Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of summer and the appropriate time to:
1. Plant tomatoes (Rutgers, Beefmaster, and something called Mr. Stripey!) and eggplant (Ichiban).
2. Drink the first gin and tonic of the season.
3. Wear white - in my case, khakis, shorts, and a Stanley Kowalski undershirt.
4. Proof bread dough in the afternoon sun on the brick patio.
5. Raise the multi-colored beach umbrella (bought on clearance in Carolina Beach) on the patio table.
6. Eat three meals a day outside.
7. Wear sandals without socks.
8. Switch to boxer shorts under my jeans.
9. Start worrying about whether plants are getting enough water, instead of worrying about whether plants are getting enough light.
10. Go to a Goodbye, Columbus party for friends who are moving to Bellingham, Washington, next week. Long story short: Steve and Kathy took a trip to Oregon a few years ago to visit her daughter in Portland, went sightseeing in Eugene, Seattle, Vancouver, all the cool places, and found Bellingham to their liking. She asked him, "Would you rather die here or in Ohio?" They took out a home equity loan, bought a house, and rented it out for three years while they played out their jobs and other commitments in central Swingstate. Now they're beginning a new adventure in the great northwest.
11. Witness the first germinating bean seeds, saved from last year's meagre crop, sprouting up out of the ground in their distinctive beanie way, like a big head on a thin spine straightening up from a deep fetal crouch. By next week they could be reaching their tendrils out to twine around the tripod of poles and start climbing. FEE-FI-FO-FUM!
12. Go to a neighborhood pot-luck on Julie's deck with our Methodistville friends, who appreciate good food, good books, and gardening. We mostly talked about TV and politics, but I went home with four little envelopes of different kinds of sunflower seeds to plant in some sunny spot in the back yard of Om Shanty.
13. Clean out the garage/storage/workshop and take a few things to the thrift store; move a few boxes of memorabilia to the other garage, and hang some bookshelves, a small step toward converting storage space into living space. The trip down memory lane that is unpacking boxes of books and arranging them on shelves will have to wait until another weekend, but hey, the Fourth of July is right around the corner!
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Saturday, May 27, 2006
In praise of wildness
As we knew, Gary Snyder knows of what he speaks. Every time I pick up one of his books - poetry, essays, whatever - I rediscover what an amazing guy he is. The Practice of the Wild (1990), which I ran across in the library while looking for something else, dontchaknow, is eye-opening.
The next day, I paused to rest while weeding a perennial bed and sat at the little patio table to eat a piece of leftover pizza. My eyes came to rest on the flowering plum tree next to the side gate. It's well past full bloom and all leafed-out in reddish purple leaves. It happens fast in the spring, in all its unruly glory leaning lopsided out over the fence and badly in need of pruning in the irregular upper branches. I can (and did) pinch off the suckers sprouting from the trunk, but up higher the tree follows its own laws to reach away from the roof and towering pine tree to get some light and do what it has to do. It's a glorious mess but I gotta like it.
David Dye was interviewing two rock gods on the radio the other night on "The World Cafe," and when they weren't rhapsodizing over their own amazing talents they were going on about how much they love to walk. Cool, I thought, pop musicians who take the trouble to contemplate their somatic existence. Then their egos got the better of them, and they repeated like five times their fascination with walking because only humans walk just for fun, and "this is what makes us different from animals."
Oh really. I wouldn't know, since I'm not a rock god, but I thought humans were animals, as in homo sapiens? And being ignorant of the inner thoughts, intentions, and awareness of wolves, tigers, deer, rabbits, and groundhogs, I did not know their every cognition regarding locomotion. But Mr. REM and friend do know (telepathically?) what mere animals think about (and don't), happy to share with the rest of us that mere animals only walk to find food, whereas rock gods walk around Manhattan just for the heck of it, or because they're too cool to take the subway while being inspired to create their next double-platinum hit. To paraphrase Scott Fitzgerald, the very rich are different from you and me; they're totally full of shit.
One of Snyder's best qualities as a writer is his unwillingness to make it too easy for himself or his readers. I don't think he sat down with his literary agent or his editor at Shoemaker & Hoard, a division of Avalon Publishing Group, and let them decide what kind of book would sell the most copies or reach their desired target market. "Yeah right, Gary, I get the whole wilderness schtick, I've got a time-share in Aspen, and the mountains rock. But what we're looking for is self-help for middle managers, ya dig? Seven spiritual secrets of the wilderness poet. Talk to me, babe." He doesn't reduce it all to a formula for entrepreneurial success, thinner thighs in thirty days, or how to have it all. It's more complex and difficult than that. If that's a turn-off, skip this book.
The man actually has hope for himself, his tribe, his home bioregion, his fellow critters, and the planet. But true believers beware. One-issue revolutionaries beware. Reductionists and positivists beware. No book - least of all this one - will ever tell you who you are, why you are here, what it all means, or what to do about it. Read Gary Snyder the way you would read Carl Sandberg's biography of Lincoln, for the fun of reading the prose writing of a craftsman who actually has something to say abaout stuff that matters. The way you might listen to a song where both the words and music both hold up on repeated listening.
This book might just piss you off. It might make you want to go for a walk, cook some oatmeal, sew on a button, smash the state, meditate, build something with hand tools, watch birds, or write your congressperson. It made me want to write something, but that's just me, and clearly I'm having a hard time doing that coherently. To tell the truth, I'm not sure what my next move will be.
Alvar Nunez, who for eight years walked naked across Texas and New Mexico, came out transformed into a person of the New World. He had rejoined the old ways and was never the same again. He gained a compassionate heart, a taste for self-sufficiency and simplicity, and a knack for healing....Nunez was the first European to encounter North America and its native myth-mind....It is perennially within us, dormant as a hard-shelled seed, awaiting the fire or flood that awakes it again. (p. 14)
The next day, I paused to rest while weeding a perennial bed and sat at the little patio table to eat a piece of leftover pizza. My eyes came to rest on the flowering plum tree next to the side gate. It's well past full bloom and all leafed-out in reddish purple leaves. It happens fast in the spring, in all its unruly glory leaning lopsided out over the fence and badly in need of pruning in the irregular upper branches. I can (and did) pinch off the suckers sprouting from the trunk, but up higher the tree follows its own laws to reach away from the roof and towering pine tree to get some light and do what it has to do. It's a glorious mess but I gotta like it.
It would be a mistake to think that human beings got "smarter" at some point and invented first language and then society. Language and culture emerge from our biological-social natural existence, animals that we were/are. Language is a mind-body system that coevolved with our needs and nerves. Like imagination and the body, language rises unbidden. (p. 18)
David Dye was interviewing two rock gods on the radio the other night on "The World Cafe," and when they weren't rhapsodizing over their own amazing talents they were going on about how much they love to walk. Cool, I thought, pop musicians who take the trouble to contemplate their somatic existence. Then their egos got the better of them, and they repeated like five times their fascination with walking because only humans walk just for fun, and "this is what makes us different from animals."
Oh really. I wouldn't know, since I'm not a rock god, but I thought humans were animals, as in homo sapiens? And being ignorant of the inner thoughts, intentions, and awareness of wolves, tigers, deer, rabbits, and groundhogs, I did not know their every cognition regarding locomotion. But Mr. REM and friend do know (telepathically?) what mere animals think about (and don't), happy to share with the rest of us that mere animals only walk to find food, whereas rock gods walk around Manhattan just for the heck of it, or because they're too cool to take the subway while being inspired to create their next double-platinum hit. To paraphrase Scott Fitzgerald, the very rich are different from you and me; they're totally full of shit.
American society (like any other) has its own set of unquestioned assumptions. It still maintains a largely uncritical faith in the notion of continually unfolding progress. It cleaves to the idea that there can be unblemished scientific objectivity. And most fundamentally it operates under the delusion that we are each a kind of "solitary knower" - that we exist as rootless intelligences without layers of localized contexts. Just a "self" and the "world". In this there is no real recognition that grandparents, place, grammar, pets, friends, lovers, children, tools, the poems and songs we remember, are what we think with. Such a solitary mind - if it could exist - would be a boring prisoner of abstractions. (p. 65)
One of Snyder's best qualities as a writer is his unwillingness to make it too easy for himself or his readers. I don't think he sat down with his literary agent or his editor at Shoemaker & Hoard, a division of Avalon Publishing Group, and let them decide what kind of book would sell the most copies or reach their desired target market. "Yeah right, Gary, I get the whole wilderness schtick, I've got a time-share in Aspen, and the mountains rock. But what we're looking for is self-help for middle managers, ya dig? Seven spiritual secrets of the wilderness poet. Talk to me, babe." He doesn't reduce it all to a formula for entrepreneurial success, thinner thighs in thirty days, or how to have it all. It's more complex and difficult than that. If that's a turn-off, skip this book.
The point is to make intimate contact with the real world, real self. Sacred refers to that which helps take us (not only human beings) out of our little selves into the whole mountains-and-rivers mandala universe....The wilderness as a temple is only a beginning. One should not dwell in the specialness of the extraordinary experience nor hope to leave the political quagg behind to enter a perpetual state of heightened insight....to come back to the lowlands and see all the land about us, agricultural, suburban, urban, as part of the same territory - never totally ruined, never completely unnatural. (p. 101)
The man actually has hope for himself, his tribe, his home bioregion, his fellow critters, and the planet. But true believers beware. One-issue revolutionaries beware. Reductionists and positivists beware. No book - least of all this one - will ever tell you who you are, why you are here, what it all means, or what to do about it. Read Gary Snyder the way you would read Carl Sandberg's biography of Lincoln, for the fun of reading the prose writing of a craftsman who actually has something to say abaout stuff that matters. The way you might listen to a song where both the words and music both hold up on repeated listening.
I suspect that primary peoples all know that their myths are somehow "made up." They do not take them literally and at the same time they hold the stories very real. Only upon being invaded by history and whipsawed by alien values do a people begin to declare that their myths are "literally true." This literalness in turn provokes skeptical questioning and the whole critical exercise. What a final refinement of confusion about the role of myths it is to declare that although they are not to be believed, they are nonetheless aesthetic and psychological constructs which bring order to an otherwise chaotic world and to which we should willfully commit ourselves! (p. 121)
This book might just piss you off. It might make you want to go for a walk, cook some oatmeal, sew on a button, smash the state, meditate, build something with hand tools, watch birds, or write your congressperson. It made me want to write something, but that's just me, and clearly I'm having a hard time doing that coherently. To tell the truth, I'm not sure what my next move will be.
People love to do hard work together and to feel that the work is real; that is to say primary, productive, needed....And our conservationist-environmentalist outrage is often (in its frustration) aimed at the logger or the rancher, when the real power is in the hands of people who make unimaginably larger sums of money, people impecably groomed, excellently educated at the best universities - male and female alike - eating fine foods and reading classy literature, while orchestrating the investment and legislation that ruin the world. (p. 127)
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Amerikan Idle
A witty but lame conversation on NPR last night while I'm driving the Parkway from the rec center back to the office - don't ask - about the media frenzy over a lame television phenomenon. Do the talking heads on the radio not see the irony in their jumping on the bandwagon that newspapers and magazines and online media, as well as TV itself have already jumped on, by pleading "please listen to me" talk about the TV show that everyone (supposedly) is talking about. Is there nothing else to talk about? Do they not have enough to do?
So here I am, listening to the four smart people proclaim the cultural significance of other smart people having nothing else to talk about but this lame TV show and the buzz it has created among other people who, you would think, would have something else to do. But no. They apparently don't have anything else to do, or they would be doing it. And by adding to the buzz, or static, or noise around the mindless bread-and-circuses trance in which otherwise intelligent people sleepwalk through their pathetic lives, I too, by listening to them talk, and by writing this, am part of the problem.
Congress is spending your money in ways that should piss you off. The executive branch is continuing to make war for no reason except to enrich itself and its campaign contributors. Citizens and noncitizens alike are being searched, seized, surveiled, arrested, imprisoned, and probably "disappeared" by an increasingly totalitarian war machine, and the judicial branch says it's okay.
One of the radio smarties sagely commented that people need an escape, and lame-oh TV provides it. Aww, poor Amerikans, with their suburban McMansions and their SUVs in the driveway, their fast-food meals and their polyester clothes from Wal-mart, they need an escape from the stress and strains of technological and commercial activity, and they find it in - technological and commercial activity. How very clever of them!
It's a place where words do not predominate.
Last weekend was a prime time to be there. I mowed the grass, pulled three bushels of weeds and added them to the compost, layered with a couple sections of newspaper and a week's worth of kitchen compost. I spaded up a new section of garden, turning a layer of horse manure under the soil, raked it level, and let it sit. Then I planted 21 pepper plants and a couple of herbs (cilantro, basil) and watered them all. I put two kinds of blue salvia in a little bed by the patio that had some empty space. I spread the remainder of the horse manure on miscellaneous perennial beds that needed a little something. I rested. It was good.
In other news, I see that a jury has found Kenneth Lay guilty on all counts. I'm confident that someone with his resources will find comfort and solace somehow - boo-hoo, you poor, poor victim of market panic - and somehow survive this terrible experience in one of your several vacation homes surrounded by loved-ones, deal-makers, and servants. According to Slate, "Lay and Skilling both face dozens of years in the slammer, and both suggested they're going to appeal. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 11." Do us all a favor and throw away the freaking key.
So here I am, listening to the four smart people proclaim the cultural significance of other smart people having nothing else to talk about but this lame TV show and the buzz it has created among other people who, you would think, would have something else to do. But no. They apparently don't have anything else to do, or they would be doing it. And by adding to the buzz, or static, or noise around the mindless bread-and-circuses trance in which otherwise intelligent people sleepwalk through their pathetic lives, I too, by listening to them talk, and by writing this, am part of the problem.
Congress is spending your money in ways that should piss you off. The executive branch is continuing to make war for no reason except to enrich itself and its campaign contributors. Citizens and noncitizens alike are being searched, seized, surveiled, arrested, imprisoned, and probably "disappeared" by an increasingly totalitarian war machine, and the judicial branch says it's okay.
One of the radio smarties sagely commented that people need an escape, and lame-oh TV provides it. Aww, poor Amerikans, with their suburban McMansions and their SUVs in the driveway, their fast-food meals and their polyester clothes from Wal-mart, they need an escape from the stress and strains of technological and commercial activity, and they find it in - technological and commercial activity. How very clever of them!
It's a place where words do not predominate.
Last weekend was a prime time to be there. I mowed the grass, pulled three bushels of weeds and added them to the compost, layered with a couple sections of newspaper and a week's worth of kitchen compost. I spaded up a new section of garden, turning a layer of horse manure under the soil, raked it level, and let it sit. Then I planted 21 pepper plants and a couple of herbs (cilantro, basil) and watered them all. I put two kinds of blue salvia in a little bed by the patio that had some empty space. I spread the remainder of the horse manure on miscellaneous perennial beds that needed a little something. I rested. It was good.
In other news, I see that a jury has found Kenneth Lay guilty on all counts. I'm confident that someone with his resources will find comfort and solace somehow - boo-hoo, you poor, poor victim of market panic - and somehow survive this terrible experience in one of your several vacation homes surrounded by loved-ones, deal-makers, and servants. According to Slate, "Lay and Skilling both face dozens of years in the slammer, and both suggested they're going to appeal. Sentencing is scheduled for Sept. 11." Do us all a favor and throw away the freaking key.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
Helga Golly, ADP Intern
Catch the new summer drama/comedy/documentary/reality/ miniseries, coming soon to a second-floor cubicle near you. This concept has been developing in the creative, possibly overactive imagination of a third-floor production editor for months, no, make that years, and it looks like it's real.
The facts: My daughter learned through reliable sources that the art, design, and production department of a major educational publisher had openings for summer interns. She sent a resume, completed the online application, and waited for human resources to do what they do. Meanwhile, back at Northeast Swingstate University, she went to classes, wrote papers, took tests, made ceramic bowls and Rohrschack test presentations. She turned 22 a week ago.
A manager in the photo department called her, and their preliminary conversation went well. They talked about how she would divide her time between photo research and production in order to learn about the whole operation. She took her French final, her early modern final, and her philosophy of art final. The director of art and photo did a second phone interview, which also went well, and recommended Helga for an internship. She took her existentialism final, imagining a conversation between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. She moved out of the dorm and home to Methodistville for the summer.
She waited to hear something.
Today mister whitewater photo guru officially offered the internship, and she's scheduled to start work next Wednesday. One small step for a young woman on the verge of completing her undergraduate education, a giant leap in the bildungsroman of her growing up the daughter of an editor and an artist. It will be interesting, as Helga learns the ropes of the publishing business and the company culture, whether she takes to it like a duck to water or whether it's a rough transition from school to work. Let the real testing begin.
The facts: My daughter learned through reliable sources that the art, design, and production department of a major educational publisher had openings for summer interns. She sent a resume, completed the online application, and waited for human resources to do what they do. Meanwhile, back at Northeast Swingstate University, she went to classes, wrote papers, took tests, made ceramic bowls and Rohrschack test presentations. She turned 22 a week ago.
A manager in the photo department called her, and their preliminary conversation went well. They talked about how she would divide her time between photo research and production in order to learn about the whole operation. She took her French final, her early modern final, and her philosophy of art final. The director of art and photo did a second phone interview, which also went well, and recommended Helga for an internship. She took her existentialism final, imagining a conversation between Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. She moved out of the dorm and home to Methodistville for the summer.
She waited to hear something.
Today mister whitewater photo guru officially offered the internship, and she's scheduled to start work next Wednesday. One small step for a young woman on the verge of completing her undergraduate education, a giant leap in the bildungsroman of her growing up the daughter of an editor and an artist. It will be interesting, as Helga learns the ropes of the publishing business and the company culture, whether she takes to it like a duck to water or whether it's a rough transition from school to work. Let the real testing begin.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Notes on May 4
Itinerary:
Arrive Days Inn the night before about 9:00 pm; call daughter, call former roommate Fremont Frank; pick up Helga at the ceramics studio on Summit St., meet Frank at Chipotle for a veggie burrito and a XX. Sit at a table outside in the balmy spring evening air and talk about sore feet, orthotics, Chuck Taylor All-Stars, Rohrschack ink-blots, spontaneous human experience, "Fear and Trembling."
Helga's former roommate Megan met us at the Commons, along with another friend and her dad from Canton. He had been at Boston College in 1970, and after May 4 their semester was declared over, and every class became pass/fail. He was interested in our experience at Northeast Swingstate U. He and Frank and I talked about our other kids (a teacher, an elementary school principal, a writer, an environmental activist, a carpenter, a singer). He knew a lot about an evangelical group called Sojourners and a guy named Jim Wallis, who sounds like a kind of left-leaning answer to the megachurch reactionaries backing the Blackwell juggernaut and circumventing the Constitution in the race for governor.
The bell rang at 11:00 pm, and we all lit our candles, stopped talking, and started walking in a loose procession from the Commons out to front campus, along Main Street, past Music and Speech, and back to the Prentice parking lot, where four permanent memorials mark the spots where four students died. That part is much the same every year, starting at the site of an anti-war rally and ending where Alison Krause, Bill Schroeder, Sandy Scheuer, and Jeff Miller were killed by members of Troop G. Then people pray, place a pebble on the marker, or whatever they choose to do, and go their separate ways.
I woke up in time to pick up Helga and meet Frank at Mike's Place out on route 43 for a great breakfast. She talked about her classes; we talked about how hard it was to understand Kierkegaard at 18, and really, how could anyone but Abraham know what it's like to make the leap of faith and hold the knife on Isaac. We talked about our work and our families. Frank's son has a new job with a local contractor and is moving back to Swingstate from Lakestate; my son is moving back to New York from Arizona to do the summer camp at MoreGardens. Zoe seems to have a clue as she repeats what her advisor says, "It's the leap, not the landing."
On the way out, Frank told me he's retiring from Whirlpool this month after 36 years. He started on the assembly line in Clyde after our freshman year, went to Northwest Swingstate U. on the company's dime, and then into management in the distribution division. They moved him up north to Lakestate to run the division, and a few years later he asked to come back to Swingstate, where his mother, daughter, and grandchildren live. He said he's opening a landscape stone business and calling it Froggy River Existential Enterprises (FREE), then he got on his Harley and headed home.
Helga showed me around the ceramics studio where some of her projects were still cooling in the kiln. It was big fun to walk around on her turf among the tools and materials of her craft and see some of the pieces she had made, one of which is now in our living room, a birthday present for Gven. Then she had places to go and things to do, so I walked until I found a wooded place between the library and the track to practice.
As I finished my qigong form, a swarm of preschoolers and their teachers came up the path, sat down, and ate their lunch. It was noon, so I walked over the hill to the Commons, sat and listened to the memorial service for an hour or so, walked to the car and went home the long way, by way of Medina, Mansfield, Mount Gilead, and Delaware. I got to Ted's place with just enough time to shovel a truckload of horse manure and unload it at home before my Thursday night class, so it worked out well.
Arrive Days Inn the night before about 9:00 pm; call daughter, call former roommate Fremont Frank; pick up Helga at the ceramics studio on Summit St., meet Frank at Chipotle for a veggie burrito and a XX. Sit at a table outside in the balmy spring evening air and talk about sore feet, orthotics, Chuck Taylor All-Stars, Rohrschack ink-blots, spontaneous human experience, "Fear and Trembling."
Helga's former roommate Megan met us at the Commons, along with another friend and her dad from Canton. He had been at Boston College in 1970, and after May 4 their semester was declared over, and every class became pass/fail. He was interested in our experience at Northeast Swingstate U. He and Frank and I talked about our other kids (a teacher, an elementary school principal, a writer, an environmental activist, a carpenter, a singer). He knew a lot about an evangelical group called Sojourners and a guy named Jim Wallis, who sounds like a kind of left-leaning answer to the megachurch reactionaries backing the Blackwell juggernaut and circumventing the Constitution in the race for governor.
The bell rang at 11:00 pm, and we all lit our candles, stopped talking, and started walking in a loose procession from the Commons out to front campus, along Main Street, past Music and Speech, and back to the Prentice parking lot, where four permanent memorials mark the spots where four students died. That part is much the same every year, starting at the site of an anti-war rally and ending where Alison Krause, Bill Schroeder, Sandy Scheuer, and Jeff Miller were killed by members of Troop G. Then people pray, place a pebble on the marker, or whatever they choose to do, and go their separate ways.
I woke up in time to pick up Helga and meet Frank at Mike's Place out on route 43 for a great breakfast. She talked about her classes; we talked about how hard it was to understand Kierkegaard at 18, and really, how could anyone but Abraham know what it's like to make the leap of faith and hold the knife on Isaac. We talked about our work and our families. Frank's son has a new job with a local contractor and is moving back to Swingstate from Lakestate; my son is moving back to New York from Arizona to do the summer camp at MoreGardens. Zoe seems to have a clue as she repeats what her advisor says, "It's the leap, not the landing."
On the way out, Frank told me he's retiring from Whirlpool this month after 36 years. He started on the assembly line in Clyde after our freshman year, went to Northwest Swingstate U. on the company's dime, and then into management in the distribution division. They moved him up north to Lakestate to run the division, and a few years later he asked to come back to Swingstate, where his mother, daughter, and grandchildren live. He said he's opening a landscape stone business and calling it Froggy River Existential Enterprises (FREE), then he got on his Harley and headed home.
Helga showed me around the ceramics studio where some of her projects were still cooling in the kiln. It was big fun to walk around on her turf among the tools and materials of her craft and see some of the pieces she had made, one of which is now in our living room, a birthday present for Gven. Then she had places to go and things to do, so I walked until I found a wooded place between the library and the track to practice.
As I finished my qigong form, a swarm of preschoolers and their teachers came up the path, sat down, and ate their lunch. It was noon, so I walked over the hill to the Commons, sat and listened to the memorial service for an hour or so, walked to the car and went home the long way, by way of Medina, Mansfield, Mount Gilead, and Delaware. I got to Ted's place with just enough time to shovel a truckload of horse manure and unload it at home before my Thursday night class, so it worked out well.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Basic Bread Recipe
Annotated Baker's Edition ©2006
1. Get up when you feel like it; brush your teeth, wash your face, massage your feet, do what you need to do; drink coffee; do chores (mow the lawn, milk the cows, take out the trash/recycling, sweep the floor, that kind of thing) to clear the mind. Wash your hands.
2. In a large ceramic bowl mix the following: 1 tablespoon dry yeast, 4 cups warm (not hot) water, 1/4 cup oil, 3/4 cup honey; stir gently with wooden spoon and let sit for 5-10 minutes, letting yeast-water solution mingle with honey-oil mixture. [Don't mess with those little foil envelopes of yeast that are mostly packaging; buying yeast in bulk is a better deal, and a little bag (or one-pound cake) will last several months.]
3. Add 4 cups whole wheat flour to wet ingredients, and stir vigorously with wooden spoon 200-300 strokes, alternating right/left hands and clockwise/counterclockwise. Mixture should be a thick slurry with minimal lumps, but not yet 'dough'. [Stone-ground western red wheat seems to work best for bread, but even that varies from year to year or even shipment to shipment; the texture of midwestern wheat doesn't get the best results for bread, dontchaknow.]
4. Cover bowl with clean towel or napkin, and let sit in warm place for about 2 hours. [Any warm place will do; I like an iron pan that's just been used, or other heat-retaining surface, because the heat dissipates slowly, allowing the yeast to grow at a steady rate. If you put it in a very warm place, let it sit less than 2 hours; in cooler place, more than 2 hours.]
5. Do more chores (split wood, pull weeds, whatever). Wash your hands. The sponge-like slurry should have risen somewhat. Add 1 tablespoon salt and any fruit, nuts, or spices desired (cinnamon or dill, walnuts or pecans, raisins or cranberries, or some combination); fold in with the same wooden spoon as used earlier; add 2 cups flour, stirring in with wooden spoon, adding flour until dough achieves a springy, more solid state. [Respect the bowl, the spoon, the measuring cup; they're part of this, too, ya know.]
6. Remove dough from bowl and add about 2 cups flour - a little at a time - while kneading on countertop or breadboard. [Kneading should incorporate push-pull action, the push pressing down into dough and the pull folding it back on itself; continue until dough is firm but not dry, still spongy but not sticky to the touch.]
7. Place dough in bowl and cover with the same towel or napkin; let sit in warm place for about 2 hours. [Higher temperature, less time; lower temperature, more time.]
8. Eat lunch. Read the paper. Run some errands, but don't be gone all day, you've got dough rising. Wash your hands. Remove dough from bowl and knead a couple of times to form dense ball; divide into 3 equal-size pieces (if baking pans are equal sizes) and knead each piece into loaf shapes (round for baking sheet, elongated for rectangular pan) and place in/on oiled pans; cover with towel and let sit in warm place for 30 minutes (more or less).
9. Preheat oven to 275 degrees; bake for 50 minutes - 55 minutes if using dried fruit, 60 minutes if using nondried fruit. Check finished loaves for slight browning on top and bottom surface; gently thump bottom for hollow, drumlike sound; cool on rack for 10 minutes before slicing.
10. Mmmm...
1. Get up when you feel like it; brush your teeth, wash your face, massage your feet, do what you need to do; drink coffee; do chores (mow the lawn, milk the cows, take out the trash/recycling, sweep the floor, that kind of thing) to clear the mind. Wash your hands.
2. In a large ceramic bowl mix the following: 1 tablespoon dry yeast, 4 cups warm (not hot) water, 1/4 cup oil, 3/4 cup honey; stir gently with wooden spoon and let sit for 5-10 minutes, letting yeast-water solution mingle with honey-oil mixture. [Don't mess with those little foil envelopes of yeast that are mostly packaging; buying yeast in bulk is a better deal, and a little bag (or one-pound cake) will last several months.]
3. Add 4 cups whole wheat flour to wet ingredients, and stir vigorously with wooden spoon 200-300 strokes, alternating right/left hands and clockwise/counterclockwise. Mixture should be a thick slurry with minimal lumps, but not yet 'dough'. [Stone-ground western red wheat seems to work best for bread, but even that varies from year to year or even shipment to shipment; the texture of midwestern wheat doesn't get the best results for bread, dontchaknow.]
4. Cover bowl with clean towel or napkin, and let sit in warm place for about 2 hours. [Any warm place will do; I like an iron pan that's just been used, or other heat-retaining surface, because the heat dissipates slowly, allowing the yeast to grow at a steady rate. If you put it in a very warm place, let it sit less than 2 hours; in cooler place, more than 2 hours.]
5. Do more chores (split wood, pull weeds, whatever). Wash your hands. The sponge-like slurry should have risen somewhat. Add 1 tablespoon salt and any fruit, nuts, or spices desired (cinnamon or dill, walnuts or pecans, raisins or cranberries, or some combination); fold in with the same wooden spoon as used earlier; add 2 cups flour, stirring in with wooden spoon, adding flour until dough achieves a springy, more solid state. [Respect the bowl, the spoon, the measuring cup; they're part of this, too, ya know.]
6. Remove dough from bowl and add about 2 cups flour - a little at a time - while kneading on countertop or breadboard. [Kneading should incorporate push-pull action, the push pressing down into dough and the pull folding it back on itself; continue until dough is firm but not dry, still spongy but not sticky to the touch.]
7. Place dough in bowl and cover with the same towel or napkin; let sit in warm place for about 2 hours. [Higher temperature, less time; lower temperature, more time.]
8. Eat lunch. Read the paper. Run some errands, but don't be gone all day, you've got dough rising. Wash your hands. Remove dough from bowl and knead a couple of times to form dense ball; divide into 3 equal-size pieces (if baking pans are equal sizes) and knead each piece into loaf shapes (round for baking sheet, elongated for rectangular pan) and place in/on oiled pans; cover with towel and let sit in warm place for 30 minutes (more or less).
9. Preheat oven to 275 degrees; bake for 50 minutes - 55 minutes if using dried fruit, 60 minutes if using nondried fruit. Check finished loaves for slight browning on top and bottom surface; gently thump bottom for hollow, drumlike sound; cool on rack for 10 minutes before slicing.
10. Mmmm...
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Familydrama
Subtitle: Sven's Vicarious Adventure Revisited
Or: Got Issues?
A friend's comment over dinner the other night hit me right between the chakras. She remarked how envious she is when I describe my occasional evening indulgence in a quiet meal along with a book and a drink and suitable music. I understand where she's coming from, a thirtysomething mother with a five-year-old and a six-month-old, a demanding job, a husband, and a house to manage. To hear me tell it, I'm living the life of Riley, slipping into my smoking jacket and settling into an evening of aesthetic pleasures undisturbed by the needs of others.
And she's right, up to a point. Most of the time when I get home at night I have nobody's needs to meet but my own. On the other hand, Gven Golly and I both come home to a proverbial 'empty nest', although I hate that term, and can only guess what our two full-grown, mostly independent birds are up to on a given day. It's like living in another dimension to realize that my major adventure in my journey through this decade consists of participating - at a distance - in their adventures along their journeys.
We communicate, of course, and they keep us informed of the events that they think make the most difference to us. I'll see Helga this week, for example, and she'll be coming home for the summer in the middle of May. We're looking forward to Jessi and his friend Alex stopping by for a few days on their way back to New York later this month. The rest of the time, it's hit-or-miss, mostly miss. We're slowly getting used to it.
I sat behind an interesting youngish family in church on Sunday: (right to left) father, teenage son, middle son, younger daughter, mother. A handsome family, or maybe I'm just partial to redheads. Nice haircuts, nice clothes, not fancy or ostentacious, just attentive. Lots of eye-contact and concern when the younger kids got rambunctious. The little girl went up front for story time and then right off to RE (Sunday school), but the younger boy didn't want to go, and there was a moment of disagreement and resistance before he finally settled into a parental lap. It's complicated getting used to a new place, and it was touching to watch these two conscientious parents deal with it while probably having their own doubts. Or not. I'm just observing this unfolding semi-private family moment in the midst of their ongoing, unique family dynamics, and projecting some of my own experience on what I see.
Multiply those moments of questioning how to DO THE RIGHT THING times 24/7 and you have the rich, juicy reality of family life. What's the line attributed to Leo Tolstoy? "Happy families are all alike." I beg to differ, Count Leo. Maybe unhappy, traumatized families make better Romantic (as opposed to merely romantic) novels, but I suspect there's character, plot, setting, tone, conflict, dramatic tension, and change in every family all the time. It keeps it interesting.
Or: Got Issues?
A friend's comment over dinner the other night hit me right between the chakras. She remarked how envious she is when I describe my occasional evening indulgence in a quiet meal along with a book and a drink and suitable music. I understand where she's coming from, a thirtysomething mother with a five-year-old and a six-month-old, a demanding job, a husband, and a house to manage. To hear me tell it, I'm living the life of Riley, slipping into my smoking jacket and settling into an evening of aesthetic pleasures undisturbed by the needs of others.
And she's right, up to a point. Most of the time when I get home at night I have nobody's needs to meet but my own. On the other hand, Gven Golly and I both come home to a proverbial 'empty nest', although I hate that term, and can only guess what our two full-grown, mostly independent birds are up to on a given day. It's like living in another dimension to realize that my major adventure in my journey through this decade consists of participating - at a distance - in their adventures along their journeys.
We communicate, of course, and they keep us informed of the events that they think make the most difference to us. I'll see Helga this week, for example, and she'll be coming home for the summer in the middle of May. We're looking forward to Jessi and his friend Alex stopping by for a few days on their way back to New York later this month. The rest of the time, it's hit-or-miss, mostly miss. We're slowly getting used to it.
I sat behind an interesting youngish family in church on Sunday: (right to left) father, teenage son, middle son, younger daughter, mother. A handsome family, or maybe I'm just partial to redheads. Nice haircuts, nice clothes, not fancy or ostentacious, just attentive. Lots of eye-contact and concern when the younger kids got rambunctious. The little girl went up front for story time and then right off to RE (Sunday school), but the younger boy didn't want to go, and there was a moment of disagreement and resistance before he finally settled into a parental lap. It's complicated getting used to a new place, and it was touching to watch these two conscientious parents deal with it while probably having their own doubts. Or not. I'm just observing this unfolding semi-private family moment in the midst of their ongoing, unique family dynamics, and projecting some of my own experience on what I see.
Multiply those moments of questioning how to DO THE RIGHT THING times 24/7 and you have the rich, juicy reality of family life. What's the line attributed to Leo Tolstoy? "Happy families are all alike." I beg to differ, Count Leo. Maybe unhappy, traumatized families make better Romantic (as opposed to merely romantic) novels, but I suspect there's character, plot, setting, tone, conflict, dramatic tension, and change in every family all the time. It keeps it interesting.
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Nonlinear
Beginning: Drink coffee, eat oatmeal, wander outside and pull three bushel baskets full of weeds, and what a well-designed implement it is, the bushel basket - light-weight, just big enough to hold a small load of just about anything indoors or out, handy little wire handles, woven and stapled of strong but not indestructible, almost paper-thin strips of wood. Transplant a few daffodils with spent blooms from a back bed full of daylilies to a smaller bed near the house; water them in. Carry the logs Big Mike and the tree men trimmed from the maple trees back to the woodpile for splitting and drying. Stop for an orange fizz and another piece of pizza. Before you know it, the day's half gone.
Middle: The sun went behind the clouds and came out again. Neighbors ran their riding mowers over their sixteenth-of-an-acre lawns, then they ran their weed whackers around the edges, then they ran their power blowers over the sidewalk. Preteen girls played softball in the field across the street. I looked around and noticed a lot more things blooming: little spikey ajuga, ubiquitous wild violets, vinca starting to spread, and the first big iris of the year, it's all purple. Last week everything was yellow and white, and it's been snowing apple blossoms, and when it's apple blossom time in Orange, California, I know we'll make a peach of a pair. Sitting in the adirondack chair, I actually closed my eyes for a while and took a short nap. Mac called to talk about going to get a load of manure. Timing couldn't be better, now that the beds are nearly weed-free.
End: My second wind came and went, so Gven and I decided to go to an early movie, besides it's the only time "Tristram Shandy" is shown in central swingstate, and lo and behold, we actually got there on time. As a character explains midway through, it's a film of the unfilmable postmodern novel that was written before there was a modern to be post. I knew going in that it would be different, and it didn't disappoint. The narrator/star explains that there was some confusion as to the facts, as in the gruesomely hilarious naming of the unfortunate Trismegistus/Tristram, and I won't even go into his forceps-assisted rhinoplastic delivery, his accidentally window-assisted circumcision, and a series of flashbacks to a swashbuckling forebear's battlefield injury in Flanders, later verified by Agent Scully herself. Be still my heart!
As we strolled Grandview Avenue after the movie, which I was sad to see end so quickly, it was impossible not to recall our early years of childrearing on those same Grandview streets, even while talking about how the film about the novel about the life and opinions worked better because it didn't dwell on every funny line, of which it is full. Beautiful evening of sweet memories, it only seemed right to stop and get a bite to eat. So we sat and ate and unpacked how full the present is too, what with both offspring coming home at some point during May, a couple of important birthdays, my brother's Vandervilt MBA graduation, and our own trip to a family gathering after Memorial Day, it's going to be busy.
Middle: The sun went behind the clouds and came out again. Neighbors ran their riding mowers over their sixteenth-of-an-acre lawns, then they ran their weed whackers around the edges, then they ran their power blowers over the sidewalk. Preteen girls played softball in the field across the street. I looked around and noticed a lot more things blooming: little spikey ajuga, ubiquitous wild violets, vinca starting to spread, and the first big iris of the year, it's all purple. Last week everything was yellow and white, and it's been snowing apple blossoms, and when it's apple blossom time in Orange, California, I know we'll make a peach of a pair. Sitting in the adirondack chair, I actually closed my eyes for a while and took a short nap. Mac called to talk about going to get a load of manure. Timing couldn't be better, now that the beds are nearly weed-free.
End: My second wind came and went, so Gven and I decided to go to an early movie, besides it's the only time "Tristram Shandy" is shown in central swingstate, and lo and behold, we actually got there on time. As a character explains midway through, it's a film of the unfilmable postmodern novel that was written before there was a modern to be post. I knew going in that it would be different, and it didn't disappoint. The narrator/star explains that there was some confusion as to the facts, as in the gruesomely hilarious naming of the unfortunate Trismegistus/Tristram, and I won't even go into his forceps-assisted rhinoplastic delivery, his accidentally window-assisted circumcision, and a series of flashbacks to a swashbuckling forebear's battlefield injury in Flanders, later verified by Agent Scully herself. Be still my heart!
As we strolled Grandview Avenue after the movie, which I was sad to see end so quickly, it was impossible not to recall our early years of childrearing on those same Grandview streets, even while talking about how the film about the novel about the life and opinions worked better because it didn't dwell on every funny line, of which it is full. Beautiful evening of sweet memories, it only seemed right to stop and get a bite to eat. So we sat and ate and unpacked how full the present is too, what with both offspring coming home at some point during May, a couple of important birthdays, my brother's Vandervilt MBA graduation, and our own trip to a family gathering after Memorial Day, it's going to be busy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
