Rice Crust

Left-over rice, or any pasta, makes a fine breakfast cake; and I'm not adverse to piling on anything else that might be around and topping it with an egg. Fielded a phone call about how loading was carried through a crooked post. An interesting conversation. I told him to make an eight foot long miter box, establish (an arbitrary) 'top' to the log, so he could make parallel cuts. Then, this is the cool part, you stand the post up, brace it off. Whenever you harvest a potential post you usually leave both ends wild, too long, so you can cut them back. You establish the base cut. I do this with an electric chain-saw and I'm good at it. Then, using a plumb-bob, you determine that the center of the top bearing falls within the footprint of the base. Make the parallel cut. It's always worked for me. Several engineer friends have dubbed this dubious data, though building inspectors always approved them. An eight inch oak trunk is pretty stout. Under compression, wood is very strong. I read recently that someone is building a seven-story wood framed building, using various innovative wood products. Concrete has gotten expensive and we're running out of sand. China has used more sand in the last decade than the US had used in the last hundred years. If Trump has his way with The Wall, they'll be bringing in sand from a thousand miles away. That'd be a sweet contract to have. My first job in Colorado was replacing a building that had burned down, a three-story structure in a Historic Zone, mandated to be built in the manner of the original, 8x8 and 10x10 Ponderosa Pine. They did allow me to use brackets and lag bolts. It went together fairly quickly because I could mass-cut all the components, I'd hired someone to help me stand everything up, then hired a guy from the local tire store to use an air-gun to drive the bolts home. I'd retire to the local pub, because I couldn't stand the sound. This was in Ridgway (no 'e') and I went on to build several places there. As I think back on it, I built maybe ten houses, between Montrose and Telluride, in the ten years in western Colorado, one project a year; the rest of that time spent getting a goat dairy certified and running a ranch. I'd call this period Raw Milk, if I were to write about it, and it was glorious. During the separation and divorce, which takes forever in Colorado, I built two more houses in Utah, then put my books in storage and took on the Jefferson project, outside Winchester, Virginia. Get shed of all that. Wipe the slate clean. I loved sleeping in Tom's bedroom, spare, a rope bed with a straw mattress. Read more...

Fluttersome

Butterflies high in the trees. I don't know where they go when it rains. It's supposed to be sunny tomorrow, before another couple of days of rain, so I might try and get to town to do the laundry. God knows everything is dirty, it's the air here, power plants along the river burning coal. The museum has a flat roof, though no flat roof is ever actually flat, they drain toward scuppers or pipes, and we had to go up there every couple of years, to scoop up particulate matter, to clear the drains. Upwind and a few miles from the river, the trees acting as filters, the ridge is somewhat better, but if I leave a bucket of rainwater sitting out for a extra day, there'll be some flecks of ash. Few things are completely clean. Quick trip to town, not enough time to do the laundry as another front is moving in. Get back home, just before the hard rain, and eat potato logs I got at the Qwik-Stop on the way out of town. These are very good with French mustard and hot sauce. Thunder and lightening, so I close down. Then take a nap, to the hammering on the roof. It's quite pleasant. Mickey Hart and those throat singers. When I wake it's so dark It's frightful, I can't see my hands, I can't see anything. I feel around for my slippers. I keep a candle at the edge of my desk, and a book of matches, and my headlamp, of course. Dead reckoning. When it's very dark, even a single candle provides quite a bit of light. In a total black-out there's no depth perception. If I'm being extravagant with light, I put another candle at the end of the island, that way I can avoid tripping over my own feet. Read more...

Total Green

It's a wall, completely surrounding me. I can't see 50 yards in any direction. The driveway is canopied, dark, in overcast light. There's a new flush of oak galls and they're very sweet, pink and creamed-colored, and I thought briefly about distilling, realized it would cost tens of thousands of dollars an ounce. The perfect mogul's drink. The snicker of rain on the roof, the blackberries will be happy, and the corn in the bottoms along Turkey Creek. I like walking those fields, after they've harrowed but before they plant, looking for arrowheads. A lot of bird-points, lovely little things. These bottoms have been hunted for thousands of years, grouse and turkey and deer, but they yield little trace. A few pieces of rock. This time of year, though, I have to say, you can't see a fucking thing. The green is complete, right from the ground up until it becomes sky. The darkest greens, holly, wild rhododendrons, some of the conifers, spatter the landscape; most of the greens are soft. Blue ranges wildly. Pollen and catkins cover the Jeep, it looks like an artifact. I'm trying to get the rest of the split wood inside and realize I need to pay someone to do this for me. I'm old and beaten down, I used my body hard for a lot of years, and I'm quite content, now, with rereading Proust and sipping tea. The good old days, when we plowed with mules and planted a market crop, like mining coal with a pick and shovel, for the most part are past. The rain sets in hard, drumming on the roof, so I check my black-out kit, spread a buffet of cheese and olives, set out the camp stove so I can cook Ramen. The bar is low here, I'm not going to freeze to death and I have plenty of food. It's pleasant, actually, the sense of isolation that weather imposes. No phone, no electricity, reading with a headlamp seems perfectly natural; yes, I couldn't get out to socialize, but what does that matter? I spent the evening reading about forks. Read more...

General Corruption

The lines are blurred, but almost everyone steals. Small change, usually, a roll of toilet paper, some push-pins. Madoff. They fired the head of Ford, but he'd earned 19 million last year. Don't get me started on Trump or Congress. I'd like to just close the door, the gate, and not listen to anything, but I like hearing the local news and weather, so I know what to expect. Being prepared is the name of the game. Being prepared, for me, means having beans and rice; I know entropy is on the rise, but I should be ok, in my lead suit and aluminum foil hat. I'd picked up the new John Lescroart novel at the library, so I buried my head in a book for a few hours and felt better. A bit more money in the bank than I thought, so I'd bought a Ridge Zinfandel, which I opened, then set aside to breathe while I made the veal roll-ups. Morel Duxelles with caramelized shallots. I have a pan I'd modified to fit in the toaster oven (raining again and I can't use the grill), a pat of butter on each and a little wine in the pan, maybe five minutes in the oven. There were six of them and I figured two meals, with the sauteed parsnips and dandelion salad. Par-boil the parsnips, then slice and fry in butter. I spent like two hours making this meal, mostly sitting at the island and reading, but paying attention to whatever I was cooking, and it was very good. I was trying to track down the actual method Incans used to freeze potatoes, so I was reading yet another book about potatoes. Say what you will, but when I'm fully engrossed, caramelizing parsnip spears or wondering about freeze-dried potatoes, well and truly in the moment, I don't care about anything else. Usually the bear just goes away, sometimes I throw a firecracker. Firecrackers have become my first line of defense. Dogs hate them, snakes hate them; my advice? Carry a Bic lighter and a few loose firecrackers if you're walking in the woods. You can't be too careful. Worse case scenario, a rabid coon. How contagious is that disease? It's a Tuesday in May, the canopy is almost complete. Read more...

Fog Rising

Mist fills the hollow, spills up over the ridge. Library called and they had a book for me, so I drove into town. Got a couple of other books, stopped at Kroger, some nice little thin-sliced veal remaindered. I'll stuff these with mushrooms and shallots and cook them on the grill, not today though, clouds building up, so I stopped for a shake at the dairy bar and beat it home. I hadn't gotten the Jeep unloaded when the rain started thundering down, violent, changing over to marble-sized hail. It got quite dark, the power flickered a few times, but I have oil lamps, candles, and my headlamp; and I've cooked some damn fine meals on a camp-stove. There were beautiful bunches of Dandelion greens at the store, so I bought a couple; one for a salad, with sliced sweet onions and cucumber, and another that I'll just cook like spinach, serve with butter, salt and pepper. Left-overs make mean omelets. Settles into a slow steady rain that finally puts me to sleep, and when I wake up, from a dream about chickens, it takes a few minutes to remember where I am. This ridge, this rainstorm, frogs, chirping through the rain. Mississippi John Hurt singing about Avalon, his home town. I bought some chickens, in Avalon, some promising small roosters, from a distant cousin, twice removed, trying to develop a free-range chicken that could live on hog droppings. Another of my failures, the pigs just ate the chickens. When pigs eat chickens there's nothing left; actually, when pigs eat anything there's nothing left. They're an extremely efficient disposal system. Every family in America could raise a pig on their household waste: like llamas, they like to shit in the same place, and they smell nice, if they can wallow in clean water. How did I get to pigs? Oh, right, the chickens, chickens from the dream. The dream was just a pastoral reminder. Chickens running about in the yard, maybe a dog, sleeping under the porch, a cat in the window; usually there are some herbs growing in pots on the window sill. Emily flits about, baking bread. She did most of the baking and made outlandish pastries out of left-over dough, almost pornographic. I love the image of wild sex, while Emily watches at the door. Read more...

Tuning Up

Sleeping in the theater, I had a blanket and pillow rolled up in a janitor's closet, was convenient. There was a Greek Diner around the corner, where I could get breakfast any time of the day or night, I wasn't drinking at all and we had a great source of Lebanese hash. I needed to be there, to turn on the lights and let the orchestra members in for rehearsal, then I'd go back to sleep, an audience of one, listening to the Boston Symphony tune up in my dreams. I loved this. The sound, the shape of the sound was incredible. I remember the first time, a Sunday afternoon, that Beverly Sills sang cue-to-cue (a technical rehearsal, sung at half-voice) for Traviata; Michael called back and told me the tuning was based on 440 cycles, from the first violin. An "A", but this was subject to some variation, perfect pitch being a somewhat relative term. Who knew? Michael said that oriental orchestral tuning was usually 448 cycles, still an "A" but with a edge. A violent storm moves in suddenly and I have to shut down. Mike has a drummer coming in to the college, a big deal, and he wants to bring him out for dinner, which might overlap with Kim's yearly visit on his way to the F1 race in Montreal, so I do need the new grill. Cooking for six is the same as cooking for eight. I usually cook for either two or four, eight is double four, so I end up with left-overs. Usually I can fold it into an omelet. If not I dry it, grinding it into a powder, mix with fruits and nuts. Call it dinner. Read more...

Predatory Lending

Dealing with debt. You can borrow $134,500 to get an undergraduate degree, and they've got you by the short hairs then. You're granted a cubicle and a house in the suburbs. Insider trading, because you're locked into the system. We could dance around the word slavery. You couldn't possibly be a slave if you have a summer cabin in the mountains, two jet-skies, a camper, a Bass boat with a foot controlled electric trolling motor, a Dodge Ram, all the trappings. Yet, of course. Young grape leaves don't need blanching, I made a batch of stuffed leaves, rice, chorizo, and caramelized onions, braised/steamed in white wine, that was exceptional. Use sticky rice, with a browned butter sauce. Even hardened poets weep. Later, I was rereading some vegetable recipes, and my thoughts were turned to grilling, because it's too warm to build a fire inside. I need a new grill, something I can set-up right outside the back door. In the past, I've usually fabricated grills out of found objects, sinks and refrigerator shelves, and I've built a few out of rock. I left a great grill in Colorado. I don't want to build another one, though I will if I need to, but I've seen a couple of Korean and Chinese units that could fill the bill. Plain Jane efficient wood/charcoal burners. To cook a brisket, you need 250 degrees for twenty hours, you need to be able to stoke the fire without moving the meat, you need to be able to control the air flow. And you have to stay awake, mostly. Also, I need to be able to roast vegetables off the heat, so the unit needs to be rectangular, to provide the space. Also, I have to get a drip pan below the meat because drippings are important to me. What we might call minimum design criteria. Desire paths indicate where we actually go: the outhouse, the garden, the woodshed. It only falls to reason. The Attach Of The Luna Moths, a short film I'd been working on for many years, was leaked to the press, and they seemed to think it was a metaphor. God bless their hearts. Read more...

Nothing Further

Needing a plan I started a list. Way too much trash, recycling and Goodwill stuff for one or even two trips, so I have to break it down. What to take to town, what to bring back home. Strike up the band, it's another cycle. Make a list first, of back shelve items, toilet paper, a new grinder of black pepper, staple food stuffs though I'm well stocked with staples, I do need another box of push-pins. I have the laundry sorted out. I do a large laundry in the fall and in the spring, the rest of the year I do a single load every two weeks. I often dash underwear and socks in a butter churn. The house needs the moisture, so I never mind the drying lines in the kitchen, there's something old-country about it. B said it was spring break at the collage, so I need to go for a little dumpster diving and to get rid of some trash. In the country, trash accumulates, there aren't many ways of getting shed of old broken stuff. You burn what you can. Glossy, clay-filled paper, is awful stuff, on the other hand I started almost all of my fires last winter with cash register receipts and that seems pretty cool. I walk that narrow line between cool and stupid most of the time. The continuing snake saga. Sitting out on the back porch, last night, a slight coolness from the river and hollows. Then this morning there is a six foot, four inch skin casing of a male timber rattler, stretched across the back deck. Molting. It's quite delicate and beautiful. In an attempt at preservation I put it to soak in salted water then intend to stretch it out and 'fix' it with something, to try and preserve the color. Snakes are, amazingly, quite dry; and these molted skins generally turn to dust quickly. Ground rock and desiccated organic matter. That mote, that lodges in the corner of your eye? it's been around forever. Symmetry became the subject of the day. I looked at a great many leaves and some very small flowers. I thought about tractors, post 1954, and the phrase "apparent symmetry" came to mind, mostly a product of cowling. What covers the workings, what you actually see. Cars, planes, trains, flying insects and birds; with moving things balance comes into play. In the field, if you look closely, there is a lot of failure. Failure is the impetus for change, or success is the impetus for change, however you view that; I lean toward failure, until it becomes an excuse. Nothing succeeds like failure. Read more...

Scope

Anglo-Saxon for poet, from sceopen, to make. The house is creaking, drying, finally, in full sun. All morning I just drink coffee and watch the play of light. Birdsong. Dappled patterns, Bayou Light, sculling in close to the bank, gigging frogs as their eyes shine in reflection. Several hours had gone by and I was deep into reverie, in a state where background and foreground were diffused, when the sudden appearance of a shadow broke the plane, a red-tail hawk, circling the logging road. A lovely thing, she goes over twice, her shadow describing an arc across the ridge. Back inside, I'm reading straight through another volume of forgotten words. I mark some of them with a pencil dot. Small twigs and sticks, windfalls, gathered for kindling is called sprote-wood. Stoure is the cloud of dust stirred by the trample of feet. And I love thrum, for green and vigorous. I was using my yelf (dung-fork) just today. Black Cohosh shades out the competition, I was looking at a patch, 20 feet square, and nothing else grows there, the leaves completely cover the ground. Dave said that the price for the dried root is so low, that it doesn't pay to dig it. He still digs and dries Ginseng for which he says the market is good. I spent the day cross-referencing words and getting side-tracked, which is pretty normal for me. Surprised by nightfall. Looked up and it was dark. A hasty meal of beans on toast and tomatoes in balsamic. Read more...

Passing Strange

A night of weird sounds. First a tree fell in the forest. So much rain, the ground is so soft, another tree-tip pit opens for exploration. If I can find the damned thing, as my sense of direction, with wind and rain, is completely lost. I want to get out, to see the extent of flooding, not in any sense morbid, but just to see the actual map. The Boone Coleman heirs will be paid a lot of money for not raising soybeans. Then a severe thunder cell, wind and hard rain. Being pelted I thought, and I hadn't used or even thought the word 'pelt' for anything other than an animal skin with the fur attached, but I awoke with the word 'pelted' on my mind. To pelt, as to rage. Shakespeare, King Lear, "That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm." Then, in a lull, an argument at the compost pile. Sounds like cats and dogs to me and I don't want to get involved. I have to get up, any chance at sleep is lost, and I'd rather read than toss and turn. Any given time, I have three or four books waiting to be read. There's a book at the island, if I happen to eat there, there's a book (a small pile) on the stairs; I keep some books in the Jeep, and carry a book in my pocket; for years I kept an unabridged dictionary in the back seat. You can't be too careful, the scree slope, the slippery slope, two steps forward, one step back. Cha cha cha. I'm in a particularly good mood, which I attribute to not listening to the news, and I have the last of the cheese grits with cracklings, an egg on top, a piece of whole grain toast with marmalade, settle in with a book and a second cup of coffee. I'm reading everything I can find about Z, that earlier culture in the Amazon. I've always been suspect of dating things in the Americas. I'd been napping, and had the radio very low, so I couldn't understand what was being said, but they seemed to be talking about marrow extraction and how it was similar to the way marrow was extracted a hundred thousand years earlier. I make a mental note to pick up some marrow bones. I have a spoon that may actually be a marrow spoon. I love sharp greens and fried green tomatoes with this, English Cucumber sandwiches, something with a snap. I hardly ever skin anything anymore, potatoes and squash; potatoes especially, for the last year or so, have been especially good, because the skins fall off and brown as these delectable bits when I make fried potatoes. I admit to a penchant for fried potatoes. Read more...

Flash Floods

Just no place for the water to go. The flood-plain is flooded, the lakes and ponds are full, the new spill-way at Turkey Lake is getting its first real test, Turkey Creek in spate. Rain wakes me again but it's so dark with overcast I roll over and sleep for another hour. When it starts raining harder, I get up and make a full double espresso, put it in my insulated mug, ladle out my measure of cheese grits, settle in to read twenty pages of Thoreau. The radio was playing low, so I could monitor the weather. It's some mild state of emergency, road closures, low-land flooding. High and dry myself, I don't have to go anywhere, so I decided to make cracklings from a smoked jowl, both rotating my stock and providing fat for cooking other things. Cool enough for a fire so I start rendering the diced jowl. At the same time I started caramelizing onions and red peppers in a soup pot to make a dish of mixed greens (turnip, mustard, and spinach) that I wanted to serve on a bed of mashed potatoes. Champ, this is called, ends up being quite a fancy meal, with cracklings and crotons, a topping of cheese, browned on top. To be authentically Irish you need to drink buttermilk with this, but I cut right to the whiskey. A little pumpkin-seed oil, and thou, in the wilderness. Read a long article about impeachment. The word deranged comes to mind. I'm term-limited, we all are, and thank God. Listening to some Senators today I was struck with how they could say nothing. Fucking Beckett novel. Playing yourself in a movie about yourself, that sonorous baritone, the white shirts with starched collars, that brush of breast when the dental assistant is cleaning your teeth. Read more...

Comb Wash

Outside of Blanding, Utah, you follow the birds to where water might be. Simple geography. A box canyon with a small pool and the barest trickle could support a family. Two springs I know, one outside of Moab and the other on the line between Colorado and Utah south of Dove Creek could support a village. Water is the factor. Grow some corn and kill some rabbits, big-horn jerky and wild greens, it's not difficult to earn a living. You need oil or fat of one kind or another, cotton-seed or coconut; there were no milk animals in Mexico because avocados were twenty per-cent oil. Then the pig explosion, wild and domestic pigs and all that salt-pork. Assumes salt, a mineral we eat directly. I was curious about my consumption of salt and sugar, so I set up a study, completely free of any restraints. I use less then a pound of salt and less than four pounds of sugar a year. A pint of honey one scant teaspoon at a time in herbal tea. That damned Barnhart got me drinking expensive tea, also that expensive Polish salami, but to his credit he always brings whiskey when he walks in to solve a problem I've usually created for myself. His son is way too bright too soon, I think he's scheduled to graduate from college and high school at the same time. I say send the kid to Finland for a year, or someplace where you have to wash plates with sand. The salt study is tainted because I use salt-pork all the time, and a particular cod-fish cake, made from salted cod, is a favorite of mine. Samara called, to talk about Oregon, and I'm designing a house they could live in there, a simple pagoda with an overhang for an outdoor kitchen. Read more...

Outdoor Kitchens

Looking at pictures of remnants, and various reconstructions, of these outdoor kitchens, has occupied me for days. Laborious is a word I come away with. Hauling, fetching, lifting and cooking. Rude trestle tables on a covered back porch for the slaves, grits and buttermilk, then breakfast for 'the family', then preparing the huge mid-day meal. Reading recipes often becomes a sociological study. One thing I noticed was that salted pig fat was almost always mentioned. Also, that there was always a bread oven, off to the side of the firebox, and you had to turn the pan around, half-way through the hour it took to cook a loaf. Some of these kitchens, in early photographs, 1870 - 1880, are marvels of efficiency. I've cooked with a wood-fired stove for twenty years, and even mid-winter it can be a warm affair. I broke a personal rule and paid more than two dollars for an artichoke ($2.19) but it was perfect, medium-large, green and tight. I had stood and stared at them for so long that the attractive produce woman had come over and asked me if I was ok. I explained my problem and she said she'd never eaten one. I told her how to steam them, with four forks in a pan, and how to eat one, with browned butter and a total disregard for spatter. Back home the long way around so I could wash the undercarriage at the ford. Feeling out of alignment is often just mud in the wheel wells. So much water the flood plain near town is a vast inland sea. The Scioto is backed up coming into the Ohio and the Ohio is backed up flowing into the Mississippi. I heard on the radio that the levees are failing somewhere. I don't know where, exactly, because I've been experimenting with playing the news on the radio so low that the language sounds vaguely Russian. I can only pick out the occasional verb. Another game I play with the radio, is to fill a pause with the next word, and I'm correct a shocking number of times. Reading B's poems again today, so fecund and rich, his line breaks are almost commas and they drive the narrative flow. More rain, thunder, I'd better go. Hole up and read in the dark with my headlamp. Just another passing fancy. I would have finished Thoreau's journals in one winter if I hadn't stopped to read 20 volumes of Patrick O' Brian. Read more...

Spin Off

I lost something, or sent a fragment, a freak thunder cell I heard coming, and I was caught trying to save a few words, maybe punched an incorrect key. Don't know what's where. A sudden downpour that lasts for five minutes, darkness and quiet descend like a blanket, just the drip of tree-rain. The crows have left for their summer at the lake, leaving me with a bunch of mice in the freezer. I've never, however, thrown a mouse out into the back yard and had it not be gone the next day. Much cooler, so I built a fire, then baked an acorn squash, stuffed one half with sausage and the other with raspberries. I have so many very good vinegars right now, that my usual salad is tomatoes, onion and cucumber, in a smallish bowl, and I drink or sop the left-over liquid. On more formal occasions, I break the bread into pieces and use a fork. I can always be introduced as the country cousin. It's a clever disguise, and I don't have to fuck around with appearances. I started to wear black jeans and denim shirts when a couple of people died and I ended up with a bunch of black jeans and denim shirts. I've stayed the same size since high school, so I ended up with a lot of clothes when people gained weight. At Janitor College we lived on day-old bread and ketchup soup. We planted the commons in dandelion so we'd have both wine and bitter greens, and it was not uncommon for a professor to arrive in his bathrobe. Murray always taught Shit Flows Downhill, which was a great course, and usually showed up in his Roto-Rooter clothes with the name Frank on the pocket even though his name was David. A glorious day, and I needed some things (seasonal items), so I cleaned up and went to town. The real treat was coming home along the creek, the long way around. The wild mustard is beautiful, spread across the flood-plain. Read more...

Powerful Magic

B said that he too had been looking at the miniature Iris. There's a patch of them, at the top of the driveway, where I can look closely without bending over. Eye to eye, so to speak. Read more...

The Right Choice

I've seldom been trapped for more than a day or two. Once in Utah, once in Nevada, once on the Upper Cimarron in Colorado, and they all ended up being funny stories in which you made tea from muddy water. More rain, for several days, and the wall of green encloses. It's so beautiful, in hundreds of shades, I'm in thrall. I love winter, the contrast, the black-and-whiteness of it, the isolation, but I also love the greening of the hollows, the blackberries blooming, the trillium at the bottom of the driveway, the redbud and shad bush. The blackberries are amazing, they bloom, they set fruit, the yield depends on water, and right now it looks like a bumper crop. The snakes are another story, I've never seen so many. Next month, when the ridge-top finally dries, they'll move down to the hollows, but when I went to go to town earlier this week, there were two rattlesnakes between me and the Jeep. It was cool, mid-morning, and they were stretched out, soaking in sunlight. They can't hurt you at this point, they can lunge a few inches, but they have to be coiled to make a strike. Good timing, because one of them is a pregnant female, so I put them in a bucket and relocated them down in the State Forest. B drove up the hill, with a copy of his new collected poems, Occasional Cleavage, and we talked for a while. Of course he would like to have designed the book himself. He's a book designer (wearing several hats) and he likes ten point type. Doesn't mean he's not a nice person. Private jokes. I use more space, I like eleven point type on a twelve point slug, even though, when I'm writing, I enjoy the compression. I write in ten-point type. Compress everything as much as possible. Read more...

Inside Out

Saturated, steaming slightly, the understory is greening. The shadbush, the few remaining dogwoods; flowers littering Mackletree the last couple of miles to the house, it's so lovely and romantic I have to laugh. Mary Shelley was only nineteen when she wrote Frankenstein. Thunder storms moving in and out, sheets of rain. It's pleasant, the drumming, the trees sweeping in the wind. Mid-day I french-fry some sweet potatoes, and dip them in a pesto mayonnaise. Big winds, and sure enough, the power goes out; a full gale, Force 8, when small twigs (but not branches) are blown off trees. In open water, with a goodly fetch, this would be 37 knot winds with 18 foot waves. On the ridge it's like being battered by an invisible giant. Power flickers on and off and finally goes out for good. Routine. Headlamp, light a candle at the end of the island. Hole up, in my nest, and read. I think I might need a laptop and an extra battery next winter. Samara called and wants me to think about moving to Oregon, they'd give me a piece of land, I could build a cabin for myself, design and oversee the building of a small, self-contained, house for them. All of which is intellectually interesting, something to think about. Hot running water and electricity in the same place? I can only imagine. I barely scratch a living at the margin, but I'm good with that. Power seems to be restored, and as this is truly 'the country', the power company calls me, to make sure everything is ok. Having my computer off for a couple days provided hours for studying the trim-work in volumes of pictures of old houses, which leads to a study of kitchens, especially as they related to the placement and use of wood cook-stoves. My cook-stove, an Irish Stanley Waterford, allowed for safe installation close to a wall, but that was not the case for some of the monsters in these old houses. I lost track of time, imagining kitchens. Then started sketching a 900 sq. ft. house, full hip roof with a sleeping loft, that would lend itself to the materials and techniques I favor. Read more...