Good Morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Disrobed,

 

Are you dressed yet?  I am not; I often write to you first thing, from my bed.  Yes, it is intimate, and you might blush a bit;  I do.  I write to you after a cup of coffee and when the cat has settled into a furry puddle, and while the birds are still singing outside the window.

 

I keep my legs under the covers, and set the computer on my lap- this always pinches my wrists oddly, and I look forward to saying one day "I have these problems in my wrists because I wrote letters in bed for many years."  I have a tatty old silk robe that I put on for cooler mornings, and on warmer ones, like this one, I am usually in a short knit cotton nightgown, a nightie.  Both the tatty robe and the nightie are pink.  I have been sewing my own sleepwear these days, embroidering the binding in small trailing blossoms, because it looks better than the stuff I could buy in stores.  Sometimes I dab on a rose scented perfume before I go to bed.  Think of all this la vie en rose as you read on.

 

Yesterday I heard a compelling collection of short stories on Selected Shorts-  it was from a compendium of pieces on Women in Clothes.  The last work, titled Nothing, is a gem of a poem by Lisa Robertson, and I hope you will take a few minutes to listen to it- I would rather have given you the text to read, but, just like my viscose navy floral short sleeve blouse with the lilac piping I could not find it anywhere.  The poem can be found on the audio file at 50 minutes and 50 seconds.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

North, to Alaska

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A fine manifesto.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Dwellers,

 

Come, adopt with me some of the fine stipulations of this manifesto for living.  Here, in the house, there is a loom where the sofa should be, and a stack of guitars where the bin for recycling would be.  There are roller skates under the answering machine.  There is a drum kit and a mixing board in the ceramics studio, and a sewing machine and an accordion in the painting atelier.  We keep it pretty well muddled here already, but I can easily get behind further exiling the dining room by stacking a few more books on the table!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

roadside libraries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear New in Town,

 

I was thinking that this might be a good way for us to get to know each other-  We could have a Little Free Library.  We could build it together, or if you don't want to participate in the collection, if you don't want to work in the 'stacks,' you could just borrow some of the books.  I think we should paint our library a color that will look nice in front of the house- nothing too ostentatious, nothing too gingerbread-y. 

 

I am very excited to select the books we shall put into it!  Educational, yes, of course, but we cannot ignore the soul.  I thought Ariel by Sylvia Plath, and On The Road, by Kerouac, and we will have everything written by Italo Calvino, and lots of Annie Dillard books too, plus Borges, and we must have The Dud Avocado, and the mysteries about the pig, and we should have Ray Bradbury and Terry Pratchett, and Rumer Godden, Diana Wynn-Jones, Lloyd Alexander, Nabokov, Joan Didion, Neruda, James Joyce, Tove Jansson, John McPhee, Wodehouse....

I am going out to see how much old redwood fencing is left, and to see about some scrap roofing.  Meet me in the cool of the evening, and we can draw up some plans.  Bring a pencil.









 

O black day

O black day.

They have killed my white horse, my pony boy.

Right now, which will be 'then' by the time you read this,
I can see the hole growing larger and larger, behind the cottonwood tree.

The backhoe pivots, leans down and curves itself full,
pivots again, and a rain of earth falls.

The sheriff came about a week ago, but my pony boy said nothing to the deputy;
who stood, near his truck, with his black boot on the white rail of the fence;
while the white horse stayed in the middle of his corner of the world.

I saw them this morning.  They entered, two of them, they hesitated; my pony boy stood
in the center of his field, as he has for 10, 15, 20 years; and then they walked up and put on a
halter.   

There he goes now.  They have lain him on a flatbed trailer, and they are driving him,
in state, over the field, towards the stream, to the hole. 

O black day.

Pie, Mr. Tweety.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear A. M.,

 

Today I offer you a Breakfast Pie.  The Fannie Farmer Baking Book, by the charming Marion Cunningham, says that Breakfast Pie used to be very common among the early rising agriculturalists of our nation.  Around here, much more recently, a prominent Dodo-ist remarked:  "Breakfast Pie!  What a great country this once was!"

 

Make it and bake it and decide for yourself what you think about our country and breakfast pie.

 

 

 

 

 

Creamed Oatmeal-Walnut Pie

      (Adapted from The Fannie Farmer Baking Book, by Marion Cunningham, 1984, Alfred A. Knopf, NY.)

 

Oatmeal pie crust:

 

3/4 cup flour

1/4 cup rolled oats

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup vegetable shortening or butter

2 - 3 tablespoons water

 

Mix the dry ingredients and cut in the shortening,  or toss everything but the water into the food processor.  Add the water slowly.  Roll it out, and patch it, because the oats make it very fragile, so it will break frequently as you fit it into a 9 or 8 inch pie pan.  Prick it with a fork.

 

Blind bake the crust partially- use pie weights, or another pie tin, or beans on parchment to prevent the crust from rising in the oven.  Bake it for 6 minutes at 425 degrees, then take out the weights and bake it for another 4 or 5 minutes. 

 

Filling:

 

1 1/2 cups milk

1/3 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup oatmeal

1/2 cup raisins

3 tablespoons butter

 

2 eggs, lightly beaten

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

 

Combine the first 6 ingredients in a saucepan and cook over medium heat until it begins to bubble and thicken.  Remove pan from heat and temper the beaten eggs a bit before adding them, by mixing half a cup of the hot porridge into the eggs, then stir the eggs into the pan of porridge.  Add the walnuts, fill the pie shell, and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.  The center will be shiny, while the edges will look dry.  Let your breakfast pie set for 30 minutes and then eat it warm, with heavy cream, if you have a cow, or even if you just have a pint of it from the store!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

bzzz.

 

 

 

Dear Concerned,

I know that you are worried about pollinators, and that you curse the day that we began to apply economic values to things like air, scenery, and species diversity.  It seemed like a good way to get through their thick skulls at the time, but I wish we had never gotten into bed with them in the first place.

Now that the damage is done, what do we do with ourselves and our billions dollar industry of fill-in- the-blank?  I do not know.  I do not know. 

 

I do know that in our perfect world, the one we live in; not the other one, not the one where everything is quantifiable in currency and utility to humans; there is plenty of gorgeous, useful, and exotic treasure to be sentiently enjoyed.

This year we had some real humdinger bumblebees in the wooly blue curls.  Golly they were great!  They were of regal bearing:  Large and loud and remarkable.  I wish I could be sure about just which bumblebees they were; a carpenter bumblebee perhaps; I am really only going on size, though, and that isn't much to key a species on.  I don't let my lack of proper identification diminish my enjoyment, however.

While you are contemplating those that buzz and hum, you might want to watch this film about a particular kind of bumblebee.