Keep Going

Was walking in a park savoring a beautiful weekday afternoon. Afternoons are a world I'm still exploring, closed to me for the 30 years I spent in offices hiding two or three jars of spices such as peppercorns or cinnamon in the desk drawer so when most depressed I could take whiffs of a natural, beautiful smell. In my basement office, also a supply closet, I hung a calendar of spectacular natural scenes, and prayed that someday, someday. . . I stayed there because I couldn't risk losing the health insurance. I'm much better off now.

At the park were a few other untethered people, older men, and a woman in her twenties sitting in her truck fiercely texting, and I thought, "Oh God, I remember that." I trudged into the wet sand beneath the highway bridge, to the river's edge and its beer-colored water, because every walk needs novelty; or else, under COVID-19 awareness, each day feels too much the same. We are all very tired, maybe dazed. Most of us are coping as best we can. We miss our communal lives and casual contact. It hurts to give that up for so very long, and some people won't, and they get sick and make others sick. I mean, the virus is reaching an astounding new peak in mid-America.

So it's more important than ever to strictly observe the health guidelines. I follow them. I had just visited an open-air fruit and vegetable market, purchasing bell peppers, cauliflower, scallions and fresh ginger for a first try at an exotic recipe, when this sign reminded me to choose to stay in my lane no matter how careworn and discouraged, because this too shall pass.

Pan Dowdy

My pots and pans hang above the stove and this is so convenient I forget that they are on display although rather the worse for years of wear. Stymied for something to do because my satellite Internet is so bad, my biker bro-in-law on a visit about a year ago asked me if I had any of those copper-colored curly-scrubby-scouring pads. I said no, why. He said he wanted to clean my pans for me.

 

I had long before ceased to be conscious of the state of dishware and cookware 10 to 20 years old. That it functioned was all I cared about. But after the visit I reproached myself and bought copper-colored scourers. It took half an hour to shine up just the interior of one small "stainless" skillet, using first soaking and dish liquid, then baking soda, then vinegar fizzing the baking soda, meanwhile scrubbing until the copper scrubby was in shreds. Then several rounds in the dishwasher. All this did not vanquish the brownish varnish, but it did make the pizza pan peel.

I settled for 50 percent improvement. Then on another day I began lapidary work on the pan's exterior, but soon lost heart.

One day this summer I bought new dishes and bowls and felt like a bride. But I forgot about the dowdy pans until today. Not an hour later I ordered a new nonstick pizza pan, small skillet, and omelet pan. Please see the photo, which I display as art, hoping you might validate my inkling that buying new was a good and reasonable thing to do.

The Picture of Happiness

I pined for a Nikon camera, nothing fancy or weighty, just a point-and-shoot with a few bells and whistles, and around 2004 finally bought a Nikon Coolpix and loved it: great optics, a 4x zoom lens, a close-up option for intense nature photography; and I got a tripod, too, and with them snapped hundreds of gorgeous nature photos, turning some into calendars custom-made and lovingly sent 1) to my parents, who hated the calendars; one year I included a dramatic, unbeatable photo of a blacksnake, and photos of turtles, and close-ups of mushrooms, and a green bug on a pink flower; I had no clue they'd be so repelled and offended, and 2) the couple who lived on this Divine property just before me. They liked the calendars.

I hung the camera by its strap near the door, to grab when I saw deer, turkeys, sunrises, orioles & that. I'd owned other, heavier cameras, SLRs with multiple lenses. The Nikon felt so portable and good in my hand! It had a 256MB memory card, and no wireless capability. Around 2013 or 2014 its electronic shutter got gummy. It was not worth the repair. Besides, we now all carried cellphones with built-in cameras.

Realized when trying to photograph the Moon the other night how I missed the little Nikon and steady tripod mount. (The difference between amateur and wow-factor photos is the use of a tripod. )

 

Often I had thought to sell or throw away my tripod but didn't. Someday, someday. It waited patiently in its box for years until today, when I mounted on it a used Nikon Coolpix, purchased on eBay, one configured and operated very much and delightfully like the old one. Could have bought the latest model for about four times the money. Decided to see if I could again love photography enough to haul a tripod around and sit in the cold to wait for the ideal light, or wait an hour  to snap the just-right bluebird photo.

 

The 256MB memory card is now 8GB and that will be nice. Yes, to download I'll have to run a firewire between the camera and computer. So.

Here is my setup to take a photo of tonight's blue moon. I could just cry for all the time I missed my former Nikon camera, and for joy that I have one again.

Down the Road a Piece: A New Bridge

Since 2001 a thousand times on walks I crossed that crumbling concrete asphalt-topped Doc Sargent Road bridge across the creek, maybe 15 feet wide and 18 inches deep at that point, and maybe 50 times I waded beneath the bridge to hunt fossils, once scooping up a crawfish that bit me, a couple of times treading quicksand, and then after a storm one of the two ducts under the bridge got clogged with sand, and at the next serious rainstorm the mild-mannered LaBarque Creek began flooding in a foaming hurricane rush like I'd never seen, tore up stuff, then two years later did it again.

They're replacing that bridge. (Here's my 2018 post with a photo of the old bridge.) Work began in August. At 7 a.m. weekdays they're backhoeing and scooping and whatnot. Naturally I wanted to see, went over and asked a construction worker when they'd finish. He said, "Round Christmas." Here are some pictures. Where the bridge was is a tangle of naked, rusted rebar.

Considering that those toothpick-and-tar-paper new McMansions are built in two weeks from start to finish, they must be building a very good bridge here. Notice the pure-white sand. That's the sought-after St. Peters vein of sandstone than runs in a strip from Minnesota to here, and is still mined today in Pacific.

Bread Snobbishness Is on the Rise

We couldn't go out to buy bread so we made our bread: the whole nation. Of course I've always done it; my bread-making machines, one large one small, are both more than 10 years old and treasured. Fresh bread flour brings out the taste of wheat, and there's nothing like it. For 15 years now when it's sleeting and people run to the store for "bread and milk," I pity them what they think is bread. 

When I finally crept out to the store, like, in June, there was no bread flour and only a foreign brand of yeast in one-pound vacuum packaging (brand name SAF), so I bought the SAF and went online to my favorite flour purveyor, King Arthur. (If there were a mill around here, I'd buy it here.) Bread flour was sold out. I signed their waiting list and waited.

 

Meanwhile I bought healthy-type grocery-store breads: 12-grain, whole wheat, nuts and seeds, sometimes Jewish rye. When the two five-pound bags of King Arthur arrived from Kansas, I used them up. While waiting for more and again eating store-bought, I found I had become a bread snob. The bagels had no character. Squishy hamburger buns with dehydrated minced onion on top are not kaiser rolls. Sweetening syrup and preservatives marred the mass-manufactured health breads. My own (machine's) finest is its French bread. Or the pepperoni bread. Or is it the olive oil bread? The English muffin loaf? The flavorful "Cornell Bread" is a high-protein loaf scientifically developed for institutions. Its secret ingredient is one-third of a cup of soy flour. Enjoy during lockdowns.

Do you have an unused bread machine? Please don't fuss with sourdough! A machine will make every kind of bread! Beer, nuts, cheese, herbs, millet, caraway, challah, black bread, raisins. I used to mix dough with a wooden spoon, and knead and knead, and check rising dough every half-hour, but now everything goes in the pan, I press a button, then loll while it labors and bakes.

With cunning and stealth I obtained locally another two bags of King Arthur bread flour and two new bread-machine cookbooks. Blame the pandemic. I am also a fan of SAF yeast. Yes, I slice and butter and eat pieces of fresh loaves while they're still warm; that's why the picture shows the loaf raggedy where it's missing a piece.

Oh Brave and Faithful Plant

 

In late spring the baby basil plants were mostly sold, leaving only leggy and fragile ones. On the way home, the healthiest plant fell over and the stem broke. One shoot remained in that pot and two, undersized, in the other. The survivors all went into one planter because I expected to lose one.

 

I'm a good transplanter. No one else will ever know that except you and I. It is love. I love my basil annuals. Told them so and blessed them. Brought them indoors on cool nights. Moved them twice daily into the strongest summer light when the trees leafed out and cast shadows. A creature (squirrel?) always upsets and paws through the pot, but only once per season, usually soon after planting, as if to dash my hopes and grieve me. The basil always survives this. Looked up Saint Basil. Looked up Basil as a baby name. Breathed deeply. Scissored the leaves for cooking. Picked the flowering heads off so they'd keep leafing.

Today when frost is only days away I filled the chopper with garlic, olive oil, pine nuts and lemon, for pesto-making, and boiled clean a jar that held the store-bought pesto I buy when I must settle for less. (I've tried freezing, drying, and microwaving my basil harvest. Nothing but pesto works.) I thanked my plant for its beauty and fortitude as I picked off every leaf and the room filled with its sacred fragrance. This year I told it, "You are one of the great joys of my life."

Stars and Mars

Daylight veils and night-time reveals the most majestic sight of the planet Mars, like a huge red star, rising in the east soon after dark, dominating the sky. It's at its closest to the Sun right now, meaning that it's at its closest to us, and on the 16th was precisely aligned with the Earth and Sun. Oh! I tried so hard to get a photo showing how I felt when this planet appeared in the eastern windows each night, persisting, as if it wanted something. I'll give it! (This is the best my camera could do; there's a more awesome photo here.)

Dominating the southern sky not long ago were the two brilliant planets Jupiter and Saturn, so bright in the bedroom window that after settling in I got back up and went out to look at them. They're headed west, sinking soon after sunset. On December 21 (winter solstice!), look low in the southwest at sunset, and Jupiter and Saturn will be in a rare conjunction at 0 degrees of the sign Aquarius. This is also called "the Great Conjunction" and occurs every 19.6 years. Astronomers say that the star the Magi noticed and followed was a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.

This 2020 at least the planets are with us and want to entertain us!