Dooney'sWorld

Mid Week Update

Finished All the Pretty Horses today. It was an excellent book, one I will read again I am sure and pause to savor bits and pieces. John Grady Cole and Lacey Rawlins were setting out for trouble from the beginning although they didn't quite realize it. It was so painfully plain, not so much Rawlins, but Cole was one of those unfortunate young men, so right and yet at the same time so wrong. Trouble was destined to find him and even revolve around him, without his ever understanding how or why, much less seeing his responsibility in attracting it. I was sad to put the book down.

I immediately started another though; the demands of the exercise bicycle are always present, after all. The new book is Sweetwater Creek by Anne Rivers Siddons, which promises to be quite different. I've not read any of Siddons books but the first couple of chapters of this one have drawn me right in – a huge change from the world of words I just left.

Otherwise all has been mundane and hectic all at once. We moved the chairs in the family room on Monday with the goal of attempting to see how the room would work if they were actually in front of the fireplace. Of course this raises the issue of the television, and the stereo speakers as well. We ended up spending far more time than we initially thought, but have come up with three potential scenarios. The next step will be to plot some drawings on graph paper to check to see that things will fit and how before me make more decisions and start thinking about getting estimates for some work. I don't see how anything will be accomplished merely by rearranging furniture. A minimum of a little electrical and carpentry work will be required, but not as extensive of renovation work as I had originally feared. I don't think either one of is ready to start the whole contractor wheel going again, a little breathing room is required. Still I am feeling great hope, and far more excitement for the prospects in the family room and dining room than I have felt for some time. Still there are many things to finish before I get started on this project, including my sewing room closet; I STILL have not finalized the plans for that, much ordered the components. With Harvey coming for a visit the beginning of April, time is running short – I can't use the guest room as a sewing closet and fabric storage area forever.

The biggest suck on my time now is the office computer, which is dying a slow death. I should say it is just dead, but that is not completely true; we are keeping it going on life-support. An equipment swap was performed yesterday, just because the secretary had to have something to get through the day, but things are not going well. The scheduling program we used for 11 years disappeared a few years back and won't run on any version of windows more recent than Windows 98. A constant bevy of phone calls and trips between offices seems mostly to drive my available time down to fragments and I see a future littered with interruptions and fixes, at least for the short term. Even buying a new computer won't solve these problems. There are certainly days when running one's own business, and being married to the boss, is a trial. Not that the boss is a trial, but I look back fondly on the days when I could close the door on the office in the evening and be truly "off duty". What an interesting concept.

What to Have for Breakfast

It seems I have spent a great deal of time this weekend pondering the subject of breakfast. On the surface it does not seem like a subject that would require much time in the way of thought: one rises, one eats, one gets on with the day. But, like many things, one's initial impression of a subject does necessarily relate to the depths of the whole.

I suppose my thoughts were prompted by musings on what to have for breakfast one morning. It is not as simple as it seems. If one cannot eat wheat, barley or rye, and the modern American breakfast consists of cereal or breadstuffs, what is left? There are eggs. But eggs get boring every day.

As G has joined me in embracing a diet of fresh and freshly prepared basic foods, the subject is arising of how to plan breakfasts and lunches when one is not relying on the cereal box or the local deli and fast-food joint for one's daytime nutrition.

I am faced with the need to come up with a repertoire of basic breakfast foods that I can either prepare easily, or prepare in advance for working mornings, so that breakfast is a fairly easy, healthy, nutritious, and satisfying start to the day.

We have several requirements.

1. Since I have been keeping track of our daily nutritional intake, the breakfast should contribute to the nutritional input for the day in a positive way, providing at least some vitamins and fiber, not just empty calories.
2. It should also be satisfying and comforting; we are not always particularly daring first thing in the morning although we have gotten into the habit of incorporating more fruit and more often vegetables into our morning routine. But although an omelet with leftover vegetables works with many things, what do I do when there are no suitable leftovers, or we are tired of morning omelets?
3. There should be enough variety in the choices so as not to be totally dependent on leftovers but also not be boring. Although I love my Apple, Apricot, and Blueberry salad which I have for breakfast quite frequently, having it two or three times a week, every week, does get tedious. There are also times of year when the apple supply is less than thrilling such as now during this end of winter/not yet spring period, when the fall apples are old and the spring apples are not yet appealing.

So what are our stock breakfasts now? The selection is rather slim. Most breakfasts seem to consist of some king of mishmash of leftovers. This week, when we got back from a trip and there were no leftovers, the choices were fewer. The breakfast menus that we come back to, time after time boil down to about two, plus a new one that I added this morning which looks like it can become a staple.

    Apple, Apricot and Blueberry Salad

    Scrambled Eggs with Soyriso and Greens (often beet greens but any other greens work)

Oatmeal. I have successfully incorporated McCann's steel cut oats into my morning routine with no adverse affects. Although I realize there are people who eat a bowl of oatmeal happily every day, I think I want a little more variety in my diet.

And today's new addition is:

    Ham sautéed with Hominy

This morning we had a generous slice of ham, about 8 ounces total, or 4 ounces each, which I seared in a skillet. After I removed the ham I used a little chicken stock to boil up the ham bits and I added a can of hominy, rinsed and drained, to the skillet, which I warmed in the ham gravy and served on the side of the ham. This was very popular and easy and will probably become a standard choice.

G usually has toast on the side with these breakfasts, I never was a big bread eater, and now that I can't eat good bread, I am little inclined to eat most of the gluten free offerings I have tried, so I do without.

There are things I would like to incorporate, namely:

1. Pumpkin pancakes. Good and easy and I love pumpkin, but these alone with syrup only last about an hour or two before I get the shakes and have to eat something immediately to avoid passing out. Perhaps with a chicken sausage on the side or stewed fruit or both. This might be worth exploring.
2. Egg Cakes are a variation on matzo brie that my family ate when I was growing up and which I have successfully adapted to gluten free cooking. They are heavy on eggs, but don't taste like "eggs" to me so they might be a good choice if I can find some fruit or vegetable side to go with them just to increase the complex carbohydrate and fiber intake.
3. Grits. I love grits but grits alone do not a good breakfast make. Grits and eggs are good, but again we get back to the fact that I get bored with eggs every morning.
4. G loves leftover chicken fajitas for breakfast so perhaps I can come up with some variations on chicken fajita breakfasts with some easy side dishes, perhaps even grits.

I can incorporate tortillas, beans, cheese, and greens as well as rice and potatoes. In reading about the history of breakfast foods it seems that historical American Breakfasts incorporated a much wider variety of foods than the modern American breakfast does. Apparently having leftover rice or greens was fairly common and I remember broiled tomatoes for breakfast, but then again perhaps that was a dish reserved for special occasions or brunch.

So I have to get to work on some menu experimentation. If I have to come up with breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day, I have to develop a collection of basic lunch and breakfast dishes I can fall back on easily without much work, or with a little advance or weekend planning so that something is always easily available on those more stressed and busy days.

 

    

It looks like a deck

It seems as if I have been existing in a void of late.  Life is not empty.  My mind is not empty either; there are thoughts, but they are more like fireflies in the night, lighting up little pieces of time but not staying in place.  I cannot seem to pin them down with words.  And so I have been quiet.  Perhaps it is just the winter.  Perhaps it is some primal urge to hibernate and emerge with the flowers in the spring.

And so I will give you an update on the construction project.  It looks like a deck and only little things remain.  But those little things add up to a lot of waiting and scheduling still to come.

Fron the driveway, looking at the north side of the house:

And then continuing to the west side of the house and around, looking toward the south.

As you can see, the door has not been moved.  The new door will be on the North (left) and the old door will be raised to match the windows.

Then around the pool and looking along the living room and up toward the master bedroom:

If you look you can see that the master bedroom deck is still cantilevered off the house, as was the original deck.  The code will not allow for this and the deck is too flexible to be approved.  Footings will have to be poured and supports put in from below as well, and the underside of the deck will be framed in, so that no one can crawl up onto the pool deck from underneath.

I will actually miss the look of the cantilevered decks, it looked so "right" with the style of the house, but we would never get approval or a certificate of occupancy so I suppose it has to be done sooner or later.  When the house was done, nothing met code, nothing was checked, this town had a reputation then for having an "anything goes" attitude.  Now the tide has swung in the opposite direction.

Looking Northwest from the master bedroom deck.  Even this one, which will not meet code is far sturdier and less bouncy than the original, which could mimic a diving board if one was ambitious in ones attempts at stomping around.

And the view from the living room deck in all its gray winter glory.

Sunday afternoon concerts

Sunday afternoon, is in many ways, is the worst time to go to a chamber music concert because it interrupts my ritual Sunday afternoon nap.  I don't nap long, but that 20 minutes or so, between 4 and 5 on a Sunday afternoon is a treat I treasure. It is the perfect denouement to perfect Sunday of unwinding from the week gone-by.

But we have attended several afternoon concerts over the course of the last few weeks, and I have been amazed at the quality of the concerts and the fact that I have not even been tempted to fall asleep, even though that 4:00 to 5:00 PM time is always the most difficult hour in my day.

A few weeks ago we heard the Attacca quartet in a truly spectacular performance, which I did not write about because so much else was in an uproar in my life that I felt I would give the performers short shrift and slide into a maudlin  exploration of self pity.  That past, I can now say it was spectacular and will not be forgotten.  Find this quartet.  Listen to them.  I can tell you no more.

Last week we heard Till Fellner at the Howland Cultural Center in Beacon and it was another wonderful performance, not only because I am somewhat partial to solo piano music.  I can be rather critical, too critical G tells me. 

And today we heard the Coryo quartet up in Rhinebeck and it was another wonderful concert, part of their "Emerging Artist" series.  We started with Haydn which I loved.  Supposedly Schumann was to follow but we got Bartok instead.  An announcement was not made, and that 4PM daze must have crept up a little bit because it took me a few measures of the first movement to get from "that is the strangest opening to a Schubert quartet I have ever heard" and "Schumann only wrote 4 string quartets, have I not heard this one before?" to realize that I was most definitely not listening to Schumann.  Even then I didn't recognize that it was the Bartok until the second movement, which could have been by no-one else. Shame on me.

The Schumann, when it appeared, was wonderful as well and the concert was quite excellent, although I felt that the Bartok was a little harsh following the Haydn and would have been better served had the Schumann remained interjected between them.  I don't know if there is any validity to this point of view, or if it is simply that I had made up my mind that I was going to hear Haydn, Schumann, and Bartok and then I couldn't accept an alternative ordering.

Either way, perfectly nice end to the afternoon.

The pleasures of Reading

There is nothing quite as enjoyable as good writing.  A good novel, beautifully written exists far beyond the level of just the plot and the story, although plot and story are also important.  Every bit is a treat to savor.

From Almayer's Folly, probably the only Joseph Conrad novel I had not previously read:  These passages are from the ending, the tragedy of Almayer.

    He ceased, and they both sat silent side by side, not looking at each other, but gazing at the vast expanse of the sea.  Almayer's words had dried Nina's tears, and her look grew hard as she stared before her into the limitless sheet of blue that shone limpid, unwavering, and steady like heaven itself.  He looked at it also, but his features had lost all expression, and life in his eyes seemed to have gone out.  The face was a blank, without a sign of emotion, feeling, reason, or even knowledge of itself.  All passion, regret, grief, hope or anger -- all were gone, erased by the hand of Fate, as if after this last stroke everything was over and there was no need for any record. 

and a little later on, how well Conrad captures the loss, the regret, the failure that shaped these lives and their expectations:

"I would have rather strangled you with my own hands," said Almayer, in an expressionless voice which was such a contrast to the desperate bitterness of his feelings that it surprised even himself.  He asked himself who spoke, and, after looking slowly round as if expecting to see somebody, turned again his eyes toward the sea.

'You say that because you do not understand the meaning of my words," she said sadly.  "Between you and my mother there never was any love.  When  I returned to Sambir I found the place which I thought would be a peaceful refuge for my heart, filled with weariness and hatred -- and mutual contempt.  I have listened to your voice and to her voice.  Then I saw that you could not understand me; for was I not part of that woman? Of her who was the regret and shame of your life" I had to choose--I hesitated.  Why were you so blind? Did you not see me struggling before your eyes?

Conrad is a master. And from The Return-

     He came to himself with a slight start, and became aware of an oppressive, crushing desolation.  It was only a feeling, it is true, but it produced on him a physical effect, as though his chest had been squeezed in a vice.  He perceived himself so extremely forlorn and lamentable, and was moved so deeply by the oppressive sorrow, that another turn of the screw, he felt, would bring tears out of his eyes.  He was deteriorating.  Five years of life in common had appeased his longing.  Yes, long-time ago.   The first five months did that -- but . . . There as the habit -- the habit of her person, of her smile, of her gestures, of her voice, of her silence.

These are not Conrad's "Great works" the novels we have all heard of, but Conrad's mastery of language and the human soul still comes out.

And from another great novelist, the opening of my new book All the Pretty Horses  by Cormack McCarthy.  A novelist I have only recently come to appreciate.

The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door.  He took off his hat and came slowly forward.  The floorboards creaked under his boots.  In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their wasted cutglass vase.  Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly know to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting.  He looked down at the  guttered candlestub.  He pressed his thumb print in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer.  Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin.  That was not sleeping.  That was not sleeping.

No thoughts, just reading.

thoughts on Mohammad Yunus' Banker to the Poor

When I started reading Mohammad Yunus' Banker to the Poor  I was immediately struck by how little the poor people who are helped by the Grameen Bank needed to help themselves build a better life.  Of course I was also struck by the ways in which these same people find themselves locked into a cycle which they have no way to escape, unless someone will lend them a hand (or a little money).  After reading the first couple of chapters I had to put the book down and think about it a few days.  The same thing happened when I read Nickeled and Dimed  by Barbara Ehrenreich and actually, although the situations are different and the countries and the status of our poor and nearly poor people, there are very strong similarities in that in both cases the people about whom I was reading were locked into a self-perpetuating system that will never allow them to break free and become self-sufficient.

Both books opened my eyes to things that I never really thought about.  Oh I knew the poor existed.  Who does not?  But I never thought much about why they were poor, or how they could stop being poor, except for the standard pap that we all tell ourselves.  But much of the standard pap is wrong.

I have never been poor.  It is highly unlikely that I ever would be -- I was born with too many advantages.  But Yunus is right in that there is no reason on earth why anyone should be poor, so poor that they cannot provide shelter, food, clothing, and health for their families.  Granted not everyone may be rich, and not everyone even wants to be rich.  This rethinking of my basic assumptions is tiring work.  I am sure it is worthwhile in the end.  If we all managed to do it, how much better would the world be?

At the end of the book, there were so many ideas and beliefs I was overwhelmed.  I took pages of notes.  I cannot condense them into a smaller space.  Yunus is revolutionary and whether one agrees with him or not, his goals are admirable.  To achieve them would require a complete restructuring of human society.

At the moment I will leave you with these two quotes:

Poverty does not belong in a civilized society. pp 236

and
Charity is not a solution to poverty.  Charity only perpetuates poverty by taking the initiative away from the poor.  Charity allows us to go ahead with our own lives without worrying about those of the poor.  It appeases our consciences  pp237.

There are many more profound, more thought-provoking, and more controversial statements.  At the moment, this strikes me as the gist of the matter. 

Now, how do we change the world?