The Life Less Hectic

Apartment Life

2011-01-30T09:49:00.013-06:00

Significant changes have occurred since my last blog post. At the end of September I moved from a 3-story, 3400+ square foot house in midtown Kansas City to a 1200 square foot apartment in Kansas City south. I have been troubled for years by what struck me as the unreasonable consumption of two people living in such a large house. It is wasteful not only in terms of our planet's ecology and taking far more than one's fair share of natural resources, but also at the personal level in the amount of energy, effort, and money required to support it.

Even 1200 feet seems sumptuous for one person, especially compared with the tiny 300 and 400 square foot apartments often featured on one of my favorite websites, Apartment Therapy. But Kansas City isn't New York, and I fell in love with my new apartment the moment I entered it. I had imagined it would take weeks and weeks to find something I liked, but in reality this was the third apartment I looked at. My search lasted less than one week. The one bedroom apartments I saw seemed cramped and the thought of finally having a dedicated study and craft room (i.e. the second bedroom) was enticing.

My top criteria for an apartment was a quiet location with a park-like or wooded view. The balcony of my new home looks out on woods, and it is as quiet as one might desire. As much as I love midtown Kansas City, the noise, and especially sirens, is nearly constant. I quickly set up a bird feeding station on the balcony, and have been rewarded with a delightful mix of birds, some which I rarely or never saw in midtown. Daily visitors include white breasted nuthatches and tufted titmice, neither of which I ever saw in my previous yard, along with black-capped chickadees, Carolina wrens, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, northern flickers (the picture above), dark-eyed juncos, mourning doves, cardinals, blue jays, and the inevitable house sparrows. I have far few of this nuisance bird than previously, however, and have yet to see either grackles or starlings on the balcony.

The apartment utility bills are far lower than what they were at the house, needless to say, but I have enjoyed a number of additional pleasant surprises. A memorable moment came about when I entered the apartment on my first visit and noticed a hall closet by the front door. What a concept! :-) A convenient place to hang coats. Something apparently not conceived of 100 years ago when houses in our midtown neighborhood were built. I think the apartment manager must have been wondering why I spent so much time looking over the closet with a pleased smile on my face. I have also found the kitchen, though much smaller than my previous kitchen, is far more comfortable and convenient to cook in (at least for one person). The range, refrigerator, kitchen sink, dish washer, and food preparation counter are laid out so compactly one only has to turn around to reach any necessary item.

If one is truly concerned about conserving natural resources, it is hard to imagine any single step that can be more effective in reducing consumption than choosing an apartment over a house. Stewart Brand has much to say on the energy efficiency of apartment life (and the urban environment in general) in his book, Whole Earth Discipline, which concerns itself with pragmatic solutions to the global warming crisis. Moreover, I chose an apartment only minutes from my work location, which has cut my work time commute by something like 75%.

Do I feel I have sacrificed anything by moving to an apartment, or compromised my lifestyle? No. Quite the contrary. I had some concerns when I first moved, but have since come to understand that everything which is truly important to me can be managed one way or another from my new home. And shedding the burden of maintaining an overly large house has been one of the most liberating experiences of my life.

Monarch Mania

2010-09-18T16:36:00.009-05:00

I visited the Anita B Gorman Discovery Center today to attend the Monarch Mania event, devoted to the butterfly of that name. The event featured stations positioned around the center grounds with activities for visitors of all ages. The life cycle of the Monarch butterfly was covered in its different phases. A banding project was also being carried out, with small stickers being attached under the wing of each butterfly to establish their migratory route. Visitors could also catch butterflies and other insects with nets for closer inspection at one of the stations. Captured insects were subsequently released unharmed.

A highlight of the event for me was meeting Betsy Betros, author of a terrific book about butterflies — A Photographic Field Guide to the Butterflies in the Kansas City Region (A Local Color Nature Series book). Betsy worked on the book for four years, did most of the photography herself, and even designed and prepared the layout and all the text of the 407 page guide. Wow!

Betsy helped me identify the two skippers shown in the image of an Ironweed plant (Vernonia baldwinii I took at the Heart of America Star Party on September 4. The one on the right is most likely a Sachem (Atalopedes compestris) female and the one on the left is a Peck’s Skipper (Polites peckius). Betsy also told me about the Idalia Society, a Kansas City butterfly club. Needless to say, I left with a copy of Betsy’s book under my arm. (And a few other books, too.)

Here is a link to my Picasa album from the HOASP.

Damselflies

2010-08-08T17:01:00.019-05:00

Here is a picture I took at Pomme de Terre state park of what turns out to be a type of damselfly, a Powdered Dancer ( Argia Moesta). These were all over the rocky areas at our campsite. I thought they were dragonflies to begin with, knowing next to nothing about them. Both dragonflies and damselflies belong to the order of Odonata, which has inhabited the Earth for something over 250 million years.

I was able to identify the insect using the Stokes Beginner's Guide to Dragonflies and Damselflies, quite a nice guidebook and one I plan to add to our nature library. Donna Brunet, an expert macro photographer here in Missouri who specializes in insects, kindly responded to an email query confirming the identification.

Unlike dragonflies, damselflies generally hold their wings together when perched and their fore and back wings are similar in shape and size. In addition, their eyes are generally spaced farther apart than the diameter of each eye. This picture is of a male. The chalky white coloration on the male's thorax is distinctive.

Here is a picture of a dragonfly I found while walking Basie in our neighborhood recently. It had been snagged by a seriously scary looking spider, who wasn't letting go. I carried the pair home with me and took lots of pictures. I haven't identified either insect yet.

The eyes are obviously larger and much closer together. Here is a picture of the spider.

And a closeup of the spider’s head. (Lots of eyes!)

Home-Made Pizza

2010-03-25T06:45:00.002-05:00

Elly and I have fooled around with home-made pizza off and on over the years and have recently come up with an approach we feel is close to perfect. The result is tastier (not to mention healthier!) than what is available at most restaurants and takes surprisingly little time to accomplish.

Making the Dough

The dough recipe comes from Baking Illustrated, a book from the editors of Cook’s Illustrated Magazine, and my most frequently referred to baking book. We use a variation of the recipe on page 154, reducing the yeast to 1/2 teaspoon and letting the dough rise all day. Many bread recipes call for a quantity of yeast designed to complete the rise in an hour or two. Reducing the yeast causes the rise to take much longer. As a consequence, the dough develops much more flavor.

4 cups (22 ounces) of bread flour

Use Better for Bread flour, not All Purpose flour, for pizza dough. The result will be a crispier crust with a nice, chewy interior. Also, if you do much baking, I recommend getting an Oxo digital scale. These cost about $32 and are well worth the price. Flour is highly compressible. Measuring by volume, rather than weight, requires careful technique for consistent results. Measuring flour with a digital scale is quick and fool-proof.

Mix the following two ingredients into the flour with a wooden spoon, a Danish dough whisk, or with the mixing paddle attached on a standing mixer.

1&1/2 teaspoons salt (Kosher or Sea Salt, never table salt!)
1/2 teaspoon of Bread Machine or Instant yeast

Danish dough whisks cost about $9 and are designed for mixing doughs of various types. Bread machine or instant yeast is similar to regular yeast except it doesn’t need to be dissolved or proofed prior to mixing with dry ingredients. Oddly enough, many recipes, including the Cook’s Illustrated recipe referred to here,recommend using bread machine / instant yeast and then call for proofing the yeast before mixing it into the flour. It’s a total waste of time and completely unnecessary.

2 tablespoons olive oil
1&3/4 cups of warm water

We have a Brita pitcher and use filtered water for all of our cooking. The water should be warm to the touch, but not too hot. About 100 degrees is good. I heat the water in our microwave for one minute to get the right temperature. (It’s cold coming out of our refrigerator.) Making the water too hot (over, say 120 degrees) can kill the yeast, though this risk is considerably diminished by mixing the yeast into the flour dry. The flour acts as a buffer, reducing the shock of pouring yeast directly into hot water. Still, keep the temp about 100 degrees.

Mix the olive oil into the water, then pour the liquid into the mixing bowl with the dry ingredients and mix to a wet, shaggy dough.

It is not necessary to knead the dough. Books have been written on the subject, including Suzanne Dunaway’s delightful No Need to Knead, which offers not only delicious recipes but stories and watercolor illustrations by the author. It is out-of-print now, but an absolute gem. Not to be passed up if you come across a copy. Anyway, just mix until all the flour has been incorporated, spray the top with cooking spray, cover with plastic wrap, and leave the bowl on your kitchen counter for the day. You can do this Friday morning for pizza Friday night.

That said, I’m in the habit of mixing the dough in our standing mixer, swapping out the mixing paddle for a dough hook once the ingredients are combined, and then kneading at the lowest speed setting for five minutes. My theory is that it can’t hurt, and why not use a tool we already own? If you don’t own a standing mixer, don’t worry about it and don’t mess with kneading the dough.

Pizza Stone and Peel

Tools you definitely do need for home-made pizza are a good baking stone and a pizza paddle. Old Stone Oven baking stones are the best. They cost about $50. We have an Epicurean pizza peel, made from some sort of composite material with a comfortable rubber handle. It is far better than any wooden pizza peel we have used. It cost about $40.

Preheating the Stone

Put the stone on a middle rack in your oven and heat it up for at least an hour before baking your pizza. Set your oven at the highest possible temperature, which will be something like 500 or 550 degrees. Our temp dial only goes up to 500, but I turn it up above the 500 mark, stopping just below the Oven Clean setting. This is important. You want that stone hot. The biggest difference between a home oven and a commercial pizza oven is the heat level (commercial pizza ovens run at 700-800 degrees and have a stone baking surface). Using a pizza stone properly will get you nearly the same result.

Shaping the Pizza

This dough recipe makes three goodly-sized pizzas. Sprinkle some flour on a clear area of your kitchen counter, and plunk the dough down on it. You’ll have to scrape the dough out of the bowl. Use enough flour to keep the dough from sticking. Put flour on your hands and shape the dough into a thick roll. Cut it into three even pieces and shape into balls. If you’re only making one pizza, wrap the remaining two balls in plastic wrap, but each one inside a ZipLock freezer bag (1-quart is a good size bag), and freeze them.

The dough will hold perfectly for several months this way. When you want to make a pizza, remove the frozen dough from the bag and wrap, spray a mixing bowl with cooking spray, drop the dough in, spray a little more on top, cover the bowl with the plastic wrap, and let it thaw. If you do this in the morning, just leave the bowl in your refrigerator. Take it out when you get home from work and let it warm up for an hour before shaping.

Okay, this is important. DO NOT use a rolling pin to roll out your pizza dough! A rolling pin will squash all the lovely little gas pockets created by the yeast out of the dough, leaving a flat, lackluster crust that won’t be worth a darn. Instead, spread the ball into a six to eight-inch disk gently using your palms, and then, with your fingers, coax it into a nice 14-inch shape. Use flour as necessary to keep it from sticking and flip the disk over so the same side isn’t always facing up. The object here is a thickness of around 1/4 inch. Some areas will be a little thicker and thinner. Be careful about making the crust too thin, which can cause it to burn.

You would think that throwing dough on a blistering hot stone would cause it to burn immediately. However, the moisture in the dough prevents that from happening. Instead, you get a lovely crisp crust with a chewy crumb (the interior). If the crust is too thin, however, the moisture cooks off, and once dry, the area will burn.

Don’t worry about making a perfectly rough crust. It is more important to have a consistent thickness. Let the crust be square or oblong or shaped like an amoeba, just as long as it fits on the pizza paddle.

Forget about Cornmeal!

Most recipes will tell you to use corn meal to keep the pizza from sticking to the paddle. The idea is you spread cornmeal on the pizza paddle, put the dough on top, cover it with the ingredients, and slide the whole thing off the peel onto the stone. This works reasonably well as long as you have used enough corn meal and are competent with the peel, but cornmeal is messy, and your crust will likely be flat and undercooked.

The trick is to forget the cornmeal and pre-bake the crust (on a truly hot pizza stone) before adding any toppings. If you use enough flour to keep the dough from sticking when you shape it, it should slide off the peel with ease as long as you haven't put any ingredients on it. Just fold the shaped dough in half, and then in half again, put it on your peel, and unfold it. Prick it all over with a fork to reduce air pockets when it bakes. Give it a gentle shake to make sure it slides easily, and then slide it onto the hot pizza stone and bake four minutes.

It will look something like this. There will be some bubbles. That’s fine. It’s rustic. It’s authentic. Pre-baking like this causes a nice “oven-spring” when the crust expands rapidly before setting. It creates a wonderful texture that never occurs when toppings are added first.

Pre-baked crust, top and bottom views.

Slide your pizza peel under the pre-baked crust and take it out of the oven to add the toppings. The crust won’t stick at all now, regardless of how many toppings or how much cheese (Elly-Ann!!) you add.

Quick Pizza Sauce

The following recipe makes a delicious sauce in only a few minutes. We started with a pizza sauce recipe from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking book mentioned above and then got real with the seasonings.

1 28-ounce can of crushed tomatoes in puree.

We have come to prefer Hunts canned tomato products to all others.

2 tablespoons of olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, pressed through a garlic press

1 teaspoon dried basil
1 teaspoon sugar
salt, black pepper, and hot pepper flakes to taste.

Heat the oil in a heavy sauce pan for a few minutes, then add the garlic and cook for 30-45 seconds. The garlic should sizzle slightly when you add it to the pan. Don’t let the garlic brown or burn. Add the crushed tomatoes in puree and stir to incorporate. Stir in the basil, sugar, salt, pepper, and hot pepper flakes. Cook on medium low heat 10 minutes or so to cook off some of the moisture at a gentle simmer. Don’t let the sauce boil.

Final Assembly

Probably a little too much sauce here. :-)

Most recipes will warn you not to put too many ingredients on your pizza. The thing is, if you pre-bake the crust, you can load on as many as you like.

That goes for cheese too, of course.

Canine supervision helps.

The pizza will bake in about six to eight minutes. Faster than you might think. Keep a watchful eye on it, and don’t let it get too brown. After removing your pizza from the oven, let it cool on a wire rack for a few minutes — maybe five — before cutting it. And don’t cut it on your pizza peel! :-)

First Day of Spring

2010-03-20T16:44:00.010-05:00

On our first day of Spring, March 20, 2010, we had a blizzard in Kansas City. Or, at least a heck of a lot of snow. It snowed all day. We had maybe 8 inches altogether.

Snowy weather brings many feathered visitors to our backyard, and yesterday was no exception. In fact, we added two new species to our backyard bird list (included on the left side of The Life Less Hectic), bringing our total to 55. The additions are Song Sparrows and Fox Sparrows. Here is a picture of the Song sparrow, which spent most of the afternoon digging for seeds under the snow.

We attract a good many birds, by far the greatest variety of species, by scattering seed on the ground. Many interesting species, including most of our native sparrows, rarely ever visit feeders. They prefer to feed from the ground close to cover like shrubs and bushes, wooden fences, and trees. Here is another picture of the Song sparrow.

And here is a picture of the Fox sparrow, which showed up later in the afternoon. Both birds stayed long enough for Elly to see them when she got home from work around 6:00 pm.

An American Tree sparrow also put in a brief appearance. We first spotted these in our backyard on December 27, 2009, and have only seen them once or twice.

We have had male red-winged black birds for a few weeks now, but hadn’t seen any females until a group of five or six showed up yesterday. Juncos are still plentiful, and will remain in the area into April, when they migrate to northern breeding grounds. We have had throngs of goldfinches, two and three dozen at a time. Late yesterday a group of 6 or more house finches arrived to share perches on our spiral finch feeder, easily the most effective feeder we have found for smaller birds.

Reading Arrangements

2010-02-13T16:47:00.020-06:00

It is not my intention to catch up on six weeks of blog posts in a few days (counting only from the beginning of this year and ignoring all the weekly posts not written in 2009). However, I find myself in a blogging mood and decided on a second foray into less hectic living.

Elly and I have lived in our home in midtown Kansas City for over 21 years. Our choice of a house in a comfortable and friendly midtown neighborhood, and our decision to stay put, has contributed significantly to our happiness and to the peaceful quality of our lives. Americans are said to relocate, on average, every seven years. This claim is consistent with what we have observed in our own neighborhood. Many houses on our block have changed hands three or more times since we moved in. The habit of moving so frequently is undeniably connected with the hectic pace of life experienced by so many, and a subject worthy of its own post. Not this one, however. :-)

Over the years we have put considerable effort into renovating our home, doing much of the work ourselves. And we still have quite a bit to do. We’ve taken our time, probably more time than many people would want to take. One benefit of the slow approach, however, is we have managed to avoid major blunders in the form of design changes not consistent with the character of our house, which was built at the turn of the 20th century. One sees such mistakes all too frequently. Bedrooms, for example, in contemporary homes, are much larger than bedrooms in homes built over 100 years ago. A common remodeling practice is to combine several rooms in an older home into a single bedroom. We had planned such a change ourselves, initially. But as the years passed, we came to appreciate the economy and scale of the bedrooms originally designed for our home. When we finally started remodeling the bedrooms, the idea of knocking down walls to combine them was not given a second thought.

The home we chose all those years ago reflected what we both value and wanted for our lives, but to a surprising extent our home has also shaped our lives and our ideas. The destination of this circuitous ramble is where I am presently seated — my reading chair in our living room.

I could not say precisely when the living room became my favorite place in our home, but it has. It is a sanctuary of repose, relaxation, and reflection. And for reading.

The bookcase and fireplace came first. Our fireplace surely looks original. It isn’t. The previous owners tore out the original fireplace, so we had to replace it. We visited other houses in our neighborhood to see what their fireplaces looked like before rebuilding ours. None were wood-burning. All the original fireplaces in the homes we visited had natural gas heaters. We found the mantelpiece at an antique store in the area. It undoubtedly came from a home built around the same time as ours.

Once the room was finished and furnished, Elly established the sofa as her favorite location (closer to the heating vent), and I chose the corner chair near one of the bookcases. The habit of keeping a selection of currently favored books on the shelves by my chair developed over time. It wasn’t until the last few years that I got serious about a decent reading light. My first choice, a floor-standing Ott light didn’t work out. The light was too cool (it was daylight balanced, which looks very blue indoors) and had a long arm that proved awkward in my reading corner. I replaced that with a rickety floor lamp uncovered by a rummage through our attic, a survivor from our apartment days and not a favorite of Elly’s. Admittedly, one had to be careful when turning it on to avoid knocking off the shade, which at its best was obviously off kilter.

One Saturday in January we visited an area furniture store, Revival Home Furnishings, and found a nice lamp for the living room table. It wasn't truly adequate as a reading light on its own, so I added a floor standing swing-arm lamp from Lowes. Lowes also had replacement shades, one of which perfectly matched the shade on the new table lamp and brought the combination together nicely. The result meets my requirement for bright, comfortable reading light and Elly’s requirement for attractive home decor.

So I have a favorite chair where I like to read. What’s the big deal? First, I spend more time reading and I enjoy it more. (I enjoy the occasional nap, too. A nice thing about books is they wait patiently and don’t go on without you.) The satisfaction from the arrangement, honestly, far exceeds the effort that went into establishing it. We visited some neighbors years ago, and I noticed that Bob (a local history buff) had his own favorite chair with reading light and bookcase in the living room. It didn’t seem like a big deal to me. My perspective has changed considerably since then. It is a big deal. Setting up a spot where you can enjoy a relaxing pastime does wonders for your peace of mind and helps you slow down and enjoy your life instead of rushing through it. And yes, the neighbors we met years ago still live in the same house. Bob may well be sitting in his chair, reading, as I write this post...

Sailor 1911 Fountain Pen

2010-02-13T15:47:00.009-06:00

Okay, I haven’t gotten off to a quick start on blogging in 2010. In fact, this is my first post of the year. I have meant to post many times over the past month and a half and simply have not taken the time to do it.

Fountain pens were first mentioned on The Life Less Hectic in a blog post almost one year ago — a post which announced my intention to write a series of posts about slowing down. A series that so far has included two posts, written one week apart, and then nothing since.

While I haven't kept up with my blog this past year, I have written regularly in my personal journal, using the Lamy fountain pen mentioned in my post last February. As I said then, I was surprised by how enjoyable it is to write with a fountain pen and in the year intervening the practice has become a daily habit with me. I decided to splurge on a quality pen and chose a Sailor 1911 with a fine nib. Sailor pen nibs are among the best available, and their fountain pens are reasonably-priced considering the quality, especially when compared with Monte Blanc pens.

Naturally, I purchased mine from our local purveyor of fine writing instruments, The Pen Place. It is beautifully crafted and pure pleasure to write with. It provides an effortless, consistent line with the lightest imaginable touch. When I first became interested in fountain pens, I read that people suffering from arthritis frequently turn to them. Fortunately, I am not afflicted with the condition (at least so far), but I was puzzled about why writing with a fountain pen would help. The reason is that they require practically no force to write with. Using an ordinary ball-point pen requires a surprising amount of force. Often in the past I found my hand cramping up from the death’s grip hold I had on my pen. A small amount of practice with a fountain pen eliminates the problem entirely.

Here is one more picture: a closeup of the nib.

Christmas 2009

2009-12-27T20:14:00.006-06:00

People in Kansas City hoping for a white Christmas got more than they bargained for this year. We had a blizzard Christmas morning and got something like a foot of snow. It has been many years since we have had so much snow in a single storm. This would have been more fun if Elly hadn’t had to work on Saturday! We still enjoyed it though. Basie especially, shown here with a somewhat icy kong.

One of my absolute favorite things is to watch birds at our feeders on a snowy day, and we were treated to a real display on Christmas — flocks of juncos and goldfinches, a dozen or more cardinals, blue jays, a few white-throated sparrows, lots of house finches, and the usual mix of urban junk birds (house sparrows, starlings, and mourning doves). A crow even showed up in the early morning. This afternoon we added another bird to our backyard list, an American Tree Sparrow, bringing our count to 53.

Of course, we did a lot of cooking on Christmas day, another of our favorite things. We went Indian for Christmas dinner (Elly doing most of the work). I made a plum pudding for dessert (how-to post coming soon). For breakfast Christmas morning I made cranberry scones, following a terrific recipe in the Cooks Illustrated Baking cookbook. Lots of butter and cream make for an outstanding scone. (Not a diet food!)

A Haphazard Loiterer

2009-12-08T23:23:00.002-06:00

For myself, being in a manner a haphazard loiterer about the world and prone to linger in its pleasant places, here have I been suffering day by day to steal away unheeded, spellbound, for aught I know, in this old enchanted pile. Having always a companionable feeling for my reader, and being prone to live with him on confidential terms, I shall make it a point to communicate to him my reveries and researches during this state of delicious thraldom. If they have the power of imparting to his imagination any of the witching charms of the place, he will not repine at lingering with me for a season in the legendary halls of the Alhambra.

— Washington Irving, The Alhambra

The Alhambra

2009-11-29T21:46:00.003-06:00

“I now perceived I had made an invaluable acquaintance in this son of the Alhambra, one who knew all the apocryphal history of the place, and firmly believed in it, and whose memory was stuffed with a kind of knowledge for which I have a lurking fancy, but which is too apt to be considered rubbish by less indulgent philosophers. I determined to cultivate the acquaintance of this learned Theban.”

— Washington Irving, The Alhambra, “Palace of the Alhambra” (p. 35, Heritage Press edition, 1969)

Pumpkin Soup

2009-11-22T13:39:00.070-06:00

I'll be the first to admit that Pumpkin soup doesn't sound promising. It calls to mind soupy pumpkin pie, which seems disgusting, even for someone who likes desserts. The source of the recipe was also one to inspire skepticism: Ghoulish Goodies: A Frightful Cookbook by Sharon Bowers. Elly brought it home before Halloween. It includes lots of clever ideas for treats like "Swamp Creature Toes" (pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate with sliced almonds painted with green food coloring as the toenails). Honestly, though, in addition to terrifically amusing themed treats (suitable for making with kids) it also contains wonderful recipes, including one for pumpkin soup, which is savory, not sweet. Bowers' first comment about pumpkin soup is the biggest mistake most people make is trying to play up the sweetness of pumpkin. Ah.

Pumpkin Prep

Habitues of The Life Less Hectic may be familiar with my post on pumpkin pie, in which I discourse on the importance of choosing a "pie" pumpkin, NOT a carving pumpkin, for cooking. The same applies for soup. Indeed, for any meal involving pumpkin.

The method for preparing pumpkin for pies is simplicity itself, as described in the pie article. Prepping pumpkin for soup is more labor intensive, as the pumpkin needs to be cubed. Banish thoughts of peeling a pumpkin at the outset! Directions for peeling a pumpkin with a sharp knife are available on the web. I've tried (and failed) to imagine a more likely scenario for slicing off a finger. Instead, dice the pumpkin as you would a cantelope, first cutting it in half lengthwise and scraping out the seeds and pulp (blessedly easy with pie pumpkins as opposed to carving pumpkins). Then cut the halves into wedges, cut those into squares, and then cut off the shell. This takes a bit of time, but the odds of completing the task with all fingers intact are good. So much for cubed pumpkin.

By the way, even a small pie pumpkin yields more than you'll need for this soup (16 oz. cubed). Faced with this problem, I tossed the remaining cubes in a bit of canola oil, and roasted them in a 400 degree oven for around 40 minutes (turning them about four times). Then I pureed the roasted cubes. Somewhat to my surprise, I found the flavor AND texture superior to roasting pumpkin in the shell as in my pie post. Elly's theory is that the additional surface exposed when roasting the cubes develops more flavor and concentrates the pumpkin by lowering the moisture content.

Roasted Vegetable Stock

The only significant deviation I made from Bowers' recipe was to use roasted vegetable stock, instead of chicken stock. You want to make this yourself. It's not hard to do, and the result is far superior to any commercial product. This is true, in fact, even if you want to use chicken stock. Not only will the flavor be fantastic, you'll also eliminate chemical preservatives, which is no small advantage.

I followed Martha Rose Shulman's roasted vegetable stock recipe from her book, The Best Vegetarian Recipes.

1 large onion, coarsely chopped

4 carrots, trimmed and sliced

6 large garlic cloves, peeled

1 large leek, white and light green parts, cleaned and sliced

1 pasnip, peeled and sliced

1/2 pound mushrooms, stems trimmed, whipped clean

1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

1 cup dry white wine

Bouguet garni made with several parsley and thyme sprigs and one bay leaf

6 whole peppercorns

Salt to taste (about 2 teaspoons)

Soy sauce to taste (1 to 2 teaspoons)

Toss the veggies with olive oil in a large roasting pan. I also included some kosher salt (NEVER use table salt). In fact, banish it from your house and use only kosher or sea salt. Your food will taste infinitely better, and people will assume you are a "foodie." If anyone actually uses the term, please slap them! Roast them (the veggies, not people who use the term "foodie") in a preheated 400 degree oven, turning about every 10 minutes, for 40 minutes until the vegetables are browned. They'll look like this. Note: these could actually stand a bit more browning.

Transfer the veggies to a soup pot, pour the cup of white wine into the roasting pan (a splash of cognac added to the wine won't go amiss here, or sherry), and scrape up any brown bits, stirring into the wine. This is called "deglazing" the roasting pan, and it is a serious flavor enhancer. Add the wine to the soup pot, along with 8 cups of water. A note on water: several years ago we got a Brita pitcher and filter all our drinking water. We also filter all water we use for cooking. This is inexpensive and quick, and noticeably improves the flavor of our food.

Back in June Elly made up some herb and flower pots, shown in this post, which included flat-leaf (Italian) parsley. If you're afraid of snakes, skip the first part of the post which includes pictures of a large black rat snake I found on the back porch and almost tried to pick up before I realized it was not a "stick"! :-) The parsley didn't do much until about October, when for some reason it took off. I took this picture a few days ago. We haven't had a hard frost yet, so in late November we're still enjoying delicious parsley from our own garden, along with sage, rosemary, thyme, and even tarragon (though that is getting a bit dodgy). The basil is long gone, alas. Standard herbs are truly hardy plants, inexpensive and easy to grow, and a real boon for the kitchen.

Okay, so the bouquet garni. (You may be wondering about that.) Essentially, it is a cheese cloth bag (or just a scrap of cheese cloth tied up with some string) into which you have stuffed various herbs, in this case parsley and thyme from our garden and a bay leaf. We got these garni bags from Prydes in Westport, and they are fun. A clever trick, if you don't have garni bags, is to empty a tea bag and use that instead. (But the garni bags work better!)

Add the bouquet garni, peppercorns, salt and soy sauce (I use 2 teaspoons of each) to the soup pot, bring it to a boil, and then reduce heat, partially cover, and simmer for an hour.

Keep in mind, we haven't gotten to the soup yet. This is only the stock! In case you haven't already guessed, this is what slow food is all about. Frequently, when the subject of slow food comes up, all sorts of exotic locales (like Italy, where the slow food movement got started) or ingredients are mentioned. None of that is essential to slow cooking, however, and people who think it is usually also think cooking is a bore and needs some hype to make it interesting. All of the ingredients called for in this recipe are available in just about any reasonably stocked grocery store. Also, keep in mind that while you can't make this soup in half an hour, much of the time required is cooking time, during which your involvement is little more than an occasional stir and a quick check to ensure an appropriate simmer. And, needless to say, your kitchen and home will be filled with the delicious aroma.

So, once the stock has simmered, it needs to be strained. This can be done with a strainer and spoon (used to mash as much juice as possible from the roasted veggies). If you have a food mill, you can really wring the last drop of liquid from the veggies. We started our compost pile this year, which is where the leftover pulp ended up.

Now for the Soup

2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

1 celery stalk, chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

1 pound pumpkin, cubed

1 medium potato, peeled and diced

1 teaspoon dried sage

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

8 cups roasted veggie stock

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat and then add the chopped onion and celery and saute until softened and lightly browned. Deviating from Bowers' recipe, my advice is NOT to add the minced garlic until the onion and celery are done. Add the garlic and saute for only a few moments before adding the stock and other ingredients. Otherwise, the garlic will burn. The fact that recipes often call for sauting garlic along with ingredients like onions and celery is a puzzle to me. The result is always burnt garlic. Why is this standard advice?

Bring to a boil, lower heat, and simmer for 30 minutes. (Or longer if you like.)

Once the cubed pumpkin and diced potato is tender, remove the soup from the burner and puree it a few cups at a time in a blender. The result will be smooth and creamy. I apologize for not having a picture of this process. I used two large pots, the soup pot and an empty pot, one on either side of the blender, and a ladle to transfer the soup into the blender. Do NOT attempt to use a food processor for this! :-)

The finished soup will look something like this.

This is a time-consuming project. Is it worth the trouble? In a word, yes! The first time I made it, I had to insist that Elly (a vegetarian) step away from the soup pot before she consumed an entire bowl in what was intended to be a simple taste. :-) Apart from the olive oil, this soup is fat-free. And yet it is richer and creamier than the Lobster bisque served at the Bravo's restaurant (a frequent lunch venue for myself and close friends Dahl and Erin Metters). I have made the soup for three weeks running. Elly, who NEVER eats the same meal two nights in a row, is happy to have pumpkin soup every night until it is consumed. And honestly, it is not difficult to make. It doesn't require any exotic or expensive ingredients. It is super-healthy and an absolute treat. There's no down side. You will simply never taste any soup from a can than comes within 100 miles of this for flavor.

Bowers suggests serving the soup with French bread croutons, rubbed with garlic and covered with melted cheese like cheddar or parmesian. It's a wonderful combination. But, even better is to serve it with Andrew Whitley's recipe for Cheese Bread from Bread Matters. That's a subject for another post...

The Neddiad

2009-11-18T21:59:00.005-06:00

Before they left the colonel put his hand on my shoulder and said, "It is impossible for a boy with his wits about him to travel the Santa Fe Trail without discovering something. You're a boy with your wits about him, and you'll probably find a treasure along the way. If you should meet a Navajo shaman named Melvin, you'll be in luck, so keep your eyes open."

from The Neddidad by Daniel Pinkwater (p. 24)

Another Addition to the Backyard Bird List

2009-10-17T16:32:00.013-05:00

Well I have obviously fallen short on my 2009 resolution to write at least one blog post a week, having let two months slide by since my last post. Yikes! So this is going to be something of a compilation.

Yesterday afternoon I stepped outside and noticed what I took to be a flock of geese flying overhead at first glance. But they were awfully low and their wings looked odd. It dawned on my they were gulls. At least three dozen, of them, in fact, flying in formation. A quick call to birding guru, Mark McKellar, at the Backyard Bird Center, helped me identify them as Franklin's Gulls. Mark says that Franklin's are the type that fly in formation like geese.

They were gone in an instant, so needless to say, no picture. Here, however, is a picture I took at 6:09 am on September 16 from our backyard showing a conjunction of the moon with Venus in the eastern sky.

This is actually a handheld image. I didn't even use a tripod. These digital point and shoot cameras are amazing. (Mine is a Canon S2 IS.) The trick for something like this is to set the ISO speed at something reasonably fast, 200 or 400 ISO, and then significantly underexpose the image.

Here is a fun picture I took of bees on a flower in our neighbor's yard a few days after the conjunction. We sort of skipped October and zoomed right into November in Kansas City, this fall, with temps quickly following into the 40s during the day. Not too many opportunities for fall flower pictures now!

Here is a picture of Basie and me taken in the last few weeks -- on Elly's birthday camping trip to Pomme de Terre state park. Pomme de Terre has become our favorite state park this year (the Pittsburgh side!), followed closely by Arrow Rock state park.

The sunsets were beautiful during our visit.

Here is Basie, enjoying the sunset in his preferred snoozing orientation...

Paying Attention

2009-08-16T08:11:00.002-05:00

"Most of us move so quickly that our surroundings become no more than the blurred scenery we fly past on our way to somewhere else. We pay attention to the speedometer, the wristwatch, the cell phone, the list of things to do, all of which feed our illusion that life is manageable. Meanwhile, none of them meets the first criterion for reverence, which is to remind us that we are not gods. If anything, these devices sustain the illusion that we might yet be gods -- if only we could find some way to do more faster."

-- Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World

Eddie Delahunt Cafe

2009-08-07T12:48:00.006-05:00

I heard about Eddie Delahunt on NPR yesterday morning, a program about local musical performers. Eddie is an Irish singer and musician who operates his own Cafe (shown above) at 45th & State Line, in a nifty antiques area. Samples of Eddie's music can be heard at www.EddieDelahunt.com. Or, if you live in Kansas City you can catch Eddie's act live. Among other local venues, he currently performs Friday evenings from 6 to 9 at Mike Kelly's Westsider.

I happened to meet with Lynn Badaracco, my Lee Hecht Harrison outplacement consultant, last week at the Roasterie Cafe in Brookside. Lynn is helping me with my job search -- I volunteered for a separation package from Sprint Nextel this spring. I've been considering whether to blog about searching for a new job. Guess this is my first post to touch on the subject. :-)

One of my goals is to find a job in the KC urban core area, or at least a reasonably short commute from it. The idea occurred to me that it would be fun to meet with people when possible at venues in the urban core area. Places like the Roasterie, which I enjoyed, or Eddie Delahunt's Cafe, which I visited this afternoon. Eddie himself was on the job behind the counter. No unusual thing, I take it. He wrote a friendly autograph on my copy of his Triur CD. I'm looking forward to my next visit when I plan to stay longer and enjoy a beverage and sandwich.

Elly's Idea of a Burger

2009-08-02T07:34:00.011-05:00

Elly and I are interested in vegetable gardening, and we've had a few over the years. Some have been more successful than others. This year, our tomatoes have overrun the whole garden (yes we planted too many!). The plants are well over six feet high. It has been cool and wet this summer, however, and tomatoes prefer hot and dry summers. As a result, we keep getting more and more growth, and more and more green tomatoes. Few are ripening.

The solution? Fried green tomatoes, naturally. :-)

Our favorite recipe comes from Deborah Madison. It's simple to prepare, involving only a small amount of corn meal, and pan frying with ghee (a clarified butter used in Indian cooking). The result is spectacular. At least, we think so.

Basie, it turns out, is not a fan of cooking that involves sizzling, smoke, or the exhaust hood on our cooktop. His opinion on the matter emerged quite suddenly. One day, we fired up the indoor grill. An instant later he went sailing over the puppy gate like a gazelle, clearing it by a good 12 inches and heading for a remote region of our home. (He had never previously jumped over it.) He's shown here watching the green tomato proceedings from a safe distance.

Traditional burgers are off the menu for Elly, who is a vegetarian. However, we have discovered Morning Star Chipotle Black Bean Burgers at Costco. They are hands down the tastiest veggie burgers we have tried. So here is Elly's idea of a burger, served with sauteed mushrooms on a bed of lettuce with a side of fried green tomatoes. Quick and easy to prepare, and nothing short of fabu. I had the same thing and loved every bite.

Access to the Divine

2009-07-31T05:10:00.003-05:00

"To be a mystic is to have direct access to the divine, an access that requires no middleman or woman. Mysticism is to have direct knowledge through insight and intuition of God or ultimate truth. In this state of overwhelming awe and connection to all things, meaning and purpose are a given. And here's what is truly surprising: the whole 'mystic' thing is actually not as mysterious as it's been cracked up to be.

The Buddha, the 'Awakened One,' said that Buddha nature is in each one of us and that nothing special is required to have it. It's just a matter of allowing it. It is the same for the mystic in each one of us. Though the part of each of us that is capable of a higher consciousness and therefore connection to all things may be dormant, it is always accessible. Search your mind and heart for it, and it is there. And once awakened, the ultimate clarity and meaning result."

from The Little Book on Meaning by Laura Berman Fortgang (pp. 183-4).

Thomas Hart Benton

2009-07-30T08:10:00.001-05:00

It was an exciting day last Saturday. I met Thomas Hart Benton, which was quite a feat since he passed away in 1975. No, I wasn't channeling Tom. Local historian Bill Worley portrayed the artist in the studio (a converted garage) at Benton's home which is only a few blocks from our neighborhood. The event was co-sponsored by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the Missouri Humanities Council.

Worley gave a wonderful Benton performance, and the experience was enriched by the tremendous sense of place and being surrounded by the artist's tools, supplies, and other personal effects.

More pictures from the event can be seen in my Benton Picasa album.

As if meeting Thomas Hart Benton was not enough excitement for one day, Saturday evening I had the honor to meet Galileo Galilei. But that is a story for another post...

Outstanding in Its Field

2009-07-24T16:58:00.008-05:00

Yes it has been a heck of a long time since my last blog post, but rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated. I thought it would be a good idea to write a post and head off any Jeff Goldblum style Google hoaxes! :-)

I decided to upgrade the OS on my computer, with predictably disastrous results. When I finally got that fixed, everything had to be reloaded, of course, and I couldn't find my Adobe Elements DVD for the longest time. All is well, now. Or at least functional.

This is my 22-inch Dob. Technically not in its own field, but in Ron Abbott's field at his Land of Oz observatory. We had a great night of observing last Saturday. Dave Hudgins and Bently Ousley joined in on the fun. Rumor has it Dave will be appearing in full Galileo regalia at the July ASKC meeting tomorrow night, telescope in hand. Watch this blog for pictures of the action.

Here is a picture of Ron himself on the morning after our observing session.

Snake Redux

2009-06-12T09:34:00.002-05:00

We have some soffit and fascia that needs to be replaced on a corner of our front porch roof. It has been needing repair for quite some time, actually. Starlings have taken to nesting inside it. This morning, as Elly was leaving for work, I stepped up on the front porch wall to take a closer look and was startled to see a snake poking its head out of the soffit. I'm not sure it was the same black rat snake we saw on our back porch because its head seemed quite a bit larger than the last one. It must have climbed up the stone pillar on that corner to go in and visit the starlings. Black rat snakes are reputedly excellent climbers, and now we have evidence that such is the case.

Backyard Safari

2009-06-09T10:15:00.014-05:00

I got a start yesterday afternoon when I went to turn on our birdbath fountain. I thought to myself, hmmmm, I wonder who put that stick behind here . . . it looks a lot like a snake. Then it dawned on me that it IS A SNAKE!!!! I'm not an expert in matters herpetologic and initially thought our visitor was a bull snake. But, Dan Johnson, a friend from the Kansas City astronomy club I belong to, who sometimes counts snakes in his spare time to assist local herpetology research, told me it is a black rat snake. They are wide spread in Missouri and reach lengths up to 6 feet. Our visitor was a good three feet. Mature adults are mostly black. This one is not full grown and still showing obvious markings. They get darker as they mature. I gently encouraged it to vacate the porch, where upon it took up residence UNDER our porch.

Rat snakes (among others) are useful critters to have about for rodent control and such. It didn't seem particularly aggressive, either. Elly is more pleased about the new resident than I am, oddly enough. Her theory is that the snake has been with us for quite a while, and we've only just now noticed it. Possibly. Anyway, I think urban ecology is a good thing, but am definitely watching my step in the backyard now. Here are a few more pictures.

After those somewhat scary pictures, a nice charming picture of Basie, who decided to ensconce himself in one of our yard chairs Sunday afternoon, seems like a good idea.

We went to one of our favorite garden suppliers earlier in the day, Sunshine Flowers, and got plants for some of our terracotta pots, which we had decided to arrange on our side patio. In particular, we decided to make some parsley pots with both curly and flat leaf parsley, as well as bee balm and cilantro. This is Elly's potting bench, which I built from lumber recovered from a small deck at the back of our yard which we weren't using. We have decided to convert the area into a garden featuring a dogwood tree as a memorial for Samba.

Here is one of the flower pots Elly arranged. I noticed the yellow flower, a Gazania Red Stripe, at the garden center and Elly worked several of them into the arrangements.

We placed four pots on each end of our patio.

After all the gardening, we were both ready for some backyard reading (supervised by Basie, naturally).

One more picture of the Gazania Red Stripe.

All the Time in the World

2009-05-15T17:29:00.005-05:00

"Unlike a watch, which marks off how much time has gone and how much remains, the sound of the bells ringing the quarters had seemed to say, 'Stop. Think. This is here. This is now.' In my previous life there had never been enough time: time was always running out. But in the garden, where I was acutely aware of the passage of time -- the changing light as the hours of the day passed by, the shifting pattern of the seasons as the years passed by -- there was paradoxically the feeling of having all the time in the world, of hours and days stretching and expanding into a shimmering pool of now."

-- Katherine Swift, The Moreville Hours: The Story of a Garden.

I read about this book on Cornflower, and Elly gave it to me as a birthday present.

The Immense Cosmos

2009-05-13T13:31:00.003-05:00

Given the overwhelming vastness and miraculous nature of our universe, a natural tendency is to retreat into our socially constructed existence here on earth -- a thin slice of reality that we can more readily comprehend because we are the primary architects of the cities and factories that now dominate our lives. Yet by ignoring the larger universe in which we are immersed -- by concentrating our attention on the engaging and demanding social reality -- we easily forget that it is the immense cosmos that is our true home. We live almost completely immersed in a socially constructed reality that so fully absorbs our energy and attention that virtually none remains to experience the wonder of our existence. The tragedy of modern industrial societies is the superficiality that they project (and that we accept) as the norm for human affairs. We unconsciously trivialize the human experiment with shallow pursuits of money and social status that mask the magnificence of what it means to be a human being.

-- Duane Elgin, Voluntary Simplicity, pp. 115-16 (revised edition, c1993).

Backyard Bird List Hits 50

2009-05-09T11:01:00.008-05:00

Yesterday afternoon was a wonderful time for bird watching in the Miles backyard. The pine siskins hung out all afternoon, mixing it up with the house finches. I counted 7 siskins at one point. One of our favorite sparrows, White-Crowned, put in an appearance for the first time this spring, a black-capped chickadee came by to visit, the first we've seen in months. And, most fun of all, a white-breasted nuthatch chose to visit our peanut feeder when I was sitting about 8 feet away reading a book. I didn't have the camera so I couldn't get a picture but it is the first white-breasted nuthatch we've seen in our yard. And that brings our backyard bird list to 50. Here is a picture I took yesterday of a white-crowned sparrow.

Our first Peony blossom opened this morning. We have nine large peony bushes in our front yard, a mixture of white, pink, and a reddish-purple. We'll have huge peony bouquets for the next few weeks and our house will be redolent with their fragrance.

Pine Siskins and House Finches

2009-05-08T15:01:00.006-05:00

I saw both pine siskins and house finches on one of our feeders this afternoon and took the opportunity to get pictures of them. Since the birds look somewhat a like, it is interesting to see them together. The bird on the right side of the feeder is a female house finch. The other three are pine siskins. You can see that they are smaller and that the house finch's tail is longer. The siskin's markings are more vivid, too, but that is not as easily seen in this image.

The birds on the right in this image are house finches (top female, lower bird male) and the bird on the left side of the feeder is a pine siskin. Here the difference in their beaks is obvious -- the finches have much thicker and more powerful beaks. Also, this is about the best picture I have gotten showing the yellow covert markings on a pine siskin's tail.

It doesn't require a really expensive camera to get interesting and attractive photographs of birds. More important is to understand how to use your camera effectively, get in close to your subjects, and keep your eyes open for good image opportunities. These latter two items are easier to accomplish in your own yard than anywhere else because you needn't dedicate large amounts of time solely to the project and you can control feeder positions and attract birds to good spots for pictures.

Clay-Colored Sparrow

2009-05-06T10:25:00.004-05:00

We added another bird to our backyard list (and our life list) yesterday -- a Clay-Colored Sparrow. According to Sibley, these birds often intermingle with chipping sparrows, whom they resemble somewhat. The facial markings easily distinguish them from the latter, at least during the spring when they are breeding. These are migratory birds in our area, nesting in the far northern US and in Canada. Chipping sparrows nest across the US, including in Missouri.

Elly had just returned from her trip to Phoenix, and we were enjoying a glass of wine at our kitchen table when this little bird showed up. I didn't have enough light to get a great picture because it was cloudy and the bird was a bit farther away on our driveway. This was the best shot I managed. The "clay" markings were a beautifully delicate bluish-gray color. This visitor brings our backyard list to 49.

Pine Siskins!

2009-05-04T22:21:00.007-05:00

I've been meaning to post about this for a few weeks. Elly and I spotted our first Pine Siskins on Tuesday, April 21, on the new spiral feeder we put up this spring. We have heard of them, but have never actually seen any. A pair showed up while we were sipping coffee and tea at the breakfast table. (I'm the tea drinker.)

We knew immediately what they were. Superficially, they look a little like female house finches. But they are smaller, their markings are much more vivid, their beaks are thinner and more pointy, and their tales are shorter. The yellow markings on the wings and tails are quite subtle -- at least in the ones we have seen, a dozen or more over the past few weeks. They mostly all have fairly obvious supercillium markings, as well.

Mark at Backyard Bird thinks a large group of them wintered over in the Ozarks due to the harsh conditions further north. Now they are heading to their spring breeding locations.

It is fun to identify a bird you haven't seen before, and even more fun to be able to do it in your own backyard. We've also seen many kinglets and brown creepers, lots and lots of chipping sparrows, even flocks of them moving through our neighborhood, and a few Yellow-Rumped warblers (the Myrtle variety). Our backyard bird count now stands at 48. :-)

I took this picture of a saucy white-throated sparrow the same morning the Pine Siskins showed up.

Kindle 2.0

2009-05-04T09:29:00.007-05:00

I finally gave into temptation and got a Kindle 2.0. A friend had accidentally ordered two of them, and offered to sell me the spare rather than ship it back to Amazon so I didn't have to order one and wait for it. I've had it for some weeks now. I didn't have a cover for it, initially, but got worried that it might be scratched or damaged and after looking over the various cover options, decided the synthetic covers didn't look functional and went with the standard leather cover. We don't do much leather in our household -- no furniture, coats, etc. But some of our shoes are leather, and some of our dog leads. I would have gone with a synthetic or fabric option if a decent one had been available.

Elly was not enthusiastic about it, initially. I think she was worried I would be ordering books from Amazon every time she turned around. I guess a lot of people have been doing that, judging from Amazon's stock price. But I assured her I am much more interested in older, out-of-print books from places like Project Gutenberg. So far, I have only ordered one book from Amazon -- the Kindle 2.0 Cookbook. It explains how to do lots of things with the Kindle that are not covered in the manual. And that only cost $4.

I've loaded about 50 different books on the reader, lots of John Burroughs, E.F. Benson ghost stories, Willa Cather, Jules Verne, William James, and the like. A friend sent me a paper he had written on mysticism. It was a Word document. Amazon has a nifty service that converts standard document formats, like Word, into the Kindle format. You can even have it done for free if you download the converted document to your computer (instead of having Amazon send it to your Kindle directly) and then use the USB cable to load it on your Kindle. The Word conversion works exceptionally well, converting note numbers to hyperlinks, and doing all sorts of nifty things like that.

I have been extremely pleased with the reader. It is fun to read with, especially in bed, because it is thin and light and the page turning mechanism is super ergonomic. I have heard some users don't like the short pause when changing pages, but I think that is ridiculous. I mean it takes about an instant. Easier than turning the page in a book, honestly. The ability to highlight passages and add notes is wonderful. Also being able to do full text searches. You can go for weeks without recharging if you switch the wireless mode off. The Wireless feature consumes a lot of power if you leave it on, and you have to recharge every few days. Since I download Project Gutenberg books to my computer, and then put them on the Kindle with the USB cable, I rarely ever need wireless connectivity and leave it off most of the time.

My one complaint is that I wish there were a way to organize books in the Kindle so that I could arrange them in groups. Everything just goes into the main list in whatever order it likes. It is easy enough to locate whatever book you want with search and filter features, so the objection is a minor one.

I've been reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and have been loving it. It will be the first book I finish on the Kindle reader. I've meant to read it for years.

Is the Kindle the future of reading? Nope! I'm amused be predictions that print books are going to go the way of the Dodo. Print books that were made over 500 years ago are still readable today. Think about it. Paper book-making is a sustainable technology that does not have to rely on petroleum. Kindle readers are just the opposite. Moreover, electronic files that were made only 20 years ago now can't be read because the technology used for them is obsolete. My prediction is that paper books will still be read when Kindle readers have gone the way of the Dodo.

In the meantime, though, I'm going to enjoy mine.

Cinnamon Roll Disaster

2009-04-19T10:15:00.005-05:00

Just in case you were wondering if every culinary effort at the Miles house turns out well, the answer is "No!" Here you see the result of my first experiment with making cinnamon rolls. I thought about taking a picture of what they looked like straight out of the oven but I just wasn't brave enough to do it. I was also a little concerned for the grackles, but have not found any lying dead around the yard. They must have strong constitutions. This one does have an expression that looks something like "I'm going to find who did this and peck his eyes out."

So what happened? Well, surprisingly few cinnamon roll recipes are to be found in baking books. Cooks Illustrated did have one, but it sounded like one of their wacko we're better than everyone else because we're different affairs. I skipped it and went for my mom's old Betty Crocker recipe. I mean BC couldn't possibly let me down. Right? Wrong! The cooking time was WAY too long, and like an idiot I wasn't keeping a close enough eye on what was going on in the oven. And yes, I used an oven thermometer and had the oven pegged at 375 following the directions. The BC icing recipe is also way wrong, basically resulting in confectionary sugar concrete.

What to do? A trip to the library, where I found two books whose cinnamon roll recipes seemed like winners. My second attempt is from Abigail Johnson Dodge's The Weekend Baker, and the result was superb. :-) Abigail knows a thing or two about mixing up icing, as well. Heavy cream makes a much richer icing than milk! I haven't tried recipe number 2, yet, but will definitely give it a go. It's a potato dough approach and calls for Irish Cream liquor in the icing. Anyway, this is one of the Dodge cinnamon rolls. The grackles won't be getting any of these...

Easter Sunday

2009-04-18T11:16:00.016-05:00

Elly, Basie, and I had a wonderful Easter Sunday. A few weeks ago I put up a new Spiral Feeder from backyard bird and the finches just love it. It's about 3 feet tall. They really like being able to slip along the spiral perches from hole to hole. So much so that our older finch feeder, with individual perches, only serves as a backup feeder now -- the birds spend 90% of their time on the new one. I took this picture Sunday afternoon.

We decided to spend the day at home (a typical holiday choice for us) cooking a multi-course dinner. Elly had the clever idea to listen to choral masses. We have a good-sized collection of classical CDs, both instrumental and vocal, but haven't listened to them much over the past few years. We listened to three Tallis Scholars CDs -- Palestrina Masses, Allegri Miserere, and a Josquin CD with Missa Pange lingua and Missa La sol fa re mi. We also listened to Dvorak's Stabat Mater.

Basie seemed to think it was good napping background music.

I started off making biscuits, following a recipe from the Cook's Illustrated Baking book. These turned out marvelously. I won't tell how many Elly ate. My first adventure in making biscuits.

Elly made a Gruyere and leek tart, combining multiple recipes, which turned out quite nicely.

And also a puff pastry with an asparagus and shitaki mushroom filling that was another triumph.

I took charge of dessert, making a parfait with layers of strawberries, lemon mousse, and white chocolate mousse. I used some more of the lemons from Dick Harshaw's yard in Phoenix.

Here is one of the parfaits. They weren't quite a photogenic as the Bon Apetite version, but they were delicious.

We enjoyed a terrific bottle of 2005 Treana Red supplied by my sister and brother-in-law (Karen and Tom) with our dinner and ate leftovers for days.

Back from Arizona

2009-04-05T13:08:00.003-05:00

Questions have been raised, both on and off my blog, as to why it has been so long since my last post. A major reason is that I took a trip to Arizona last week to do some astronomy with friends in the Saguaro Astronomy Club. We observed from a site in the Sonora Desert. It was a great week! I put 3,029 miles on the RV. Lots of pictures in my Picasa album from the trip.

Harris's Sparrow

2009-03-10T07:45:00.008-05:00

Elly and I added another bird to our backyard bird list yesterday -- a Harris's Sparrow. We're now up to 45 birds identified from our backyard. Harris's sparrows are not uncommon in our region, but we have not seen one in our yard before. In fact, this is the first Harris's Sparrow either one of us has identified.

I wasn't able to get a picture of the bird, but will be keeping a close eye on our yard for photo opportunities. I did find a picture on the web that is similar to the bird we saw. Our visitor had a strikingly jet-black cap and throat. In full breeding plumage, which appears by the end of April, adult males sport gray cheeks and a decidedly pink bill.

These are our largest sparrows, slightly bigger than white-crowned sparrows, with whom they are frequently seen. We had a goodly number of white-crowned sparrows last April, though we haven't seen any yet this spring. Here is a picture I took last spring of a white-crowned sparrow.

We also spotted two female redwinged blackbirds this morning -- the first we have seen this spring. Adult male redwinged blackbirds arrive four to six weeks before the females. While the adult males are unmistakable with their deep black plumage and red and yellow epaulets, the females look more like overgrown sparrows.

The bird on the upper left is a house sparrow (not a true sparrow, at all, but an invasive English species). The bird in the upper middle and the one on the far right are female redwinged blackbirds, which gives a good size comparison with a typical sparrow-like bird. The bird in the lower center is a young male redwing. His shoulder markings are just coming in and he still has some brown on his back. Juvenile males look like over-sized female redwings. It is hard to see in this image, because of the angle, but the young male is significantly larger than the females.

Impulse Book Purchase

2009-03-05T11:15:00.007-06:00

It's windy in Kansas City this morning, though the stiff breeze doesn't seem to bother these red winged-blackbirds. Robins aren't the true harbinger of spring, as some people suppose. They actually remain with us the year round. But, not so with red winged-blackbirds. Their arrival really does signal that spring is near.

One of my New Year resolutions is to avoid impulse book purchases, and I have done fairly well in that regard. But, I could not resist Charles Tunnicliffe's A Sketchbook of Birds when I saw it in a window display at Spivey's a few days ago.

I also ordered Suzanne Dunaway's No Need to Knead from Chequamegon Books in Wisconsin yesterday. This was not an impulse purchase. I found Dunaway's book at the public library and have been going nuts baking bread recipes from it. They're nothing short of wonderful. Only a few copies are available on Abebooks.com -- a sure sign of limited supply. But Elly, munching a slice of Rosemary Filoncino, dipped in rosemary olive oil (both recipes from No Need to Knead), agreed the book is well worth $65. We have had the pleasure to correspond with Ms. Dunaway, who is as charming as her book suggests, and have learned that a reprint from 10 Speed Press may be a possibility. Here is a picture of the filoncino loaves, baked in a baguette pan added to our cooking arsenal after I read about them in Ms. Dunaway's book.

I also had the good fortune to come across the March/April edition of Greenability magazine (Living well, by living green in Kansas City) yesterday. It is actually published by a neighbor of ours. This is an outstanding local resource for eco-friendly lifestyles. Elly and I are now subscribers.

Snow Day

2009-03-01T13:47:00.018-06:00

The weather forecast called for maybe an inch of snow. Instead, we got a good six inches on Saturday, which was a great way to end out the month of February. Nothing is more fun and relaxing than to spend a snowy day in the kitchen, reading, cooking, watching birds, and, now, thanks to the new addition to our family, watching Basie play in the snow.

Basie loves snow, which isn't a big surprise. He loves to play in the backyard, loves cold weather, and loves to explore. He is 11 weeks old now and growing fast.

My two new journals -- the green one is for birdwatching and the tan one is my kitchen journal. Among other things, this is great for remembering what cookbook a particularly good recipe came from.

Elly was busy making a Cauliflower Cheese Pie from Mollie Katzen's Moosewood Cookbook. We substitute a regular pie crust for the grated potato crust called for in the original recipe. This is awesome with white cheddar cheese, BTW.

I've been on something of a baking binge since trying a Ciabatta recipe in the March/April 2009 Cooks Illustrated which turned out marvelously. Then I came across Suzanne Dunaway's No Need to Knead cookbook at the library. This is one cookbook that seriously needs a second edition. It was published in 1999 and is not readily available on the used book market. It is one of the best cookbooks I have found, even including original watercolor illustrations by Dunaway. I made Apricot Focaccia following her recipe exactly and the result was divine. Easy too. It is suprising what great bread you can make without kneading. Seriously. If you are interested in baking at all and can find a copy of Dunaway's book at your local library, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Some more birds. I can't seem to stop snapping pictures of birds in our backyard. Believe me this is a tiny sample of my total image haul. :-)

Lots of activity at the niger feeder. Goldfinches give larger birds like Grackles a very wide birth, but they aren't afraid to mix it up with birds their own size like house finches and juncos.

The quintessential snow birds in our backyard are cardials and dark-eyed juncos. These are a couple of nice junco pictures. They stay with us from October through April, traveling north into Canada to breed and next in the spring and summer.

Bluejays simply can't resist peanuts in the shell, even if they have to do a little snow removal to uncover them.

Starlings are widely reviled by birders because they are an invasive species and force out many lovely native birds. Well, at least in urban areas. I have to confess that I enjoy watching the. They are handsome, fiesty, and often hilarious.

Here are a couple more pictures of Basie, for his many blog-stalking fans...

Playing in the snow can wear a puppy out!

Another Slow Idea

2009-02-23T22:11:00.007-06:00

The March 2009 National Geographic magazine includes an article on reducing energy consumption at home, which I read yesterday afternoon. One of the suggestions was to turn off your computer when you aren't using it. In fact, turn off any electrical appliance you are not using, including chargers. I thought, sure, why not? So I turned off our computer and then, for good measure, went into our TV room and turned off the power center for the room, which includes our cable modem and wireless network hub.

I decided I would only turn them on when either Elly or I wanted to use the computer.

Three or four times today I thought, I'll go check my email, or I'll look something up on the Internet, and then each time it occurred to me the whole schmear was turned off so I skipped it. And then it dawned on me, Hey! This isn't such a bad thing!

In addition to saving energy, it also reduces distraction. I mean, leaving your computer on all the time isn't quite the same thing as running your television for background noise (you know who you are), but it makes it WAY too simple (tempting) to drop anything you are doing to just have a quick peek at something on the computer. We all know what happens next: two hours later you are wondering where all the time went. Instead of leaving the computer on, why not decide exactly when, and how much time you will spend on the computer, blocking out a specific period for computer stuff, and then leave it turned off and don't use it any other time of the day?

I certainly liked what happened today. I'm going to keep this up for a while and see how it goes.

BTW, one afternoon Elly and I spent some time mulling over what things make life more hectic. We easily came up with a list of four items, and then spent the rest of our time pondering how and why they have the effect they do. These are, in no particular order:

Cell phones

Television

Cars

Personal computers

The argument here isn't to do with out these things -- we're not Luddites -- but to manage them to improve the quality of our lives instead of running us ragged.

We turned off broadcast television years ago. We still watch movies and serial programming, but only what is available on DVD (through Netflix), with VERY rare exceptions like Presidential elections. No broadcast TV, cable, or dish. The result has been wonderful. It was not a difficult transition at all, and it removed perhaps the major source of stress from our lives.

Cars have a similar, though perhaps less insidious effect, as computers. It is simply too easy to hop in the car and spend your day running around. When was the last time you had a "car-free" day. That is, when you did not get in a car at all for a 24 hour period? Staying home is a great way to slow down and enjoy life more. And save money and the environment at the same time too. It takes a little planning, but not that much.

Thoughts about these four technologies will be regular features in my slowing down posts.

Journals, Fountain Pens, and the Life Less Hectic

2009-02-21T11:17:00.004-06:00

I have been meaning to start a series of posts on slowing down, on living the life less hectic, and finally have gotten around to writing one. Books about slowing down aren't too helpful in actually figuring out how to do it. They tend to analyse the reasons why slowing down is a good idea, or point out how hectic our lives have become, but they are weak on advice or help in making changes to do less and to enjoy more.

Carl Honore's In Praise of Slowness: Challenging the Cult of Speed is a typical example of the problem. Honore is a journalist, and the book reads more like a series of superficial magazine articles than the comprehensive report promised on the jacket copy. Most of the chapters center on some visit or experience Honore has exploring this or that group's "slow" activity or orientation. Meanwhile, he maintains a wink and nod subtext letting the reader know he is too sophisticated to take all this "slowness" stuff seriously. In the chapter on slow food, for example, he brags about liking to eat at McDonalds. In the chapter on slowing down on the road, he mentions various speeding tickets he receives. In more than one instance, he actually sneers at attempts to live life in the slow lane -- British couples moving to the countryside from London, for example. He goes to 10-day meditation retreat, but only stays for three days. Readers turning to the book for help in slowing down won't find much help, unfortunately.

I would be happy to hear about any book you have read on this subject, which you think is more helpful.

Anyway, my idea for this serious of posts, which I'm going to tag with the label "slowing down", is to talk about actual things Elly and I have done to slow down and enjoy ourselves more, which gets to the title of this post. (You were wondering about that, weren't you?) BTW, if you have skipped ahead to find the main subject, you should slow down, go back, and read the post from the beginning. This will help you. :-)

For those who aren't heavily into blogging, "labels" (also called categories) are a way to organize blog posts so visitors can find posts about a subject that interests them. On the left side of this blog is a section titled "Labels." Clicking any of the items will display the posts on that subject. The number in parenthesis is the number of matching posts.

Keeping a daily journal is a great way to slow down, I have found. You don't have to write pages and pages each day. Writing as little as one paragraph makes a difference. It is important to date each entry. I write the day of the week, followed by the month, day, and year like this: Saturday, February 21, 2009, spelling out the day and the month. Wouldn't it be faster just to write 2/21/09? Yep. I mean, later, if you want to, you can always look up the day of the week on your computer. BUT, the point is to slow down, right? Take your time. Not be in so much of a hurry. And, trust me on this, months or years later, you will appreciate having the day of the week right there.

What do you write about? Anything you want. The point is simply to take a few minutes, or ten or fifteen, and just reflect on your day. Maybe write about something that happened which you truly enjoyed. Or about taking the time to do something you wouldn't ordinarily do. Or comment about a book you are reading. Write about birds you have seen in your yard. About a new wine you have tried. About a recipe you are cooking. About the antics of a pet. Really, anything you want. And a nice aspect of your journal, compared with a blog, for instance, is that you don't really need to worry about other people reading what you have written. This isn't about keeping secrets. It's about relaxing on your own and not giving any concern to what others might think, not worrying about incomplete sentences, or explaining context, or misspelling words, or skipping here and there on a whim.

Soon you may notice something interesting. How many times has someone asked you what day it is and you have to stop and think. "What day is it??" What day of the week. What date. I mean, talk about an indication that our lives are too hectic! If you start writing in your journal each day, before long you won't have to think about what day of the week it is, or what the date is. You will know off the top of your head. And if you find yourself thinking, "Gee, this week has just flown by, what did I spend my time doing" all you need to do is flip through the pages of your journal to recover that time.

Why write with a fountain pen? First, don't worry about getting a fountain pen before starting your journal. Any pen will do to begin with. I started messing around with fountain pens for sketching. Kansas City has a great pen store, called the Pen Place, where I got my first (and second) fountain pens. I chose Lamy pens. These are the best quality, reasonably priced fountain pens available. The resin (plastic) versions cost about $30. (The matte finish versions are particularly good for carrying about in your pocket -- the shiny version starts looking scratched up pretty quickly.) The Pen Place person added what is called a converter, which cost another $4. It is a little piston device that enables you to fill the pen from an ink bottle instead of using cartridges -- much more economical.

Frankly, I thought fountain pens would be fussy and not great to write with. In fact, they are easy to use and write a beautiful, flowing line that is pure pleasure. One thing you will need, though, is good quality paper to write on, and one of the first things I realized is that Moleskin notebooks now have very cheap paper that doesn't work well for fountain pens. (They are made in China, now.) I've been writing in lovely journals I found at the Nelson-Atkins Museum Store (shown in the picture above). They are lined (I wish they weren't, actually) and have wonderfully smooth and high-quality paper.

Writing with a fountain pen encourages you to slow down. A good thing. We're not talking about crawling across the page, but for whatever reason, fountain pens work best with a light tough and a steady smooth cadence. And something about these pens encourages that sort of writing. It's a sort of reflective pace that lends itself well to mulling things over and contemplation. One thing that helps is to pause occasionally and tap the barrel of the pen with your forefinger three times. This sounds kooky, I know, but it causes your grip to relax and loosen up. Holding the pen (any pen) with a vice-like "death grip" causes cramped and unpleasant writing. It happens almost all the time, too, if you don't pay attention to how your holding a pen. At least it did to me.

Another great thing about fountain pens is that they conserve on natural resources. They last for years and years. That is many, MANY disposable pens you won't consume.

Will keeping a journal and writing with a fountain pen really help you slow down? Honestly, I didn't start doing it to slow down, but the truth is, somewhat unexpectedly, it really does help. The effect becomes more and more noticeable over time.

Basie's First Week at Home

2009-02-15T12:42:00.006-06:00

We brought Basie home on Friday, February 6, just over a week ago. Elly took a week off from work, and I am between jobs, so we both got to spend the week with the new puppy. We've taken about a zillion pictures, of course. I've uploaded some nice ones to this Picassa album. Lots of captions.

Basie met Dr. Byers at Westside Animal Hospital on Tuesday, where everyone made a big fuss over the new puppy. Dr. B was impressed with how healthy he is and all the health certifications Susanna Joy had gotten for each puppy.

Basie has been the center of attention at home for the first week, needless to say. He has had a lot of firsts, learning to sleep in his kennel and spend time in it during the day when we are too busy to play with him or keep a close eye on his activity. Basie has razor sharp little teeth and can chew things up in a surprisingly few seconds. The kennel is a great solution. He is wearing a collar now and has gone for several walks. We're going to start him in a puppy class (to help socialize him with other dogs) as soon as possible.

Basie is a smart puppy and is learning to do his business in an area set aside for that purpose in our backyard. Several times when we have been playing with him outside he has stopped to run over to his pottie area to relieve himself. He has also learned to run to the back door and pat it with his paw when he needs to go out.

He is eating three meals a day (3/4 cup per meal) until he is three months old, when we will shift down to two meals a day. We've noticed that Basie goes into a "power squat" stance when he is eating. I included a picture of this in the Picassa album. Basie is one of the largest puppies from his litter and learned he could push other puppies out of his way to get more food. He has let us know in no uncertain terms that 3/4s of a cup is not as much as he would like to eat. He tries to jump up on the box where the dog food is kept after finishing what is in his bowl. Also, he tends to be more aggressive after meals.

Surprisingly, for as cute and sweet as he looks in his pictures, Basie is a much more aggressive dog than our Rottweiler, Samba, was. Samba looked intimidating, but the truth is he wasn't overly confident and wasn't very aggressive. He had a very strong protective instinct, but when he was away from home he was usually a quiet dog. Basie is much more confident, which is a good thing, and we have enough experience raising puppies to respond properly to his temper tantrums. We pointed this out to Dr. B, who couldn't help rolling his eyes. It is true, though. One thing that contributed to Basie's dominant behavior pattern, we suspect, is that the one male puppy in his litter who was more aggressive than Basie, had a mild inflammation problem and had to be separated from the rest of the litter. After that, we suspect Basie more or less got to take over and it really went to his head so to speak.

An advantage of having lots of toys for new puppies like Basie is the toys are a convenient distraction from things they shouldn't be chewing on, including us. Basie was used to rough-housing with his litter mates, which included biting naturally. This is part of normal puppy development. When a new puppy comes home and is away from its litter mates for the first time, it's natural to transfer the behaviour to the new family. This involves lots of playing, of course, but the puppy has to learn it isn't acceptable to bite his or her new family members and that certain rules must be followed. The trick is to help a puppy learn this without being overbearing and overusing the "no" word and other strong corrections. It is easier to do with a puppy like Samba, who we could basically correct with a stern glance. Basie's attitude is more like "I'm having fun -- screw you!" This isn't a bad thing. Basie's confidence will enable him to be more relaxed in new situations and around people and dogs he doesn't know. At present, however, he does need a loving, firm hand.

Basie likes to have lots of toys in his kennel. too. At first, I thought it would be too hot and crowded for him. But he was obviously upset to be in a nearly barren kennel so we tossed in lots of toys and a small sleeping mattress and he settled down immediately. We think it reminds him of sleeping with nine other puppies. He also likes to sleep on our feet and our laps. Especially Elly's.

Somewhat surprisingly, at nine weeks Basie has no problem sleeping through the night. We take him out during the night if he whines, but he hasn't done that too much since the first few nights. We're consistent about when he goes in his kennel for the night and when he gets up in the morning. The kennel is in our bedroom (where he will sleep when he is full grown). The important thing for the happiness of pets (dogs and cats, especially) is to have a regular, predictable routine so they know what to expect and can establish a regular pattern of behavior.

Common Redpoll

2009-02-11T13:29:00.006-06:00

Elly and I have been keeping a close watch on our Niger feeder since Mark McKellar at the Backyard Bird Center told me cold weather up north has driven many birds down into our area that are somewhat unusual here. Large numbers of goldfinches have been frequenting the feeder. So many, in fact, we plan to put up a few more feeders. Some of the northern visitors like to mingle with goldfinch flocks.

We were rewarded today with the appearance of a Common Redpoll, mixed right in with the goldfinches as predicted by Mr. McKellar. He showed up about 11:40 am. Definitely a male from the coloring. I got a few pictures. No great shots but the bird can be readily identified. Their tails are proportionately longer than those of goldfinches, and, as can be seen in the second image, much more deeply forked. This is the first Redpoll we have seen in our yard, so we get to add another bird to our yard list.

Basie At Last

2009-02-04T11:08:00.008-06:00

Last week Susanna decided which puppy would come home with us. We were so pleased with her choice. Sunday was our first visit when we knew for sure which puppy is Basie. He is on the right in this picture with one of his brothers. Sunday was also the first time we got to go outside with the puppies. And Basie is coming home this Friday -- one do sooner than we had expected.

This is a picture of the whole family. We worked hard for this! :-) In fact, we got a whole series of pictures before the final success. All of those pictures, plus more of the puppies (especially Basie) can be viewed in our first Basie Picasa album.

Here is one more picture of Basie with his (very happy) new Mom.

Eggplant Tasting Club

2009-02-02T12:22:00.015-06:00

The first annual meeting of the Dahl Metters Eggplant Tasting Club was held on January 20, 2009 to general acclaim from all participants, including Dahl. Dahl has always maintained that while he does not hate eggplant, he likes everything else more. George Arnold, a good friend who happens to be on Dahl's team at work and loves to cook, and I decided we needed to do something to expand Dahl's culinary horizons and came up with the club.

Dahl is shown here throwing caution to the wind and leading by example!

George did most of the work in putting this event together, coming up with a location, printing signs and neat eggplant handouts, and preparing two wonderful dishes -- eggplant lasgna and eggplant rollups. Many thanks to the other participants who contributed dishes as well: Anusha brought an eggplant curry and Chandra and Diwakar brought delicious eggplant puffs which we should have cut in half so everyone would have had the chance to try them. I brought Baba Ghanouj, described in my previous post.

Inspired by Dahl's courage, even the most culinarily faint-hearted lept into the fray...

And the moment of truth!

Everyone had a great time. Dahl, who confided to me he hadn't eaten eggplant for decades, went back for seconds! George and I plan to make sure Dahl won't have to wait decades to enjoy delicious eggplant cuisine again. We're already planning the second annual meeting of the Dahl Metters Eggplant Tasting Club in January 2010.

Baba Ghanouj

2009-02-02T11:12:00.013-06:00

Baba Ghanouj (pronounced ganoosh) is a sort of Middle Eastern dip made from eggplant that is wonderful on grilled wedges of pita bread. Elly has slightly modified a recipe for this from Nava Atlas's Vegetarian Celebrations, and the result is simply delicious. Better, in fact, than we have found in restaurants or from grocery stores. The cookbook is out-of-print but is readily available on Advanced Book Exchange or you might be able to check it out from the library. Elly recently made a batch (with a small amount of help from Moi) for the first annual meeting of the Dahl Metters Eggplant Tasting Club, more on which in my next post.

The first step is to roast two whole eggplants (about three pounds) in a 500 degree oven for 40 minutes. These are the big purple kind found in most grocery stores. The eggplants must be pierced first with a fork so they don't explode. Elly recommends puncturing each egg plant about 16 times -- four lengthwise rows of punctures distributed around the eggplant. Smaller eggplants might need less time but this isn't too critical. You might also need three eggplants if they're smaller. Just make sure the total weight is about three pounds. I helped by puncturing the eggplants. Sorry, I don't have a picture of this or of roasting them in the oven. Atlas's recipe calls for roasting them on broil, but baking at high temp is more reliable. Also, the eggplants only need to be turned once (after about 20 minutes). Keep baking them until they collapse inward. It doesn't matter if the skins get charred because they will be discarded anyway. An alternative approach, which adds a pleasing smokiness to the dish is to grill them on a barbecue grill. They must be turned during this process so they char up evenly. Again, keeping grilling until they collapse.

After the eggplant is roasted or grilled, set it aside to cool. While the eggplant is roasting (or cooling, you'll have plenty of time) saute one heaping cup of chopped yellow onions and four gloves of minced garlic in one table spoon of olive oil over moderate heat until translucent. Hint: start the onions sauteing before adding the garlic to prevent the garlic from getting too brown.

You will also need 1/4 cup of tahini (sesame paste). The texture is a little like thick peanut butter. The Krinos brand is available at many grocery stores and is consistently good in our experience. Also, the juice of one lemon (use fresh!) and 1 teaspoon of ground cumin.

Once the eggplant is cool enough to handle, slit them open lengthwise and scoop out the insides with a spoon. This looks pretty scary. Just keep your courage up and don't worry! :-) Hint: if your friends or family are squeamish about eggplant, don't let them see you make this dish!

Glop the eggplant, sauteed onions and garlic, and the rest of the ingredients into your food processor. It will look even scarier than the eggplant by itself. Don't worry, be happy! Do do do do do do do...

Slap the lid on and press the button. Continue until it looks like this. Don't over do it. You want the baba ghanouj to have a little texture.

I'm sorry I don't have a picture of the finished dip in a serving dish. Elly makes a lovely presentation by swirling the dip with a spoon so there are a few circular grooves, drizzling some olive oil on top (it will settle into the grooves), and the adding a light sprinkle of Cayenne pepper. Serve the dip at room temperature. It will hold in the refrigerator for several days, but allow it to warm up to room temp before serving for the best flavor.

6 Week Pups

2009-01-25T16:30:00.007-06:00

This is really just a hit-and-run post to get up more pictures of the Labrador puppies. Elly and I have visited each Sunday for the last three weeks. We just got back from Sedalia about an hour ago. The puppies are six weeks old in these pictures. They are growing fast and are as adorable as possible. One more Sunday visit and our puppy will come home with us the following Saturday — February 7.

This last picture shows all ten puppies having one of their four daily meals at a circular feeding pan. Watching them do this is a riot because they rotate like a pinwheel around the pan, each puppy nudging the next one around as they all eat as much food as possible.

Eden Revisited

2009-01-18T16:58:00.003-06:00

“There is a story so pervasive, so deeply sublimated, therefore so powerful, that it is disabling our grace and ease in this world, the grace and ease with which we mostly conduct our lives and create our art. The story is Genesis, the Ur-story at the center of all our stories. It is in Genesis that we learn the reason for our current state of exile from Nature. Uniquely created and endowed (thus unnatural), in a world that is neither our original home nor our ultimate home, we have been cast as aliens into an opaque, often dangerous world, a corrupted form of something earlier, something higher. These observations on human nature, and on Nature itself, shape our forms of upbringing, the dynamic and moral structures of our entire civilization, our schooling — and in particular our art education.

To create a new, more deeply satisfactory story, one that will enable a healing of the schism between humans and the rest of creation, constitutes the great task of this generation. Because this story is as primary as it is, invasive as it is, the task of creating a new story, Genesis II, requires an effort that our minds, bodies, and spirits find satisfactory. The artistic enterprise, when full and sincere, is just such an engagement that calls upon these powers, making the arts well-bade instruments for this daunting and necessary creative act.”

— Peter London, Drawing Closer to Nature: Making Art in Dialogue with the Natural World.

Goldfinch Convention

2009-01-17T16:32:00.001-06:00

We got some bad news on the bird front. Our bird guru, Mark McKellar, who operates Backyard Bird Center, told me my New Year's day "merlin" is actually a sharp-shinned hawk. Drats! Now I'm determined to get out and observe some merlins this year. We did have a consolation, though, Elly and I saw a brown creeper on one of our hackberry trees a few mornings ago. We've never seen one in the backyard before. This is the best picture I got of the littler bugger. He came early, so I had to shoot at a higher ISO setting (200, I think) which is pretty noisy on the Canon S2 IS. Still can't bring myself to spring for a full-blown digital-SLR though.

We're also having large groups of goldfinches at our niger feeder. All 8 perches are frequently occupied with more birds waiting their chance. One day I counted fourteen. Mark said the harsh winter up north is driving birds down to our area, including common red polls and pine siskins. Even a white-winged crossbill has been spotted. They like to flock in with gold finches, so we have decided to add more niger feeders to encourage them.

Here are several pictures showing how we have mounted the niger feeders so they can be raised and lowered easily for refilling.

I looked through my many image folders and discovered I don't have a picture of the niger feeder with 8 goldfinches at once, so that will be an image goal of mine. Here is the closest I have gotten so far -- five. This quality is more representative of what the camera can manage in good lighting.

Here is another of my favorite birds, a Carolina Wren, which obligingly posed in full sun for me this week. These visit our yard regularly, but we're trying to figure out how to encourage them to be daily visitors.

Puppies at Four Weeks

2009-01-17T15:50:00.000-06:00

We took another trip to Sedalia last Sunday to visit the pups. We're visiting every weekend until we bring our puppy home on February 7. We'll be going again tomorrow. Here is a picture of the whole crew -- all ten puppies. They have grown a lot in just one week!

More adorable, of course.

Feisty, too. I wore a knit sweater instead of a sweatshirt and won't be making that mistake again.

And they're talking back!

Emma is a patient mom, fortunately, but she still appreciated some commiseration from Elly.

Puppy Pictures

2009-01-06T21:05:00.006-06:00

Elly and I got to visit Emma and her puppies for the first time last Sunday. We spent time with the three yellow males in the litter -- ten puppies altogether. And, of course, with Emma too.

While we were with the three yellow boys, Emma stayed in the puppy enclosure. But she got to come out and visit us before we left, and we gave her a new collar with a heart tag enscribed "Emma: World's Greatest Mom."

Here is one of the three boys. They are all handsome, but Elly picked a favorite almost immediately.

It's a tough decision, though. Which one, which one?

We will be visiting practically every weekend until our new puppy comes home with us on Saturday, February 7.

A New Bird on New Year's Day

2009-01-02T17:42:00.006-06:00

Elly and I had a relaxed and fun New Year's Day, which we spent together at home. It was a "car-free" day, something I plan to track in 2009. Here is a picture of our new cat, Brulee, sprawled in abandon across a new door mat we got mostly so she would have something to lie on in the kitchen. We got the idea after noticing that she likes to lie on a mat in our downstairs bathroom.

This is NOT an invitation for belly-rubbing or any sort of familiarity, we have discovered, but it is a sign that Brulee is happy and comfortable in her new home. (I have checked a few cat books out from the library, and Elly has been busy reading them.)

The first birds I saw New Year's morning were dark-eyed juncos. Other early visitors included mourning doves and cardinals.

I went for a walk around noon and found a spot near some woods not far from our home, by a boulevard in our neighborhood, where the ground was moist from runoff. Birds were thronging around. I first noticed the spot because of all the robins, dozens of them. We've had more robins this winter than I can recall. (They tend to stay year-round, which people who don't get off the beaten track don't realize because they like to hang out in wooded areas where they are able to find grubs and other things to eat in the leaf mold.) I have wondered if the robins might be massing for an assault against the starlings, who they significantly outnumber at present. :-) In addition to the robins I saw cardinals, juncos, gold finches, house finches, white-throated sparrows, chickadees, what might have been a house wren (didn't get a good look) and even a brown creeper, which I haven't seen for quite some time.

Here is a picture I took of the creeper. It's not a great shot, but these are tiny birds that move fast, and they are a challenge to capture with a point and shoot camera, even a good one like my Canon S2 IS. I have thought about upgrading to a digital SLR, but to do much better for this sort of subject a quite expensive lens would be required. Digiscoping a bird like this is no picnic either.

Anyway, the brown creeper was not my new bird -- I've seen them before. I checked our bird log when I got home and found my last recorded observation was almost exactly two years ago, in the same location, on a walk with Samba.

I had been standing in the same spot for about 15 minutes when I heard a high pitched alarm call and the birds started fleeing, a sure sign of a hawk or falcon. I glanced up quickly and, sure enough, a small and beautiful falcon came zipping by and landed high in a cotton wood tree on the other side of the boulevard. I managed to get two decent pictures.

I identified it as a merlin falcon using our Sibley guide based on the eye markings and markings on the sides of its breast. Elly and I have seen kestrels in our neighborhood several times, but this is the first merlin. Based on coloration, I think it is a female. They are slightly smaller than kestrels.

Also while on my walk I noticed this glyph-like arrow chalked on several walk ways. It's a marker identifying a path, to what I don't know. Buried treasure?

When I got home I helped out in the kitchen chopping ginger and garlic. Elly spent much of the day cooking. We always have black-eyed peas (for luck) and collards (for money) on New Year's Day. Elly had the fun idea of using them in Indian recipes this year. We cooked Indian with our niece, Katelyn Monday night and had plenty of leftovers. It takes a long time to cook Indian, and a trick we have learned is to augment leftovers with an additional dish on each subsequent night, which makes dinner faster to prepare and jazzes up the leftovers.

Collards take a lot of prep time because each leaf has to be destemmed, chopped up, and cleaned thoroughly to remove all the sand. They are delicious though and extraordinarily healthy. Elly substituted the collards for spinach and water cress in Deborah Madison's recipe for "Indian-style saute of Cauliflower and Greens" from her book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

I'm always supposed to remind Elly to soak the black-eyed peas on New Year's Eve, but I always forget. :-) Fortunately, she has found a quick-boil way to prepare dried beans for cooking without a long presoak.

These were used in a recipe for "Curried Black-eyed Peas" from Suvir Saran's Indian Home Cooking, which is one of our most favorite cookbooks. A plus with this recipe, which combined a pureed tomato sauce with yogurt, is it helped us discover the "secret" of a vegetable korma dish from a local Indian restaurant we like.

Adding just two dishes wasn't enough for Elly, who is something of an over-achiever when it comes to culinary pursuits, so she also made a "Curried Lentil Soup" from Paulette Mitchell's book The Spirited Vegetarian. When we try a red we don't like, we just set it aside for cooking. At present, we have something of a backlog in cooking wine and this recipe helped out a little in that department.

The soup is in the covered pot on the far right, so you can't really see it in this picture, all though you can definitely see what the cooktop of a New Year's Day culinary overachiever looks like! We had fun, though. When I wasn't chopping stuff up, I was reading at our kitchen table or taking pictures of Brulee. We also decided to enjoy a bottle of Veuve Cliquot in the afternoon to allow for a bottle of red with dinner. (A bottle of champagne after a bottle of red with dinner is a bit much, even for us.)

And here is the result of all Elly's cooking -- a splendid and healthy New Year's Day Indian dinner.

2009 New Year's Resolutions

2009-01-01T08:52:00.020-06:00

After a fast start on my 2008 New Year's Resolutions, I fell off quickly I'm sorry to say. I did achieve some of my goals, but it was not a winning season. :-) Oh well, hope springs eternal and all that, so I'm reloading my list. Here goes.

Curb impulse book buying and buy fewer books in 2009.

Concentrate on reading books we already own.

Read more fiction. (About 98% of my 2008 reading was nonfiction.)

Reserve Tuesday and Thursday evenings for reading. (We did pretty well on this in 2008.)

Go for a walk or ride exercise bike every day.

Write in my journal every day.

Make at least one blog post per week.

Make progress on sketching and water color painting in 2009. (I really fell down on this one in 2008.)

Make major progress on home improvement projects. (I'm taking 3 months off from work to accomplish this goal.)

Get workshop organized.

Plant vegetable garden.

Make a stained-glass project.

Do more dark sky site astronomy. (Only 1 DS trip in 2008!!)

Take at last one trip to visit some place like the Smithsonian, or the Library of Congress, or the Huntington Library.

Find a new job with a commute time less than 20 minutes.

Avoid eating factory-farm produce or meat.

The last item is something I have been thinking about more and more. Elly is an ovo-lacto vegetarian, and I eat vegetarian 75% of the time or more. Typically, when I eat meat it is at lunch restaurant visits (once a week on average) or something I have gotten from Costco (usually salmon or shrimp). We often eat out-of-season produce, though, and I am not careful to find out where the produce comes from. In 2009 I plan to limit meat dishes to what I prepare myself, ensuring that the food comes from farms where animals are treated humanely. Also, I want to increase the amount of produce we eat that is locally grown. In practical terms, this means buying more food from farmers markets and Whole Foods, and talking more with the grocers about where their produce comes from.

Standing in the Light

2008-12-31T16:24:00.004-06:00

I have just finished Sharman Apt Russell's book, Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist, which I found in our public library's new book section. The book combines information about the history of pantheism and some of its major figures from the early Greeks on, with musings about nature (especially bird watching) in the Gila Valley in New Mexico, where the author and her husband have homesteaded for many years, and her experiences with a Silver City, NM Quaker circle she attends intermittently. The result is an eclectic blend of interesting information presented in a meandering style more than slightly akin to the Gila River, which also winds its way through the book.

I found this image of the Gila River on the WikiMedia Commons website. It was taken by Joe Burgess and has been released into the public domain.

Quite a bit of information about present day Quakers is included, along with bits of Quaker history. I was intrigued to learn that pantheists find themselves welcome and at home in Quaker Meetings, some of which consist of an hour of sitting silently in a circle waiting to hear the voice of God within. Russell explains that this is a traditional Quaker format, referred to as "unprogrammed." "Programmed" Quaker services, which more nearly resemble other Christian church services, were a 19th century development. I wrote a passage of Russell's description about Quaker Meetings in my journal:

Silence is another defining tradition. We know the divine best through personal, immediate experience, and that divinity, that Light, is here right now, all around us. Silence is how we listen for the Light. In a moment of listening, we will hear a small, inner voice, the voice of God within. We will know what we have always suspected: Eternal life is under the words. (p. 146)

The book concludes with a section of selected notes and references, which outlines much of the reading sources Russell used while writing the book. This serves as a handy source for additional reading. An index is also provided.

Both nature lovers and spiritual explorers will find much to appreciate in this book.

A Relaxed Christmas

2008-12-27T16:45:00.007-06:00

Thanks to Christmas falling on Thursday this year, coupled with a change in hours at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Elly had the week of Christmas (Monday through Thursday) off, a rare thing in retail. I took Monday and Tuesday off from work, and worked from home Wednesday morning, so we got to spend the week together.

Apart from some grocery shopping in midtown KC (where we live) on Monday, I didn't leave home. I can't recall the last time I was home for three days in a row without getting in a car once. It was such an enjoyable and relaxing holiday. The only way it could have been happier and more fun is if Samba, our dog who passed away in July, were still with us. We do have a new pup on the way, though, which helps.

We spent the time watching birds at our backyard feeders, cooking holiday recipes, listening to Christmas music, reading, watching Christmas movies, and enjoying each other's company. I wrote out nine Christmas cards to family and friends, Monday morning, a little late, I know, but most of them arrived on Christmas Eve so it worked out well.

These are three house finches and two goldfinches on our niger feeder, which we moved up to one of our hackberry trees. The goldfinches love the new location. We've seen as many as six at a time on the feeder. That is a lot for an urban backyard. At least for our urban backyard.

Years ago we scaled back on Christmas presents, which not only saves a lot of money but also reduces time spent wrapping. That leaves more time for everything else. It is better for the environment, too. If holiday shopping doesn't increase every year, the shopping season is supposed to have been a failure. Just calling it the "shopping" season is a symptom of what is wrong. How much of this stuff do we need? What is the cost to the environment? To future generations? Should we be measuring our success by how much more we consume each year? I heard on the radio today that shopping was down 8 percent in the United States this holiday season. I wish that were cause for celebration rather than lamentation.

Enough of that! Here is a Christmas ornament my grandmother made for me in 1974. Elly and I have been giving each other Christmas ornaments for years, but my grandmother's ornament is the oldest one we have on the tree by a long shot.

Elly is pretty much the master of the clever gift card. Here she is hinting about the library I need to build.

Naturally, the hint occurs on a gift that turns out to be a book. In fact, most of my Christmas gifts from Elly are books -- my idea of the perfect present. Dracula may seem a little out of place at Christmas time, but this is a lovely new edition annotated by Leslie S. Klinger, who I think I interviewed years ago.

Here is Elly with our new cat Brulee, who has decided it is high time she receive Christmas dinner. Brulee is sort of an unexpected Christmas gift. And, since she is pregnant, also the type of gift that keeps on giving. We will be calling on friends once the kittens have arrived...

And our own Christmas dinner. This included two types of croustini, both of which were delicious but the roasted tomato and goat cheese croustinis were out of this world and surprisingly simple to make.

The croustinis accompanied a fabu asparagus salad.

For dessert we had Christmas cookies, made by Moi. :-)

A New Name

2008-12-23T09:55:00.018-06:00

Aficionados of the Fiske Miles blog may notice that it now has a new name. I made the change to reflect a central value of my own life. At some point along about my late 30s I found myself more and more frequently lamenting the hectic pace of my life. I often fretted about the increasing rate at which information poured in and events (both wanted and unwanted) seemingly occurred. This is not a unique concern. In fact, it is much more the rule than the exception based on what I have observed in those around me. I asked myself the same question that many others ask: am I enjoying my life? Am I doing what I want to do? I found myself looking for books about "downshifting" and life in the slow lane. I found a few, but, honestly, they were not much help.

Ever the pragmatist, I started looking at what I was doing to figure out how to slow things down. How to spend more time doing the things I wanted to do and how to enjoy them more. How, essentially, to live a less hectic life.

Gradually, as the years passed, I began having more and more success at this. I have found more and more ways to remove, or at least minimize, the frenetic from my life. I'm more relaxed. Stress is not a problem for me. I am happier and healthier. I am doing more of the things I want to do. Surprisingly, it wasn't that difficult to accomplish. It didn't require moving to a mountain top, years of meditation practice, changing jobs, or giving up things that are important to me.

I didn't find some profound secret. There isn't one. There is no "get relaxed quick" scheme. When I talk with people about the changes I made, the changes I'm making, they don't usually seem impressed. How would that really make such a difference is a question I see them pondering. Usually, they are too polite to ask. Or, maybe, well that's okay for you but I wouldn't want to do that. I still hear them complaining about their hectic lives, though, and not having enough time.

My blog reflects those things which are important to me, which I value and enjoy. I think it reflects the relaxed pace of my own life. I haven't written any posts specifically about how I have slowed down, but I think I will do. Maybe they will help someone else find their own way to enjoying their life more. At any rate, changing the name of my blog is a commitment to making it a place of peace and serenity in the blogosphere.

About the robins. We have a heated bird bath. Water, it turns out, is as critical for birds when the weather turns icy as food. Elly and I were watching birds in our backyard during a snow storm a few mornings ago, one of our most favorite things to do, when several dozen robins flew in for a drink. We haven't seen this before. It was fun -- a magical event and a wonderful way to start our day. Spending time watching the natural world is an excellent way to make one's life less hectic.

Another Family Member on the Way

2008-12-18T06:28:00.006-06:00

We lost our beloved Rottweiler Samba in July -- one of the saddest events of our lives. After several months we realized we would simply never stop missing him and not having dogs in our home was making things worse. We decided that our next dog (dogs, really, because we plan to have more than one) would be a Labrador Retriever. We searched for several months, made one false start, and finally found a breeder we are happy with in October -- Susannah Joy, who operates Top Form Labradors in Sedalia, Missouri. Susannah has been breeding, and showing, Labs for 35 years. We were fortunate to find such an excellent breeder so close to Kansas City. (Sedalia is about 90 minutes southeast of where we live.)

We met Susannah in early October, and also met Bing (BISS CH. Waifin's Topform Conundrum RN, WC), and Emma (Topform Patience Pays) and Zena (Topform Face The Music N’Dance) who Susannah planned to mate with Bing for litters to be delivered in December and February respectively. We put a deposit on a male puppy from Emma's litter, or, failing that, a male puppy from Zena's litter.

Here are some pictures of Emma, whose breeding with Bing was successful, just days before her litter of puppies was born.

In this second picture, Emma is staring (hungrily, Susannah believes) at a lovebird.

Emma had ten puppies Wednesday, December 10. She had six yellows and four blacks. Elly had her heart set on a yellow male and there are several in the litter so we will get a yellow boy. The puppies won't be ready to leave their mom until they are eight weeks old, so our new puppy will come home in February. We get to visit the puppies for the first time on Sunday, January 4, 2009.

Susannah has posted several videos of the new puppies on YouTube and has links to them on her website.

Insightful Dialog

2008-12-16T16:30:00.002-06:00

The following is a response to an atheist friend who observed that our beliefs are farther apart than he had imagined after reading my analysis of a series of questions presented as a "doubt" quiz on Krista Tippett's "Speaking of Faith" program on American Public Radio. The quiz is drawn from Jenifer Michael Hecht's Doubt: A History. (Link to quiz provided below.)

I have come to realize that insightful dialog doesn't depend that much on agreement from both parties. What is important is a non-dogmatic spirit of inquiry and exploration.

I guess the differences in our position is why we have agreed to disagree on the use of the word God. :-) What I discovered when I found my faith is that my problem was not with God but with what I believe are false conceptions of God.

Sorting that out, understanding it, has helped me be much more confident, even comfortable, considering the beliefs of others. I don't mean in an argumentative way, but in the sense of understanding (and accepting) where my beliefs diverge from those of others.

As a quick example, when I hear statements about God's judgement, it is easy for me to disregard them. God does not judge. People judge, and sometimes ascribe their judgements to God. Profound and needless suffering often results from such behavior. How can one be certain that God does not judge? Simply by observing the natural world, God's creation. We might not like everything we see (because humans do like to judge) but denying what is clearly before us, or attempting to rationalize beliefs that are not consistent with experience, is nothing other than making God in our own image, which is absurd.

It is just as easy for me to dismiss statements that the universe is without purpose. I don't believe we can understand its purpose, but we can discover and understand the natural laws which give it order and govern how it operates. This pattern and order serves some end, no matter how mysterious it must remain to us. I think accepting this central mystery is much the same thing as accepting God. A universe without purpose would be chaos. If you consider any statement insisting that the universe is without purpose, they almost inevitably depend on the notion that humans aren't at the center of it. :-) Just reread the last question in the Doubt Quiz.

I find it more rewarding, spiritually, to accept that I am part of something far larger than myself, and be happy that I am a part of it. Maybe this is why I have never felt insignificant when doing astronomy. I find it thrilling to be part of something so stupendously grand.

===========================

After reading this post over, I decided to provide my analysis of the Doubt Quiz questions. My overall response to the quiz is that the questions depend heavily on viewpoints informed by traditional monotheistic belief systems. If one's beliefs fall outside those traditions, the questions are poorly formed and the available responses are not meaningful.

1. Do you believe that a particular religious tradition holds accurate knowledge of the ultimate nature of reality and the purpose of human life?

My answer to this is easy: no. Accurate knowledge of ultimate reality is not available to finite beings. Also, it is up to each of us to determine the purpose of our own lives. In doing so, we serve God's purpose, whatever that might be. Some (many?) people turn to religious organizations to find purpose in their lives. This seems perfectly legitimate to me, though I would point out that turning to religion is a personal choice each believer makes.

2. Do you believe that some thinking being consciously made the universe?

I think this questions is incoherent. I responded that I'm not sure, but what I would rather have said is that the question is poorly formed. Thinking and consciousness have meaning in a human context, but what meaning can they have in the context of God? Also, what does the word "made" mean in the context of God? The way humans make things can bear no relation to the actions of God.

3. Is there an identifiable force coursing through the universe, holding it together, or uniting all life-forms?

I said yes to this, but it is another poorly formed question. The issue partly turns on the word "identifiable." In other words material or available to scientific analysis? The universe clearly operates according to "identifiable" laws, and I would say that those ARE dependent on God, which is why I said yes, but the idea of a God force or the equivalent is naive in my opinion.

4. Could prayer be in any way effective, that is, do you believe that such a being or force (as posited above) could ever be responsive to your thoughts or words?

I struggled with this too. From my perspective, the purpose of prayer is not to ask for things one wants but to experience communion with God. In that sense, it is effective. Since I believe God is ultimately beyond human conception, I can't possibly know the relation of my thoughts or words to God.

5. Do you believe this being or force can think or speak?

More anthropomorphism. God does not think in the way humans think. Still, human thought is probably the closest we can come to a symbol of God's thought. Speak? The word seems inappropriate to the feelings I have concerning the presence I have felt.

6. Do you believe this being has a memory or can make plans?

Same issues as for 5.

7. Does this force sometimes take a human form?

I answered no to this because it seems like an obvious reference to the divinity of Christ, which I don't accept. BUT, I could have answered yes because I feel that the form of everything in existence is dependent on God. In this sense, Christ was divine, but then so are you and I, as well as every living and nonliving element in the universe. This sounds like pantheism, but is probably closer to panentheism and I'm not sure I understand either position well enough to be comfortable with them. I don't think of myself as a pantheist.

8. Do you believe that the thinking part or animating force of a human being continues to exist after the body has died?

I answered no pretty easily to this one, though the term "animating force" worried me somewhat because it relates back to my feelings about question 7.

9. Do you believe that any part of a human being survives death, elsewhere or here on earth?

I answered no easily to this, because I would say that what survives is not specifically human, or, perhaps more accurately, we are part of something much larger that is eternal. Again, this sounds close to pantheism/panentheism. Have you read my Samba's Last Day posts?

http://fiskemiles.blogspot.com/2008/07/sambas-last-day.html

http://fiskemiles.blogspot.com/2008/07/final-gift-from-samba.html

10. Do you believe that feelings about things should be admitted as evidence in establishing reality?

I struggled with this but answered yes. My reasoning is that I don't think feelings can be admitted as evidence concerning material existence, in other words, objective knowledge of the natural world, but I think think they support the reality of God. I have a problem with the use of the word evidence, though. I would say this question is poorly formed and probably incoherent. There is also a serious logical fallacy -- begging the question of what reality means.

11. Do you believe that love and inner feelings of morality suggest that there is a world beyond that of biology, social patterns, and accident — i.e., a realm of higher meaning?

Answered not sure. I think morality is a human response, and so is love. I don't think they apply in a coherent way to God. But, I believe in a realm of higher meaning. Or, more cogently stated, I believe humans can comprehend only a tiny fraction of all that is meaningful.

12. Do you believe that the world is not completely knowable by science?

This was an easy one. Yes. Answering no is scientistic.

13. If someone were to say "The universe is nothing but an accidental pile of stuff, jostling around with no rhyme nor reason, and all life on earth is but a tiny, utterly inconsequential speck of nothing, in a corner of space, existing in the blink of an eye never to be judged, noticed, or remembered," would you say, "Now that's going a bit far, that's a bit wrongheaded?"

Another easy yes. Though, what I would actually say is not that it is going a bit far but that it is blatantly wrong. :-)

An Addition to the Family

2008-12-10T12:28:00.001-06:00

Somewhat unexpectedly, a new member of the family has arrived. Brulee (it took all of two minutes for Elly to name her "like creme brulee because she has a burnt sugar look about her, but I'm not thinking of keeping her" "no, of course you aren't, dear") appeared on our doorstep Sunday afternoon indicating she would like to come in and was ready for dinner. We have never seen her before. She is an affectionate and very pretty cat -- possibly how she got herself into a "family way." I posted her picture on our neighborhood egroup, but no one has claimed her. Our theory is that her previous owner didn't want to contend with a pregnant cat and abandoned her in our neighborhood far from home. She is obviously used to being inside, not outside.

We took her to see Dr. Byer at Westwood Animal Hospital for a "well kitty" visit yesterday. Dr. B thinks she is about three years old and will probably deliver kittens in a month. She got a rabies vaccine. The rest of her vaccines (and a few other procedures!) will have to wait until after her kittens are weaned. Two cats is our household limit, and we already had Beatrice before Brulee arrived, so we will be looking for homes for the kittens.

The Union of Actual and Ideal

2008-12-09T07:06:00.002-06:00

-- from A Common Faith by John Dewey

"These considerations may be applied to the idea of God, or, to avoid misleading conceptions, to the idea of the divine. This idea is, as I have said, one of ideal possibilities unified through imaginative realization and projection. But this idea of God, or of the divine, is also connected with all the natural forces and conditions -- including man and human association -- that promote the growth of the ideal and that further its realization. We are in the presence of neither of ideals completely embodied in existence nor yet of ideals that are mere rootless ideals, fantasies, utopias. For there are forces in nature and society that generate and support the ideals. They are further unified by the action that gives them coherence and solidity. It is this active relation between ideal and actual to which I would give the name 'God.' I would not insist that the name must be given. There are those who hold that the associations of the term with the supernatural are so numerous and close that any use of the word 'God' is sure to give rise to misconception and be taken as a concession to traditional ideas.

They may be correct in this view. But the facts to which I have referred are there, and they need to be brought out with all possible clearness and force. There exist concretely and experimentally goods -- the values of art in all its forms, of knowledge, of effort and of rest after striving, of education and fellowship, of friendship and love, of growth in mind and body. Theses goods are there and yet they are relatively embryonic. Many persons are shut out from generous participation in them; there are forces at work that threaten and sap existent goods as well as prevent their expansion. A clear and intense conception of a union of ideal ends with actual conditions is capable of arousing steady emotion. It may be fed by every experience, no matter what its material.

...One reason why personally I think it fitting to use the word 'God' to denote that uniting of the ideal and actual which has been spoken of, lies in the fact that aggressive atheism seems to me to have something in common with traditional supernaturalism. I do not mean merely that the former is mainly so negative that it fails to give positive direction to thought, though that fact is pertinent. What I have in mind especially is the exclusive preoccupation of both militant atheism and supernaturalism with man in isolation. For in spite of supernaturalism's reference to something beyond nature, it conceives of this earth as the moral center of the universe and of man as the apex of the whole scheme of things. It regards the drama of sin and redemption enacted within the isolated and lonely soul of man as the one thing of ultimate importance. Apart from man, nature is held either accursed or negligible. Militant atheism is also affected by lack of natural piety. The ties binding man to nature that poets have always celebrated are passed over lightly. The attitude taken is often that of man living in an indifferent and hostile world and issuing blasts of defiance. A religious attitude, however, needs the sense of a connection of man, in the way of both dependence and support, with the enveloping world that the imagination feels is a universe. Use of the words 'God' or 'divine' to convey the union of the actual with ideal may protect man from a sense of isolation and from consequent despair or defiance." (pp. 50-53)

-- from River out of Eden by Richard Dawkins

"The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference."

How to Crack a Hazelnut

2008-12-08T07:22:00.010-06:00

I looked over my 2008 New Year's Resolutions a few days ago. Embarrassing! Still, I have accomplished a few things, among them improving my culinary skills. I can't say I have made great progress in French cuisine, but I definitely learned a thing or two about cracking hazelnuts on Thanksgiving Day. Elly needed hazelnuts for several dishes she wanted to cook. I came home with a bag of unshelled nuts, and she said "Great. Now how are you going to crack them?" "Crack them? Is that my job?"

I started off with the traditional nutcracker, which, frankly was not up to the job. I had a hard time breaking the shell and frequently crushed the nut inside. After a minute of this I thought to myself there has to be a better way and consulted the ultimate authority. Google.

I didn't find that much about how to crack hazelnuts. One source suggested boiling them first, which sounded like a total mess. Another person said, not about hazelnuts in particular, but just nuts in general, that if you didn't have a nut cracker, you could use a pair of pliers or something from the workshop. A light bulb turned on ever my head. Channel lock pliers! They exert considerable force and can be opened to convenient widths -- much wider than regular pliers. After a few experiments, I found that exerting force from top to bottom was the most reliable way to crack the shell without crushing the nut inside. There were a few tough nuts. With these, I found rotating them a bit, putting pressure on from multiple angles, was a good way to open them without exerting too much pressure.

A few broken nuts can be seen in the picture below. These were caused by the traditional nut cracker. Once I started using the channel locks, I had almost no trouble with crushing them. Now, if I could only come up with an easy way to get the skin casing off the roasted nuts. Rubbing them together did't work that well...

The Mystery of the Visible

2008-10-27T07:01:00.004-05:00

A response to Will Buckingham's post, Dragons and Levitating Monks.

The first point about Will's post is that his examples are asymmetrical.

Presumably, the Indian restaurant owner and his wife actually believed the monk could levitate. The example provided by Sagan, an atheist and debunker of irrational belief, was created to demonstrate such beliefs can always be placed beyond the reach of empirical proof. The true parallel of the levitating monk, for Western religions such as Christianity, would be things like belief in the ability of saints to perform miracles, divine intervention by God in medical cases as a result of prayer, possibly even a McCain victory in the upcoming U.S. presidential election (surely a subject of much prayer among a certain segment of U.S. Christians).

The second point is that what these examples illustrate is a wide-spread desire for the miraculous, however that might manifest itself. A significant component of such desires is the validation of religious beliefs. This demonstrates a lack of faith, rather than what one might suppose to be a demonstration of it. Faith, after all, requires no proof.

A final point is that we are surrounded by the miraculous. Our very existence is itself a miracle. It is human nature, I suppose, to become accustomed to what we experience constantly and to lose sight of the wonder plainly manifested to us. As Oscar Wilde expressed it: "The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible."

A deeper, more enriched spirituality is available to anyone who wishes to pursue it by rousing themselves from the illusion that our common, every day experiences are nothing special.

Pumpkin Pie

2008-10-26T14:29:00.010-05:00

After a somewhat lengthy hiatus, I am finally making an actual blog post (as opposed to a book quote addition, which, in my view, is more or less cheating and shouldn't be counted as a legitimate post!). I've been somewhat inspired by two of my favorite bloggers, who have also taken up the keyboard again in recent weeks -- Diana Sudyka on her Tiny Avery and Eloise by the Book Piles, who I turn to when I feel particularly guilty about adding more books to our already sizable collection that sprawls across every floor of our three story house. Four, if you want to count the basement, my workshop, where my wood working and other shop books go. Eloise's most recent post discusses books she found still in the shopping bags she carried them home in. What an inspiration! :-)

So what about pumpkin pie? On a recent visit to Sunshine Flowers, now our favorite source for plants of all sorts for the yard, I was picking out several pumpkins for Jack O Lanterns when I noticed a box of "pie" pumpkins. Pie pumpkins? A long standing tradition in the Miles family holds that trying to cook real pumpkin for a pie is a total waste of time. This tradition got its start when my mother and grandmother (my grandparents operated a boarding house in midtown Kansas City many years ago) decided to bake a pumpkin pie from real pumpkin. One of their lodgers raved about how delicious pumpkin pies were when made from fresh pumpkin. They spent most of the day doing battle with a fresh pumpkin, made an unholy mess, and finally threw the whole thing in the trash and used canned pumpkin for the pie. Predictably, the fresh pumpkin pie fancier raved about how delicious their pie was, and how much better than it would have been made from a can...

The thought which crossed my mind at Sunshine Flowers was that mother and grandmother, who were not necessarily the most diligent when it came to culinary research, probably used a standard carving pumpkin for their pie. A no-no, as it turns out. I bought two of the pie pumpkins. They are much smaller than pumpkins used for carving, about 8-inches in diameter, and have a much better consistency and taste than their larger cousins. After getting them home, I rooted around in our cookbook collection until I found what I wanted in Alice Waters' The Art of Simple Food. I'm pleased to report that cooking pumpkin is every bit as simple as the title of Waters' book suggests and the result truly is far better than canned pumpkin. I must also add I was totally disappointed by Cooks Illustrated: why "America's Test Kitchen" has chosen to cop out on cooking pumpkin is something I find hard to understand. Perhaps they will eventually make amends.

1. Cut the pumpkin in half lengthwise. Be careful when doing this not to let the knife slip. You need a very solid cutting surface. This is actually the trickiest part of the whole process.

2. Scoop out the seeds and stringy pulp with a large spoon. I have read that an ice cream scoop is good for this, but had little success with that approach. A large spoon with its sharper edge proved much more effective. Don't worry about getting every last bit of the stringy pulp out, just get most of it.

3. Spray a rimmed cookie sheet or baking pan with PAM or a similar cooking spray (you might want to line the sheet first with aluminum foil for easier clean-up). Put the pumpkin, cut sides down, on the sheet and bake in a 375 degree oven for around 45 minutes until the pumpkin is soft to the touch. Cooking time can very depending on the pumpkin. Denser, heavier pumpkins take a bit longer but actually have a better flavor -- something to keep in mind when selecting them.

4. Remove the pumpkin from the oven and let cool. Once cooled, flip the pumpkin halves over and scoop the cooked pumpkin out of the shell. This is quite easy to do -- the shells are strong and the cooked pumpkin is soft and easy to scrape out. Toss the shells. (Some people advise saving the seeds for toasting, etc. I tried this once. Life is too short for that sort of headache!)

5. Puree the cooked pumpkin in a food processor until it is smooth.

That's all there is to it. Aside from cooking, the whole process takes minimal time. Maybe a total of fifteen minutes. It is almost absurdly easy, to be honest.

Here is my pie recipe, which I modified somewhat from Alice Waters' version, which has a frighteningly small amount of sugar and actually calls for black pepper. Why do this to a pie???

You'll need one pre-baked pie shell. I feel guilty about not making my own pie pastry (something I intend to experiment with sooner or later), but, honestly, Pillsbury pie dough is SO easy and it tastes great! I got the idea of pre-baking the shell from Waters. Previously, I baked pumpkin pies in an unbaked pie shell. Pre-baked makes for a much better pie.

1 cup of heavy cream
2 tsp flour

Mix the flour with 1/4 cup of the heavy cream and bring to a gentle boil over moderately low heat. When the cream thickens, slowly add the remaining 3/4 cup and bring it back to a gentle boil. Remove from heat and let cool.

1.5 cups of pumpkin (the typical pie pumpkin yields about 3 cups of cooked pumpkin)
3 eggs

Whisk the eggs in a large bowel and then mix in the pumpkin. Mix in the cream.

1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp ginger
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp kosher salt

The salt is VERY important. Waters' recipe doesn't include it, but adding salt really brings out a lot of flavor and adds depth to the pumpkin. Don't use regular table salt, which is iodized. Use kosher. In fact, kosher (or sea) salt should always be used for cooking.

Mix the sugar and spices together in a small bowl, then mix with remaining ingredients.

Add 1.5 tsp of brandy to the pie filling and mix in. This is optional in the Waters recipe, but not in mine. :-)

Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 45 minutes. Check the pie after about 35 minutes. Remove it from the oven when the center is just set. Don't over cook your pie! I like to use foil edge protectors to keep the crust from browning too much. It's best to put these on initially, and then remove after the first 30 minutes.

The result should look something like this.

Literary Labyrinth

2008-10-10T06:43:00.002-05:00

Finally, when phonetic writing prevailed, the sounds of words were represented at first in syllables, and later, in a further refinement, by alphabetical symbols or letters standing for the phonemes -- the vowel and consonant sounds -- that make up our words. Now we had a graphic counterpart of speech itself. We could represent and pass on to others in an enduring way the realities that we observed and discovered within and without for their inspection and introspection. To our point, we could express our selves and learn about the selves of others beyond the limits of time and space that constrain the spoken word.

Nancy M. Malone
Walking a Literary Labyrinth:
A Spirituality of Reading

Coming to Our Senses

2008-08-05T07:35:00.003-05:00

"I am speaking of accessing the timeless in this very moment--because it is always right under our noses, so to speak--and in so doing, to gain access to those dimensions of possibility that are presently hidden from us because we refuse to be present, because we are seduced, entrained, mesmerized, or frightened into the future and the past, carried along in the stream of events and the weather patterns of our own reactions and numbness, attending to, if not obsessing about what we often unthinkingly dub "urgent," while losing touch at the same time with what is actually important, supremely important, in fact vital for our own well-being, for our sanity, and for our very survival. We have made absorption in the future and in the past such an overriding habit that, much of the time, we have no awareness of the present moment at all. As a consequence, we may feel we have very little, if any, control over the ups and downs of our own lives and of our own minds."

from Coming to Our Senses by Jon Kabat-Zinn (p. 22).

Barack Obama's VP Pick

2008-07-31T17:03:00.002-05:00

The two subjects one is supposed to avoid in many conversational venues are religion and politics. I have obviously violated this guideline with regard to religion, so why not go all the way?? Here is something that has been perplexing me for several months. Why is it media pundits tip-toe around the obvious VP issue for the Obama campaign? The question Obama's campaign team has to be considering is do they put Hillary Clinton on the ticket or not? Put another way, can they win without Hillary?

The situation is not as complicated as many make it. Sure, Hillary has a couple of negatives. Bill is a BIG one. And H. herself has something of a credibility problem.

But look at the numbers. Obama has the African-American vote sewn up. Anyone who believes he isn't going to poll 90% of their vote is not paying attention. What happens if Hillary joins the ticket? 70-75% of the female vote? Ditto that for white working class Americans and Hispanics (all three areas where Obama needs help and Hillary delivers). Plus the liberal middle class.

What does he lose? Religious and social conservatives? They aren't going to vote for him anyway.

Basically, adding Hillary to the ticket means Barack can start writing his inaugural address. Or, at least working on the outline.

The closer the polls look now, the more likely an Obama/Clinton ticket becomes.

This doesn't seem like rocket science...

A Decent Nobody, with Warts

2008-07-19T15:54:00.019-05:00

A few months ago a friend who also has hackberry trees in her yard asked me if the leaves on our hackberry trees develop “warts” too. They do, indeed. I have been meaning to investigate this situation and on a recent visit to the Kansas City public library came across The Urban Tree Guide: An Uncommon Field Guide for City and Town by Arthur Plotnik, a Chicago author widely known for a book titled The Elements of Editing after Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Plotnik has also published a book, rather waggishly titled Spunk and Bite, which is a guide to lively writing. I haven’t had the pleasure to read that, yet, but if Plotnik’s tree guide is any indication, Spunk and Bite should be a lot of fun. He also maintains a blog (which he refers to as a “snog”) named The Lubricated Snoot. The illustrations in his tree guide are provided by Plotnik’s wife, Chicago artist and teacher Mary Phelan.

As the title suggests, the book concentrates on trees one might find in urban areas, covering more than 200 species. In addition to helpful identification tips, latin names, common names, and other such info, each entry includes a detailed essay relating interesting information, a sort of character dossier, about each tree.

But I was uninspired by tree-identification field guides. Most lacked heartfelt descriptions and none focused on trees in the city. They offered brief descriptive data — leaf and twig morphology (form, measurements), sub varieties, and zonal habitat. Enough to guide field trippers, perhaps, but not to reveal a tree’s personality. (p. 5)

Plotnik’s hackberry entry is titled “A Decent Nobody, with Warts.” The Latin for common hackberry (what I believe we have in our yard and shown in the first image included with this post) is Family: Ulmaceae (Elm); Genus: Celtis (hackberry); Celtis occidentalis (Common Hackberry).

Hackberry leaves often host eraser-size “nipple galls,” the dwellings of minute jumping lice. Located on the underside of the leaf, the hard and well-sealed galls take on amusing shapes, like cartoon fireplugs or baby bottle nipples.

Naming them lice sounds pretty scary, I have to say. We see swarms of these critters in the spring and fall. I previously thought they were miniature leaf-hoppers. Plotnik has done his homework, though. Lice, indeed. In fact, jumping plant lice or hackberry psyllids, described in detail on this Ohio State University fact sheet. Elly and I don’t spray insecticides to control them (perish the thought!) and simply put up with the nuisance in the spring and fall, periodically vacuuming them up from door and window sills with my shop vac. Here is a close-up image of one of the nipple galls I found on a hackberry leaf lying in our yard. Each gall includes a single psyllid. The adult insect is tiny, about 1/8-inch in length, and is said to resemble a miniature cicada. I’ll have to use a hand lens on one to see if I agree with that description.

Here are hackberries on the tree. A number of the galls can also be seen. The tree leaves look quite eaten up, diseased even. This is natural and does not indicate any problem with the health of the tree. In fact, a book I was reading about organic landscaping recently (don’t have the title too hand, my apologizes) stated that using ornamental plants which are “naturally resistant” to insect damage actually harms local biospheres by reducing insect populations which are critical to birds and other wildlife. This is one of the big objections to non-native plants, which are often introduced for the very reason which makes them harmful: the fact that native insects have evolved to eat native plants. This hadn’t occurred to me, but it makes total sense.

Mature hackberry trees have a sort of weird, warty bark (consistent with the warty leaves, though, in no way related to the pysllids). Here is a closeup of the bark on one of ours.

And, finally, an image of Elly and myself, taken last Sunday. We spent most of the day in our backyard. The weather was delightful. Elly proofed galleys for the Nelson-Atkins Museum’s new handbook (managing one of the coolest museum stores in the country isn’t enough of a challenge by itself, apparently), and I spent my time reading and photographing our hackberry trees...

A Final Gift from Samba

2008-07-08T06:28:00.008-05:00

I have decided to share an additional detail about Samba's last day. If you have not read my previous blog post about Samba, you should do so before continuing. What I have to say should be seen in the context provided in that post.

While I count myself a believer, it is also true that I am of a skeptical disposition and most of my beliefs are centered in naturalism. My sense of the miraculous derives from the existence of our universe (that there is something rather than nothing) and that life somehow emerges from inanimate matter. These are miracles enough for me, and I celebrate them daily. I don't offer any conclusions about the meaning of what I'm about to describe, only that the event gave me pause to reconsider my own beliefs.

When Elly went upstairs, and I was sitting alone in the kitchen with Samba, writing in my journal, I was startled by a bright flash of bluish light in the room. It seemed like a camera flash or something electrical. My first thought was that Elly had taken a picture, but I'm the photographer in the family -- Elly doesn't know how to use the camera. And, at any rate, it was sitting on the table beside me. I got up and looked around, thinking she had come back downstairs and was somehow responsible for what I had seen. She hadn't. I looked around the kitchen at our appliances, thinking an electrical cord had shorted out or something. I didn't see anything like that. I also looked out the window to see if something had reflected into the room from outside, but didn't find an explanation there, either. As I sat back down, I thought to myself if Samba were passing away, that would be an eerie event. Elly came back a minute later and Samba did pass away.

I was dazed. It was an emotional moment for us, of course. I told Elly about what had happened and her first response was she had somehow missed Samba's departure. I gently pointed out that Samba had obviously been waiting for her to return, which was undeniably true. I also pointed out that of the two of us, I was the one who had to see the flash of light to believe it.

We had expected to feel so bereft and overwhelmed with grief at that moment. Instead, we felt serenity and peace, wonder and happiness.

I called Westwood Animal Hospital, where we had made the appointment for Samba, and they said we could borrow a stretcher to bring Samba to them. When I got there to pick up the stretcher, Dr. Beyer, Samba's vet, asked to come with me and help. When we told Dr. B years ago we were planning to get a Rottweiler, he said he had never liked Rotties because he found them to be aggressive and dangerous dogs. It took Samba about 15 seconds to win Dr. B over, and they were fast friends Samba's whole life. When we got back to the house, Dr. B couldn't resist rubbing Samba's head and telling him that he had treats in his pocket for him. (Samba was a great one for encouraging generosity in the treat department.) We took Samba to Westwood AH.

When I got home, Elly and I sat down to reflect on everything that had happened. After we both calmed down, it came to me the flash had been caused by an undercounter light over Elly's desk that had blown out. So, there was after all a perfectly reasonable explanation for what had occurred. A skeptic would say it was only a coincidence, happening when it did. I would have said that myself before Tuesday. Now, I have to admit I believe there was more to it than mere coincidence. The choice between living in a world where one is bereft of hope and overwhelmed with grief in the face of loss, or being filled with peace and serenity, hope and wonder at the magic of life is no longer difficult for me.

I have much to thank Samba for, but his last gift to me was perhaps the most important of all.

Samba’s Last Day

2008-07-04T08:55:00.013-05:00

From the moment he entered our lives as a nine week old puppy, until the moment he left us on Tuesday, July 1, 2008, nine years later, Samba was special. He was graced with intelligence, power, humor, and most of all love. Our lives are richer because of him. It’s hard to find words to convey what he was like: how magical he was. I think the best I can do is relate his last day with us.

Samba was diagnosed with bone cancer (osteosarcoma) at the beginning of July 2007. Most dogs with the condition live for only a few months. Samba motored on, just as he always had, for nearly a year. He was that strong. In June, he started going down hill. He wasn’t having a lot of pain, but he was resting more than he ever had and moving more slowly. We realized the cancer which had first appeared in his left front leg had spread to his hindquarters. On Monday, June 30, Samba didn’t want his breakfast — a first for him. We knew in our hearts the time had come to let him go peacefully. The day was so beautiful, we decided to spend it with him and made an appointment for the following day, Tuesday, at 3:30 PM to have him put to sleep. It was such a sad moment for us. Something we had dreaded.

When he got up Tuesday, Samba wanted to lie on the back porch. He hadn’t wanted to do that for some time, and we were happy to sit with him. Samba loved our kitchen and was most comfortable there, so Elly and I stayed in the kitchen. Whenever Elly left the room, even for a minute, Samba became anxious, looking for her until she came back. Around noon, he wanted to go out in the backyard to lie in the sun: something he started doing a few years ago. Usually half an hour is enough for him, but he stayed out for an hour. Elly and I sat with him.

Samba was panting when we came back in, which was nothing unusual. We have often laughed at how a black dog liked to lie in the sun until he was panting so much he had to get up. He seemed to be having trouble cooling off, so Elly suggested closing the doors and windows and turning on the kitchen AC to help him be more comfortable. We did that and Samba lay down near the air conditioner. Elly had to go upstairs for a minute. I was sitting at the kitchen table writing in my journal.

When Elly came back, she sat down with Samba and started petting him. A moment later she told me Samba was passing away. I did not believe her, at first. I came over to look at him and he was breathing deeply. I said he was just resting. Elly said when she had sat down he had been breathing rapidly, but when she started petting him his breathing had slowed way down, and now he was only taking occasional breaths. A minute later Samba took his last breath with Elly and me sitting beside him. He had been waiting for her to come back before leaving us. He passed away two hours before we had planned to take him to the animal hospital.

We had been so miserable at the thought of having our beautiful Samba put to sleep. He spared us that pain. He said goodbye to us on his own terms, where he most loved to be. That was Samba.

When he was about fourteen months old, we had taken Samba to visit Dianne Moore, who owned Samba’s father, Cory. Samba was a massive dog. Not fat, but at the maximum height and weight according to the Rottweiler breed standard. Dianne had commented to him: “I don’t think you’re going to be losing too many fights, Samba.” And the truth is he never did. Even his last fight, with cancer.

The three pictures above were taken while we were sitting out with Samba on his last day with us, an hour and a half before he passed away. The following picture, one of our favorites, was taken a few weeks ago on June 14 at sunset.

Finding God Through Atheism

2008-06-27T07:30:00.013-05:00

I’ve promised myself, and a few friends, to do a better job of writing posts for my blog. Especially, light-hearted, entertaining stuff like vegetarian barbeque, backyard nature watching, progress on our 20-year home remodeling project, my rampant bibliomania. Stuff like that. In case you haven’t already guessed from the title of this post, it does not fall into the light-hearted category. If you are uncomfortable reading unambiguous statements about religious concerns, this would be a good post to skip.

Still here? :-)

I got an email last night from a friend who had come across some of my pages about telescope making. He had noticed a statement from me on a previous website that I was an atheist, but could find no comment about it on my current site and wondered if I had changed my mind or simply avoided discussing the matter because it was a hassle. I responded with a longish answer to his question — probably a lot more than he wanted to know. After reflecting on my response, I decided to post it on my site. Why not be open about my thoughts on the subject, my progress even, for people like my friend who are curious, possibly following their own path and trying to decide what they believe?

So, here is how I answered his question whether I had changed my mind about atheism.

I gave up atheism. :-) You know, this is something that I have thought about a lot. One of the experiences that really put me off atheism was discussing Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, with a group of atheists on an Internet forum. They were all just so cocksure there is no God. They were the mirror image of fundamentalist Christians. Fundamentalist atheists, I guess. And they were so dismissive concerning the Bible. So contemptuous of it, even. While, for me, the Bible does not reveal God, it profoundly reveals the longing for God felt by many people in Western civilization. I was raised in the Christian church, so the Bible has more meaning for me than other religious texts like the Koran, Upanishads, etc., though I don’t for a moment believe it has any superior claim to legitimacy. Of course, it is also a cornerstone of Western civilization, much of which doesn’t make sense without it.

I’ve realized one of the things that kept me from believing in God for the longest time was Christianity, odd as that sounds. I simply can’t accept Christian concepts of God. I think some atheists, maybe a lot of atheists, reject God for the same reason. And, of course, in Western civilization, at least, Christian concepts of God are pretty much a monopoly. Perhaps I should say Abrahamic concepts of God, to include Hebrews.

After thinking of myself as an atheist for a few years (prior to that I described myself as an agnostic), I was startled one day to realize I believe, devoutly believe I have to say, in God. I came to this, I think, as a result of considering that life and the existence of the cosmos is miraculous — a mystery within which we exist and beyond which we can never perceive. Accepting the essential mystery of our very existence, an impenetrable mystery, freed me to accept the existence of God as our creator. I can offer no proof for the existence of God, but neither have I heard any convincing proof that God does not exist. I simply have no choice but to believe. I can’t not believe. I make no attempt to convince others of the existence of God, but for myself, I simply have no doubt. I guess that is faith. :-) I have to smile reading that statement. Did it really come from me?

The existence of God is a matter beyond proof because God is beyond human comprehension. I think this is where I started having problems with Christianity. I don’t believe it is possible for finite beings to understand the intentions of God, or to reach conclusions concerning God’s judgment. When I hear people speak of God’s love, their assertions are meaningless to me. Love is a human emotion. Does God love us? I don’t believe that is a coherent question, even. Maimonides said something to the effect that the highest knowledge concerning God is that God is beyond human comprehension. I accept that. I also accept, as Einstein asserted, that to know God, in whatever trivial capacity we are capable of doing so, we must study God’s creation, that is, the natural world. Of course, the natural world includes the human race. Not that we are the pinnacle of creation — that’s absurd. But we must, in some way, reflect the providence of our Creator.

A second irony in all this is that until I embraced atheism, I could not believe in God. It was only through becoming an atheist, that I found my faith.

The fact that I believe in God does not mean I believe in life after death (in the sense of our conscious awareness surviving our death), that humans have souls, or any of the other trappings of major religions. In that sense, my worldview is utterly naturalistic. Where I part with naturalism is the assertion that nothing exists beyond the natural world. That God, in fact, does not exist. You can see this sort of thing on the naturalism.org website. The simple truth is such assertions can have no rational basis because we have no way to support claims concerning anything beyond the cosmos in which we exist. The statement that God does not exist is a faith position in the same way that my earlier statement of belief in God is a faith position. We must each search our own hearts and decide for ourselves.

Teaching Starlings

2008-06-13T06:29:00.002-05:00

Elly brought home the June 2008 issue of Review magazine, which covers the visual arts community in Kansas City. It includes an article, “Wings of Change” by Jessica Owings about an “urban culture” project conceived by Brian Collier centering on starlings. An invasive species, starlings were introduced to America in the late 19th century in an ill-conceived attempt to “improve” native American wildlife by Eugene Schieffelin who had the idea of introducing all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. One hundred starlings were released in New York’s Central Park. They have proliferated so widely their number in America now exceeds 200 million. Their aggressive character has resulted in the displacement of many native American bird species, including the Eastern Blue Bird.

Collier’s project is to teach starlings, which are remarkable mimics, to say "Schieffelin" (pronounced she-flin) utilizing nestboxes equiped with a motion activated audio device that sounds the name repeatedly. The idea is that if some starlings learn the phrase, other starlings may pick it up too, and eventually birds accross the country could be repeating it. More information can be found at Collier’s Teach the Starlings website.

The thought of providing nest boxes for starlings, which have driven so many other birds from their nests, makes one wince. Still, I wonder how much difference that can make at this point -- it's not like starlings are having any difficulty finding nests. The whole idea seems hilarious to me. Though, one of my birding friends was less than amused and has promised to report Collier to the Audobon Society for “aiding and abetting an invasive species.” We’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, Elly and I are keeping our ears pricked for Schiefelin saying starlings. Maybe this young bird is getting ready to sound forth...

Goldfinches

2008-05-24T07:53:00.011-05:00

I decided to get my long weekend off to a good start by adding a post to my blog, which I have been neglecting in recent weeks. I have been making adjustments to our bird feeding arrangements in the backyard to attract a greater variety of birds. In the past, we have had goldfinches in the early spring but as soon as grackles show up, the goldfinches depart. Grackles are vicious birds, responsible for killing many more house sparrows than cats claim, so it is not surprising that goldfinches (much smaller than house sparrows) give them a wide berth. I moved the niger feeder from its position near the chip and hopper feeders that attract the most birds, including grackles, up to one of our hackberry trees where it is hung with a branch hook. I worried the feeder might be blown out of the tree by a strong wind, but obliging gale force winds (gusts to about 70 miles an hour) arrived within the week and proved my fears groundless: the feeder remained in place.

Within a week the goldfinches became frequent visitors. We see them about the yard daily now, and have had as many as four at a time on the feeder. A terrific reward for the minor inconvenience of climbing an extension latter once a week to replenish the feeder. Despite appearances, the overhead power lines are in another yard, far away from my position. Our neighbors arrived home when Elly was taking this picture. She told them it was for future insurance claims. Nice!

Einstein's God Letter

2008-05-15T17:31:00.001-05:00

The news story widely published this week concerning a letter from Albert Einstein to philosopher Eric Gutkind in January 1955, in which the scientist makes remarks that belief in God is childish, etc., doubtless has many atheists crowing triumphantly. The USA Today article is more informative than many.

The curious point about this, a point which should give pause for thought, is that Einstein emphatically and angrily denounced atheists who attempted to use his statements to support their disbelief in God. (See Max Jammers, Einstein and Religion, pp. 96-7.) Jammer's own conclusion, and a reasonable one, is that while Einstein rejected belief in a so-called "personal God", that is, a God possessing anthropomorphic or anthropopathic qualities, he retained belief in God manifested "in the laws of the Universe as a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble" (Jammers, p. 148).

Einstein's statement in the letter to Gutkind concerning the childishness of belief in God would be consistent with his other statements about God if the term is used in the sense of a personal God who watches over humanity and to whom one should pray. In other words, the common, anthropomorophic concept of God.

The ambiguity of Einstein's remarks concerning God stem from the fact that once one has rejected anthropomorphic concepts, little can be said concerning the true nature of God. Any attribute one attempts to assign, love, intentionality, etc., is also a human attribute and thus anthropomorphic. Jammers compares Einstein's theological position with that of the 12th Century rabbinical philosopher, Moses Maimonides, who argued that the highest knowledge of God is knowing we are unable to comprehend God (paraphrased from Jammers, p. 144).

Whether Einstein could be considered a theist is something of a vexed question. He was obviously not a theist in the traditional sense, which Jammers points out. However, since he was not an atheist, nor an agnostic, and apparently did believe in some form of God, it is difficult to know how else to categorize his belief. Einstein repeatedly argued that the only definite knowledge we possess concerning God's nature is how God is manifested in the laws governing our universe. The argument indicates a belief that God in some sense is responsible for creation, which rather suggests a theistic position.

Neurological Foundation of Mysticism?

2008-05-03T10:05:00.007-05:00

-- from The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

"A second puzzle that Wilson [David Sloan Wilson, Darwin's Cathedral] can solve is why mysticism, everywhere and always, is about transcending the self and merging with something larger than the self. When William James analyzed mysticism, he focused on the psychological state of 'cosmic consciousness' and on the techniques developed in all the major religions to attain it. Hindus and Buddhists use meditation and yoga to attain the state of samadhi, in which 'the subject-object distinction and one's sense of an individual self disappear in a state usually described as one of supreme peace, bliss, and illumination.' James found much the same goal in Christian and Muslim mysticism, often attained through repetitive prayer. He quoted the eleventh-century Muslim philosopher Al Ghazzali, who spent several years worshipping with the Sufis of Syria. Al Ghazzali attained experiences of 'transport' and revelation that he said cannot be described in words, although he did try to explain to his Muslim readers the essence of Sufism:

The first condition for a Sufi is to purge his heart entirely of all that is not God. The next key of the contemplative life consists in the humble prayers which escape from the fervent soul, and in the meditations on God in which the heart is swallowed up entirely. But in reality this is only the beginning of the Sufi life, the end of Sufism being total absorption in God.

From Wilson's perspective, mystical experience is an 'off' button for the self. When the self is turned off, people become just a cell in the larger body, a bee in the larger hive. It is no wonder that the after effects of mystical experience are predictable; people usually feel a stronger commitment to God or to helping others, often by bringing them to God.

The neuroscientist Andrew Newberg has studied the brains of people undergoing mystical experiences, mostly during meditation, and has found where that off-switch might be. In the rear portion of the brain's parietal lobes (under the rear portion of the top of the skull) are two patches of cortex Newberg calls the 'orientation association areas.' The patch in the left hemisphere appears to contribute to the mental sensation of having a limited and physically defined body, and thus keeps track of your edges. The corresponding area in the right hemisphere maintains a map of the space around you. These two areas receive input from your senses to help them maintain an ongoing representation of your self and its location in space. At the very moment when people report achieving states of mystical union, these two areas appear to be cut off. Input from other parts of the brain is reduced, and overall activity in these orientation areas is reduced, too. But Newberg believes they are still trying to do their jobs: The area on the left tries to establish the body's boundaries and doesn't find them; the area on the right tries to establish the self's location in space and doesn't find it. The person experiences a loss of self combined with a paradoxical expansion of the self out into space, yet with no fixed location in the normal world of three dimensions. The person feels merged with something vast, something larger than the self." (pp. 235-7)

Recent Birds

2008-04-30T12:27:00.013-05:00

We have had a lot of fun birds in our backyard over the past few weeks, this Baltimore Oriole being one of the most beautiful. I’ve glimpsed an Oriole in our backyard once before, but only fleetingly in one of our trees and at that time didn’t get a good enough look to be positive about its identification. This fine bird obligingly landed on bird feeder central and stayed long enough for me to grab a few quick shots with a digital camera. Unfortunately, it didn't stay long enough for Elly, who was upstairs at the time, to see it for herself.

We’ve also had groups of white-throated and white-crowned sparrows, ruby-crowned kinglets, yellow-rumpled warblers, chipping sparrows, and Lincoln’s sparrows. A previous post on Lincoln’s sparrows includes a picture I took of one. Lincoln’s sparrows are quite shy and fly off immediately if another bird approaches.

I have decided one of the main reasons we are getting so many more visitors now is that last fall I started spreading birdseed liberally on our driveway. Doing so has attracted many more birds because it avoids competition at a small feeding station, which, essentially becomes a bottleneck. In addition, while some birds go to extreme lengths to discourage species generally viewed as pests — house sparrows and starlings, for example — we have decided not to worry about attracting them. As a result, we are actually seeing more of the rarer birds one often looks for because the common birds act as decoys, luring them in.

Within the last week the idea occurred to me to start spreading seed in inconspicuous locations, like near shrubbery, which has had the welcome effect of encouraging even more visits from shy birds that feel nervous in exposed locations. It seems simple enough in retrospect, but I wonder how many backyard feeder enthusiasts follow the practice? At any rate, the results are encouraging. I’m looking into increasing the number of native plants and shrubs in our yard as further encouragement for bird (and butterfly) visits.

Mark McKellar at the Backyard Bird Center told me that since we live in an older neighborhood with many mature trees, we might be able to entice orioles to become regular visitors with an oriole feeder (which makes orange halves, nectar, and grape jelly available for these birds). Accordingly, I have set one up in a hackberry tree and we are patiently watching for return visits. Here is one more picture of our recent visitor from Baltimore...

On Book Buying and Self-Restraint

2008-04-26T20:53:00.009-05:00

I was pleased this morning when I checked my book buying log (a spreadsheet I started to track book expenditures in an attempt to work on self-restraint) to see that I had not purchased a single book in the month of April. Unfortunately, some backsliding occurred today. I had a bag of books to trade at Half-Price, and this fatal lure resulted in the purchase of 5 more books. I rationalized that the trade credit covered half the expenditure. And one of the books was a Martha Grimes novel Elly wanted. Then I saw Native Landscaping for Wildlife and People by Dave Tylka at Backyard Bird. I couldn’t pass that up! Then I noticed a new ALexander McCall Smith at Costco, Miracle at Speedy Motors. That was another book for Elly. I also placed an Amazon order today. One of those was for Elly too.

I dutifully added them all into my Book Buying log this evening: 12 books! It puts me at about 1 book every other day. Well, maybe not quite that much because the Amazon order won’t come for a week or two. I guess I’m going to add a Bibliomania category for book buying confession posts. Anyway, here is the list of 12.

Martha Grimes, The Winds of Change. (Elly!)

Edward Hirsch, How to Read A Poem and Fall in Love with Poetry. (I’ve had this checked out of the library twice. Figured it might as well have a permanent place in our home.)

Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within. (I obviously need no help freeing the "book buyer" within.)

Anne Lamott, bird by bird. (I blame this one on Eloise by the Book Piles.)

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale File. (Lovely Everyman’s Library edition for $7.98 at Half-Price.)

Alexander McCall Smith, The Miracle at Speedy Motors. (Elly!)

Dave Tylka, Native Landscaping for Wildlife and People.

Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion. (Another book I have checked out from the library multiple times. I needed it for my next Richard Dawkins rant...)

Ted Kooser, The Poetry Home Repair Manual. (Irresistible. Are you reading this Eloise? One to add to your TBR pile.)

Stephen Fry, The Ode Less Traveled. (Eloise’s fault again. BUT, this is available as a bargain book from Amazon now for $5.99.)

Bill Bryson, Shakespeare: The World as Stage. (Had to return this to the library today and Elly said we might as well order it. Shakespeare books generally come with a “Get Out of Jail Free” card from Elly.)

Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis. (One of the most interesting books I have read this year. With, I should say, an extensive, and equally fascinating bibliography, which doesn’t bode well for future book buying restraint...)

The picture of Samba and me was taken this morning. For those of you who are aware that Samba has bone cancer, I am happy to report he is doing excellently ten months after his diagnosis. Life expectancy after a diagnosis of canine bone cancer is usually 2-6 months. Samba is getting a combination of radiation treatments and intravenous pamidronate. He is the first dog our vet has had on this course of treatment. The result has been so good she is now treating two more dogs with the same combination.

Warbler Redux

2008-04-18T07:21:00.010-05:00

The yellow-rumped warblers I first saw Wednesday evening were back for more fun and frolic in our hackberry trees last night, Thursday evening, and again this morning. I counted 4-6 of them last night and at least four again this morning. They move around quickly so it is hard to get an exact count. They seem to rove about in a little band of mostly males. One or two seem drab compared with the others so maybe they are females. They don't come down to the feeders at all, but stay up in the hackberry trees pecking insects off the budding branches.

Last night I had the idea of taking my binoculars up to our day room and opening the door so I could have a clear view of them from a higher vantage point. It was raining, but the roof overhangs the doorway so I was able to stand in it and look more or less directly at the birds. Two of them stayed in the hackberry for 15 to 20 minutes. They have yellow patches on their sides just by the front of their wings, yellow crowns, and yellow rumps (of course) which I couldn't actually see from the ground looking up but could see from the day room. They also have pronounced white eye rings that are more prominent than what is shown in Sibley. They weren't bothered by the rain at all.

They are strong fliers and acrobatic when foraging for insects, hanging upside down, twisting every which way, and frequently hovering to peck up insects they couldn't reach from a perch. When one takes off, the rest seem to follow. I hope they hang around for a few more days so Elly can see them when she gets home. They have been the most enjoyable group of feathered visitors we have had in our backyard.

I read in Birds in Missouri by Brad Jacobs (which is a wonderful book for Missouri birders that I purchased at the Backyard Bird Center a few weeks ago) that Lincoln's sparrows, while secretive and rarely seen, will show up on occasion if you scatter birdseed on the ground, which we started doing last fall. I guess that is why we were favored with a visit. It was probably attracted by all the birds which frequent our yard. The house sparrows, mourning doves, and other common urban birds are decoys for the less frequent visitors, who hang about in trees on the margins until things slow down a bit and then fly in for quick foraging raids or just stay in the trees if their preference is for insects.

I wonder if the warblers would have been attracted to our hackberries if all the other birds hadn't been present? I know some people go to considerable lengths to avoid feeding more common birds like starlings, house sparrows, etc. It may be possible that by doing so they are limiting their chances to see rare visitors they are eager to view. That would be ironic.

I saw several dark-eyed juncos last night and a few again this morning. We've gone a few days without having any, and I was starting to wonder if we had seen the last of them until fall. They usually head north for their breeding grounds around the middle of April, not returning until the middle of October. I also saw a white-throated sparrow this morning. They stay year-round, but visit our yard less frequently in warmer months when insects, grubs, and other food is plentiful.

Yellow-Rumped Warbler

2008-04-16T20:46:00.003-05:00

I decided not to make any stops on the way home from work so I would have time to mow our front yard this evening. It was the first mowing of the year, and, to be truthful, was a bit over-due, as our front yard has a southern exposure. I had to make frequent stops to empty the grass catcher.

When I finished mowing, I fed Samba and decided to sit out in the backyard for a while to enjoy the evening air and give Samba the opportunity to enjoy it too. Or, more accurately, to eat grass. Why do dogs do that? Before Elly and I became wise to the ways of dogs, we imagined they ate grass because they felt sick and throwing up made them feel better. We have since realized that they make themselves sick by eating the grass, which they like for some unaccountable reason. Anyway, it takes a lot of grass to make Samba sick (he is big!), and he wasn't going after it in earnest so I didn't worry much about the matter.

Instead I sat in my La Fuma lawn chair, sipping a glass of white wine, reading a bit from American Mania by Peter Whybrow, and congratulating myself on not being caught up in the rat race. Elly is in Florida for the week, and Samba and I have been doing the best we can without her. (Not that well, really.)

Still, it was a fine evening and glancing over at our neighbor's mullberry tree, which hasn't leafed out yet, I saw a bird hopping about and new immediately it was a warbler. I can't say just how I knew this, only, after watching lots of birds for a few years, one becomes surprisingly adept at sorting them out. Of course, there are about a zillion different warblers, and warblers are tiny birds, so I couldn't identify it naked eye. I popped inside for binoculars and the bird obliged me by hanging about until I came back. It was a yellow-rumped warbler. These come in two varieties, apparently, and this one was a Myrtle male. (The other variety is know as Audobon's.) These used to be classified as separate species, but the discovery that they inter-breed has resulted in a reclassification. Apparently, the two types were separated by glaciation during the last ice-age, which has caused subtle differences in their plumage. A fine article about them can be found in the Wikipedia. Lots of nice pictures are available on the web, too.

I haven't seen one of these before, though they are said to be fairly common migrants in our area. I've come to realize that if one only spends time outside, relaxing and looking about, all sorts of birds can actually be seen during migration periods. The trouble is we so rarely take the time to look. A few minutes won't do it. You actually need to sit still for half an hour or more and watch patiently. Of course, it helps to have mature trees about. Our neighborhood is about 100 years old, so we have plenty of those.

As the twilight began to deepen I noticed the waxing gibbeous moon was high in the eastern sky, and not yet covered with clouds, so I brought out my 4-inch telescope and spent an enjoyable 20 minutes refamiliarizing myself with some of its features. The forecast is for thunderstorms after midnight, and by the time I was putting the telescope away I could smell rain in the air. Still a few hours away.

I was struck by how hectic the last few nights have seemed, and how this evening has been so relaxed and rewarding by comparison. Coming straight home from work made the difference. I got home before 6:00 pm and had the front yard mowed by seven. Plus, I already had dinner prepared (left over shrimp creole from the other night).

Happiness Trap

2008-04-16T07:04:00.005-05:00

“Modern theories about rational choice and information processing don’t adequately explain weakness of the will. The older metaphors about controlling animals work beautifully. The image that I came up with for myself, as I marveled at my weakness, was that I was a rider on the back of an elephant. I’m holding the reins in my hands, and by pulling one way or the other I can tell the elephant to turn, to stop, or to go. I can direct things, but only when the elephant doesn’t have desires of his own. When the elephant really wants to do something, I’m no match for him.” (p. 4)

“In sum, the rider is an advisor or servant; not a king, president, or charioteer with a firm grip on the reins. The rider is Gazzaniga’s interpreter module; it is conscious, controlled thought. The elephant, in contrast, is everything else. The elephant includes the gut feelings, visceral reactions, emotions, and intuitions that comprise much of the automatic system. The elephant and the rider each have their own intelligence, and when they work together well they enable the unique brilliance of human beings. But they don’t always work together well.” (p. 17)

“The elephant was shaped by natural selection to win at the game of life, and part of its strategy is to impress others, gain their admiration, and rise in relative rank. The elephant cares about prestige, not happiness, and it looks eternally to others to figure out what is prestigious. The elephant will pursue its evolutionary goals even when greater happiness can be found elsewhere. If everyone is chasing the same limited amount of prestige, then all are stuck in a zero-sum game, an eternal arms race, a world in which rising wealth does not bring rising happiness. The pursuit of luxury goods is a happiness trap; it is a dead end that people race toward in the mistaken belief that it will make them happy.” (p. 101)

— from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, by Jonathan Haidt

Wallace Stevens Contemplating

2008-04-13T19:07:00.003-05:00

from Wallace Steven's journal, Sunday, August 10, 1902 [New York]
Letters of Wallace Stevens: Selected and Edited by Holly Stevens

In the early part of the day I saw some very respectable country which, as usual, set me contemplating. I love to walk along with a slight wind playing in the trees about me and think over a thousand and one odds and ends. Last night I spent an hour in the dark transept of St. Patrick's Cathedral where I go now and then in my more lonely moods. An old argument with me is that the true religious force in the world is not the church but the world itself: the mysterious callings of Nature and our responses. What incessant murmurs fill that ever-laboring, tireless church! But to-day in my walk I thought that after all there is no conflict of forces but rather a contrast. In the cathedral I felt one presence; on the highway I felt another. Two different deities presented themselves; and, though I have only cloudy visions of either, yet I now feel the distinction between them. The priest in me worshipped one God at one shrine; the poet another God at another shire. The priest worshiped Mercy and Love; the poet, Beauty and Might. In the shadows of the church I could hear the prayers of men and women; in the shadows of the trees nothing human mingled with Divinity. As I sat dreaming with the Congregation I felt how the glittering altar worked on my senses stimulating and consoling them; and as I went tramping through the fields and woods I beheld every leaf and blade of grass revealing or rather betokening the Invisible. (pp. 58-9)

Google Notebooks

2008-04-12T08:35:00.009-05:00

I have gotten very interested in many of the tools Google offers to users for free. For one thing, they often include mobile versions for wireless phones and other mobile devices. I recently purchased a Palm Treo 755p smart phone, which has one of the best miniature querty keyboards I have seen and features a convenient user interface. It’s great for accessing web pages, believe it or not, especially ones that offer a mobile style sheet.

Google’s Notebook tool is a terrific way to make quick notes on anything you want to keep track of. Notes can be organized into individual notebooks you create, and within notebooks into individual sections. Convenient search options are also provided. The user interface is intuitive and easy to learn. What’s more, the tool includes a nifty clip feature enabling you to clip items of interest from web pages and insert them automatically into notebooks.

The mobile version is limited to viewing notebooks and adding notes (you can’t create notebooks in the mobile view, for instance.) But just being able to add notes from your phone is a terrific feature. At least, it is if you always carry your phone. It’s easy to use while reading, no matter where you happen to be.

I’ve been trying to figure out a convenient way to search my notes from the phone (the mobile version of notebook doesn’t include the search features either). I finally realized if I published a notebook (another feature of the tool) and made it available as a web page, I could view the page on my phone’s browser and use the browser’s search text feature to locate notes. I decided to add a few of the notebooks I have published as links on my blog just for fun. My notes aren’t great reading, by any means, but they do provide an audit trail for my eclectic rambling through topics that interest me.

If you happen to be an inverterate note-taker, you owe it to yourself to check out Google’s cool (and free!) notebook tool.

Lincoln’s Sparrow

2008-04-10T21:37:00.011-05:00

Elly and I added a bird to our life list this evening, a Lincoln’s Sparrow, bringing the total to 90 (a pitiful number in the eyes of seasoned birders I’m afraid, but there it is). We noticed the elegant little visitor foraging for seeds on our gravel walkway, and I managed to get some pictures of him. Her? It was just a bit smaller than several dark-eyed juncos who were also frequenting the area.

Seeing a new bird is fun, especially so when we find it in our own backyard. We have had a run of luck in the last few weeks, seeing Great-Tailed grackles for the first time. Then seeing a ruby-crowned kinglet, which we have observed before but not in our own yard. And then this fine bird. The Lincoln’s sparrow was named by Audubon in honor of Thomas Lincoln, who was a friend of his, as well as being the father of Abraham Lincoln.

The pictures don’t do it justice, actually. Many of the American sparrows are beautiful little birds, far different from the common House sparrows, which aren’t even native to the Americas (European imports), and aren’t actually related to our own sparrows. Nevertheless, they are what most people think of as sparrows. The Lincoln’s sparrow who visited us was a treat, and stayed around for an obligingly long time to have his picture taken and be carefully studied. These sparrows are said to be secretive birds and somewhat rare migrants in Missouri.

The Pursuit of Happiness

2008-04-10T06:44:00.006-05:00

The most widely reported conclusion, from surveys done by psychologist Ed Diener, is that within any given country, at the lowest end of the income scale money does buy happiness: People who worry every day about paying for food and shelter report significantly less well-being than those who don’t. But once you are freed from basic needs and have entered the middle class, the relationship between wealth and happiness becomes smaller. The rich are happier on average than the middle class, but only by a little, and part of this relationship is reverse correlation: Happy people grow rich faster because, as in the marriage market, they are more appealing to others (such as bosses), and also because their frequent positive emotions help them to commit to projects, to work hard, and to invest in their futures. Wealth itself has only a small direct effect on happiness because it so effectively speeds up the hedonic treadmill. For example, as the level of wealth has doubled or tripled in the last fifty years in many industrialized nations, the levels of happiness and satisfaction with life that people report have not changed, and depression has actually become more common. Vast increases in gross domestic product let to improvements in the comforts of life — a larger home, more cars, televisions, and restaurant meals, better health and longer life — but these improvements became the normal conditions of life; all were adapted to and taken for granted, so they did not make people feel any happier or more satisfied.

— Jonathan Haidt
The Happiness Hypothesis, pp. 88-89

Great-Tailed Grackle

2008-04-08T16:17:00.006-05:00

I needed something to cheer me up today and found this huge fellow stomping around our feeding station this afternoon. Of course, it could be a female...

Anyway, it is a Great-tailed Grackle. We saw one of these for the first time a few weeks ago. Elly spotted it and commented that it was the largest grackle she had ever seen. Actually, she said it looks like a cross between a grackle and a crow. I didn’t get any pictures on that occasion. Here is one I took today with a common grackle in the same frame to show the size comparision.

The Great-Tailed grackles are really big. Diana Sudyka has a wonderful watercolor of one on her Tiny Avery blog. She and her husband Jay (both artists) were in Austin for a poster event a few weeks back, and I guess these were thick on the ground down there.

We had another birding first (for our backyard) yesterday: a ruby-crowned kinglet. I’ve actually seen these in wooded areas near our neighborhood, but never in our backyard before. Elly and I both got a good look at the little fellow: about the size of a Great-tailed grackle’s head! I actually saw the bird’s ruby crown, which I haven’t seen before.

I tried to get a picture of it flying up into the air because they fan their tails in flight, which is really impressive, but that didn’t work out. Here is one more snap of the Great-tailed. I can’t help thinking of these as the velociraptor of the grackle world.

Sailing with Captain Blood

2008-04-05T20:28:00.018-05:00

Eloise by the Book Piles introduced me to Rafael Sabatini’s Captain Blood with a post on her blog. It was her first book of 2008, and her account of reading it was so enticing I bought a copy when my self-imposed book buying moratorium ended at the end of January. Of course, the novel was made into a famed pirate movie starring Errol Flynn, which I haven’t actually seen, but which lack will be remedied shortly.

Peter Blood, an Irish physician whose varied career includes military service in France, is sentenced to a life of slavery and transported to a Barbados plantation after treating a rebel fighting against King James. But the resourceful Blood escapes from captivity after capturing a Spanish privateer with a crew of ex-slaves and becomes the terror of the Spanish main. Before Blood leaves the island he falls in love with Arabella Bishop, a beautiful and spirited young woman who has the misfortune to be the niece of one of the tale’s principal villains, an inhuman slave owner who is also in charge of the island’s militia and takes command of a small fleet to pursue the elusive pirate.

Sabatini captivates his reader from the first page of the novel, which, simply put, is unadulterated fun. For me, it brings back summers I spent growing up at my grandparents’ home in the Ozarks, swimming, fishing, learning woodworking with my grandfather in his workshop, and reading adventure stories in the air-conditioned den sequestered from the heat of July and August afternoons. My grandfather loved to read, a trait he passed on to my mother and through her to his grandchildren. He was a great fan of Zane Gray and Louis Lamour. Lamour westerns were a staple of my summer reading, and share much in common with Sabatini’s pirate yarn, despite the different venue. The heroes were resourceful, gallant, and upright, while the heroines were quick-witted and steadfast. Granddad collected a whole set of Zane Gray in an inexpensive Walter J. Black edition. Dozens and dozens of books. When I came across some of these at Half-Price books, I bought a few of his favorite titles as a keepsake. These include The Riders of the Purple Sage, 30,000 on the Hoof, The Hash Knife Outfit, and The Mysterious Rider.

I don’t know if Granddad ever read Captain Blood. At least, I have no recollection of his having the book. If he had, I’m sure he would have loved the story. Here is one of my favorite pictures of my grandfather, looking more than a little piratical with his cockatiel, Mully, perched on his shoulder.

My mother, an Earth science teacher, brought Mully home along with several Zebra finches one day. Dad and Granddad, who lived with us for the last years of his life, made all sorts of fun of Mom for bringing those birds home. But, within a few weeks, Mully’s cage was mysteriously transported into my Granddad’s room, and they were close companions from then on. Granddad taught Mully to speak and often fell asleep in his chair with Mully perched on his shoulder. More than once Mully took advantage of the situation to climb down Granddad’s arm and chew all the buttons of his TV remote control. Granddad would wryly pay my father to fetch him a new one from Sears and Roebuck.

We lost Granddad and Mom within a few years of each other. Dad kept Mully for the rest of his life, and when Dad passed away, the folks at the retirement community asked if they could keep Mully in their menagerie. In addition to teaching him to speak, Granddad also taught him to make wolf whistles at the ladies. Like Granddad, Mully was quite the charmer.

Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

2008-03-31T12:50:00.003-05:00

I finished reading Richard Layard’s Happiness: Lessons from a New Science and wanted to post a few comments about it before loaning my copy of the book to a friend who wants to figure out where Layard “went wrong” in his conclusion that progressive income tax improves overall happiness by providing a disincentive for workers to continuously increase their income, which Layard amusingly categorizes as a form of pollution. My friend is a political conservative.

Initially, I checked the book out from the library, but liked it so well I bought my own copy (a nice Penguin trade paperback). I’m not sure what actually brought Layard’s book to my attention: whether I came across a reference to it in another book I was reading, or just came across it while roaming the public library. One project I have embarked on is to keep a closer eye on how books come into my life. I mean in a figurative sense. I’m quite familiar with how they get in the front door, as is my wife Elly, who balances our check book.

Layard, a London economist, notes that over the last 50 years income levels have increased significantly in America and the UK, but happiness has not increased. The fact that happiness can be effectively measured is something he treats early in his book, which includes extensive end notes and a long reading list. The book is a jumping off point for many interesting reading projects, one factor that caused me to add it to our home library. At any rate, after showing how happiness can be effectively measured, and providing examples of studies that have done so, he essentially asks the question "What’s wrong with the income/happiness picture.” If people are making more money, why are’t they happier.

The answers Layard provides, noting that many things contribute to happiness, take a more or less big picture view based in economics, which is not surprising given the author’s background. If this sounds like boring or difficult reading, let me assure you it is not. The text itself is just over 200 pages, pithy, with provocative insights and not a small amount of humor.

So how can more income be a form of pollution?? Layard points out that for much of the world’s population, more income is critical for happiness simply because many people don’t have enough income to provide basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter. After a certain point, however, additional income has an increasingly smaller impact on happiness. In fact, some rather convincing studies have shown that relative income, that is how much one makes in comparison with his or her social group, is more important to happiness than the income level itself. People who earn less money than their friends are less happy, while people who make more money are happier. The catch, however, is making more money increases happiness less than the increase in unhappiness among those who fall behind. Thus, the rat race and Layard’s conclusion about the polluting effect of striving to maximize income.

If the consumers are to consume more, it is they who will have to produce it. If they work harder, they can indeed consume more but only at the sacrifice of something — their family life or their tennis or whatever. So it only makes sense for them to work harder if there is some overall net benefit. But as we have seen, people can have too great a work incentive, because one of their aims is to improve their relative income. Every time they raise their relative income (which they like), they lower the relative income of other people (which those people dislike). This is an “external disbenefit” imposed on others, a form of physical pollution. If people do not take this pollution into account when they decide how much to work...the result will be too much work and a distorted work-life balance.

Taxing Pollution

At least that would be true if there were no taxes. But taxes provide a standard cure for pollution. They make it possible to charge people for the damage which they do to others — and so force them to take this damage into account. People will thus take note of external costs which they would otherwise ignore, and if the level of tax is right, the polluting activity will be cut back to the most efficient level.

...In both situations the tax is not distorting (by discouraging something that is desirable) but corrective (by discouraging something that is undesirable.) This puts a completely new light on our existing taxes, because both economists and politicians have tended to look on taxes as distorting, even at very low levels of tax. But we have now seen that at least up to some point the taxes are performing a useful function that we were unaware of. They are helping to preserve our work-life balance.

This is just one aspect of a multi-faceted and fascinating book. Layard’s analysis of the impact of television on happiness (predictably, it decreases happiness) was another highlight for me.

I’m not sure reading this book will increase the happiness of my conservative friend, but it should at least generate some lively conversation.

Eggs Florentine

2008-03-29T17:50:00.009-05:00

I mentioned this dish, which Elly has converted to be South Beach dietish while still retaining lots of flavor, to Judy H., a close friend of ours who works with Elly at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. She was interested enough to want to try it, and then liked it well enough to want the recipe so I decided to post it here. Hi, Judy! :-) Elly’s version is based on a recipe from The American Country Inn and Bed & Breakfast Cookbook (Volume II) by Kitty and Lucian Maynard.

5 eggs & 1 cup EggBeaters

2 cups 2% cottage cheese

2 cups grated Jarlsburg cheese

8 ounces crumbled goat's milk feta cheese

4 tablespoons melted butter

2 10oz packages chopped frozen spinach, thawed and drained

1 tsp dill weed

1/2 tsp powdered garlic

1/4 tsp fresh ground pepper

Okay, no South Beach concessions were made on the Jarlsburg, feta, and butter. I’ve still lost plenty of weight eating this for breakfast, though...

I often make this Saturday evening so we can enjoy a light meal when Elly gets home from work around 10:00 pm. It is complemented nicely by an arugula salad with shaved Parmesan Reggiano, olive oil, fresh lemon juice, and freshly ground pepper.

Here is the sequence I follow. First, I turn the oven on Bake at 350 degrees so it can heat up. Then I thaw the spinach in our microwave with two rounds of 5-minutes at 70% power. While that is working, I mix the eggs, EggBeaters, cottage cheese, seasoning, Jarlsburg, and feta. I don’t mess with draining it, just squeeze the water out one handful at a time. You really want to get the water out before mixing it in with the eggs and cheese. I add the melted butter last and stir it in well.

I spray a 13x9-inch Pyrex baking dish with Pam cooking spray, pour the mixture in, and spread it around with a spatula. Then it goes in the oven for 50 minutes.

This is a fool-proof recipe that is both healthy and delicious.

Tile Project

2008-03-27T12:28:00.011-05:00

One of my (many) New Year’s resolutions was to make progress on some remodeling projects for our house, and while I have not been posting about the work, which, in hindsight, I should have done, Elly and I have been busy. We decided to tackle our second floor laundry room and dayroom first, inspired by the ominous banging our 20-year-old dryer has been making for months.

We have had the washer and dryer in our basement since moving into the house, but when we hired a contractor to build a two-story addition for us in 2004, we decided a second-floor laundry would be much more the thing. We previously did all of our own remodeling work, but couldn’t handle such a large project on our own. We still planned to do much of the interior finish work ourselves, concentrating initially on the kitchen and first floor bathroom and leaving the second floor day and laundry room areas for later.

Our first job in the two rooms was to install a compound crown molding treatment we have used throughout the house. More on that in another post.

The biggest project was to lay a tile floor for the two rooms. We previously tiled our second floor bathroom, but it was a much smaller space. We chose a natural, travertine mosaic pattern. The individual tile pieces are mounted on a 30x30cm mesh backing which simplifies installation somewhat.

I hauled all the material into our house on an icy, snowy day. Between the tile (13 boxes), five bags of thinset, bags of grout, tile backer board, etc., the combined weight was something like 1/2 a ton or maybe a little more. Getting the stuff inside was only the first step. We had to haul all of it upstairs, too!

Here is a picture of Samba helping with the tile backer board.

This picture shows a midpoint in the project after we had installed all the tile-backer board.

Here is a picture of the tile set in place. The laundry room is out of sight on the right side of the day room. We started working on the tile February 22 and finished setting tile on March 18. We only work on remodeling projects on the weekend, so it takes longer but our sanity remains somewhat intact (if tenuous). In our younger years we would come home from work and demo rooms at night. But, with experience comes wisdom. Sort of.

More pictures of the project, and of Samba(!), accompanied by detailed step-by-step captions, can be viewed in my Laundry and Dayroom Picasa album.

Coraline and Others

2008-03-27T12:25:00.002-05:00

I recently read Coraline by Neil Gaiman after coming across a post about the book on Eloise by the Book Piles (one of my very favorite reading blogs). It’s a whimsical, spooky tale written for “readers of all ages” as book blurb writers like to say. It’s also creepy and disturbing, with a dash of mordant humor thrown in for good measure. Okay, more than a dash. When she turns up after a long absence in a department store and her mother wants to know where she has been, Coraline has an answer ready: “I was kidnapped by aliens. They came down from outer space with ray guns, but I fooled them by wearing a wig and laughing in a foreign accent, and I escaped.” Her story is wasted on her preoccupied mother, however, as are her explanations to adults that her name is not Caroline.

Coraline’s parents have recently moved into a flat in an old house. In the drawing room is a locked door which opens on a brick wall. BUT, one day when Coraline opens the door she finds something different: “It opened on to a dark hallway. The bricks had gone as if they’d never been there. There was a cold, musty smell coming through the open doorway: it smelled like something very old and very slow.” Despite a warning from the musical mice owned by the crazy old man upstairs, Coraline goes through the door. On the other side she finds a flat nearly identical to her own. She also finds a woman who looks a little like her mother, only her skin is paper white, her fingers are too long, and her dark red fingernails are curved and sharp. Caroline’s other mother wants to keep her, and the young girl soon finds that getting back to her own world will require all of her cunning, courage, and help from those who have also been trapped by the other mother.

I have read four books along somewhat similar lines over the past six months. In addition to Coraline, these include The Book of Lost Things by Jonathan Connolly, The Thief of Always by Clive Barker, and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. I reread this last book for the first time since my childhood after hearing that L’Engle had passed away last September.

Of these, Gaiman’s is perhaps the most effectively plotted maintaining a consistent tone from the start and ending on a fittingly clever and creepy note. Connolly’s story is seriously flawed, as I discuss in some detail in my post on his book. Barker stands out for characterization and style. He is in a different league from the rest of the group. His characters are well-dimensioned and compelling and his prose is no less than enchanting. I found his tale the most engaging, though diminished somewhat by an anticlimatic, pat conclusion.

L’Engle is arguably the least accomplished writer of the quartet. I had forgotten her story literally begins with the line “It was a dark and stormy night.” What a hoot! Despite the corn and camp, though, and there is plenty of that, her story struck me as more fun than all the rest combined. I read it as an adolescent, so nostalgia might account for part of that response. But it seems to me another factor is she did not try to write Wrinkle in Time for all ages. She wrote the story for kids and expends no energy working in bits that read differently for adults. In other words, she didn’t go out of her way to be sophisticated. It seems to me the honest homespun has worn quite well.

Spring Equinox

2008-03-20T12:50:00.006-05:00

The 2008 Spring Equinox is today, March 20. I decided to sit out in the backyard with Samba on my lunchbreak so we both could enjoy the fresh air and sunshine (60 degrees!!). I noticed some crocus in full bloom in our neighbor’s backyard and took some pictures. Here are two of the images in honor of the equinox.

Message in a Bottle

2008-03-15T16:51:00.006-05:00

— from How to Read a Poem by Edward Hirsch

Imagine you have gone down to the shore and there, amidst the other debris — the seaweed and rotten wood, the crushed cans and dead fish — you find an unlikely looking bottle from the past. You bring it home and discover a message inside. This letter, so strange and disturbing, seems to have been making its way toward someone for a long time, and now that someone turns out to be you. The great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, destroyed in a Stalinist camp, identified this experience. “Why should’t the poet turn to his friends, to those who are naturally close to him?” he asked in “On the Addressee.” But of course those friends aren’t necessarily the people around him in daily life. They may be the friends he only hopes exist, or will exist, the ones his words are seeking. Mandelstam wrote:

At a critical moment, a seafarer tosses a sealed bottle into the ocean waves, containing his name and a message detailing his fate. Wandering along the dunes many years later, I happen upon it in the sand. I read the message, note the date, the last will and testament of one who has passed on. I have the right to do so. I have not opened someone else’s mail. The message in the bottle was addressed to its finder. I found it. That means, I have become its secret addressee.

Thus it is for all of us who read poems, who become the secret addressees of literary texts. I am at home in the middle of the night and suddenly hear myself being called, as if by name. I go over and take down the book — the message in the bottle — because tonight I am its recipient, its posterity, its heartland.

White Grackles, Roasted Greenbeans, and Georgene Lockwood

2008-03-14T06:28:00.007-05:00

I don’t generally go in for The Complete Idiot’s Guide series, but came across Georgene Lockwood’s TCIG Simple Living book at Half-Price last weekend and was so impressed with it (after a cursory examination) I decided to give it a try. Oh, along with five other books. I realize having tons of books is not necessarily the best approach to simple living, but according to Georgene Lockwood we each have to find our own way...

One exercise she recommends (lots of exercises) is to keep track, on a daily basis, of three things to be grateful for, which, she acknowledges, sounds kind of hokey. Why not? Here are my three things for yesterday.

1. On my lunch break (it was a work from home day), I saw this splendid albino grackle on our feeding tray. I have heard of these before, but have not seen one. It was a very striking bird.

Here is a normal grackle for comparison.

2. I decided to choose roasted green beans for my second item. It is amazing how delicious, healthy, and easy to prepare these are. Of course, you need fresh green beans. Cut off the ends with a paring knife, toss them with a bit of olive oil and kosher salt on a large baking sheet, and then roast them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes, turning them with a spatula at 10 minute intervals. Some beans cook faster, some slower, so you want to keep an eye on them until you have some experience with this. They taste better than french fries and are more healthy. We have gotten in the habit of roasting most vegetables. At least, it is a cooking technique we use for them about 75-80% if the time. They taste great and retain more vitamins and minerals (which aren’t leached away by cooking water, etc.).

3. Reading Georgene L’s book was my third grateful choice.

Part of the exercise is that you can't repeat items -- you have to think of new ones each day.

If I were going to pick a fourth item, it would be seeing a female cowbird in our backyard yesterday morning. We haven't seen one since last fall. She is probably hoping to find some early nest to lay an egg in. (Cowbirds don’t make their own nests. They lay eggs in the nests of other birds and let them do the hard work. I hope she chooses a starling's nest.)

Stashing Books

2008-03-09T19:23:00.030-05:00

I was inspired to post a few bookcase pictures after reading this post about treacherous book piles on Eliose by the Book Piles, one of my favorite reading blogs. Elly and I have been in our home for nearly 20 years. We have gutted the house and completely rehabbed it. Well, not quite completely. I figure we’ll have the job finished in maybe another 20 years...

Here are the first bookcases we built. Believe it or not, the previous owners ripped out the fireplace and everything else on this wall. (You have to wonder about previous owners, sometimes.) Fortunately, we were able to find a period fireplace mantle appropriate for our home. Comparing it with other fireplaces in the neighborhood, it is difficult to believe it isn’t original. Anyway, we built out the entire chimney wall and then added the built-in bookcases. This picture was taken last fall after Elly and her mom did fall theme arrangements for the living room. The illumination is very warm tungsten lighting, and I haven’t gone to great lengths to color correct it so the actual shade of yellow is a lot milder than how it appears here!

We worked a lot of books, including Sherlock Holmes, Jules Verne, etc. onto the dresser in our bedroom, which is more or less done in Empire style. We’re planning to add additional Sherlock Holmes touches to the room. The small set in front is a delightful edition of Washington Irving.

The rest of these are quick and dirty attic bookcase projects. Converting one of our rooms into an actual library is on the project list for this year, as soon as we finish our day room and laundry room (but that is another post).

We made these bookcases of MDF (Medium Density Fiber board) which is inexpensive and readily available from U.S. home improvement centers. One trick is to use sheet metal screws instead of wood screws to attach the shelves to the case sides. Wood screws taper and will split the MDF material. Sheet metal screws are cylindrical and don’t cause this problem. It is still a good idea to predrill though. I cut spacers out of scrap to set the height of each shelf from the next lower shelf, which made the job go very quickly.

I used 1/4-inch hardboard for the backs, and attached them with a bradnailer (which took about 60 seconds per unit). This is quite sturdy. Dados or any sort of shelf support are not necessary, but the cases must be narrow to prevent sagging. These are about 24-inches wide.

Here are several shelves thrown up with little ceremony over an attic work table. We used premade particle board (Low Density Fiber board) shelving and metal brackets. Because of the way the original stud wall was constructed, we couldn’t put a bracket in the middle, which causes the shelves to sag as you can see.

Here is the view down the attic staircase, one side of which is lined with book shelves built from the same premade particle board shelving, which comes in different widths. The shelves are quite long, maybe 8 or 10 feet. The shelf brackets are more appropriately spaced, so there is no sagging. The bookcases on the landing are made from birch plywood and were more complicated and deeper. Were we building them again, we would probably go the MDF route.

The MDF bookcases were built one weekend over two afternoons. The staircase shelves were installed in about two hours. An advantage of installing shelves in a little-used area is they don’t require elaborate finishing, which generally makes them quick and easy to install. Not to mention less expensive.

An Open Letter to Richard Dawkins

2008-03-08T10:05:00.007-06:00

After thinking this over for a while, I decided I did not want a letter to Richard Dawkins on my blog. Yuck!

Instead, I’m working on a longish rant about all the blunders Dawkins makes concerning Einstein’s ideas about religion. I plan to post it on my website, and will include a link to it from here. I’m still hacked about his rediculous claim to be a member of “Einstein’s camp” in his interview with Terry Gross, aired on NPR’s Fresh Air, March 8, 2008. Einstein vehemently denied being an atheist and noted that the intolerance of fanatical atheists is of the same kind as that of the religious fanatics. Another thing he got right!

The Importance of Books

2008-03-04T12:26:00.004-06:00

“...books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or exite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die. They are full of all the things that you don’t get in real life — wonderful, lyrical language, for instance, right off the bat. And quality of attention: we may notice amazing details during the course of a day but we rarely let ourselves stop and really pay attention. An author makes you notice, makes you pay attention, and this is a great gift. My gratitude for good writing is unbounded; I’m grateful for it the way I’m grateful for the ocean.” (p. 15)

— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

Exquisite Spell

2008-03-02T23:59:00.002-06:00

“‘Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it,’ Emily Dickinson said. One reason I like staying up to read long after everyone else has gone to sleep is that in the middle of the night not much conspires to break that spell. I like the dark hour when the secular world recedes and consciousness is loosened for poetic reverie. I have called the poem a soul in action through words because I want to suggest that lyric poetry provides us with a particular means of spiritual transport.”

— Edward Hirsch, How to Read a Poem, p. 250.

Kudos to Hunter Books, Burnham, Buckinghamshire, U.K.

2008-02-27T20:26:00.004-06:00

My latest Sir Walter Scott foray, Rob Roy, prompted me to request through inter library loan A.N. Wilson’s The Laird of Abbotsford: A View of Sir Walter Scott. The book was recommended by Alan Massie in his introduction to the Folio Society edition of Rob Roy, as the best modern introduction to Scott. I was so pleased with it that I wanted a copy of my own.

It is out-of-print, and I could only find one hardback copy in the U.S., though it sounded like a great one, even including Wilson’s autograph. When I checked with the bookseller, though, the copy had already been sold. After my initial disappointment it dawned on me to check UK booksellers, Wilson being a UK citizen. Lo and behold, plentiful copies in excellent condition. I sent an email to Hunter Books, and received a prompt reply that the book was in stock. Even with shipping, the book was less expensive than the U.S. copy. I placed my order through Advanced Book Exchange (where I had located the copy) and was notified that shipping could take up to eight weeks.

I was surprised and delighted to receive the book, carefully packed and in “like new” condition, only ten days later! The dust jacket even had a protective cover. It also has the mildly exotic UK currency on the dust jacket (£8.95 net). Always a fun thing.

Hunter Books is operated by Andrew Ray. I’m not sure if he has a retail storefront. At any rate, I couldn’t find mention of one. But I did find this Wikipedia entry for Burnham, Buckinghamshire, which included some links to local websites with pictures of the area.

This was the first book I have ordered from a UK bookseller, but it won’t be the last.

Two minds full of turtle thoughts

2008-02-26T18:10:00.001-06:00

I finished reading Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban last week. Or, I should say, I finished my first reading of it. This is a book that can be read again and again because of the way Hoban weaves every detail into the on-going narrative. Each time you pick the book up, you notice something new.

I came across the title while reading The Book Addict’s Treasury by Julie Rugg and Linda Murphy, which included a quote from Hoban’s novel that I previously posted here. Upon further investigation, I found to my delight that I had made Mr. Hoban’s acquaintance a number of years ago in the form of his children’s books about a wayward young badger named Frances (Bedtime for Frances, A Baby Sister for Frances, Bread and Jam for Frances, etc.) I also found Turtle Diary at the Kanas City public library. This is a scan of the book, the first American edition, which was published by Random House in 1975. The library was once in the practice of stamping due dates in the front of books, which they have long since discontinued. I used to wince about this, but now I wonder if it was really such a bad thing. The Hoban book has been in the library system for over 30 years. The first checkout stamp was on June 14, 1976. That was the summer before my ninth grade year in junior highschool. I was probably at church camp or practicing the clarinet. Quite a few stamps were made in 1976 and 77, then one in 1983 and another in 1991, and nothing since. I'm not sure when the library discontinued the stamping practice.

A marvelous website, The Head of Orpheus, maintained by Dave Awl, provides information about all things Hobanian.

Turtle Diary is the story of William G. and Neaera H., two strangers who find themselves drawn together by their desire to free sea turtles from the London Zoo.

Sea turtles. Two or three hundred pounds the big ones must have weighed. Looping and swinging, flying in golden-green silty water in a grotty little tank no bigger than my room. Soaring, dipping and curving with flippers like wings in a glass box of second-hand ocean. Their eyes said nothing, the thousands of miles of ocean couldn't be said.

— William G.

Hoban takes this unlikely premise and spins a bewitching tale of loneliness and self-discovery in which the protagonists themselves, no less than the turtles, ultimately find freedom.

The narrative takes the form of alternate diary entries, William’s followed by Neaera’s (as G is followed by H?). The two don’t meet until the story is well underway, by which time the reader has been shown many parallels between their emotional lives and attitudes through their responses to similar objects and events, intriguingly, in some instances, to the very same objects and events, which they encounter separately before their paths cross. When they do meet, and almost instinctively recognize their common interest, the discovery seems inevitable. Unavoidable, even.

William G., previously in advertising, is 45, divorced, and working as a sales clerk at a bookstore. Neaera H. is 43, a successful children's book writer and illustrator who has never been married and has grown tired of her work. Here is how she describes herself in chapter 2, her first entry: “My married friends wear Laura Ashley dresses and in their houses are grainy photographs of them barefoot on continental beaches with their naked children. I live alone, wear odds and ends, I have resisted vegetarianism and I don't keep cats.” She closes her first entry on the following page with this observation: “The best bird drawings I’ve done were for Delia Swallow’s Housewarming, one of my early books. The story was rubbish but the swallow was well observed, she was a distinct Laura Ashley type.” Hoban’s eye for precise detail and his trenchant wit informs and illuminates the entire novel, making it a treat for the attentive reader. He isn’t afraid to challenge his readers, either, as details resurface far removed from their initial appearance, their significance transformed by intervening events and developments.

The book was made into a 1985 film directed by John Irvin with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. The cast included Glenda Jackson (perfect as Neaera), Ben Kingsly (as William) and Michael Gabon as George Fairburn, the London Zoo keeper in charge of the turtles, and an unofficial co-conspiritor. Dave Awl accurately describes it as a lovely companion piece to the book — a faithful screen adaptation enjoyable in its own right, though missing the poignant inner reflections which make the book such a memorable reading experience. Elly and I watched and enjoyed the film. It is a bit hard to come by: I couldn’t find it on Amazon or Netflix, but was able to check it out from the public library. I expect the video should be available at many art film rental type stores. It is worth seeking out, but read the book first.

Lunar Eclipse, February 20, 2008

2008-02-20T23:38:00.003-06:00

With temperatures just above zero degrees, and clouds forecast to come in early, I was wavering about getting out a telescope to watch the lunar eclipse tonight. BUT, then I saw my next door neighbor Joan getting out her Orion XT-6 and walked over to chat with her for a few minutes. Since my Tele Vue 101 is always set up and ready to go, and can be carried out the door in seconds, I decided to brave the weather and give it a try. I did put on my Baffin Technologies icepack boots (guaranteed against frostbite to 150 degrees below zero :-) ).

We had some fine views, and I even took pictures through the 101 with a 17mm Nagler and my Canon S2 IS, which I just held up to the eyepiece. I experimented with various aperature and shutter speed combos to get a nice balance. This was a one second exposure at f2.7 with an ISO setting of 200. It was taken just before totality, which is why one edge has a whitish rim. The moon was accompanied by Saturn and Regulus, which made for a fine show. When the sky darkened as the moon neared totality, stars across the sky became more brilliant, which was a bit of magic.

The clouds were coming in fast by 9:15 PM and by 9:30 the sky was clouded over and the show was finished. So we didn't get to see that much of the totality, but it was still a beautiful display. Well worth braving the cold.

We won't have another lunar eclipse until December 2010 I guess, so I'm glad we got to see this one.

Biophiliac Soul

2008-02-19T17:12:00.004-06:00

“But the only remaining wild animals in abundance that carry on in spite of human development are birds. The rain forest is far away, but these birds, who often winter there, bring it with them. Here is the nature my biophiliac soul needs to affiliate with. In our mother’s womb we float in water, a remnant of our aquatic origins that we somehow took with us when we left the oceans that spawned us eons ago. But where are the woods, the fertile forests that also constituted the womb of our species? Birds bring us fragments, not in their beaks, but on their backs. Tiny fragments, to be sure, and not enough to reconstitute a world — but something.”

— Jonathan Rosen, The Life of the Skies

Rob Roy

2008-02-11T19:00:00.001-06:00

Last night I finished the first book in my 2008 reading challenge, Rob Roy by Sir Walter Scott. In January 2007 I read Waverly, which has many similar features. I believe these were Scott’s first and second novels. Rob Roy is among his most popular. The story doesn’t center on Rob Roy, a Scottish folk hero often compared with Robin Hood, and he doesn’t even put in an official appearance until the middle of the book. He has his hands full toward the end of the tale, however, doing quite a lot of Scott’s work for him if you want to know the truth. I am wondering if Scott chose the title to help the book’s sales: as I understand it, Rob Roy was a romantic figure in the 19th Century, a "box office draw" as it were.

The tale concerns Frank Osbaldistone, the son of a successful and wealthy English merchant who does not want to enter his father’s business but to write poetry instead. Father and son quarrel, and Osbaldistone senior packs young Frank off to the estate of his brother (Sir Hildebrand O.) in Northumberland, near the Scottish border, accepting one of his brother’s sons, Rashleigh, the evil one (naturally) into his business instead. Upon arriving at Osbaldistone Manor, young Frank promptly falls in love with the alluring Diana Vernon, who is pledged to marry one of Sir Hildebrand’s sons through a family pact. Darn! Will Frank and Diana marry? Will Rashleigh ruin Frank’s father? Will Rob Roy rescue the reader from Sir Walter’s cumbersome and contrived plot??

I won’t tell.

But, I will make a few observations about my response to the story. Okay, the plot is awful. And so, I have to say, is the Scottish dialect, which is so hard to follow my Folio Society edition (lovely book!) includes a glossary of Scottish words, which, while helpful, hardly reduced the irritation of wading through dialog featuring characters like Andrew Fairservice and Bailie Nicol Jarvie. These are two of the funniest people in the story, but the humor was somewhat diminished for me by my struggles to follow what they are saying. On the other hand, when he isn’t Scotching things up, Scott’s prose is a sheer delight, worth the price of admission, even if it weren’t for the lovely Diana, who is a lot of fun. She isn’t all that believable, honestly, but as at least one critic (A.N. Wilson?) observed many readers just love the idea of Diana. I did.

The story is quite humorous, with lots of physical comedy, though it isn’t all fun and games. Scott does a masterful job depicting the Scottish people and providing gorgeous descriptions of Scotland itself. It is also said to have significant autobiographical elements, the relationship between Frank and his father William bearing more than a passing resemblence to that of Scott and his own father. Scott had no head for business, and eventually faced financial ruin despite the extraordinary success of his novels. Those interested in ghosts (Eloise!) should pay careful attention to Andrew Fairservice’s remarks about seeing a “bogle,” which apparition makes a subsequent reappearance.

Toward the end, Scott more or less gives up and simply tells the reader how everything turns out, which diminishes the fun somewhat, but the tale is still an enjoyable romp for all that.