sisu

90 candles make a lovely light

Just another day on the couch for Goompa's Purrky yesterday, but we had our eye on a bigger prize, our pater familias's 90th birthday.

We three children, two spouses and four grandchildren drove and flew in from points south and west to toast the Energizer Bunny at his Down East homestead, Camelot-by-the-Sea.

Formal posing for pictures? Never our thing, as we're totally into beauty in unexpected places, snapping the shutter early and often before and after formal "say cheese" set-ups to capture Cartier-Bresson's "decisive moment."

Ellen's Beef Strogie was to die for, a transcendent reincarnation of our mother's signature dish with salted butter and bouillon cubes front and center. VERY politically incorrect. She's promised to write it all down so we can publish here in our Cold Turkey Cookbook in the "Full of Calories and Loving It" section.

"Just had a nice chat with Dad," imails our sis this evening:

She: He did, indeed, enjoy his birthday celebration and was totally delighted that all four grandchildren were able to attend. He reports that the pumpkin muffins were so good that you had TWO!

We: Yes. Plus I took some home. Delicious!

She: I know that I took a Toll House Cookie, just to be polite, and THEN … I wanted to scarf down the whole container, but retrained myself.

We: Retrained yourself? Love it. You'd have to.

She: I love how all four grandchildren are great cooks. Whatever it took, and I'm sure that Mummy had a lot to do with it … my boys LOVE to cook. They are not slugs on the couch, watching football. They watch some football, then go whip up a meal. AND they do laundry and know how to iron. I think being a sluggard has helped me to raise capable children.

Update: Modulator's Friday Ark #270 now boarding.

Blue skies smiling at me

He loves, and she loves … Tiny and Earl clowder the light fantastic this afternoon as foggy overcast gives way to "blue skies smiling at me."

Even as Tuck sands and paints and climbs ladders to the sky to spit and polish our humble home by the sea.

"It compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies"

Sunrise at Camelot-by-the-Sea from Goomp's terrace this morning.

L'heure bleu. Tuesday morning after Labor Day meant the first day of school for us children of the Fifties, a day of trepidation for ourselves, a smartie pants with social-skill issues. We were great at reading, writing and 'rithmetic but borderline pathologically shy. 'Wonder how we'd have taken a presidential "live cable-cast speech on values and education" piped into the classroom back then? We were still wet behind the ears when our radar screen began to pick up blips of the insidious Big Lie behind the Gramscian march through the institutions. As we blogged back on Flag Day of 2005: 

We remember the first inklings of the emasculating Marx-lite mindset beginning to infiltrate our elementary and high school classrooms in the fifties and sixties, when reflexively p.c. teachers -- before anyone really knew what p.c. was -- told us there was no such thing as human nature and keened that we shouldn't have a battle hymn for a national anthem.  We should change it to "America the Beautiful," they told us. While we love the poetry and religious fervor of "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies," with its unspoken recognition of what used to be called "Manifest Destiny," as a national anthem it falls short, missing the point that came crashing into our consciousness on that awful 9/11: Freedom isn't free.

Last gasps of summer. Tiny attends Ellen's plate for a Sunday bookend to our season-opening lobster bake with all the fixin's last May.

The light fantastic caught in the folds of a little linen shirt hung out to dry.

L'heure bleu, last gasps, hung out to dry. And now Tiny, above, sucking out the juices of a lobster carapace. The psychological landscape closes in. Intimations of creeping statism. We jumped into the Medicare maelstrom last week as our 65th approaches, waiting an hour (but we brought Jonah's Liberal Fascism, so no time wasted) to register at the local Social Security office, only to find they had us listed by our maiden name. That meant going back home to fetch the marriage license and then back for more waiting. Their error but our time. Unnerving inklings of things to come with the President's and Congress's medical-insurance meddling? In related frustrations, Goomp had asked us to help him switch from pro-Obamacare AARP to Humana for his Medicare supplemental. We duly researched, called and made an appointment for today, turned our schedule upside down to accommodate, but the rep never showed. Arggghhhhh! Public insurance, private insurance. Where's the competition to keep 'em honest? Rudy Giuliani had the libertarian's answer to an attempted Tom Brokaw gotcha the other day:

BROKAW: "What's been interesting to me is that the Republicans have raised the public option as some kind of Orwellian monster. Half the health care in America is already delivered by the government ... Medicare, Medicaid, the Veterans Administration, Federal Employees insurance ..."

GIULIANI: "That's part of the problem. Part of the problem is that half of it is already in the hands of one massive monopoly. You make that monopoly greater and you destroy private insurance."

The rest of the problem with the dark cloud of "universal coverage" looming on the horizon is Tocqueville's "network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd":

The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

Baa!

Update: "The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subued to man, its presence refreshes him," wrote Thoreau. Head on over to Modulator's Friday Ark #260 and be refreshed.

Update II: The News Junkie at Maggie's links.

Every heart beats true for the red, white and blue

Blue skies and gentle west winds with occasional gusts graced our Sunday Family Fourth Festivities at Goomp's Camelot-by-the-Sea down east. Old Glory, above, was in her glory.

Matthew and Susan pose in a proud and loving mother-and-son embrace with the Brahmanesque York Reading Room and Atlantic Ocean falling away behind. Click here for higher-resolution image.

Suzi's Red, White and Blue Strawberry/Blueberry Shortcake hit our sweet spot. All agreed Pillsbury's Shortcake beats those dry, tasteless homemade ones of our new-bride days when you had to prove your culinary worth by making everything from scratch.

Working off our just desserts, Sue, Ellen, Matt, Tuck, Ben and ourselves tripped the light fantastic in a rousing rendition of the Cliff-Walk Two-Step across the York River down by York Harbor Beach, with the Hahbah in the background.

Mother ponders what to do next as son checks camera settings.

Earlier on the opposite side of the river at Goomp's, a groaning board of Fourth-of-July faves was downed with relish: Grilled Chicken Sate with Peanut Sauce, rib eyes, Kayem [Chelsea's own!] dogs — both pork and beef — on grilled buns, corn on the cob, Eddie's Beans [Thanks, Ellen!], Sissy's Superb Potato Salad and Corny Cornbread Mini Muffins. Did we forget anything? Oh, yes: The champagne flowed!

Note gray roof of Goomp's house in background across the river, upper right amidst native forest greenery.

'Wish the day would linger longer … They left us laughing and begging for more. A wonderful time was had by all. Click here for higher-resolution image.

As we made our way back to the car, Matthew discovered a botanical "reversion," growing out of one of the Dwarf Alberta Spruces (Picea Glauca 'Alberta') that dot the landscape. The sport's the strapping youngster sprouting from the refined parent plant, above. Wikipedia explains:

A sport is a part of a plant … that shows morphological differences from the rest of the plant.

Sports with desirable characteristics are often propagated vegetatively to form new cultivars. Such selections are often prone to "reversion," meaning that part or all of the plant reverts to its original form.

Googling, we came upon this fascinating snippet of plant-explorer lore — worthy of a blogpost of its own, tied in with the contentious "green" debate —  from the University of Arkansas Extension Service:

Dwarf Alberta Spruce was discovered in 1904 in the Northern Rockies near Lake Laggan, Alberta as two Arnold Arboretum botanists awaited the arrival of their train to take them back to Boston. Today, they would meet with serious government red tape and social castigation, but at the time they spotted the stunted seedling and recognized it as something new and different. Without a second thought, they dug it up and took it home with them.

Back in Boston, the dwarf spruce was found to be easy to propagate and was released to the nursery trade a few years later. [You see them everywhere, from carefully cultivated formal estates and suburban lawns to planted in large terra cotta pots outside luxury apartment buildings and perfunctorily "landscaped" curbs of gas stations along the interstate.]

The most famous of the pair was Alfred Rehder, who became known to thousands of students for his Manual of Cultivated Trees and Shrubs. In the1940 edition, Rehder was the first to use a plant hardiness zone map based on minimum winter temperatures. His first hardiness map had only seven zones but served as the precursor to the 12-zone USDA map we use today.

Heading south back to Chelsea on I-95 Monday morning, we found ourselves playing a bit part in the big traffic story of the day, a smash-up involving three cars and a tanker truck in the northbound lane. Police cars, ambulances, fire engines, a dump truck full of sand and a hazmat vehicle rushed to the scene, and a helicopter hovered overhead. The highway was closed for hours as emergency workers tried to stem the flow of oil into the nearby Merrimack River. We escaped with a relatively modest 45-minute delay and a creepy feeling at the horror of it all, compounded by the fact that just as the traffic was starting to slow down, we had been reading the chapter in Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism where Lucianne's elder son makes the argument that Woodrow Wilson was "the twentieth century's first fascist dictator."

Update: More pics and info re crash and clean-up from local Daily News.

Other than that, a perfect weekend.

The mountain comes to Mohammed

It takes three tugboats to guide the chemical/oil tanker "Mount Rainier," sailing under the flag of Cyprus early morning, into the Chelsea Creek.

We love the layered, foreshortened image above — taken from our front steps — where the turning tanker seems to be squeezed into the tight space — actually a watery expanse of about 1/4 mile — between the McArdle Bridge that runs from Chelsea to East Boston in the foreground and a secondary span of the Mystic River Bridge between Chelsea and Charlestown in the background.

The working waterfront never sleeps.

The company was the same

"Still being able to have a lobster bake on the Coast of Maine tells me that all is not yet lost out there," says Tuck. Eat your heart out, Mr. statist POTUS. Read Andrew Foy's and Brenton Stransky's "Revisiting Hayek" and call us in the morning. Meanwhile Hannaford's cooked the lobsters so we didn't have to hear their screams. We did all the rest. Steamed corn on the cob, potato salad on beds of Boston lettuce (center), mighty Caesar salad (top). How sweet it was. No croutons better than our own roasted ones with garlic and olive oil. As for the dressing, anchovy paste instead of anchovies soothe the savage breast. We can't bear to see their beady little eyes staring out at us from the can.

 

Goomp was happy as a clam. Brandy Alexander Pie for dessert was the frosting on the cake.

 

Update: While the rest of us clawed our way to the meat with crackers and picks, Goomp leisurely enjoyed two lobster rolls (above left) lovingly prepared by ourselves.

Now the curtain opens on a portrait of today*

Serendipity. In our ongoing project to capture the decisive moment when Tiny sits up on her haunches and catches a "ball" — in this case a twig — in her two paws, pattycake style, we've stumbled upon some magical moments you don't know you're getting till you check out your "contacts" back in the "darkroom," i.e., click on the "Play back images" button. Above and below, classic Tiny "Ecstasy of St, Teresa" moments atop the dining room table.

The bulk container "Golden Glory" out of Panama picks up the sun's first rays early morning at Eastern Salt across the street.

Where'd that twig go?

*Blogpost title from "Chelsea Morning" by Joni Mitchell.

It was a Chelsea morning

"Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning, and the first thing that I saw" were the sun's early rays dazzling the pure white cranes of Ice Type Handymax bulk carrier "Lowlands Opal" out of Panama across the street at Eastern Salt here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea.

" . . . and a rainbow on the wall, Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon." Grape-family member Boston Ivy (Parthenocissus cuspidata) trips the light fantastic on the great retaining wall behind the house.

"There was milk and toast and honey and a bowl of oranges, too, And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses," but who needs Joni Mitchell's "milk and toast and honey" when you've got Eggs Bennie with Hollandaise Light Fantastic, the latest entry in our Cold Turkey Cookbook. What to do with the egg whites when you separate out the yolks for the Perfect Hollandaise? We whipped 'em up to stiff peaks and folded the meringue into the basic Hollandaise for a sensuously pale yellow, fluffy concoction that's fun to eat. Excerpts from an imail conversation:

We: I checked out online to see if anyone else had tried it. Someone had and said it was wonderfully light. And it is.

She: What made you decide to try that?

We: It came to me in a dream? Actually, it was the ease of beating egg whites, which I've become used to in making my broccoli and spinach MOOSES (MEESE?), with my adorable new KitchenAid Immersion Blender.

Enhancing the creative process with new technologies in our own Experimental Kitchen.

She: LOL. I must say, as much as I love Hollandaise, it always sits in my stomach like a pound of butter, for two days. Lightening it up sounds like a stroke of pure genius. God works in mysterious ways, yes?

We: And don't forget your cream of tartar.

She: Sis, trust me on this one. You can forget cream of tartar. Not necessary.

We: Really? But I don't WANT to forget it. It reminds me of "eye of newt, and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog."

She: Well, we ARE the Weird Sisters. Our cooking should reflect that.

"For a charm of powerful trouble, Like a hell-broth boil and bubble."

"Duty, honor and country," McCain's core values

Cranes and salt pile frame a glorious sunset across the street from Chelsea-by-the-Sea at Eastern Minerals early evening. The sometimes too sober Fred Barnes says McCain will win; the ever clueless Mort Kondrake says Obama. Fred cites "duty, honor and country," McCain's core values as explicated in a superb WSJ editorial this morning. Johnny's core values were the very thing that finally allowed us to 'learn to stop worrying and love John McCain" back last February. Our sister, our dear blogfriend Miss Kelly and our own gut are chanting "Landslide."

Foreign influences

Oil tanker Great Eastern from foreign shores (couldn't make out the call port) heads back to sea out the mouth of the Creek early morning.

Old, rusted-out Sears bottom-of-the-line lawnmower, meet spanking new Sears bottom-of-the-line lawn mower. Tuck got 18 years of good service out of the faithful oldtimer. As is the custom here in Chelsea-by-the-Sea, he set Rusty out on the sidewalk, and within 45 minutes a couple of illegal alien types — Chelsea is a so-called "Sanctuary City" — had picked up the oldster and loaded him onto their pick-up truck to begin a new life of service. Imail snippet:

AMERICA! One man's trash is another man's treasure.

Unlike Democrats, God helps those who help themselves.

Update: More imail snippets post publication:

She: PERFECT counter-point to Democrats stuck on the escalator. It reminds me of that movie about the cars (which I haven't seen), but … the lives of machines. That old mower must be so happy!

We: Yes. Like dogs, they love to have a job!

She: Tears in my eyes, YES!

So much conservative compassion, so little time.