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Restingmotion

  • On looking through the photo albums

    I had an opportunity today to go through our photo albums and it was a very interesting activity.  Admittedly I am not really a photo person and I don’t usually look through the albums often.  Still I am finding that it was a rewarding experience.

    Step-daughter M had asked for some photos of herself and her father when she was young, and also some pictures of her father and I so that she could add them to a photo-wall she was creating in her house.  That task was both easy and difficult.  I have pictures of her dad as a child and young adult and those were easily scanned into the computer for later printing.  I also have an album of pictures of the children when they were small, thoughtfully put together by M herself as a birthday gift to her dad, when at some point she realized that most of the photos had migrated with her mother at the great divorcement.

    Pictures of her father and I together was a more complicated issue however and this required extensive poring over the albums.  Basically I am not a taker of photographs.  I have been on occasion.  G bought me a pocket sized camera soon after we were married and I dutifully carried it on trips and, under his encouragement, took pictures, usually because he was taking pictures too.  G was something of an amateur photographer.  Actually I got rather good.  But I don’t automatically think of taking pictures without encouragement, or without being under the tutelage of another photographer.

    Even with two photographers there are few pictures of either one of us.  Neither G nor I are particularly eager photographic subjects.  There are more photos of me, primarily because G took far more pictures than I, lugging large cameras and lenses on all trips.  But G was mostly a photographer of landscapes and things, not people, and I shared some of the same propensities.

    I loved looking through the photos of our trips and our days.  It has been very evocative, a trip down memory lane it is true, but some things have reminded me of things about myself I have forgotten.  Sometimes there would be just a page of pictures of the trees at home on a given day — those would be my photographs — whereas G would take wonderfully detailed pictures of scenery and architecture on our trips.  Looking at our pictures, even when there is nary a person in any one, reminds me of so much about who we were in those days.

    But after about 2000 the pictures drop off.  G stopped carrying his camera and photographic duty more and more often fell to me.  I would take the pictures when I thought about it, or when pressed, which wasn’t very often.  Then when I had a digital camera I would upload them to the computer and never print them out.   I still rarely take pictures unless I need a photo for a blog post or to record something in the garden journal.  When I am someplace or doing something with friends, I am usually too busy being there, in that time and place,  to step out of the picture and think about recording the image.

    So what happened?  Will there be photos of our future, or will there be only a 20 year snapshot of a portion of our lives?  I don’t know. 

    I doubt I will become a photographer.  I am not sure that I have the temperament.  And unfortunately G’s photography days may be short lived.  He was having increasing difficulties making the camera work, even though he had operated a camera for years.  He was having increasingly difficulty getting chemicals to mix correctly, and the dark room was becoming a place of frustration.  It is easier to find excuses than admit that he is failing, that he can’t do it anymore.  He would never use a point and shoot camera.  He would feel that if he couldn’t control every aspect of the shot it wasn’t worth doing.

    And you know, it is OK with me.

  • First Iris

    FirstirisThe first Iris of the season opened its bloom today. 

    This iris is right next to the front door, which is a fairly sheltered little spot protected by the house from the cold air that tends to blow from the North and West, and somewhat also by winds from the south as they most often seem to be coming from the south west.  One year, when I diligently took temperature measurements around the yard I found that this little section of the front yard easily ran about 10 degrees warmer in the winter.  It averages a touch cooler in the summer too mostly because it is one of the few areas of the yard that gets bright morning sun but lots of shade in the afternoon.  Too much of our property seems subject to the harsh, pounding afternoon sun.

    When I stepped outside the front door to take the picture a couple of sparrows flew away in alarm and started twittering madly.  They must be building a nest.  I shall keep my eyes on them, it may be in the ferns near the door or at the base of the Azalea.  I remember a few years ago when they nested in the large pot of flowers right next to the front door.  Alas, I have not replanted that pot yet this spring, even though it is already getting late, so the exposed dirt is not a promising nesting site.  I used to love to sit on the step just inside the front door and watch the sparrows come feed their babies. 

    I sat on the step for a while, and the birds started to hop cagily back, but then my cell phone went off and I had to stand up.  They could see me through the window as well as I could see them, and the motion startled them off again.  Perhaps another day, when I am not answering the phone for the office.  If the nest is somewhere near the door where we can watch it, perhaps I will be able to show Owen something interesting in a few weeks when he comes to visit.  It is possible that the chicks will not yet be ready, there may be nothing to see, nothing that can be watched with the attention span of a baby anyway.

    Oh just sitting here for a brief moment and watching the birds reminded me of a much beloved book I read as a child, An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden.  I shall have to see if I can rustle up a copy as now it is set to plague my mind.

  • Summer Fabric

    I have been playing with fabric.  I have been re-arranging, sorting, storing and generally thinking and dreaming about fabric and projects.  Newly purchased fabrics have been cataloged and filed in the collection and a few old favorites have been brought out to perhaps become new summer garments.  At the very least they will inspire summer garments.

    Summerfabric2
    This is a stack of fabric that I have added to one of the cubbies in the sewing room.  They come from all periods of my collection.  The aqua fabric near the middle is the Armani fabric I posted after shopping at Leandro Fabrics a few months ago.

    What these fabrics have in common is that they have companion pieces that are dancing around my head as potential outfits.  Some of these plans are quite nascent now, for example the armani jacket is still vague in my head although I do still intend to get to it this summer, probably a little later when things have calmed down a bit, perhaps as late as July after visits from step-children and others are past.

    Some of these projects might be completed sooner, but none of them are on the immediate production list.  I still seem to have a few stacks of knits I want to work through, and perhaps a few skirts.  At this point simple projects seem to remain best, and I am loathe to start some epic project only to have it delayed until the point that it just becomes another UFO.

    A few surprises have materialized as well.  As I put fabric away in one of the fabric closets, this set of buttons fell out:
    Summerfabric1
    Buttons are not supposed to be stored with fabric. In fact I wonder what I was thinking because I would never use these buttons on the fabric with which they were cohabiting.  They are awfully pretty though, large, heavy metal with rhinestones.  Somehow they don’t say summer to me so they will be put aside, with the rest of the gold buttons, until the pefect garment comes along.

  • Linen Tank progress

    Well, the stitches came out of my finger and it is no longer sensitive to the touch of the knitting needle, so knitting has resumed, although not at the pace I would have hoped. 

    Somehow I had believed that retirement, even partial retirement, as I am still doing office bookkeeping and accounting, would afford me more time to knit and sew than has so far been the case.  Of course there are other things going on, and even office tasks are behind schedule, in part because there is no firm schedule.   I used to like to think that I was a fairly adaptable and flexible person, but I did have a schedule of sorts that I followed for maintenance around the house and for work.  I also had time to knit and sew and read.  But now it seems that keeping even the simplest schedule seems impossible and I find that I am not happy with this random slow – motion – do – what – ever – occurs – to – you  – at – the – moment kind of existence.   

    So in this slow-as-molasses world where one still seems to be busy but nothing gets done, you would think I would be so grateful to escape into knitting time that I would embrace it with attention.  No so. Apparently double moss stitch is not quite as mindless as I had thought.

    Linentanka2

    Or perhaps nothing is truly mindless at 3 in the morning.

    Upon looking at the above photo, there are several areas where I have messed up the order of the stitches, most apparently in the wide blue stripe.  Although generally, since this is the back, I might not notice this unattractive tangle of misplaced stitches, but then again, someone else might.  I am fairly certain that, now that I am aware of its existence, visible or not, I will feel like there is a big glaring light on my backside drawing everyone’s attention to that part of my anatomy which can least bear the scrutiny.

    Once again, we are moving backward.

  • In the Garden

    Life seems to be slowly getting back to normal, or at least this weekend has been a perfect weekend in many ways, even though I didn’t actually sew.

    I did spend some time reading and that was a wonderful way to get myself motivated and focused once again.  I also got out in the garden a wee little bit — today really was a perfect gardening day, sunny breezy and in the upper 60’s.  I suppose if it were like this all season I woudl live outside.  I am finally coming terms with the fact that I don’t like the heat, and the sun is not good for me, but I still like a garden. Truthfully however noone would know that looking at our place this year.  It is an overgrown mess from 3 years of workmen and repairs and construction and today was the first bit of gardening I have done this spring, and here it is nearly summer.

    Oh well, I know there are more important things going on.  But getting out in the yard even for the hour I spent outside today really refreshed me and helped me get back into the normal groove of things.  Actual sewing, aside from the dreams of garments to be made and the fondling of fabric cannot be far behind.

    As sewing progress is still fully imaginary, I shall instead show you a few tulips.  I adore tulip season, but this year even the tulips have sat out in the garden basically ignored, whereas I am usually filling vases and bowls by the armload.  They are a little short this year.  Remember they had started to come up in January, and I am sure that false start compromised their stature a little bit.  But the flowers are glorious:

    Tulips1
    Tulips2

  • Spring Bounty

    Springbounty

    Spring continues to shower us with good things and I am again savoring time in the kitchen.  You may be tired of reading about ramps and morels and spring vegetables, but we have in now way exhausted the possibilities in the kitchen.  Now that spring is really here, even the offerings at the fish market seemed to have improved. When I stopped by Adams on Friday, I got to the store just after a group of fishermen had dropped off a catch of Striped Bass.  Now I have mentioned before how lucky I am that I get Bluefish, Striped Bass, and at this time of year, Shad, that are brought in by local fishermen the day they are caught.    As I walked to the fish market, they were just unpacking a bunch of bass onto the ice.  They were beautiful and of course I bought one.

    Now a good sized whole striper is a bit big for two of us, so I did not cook it all Friday night (I hope this does not bring out the fish police).  One fillet was wrapped in paper, surrounded by ice and this whole conglomeration of things was then put in a giant zip Lock bag (I think fabric came in it originally) and stuck way in the back of the refrigerator until Saturday night.   

    And because it is rare that I have two pieces of the same fish, I decided to experiment a Little.  Friday night I steamed the fish using a technique I learned from an article about Jean Georges Vongerichten many years ago.  I pulled off a large sheet of foil, then I layered spring vegetables on the foil.  I used some of the tiny asparagus you see in the photo, morels, and some slender tiny spring carrots, grown in pots, each about the diameter of a pencil.  I placed the fish on top of this and then layered the ramps over the fish and drizzled the entire thing with olive oil and a little salt and pepper.  Then I sealed up the foil packet and placed the entire package on a very hot iron skillet that had been heating while I got everything ready.  When the foil packet puffed up like an old jiffy pop popcorn package, I started the timer, and cooked the fish for 4 minutes.  I took it off the heat and let it rest 1 minute more.  Then dinner was served.  It was heavenly.

    Saturday night I baked the second fillet, again simply drizzled with olive oil.  The ramps were cooked and pureed and baked into individual custards, and the remaining tiny asparagus and the bell pepper were simply sauteed together.  Another perfect dinner. 

    Now what was the purpose of all this?  I wanted to see how the fish turned out.  The steamed fish was delicate and flavorful, really really good, it almost melted on the tongue.  The baked bass was also very good, very flavorful, and a little more toothsome.  It was still quite tender but it had a little firmness on the tongue, more al dente I suppose, and George and I both felt we preferred this preparation.  The differences were subtle, but now I know. The vegetables and the meal as a whole was a success both nights.  Perhaps it is true, simple things are best.

    And speaking of simple things, the pansies I planted last fall have sent up progeny this spring.  They have been blooming heavily the last month or so:

    Springbounty2

  • Idle Hands and Wandering Thoughts

    Very often my knitting time is also my time to let my mind wander explore whatever thoughts happen to pass by.  But what happens when I am not knitting?  Do I stop thinking?  Do I stop daydreaming?  Well I hope not because I would be an incredibly crabby person if that were the case.  Yet, I am still a little crabbier when I have not been knitting, as I have not of late.

    It is not like my life has been fiber-free.  I have been fondling my yarn, imagining sweaters knit and imagined, more imagined that actually knit at this point.  I love these imagined sweaters.  They fit beautifully.  Imagined sweaters are always perfect.  But one can’t actually wear imagined sweaters or crush them between one’s fingers, or feel the softness or weight, or admire the beauty of the stitches.  Oh well, I suppose I shall have to knit again.

    And I will.  Knit that is.

    But this week I started reconstructing my database.  It is a slow process because I can’t just pull out the yarn and count it, record it and forget about it.  I have to try to remember what dreams originally prompted the purchase, I have to imagine its future life, I have to savor its presence.  This all takes time, and it takes time away from knitting.  I am finding projects that had slipped into the back recesses of my mind, projects I want to knit soon.  Projects that will have to wait a little longer, because truthfully every time i hold a bit of yarn and imagine it as a sweater I want to be knitting that sweater RIGHT NOW.  But I can’t knit them all right now, can I?

    Actually I am having trouble knitting any of them right now, due to the simplest and most stupid twists of fate.  I have a paper cut.  Actually it is a cardboard cut, incised on the edge of one of those cardboard storage boxes used to start files and charts.  I never realized that such a thick piece of cardboard could be so sharp, could cut so quickly, could be such an inconvenience.  I think of a paper cut as a simple thing.  But a cardboard cut, quickly made yet wide and deep might require stitches.  A cardboard cut on pad of the index finger puts a bit of a brake on one’s knitting output, but not on ones knitting dreams.

    The painful part is almost gone.  The stitches and the little cut are beginning to heal up.  Knitting will resume.

    In the meantime, the life of the mind continues on as well.  I actually read a book for the first time since all this other stuff in my life started. 

    Howdoctorsthink

    The book led me to think and let my mind wander and once my mind was
    wandering, of course it wandered from ideas to fabric and yarn and
    dreams of future projects. The hands may be idle but the perigrinations of the mind go on, and there are enough dreams to supply a lifetime of knitting (not to mention yarn).

  • Just because you think you are richer than God, doesn’t give you the right to play God.

    In Friday’s Wall Street Journal there was article about the erosion of the shoreline in Siasconsett on the Eastern side of Nantucket Island.  Basically, the shore is eroding rapidly in that part of the island and many wealthy people have large nice homes overlooking the Atlantic Ocean which they wish to protect.  I am sure there are also some less wealthy people who have had homes there for some time, but these points are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things.  Anyway, the rich have set up a fund and they want to rebuild the beach.

    Of course controversy is brewing here, and rightly so.  In this case I side with the fishermen.  I hope they win.

    I personally have nothing against rich people building houses wherever they wish to build houses.  I like ocean views as well, or mountaintop views.  But they have to learn to accept that money doesn’t buy everything and they might just loose that home. 

    There is evidence that rebuilding the beach may protect the homes for some time, and it will certainly protect property values.  But there is no evidence that rebuilding the beach actually stops erosion, in fact evidence is mounting that the efforts made to restructure and resurface areas of the ocean have often made the situation worse in the long run. All you have to do is google beach erosion to find tons of references.

    Then there is the issue of disturbing the natural environment and the striped bass habitat.  The statement made by one of the landowner’s that he would pay the families of fishermen the lost revenue that would be incurred by the loss of fishing grounds is incredibly arrogant.  Yes that may help one family, but what about the future generations?  What about future generations of all of us?  We don’t really understand the longer term impacts that some of these changes might foment.    I think this idea that we can try to configure the earth to fit the pleasures of some wealthy humans and the long-term fate of the rest of the human race and the planet itself be damned is an incredibly bad idea. 

    I am surprised that they are even getting permission to do this, but then money and power talk. And governments are run by and intrinsically connected to people who have money, and projects that don’t cost the public anything in dollars up front are easily approved.  The short term goals are met and the idea of looking at the long term seems to be a foreign concept.

    I have been to Siasconsett.  The old houses were beautiful. Some of the new ones are simply grandiose.  The place itself, looking out at the ocean is beautiful, but part of that beauty is its very danger, the pounding of the surf, the thought that it could all be washed away in a moment.    There are places in the world where you can have a fabulous view of the ocean and where there is a smaller risk that your house will be washed away.  Do the research.  If you can’t stand the risk, don’t buy the house.  .

     

  • Thinking about Doctors

    After a busy day where nothing was accomplished but which seemed like an endless treadmill to nowhere, today is moving more calmly and slowly, and it seems that things are falling in place, at least in terms of my state of mind, although it is likely that nothing is still actually getting done, but then that depends on your definition of nothing. Most certainly the garden is not getting weeded, the laundry is not getting done, and I am not doing accounting work for the office, but these seemingly tangible things are ephemeral in their own way, ephemeral in that although they are concrete accomplishments, they are probably not lasting – they don’t really affect who we are or what we are, nor do they really have any bearing on the true accomplishments of life.

     

    But then, once again, perhaps I am living too much in my head.

     

    Yesterday brought the most recent issue of the NY Review and a package from Amazon. G immediately grumbled at a headline What’s Wrong with Doctors but then that is the kind of thing that always catches his attention, he takes doctor-bashing very seriously, although he will happily indulge in bashing other professions. I of course had to look at saw that it was a review of the new book by Jerome Groopman, How Doctor’s Think. I knew G’s sister was sending us a copy of the book, along with another one she thought G would be interested in reading, so I promptly settled down with it. I was eagerly awaiting the Groopman book as I have enjoyed reading the author’s essays in The New Yorker. The review was interesting. The book was even more interesting, and more balanced and interesting than I think I expected from the review. I need to check the review again, now that I have read the book.

     

    Indeed the book came yesterday as well. I started it at some point after dinner, probably around 9 PM and I finished it this morning. It has been a long time since I have just settled down to read a book without interruption and I truly needed to do this. It was a fabulously productive and calming experience. I stayed up late, after G went to bed, and I did briefly consider whether this was wise because I feared he would wake me early. He did. But after a cup of coffee I was simply ready to curl up in a sunny window and continue reading.

     

    It was a good book and well worth reading. It was not, of course, only about what is wrong with doctors, but also what is right with doctors, and sometimes also about what is wrong with patients. The book is much about how decisions are made, how medicine, or probably anything dealing with such complex organisms as humans and their lives, is not a simple science. There is no correct formula and many times even no right answer, although there way me an answer that is the best one for each individual patient. The book is continuing to affect how I think, and how I interact with doctors. This is an issue now as we deal with G’s current medical issues, but also with my own in the future. I think the book helps me to think about the process, and makes me try to think about how a doctor may be approaching the situation as well as how I as a patient or family member of a patient approach the doctor and how I pursue medical care.

     

    This subject — the idea of how we make decisions, how objective we can truly be, and how our upbringing, our training, our personalities, and our basic assumptions about life color our decisions even without us intending that they do so – is endlessly fascinating to me. It has come up several times in my life lately, not just concerning work and medical care. I think it is something that needs to be pursued further, and probably definitely needs to be a part of the education of those who care for others. But then, as Dr. Groopman says, medicine is, or at least should be, a calling more than it should be strictly a business. And that in the end is where we all have problems and issues with the health care delivery system. Each of us wants to be treated as an individual, to be listened to and cared for. But some part of us also wants rules and statistics, cures and guarantees. Our needs, our wishes, and our demands may not be compatible, and doctors and patients need to find a way to communicate and find their way through this morass together.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Chicken with Asparagus and Morels

     

    G found lovely asparagus at the Amish Market, imported from somewhere of course, but the ends were not hard and dried up the way one usually finds them in a grocery store, and they quite tender with very little that needed trimming away.

     

    Often, when I make this dish I cook the sauce until it is very rich and thick and just barely coats the vegetables and chicken. This time I cooked it less so that it was more like a thick broth in the bottom of the bowl, giving us an excuse to drop our popovers into the plate and soak up the wonderful liquid.

     

    Now that is springtime heaven.

     

    Chicken with Morels and Asparagus

     

    2 cups Chicken Stock

    ½ pound morels

    1 pound asparagus

    1 shallot, thinly sliced

    2 boneless skinless chicken breasts

    1 teaspoon salt

    1 teaspoon tarragon

    ½ teaspoon pepper

    ¼ cup heavy cream

    1 tablespoon olive oil

     

    Trim the ends off the asparagus and peel the larger stalks if tough, reserving the stems and peels. Trim any hard ends from the morels. Cut the remaining asparagus into 1 inch long sections and set aside.

     

    Preheat oven to 200 degrees.

     

    Place chicken stock, asparagus and morel trimmings, salt, and tarragon in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer. Simmer for at least 20 minutes but perhaps for up to 40 minutes, until flavorful and reduced in volume. Strain and set aside.

     

    Heat the olive oil in a large nonstick skillet. Brown the chicken breasts until golden on both sides. Remove chicken from skillet and keep warm in the oven. Add the asparagus pieces to the hot pan and sauté until crisp tender. Remove asparagus from pan and keep warm in oven with chicken.

     

    Add shallot to skillet and sauté, stirring constantly until just beginning to brown. Add mushrooms and the strained chicken stock. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer for 10 minutes. Add cream and return to a simmer. Return chicken breasts to skillet and simmer until sauce is thick and reduced to 1/4 to 1/2 cup.

     

    Add asparagus and any drippings to the skillet and simmer just until the asparagus is hot through. Serve immediately.