National Tater Day!

National Tater Day is celebrated annually on March 31. [boldface because one of my best friends forever calls me "Tater" because of my love for this vegetable. Well...ok.]  I'm pinching this post from an online exercise group to which I belong, and someone noted that today, being March 31, is National Tater Day.  Never heard of it. 

This day is set aside to celebrate the potato that is loved by almost everyone and provides us with essential vitamins, minerals and fiber. [They kept us Irish alive for many years!--full of Vitamin C!]  There are numerous ways to fix and enjoy the potato:  Baked – Boiled – Steamed – Roasted – Mashed – Fried – Grilled – Scalloped – French Fries – Cottage Fries – Hash Browns – In Stew – In Soup – Potato Salad – Potato Dumplings – Potato Pancakes – Any Way You Like Them!!
[Personally, there's almost no way of preparing potatoes that I don't love, but my favorites are potato pancakes (will have some for breakfast today) and potato salad .  This does not mean I don't adore
mashed potatoes or home fries or escallopped potatoes.  But....]

The origin of this day may have had a different meaning, as at the beginning of April each year, there is a celebration of the sweet potato (Tater Day), in part of Kentucky. Sweet potatoes are one of the main cash crops in that area. Tater Day started way back in the early 1840′s with the trading and selling of sweet potatoes. It is the oldest continuous trade day in the United States.
Worldwide, there are more than four thousand potato varieties.

Solas Nua's Poetry Blast

 
Solas Nua (America's Only Contemporary Irish Arts Organization) has a monthly Poetry Blast.  This month features Irish poetess Siobhan Campbell. 




"Quickthorn"

Don't bring haw into the house at night
or in any month with a red fruit in season
or when starlings bank against the light,
don't bring haw in. Don't give me reason
to think you have hidden haw about you.
Tucked in secret, may its thorn thwart you.
Plucked in blossom, powdered by your thumb,
I will smell it for the hum of haw is long,
its hold is low and lilting. If you bring
haw in, I will know you want me gone
to the fairies and their jilting. I will know
you want me buried in the deep green field
where god knows what is rotting.


"These Women"

These women are no dreamers.
They make happen the full wake,
the kettle hopping, the oven warm.

They take death in hand
And force him to be civil.
In their lighting, the spitting candle calms
And the rosary settles out of irony.

These women are not kind
If you did not iron the sheets you borrowed,
If you bring batch instead of sliced,
What good is that for sandwiches?

These women bar all holds in the
screamed stall of the birthroom.
Instead they ask for the gummed grit
They found for themselves in that
most alone of coupled moments.

These women know how to mash potatoes
so that they charge despair
out of a teenager.

They have followed a father
and a small child on a combine harvester,
not to pick up the pieces of the boy's arm

and bring them to his mother,
but because they felt the call of the back field
like something rotting in the feed shed
before chief rat jumps out.

These women will not pass through
The horse meadow, even on a summer night,
For there they have felt that the world might let us go.

They've seen the consequence of that.
Ironing keeps it at bay
and doing what is right.

Boundaries

Boundaries

The universe does not
revolve around you.
The stars and planets spinning
through the ballroom of space
dance with one another
quite outside of your small life.
You cannot hold gravity
or seasons; even air and water
inevitably evade your grasp.
Why not, then, let go?

You could move through time
like a shark through water,
neither restless or ceasing,
absorbed in and absorbing
the native element.
Why pretend you can do otherwise?
The world comes in at every pore,
mixes in your blood before
breath releases you into
the world again. Did you think
the fragile boundary of your skin
could build a wall?

Listen. Every molecule is humming
its particular pitch.
Of course you are a symphony.
Whose tune do you think
the planets are singing
as they dance?

~ Lynn Ungar ~

Art, Continued

Spoke too soon.  My wonderful artist friend said "Keep 'em!  It'd be my pleasure to give them to you if you wanted them."  Well, I do want to keep them and I do enjoy them, and I thank her.  She is indeed a wonderful artist and a generous person.  And I have committed a serious photographic sin by not paying attention to the background.  Junk all over--coat, hats, gloves, reusable grocery bags, grandson's photo lacking actual frame (Jack's Uncle George).  But here they are--the dark paintings on the two walls.  I like 'em!!

Dealing With Artists....

No, this is not about me, although it could be.  I never said I wasn't difficult, but there are some who trump me in that category.  Long story short: a wonderful painter who doesn't want her paintings back. (I got them from another artist friend with whom she had swapped her paintings for the other artist's ceramic pieces.)  She told me to just throw them out, as she no longer had the ceramic pieces, either.  However, the paintings are beautiful, and I am going to disobey her instructions.  I'll keep them on my walls. 

Here, btw, is a young artist whose output has received great honor in his milieu:  Jack, my second-oldest great-grandson, aged 11 months and a few days.  I love his sweet innocence as he attacks his task.

Percentages

The past few days, it's been like this around here:

Cooking--20%
Reading about cooking--15%
Eating--10%
Cleaning up 15%
Shopping for groceries  10%
Emailing, other online nonsense 15%
Basking in the smile of great-grandson #2  15%

Freelance Cooking.....

I've been trying to buy vegetables and fruits that I can eat with my crumbling teeth.  So last week, I bought a big container of chopped berries, pineapple, kiwi, papaya, and whatever.  Unlike whole fruits, however, this has to be kept in the fridge until it's used up.  So when I take it out to eat some fruit, it's too cold, and I can't chew it.  So today I decided to make pudding and put the chopped fruit and berries in it.

Well, I happened upon a package of lemon pudding mix that required only two egg yolks, a bunch of water, and cooking. So I cooked it (endless stirring, etc.), and when it cooled off slightly, I poured most of it into a nice glass bowl in which I had placed most of the fruit.

Then, remembering a recipe for Ile Flottante that came in my recently purchased Barefoot In Paris cookbook.  It had a recipe for the meringues that required two egg whites, which I had left over
from making the pudding mix.  So....I did that, and then I plopped four meringues on top of the bowl and let it sit some more.  And now I've had two full servings of this and am hoping the benefits of the berries and other fruits will make up for the sugar in the pudding and meringues.  I also used my silicon pan liner thing in place of the bakers parchment called for in the meringue recipe.  It seems to have worked just fine. 

And now I'm reading Tamar Adler's An Everlasting Meal  and preparing to hike out to get some
fresh leafy, stemmy greens and other veg to prepare for my week's menu, whatever that might turn out to be.

I also have to mention that I had a deep fried hard-boiled egg (called "crispy deviled egg" in the menu) last night, and I really enjoyed it.  apparently they boil the eggs, coat them in crumbs, and plunge them in the deep fryer until the crumbs are nicely browned.  Then they serve it with a garlic-yogurt sauce with a few sour bits (perhaps chopped capers?).

I had only one, and that was plenty.  But eggs will continue to star in my diet for some time.  I'm doing this in honor of my new favorite saint, Eleanor Roosevelt, who every night for supper prepared scrambled eggs in a chafing dish at her dining table, whether it was in Albany or Hyde Park or Campobello or New York City or the White House.  Mrs. Roosevelt, about whom I've been reading for the past few days, was a remarkable person--dignified, unruffled, generous, thoughtful--sort of an exemplar of all the virtues that have eluded me for lo these many years.

So....This is my Ups and Downs post for Sunday, March 9.  Cathy and I went to a wonderful birthday party for one of our dear former coworkers last night, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.  Black women do know how to throw a birthday party.  We need to learn how to line dance.  There are always new challenges ahead!!!

Another reason to love trees!!

http://www.openculture.com/2014/03/listen-to-tree-rings-getting-played-on-a-turntable-and-turned-into-music.html

This is sort of self-explanatory.  Which musician does it sound like?  

Elder

Author (nine novels; also nonfiction, plays, movies) Sarah Schulman has a great post on her FaceBook page (photo from there, too) this morning:

"I now declare myself officially an ELDER. Do not fuck with me. Thank you."

Schulman has long been one of my heroes--for her luminous, hilarious writing, her deep kindness, and her brave activism in LGBT causes.  Somewhere I have a photo of her that I snapped at an early Dyke March in NYC.  So when she announced her status as an Elder this morning, I sat up and took notice.

Confession:  I have always found this "elder" stuff kind of hokey.  Elder this, elder that.  "Elder music,"  "elder studies."   Ugh.  Problem is, the term as used so often online refers only to advanced age.*  If you're such and such an age, you're an Elder.  Sbpflllt!  If you enjoy any music or do any studying in your dotage, that doesn't make the music or the studies "elder."   

Elder does mean anyone older than you....like a parent or older sibling or an ancestor or forebear.  Elder also can be a verb meaning to "act like a big brother or sister."  My personal elders were very fond of this interpretation, and they eldered all the time.  "Respect your elders," they used to say (often followed by a punch on the arm).

Among Native Americans, Elder also has a tribal meaning:  a wise person who is a "repository of cultural and philosophical knowledge and...the transmitter of such information" [Medicine, Dr. Beatrice (2001). "My Elders Tell Me", Learning to Be an Anthropologist & Remaining 'Native': Selected Writings, p.73. ISBN 0-252-06979-X.] 

Churches also have Elders:  Those who help the minister handle the business of the parish.  My neighbor is a Deaconess in her church, and that's an elder of sorts.  

I'm guessing that Schulman is taking the tribal meaning here when she says she is now officially an Elder.  She is definitely a repository of cultural and philosophical knowledge, and she definitely is a transmitter thereof.  And I have long respected her for this, looked up to her, been amazed and thankful that she remembered who I was the last time I saw her in D.C. years ago.  All hail, Elder Schulman!  Go for it!! 

*well, that's some of what the dictionary says.