Collapse

Collapse, that is the title of the latest tome I am attempting to wend my way through. The author is Jared Diamond, the author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, which was given to me by the Tender Heart of Arlington whose choice of reading material so reflects my own. G,G,and S was fantastic. So was the salty tale she gave to me and Harry Potter can't be put down until your eyelids come crashing down. Collapse is about how societies choose or don't choose to collapse. So far it is a bit overwhelming as it is more scientific than I am used to reading but this is definitely his field and passion. I will force my way through the first chapters and get into the meat of the book. Some of the subject matter I am already acquainted with and it is so satisfying when you read something that you already know. It makes you feel so smart!
The book is quite thick and should keep me busy for some time. I will try to finish it soon, as my interest is crying out for some good science fiction. The last good science fiction I can remember reading was the Rama series and the last good science fiction movie I can remember was Serenity. Why was that show ever cancelled? It was imaginative and gritty, like the first Star Wars. It never went esoteric, like the later Farscapes, or overpowering , like the rest of the Star Wars. My other favorite show went to the dogs once Jack O'Neil left.
I will try to push my way through the beginning of Collapse but there is an unfinished book lying beside the couch that even now is lilting its siren call as I type.

Stimulation

There are many things that stimulate memories. Last night I acquired a new one.
I was told by the Genius of Pittsburgh that smell is the strongest sense that stimulates memories. The fragrance of your Mother's cooking, the smell of your Father's coat long after he is gone, these all have power over your mind.
Taste can bring on recall. The taste of Minestrone brings on the fondness and tenderness of a small diner in Atlantic Highlands with its mist and coolness and thrill of a new love.
Hearing's effect has been muted by the passage of the giants. No longer do the hopes and dreams of human beings rise up ablaze with the words of Lincoln or Roosevelt or Churchill or Hitler. "Ask Not" where they have gone, we all know.
Now we come to the crux of the matter, visual! There is beauty and tenderness and pathos in that path from the eye to the brain. There is the grandeur of Ansel Adams. There is the young girl weeping at Kent State. There is the young girl so horribly burned by napalm. There is the desolation of My Lai, (Why was Hugh Thompson Jr. never awarded a Medal of Honor? If there is such a thing as honor in war, he was the penultimate example). There is young John Kennedy saluting his Father's cortege. Now there is a new one.
Last night I watched the news on television. There was a fantastically elegant cruise ship docking in Haiti. It was not all a faux pas, they did bring some bottled water. I wonder if it was Perrier. Haiti, a place of desolation and disease and malnutrition and violence and death. Recent developments have made Haiti a cause celebe among the glitterati of the world. I have news for the rich and famous of the world. All of those terrible things are not so new to Haiti. Those things exist all over the world. I wonder how many children could have been supplied with mosquito netting by the cost of adopting one child from Malawi? Malaria makes a lousy photo op. Come live in London where it takes a village to make a child feel like a pariah.
The sight of that cruise ship aroused a bile in me. Holland was fed by an air drop. Berlin was fed with an airlift that had more problems to deal with than permission to land. The sight of that cruise ship will remain with me and another sense will also be there. Something smells! Perhaps it is the tint of the residents that is holding back the relief that should be so readily available. Many of the Haitians speak French. If they cannot understand why they have been allowed to suffer so, they might speak to the residents of the French Quarter.
I will close now as I have to recharge my bile duct.

And Again

Yesterday was pizza again. I always have two days in a row as there is enough left over dough and toppings for two days. Each day I have two ten inch pizzas. I am very fond of pizza and still remember the old Neopolitan adage "Seven days without pizza makes on weak." (week).
Today will probably be a jammies day as I have no need to go anywhere and have a lot of things that need doing in the house. I also think that I will make fried chicken if the weather is not too cold.
The weather has to be mild whenever I fry anything as the frying will set off the smoke alarm unless I have the windows open and a fan on. All three apartments are tied to the same smoke alarm and if it goes off, everyone else evacuates the premises and stands in the driveway, staring up at me with accusing glares.
I have begun a cursory study of religions, both ancient and contemporary. I have done this before but never with such a slow and comfortable pace. To me, they seem to be all talking about the same God but with different options that have accumulated over the years. I guess that they are much like computers. They all start out with an Intel chipset but once they are established they all start piling on the options and different software. The latest things that I have discovered are that Abraham carried the accounts of Noah and Job with him from Sumer where they were already hundreds of years old. The Epic of Gilgamesh contains what seems like an eyewitness account of the Flood. I have always felt that the Ark may have been an overturned Marsh Arab home that was pitched outside and inside.
I have read some of the Quran and it is sad to see how similar the religion of the Muslims, the Jews, and the Christians are. They are all "People of the Book". It is all of the options that were added later that differ so much. They seem to be all talking about the same values and God and concomitant tales but there is so much tension between them now. Why can't they all realize "A God by any other name....". I will leave Hinduism for last as it seems like Religion 999,999.0. I do have a fondness for some of their dieties, the ones with pot bellies. It is something that I can identifiy with. I cannot identify with all of the skulls but the Mayas could. The river to the underworld might also join the two with the Greeks..
See what happens when you go to bed early and get up early and drink double strength coffee. The wheels start turning!

Pizza again

Yesterday was pizza day. I had planned to just have a chicken sandwich for the day but was overcome by the possibility of pizza. I already had the pizza sauce, from a previous day, and had all of the toppings. As usual, it is one of the few things that I do right. It was very good. This time I added hot cherry peppers instead of green pepper. They added just the right bite.
Last night was not a good night for sleeping. I kept waking and realized that I was going over a litany of all of the mistakes I have made in life and all of the people that I have disappointed. I began to wonder if this was the final inventory before the doors are closed. The only saving grace is that there is nothing that I can do about the past and it is all behind me. If I have disappointed you or offended you, I am sorry that I did. I still have the nightmares about being late for work. It is nice to wake up and realize that that no longer applies to me, cuddle up under the blanket, and drift off gain. There are not many things in life as comforting as a warm blanket in a cool room.

Stawful

Once more I made beef stew. Once more the stew is awful. I know what I did wrong. I did something the recipe cautioned me not to do. Telling a Swede not to do something, now there is a recipe for disaster! Why can't I make a decent beef stew? My Mother made wonderful beef stew among other things and she never used a recipe book for anything.
I can make all sorts of esoteric things and simple things but I can't make a decent beef stew. It comes out terrible just like all of the soups that I try to make. I guess that I should confine myself to Swedish and Italian recipes. They always seem to come out delicious. I have an Irish gene so I should be able to make beef stew. Irish Stew uses lamb for the meat so maybe that is the answer.
I have a new plan. It is not really a plan, it is more of a fervent desire. I will not state what it is as I am very superstitious and feel if I were to state it, it could never come true. Still, as I lay in bed at night before going to sleep, I think of how wonderful it would be. Nothing makes God laugh harder than a Man with a plan. I have let one person know about it. I told the wife of my friend from Bangaladesh about it and she wished me good luck. I think that she was just being polite, she and her husband are very polite, and smiled with just a tad of twinkle in her eye.
It is nice to know that there is some variety arising among the population of this town. I have never seen a black person in this town. There are lots of Frenchmen and Italians and Polish people here but the diversity is scant. There were lots of cloth mills in this town, that explains the French influence, and stone quarrys, that explains the Italians, and lots of hard manual labor to be done, that explains the Polish people but there is no extensive mix. In a town founded by Quakers, I would expect a more diverse population.
Still, diversity is not always a welcome thing. I put too many ingredients in the stew and that is probably why there is no harmony to the flavor.

Introspector Cluceaux

It comes often lately, reviewing my life and behavior. Last night I spent several hours wondering how I could have become such a fool when I had an oustanding example to follow. Loves gone wrong, aspirations fizzling out through being too lazy to do anything about them, potentials withering due to lack of purpose, the list goes on and on. The personal ethical code that my Father so deeply exercised seems to have meant nothing to me. I cheated, I lied, I stole, I was a downright rotter.
This morning I was up before dawn. As the Sun arose, it began to snow. It was not just a light snow, it was falling hard and the wind was blowing fiercely.
I noticed that there was no congregation of birds in the cedar tree, as there usually is in the morning. I began to be concerned about the birds. There were many robins yesterday. How can a robin, the harbinger of Spring, survive a Winter blast? I started to consider how I could be of help to them.
Then it hit, introspection! I was not concerned about the people who might be out in this blast. I was not concerned about the homeless people who might be shivering in a cardbord box. I was thinking about the birds.
What an unfeeling dolt I have become. I was not always like this. I still weep when reading a sad book and feel bad when I see children walking to school without warm clothing but I have little feeling for the people of Haiti or Afghanistan. I once cared about the human race but now seem only concerned about things that directly effect me.
The only thing that I am really proud of is that I once had a small part to play in the raising of three wonderful children. I used to pat myself on the back about how wonderful and talented they all turned out. Introspection tuned in and I realized that all that I did was go to work to provide and their wonderful Mother is the reason that they turned out so special. She made them aware of literature, made sure that they did their homework, fed them nutritious meals and a diet of human kindness. I simply provided the vittles.
The introspection is good for me. It helps me to realize that all the pumped up pride that I have always had is not justified. There is more to life than knowing the answers to the questions on Jeopardy. So I will say goodbye to Grendal and the formula for voltage drop on co-axial cable and try to remember the phrase that my children's Mother instilled in them so many times. "Mankind is our business.". Yes He has, Tim.

Rising

Yesterday was another bread day. It came out wonderful, as usual. It is so nice to have artisanal bread at home. The boule is dark tan and the texture and chew are wonderful.
The only complication with making it is that it takes twenty hours to rise. Then crank the oven up to five hundred degrees and get out the dutch oven and one hour later you are in heaven. The other problem is to wait two hours for it to cool. That never happens. I am into the butter after one hour and the crust breaks into large shatteringly crisp flakes as the loaf is sliced and the butter melts into the holes and pretty soon the loaf is almost gone. It keeps well for about two days and then is good for dunking.
Bread, cheese, wine, and a little sausage. Life is good!
I am amazed at the number of birds that are in the cedar tree out front each morning. Yesterday I am sure there was a very large flock of robins eating the berries. I have never seen robins in so large a flock, have never seen them eating berries, and have never seen robins in the middle of January. Their breasts were very bright orange, almost red, so I think that they were all males. I must be wrong, they can't have been robins. If they were, that fraternity of robins is going to be very lonely for several months as the females know that you can't incubate eggs in an igloo. I did notice that the weather was very, very mild yesterday. We are in the January thaw. Still, February looms on the horizon.

Whale-Mart

Yesterday my Brother took me to Wal-Mart. It is not just Wal-Mart, it is a Super Wal-Mart. They even have a grocery store. I saw the set of pots that I would like to have and they are stupendous and about one fifth the price of Allclad.
The grocery store was not impressive. They have the cheapest of most products and are all overpriced. The fresh produce was impressive but very overpriced. The meat was, for the most part, all Select grade. Select is below Choice and even then the meat was overpriced. They did have pig's feet and colossal frozen shrimp. The selection was incredible but the quality is not acceptable. I will stick with the little market here as everything there is of a higher quality, priced lower, and I know where everything is. I thought of the market my daughter took me to, Whole Foods. Everything there was of the highest quality and priced accordingly and the selection was even greater than Wal-Mart. They even had Italian Fontina. Stores provide what their customers demand. The demand in the Whole Foods area is for quality and diversity and the demand out here is not so discriminating. Still the little market that I go to tries the best that they can. They carry most of the products that Cook's Illustrated recommends and are reasonably priced. They don't have pig's feet but they have plenty of white bread. This is a very white bread community. They do carry Farmland bacon and Pacific beef broth and their private label is as good as IGA, which is very good. Very good priced cheaply is better than cheap priced not so cheaply. I spend about forty dollars a week on groceries and get almost everything that I can reasonably expect at Hannaford's. Maybe it is because the chain originates in Maine that they are so easy to get along with. People from Maine mind their business and keep their nose out of your's.

Chickened Out

Well, it turned out to be roast chicken. It turned out that way because I got lazy and I had a defrosted chicken that needed to be cooked. Is there anything easier than roasting a chicken? 350 degrees, two hours in the oven with some baking potatoes, white wine and Wondra for the gravy, 1/2 container of sour cream for the potatoes, a can of green beans, and supper is made!
The white meat is in the refrigerator awaiting some good bread for sandwiches. So I guess today will be a bread baking day. It will be okay to bake bread as this place is now warm enough for the bread to rise instead of making breadsicles. When the Sun comes up I think that I will go for an early morning walk. I have been housebound for too long.
I finished the book on how the Great Pyramid was built and found that it was very informative and interesting. I will try to access the computer graphics on the Internet but I know that I will fail as I always do in attempting like that. It could be because my modem speed is 2. 2 is good for me because I can only read at 2. I took a speed reading course when I was younger but I found that when speed reading, I lose the joy of reading. You tear through the material and there is no time for thinking. That ADD distracting thinking and pondering that has so ruled my life. If you can't enjoy reading, what is the point of doing it?

Heat

I now have heat. The burner repair man came this morning and the apartment is slowly warming up. I awakened the landlord at seven o'clock this morning and he said he was unaware that I didn't have heat. It is now sixty degrees here and the wolf at the door is no longer trying to get out. When it gets warmer I think that I will make pizza or roast a chicken.
Gurney's seeds came yesterday and it is going to be hard to wait a month before planting them in containers. I must though as for he last several years I have been inundated with seedlings in the bedroom window. I needed a weed whacker to get to the bed.
It is amazing how a little heat can brighten one's attitude. Boeuf en Daube is also going to be on the menu soon.

Everything Comes in Threes, I hope.

It has been a trying three days. There has been no heat or hot water for three days. The landlord says he has called someone but I think there is a monetary reason for the delay. Usually a burner repair service charges a premium for a week-end dispatch. Knowing my landlord, I think that he has decided to wait for the lower rate. I am not sure of this but I think that it is so. He is warm enough as he has a woodstove in his apartment.
The landlord wanted to know recently if I had an electric heater as his electric bill had gone up fifty dollars. I told him that I didn't. Maybe I should have taken this as an omen and purchased one.
There is another leak under the sink. There are several things wrong with the plumbing here. The toilet still works minimally, so there is no emergency. I told him about the steps several months ago and he said he would take a look at them but has not done it yet.
I am tired of having so many things wrong with the heat and the plumbing and the steps and the wiring. I have decided to move. Where and when and how I don't know but it is time.
He will still come knocking on the door the morning, early, that the rent is due. I don't like to complain but the trickle of problems has become a torrent and the floodgates are loosed. I will wait for the seeds to be delivered and then plan a decent exit.
It is difficult to type with gloves on. I have a jacket and a hat and long underwear on and hope the heat comes back on today. I will deal with the leak somehow. I have not been angry at anything in many years but I can feel some anger growing. This place is very amenable to me but I feel that it is time for a change. I can only hope that it will be possible.

Same old, same old

Once more I have overdone something. Once more it involves tomatoes. The seed catalogues have been pouring in and I overdid the ordering. Last year I ordered plants and most of them perished during shipping. I was able to get some old fashioned tomatoes from the nursery down the street but not many of the ones that I wanted to try. This year I am going to start a few seeds of each kind as last year I was overcome with a plethora of plants and many of them never got transplanted. The only kind that I was unable to find were Marmande which I have wanted to try. I may make another order for Poblano peppers and Anaheim peppers.
The overabundance of tomatoes doesn't just apply to seeds. My Brother is amused at the number of cans of tomatoes that I purchase at the grocery store. He doesn't realize that even though I purchase at least ten cans, I always run out by the end of the month. I can't help it, I am crazy about tomatoes. One of my favorite meals is just elbow macaroni with a can of tomatoes over it with lots of black pepper and cheese. I make tomato sauce at least once a week and pizza sauce as needed.
It is so nice to go out on the porch in the morning and see tomatoes from one end of it to the other and then pick and eat a juicy, ripe, tomatoe that has been warming in the Sun. Sliced tomatoes with some mayonaise or balsamic vinegar are wonderful. I used to put quite a bit of salt on them but salt is now a no-no. I am still addicted to soy sauce but that only happens a few times a month. It is difficult to cut back on salt as the food doesn't taste as vibrant but, after a while, the flavors of the food seem to come through in a gentler, tastier way.
I was able to order Omar's Lebanese this year and am looking forward to trying them. The Marmandes are French and therefore as difficult to obtain as the French are to understand. Maybe sometime, if dreams come true, a year in Provence would solve the problem, followed by a year in Tuscany, and then a year in the Greek islands, and a year in intensive care working off all of the cream and butter and sausage, esconced in the lands of Marmande and San Marzano.

Bread

I made the bread again. It is wonderful how it always comes out so good and how easy it is. It is only kneaded fourteen times and comes out of the oven looking like it just came from a French bakery. I fried up some chicken and had chicken, rice, leeks, garlic, spices, herbs, and mushroom gravy.
There seems to be quite a bit of snow on the porch so today will be snow removal and thinking. I watch the squirrels leaping from branch to limb in this weather and I wonder how they survive the Winter. They don't seem to hibernate and there is no open water for them and no readily available food so I wonder how they survive. I try to do my part to help them but I don't keep at it regularly enough to make a difference.
I am thinking too much. Lately I have been wondering if there is a purpose to life. I have taken courses at school that seem to say that it is all an accident or a very long plan. I have thought about this for a long time and come up with, what seems to me, a reasonable explanation. Still, how can a miniscule creature, on a tiny rocky and wet planet, understand the Universe. How can I possibly understand or determine what happened billions of years ago? I still remember Papagianos's explanation "What I am teaching you today is proven fact. Twenty years from now scientists will say how could they have believed such nonsense.". So a tiny conglomeration of molecules on a tiny rocky wet planet wonders "What does it all mean?", "What matters?".
We stay alive because other things die. Be it a chicken or an onion, we stay alive because something else died. What will stay alive because we will die? Purpose, Plan, or Pandemonium, what does it all mean and is there a meaning? Even the yeast dies so that I might have bread. It doesn't do this on purpose, it didn't plan to end up in an envelope, it just happened. Do we just happen? Are there strings attached to everything? Twenty years from now will they say "How could he have believed that Stringy Nonsense?".
Too much thinking, and what is thinking anyway? Maybe Pittsburgh knows, Uxbridge certainly doesn't.

Desolution

The resolution lasted six hours. I will try to pick it up again. It would be nice to finally succeed at something.

A time for change

2010, a time for change. I made a resolution last night. I don't remember ever making a New Year's Resolution before. I resolved to put away my old nemesis. I hope that I am able to persevere with this resolve. If plans go smoothly this will be a year of great changes. My driver's license will expire in May. I don't think that I will renew it. I haven't driven in seven years and have not missed it. It is much easier to be a burden to those around you than to bear the burden yourself.
I will be sixty-five at the end of May. I have had two years that I never planned on. It has been a quiet two years here in Lake Uxbridge. It has been two years of reading and cooking and staring out the window pensively and indulging my old nemesis. Begone foul nemesis! It is time to get up and do something. Time to renew old bonds and glory in the joy of being alive. I will not make a list of things to do but cleaning is wafting across what passes for a mind that I have. Lookout world, he has decided to do something. So, this year will see the second side of me. A side that has grown dusty and musty, stored away and disused for so long. Maybe I will renew the license as I feel the urge to travel, an urge that I have not felt in forty-five years.