Anyone for leftovers?

What do documentaries on lost civilizations, commentary on current national and global politics and taking an art appreciation class at the local community college have in common with what to do with your leftovers?

You might ask.

I’m decent cook but for most of my life, I just hated having to deal with leftovers. They never – to me at least – tasted as good as fresh. I always wanted something new, something freshly prepared, something of the moment. I’ve mellowed. I misunderstood leftovers. I see them very differently now.

For all of our human history, whenever one group has overpowered another, the leftovers of the subordinated group have been incorporated and something new has been made with it. We are no different today from those so-called lost civilizations of long ago. Conquerors used the churches and temples of the vanquished for themselves and adapted them for their own uses. They made something new with the leftovers. In our 250 year history, even as names of political parties remain the same, practices have changed. So Republicans and Democrats in 2026 (the names are the leftovers) have been repurposed into something very different from what they were 100 years ago, just as they had been in 1926 compared to 1826.

Changes in expression and taste have happened in art over the years, or in music or poetry or literature. You might think there’s no connection between Mozart and Moby, Botticelli and Basquiat or Shakespeare and Shepard. The way art shows up may have changed, but the feelings they invoke, the stories they tell – the leftovers – the reasons for art have simply been repurposed. Incorporated. Adapted. Subsumed.

Leftovers are a by-product of living. We are always building on the past. Even when something feels new and original, it has roots; it has a history; a legacy.

As I say, I’ve mellowed. Maybe that’s because I’ve lived long enough to have leftovers of my own, lessons I have learned. Mulch. Compost, if you will. So, I’m keeping what I like and building on it. And, all that I leave behind has been my teacher.

10/12/26

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