Ars Gratia Artis

Happy birthday to me. A Certain Age gets nearer with each anniversaire, but, fortunately, as the Baby Boom advances before me, A Certain Age, if it is an actual number, gets a smidge older with passing time. I’m not going to get there quite as fast as I might if this was, say, 1969. I’m catching up, no doubt, but at least the line keeps moving back, and, frankly, I have the truly elderly people on my caseload to smack me right back into line when I start bitching about my ever-receding salad days.

I have my favorite set of sock monkey pajamas on, and I’ve no intention of getting out of them today. It’s my birthday.

project Land, such as it has been

*I have finished yet another bag of holding, #8. I learned a new way to close the end of the bag–a double loop cast off, I think it was called.

*I have done lots of cooking, and have been writing it up at the specialty cooking blog that is temporarily located at Blogger–North Coast Cookery. I may retitle it again as Third Coast Cookery. It’s been kind of an interesting experience, deliberatley pulling the cookery writing out of this blog, because it kind of forces me to concentrate on other writing here. I think I will continue with that for a while. I want to break out of the slack habits I’ve had here, and that’s one way to do it. I have been careful not to show pictures of fish. And I still have more cookery notes I want to put in there.

*I’ve been making progress on redecorating my room towards a more period ambiance, but I have to face the fact that I am simply going to have to buy more bookshelves, because the ones I have now are collapsing under the weight of my library. I have a really wonderful silk bedspread, a chocolate brown, that is very like a period quilt–one large piece of cloth with a pattern sewn into it. The pattern is a repeat of 4 fleur de lys, so it works very well. It’s not quite the heraldic bedspread I intended to make, but it’s not the end of the world. Anyway, enough about the stuff in my bedroom. Suffice to say I have made progress.

Other things I have not mentioned

*We went to South Dakota in mid May, for Quest for Camelot. I really enjoyed it, but it was s filthy long time in the car.

You know, I don’t feel like writing anymore. I’m sitting in the yard, with the wind blowing through my hair, in my comfy jammies and having some moments of peace–a respite in passage of time that is really quite dreadful. I’m holding together okay, but it doesn’t make it less hard. I keep wanting to have time time to at least write personal letters about it to friends, but I am afraid that when I have a moment of peace to write, that moment is so precious that I can’t spend it upsetting myself again.

So happy birthday to me; may the wind that blows through my hair blow away all the troubles of this time. And may the sun that shines on my skin speak of warmth and kindness to come.

Happy birthday, mom, wherever you are in the universe now. Today would have been your 72nd birthday.

Welcome to another Solstice.

I put my first public entry on the web, my first open journal, 10 years ago today, and I started it in much the same way: Today, were she still alive, my mother would be 62 years old. I’ve just finished re-reading the entry. It made me a little sad to think that many of the issues I had on that day still walk right beside me now. There are things to be glad about: my health is not significantly worse, which it would have been had I not decided ten years ago to do the best I can to fight my genetic fate. Some years have been better “fight the good fight” years than others, but on the whole, it’s averaged out in such a way that I’m no worse off than I was then, and probably doing a little bit better. It’s just getting harder to maintain that stability. It would be absolutely correct to say that aging is not for sissies.

So, happy 10th blogging anniversary to me, and here is to the hope that I will have a 20th, and a 30th, and a 40th. Maybe even a 50th and a 60th. Here is to the hope that my last entry will be just days before I die at a very old age with my facilities and abilities all still mine–as best as they can be preserved against the ravages of aging and the injustices of time and fate.

Blogging helps, of course–presuming that one is writing something that uses the intellect. The adage “use it or lose it” applies powerfully to cognition, and there is plenty of research showing that the effect of choosing to retire in front of the TV is devastating to all one’s physical and mental capacities. That seems common sense, doesn’t it? But you would be surprised by how many people refute it, and choose to slowly commit a passive suicide in front of the box.

Finding peace helps: as I reflected on repeatedly in that first journal, my mother’s anger helped kill her. It would be inaccurate to say that there are not old things still bothering me, but the years go by and they have less power, and some of the things most people would most expect me to hang on to–not just continue to hurt over but to actively nurse anger and discontent about–are things that I am indifferent to, these days. Forgive or not forgive doesn’t matter, because it’s simply not worth the energy to actually care one way or the other. I’m not over everything I need to be over, but the arrows sticking out of my body these days are the things that most people wouldn’t expect. And that’s good.

So, it all could be worse. Much, much worse. But it would be better if my mother had made similar choices, and was sitting here with me now. She spent all her life waiting to be rescued, and never noticed that she had the power to rescue herself.

to ride my bike to work. But the days I can do it have inevitably been like today… thunderstormy. Just, frak.

In fact, that’s pretty much how I feel about this whole passage of time. Just …

First, a story of Michael’s youthful escapades: A LOVE story you won’t take for granite

It was a shock to find that in the newspaper.

But a bigger shock today:

Zorro’s Fighting Legion

An old serial, from 1939. I found it, poking around teh internetz. My grandfather appears at about the 14 minute mark, playing Martinez. This is the first time I have seen this movie–but it is also the first time I’ve seen my grandfather full face, first time I’ve heard his voice. I had letters from him, a single picture of him posing for a cowboy action shot, indistinct and at 3/4 profile, but never a phone call that I remember, never anything else. I can not describe the eeriness of seeing something like this for the first time, can not express the strangeness of seeing the 70 years gone traces of one’s own face on the screen and knowing that your grandfather has been more real to the millions of people who saw this than he ever was to you.

I’ve seen Kat for the last time.

I never loved my job at BLHS, but I often loved the work. Kat had 47 years on this planet, and she shared 10 of them with me. Year in, year out, I went to her, spent a work day, week, month, decade caring for her when she was sick, teaching her when she was well. Here is your work, Kat. Here’s how to do it. Look, I’ll help you. Let me take your hand so you can feel how to move. Here is your lunch. You did a good job, here is some coffee. Can you turn on the radio? Here is the button. Push it. Try again, you can do it. Here is a pen. This is how you hold it. This is how you make the letter “K.”

It took us 10 years to get to “t,” and I cried with joy on the day she made a t on her own. K-A-T. Kat. You wrote your name. I knew you could.

Her fingers were so delicate, so beautiful, and her hair was dark and wavy. She was funny as could be when she was happy, and sullen and hurtful when she was angry. She could hold a conversation, and loved to play and to sing. But her body was weak, and bent, and half useless, and she could barely wheel her chair, it was so heavy for all the modifications needed to help her sit straight and safe. She wanted as normal a life as she could have, though, and she would patiently work and work at things so many people take for granted, just for the pleasure of singing while doing something that would be like the sort of life so many other people take for granted or, divine help them, curse. And so she would push her wheel and pull herself along with her one good arm and one good leg, making the trip over and over, every day, taking one item at a time. Can you put your dishes in the sink, Kat? Her glass. Her plate. Her spoon. One at a time. Back and forth, table to kitchen, just so that she could do it for herself. These small independences were all she was capable of having, and I spent 10 years making sure she had them. And it made a difference to her. She was so depressed when we met, and so changed when I left.

In her coffin, her clothing covered her, and you could not see its twists and pains. Her mother spoke with me, told me that she’d directed the funeral staff not to put her braces on her. She doesn’t need them now, her mother said. They’d helped her to lay straighter than she had in years. Her beautiful hands were on her chest, still, but the trick of my expectations lent the illusion of breath as I looked at her laying there. She went suddenly, unexpectedly: no one had recognized that she was so sick. She could have been sleeping.

I left. I won’t see Kat again in this life.

I drove away, up the street, the sun beating through the window, and I longed for a cool and refreshing drink, a quiet retreat, a comfortable seat in a room filled with late afternoon shadows and an elegance reminiscent of a more gracious time. But life goes on, and we go forth, and I am expected in other places.

I had to come home, to change. I’m late. I must leave.

But as I stand in the evening sun, my thoughts will be elsewhere. I will be in my mind, in the place that is both my memory and my future, wearing my strongest body and loveliest white dress. My bare feet will curl in the cool grass and in my hand will be the refreshing drink I desire, beads of moisture slipping down its side to slide across my fingers. And as I stand there, on the edge of my forest, I will look down the hill, to the sunny valley below, and smile. Kat will be dancing there, singing to herself. Her dark hair will glint in the sun and her light and delicate fingers will emphasize all the moves she makes. She has joy now, does Kat, and I will smile to behold her doing all the things she never could do in life. At last.

Woods National Cemetery, Milwaukee, WI

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

I’m sunburnt again. Goddamit. I so hate that.

And so the pain awoke me, and dragged me from my bed, and danced with me through dark hours. It’s an awful place, awful moments, when you look at what has been done, and what must be done, and everything that ever was and ever will be haunts you like the ghosts of the lost.

Moody. Staring out the darkened window. The same song plays over and over.

Do you want to feel how it feels?

Which is worse, what hurts my body, or what pierces my soul? I can’t swear to which woke me, but both of these lovers are here tonight, and we hold hands, spinning and spinning, and Kate sings as we sway.

So, it did not take me long to figure out that managing the site content with a blog for every subject might turn into a serious nightmare. I’m going to have to plan it out a little bit more. I KNOW I want to do the cookery bits as a blog, and I don’t have issue with continuing with a blog for projects, but I’m going to have to be careful about how I set up the content. Scrolling articles for things I consider to be finished is not where I want to go. And given the amount of traffic that has been generated since I wrote the Piscetarian page and the consequent and damn near immediate increase in comment spam that came thereafter, I’m not really likely to leave all those blogs open for comment. So I guess I am going to have to try the drupal install again, and if that fails, try another CMS. The blog-per-subject thing can work, I just have to plan it. As we are talking about websites that have organically grown since 1997, with some patches out of control and some patches dead and gone, we are talking a fairly amazing amount of work to get it weeded, streamlined, and categorized for a blog.

And all done in my immense amount of spare time, to boot.

On the other hand, it won’t hurt to get some of it revamped. I’m actually thinking about making a bunch of the articles PDF’s rather than trying …. nah. That’s just a sign of how tempting the almost-easiest way out is.

Speaking of Foodways

I mean to write me a cookbook. I do not expect to publish me a cookbook, but I mean to write me one. And given the usefulness of a blog for recording what the hell you did, I guess I will be opening one of the only piscetarian food blogs. I think I will call my blog “Blast Furnace Cooking” after my propensity to cook with the heat ENTIRELY too high. I won’t have to worry about pictures of fish upsetting people here. The base blog is already installed at the test site, but I may begin a Blogger version–just so the thing can be started. Or I might just keep talking too much about food here. Or I might put a link to the temp site for refere… nah. I don’t want the test site to accidentally get indexed if I can’t get this all done in a month. Anyway:

Recent experiments include:

Clockwise: avocado chunks, sauteed veggies, red rice, and mock brats.

Of all those dishes, the only one that really needs a recipe is the mock brats. I had been desperate to try them sincefinding the recipe at Joanna Vaught’s site. She spoke so glowingly of how uber delicious they were and blah blah blah that I just could not wait until I could try them.

You know where this is going already, don’t you?

Well, no, they are not terrible. They just don’t taste anything remotely like a bratwurst. Even with the beer and all the spices, to me, it still tasted like seitan. That’s okay, I like seitan, and, in fact, prefer home made to store boughten. But.

I live in the land of bratwurst and cheese. If you tell me something is supposed to taste like a bratwurst, I kind of expect that it’s going to taste like something that seems an adequate substitute for a bratwurst. What I got was something with the basic mouth feel of meat and a compatibility with any sauce dumped upon it.

There were positive things, though. I do like the idea a lot. And the “roll the seitan into sausage shapes, wrap in foil or cheesecloth, and steam to done” made making the mock brats in appropriate shapes and portions very, very easy, without the problems I have had to this point in time with overcooking the seitan. I would have no problem with making them again, but I will definitely pursue different spice mixtures. I have a number of ideas about how this technique might apply to the SCA kitchen and I think I can make myself very happy by beginning with this base.

Speaking of things that are nowhere near adequate hole fillers, I am also a little sad at the Vegveeta recipe as it has been finally revealed. As you may know, I have managed to develop 3 vaguely cheese -sauce-like recipes for my own use, 2 are completely vegan, and one is piscetarian and made from ingredients typical in Roman cookery–so, in that way, period-like. The woman who runs this particular site was very vague about her ingredients, because she is using the blog as a sort of come-on for the books she writes. But she was happily pointing out No Nutritional Yeast! No Soy! and so I was really hoping for something that was going to be really different. A new approach.

So when I looked at the recipe and saw that it’s similar to many other not-cheese sauces and that the big change is that she’s going soyless by using almond milk, I was very disappointed. Because guess who uses almond milk all the time?

::bangs head::

I guess it’s innovative for cooks who can only follow recipes. I remain amazed at how many of them there are in this world. I sound awfully critical, and I don’t mean to be. Text can fool you that way. Just… really disappointed. I’ll keep refining my own not-cheese sauces (and they are not-cheese sauces, so what I am refining them to is soy-free and as period as I can make them and still have that cheese-like sauce experience) and then try a couple of different angles that do not involve making cheese-like jello (Look! It Slices! It dices! It’s julienne fries!). Blech. I’m still scarred from that rice cheese from hell.

My cookery emphasis this week? More cheese, and homemade veggie burgers. I’m kind of going through a period of vegan friendly subs for period meat sauces. The seitan up there will do nicely and has the added benefit of being something that can be made with all old world ingredients because it was made in the old (Asian) world in period. Yay, Buddhists! I’d also like to come up with some mild bean patties that can be used as the substrate for medieval meat sauces. MMmm, fava bean loaf.

Again? — sez you.

Nothin’ up my sleeve! — sez me

PRESTO!!!

AAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!

So, here’s the thing. I have been trying to move the whole site to a content management system, and was going to play with Drupal 6.10 and Wordpress 2.7.1. My lovely server admin, the charming and popular Belmikey, set me up a site where I can play around with these CMS’s to my heart’s content and convienently start moving this site off of one machine and on to another. Win situation for both of us.

Never mind the aggrevation I always put myself through because I will assume that if something isn’t working the way I expect it to, it must be because I am lacking some key information or I’m just not proccessing the instructions properly. I’ll skip those kvetches.

I’m now to the point where I can put in as many separate installations of Wordpress (that would be the CMS I’m using on this blog) on the new site as I want. But I can’t get the fucking Drupal. Now, something aggravating here would be, of course, the fact that OTHER people using Itasca have drupal running, so it’s obviously do-able. I’ll try a new directory of 6.10, and I’ll try 5.x if I can’t get the 6.10, but I am also kind of at the “Frak it, I’ll just do wordpress and have 10 blogs on my site.”

Why?

Because there is suddenly, to me, a feeling of time pressure. I recently blew a weekend downloading everything I had stored on Yahoo! Briefcase because it was being closed down only to discover that Geocities is next on the chopping block.

Let’s see, I’ve already lost years of poetry and journalling when various services crashed. Photos from fabulous moments when MSN photos ended abruptly. Never mind all the gone from hard drive crashes or magnetic media degradation. Geocities is going down, Lycos Europe closed last year, and so I think I will be doing myself a favor if I get my stuff into databases and back ‘em up, start making paper copies of things I really love having. And I just don’t have the requisite free time to do this level of restructuring all in a day.

OTOH, I don’t really want to run a seperate install for every.fraking.subsite. I thought the drupal would cover that, but who the frak knows if I am right.

So wordpress ad infinitum for now, with changes to my photo gallery and a slowed down push for a one size fits all CMS. That’s still my goal, but I am aggroed to the point of just wanting to make the aggravation stop and make the movement start.

If Susan Boyle can just get a rendition of this song on the market, I and many others would happily buy it, she’s have at least one fabulous hit, and everyone in the world would get a reminder that you can’t judge people by what they look like or what they’re willing to show you in the course of their daily lives.

Good luck, sistah, wherever you are and wherever you go.

I have several in the works but none ready to share. Let me give you, then, a bit of art from others:

Little Boys of Three

Look tenderly on little boys of three,
Their softness is as fleeting as a flower.
The cheeks like petals such a little hour,
The deepest dimple theirs so transiently;
Even tomorrow softness may be hard.
The little cotton cushions on the knees
turned into bony knobs for climbing trees.
The fists so like a rose grow lean and scarred.
His full moon cheeks will narrow to a line,
the silken hair becomes a brush of bristle,
As Mother’s little flower turns to thistle,
And there will linger not one little sign
To prove the cuddly cupid that was he.
Look tenderly on little boys of three.

Attribution for poem
And the photo is mine, taken when K was 3.

Although this bit, I’m quite likely to recollect. We had our little time up in Door County at the by-invitation scifi con last weekend, and, as usual, I had a lot of fun. Most years, I tend to keep to myself, even though I like all these people, a situation directly related to living in the After and an artifact of past problems. This year, though, I was a little more social, and it was kind of a two edged sword–I didn’t get to work on several meditative projects I brought with me, but, hey, I spent more time actually in the company of people I like.

We stayed an extra day this year, and we finally got to stop by a place we pass on the journey–it’s always been closed in past years. The Flying Pig was first noted by our little Poopie the Pirate, who always has an eye out for stores of treasure, and he certainly called this one perfectly:

A green gallery, full of all sorts of stuff, all sorts of static art–no performance, and spoken word or poetry appeared on the art chairs. We just wanted to look, but while there, I fell completely in love with a melusine marker, already in the garden, but I’m saving pictures of it for when I get the gardening completed and blooming (and hopefully nature won’t drown it this year like She did last year), and a dragonfly cassarole and a fish platter. And some soap called Luna Moon. So, yeah, all this water stuff and the moon stuff and I was pretty much so pwned that I gathered it, dragged it to the counter, and was preparing to pay–except Michael bought it for me for an early birthday present. Very Nice. I don’t spend my money on anything these days but food or fine quality items that suit my personal needs, practical art, you might say, so the opportunity to buy art that I could cook and serve with was not to be passed up. Artists should be supported, they shouldn’t have to work at some other profession to earn enough money to eat.

Now it is a matter of deciding what practical crap I have bought in the past is going to go out–a cassarole and a platter in, 2 pieces of junk out of the house. By the time 2010 finds me, I will have nothing but what I love and consider beautiful in my home. I digress.

This little doggie, Bella, so pretty, wandered all over and was very like me in these days. I’m interested in you, she says, and I care, but I’m shy and able to entertain myself, so I’ll just watch. Don’t mind me. I’m busy being a jewel under all this quiet. She is a pretty little friend and I enjoyed watching her wander.

Never post anything if you haven’t checked for slang.

So, last thought as I’m shutting down the day and am amazed by the dumb that is a commercial.

“If all these soaps that are s’posed to peel back the years and reveal younger looking skin actually did what they say it did, I’d have washed myself back to infancy by now.”

Sheesh.

Osma Lynn Elise Koszuta was born today, at 4:41 PM, lovely and healthy and loud.

A place where I sometimes write.

There in an article on the potential dying of American Poetry, here, an attempt to present both sides of the argument in very brief snips.

I love poetry, but I love poetry in much the same way I love representational art–something that has at least a minor connection to traditional form. Frankly, as long as popular music exists, there is going to be some kind of poetry; it’s simply difficult to face the fact that most songwriters are not very good poets.

But then, buy yourself a book from poetry.com and you’ll realize that most poets of any sort really are not very good.

It happens that I got an email from Woodland Pattern, inviting me to participate in Edible Books this year. Much to my sorrow, I can not; I will be out of town that weekend. I have no illusions regarding the reason why I was invited; I was asked to participate merely because I expressed interest last year. This year, I will send my regrets and my hope that I can do it next year, and then, maybe I’ll get invited next year, too.

The thing I am thinking about is the fact that Woodland Pattern loves poetry, much in the same way I do.

April brings both April Fools and National Poetry Month. It will also bring the arrival of Baby Zee. I’m thinking about ways in which I can again make myself present poetry, create poetry, to mark the importance of it to some people, to celebrate Baby Zee, to celebrate self.

I don’t have a large readership, so me yelling into silence here is no good. I work hard to lurk in corners; it’s only recently that someone other than those whom I follow found me on Twitter (Yes, Pete, that’s me), and I am sorry to say that those who follow are not likely to get the sort of social interaction they are expecting, as I use it primarily as a place of experimental art. Can I fit a word painting in 140 characters? Can anyone other than me see the vivid pictures and hear the tiny poetry in those little traces of visualizations condensed into words? If I’d understood twitter a little better when I signed up for the account, I might have made other choices about how the account is set up, but it is what it is, and it’s my experimental work.

In any event, I work hard to lurk, and perhaps the need for that has become a liability rather than a help, but it remains true that I am a ghost whispering in a corner. My thoughts on poetry will fall on few ears. However, my wish remains valid: I wish that everyone would spend just a little time with poetry in their blogs and forums and websites and journals. Share someone else’s. Write one poem that month, write one poem a week for that month, attend a poetry slam and write about it, buy one slender volume of an unknown poet’s work off of Lulu.com, whatever. Just one thing, just what you are comfortable with. I don’t think poetry is going to die, but I do think our lives drive us so far away from opportunities to enjoy one poem that we forget to remember that dirty limerick, contemplative haiku, or oral history as an edda. There is almost always something that stirs us and calls us to other places.

Listing to a mashup: She Wants Revenge vs. Joy Division vs. Bauhaus.

O.O

So, it comes to mind:

Skinny redheaded Kathy Griffen shouting out, “All right, where’s my gays?”

I wanna know, where is the plumpy redhead shouting out “Where’s my goths?”

Which then begs the question: Is there goth comedy? I mean, other than “If I was born in the seventeeth century, I wouldn’t have to Turtle Wax the van.”

I laughing too hard now. I must take myself to the Bedroom of Despair and dream of black puddings, or something. All the subcultural cross referencing in there makes my head spin, and I can’t cathch my breath for laughing about good ol’ Azreal Abyss.

Some while ago, I stumbled across Resurrected Recipes–well, stumbled is not exactly the right word; I check the parent blog, Slumberland.org every once in a while because the woman writing that blog is, at least as much as I can tell from her blog, like me. She is at least remotely connected to the SCA, big on having A LOT of hobbies and talking about it publicly for fun and no profit, AND she’s familiar with Winsor McCay. In short, this is another woman made of WIN, and she, like me, digs cooking her memories.

For some time, I have been concentrating on redacted period cooking and cooking for piscetarian restrictions, but I recently had a huge yen for easy and cheap comfort food from my childhood. Most of my family recipes are stored in my head, and most of them require some sort of non-sea animal product to make properly. While I have recently come up with several almond-milk based sauces that fill, if not perfectly fit, the ol’ cream or cheese sauce yen, none of them have been able to fill, much less fit, the “food from childhood” role. Enter my Aunt Helen’s Baked Spaghetti.

Aunt Helen was a well-loved woman, but I was never close to her, myself. If you’ve known me through the years, then you know that, while I have many fond memories of my extended family, I have never been terribly close to any of them. The years have hidden the reasons, taken as they have been by the dull and drudge of every day life. I spent a number of hours looking for a nice picture of my Aunt Helen to go with this cookery entry, but found nothing that was not so blurred it could not be used, and, in some ways, this speaks greatly of my connection to my family–the blurred memory of a daughter who slipped away, unnoticed.

When I think about food in my childhood, I often think about the dishes the family grande dames brought to the reunions that would be held at my grandparent’s summer cottage, and of the secretive sniping that went on regarding each woman’s offering. I never understood it; it was all delicious to me, and if it wasn’t traditionally Scandinavian or Germanic food, so what? I was too young then to recognize that the elders of my family were in a generation of people who did not marry outside of the neighborhood, outside of the ethnic clique.

Helen’s Spaghetti Dish was one I always looked forward to, and so when I found the recipe in my mother’s papers after my mother’s death, I carefully placed it into a protective card cover and put it into my own safekept, a GI issue recipe box that I picked up while I was stationed at Fort Meade. Simple and plain, a wooden box that suits me well and which will likely one day get painted with heraldry, although perhaps the Forscom crest would be more appropriate than my SCA heraldry. As my grandmother held on to this receipt, so also have I held on to this box, when so many other things have been lost.

Aunt Helen’s Baked Spaghetti, from the few receipts in my collection that were from my Grandmother’s recipe box. Click picture for readable image size.

I tend to do my grocery shopping in $20-50 dollar increments; a little bit here and there. A week or so ago, I was standing in one of my preferred stores and holding a jar of classico in my hand–the spaghetti sauce I usually buy because of the number of variations it offers me. The jar felt different this day, though, and so I paid more attention to the label, noticed that classico, and all the other brands, had gone down to 24 ounce jars: smaller amounts of food, price still the same. Too, I’d been wishing to recreate something from my youth that I could have without guilt and without a reminder of all the ways it did not taste right. Suddenly, I remembered the recipe in the box.

It’d been pressing on me for several days, the need to make the comfort food, but it took me some time to get everything I need. The ground beef is a no go & I don’t usually have green pepper in the house, and so it was several days before my routes took me past places where I could find the things I needed. It was my sincere hope that whatever I could make would have the comfort food vibe.

In the end, it did. I was worried, because a review of the recipe revealed just how spiceless it was–do not make the mistake of confusing it with anything even near to an Italian recipe. And forget about al dente pasta–this makes big tomato soaked mounds of pasta suitable for easy chewing without crossing over into the horrifying mush that is, say, canned pasta. Michael liked it just fine, and he is a guy who prefers his pasta nearly crunchy. It’s much better thought of as a tomato based casserole than spaghetti.

Recipe

Begin with your noodles. Boil up one* 12 oz. package of whole wheat spaghetti in as much water as needed. Cook to the al dente point and no further. There will be a massive amount of liquid to soak up in the last stage of cooking. Drain, set aside.

While the spaghetti is cooking, chop and sautee in as much olive oil as is needed

• 2 green peppers
• 1 large onion
• 1-4 teaspoons of salt, depending on your preference

To this, add a 12 oz package of your favorite fake meat crumbles and brown. Set aside.

In a 1.5-2 quart saucepan, make a sauce of

• 2 6-oz cans of tomato paste
• 2 teaspoons of sugar
• 1 teaspoon** of no-beef vegan base.
• 9 cups of water

Simmer 10 minutes. Now, mix all the components into an oven-proof dish large enough to hold all this–for these proportions, I used an enamel roaster capable of holding about 2.5 quarts of liquid; these ingredients filled it to the very rim. Bake in a 350 degree F oven for as long as it takes for the liquid to be reduced–30 minutes to an hour, depending on the amount of pasta in the casserole.

The casserole, after baking, will have a distinct and mild flavor of green pepper–it’s very like what you might think of when enjoying stuffed peppers. Watch for the liquid to soak into the spaghetti–you don’t want to cook TOO long, as it may bitter the peppers. If you are concerned and using 12-15 oz of pasta, try deceasing the water by 1-2 cups. The thing I love about this recipe–aside from the fact that the extra cost I would have in buying more expensive & larger amounts of spaghetti sauce can be diverted into buying better quality ingredients such as organics and/or whole foods–is the way it frees me from my former spaghetti guilt. As it happens, I love to add overwhelming amounts of spices to my sketti after cooking, and often felt a bit stupid spending money on sauces that had some planning and balance in them. No matter how much I love basil or whatever, in the end, after a few bites, I will be pouring the garlic and the cayenne and the giardinara into the bowl. With this simple sauce, it’s no guilt whatsoever to add a tablespoon of oregano if that’s what I want, because this mild dish is made for whim-based spice heads like me.

Aunt Helen, wherever you are in the universe now, thanks.

*The original recipe calls for as much as 24 oz of uncooked pasta, but that is simply too much for Michael and I to eat. Furthermore, given the dilution of the tomato paste, I would probably put a third and possibly a 4th 8 oz can of tomato paste if I was doubling the pasta.

**I added the no-beef base to add a hint of the depth of flavor ground beef would give, always lacking in whatever type of meat analogue I use. Use more if you like, adjusting the salt in the vegetables as needed. You might also find miso, marmite, soy sauce or, if piscetarian, worchestershire sauce worth trying.

Veterans graves: American Civil War vets — The War Between the States

Most of these men–this is the biggest block of them, but they are scattered through the cemetery, as well–served with Wisconsin regiments, but there are men here from all over the Northern states. There is one grave in this stand, no date of birth, no date of death, just a name, that I sometimes wonder about: was he from the Confederate States of America? There are many more reasonable explanations for a simple name on a marker, but I can’t help but wonder if he was an indigenous vet from the wrong side who wandered to the Milwaukee Soldier’s Home and, once there, died. Most of my friends–and certainly I– tend to think of the Civil War from the Gone With The Wind point of view rather than from the Glory or Across Five Aprils vantage; it was something of a shock to me to learn how important Milwaukee was in the postbellum treatment of veterans.

A family of headstones

I like to take pictures a lot. Sometimes, I get nothing in a whole session that can’t become art according to my aesthetic no matter how much I tweak it, sometimes I get images that can be art in 10 different ways with nearly every shot. This was one of those sessions where most of the shots could produce at least one good piece with little to no effort once you decided on your shot and exposure. There is one statue that I have a whole series of modified shots decorating my computer hard drive. More works hidden in a virtual closet.

Mother Sarah

I remember conversing with someone, once, who learned that a piece I’d done was a modification of a photograph, and her complements immediately turned to censure and dismissal of the piece. While there is certainly something to be said for hand work, there is also the fact that you have to have an eye for aesthetics, and modified photography is a completely legitimate tool. After all, you can have the easiest system of creation in the world and it will be worthless if you don’t have the capacity to recognize what you have done, and, most importantly, when to frakin’ stop.

Self Portrait: Am I more real in the mirror?

I did a lot of versions of this one, thought about doing more work to it to take out some of the ancillary reflections, but then, that’s part of what I was thinking about when I took the picture. When you evaluate another person’s work, it’s sometimes very easy to overlook the messages that come with the flaw, because they aren’t something you can hear.

In the mail today, I received a packet from a long time SCA friend. Her scroll had been damaged, she wrote, and she would like to have a new one made. She’s willing to pay or barter. I received what is left of the scroll via USPS. My heart contracted when I saw it–it’s a big reminder of why I just don’t do that much free scribal work for the SCA any more. I’m perfectly willing to do small pieces, but, for the most part, the days in which I would do anything more than a 4-6 hour job for free are completely over. In a world where even people who like the work you did and try to take care of it sometimes have scrolls ruined beyond repair (as in this instance), it’s too heartbreaking to put your soul into something for the reward of not being thanked and watching your sweat and money sopping up oil under the carburetor in the garage.

First, the wire is starting to buzz with the project underway: New Trek Ships being painted by respected artists. Link:

http://scifiwire.com/2009/03/new-enterprise-models-go.php

Eh, I am underwhelmed by the paint jobs tossed on two of the three models in the article. I wish it could be related to my deep, deep geekery and an asshat habit so ingrained that I can’t like anything noncanonical, but the truth is that if I was going to paint up a Trek modelas a bit of Art, I wouldn’t do patches of color, nor would I brand it with another sign of corporate culture, no matter how amusing it might be to foresee premium examples of future technology becoming nothing by corporate farces. Besides, all true geeks know that the most faboo example of corporate mania and science gone awry in the service of the truly mundane (at least, as far as space ships go) is good ol’ Planet Express.

No, once again, it’s related to my asshat full of opinions on what Art Is and Is Not. And in my opinion–cause that’s another thing everybody has–these examples of modification of the Enterprise by repsected artists make me wonder why these artists are respected. On the one hand, I’d like to congratulate the Trek franchise on doing something outside the norm no matter how much it will piss off the Basement Brigade, but I’m still looking at these things and going, WTF, mate? Were you le tired? I was hoping for Art.

Gah, I hope it doesn’t get to the flocking-and-rhinestone stage.

February was a rough work month. There is a certain amount of work that we are each obliged to complete according to the government contract we work under, and February is always a month of long days and cursing one’s salaried status, because there is lots of work, but not a lot of month. It is inevitably complicated by the fact that February brings winter weariness and viral illnesses that slash everyone’s productivity. Michael is, right now, working long hours far from here, and so I have much time on my hands. I thought–silly me–that I’d get a lot of stuff accomplished, but, instead, I devoted most of my productivity (and most of my “complete unproductivity”) to my employer, largely because of that triple whammy: big work, short month, and winter wrecked. What had to be done is done, what slipped past deadline will be done soon and were not the things that are contracturally required to be completed, and hopefully, I can go from walking around vaguely bitching about the life goals I’m not following up on because the life goal of having a successful career for reasonable pay is sucking all my time right up into the giant maw of contractual obligations to actually doing some of the things I want to do.

As I have said in the past: if other government agencies and contracters were watched the way our overseeing agency watches us, we’d have enough governmental surplus not just to throw forth a scary bonus package for badly behaving banks, we could fund the Endowment for the Arts without fear and resume the WPA without resorting to bake sales for schools or bombers.

Projectland

Macrows; Click on picture for Cook Along entry to read what the commentary below builds upon.

High thrills here. Minor progress in various areas, mostly in cooking things that taste good. My little cookbook, that manefesto on food I can eat, had a major file loss about 6 months ago, which means that I have to redo some of the recipes I was working out; I was going to redo the receipt for period-like pancakes, but got distracted by the thought of injera (and I forgopt to write that receipt down, too, so I’m going to have to make more of that). Others, though, are done enough to type up a draft version for the PDF. I find myself trying to do research on nutritional yeast, a tasty product of modern food chemistry that certainly existed in period, but was unlikely so specifically available for use as an ingrediant before van Leeuwenhoek invented Microbiology* and people could tell the difference between wild yeast sponge at the kitchen in Delft versus the wild yeast sponge in, say, York. I know I can simply point that out in the recipe notes, and I can simply point out that several late period recipes include the instruction to add a yeast specifically to a recipe for what may be flavoring as much as rising, but I’d like to find out when nutritional yeast actually became available as a specific product. Teh intettubes iz nawt helpin’ wit dis. So it’s off to the library and food history books … for food history post 1601. Geeze. I don’t go there that often. And by there, I mean “researching foodways after 1601,” not the library.

This would be three successful dishes: fridge-canned** peasen, fridge-canned chick peas and potatoes in jalfrezi, and sourdough injera. I do end up cooking vegan a lot, and all three of these dishes are that.

No, wait, I take that back: the brand of jalfrezi I used has worchestershire sauce–piscetarian friendly, but not vegan. Other brands use beef or whatever. Anyway, it was good. I served it with the chick peas. Nice. Michael liked it. Very important; his diet is improving whether he wants it to or not. I don’t want to cook things we can’t both eat, although I have no objection to him adding meat or cheese or whatever to the dish. He can stand the calories, and his arteries are not in the same shape as mine, so far as I know.

Just as a side note, our diet has changed pretty radically. Well, that should be obvious, but what I’m trying to express here is that we eat a lot of things we like from a wider range of food choices since I decided to be the principle cook in a way that actually means cooking instead of ordering out or utilizing a wide swathe of processed foods. I mean, he asked for oyster stew tonight. 18 months ago we’d have eaten spaghetti or ordered chinese. 12 months ago, I’d have cooked for us seperately. Tonight, he asked for what I can eat, and the words “Yum yum” came out of his mouth.

Over the week, I’ll be working on redactions of mushroom pies and fish pies, maybe a clam chowder that Michael can eat with me. I love standing pies. I think a nice standing vegetable pie and a bowl of chowder would make a nice meal.

A Knit Rant

Finished knit bag number 7. Hit the store and bought….

Lovely, lovely yarn, about $200 worth. Naturally, I got it for half price, down from $400, or I would not have bought quite so much. I have a couple of simple knit collars in mind for some of it, and was thinking of a partlet for Pennsic use, but of course, the first time I asked anyone in the SCA who knits for a suggested pattern, the immediate response was “they didn’t do that in period.”

Gah. Yes. I know it’s not period. That isn’t what I asked for. Having my actual request ignored for information on what is or is not period put me in mind of every eyerolling I’ve ever endured or observed when someone who knows better fails to act better, and the happy excitement I had for the project went right down Sir Harrington’s device.

I’m thinking of a shoulder cape, now, but I’m underwhelmed by the thought of all that knitting for something I don’t really want. I may find myself mothballing it for years until something I do want comes to mind. We’ll see.

Well, it’s bed time. I gues of the 850 million things I wanted to talk about will have to stop at 2.5.

__
*God, I know he didn’t invent it. He improved the microscope. That led to the burgeoning of the study. It’s an exagertation for self amusement, geeze.

**fridge canned = thrown into a canning jar while still hot, sealed and inverted, and set into the refrigerator to cool. This creates a vacuum and the food lasts a lot longer without spoilage. You can’t store it out of the fridge, as it’s not sterile, but it is a very good way to preseve food on a short term basis without freezing. I’ve been doing this frequently of late, because it takes a long time to cook these dishes, so I make a lot. As I don’t want to eat nothing but chick pea jazeeri for a week, the fridge canning saves me from that fate.

Video, simple, sweet, and by way of Ghita.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Goes best with morning’s first java.

So.

*Sunday, 2.16: we went to pick up a bed from Angel and Ted; they are passing it along. I am now faced with rearranging three rooms to accomodate the new bed-new bed in my room, my old bed in spare room, and spare room bed to porch for summer sleeping. We also went to the world of wheels. We saw a few fun things, but the best was seeing Joe, whom I have not seen in a few years. He is so talented and nice! He is a really fabulous pinstriper and lettering artist.

*St. Valentines Day: We had the boys over in the morning; they were glorious, as always. K was actually mellow, just wanted to watch cartoons and be near people. R toddled around and played with everything he could get his little hands on. I noted that there is a strong resemblance between R and my brother’s boys when they were toddlers. K appears to be a nice mix of both families, but R is clearly a Wylie. Later, Michael and I went out for Valentine’s. We went to the bookstore to have coffee and to let the restaurants clear out–we had not made reservations anywhere. It was a pretty workable strategy,though, and we had no problems.

*Friday, 2.13: The kids cae over and Ted resurrected the whole LAN. Thank goodness.

And that’s that for now.

Baby R on Nana’s knee, me in my pink sock monkey jammies and he in his blue sock monkey jammies

What a lovely little boy. I haven’t seen the boys in a while, I miss them a lot.

I’m feeling my way about these days, restless as can be. Not sure where to start with it in here. I haven’t really felt like talking much because of it.

*I finished the Tusser project, and am now trying to decide if I want to do another year with Tusser, this time using 500 Points Husbandry as a guide.

*It’s now a year and 2 days since I became a piscetarian. I am content to continue in this. I have found myself able to wear stuff I haven’t been able to wear for a while and I don’t even notice the body changing. This is fine, on the whole, but it’s been a few years since I made an investment in bras (because boobarific chicks like me can not buy a bra at places like Target, they don’t sell triple D cups) and I need to do so. I am smalled out of my more recently constructed garb and can take that stuff in… but bras? Expensive and not shrinkable. I can buy them a little small for me, but not much. At 40 bucks a pop, it’s something to be considered before doing, but the purchase can really only be put off for a while.

we are in hell these past few weeks. this looks, i know, like I am about to drift into the usual “my lief sux” emo rant one often finds in blogs, but that’s not where this is at.

But we have found a turning point, a place where we are again challenged to deviate from the norm. i have spent much of this morning reading up on the psychology of the gifted adult, because this is something that is absolutely relevant to me–seeing as i am, in fact, a gifted adult. one of the biggest favors my mother may have ever given me was the educational system arm twisting she applied to the woodridge, il school system that finally resulted in their capitulation, their breakdown, their willingness to test me just to get her off their collective backs, and lo and behold and holy fuckatoodi, they discovered that i was a gifted kid stuck in a hell of boredom and underachievement. Few women of my generation and earlier have that kind of experience to give them an absolute and irrevocable certainty of their ability and potentials, because we are from an era in which little women got married and hid in their kitchens if they were good girls and were stuck being a secretary and a spinster if they were not good enough for some man. And you can say, yes, by the time I was tested (1975) feminism was in swing and blah blah blah, but that denies the very powerful fact that in the suburbs where I lived, with the parental and other cultural influences we were exposed to, and the stultifying, conservative nature of the suburban school system, the influences that were changing society were not felt in many lives with any kind of consistency until well after the 70’s. The school system identified my brother’s LD before he was 8, and they poured tons of tax money into helping him get an education, but all i ever got was tested, patted on the head with a gee aren’t you a smart little girl, and promptly ignored for the remainder of my public education. Because I was a girl, and I was just going to get married and have kids.

Thinking about this now, I even dealt with this in college, in the late 80’s and early 90’s, when my adviser told me that I should really go to alfred adler and get a psyd rather than any of the research-based phd programs, because women always like to help people.

Well, yes, i do, but I’d rather jump rats through hoops. I like research even more. I wonder sometimes if that was the conversation that broke me there at GSU. There were several there at the end, but that was certainly one of them. And I can’t help but notice that the tides have turned in the educational system in a way that is, as usual, absolutely worse: gifted girls are still invisible, and gifted boys are labeled as ADD and thrown on meds.

And now i feel like i might be giving clues to an emo rant that is also bitter, but that isn’t the road, either. No, it’s all a set up to explain this next bit. When I’m 60, I will want to remember why i thought and did what i thought and did.

One regular dark side for gifted individuals in their adulthood is the problem of restlessness. Of feeling like there could be more, of knowing yourself able to make it more, and wondering how this can be all there is. Research into this area suggests that many gifted adults living common lives live life in survival mode. Even if you get identified as gifted and get shoved into a challenging academic climate during your first 18 years, when you leave school in the United States, for most gifted adults, there is nothing. Go to college, get a job, and wait for death. Spend most of your time hiding the true depth and breadth of your abilities, otherwise, you become a target.

So I have spent years and years not being all I can be, Army notwithstanding. Some of it is fear of failure, some of it is fear of success, some of it is being too tired by all the things in my life that have to be done for everyone but me to have time for what I actually want to do. And I have this conversation with myself regularly–just like every other gifted person leading a common life.

My 10th anniversary of blogging is coming up. While I have been home sick, I went over to the old tripod site and reread some of that. And I reread some of what is still available on other sites, those things that someone else’s hard drive failures or inability to make bank with their site or whatever, whatever reason there is for some of my old journals and websites to have disappeared for all eternity, and this theme remains constant through all those ten years. Too much of my time is spent making things I don’t want to make and doing things I DON’T WANT to do and being what I don’t want to be, so that in those moments I collect for myself, I notice how restless and unfulfilled this all leaves me.

I used to be a gifted kid stuck in a hell of boredom and underachievement. Now I’m an adult stuck in that same place. Nobody says, hey, I’ll pay your bills and you just go achieve shit.

The SCA used to fill that hole. I like my job, and if it doesn’t challenge my intellectual capacity, well, okay, this other thing did. But my interests have diverged pretty significantly from the general SCA culture, and while I still love the SCA and will still participate, there isn’t room for my interest, and so I have to find something to fill that void, or commit to a life of survivor mode in a hell of underachievement. The “what’s next” moment is absolutely here, and it may take me away from everything. It’s been on the horizon for some time, but there is no denying, as I have traversed through the travail of the past few weeks, that it’s absolutely here.

I consider myself an outsider artist. I’ve said this before. There are those who love the idea of art brut as strictly the art of the insane, but I prefer the wider definition, the art of those outside the general art establishment, the art of those without formal training, without a lot of interest in the theory and brouhaha and practices of the formal artistic establishment–art for me, not art for l’academie. It’s only a label, in truth, and labels are not terribly important if you are not playing the game. Formal training is no promise of perfect art; I sit here and type this under what my mother, the artist with formal training, considered to be her best painting. It’s a perfect product of its time, its stylization definitely speaks of the era in which it was created, and its aesthetic appeal, while certainly there, is not predicated on its picture perfect reproduction. There are a lot of professional, trained artists who can’t draw a likeness, so training can not guarantee that your work won’t or will produce something that would be considered art by the masses–the example idea being that most people would agree that a recognizable likeness presented as a general portrait is art. No matter what your path, you have to be prepared for the idea that someone is going to think your work sucks. And you have to be prepared for the idea that what is valid stylization for one era will be considered absolute utter crap by another. Timelessness can not be produced merely by training. The ability to see perspective can not be forced if the mathmatics needed to draft perspective can’t be comprehended. And the need for perspective can’t be pushed past if the viewer can’t think in terms of symbolism or can not accept changes for storytelling and/or aesthetics. Art is in many ways a contract between the creator and the viewer, and not everyone is going to sign the deal.

My academic disciple is, of course, psychology. I’ve been thinking a lot about a cross disciple conversation between art and psych and chemistry–a marriage of all the things that our culture so loves to separate. The scientist as social commentator, the artist as healer, the psychologist as mathematician. What brain chemistry comes into play during the “bliss?” What story is told about the physicist who is compelled to study as he does, who understands the aesthetics of what he sees? Other things, a million things, all wondering about the connectedness of it all. Some has been studied, some hasn’t, but what more would be studied if hard sciences were not separated from social sciences, and social sciences not separated from art?

I have a vast body of work hidden in my house–literally, and as the dream symbol for self. Most of my visible work is, of course, the scrolls I’ve done for the SCA, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. And the giftedness aspect of my nature, of who I am, tears me a thousand different ways as I look at all that raw material–it could be this, it could be that. It could tell a story about my internal motivation. It could be an aesthetic catalog of my studies. It could be a mirror that shows you what you do or do not wish to see about yourself.

In looking through all the writings of my blogging era, I happened to find one experimental piece I did that I thought long destroyed. For a time, I experimented with expressing all facets of what I was experiencing as if each facet was an individual person. It lead to some interesting insights. The hosting sight imploded years ago and I thought it long lost. But recently, in these few days, I found a file that had most of the writings archived, and I spent some time reading it. I’d forgotten how much power was in those writings. I forget how much is hidden in me.

There will be changes, things will morph and grow. I’m inclined to discuss what I have in mind but I’ve already spent nearly 1700 words writing a background that may only be comprehensible to me. But I’m done with selling myself for other people, and ultimately, if i fail, the only person going down is me. Art is Chemistry is Psychology is Astronomy is Theology. You don’t have to understand. You just have to come for the ride.

I don’t feel good. No getting around it.

Little movies up on the youtube channel–clips of Wylcliffe and Christmas Eve. Pictures up, too, demonstrating how 4 adults and 2 children can turn the first floor of my house into the worlds most amazing disaster in under 30 minutes. My favorite picture:

A little washed by the flash, but, oh, what a cutie pie.

-=>***< =-

I’m not getting much done these past couple of weeks. I updated the A&S 50 page with a few things; not much done, but a few things. The biggest thing now is trying to figure out what to do for January, the last month I’ll do this.

But I have to go to bed now.

Mostly too thingsthatcan’tbesaid to write lately, because I’m too thingsthatcan’tbesaid.

Dammit. That stoopid program doesn’t recognize Fort Indiantown Gap, the boringest station I ever endured in the military. As there about 85 people living there, I suppose that’s no surprise, but there is no nearby town, either. Of course, 85 people on post is not about to spawn a sprawling city dependent on entertaining troops, like, say, Ft. Leonard Wood has the highly exciting Waynesville. Frak. How will I pin FiG without a city? I guess I’ll use Lebanon–the reference needs knowledge of the Raber murder and it’s locale, but what the hell, I’LL know what it is.

Yeah, it’s late, I should go to bed. I’m tired. ‘Sposed to be a lot of snow to shovel, and I’ve been alone for a week. So I need to make me go to bed so I can shovel. Makes no sense? It’s okay. I forgot what I was sayin’, anyway. I’m half watching a thing on the weather as it related to the planning of the WWII nuclear weapons activities.