Looking ahead then looking back

 

Beautyberries close up

 Now that the election is over—if it IS over and decided—we can get on with our political angst (on both sides) and set about to straighten out our part of the country—if it needs it. We can concentrate on how to navigate the upcoming holidays.

Our family Thanksgiving plans, like many others I presume, are cancelled. 

But, to sort of make up for that, I am involved in two other fun activities. One is our monthly writing group meeting next Wednesday, meaning that BFF Dot is overnighting at Couchwood so we can both attend. 

               

The other is a new event: hosting the local poets meeting. Our regular gathering place, the main fire station, is closed for the year. For the past two months, the group has met at a pavilion at Tyndall Park. But plans are that mid-November temps will preclude meeting there again. So I volunteered. That gives me the opportunity to decorate the front part of the house with all the fall-motif collections I’ve amassed over the years.

Let me finish out goings-on at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs that I began last week. On another day, either Saturday or Sunday, we stopped at La Familia for lunch. Again, we were masked and seated ourselves at a booth near a wall.

Lunch boxes—many, many lunch boxes--decorated an upper shelf as far as we could see. Patrons sometimes stopped by close to us to gape at them. I don’t remember ever carrying a lunch box to school, but I remember Dad’s black one, about as large as our mailbox, with a tall thermos inside. I’m drawing a blank about what Lydia ordered but I had a taco salad.

The weather during the week until late Thursday was raw—cold, windy, raining, or rainy. We stayed in and wrote. Monday night was communal dinner in the Main House. Though there were two other writers around, they’d chosen to eat in their rooms. Greens/veggie salads, pureed  soups—one night, carrot and tomato, another night, served in what I call a cereal bowl, squash, and coconut. Those two items were enough for entire meal, but, no, we had a plate of chicken, roasted broccoli and carrots, and mashed potatoes. We ate most of that meal at the table.

Another noon, we drove out of town toward Rogers to Rowdy Beavers. It was raining, but I didn’t hear any rowdiness and saw no beavers scurrying around. LOL

  

Wednesday night, we ate salmon, roasted veggies, and rice. (Jana alternated between potatoes and rice.) Another night was a pork chop, potatoes, and roasted cauliflower. On our last night, Thursday, for dessert, Lydia had store-bought wafers and I had two severed fingers, complete with slivered-almond fingernails and red food coloring blood. They were made from a sugar cookie recipe—in honor of Halloween.

 Lydia finished her long-in-progress novel and I worked steadily toward the Creative-Non-Fiction assignments looming before the term ends in December.

The drive home on Friday merited a gas-stop again at Marshall, then a side trip to Leslie where my youngest brother—he of the Arkansas River flood a couple of Mays ago—lives after leaving Mayflower. He is in possession of an orchard, raised vegetable beds, and a two-story house with a basement.

                

He also has animal neighbors: 30 feral pigs, bobcats and even a bear or two have been spotted by neighbors. Ooh!

c 2020, by PL, dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

 

For the umpteenth time, a week in the Ozarks

Lydia, several years ago @ The Wharf, Hot Springs

 

                With COVID-19 cancelling most group activities, writer-friend Lydia and I made plans to drive to Eureka Springs and spend a week as residents at the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow, a first for her, but a return for me. She has one novel to wrap up and another to continue. I have this column to compose and a slew of MFA assignments/ requirements to work on.

                October is always a good time to travel north and this year was no exception. Yellows, reds, and oranges interspersed with pines and cedars provided many “oohs and aahs” especially as we drove through Clinton, then into Marshall where we gassed up, stood in line, social distanced for the restroom, then bought a sweet snack to take us the rest of the way. It was early afternoon. I was impressed enough to pen a poem: “The men/ at Marshall’s gas/station all wore their masks/ which surprised me in this mountain/ county.” The forests became more colorful the farther we traveled.

                I was the passenger this trip. Lydia was a careful driver. A little after three p. m. we pulled in to the Colony and were greeted by the new-to-me director, Michelle. We were all masked as was Jana in the kitchen. Packets and keys in hand, we headed to the door of 505 Spring Street to unload. Afterward, Lydia moved the car across the street to the lay-by. Her suite is downstairs; mine is right inside the front door next to the communal kitchen/ dining area. I’ve stayed in this suite since this building opened. Originally, it was Muse 1; now, with all five of the suites having been remodeled, mine is the Zeek Taylor Suite.

                By the time we’d each unpacked and put things away and marveled at our newly-decorated suites, it was dinner time. Of the four residents, we were the only ones to choose to eat down in the Main House. We sat at the ends of the long dining table. Jana (Yahna, of Czech extraction)  served a crunchy veggie salad, then brought on a plate filled with beef chunks covered with (shudder) mushroom gravy and a mound of rice. (On my pre-sent foods-I-don’t-like list were cooked turnips, liver ’n onions and tofu. I’d forgotten gravy and mushrooms.) I picked at the rice and beef, forced to consume gravy with the bites, then dug into the baked apple dessert, a small fruit topped with a fig, wrapped in a pastry igloo. A few bites of that, and I decided I’d had enough. Lydia felt the same, although her gluten-free dessert was a pudding of some kind. We each asked for a to-go box, and took our uneaten dinners back to our rooms. We ate them the next day at the 505 dining table.

                We both accomplished some needed work from then until bedtime. I turned out the light right before ten (I hadn’t had my daily nap), but she stayed up till midnight, her usual bedtime hour.

                That was Friday. Saturday, we masked up and headed to Sparky’s for a late lunch. After waiting for twenty minutes, we were seated at a two-fer table by one wall. We de-masked. She had a burger and I had a Rueben, half of which resided in the fridge beside the gravy dish. But we are happy we came even though it was in the low forties, temp-wise. More later.

 

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Even after the book’s published, I still jot stuff in my journals

 

              If I were publishing a supplement to my latest book, “A Compendium of Journal Jottings,” here are some of the things I’d add—from my journals of late.

                NATION – A Kennedy, who was in the House of Representatives ran for a Massachusetts Senate seat and lost. – I didn’t know that Sitka, Alaska used to be a Russian settlement founded in 1804 by a Mr. Baranov, a colonist and early 19c. governor of Russian Alaska. The land was long inhabited previously by Alaskan natives, many of whom he killed or enslaved. (WaPo)—NIAID ( National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institute of Health. (WaPo)—I hadn’t heard that FDR wanted/ tried to pack the SCOTUS in 1937. (WaPo) –William Howard Taft served as chief justice of SCOTUS after he was president.  –Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice in 1967. –Harry Blackmun authored the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. All three of these men are buried at Arlington where Justice Ginsburg now lies beside her husband. (AP) -- One-hundred-thirty-nine-thousand families are renters.

                GIVEN NAMES – Agence, Lummie, Mudelean, Raygan, Brudcus, Thor, Alleyene, Emonya, Earnese, Idrees, Andeessen, Tolton, Finus, Qindi, Lopha, Edathara, Genois, Dareh, Larynzo, Arnon, Ashaki, Astead, Ledyard, Precilla, Dekeesha.

                SURNAMES – Greenfieldboyce, Sussman, Lacina, Greenhouse, Clodfelter, Samenow, Sun, Wen, Tubiana, Bleacher, Ameringen, Gregorian, Glassman, Hausfather, Steptoe.

                WORLD -A quarter of all known animal species are beetles. (NPR)

                WEATHER – Medicane = a Mediterranean cyclone; a storm all but unknown until the 1990s, was headed for Greece on September 18, ’20.

                UNIVERSE – Phosphine, a chemical detected in Venus’ atmosphere that could have been produced by a biological source. We won’t know until sending a spacecraft there to take a reading of the atmosphere. (NYT News Quiz, mid-Sept.) Venus roasts at 100s of degrees and is cloaked by clouds containing droplets of corrosive sulfuric acid. (Ibid.) – Cygnus Loop =  colorful ribbons of a supernova’s blast wave that screaming (sic) through space, heating and compressing dust and gas in a way that causes the ribbons to glow. So bright that humans would have seen it from Earth 15,000 years ago. (Business Insider)

                ANIMALS – Elephants are the only animals drinking below the surface of the water and sucking the silt, which is where neurotoxins reside. Botswana has the largest population of elephants at135,000 animals. (Bloomberg)

              PLACES IN ARKANSAS – Crosses, Wild Cherry, Tollville, Ingalls.

              UNKNOWN WORDS – “caravanning” – a group of motorists driving to a specific area and planning to loiter. . . blocking off intersections or loitering on private property. (AD-G) – “shambolic” = chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged.—“abstruse” = difficult to understand; obscure. – “kakistocracy” = government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state. (FB) – “non sequitur" = a conclusion or statement that does not logically follow from the previous argument/statement; usually untrue; an absurd statement. (Bing).

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

             

Between college terms—getting home projects started

           Mid-week, I will begin the fourth Master of Fine Arts (MFA) class online from University of AR at Monticello. This one is “creative non-fiction” instructed by an out-of-stater, one advantage, the director said, of online classes. Do all these years and weeks of writing columns for The Amity Southern Standard—about 1,100-- count as “creative non-fiction”? I assume so, but with three textbooks, I no doubt will be required to widen my horizons, as I was encouraged to do in the latest poetry class.

        

      

        

                Son drove over from Hot Springs last Friday to help with sanding the original wooden screen door on the south side of the house. During its 86 years, this house had shifted and the door wouldn’t close properly. He bought and brought a spring to add to the turnbuckle already there. The diagonal piece is the turnbuckle. Turnbuckle was a new term for me. [A turnbuckle, stretching screw or bottlescrew is a device for adjusting the tension or length of ropes, cables, tie rods, and other tensioning systems. It normally consists of two threaded eye bolts, one screwed into each end of a small metal frame, one with a left-hand thread and the other with a right-hand thread.]

                After adding a short piece of scrap wood he found in the shed, he closed a gap on one side of the door. Still, there was light between the other side of the door and the frame. After much sanding of the threshold, the door closed better, even with that tiny gap that “no fly or mosquito can get through.”

Eric and I social-distancing. You can see the door that I have to sand & paint.

                Now, to paint the door white to match the other wood parts of this ole’ house. That’s MY job.  I won’t set a date to have it finished, however. Plus, I must buy a sander.

                Last weekend and the first of this week were busy. First off, I usually stop for the week’s supplies on the way home from church, but last Saturday, since I was expecting guests early in the week, and since I had a $5-off coupon for that day, I decided to shop. Guess what? I completely forgot the $5 coupon. It was clipped to my list, which I stuffed into my pants pocket. Duh!

                Today was final cleaning and prepping for tomorrow’s writers meeting here. Only four of us, so we can social distance with no trouble.

                Then, Wednesday, the fall term begins. I’m s-o-o-o-o thankful I don’t have to travel to an on-sight classroom.

                Stay safe, all!

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Poaching unripe ground fall pears

Unripe, ground-fall pears

                I swore I wouldn’t do anything with this season’s pear crop and have offered the fruit to several folks. However, the day before son Eric came to mow the acre, I picked up the ground-fall pears—small, unripe—so he wouldn’t have to mow over them. They filled the bottom of a plastic dishpan which I brought up to the house. What could be done with them, I wondered, besides throwing them out for the rabbits and squirrels and chipmunks? My curiosity got the better of me and I went to Google: how about poaching them, eHow.com’s article suggested. The only food I’d ever heard of poaching were eggs, which I never actually did.

                So I bit. Washed the fruit, layered one deep in a Dutch oven, covered them with water, set the pot on the stove, then read the directions: “Steep the pears in a fragrant bath of fruit-forward white wine (no), water, sugar, scraped vanilla bean (dumped a bit of liquid vanilla instead), and cinnamon (one stick).” I tasted the “water.” Not sweet enough: added more sugar, then the last of the maple syrup, the rest of a bottle of cranberry juice, and an instant package of Tang. Mixed. Tasted better, sweeter.

                Turned on the burner and when the liquid boiled, I lowered the heat so it could “simmer for 45 minutes.” Nothing about covering the pot, so I didn’t. But I set two timers and stayed fairly close to the kitchen area during that time.

                When the timers sounded, I turned off the heat, pulled out from a lower cabinet a plastic-wrapped round silver-ish tray that I’d never used in the fourteen years I’ve lived here, covered it with a drying towel and placed each pear on it. The skins were shiny instead of dull like when they went into the brew. The liquid had cooked down to a small amount.

pears after poaching

                After they cooled, I pulled out a cutting board and a serrated knife and began cutting each in quarters, removing the stem/seeds/hard spots (rare). Of course, I had to taste the first one. It was semi sweet, both skin and pulp. When all were cut, I plopped them back into what liquid was left, pulled down the largest casserole dish I owned. Sure enough, it held both the fruit and the juice. But barely. If I’d trembled while putting the covered bowl into the fridge, it would likely have spilled. It didn’t.

                The recipe continues: “The poached pears can be served warm, cold or at room temperature, by themselves or accompanied with poaching syrup (?). Vanilla-bean ice cream and some additional wine for zing add an extra note of indulgence.” Probably not, but perhaps. When my Florida son comes for the weekend, we’ll see if my experiment was worth crowing about. And perhaps repeating.

The fruit is crisp and crunchy. And sweet. I call it a success. 

c2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA

Being back online is a blessing for a writer

Time for air conditioning

                How dependent I am on a working internet at my advanced age was brought home to me when a July 2 thunderstorm took out the modem. Even after a 52-minute consult with two Filipino women—one whom I could understand; the other whom I couldn’t—and trying everything they suggested, which I’d already done once, a tech was scheduled for Tuesday, the 7^th between 2 and 4 p.m. FIVE DAYS LATER! OH, WOE!

                By my schedule, I should be napping since I arose with the alarm to get my taxes to town to the agent, to buy stamps at the post office, to buy printer ink at Office Depot, which was locked and barred, then buy birdseed at Tractor Supply with Mother’s Day gift cards from my younger daughter. Three errands out of four wasn’t bad, eh? Oh, and I stopped at a Dollar General for retirement cards. Lately, my cousin and my BFF have both retired. And now I had stamps!

                I was more careful selecting bird seed this time because the young birds didn’t care for all the small yellow seeds; they wanted sunflower seeds. In desperation one day, I bought some cockatiel seed from the grocery store. No, thank you. Perhaps the squirrels and chipmunks enjoyed what was spit out or pushed out, or what I dumped out the following morning.

                I was saddened by the death of Hugh Downs. In 2014, I read his book, Letter to Great Grandson, 2004, Scribner, p. 93 where he said, “To walk around the south pole—thus around the world—takes twenty-four steps, each step in a different time zone.” This scrap of paper was one of the things I found when I cleaned off the surface for the modem. Isn’t that strange, that I found his quote from six years ago around the time of his death? Wonders never cease.

                Birthday joys abounded even as late as today. My older daughter and her son, who was in Finland as an exchange student until the country “deported” all exchange students at the onset of COVID, came by to visit. We social-distanced. She brought fresh plums and tommy-toe tomatoes from a farmers’ market in Conway and a fresh, still-in-the-package mask. Jake, who will be a music major at UCA this fall, looked through my enormous stack of LPs and took home a plastic crate full. Now, who would like the others?

                Stay out of the heat if possible; wear a mask in public, and stay safe otherwise.

Grandson Billy Paulus and nephew Keith Hoggard @ my 80th birthday party

               

Flag Day June 14 -

                It just so happens that while reading A. Scott Berg’s 2013 biography of President Woodrow Wilson, titled eponymously Wilson, I came to the summer of 1916 when, after much provocation from Germany upon its neighbors far and wide, and after years of Wilson’s determination to “stay neutral,” things got so bad that the president went to Congress for permission to put the U. S. into the war.

                I’ll pick up on page 403 and since copyright allows reviews, I’ll quote a few sentences: “June 14—the day in 1777 on which Congress had adopted the Stars and Stripes as the emblem of the Union—had been sporadically observed ever since the start of the Civil War; but in the spring of 1916, Wilson officially proclaimed it a day for ‘special patriotic exercises’ on which Americans might ‘rededicate ourselves to the nation, ‘one and inseparable,’ from which every thought that is not worthy of our fathers’ first views of independence, liberty, and right shall be excluded.’ It had an electrifying effect.”

                From The Big Book of American Trivia by J. Stephen Lang published in the waning years of the 20^th century—1997—come these questions about “Grand Old Flags”: “Flags are more than pieces of fabric. They’re symbols, often highly charged with emotion. Small wonder that their design and care have been important parts of American life.”

                I’ll skip the first one (June14 is what holiday?) 2. What was John Philip Sousa’s flag-waving march, written in 1897? 3. What familiar D. C. sight is 555 feet tall and has fifty American flags around it? 4. What southern state’s flag shows a woman trampling a man? 5. What southwestern state’s flag features the sun symbol of the Zia Indians on a yellow background? 6. Over what historic Maryland fort was the first fifty-star U. S. flag raised in 1960? 7. What was added to the original U. S flag in 1795? 8. What state’s flag was designed in 1927 by a 13-year-old schoolboy? (Hint: the 49^th state)

                Answers: 2. “Stars and Stripes Forever”; 3. The Washington Monument; 4. Virginia’s—the female figure is actually an Amazon warrior woman, trampling on a tyrant. The state motto is Sic semper tyranniss—“Thus always to tyrants” (in other words, “Don’t mess with us Virginia folks”). 5. New Mexico’s;

                6. Fort McHenry in Baltimore, site of Francis Scott Key’s writing of “The Star Spangled Banner”; 7. Two new stars and stripes for the new states, Vermont, and Kentucky; 8. Alaska’s.

                Finally, from The Morrow Book of Quotations in American History by Joseph R. Conlin, 1984, these tidbits: Oliver Wendell Holmes – 1809-1894, Physician, poet, and wit: “One flag, one land, one head, one hand/ One Nation, evermore!” from “Voyage of the Good Ship Union,” 1802. And John Greenleaf Whittier (1807- 1892) Poet: “Shoot, if you must, this old gray head,/ But spare your country’s flag,” she said.” (from “Barbara Freitchie,” 1863.

                Fly your flag on Flag Day.

c 2020, PL dba lovepat press, Benton AR USA