled into mom’s 1972 blue Ford LTD. The Blue Bomb we called it. It was there, in the back seat, where the ginger snap became the focus of my attention. Where I spent hours contemplating the destructibility of this fascinating cookie called the Ginger Snap, experimenting with every last bite. Admittedly, the conditions for this experiment were rough. Cookies dropping on one side of me and the other and toppling out of the box as the LTD jerked and putted along, its automatic windows rolled down, air whipping at 70 miles per hour into the backseat. The Blue Bomb was a bullet-shaped boat of a car that barreled, with intermittent backfiring from the muffler, all the way down Interstate 95 past the Mason-Dixon Line, countless South of the Border-Get-Your-Fireworks-Here signs and I don’t know how many Waffle Houses. We lost count somewhere around Fayetteville, North Carolina. What a site it must’ve been because our ride was pimped before pimped rides were cool. But pimped in an old-school utilitarian way. It was fitted with a long wooden insert that transformed the back seat into a sleeper bed. The insert filled the space between the back of the front seats and the front of the back seats in order for backseat passengers to stretch out and roll around. Let’s put it this way, if we had pulled up to the Mexican border, the car would have been searched.

It was there, on the sleeper and through endless trial and error attempts that I realized Ginger Snaps, while very, very tough, are not, in fact, 100 percent completely indestructible. All you have to do is sink your teeth into the cookie, close your mouth, then breath into it until the warm air moistens the biscuit. It’s possible the brand name of the cookie matters. We always purchased Nabisco Ginger Snaps, which were stiff right out of the box, but softened and intensified with the technique mentioned above. By intensified, I mean the kick of the ginger intensified to the point of possessing a hot sting. It is only then when the cookie softened and dissolved. Its own personal flash point. I digress because the cookie experiment was met with regular interruptions.

Okay, okay, you two, pay attention now! When it was time to exit the Interstate, mom flustered with anxiety. "Mmnn, hmmnn, okay. I’m gonna need someone to