Gum and Dog Fur

I could rain down invective on whomever chucked their used Juicyfruit into the woods, or wherever it was that my big white pointer lay down on it and got it stuck to his bony, yet fur-covered elbow. We live where there are lots of white pines, so naturally I thought the dark sticky-looking blot was just old sap. But a sniff revealed it was not piney in the least; it was distinctly Juicyfruit.

But that is a waste of good umbrage. There are more important things. The only reason I’m bothering to write about it is that, after an evening of fruitlessly picking at it, and pitying his contortions to lick it, I turned to the trusty Web.

I want to give props to an Italian Greyhound website where I found the remedy. I wasn’t authorized to post a thank-you on the message board itself, because I don’t have an Italian Greyhound. Well, they don’t know that, but I don’t have an account or access or the time or inclination to go about getting that. So I’ll just give ‘em a link and a thank-you.

What did the trick? Peanut butter. (Kirkland brand creamy organic from Costco, to be specific.) Just a teaspoon or so massaged in. And boy, did the doggie like that! Really wanted to help. Apparently any oil will do to break up the gum (and this would work in human hair too), but the grittiness of peanut butter and its semi-solid state probably help make it break up the gum and keep it from running all over the place. So noted!

Foursooth!

I was away from my blog reading (i.e., Bloglines) for a little while. Back and discover I’ve been tagged for a thingy. Is this a meme? Seems like a meme can mean just something that everyone is talking about, or one of these survey type things. I’ll see what I can do. (It started, as far as I know, at Ma Vie Bucolique.)

 

Anyway, my instructions were to make a list of fours (most categories supplied) and create a title with a play on the word four. I don’t know if these are supposed to be four things one likes, doesn’t like, feels represent one, have a significant role in one’s life, are the first things one thinks of (I can’t even think of four chairs without great effort). I was puzzling over the point of this… does it interest you, dear reader, to know that I seem to like silly movies and serious books? Ahh, but it does allow one to plop a lot of links in one post! Just don’t anybody say I’m a party pooper.

 

4 flowers (I wish I could grow)

Cosmos

Delphinium

Peony

Stock

 

4 plants (I can grow)

Burdock (see previous post)

Foxglove

Lily of the valley

White pine

 

4 family members

Susan

Stephen

Sara

Scott

 

4 chairs

Let’s give 3 chairs and 1 chair more for the hardy captain of the Pinafore.

 

4 jobs (I have had)

Census worker

Editor

Rowing coach

Swamper (oil field laborer)

 

4 bosses I would like to be like

Janice on
Cape Ann (is there any other answer possible?)

Joan Tobin

Julie Benyo

Tom Sawyer

 

4 movies watched multiple times

Down By Law

The King of Hearts

The Princess Bride

Strictly Ballroom

 

4 favorite authors (among many)

Doris Lessing

Naguib Mafouz

J.P. Marquand

Barry Unsworth

 

4 websites visited (nearly) daily

3quarksdaily.blogs.com

CIO.com

Google.com

Metrodad.typepad.com

 

4 favorite foods

Baked goods

Cheeses

Fruits

Wine

 

4 states I’ve lived in

Massachusetts

Michigan

New York

Delusion

 

The “gruesome tag part,” as Janice on
Cape Ann so aptly put it. Thanks you guys. I’m going to cheat, and re-tag some who have not yet posted this silliness on their sites. Mostly cuz I’m a lame blogger and don’t have relationships with bloggers I don’t know in the flesh and blood world. Well maybe someday.

1. Kerstein 

2. Murray

3. Borgy

4. Churbuck

 

 

Survivalist Cuisine

For a long time now, probably since I read Doris Lessing’s Four Gated City (of which more later), I’ve had a sense, a small lurking anxiety, that I should know how to feed myself without benefit of grocery store. We’ve all been encouraged (by “Them”) since 9/11 to have several days’ or weeks’ worth of nonperishable food and stuff on hand in case of emergencies, from the relatively benign blizzards and hurricanes to the more alarming bird flus and chemical attacks, for which of course one also needs the inevitable plastic sheeting and duct tape. (We haven’t heard so much about that lately, have we? Another passing duck-and-cover campaign, serving for naught but nostalgia at our quaint responses to horror.)

In any case, the issue has occupied some space in my mind well before it really needed to. (I mean, the issue of foraging. Stocking the extra tuna fish and beans is uninteresting. The wine stash is another matter.) And, in the usual way that my out-of-the-way intentions take years to be acted upon, I finally picked some weeds from my back yard and cooked them tonight. The food was tolerable, even tasty, aided considerably by the other, less local ingredients, but it gives me an immense sense of satisfaction to have not just thrown the junk on the brush heap, but to have made dinner with it.

There’s probably an entire menu to be offered from my ¾ acre of New England, zone 6 yard and largely untended first and second growth woods. Acorns, dandelions, mystery mushrooms, purslane maybe, wild cherries, fiddleheads, and incidentally edible things I’ve planted like hyssop and borage. But I’m talking here about burdock. (Top photo from Virginia Tech’s site on weed identification.)

This impressive looking plant grows really well here. It’s actually quite handsome and has modestly pretty pink-lavender flowers, which around now turn into the most tenacious burrs. So I’d be chopping them down anyhow, or else finding the burrs throughout my laundry. A friend in Vermont had told me about two years ago that the roots of burdock were quite nutritious. He hadn’t tried them so couldn’t tell me whether they tasted like shite or not.

I’m happy to report that they’re not bad, though it was a true tug-of-war to harvest them and while preparing them they seem frighteningly woody and dirty. Apparently they’re a common ingredient in Japanese food, and the recipe I used is called Kimpira Gobo (gobo being the word for burdock). I modified it from a couple of recipes, one from a cool site of foraged food recipes called Wild Food! by Steve Brill.

1-2 c. scrubbed, sliced burdock (they say don’t peel it but I didn’t have a sturdy enough scrubber, so I peeled)
2 c. peeled and match-sticked carrots
1 T veg. oil
2 t sesame oil
2 T sesame seeds
1 T soy sauce
1 T water
Prepare the burdock and carrots (peel and slice). Throw the burdock into cold water to keep from turning brown. In a wok or large skillet, heat the two oils. When hot, sprinkle in sesame seeds and cook, stirring for about a minute. Drain burdock and add it and the carrots to the pan. Cook and stir over medium-high heat for five to seven minutes. Add soy sauce and water, cover and continue cooking until liquid is mostly gone. Total cooking time about 10 minutes.

Serve over rice.

It was good, the carrots adding sweetness and the burdock tasting nutty or almost popcorny. A bit chewy where I think they’re supposed to be tender, or crisp. But not bad. OK, I also had an incongruously Mediterranean salad with tomatoes and avocados, as well as a decent Spanish red wine. Which might have helped.

Other sources say to boil for 20 minutes. Maybe I’ll try that next time…. The stuff seems to grow back at the least provocation…

Disgruntled Chemist Writes Letters

I do not know the Disgruntled Chemist, but I like his blog and the pep and righteousness of his disgruntlement. Plus dry humor. And who doesn’t love chemistry?

He posted a letter he wrote to his senator regarding U.S. policy in the Middle East and he invites all and sundry to steal and add to it and send it to their own elected officials. I will send something like it to my two Senators K. and I pass on his invitation to anyone who stumbles upon this page.

I like the notion of passing this on. It’s a rootier grass roots than old MoveOn.org, which I found inspiring during the ‘04 election, and still admire, but which now seems a bit diffuse and unfocused.(Sadly, I hardly ever open mail from Eli Pariser anymore.)

I was once a teaching assistant for a professor who tried to preach to his torpid-looking students in the windowless classroom that they ought to DO something. That activism wasn’t that hard, nor did it demand much. Five minutes a week, he said, could make a big difference. I try to remember that, and even act on it, though usually end up expending half a year’s five minuteses in one big clump, toothless and all.

Va col canto… Thank You, Lorraine

The world is a poorer place this week than last, with the untimely death of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

There are some fine obituaries of the 52-year-old mezzo-soprano in The New York Times (registration required), Playbill, and The San Francisco Chronicle, whose music critic Joshua Kosman puts it so well:

“I always loved hearing Hunt Lieberson sing, but I hated writing about her performances. More than with any other artist, her splendor seemed to defy description or accurate measure.

Words failed; superlatives bounced off her performances with an empty clang. You’d have to have been John Keats to convey any sense of the beauty she brought into the world.”

I saw her numerous times in Boston and always her first note would stun you, take your breath away, leave you all goose-bumpy. A friend who had excellent seats (center, row 4 or something) at a recital in 1998 or 99 said that sitting directly in front of her, he could feel the air vibrating before his face.

Whenever mailings came from the BSO or the Bank of America Celebrity Series, I always looked eagerly to see when she was coming to town and arrange my budgeted music consumption around that. I suspect those mailings will now pile up unread for awhile.

The New Yorker of Jan. 5, 2004, ran a profile of Lorraine Hunt Lieberson. Through that, and the facts of her career, she has been called the anti-diva, an arch maverick and other appealing epithets. Maybe because of going about it differently or in spite of that, she gave the world something amazing and lasting in her too short life. I am forever grateful.

If you have not heard her, try her recording of Handel Arias for a general sampling of gorgeous stuff. I am particularly partial to an early recording (she was still plain Hunt and billed as a soprano) of Handel’s cantata Clori, Tirsi e Fileno with Jill Feldman and Drew Minter. Both recordings include the aria Va col canto. (Va col canto lusingando/ la sua bella il rusignuolo…. With his singing the nightingale/ charms his beloved.) It will make you remember being in love on a crystal September day with wind in your hair. Something soaring like that.

NPR offers a free listen to a tune it called the best classical song of 2004, Handel’s Ombra mai fu. Also the aria from J.S. Bach’s cantata Ich habe genug, along with an interview with the singer.

Spamalot “Reviewed” and More Interstices

Here in the interstices again–workday is done, child picked up, and basketball starts in half an hour… (I'll no doubt be late.)

My sisters were visiting over the weekend and there was much toothless invective spouted. God, I wish I could remember a quarter of it; it was brilliant. Spluttering outrage and ironic hilarity at the world's foibles and arrogant evil. Some rhapsodic blather too, as we consumed red wines from around the world. Think we tackled every continent. World citizens, we. And wishing the best for everyone except the selfish creeps in power in some places.

Sunday night, though, spouse and I went with friends to see Spamalot. As mentioned in the previous post, Monty Python was a crucial influence in my young life. That whole British humor thing goes down like a milkshake for me. Thus I may have become a too critical audience for the American stage version. It was thoroughly enjoyable (except the 80+ temperature and a couple of hours of basketball earlier in the day that made me a little sleepy partway through) but, perhaps because I knew the price of the tickets, it didn't pack the full wallop of hysteria that I thought it might. And that the Globe review had suggested it would.

Part of the trouble is not being a regular attender of musicals. Or even theater in general, sad to say. (And jeez, even movies at this point in life.) But live theater has a slightly different aesthetic, a more generous suspension of disbelief required to start, or something. What is it, experts? Anyhow, getting sucked in takes more effort especially from the balcony and especially in the pastiche that is Spamalot.

Here's where I differ from the Globe reviewer, who said you didn't need to know the original (Monty Python's Holy Grail) to appreciate the stage version. But to me it seemed like a reprieve of scenes (the best scenes) from the movie but without the flow between them. It was more like a reminder of those scenes, with some self-referential and current events jokes thrown in. Quite funny some of them. On the whole, it made me want to see the movie again. Most impressive, besides the voice of the Lady of the Lake, Pia someone–I'll look it up, was the sets and staging and smoothness with which some of the gags were executed. The program too had a very comical page at the expense of the Finns (simply because Finland sounds like England).

So, I'd recommend it highly if you can get a cheap ticket, or if you have a special interest in set design, or if your curiosity makes you think your soul will not rest easy without having seen it. Otherwise I would recommend it to a normal degree. Could one be more wishywashy? Splunge.

Oh, another recommendation: Comfy restaurant/bar in Boston's Theater district: Intermission Tavern. High marks all round. (And free wi-fi, though I only know that from a review.)

What’s in a Name?

It’s almost as bad as naming a child, naming a blog. One can’t stay up all night about it (well, one does), but you hardly have nine months to contemplate the untoward repercussions of your capricious fancies. And so, perhaps it’s worse.

With no particular ax to grind, market to corner, or stand to make, a general name will have to do the job. I seem quite capable (if not to say, prone) to see the world’s faults from my position of pretty complete powerlessness, and express outrage and vituperation to the already converted choir mostly, and thus: the first part of this blog’s title.

I am as frequently filled with a feeling of suffused blessing, simple appreciation for my life which so far has been without a lot of shooting and explosions, prolonged or injurious dearth of food and water, or physical disability (knock wood). Thus the second bit.

I wonder which will make an appearance more frequently here.