Salt Pork

I have to grin. I try and keep salt pork around, for cooking beans and greens, but I always end up slicing it, soaking in milk (to get rid of some of the salt) and frying it. I love it, always have, and I obsess, saving the strips of skin, for chewing later. You need to use a small baggy, for keeping them in your pocket, because of the potential for grease spots. One of these 'rinds', as we called them, can last for an hour. After soaking in the mouth, and much chewing, they achieve a texture that is sublime. 'Cracklings', which are the same raw material, pig skin (and fat), are deep-fried, and are much more like popcorn. I love them too. Another rainy day and I read about eating skin. There's a recurrent theme, for instance, reading the polar explorers, about cooking and eating leather shoes. It must have had a great mouth-feel, though, since they mostly had scurvy, their teeth were loose and they couldn't enjoy it. Such is the price we pay for our suffering. For reasons that escape me I was looking up Syphilus, the mythical shepherd who so offended Apollo that he was stricken with the disease. I figure he must have been having congress with sheep, but I can't find it mentioned. How had he so offended Apollo? I call several people about this. It might have been a French construct, 1530, creating a Greek framework for what had become a common affliction. I can't use my minimal inter-net connection to search, so I call a couple of people; all of the sources mention the story, but none of them specify the act. I ransack my own library in vain. I can get a little manic when I can't track something down. Made a lovely hash out of some left-over steak and baked potato, an egg on top, served with kimchee, toast and marmalade. Tried to call Howard, to ask him about Syphilus, but he wasn't there and I ended up talking with his daughter for a long time. The rain finally started blowing out in the afternoon, with a brisk wind from the NW. Patches of sunlight. Took a walk, and the water saturation must be 100%, every little wet-weather spring is flowing. Any place there is a cut in the terrain, a logging road from fifty years ago or a steeply eroded creek-bank, these springs emerge wherever surface water meets a barrier. They happen in the same place, they get named, me, I'm Low Gap Hollow, because me, and my grader ditch, are the absolute headwaters of a stream that flows for miles. I take no credit for that, water, flowing downhill, pretty much does what it wants to do. But I do like commanding the ridge. If I can't get out, that means that nobody can get in. I could defend myself against an onslaught of Spartan Republican Assholes, because they'd be out of breath, layered in body armor; and I could just roll some marbles down the driveway and they'd fall on their asses.