3.27.2023 – books are like jello

books are like jello
there is always room for more
and I can’t change that

I am at this point in my life where I am trying to divest myself of earthly belongings.

For me, for the most part, that means one thing.

Books.

My first job out of high school was in a bookstore.

I stayed with that bookstore as a bookseller, assistant manager and manager up to a custom guy-in-charge name tag that got me trouble.

From the bookstore, I went to work for the libraries.

I word it like that as I was the only person on the staff of both the Grand Rapids Public Library and the Kent County Public Library at the same time.

Together it kind made up for one full time job.

From the libraries I went to work for a publisher.

At the publisher I learned HTML that I turned into a job in the online news business.

Always working with words.

Always looking for books.

Always reading.

Always acquiring more and more books.

Books, for me, were like jello and there was always room for more.

While there might be room for even more, I had quite the personal library.

I claimed I could pick any book off my shelf and not only tell you what the book was about, but I how I GOT THE BOOK.

All those phrases you hear when someone describes their personal book collection and their relationship to those books, well, I said them.

Then I started moving.

First I just moved around to different locations in Grand Rapids, Michigan where I lived.

Each time I moved, there were more books to move.

And I moved them.

Thinking all the time of the old joke of the movers and the old lady with all the books.

The movers finally ask why she didn’t read them before she moved.

Then came the move to Atlanta.

I made some hard choices and selected maybe my favorite, got to have, 500 books or so.

About 3000 were left behind.

Then once we down here in the southland, there came the move into an apartment.

I think I went down to my got-to-have top 100 books.

I was choosing favorite authors.

The books of Jim Harrison, CS Forester and Bruce Catton all made the cut along with some favorites and a few other books kept for sentimental reasons.

I was down to 6 shelves of books.

What with e books and e readers and e check out at libraries there weren’t any other books I felt I would need.

I can get almost anything ever printed anywhere in front of my eyes so I was good.

But I keep going to bookstores.

I keep going to places with books for sale.

Regardless of any and all changes in space and place in my life, this voice inside me tells me there is always room for more books.

Why can’t I learn.

But then what would I learn?

That books aren’t like jello?

There isn’t always room for more?

I know that’s a lie so I can’t get myself to even say it let alone believe it.

Books are like jello and there always room for more and I can’t change that.

This is where I was mentally last Saturday.

My wife and I went to the Beaufort County Library.

And, doggone it, right inside the front door are the books cases for the Friends of the Library sale.

Walk on past, you say.

Well, easier said than done.

And besides no harm no foul, I rarely see anything on these shelves that I have to have.

Most of the time.

Then I saw them.

The multi volume set of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil.

In mint condition.

Like new if maybe not, new.

For sure never read after someone got the set as a gift, I am sure.

I looked at the set for a minute.

I picked one up.

In that moment I experienced nothing less that pure unadulterated covetness.

I had to own it.

The volume had a red dot sticker on the spine.

I looked at the sign.

Red Dot books were $1.

So I know what you are thinking.

What’s the big deal?

Admit it.

That is what you are thinking.

Mr. Foote’s History of the Civil War is in three volumes so we are talking three large paperback books and three bucks.

Big deal.

Well …

See …

This was the special illustrated edition.

This was the special illustrated edition of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil War.

This was the special illustrated edition of Shelby Foote’s History of the Civil War in 14 hard cover volumes.

Why did I need these books?

Who in their right mind needs these books?

I guess that’s where I lost the argument as no one would ever say I am ever in a right mind.

I just can’t help myself.

But I showed restraint.

I put the book back down on the stack.

That beautiful stack of beautiful books.

Don’t need them, I said to myself.

Then myself says to me … YOU ARE GOING TO ARGUE OVER $14?

And how could I argue with that.

Maybe it was that it was the complete set of all 14 books.

I had seen this set before in a used bookstore but with only 12 of the 14.

Now all 14 were in front of me.

When I think of complete sets of books like this I always think of the Alfred Hitchcock movie Read Window with Jimmy Stewart.

I think of the line when Stewarts friend the cop describes what would happen if he went before a Judge with a case based on Stewart’s version of what happened.

The cop tells Stewart, “… He’d throw the New York State Penal Code right in my face … and it’s six volumes.”

Anyway my wife comes up and asks if I found anything.

“Well,” I said, “pointing, this set …”

“THIS SET!”, she says.

Where are going to put that was her first thought.

Her second thought was to ask if the Friends of the Library took a debit card.

When we were told no they did not, my wife says maybe if they will hold them until Monday, she will get some cash when she is out and about.

My dear wife.

It really is nice when your wife is also your best friend.

I just got back from the library.

Long story short, I have to find a place to put these 14 books.

They will fit in somewhere.

Books are like jello.

There is always room for more.

3.26.2023 – baking bread for the

baking bread for the
romance, the smell, the texture,
that crunch of the crust

On a rainy weekend in the low country what do you think about besides thinking about what can some one do on a rainy weekend in the low country.

Sure we could go shopping.

Shopping in a resort town where prices reflect an income that doesn’t reflect mine.

There is always the library and that gets penciled in for later in the afternoon and more on that visit later this week.

My thoughts turned to baking bread.

Years ago I thought that a fine epitaph for my gravestone, back when I imagined having gravestone, would be, “He Baked Good Bread.”

And I went to work to learn.

I tried many recipes from Julia Child to a favorite Aunt.

I read a lot of books.

I watched a lot of video.

The best book on the subject for reading is Outlaw Cook, by John Thorne who chronicles his efforts to bake bread.

The type of bread someone would bake when bread made up 90% of some ones diet.

John Thorne is a great cooking writer.

He won me over when he wrote about how he published a newsletter with a photo of his kitchen.

So many of his subscribers (this was way before the world wide web and blogs and posts and such) responded in disbelief as it was a photo of a typical apartment kitchen with little counter space and tiny stove, that Mr. Thorne was moved to respond with the timeless phrase, “It is the cook … not the kitchen.”

(I think of that line a lot when I watch these magic chefs with their mega ‘kitchens’ on TV. Mise en place? Somehow I always thought it meant Mess In Place and stood for … you clean up your own mess )

It is a great cook book to read.

But it will break your heart to try and repeat.

He ends up with a wood fired concrete oven in the backyard.

I can say that I have arrived at a recipe that is my ‘go to’ recipe for baking bread.

It is the best.

It is simple.

It is simply, the best recipe for baking bread at home.

I can say that as it is my blog – my rules.

Sorry to say you do need two special pieces of equipment.

One is a cast iron loaf pan, but a small cast iron frying pan also works.

Why cast iron?

The only reason I got is that it works for me and that works for me.

The other piece of equipment is one of those stand mixers or mix-masters.

An expensive piece of kitchen equipment and I have to admit I inherited mine from my sister-in-law, Carla.

So take your mix-master if you got one and use your dough hook attachment.

In the mixing bowl dump 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 teaspoons of salt, a package of yeast, 3 and 1/2 cups of flour and 1 and 1/2 cups of warm water.

Just dump it all in there.

All at once.

Then run that mix master with the dough hook for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, take the bowl off and cover with a cloth for 1 hour so the dough can rise.

At some point, pre heat your over to 425.

After the dough has sat for an hour, get some flour on your counter and scrap the dough out onto the flour and knead into a ball.

Drop the dough into the cast iron pan and shove the pan into the hot 425 oven until brown (about 25 to 30 minutes).

Take the pan out and (if you got a nicely seasoned cast iron pan) dump the bread out onto a cooling rack and you are done.

Simple!

I let the bread sit for a few minutes then cut off some thick slices.

I ate the heal part of the loaf, covered with butter, right away as I love the crust.

Then I made up two plates with a warm slice of bread with cheese and some fruit for me and the Mrs. to have for lunch.

This morning I cut another thick slice and put it in toaster.

I watched.

The surface of my slice bread was rough, not smooth like a bakery loaf.

The tips of little fragments of bread started to brown first.

Almost like watching a sun rise and the golden toasted colors spread across the surface of the bread.

On the plate, the butter melted into the bread.

The kitchen smelled of warm bread and coffee.

Rough and crunchy.

Soft and chewy from the butter.

Simple touches to start a rainy weekend in the low country.

The romance of home baked bread.

But in the back of my mind, is a warning.

A voice reminding me, that a lot of romance was the luxury of choosing to bake some bread.

A voice reminding me, that a lot of romance was the luxury having the option to bake some bread.

I might not like it so much … if I had to do it.

3.25.2023 – prognosticators

prognosticators,
I expect, to pick us fifth
in the final four

Florida Atlantic University is making just their second appearance in the NCAA Tournament, won the East Region at Madison Square Garden and will head to Houston to play the winner of Sunday’s South Region final between Creighton and San Diego State.

After beating Kansas State and advancing to the final four, their coach, Dusty May said, “I expect the prognosticators to pick us fifth in the Final Four.”

Points for unexpectedly winning and advancing this far in the Tournement.

AND BIGGER POINTS for Coach May using the word, prognosticators!

OKAY, Coach May!

(Which is a tribute to Groucho Marx in Horsefeathers. I hope I need not elaborate.)

3.24.2023 – nearest humans are

nearest humans are
in a space station when it
passes overhead

Intrigued to read in the article, The science of sailing: inside the race across the world’s most remote ocean, by Yvonne Gordon, that:

The Southern Ocean is not somewhere most people choose to spend an hour, let alone a month.

Circling the icy continent of Antarctica, it is the planet’s wildest and most remote ocean.

Point Nemo – just to the north in the South Pacific – is the farthest location from land on Earth, 1,670 miles (2,688km) away from the closest shore.

The nearest humans are generally those in the International Space Station when it passes overhead.

I looked it up.

The international Space Station is about 250 miles away.

So you need a circle with a radius of 250 miles or a diameter of 500 miles or an area of around 196,350 square miles which is bigger than California but smaller than Texas and in the circle, there can be no other people.

If you are at the center of that space and the International Space Station flies over you head, those people on the Space Station are closer to you than anyone else on earth.

3.23.2023 – there are pleasures in

there are pleasures in
madness, in being mad, known
only to madmen

I have a source that attributes the saying, There are pleasures in madness known only to madmen, to Dr, Johnson (also known as Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709- 1784), who was, according to Wikipedia, an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, critic, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography calls him “arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history”.)

As I was working on words to bring together walking on the beach in March and March Madness, the quote popped out of my brain and I hammered out a haiku.

Then I put back into the google to see if I could find some context for the quote and what I found was, There is a pleasure sure, In being mad which none but madmen know.” from John Dryden in Act II, scene 1 of The Spanish Friar (1681).

Dr. Johnson.

John Dryden.

Madness.

March.

March Madness and the Beach.

On the Beach in March.

I grew up in a place where March was mean.

I grew up where, as Garrison Keillor wrote of the Great Lakes/Upper Midwest, God invented March so that none drinkers would know what a hangover was like.

Now I don’t.

Now I live where March is kind of nice.

March is still a month of for Madness but for me, that doesn’t include the weather.

And this led into my search for a haiku.

I was trying to find the words to express that while my team was no longer playing this March, I was able to compensate as I was able to walk on the beach in March on my lunch break.

Such madness.

Such in madness.

Suffice it to say, there are pleasures in walking in the waves on the beach at lunchtime, but you have to work near the beach to know that.

Which asks the question, am I only trying to rub it in on folks who don’t work near the beach?

Am I only trying to rub it on folks, friends and family who live up North where it is 44 degrees and overcast?

Surely, it would be a sign, sure, of some sort of madness to be so mean.

There are pleasures in madness, known only to madmen.

Which begs, the question, would I enjoy my lunch time walk on the beach as much if I couldn’t brag about in social media.

Hmmmmmmmmmmm.

Honestly?

YES I WOULD!

After all, there are pleasures in walking in the waves on the beach at lunchtime, but you have to work near the beach to know that.