Fireflies

There's a great essay by Rumford, #10 (I have no idea who numbered these) titled "On the Construction of Kitchen Fireplaces and Kitchen Utensils, Together with Remarks and Observations Relating to the Various Processes of Cooking and Proposals for Improving That Most Useful Art" in which he asserts that the flame need not be visible, and should be contained in the narrowest possible confinement. A fire-box, in other words, rather than an open flame, he'd designed some cooking stations for the Austrian Army at this point, that were remarkable, jacketed pots that fit down inside rings. My wood cook-stove is an incredibly sophisticated piece of work, hot combusted gases circle an oven where I can stabilize the temperature with various dampers and the specific wood I'm burning at a given time. As with any boat, you learn the ropes. It's not brain surgery but it does require attention, the down-haul on the main is a very specific line. It's usually coiled at the base of the main mast in a particular way. A right-hand coil. Even if you're left-handed, the coil is going to be certain way. I had a large bowl of cornmeal mush (Yodders, next to the polenta, less than half the price) with black raspberries and cream, excellent. My fingers are purple, but I never had to go more than fifteen feet from the back door. I only pick the outside edge because rattlesnakes love a berry patch. I only pick what I need, and right now the picking is good. B likes to pick enough to make and can some juice so he can marinate a leg of lamb in it, then rub and grill. A very good dish. He was just over, asking me if that was a tick in the small of his back, nope, I said, just where one was; and he was curious if I was still alive because he came over Saturday night and the lights were off. Explained how wasted I had been, but that I had gotten up in the middle of the night and written for a couple of hours, before I once again sank into a profound sleep, that time on the sofa. I woke up with two thoughts running around in my head, one was that before Chicago, Cincy was the slaughter capitol of the world, and that the mechanization adumbrated Henry Ford, and two, I don't know enough about chairs. They're missing completely from the Gothic, everyone just sits on three-legged barn stools and over-turned baskets, look at the naturalistic work of the time, no chairs. Tables were just trestles and planks that were set up in front of you, your plate was just a crust of bread, which you ate, and the plank was probably put on the floor so the dog could lick it.