Sculpin

So, it’s the last day of the first week of One Local Summer, and I went down to the market to see what I might want to use in the way of an all-local meal. The first apricots of the season are in. I thought I’d make pasta and pesto tonight and eat those apricots tomorrow. Well, no. “I’ll just have this one,” I said to myself. And ate about a pound. And that was that. We’ll have pasta tomorrow. The week really starts on Monday, right?

Josh and I stopped at “Rolling Fire”, the wood-fired pizza stand. While we were waiting for our pizza, we wound up chatting with Mitchell(?), who’s involved with Haulin’ Colin somehow. He’d seen the big cob oven we helped finish at the UW. “It’s got all kinds of sculpture on it,” he enthused. I confessed that I’d made the feet. His eyes lit up. “I remember the feet! You did the feet?!” He brought his hands up and hooked his fingers like the oven’s front claws. I was so proud! And so relieved — I’m glad the feet hadn’t cracked and fallen off. And then proud some more!

These are my links for June 18th through June 28th:

• Brides Against Breast Cancer - Because, really, what the hell am I going to do with that wedding dress?
• The Unreliability of Naive Introspection - Eric Schwitzgebel - “We are prone to gross error, even in favorable circumstances of extended reflection, about our own ongoing conscious experience, our current phenomenology. Even in this apparently privileged domain, our self-knowledge is faulty and untrustworthy.”
• ‘Tis the Season (for the last of the big summer BBQs and family reunions) | Gristmill: The environmental news blog - Lemon Ice Cream with Warm Blackberry Sauce. Yes, please.
• At Home Depot, How Green Is That Chainsaw? - New York Times - “Green, after all, has become the new ‘new and improved,’ a label so widely used that many environmental groups, while lauding the heightened interest of consumers, now dismiss many of the efforts as greenwash.”
• Dendle et al., Complications of Bikini Wax - “Extensive pubic hair removal is now common among young adults… However, the infectious risks of these practices, particularly among immunosuppressed individuals, are often underappreciated.” NSFW, life-threatening infection, horrible details, ick, gah.
• How children lost the right to roam in four generations | the Daily Mail - Whereas great-grandpa George walked six miles to go fishing when he was eight, little Edward isn’t allowed to go more than 300 yards from home without supervision.
• The Moral Obligation to be Intelligent revisited - Part I [The Situationist] - “First the bad news. There are known and established limits on the human ability to introspect and know… The bounds on rationality, the very ones that keep us from being smart, also keep us from being good.”
• “The Moral Obligation To Be Intelligent,” by John Erskine - “The disposition to consider intelligence a peril is an old Anglo-Saxon inheritance… [It is assumed that] the mind and heart are rival buckets in the well of truth, inexorably balanced — full mind, starved heart — stout heart, weak head.”

Something out there likes cole crops as much as I do. I go out and find that they’ve all been gnawed to the stem, if not to the ground. Broccoli? Kaput. Kale? Gone. Collards? Well, the ones that were protected by wall-o-waters are doing just fine. The ones that were protected just by 8″ open-topped wire cages, though, haven’t fared so well; they get chomped as soon as they stick a leaf over the top of the cage. Damn you, varmints! So much for my plans for homegrown gumbo. I’m considering some plans for Varmint Stew, though, I can tell you. Grr.

The garden at home has pretty much gone to hell lately. It’s all overgrown with weeds. And I seem to have sprained my hip somewhat in yoga, so it’s going to stay overgrown for a while. Maybe I’ll get it together in time for fall planting. That’s coming up fast.

Today Josh and I helped build a cob oven with people from the UW Farm project. We put the final coat on and did some decorating. And I’m too tuckered out to say much more about it, except that it was fun and we met a whole bunch of friendly, interesting people.

I miss Vince. I don’t know what to say. It seems all wrong. I feel sad and confused.

I didn’t know him closely, but I always loved talking with him at Pies and Pints or the farmers’ markets. Being around Vince made me happy; he was infectious that way. Even when things at the restaurant had gotten crazy or exhausting, there always seemed to be a song in his heart. He was generous and funny and creative and warm, with a huge laugh. I often thought, “This is a man who knows how to live.” He loved his life, he loved his work, and he loved the people around him. All that love and enthusiasm made him seem a little bigger than life to me.

He was one of a kind, and I’ll miss him. I do already.

These are my links for June 1st through June 8th:

• bikeseattle.org: The Bikery offers Free Bicycle Maintenance Workshop - On Saturday, June 23rd, the Bikery is offering a free Bicycle Maintenance Workshop from 2-5pm at the Garfield Community Center in the Central District. Bring your bike and any needed parts; they’ll provide all tools, and will teach you how to use them.
• Dillard’s Cat - C. L Rawlins - “When a writer purports to reveal the wonders of nature while disregarding or distorting what happens, it upsets me…. Skill isn’t the whole of it: the reader deserves to know what cap the author is wearing, scout or sibyl, tracker or troubador.”
• Omniglot - a guide to the languages, alphabets, syllabaries and other writing systems of the world - Someday, I swear, I’ll get around to making that set of obscure alphabet blocks with characters from, say, the Glagolitic and Orkhon alphabets. (For values of “I swear” equivalent to “maybe”.) It’s only been on my list since 2002 or so, after all.
• Biofuel gangs kill for green profits - timesonline.co.uk - A surge in demand for biofuels derived from agricultural products has unleashed a chaotic land grab by a new breed of gangster entrepreneurs hoping to cash in on the world’s thirst for palm oil and related bioproducts.
• Metro Bus Hikes - Hikes in the Seattle area that you can reach by Metro and other public transit. No car needed! Includes a few such directions as, “Carefully cross the busy highway,” and, “Wait until no cars are visible, then scoot across the bridge as fast as you can!”
• NPR : Letting Leafy Greens into Your Life - Here’s what to do with that Swiss chard we’ve got in our garden.

Josh and I made some soap last December that I’m enjoying a lot. To a 3.75 lb batch of soap, we added these essential oils: 2 t lemongrass, 2 t lime, 2 t coriander, 1/2 t ginger, 1/2 t basil.

I made up the scent blend to work well with Josh’s skin; lime scents work well on him. It’s pretty nice on me, too, and it makes me feel cheerful and vigorous. The scent’s holding and aging well.

It’s hard to guess how these experiments are going to work out. There was a batch of ginger soap a couple of years ago that smelled like dirt. Literally; you’d sniff that soap and think, “Wow, that smells filthy.” Several months later it’d mellowed out, but it was never really fantastic. This, on the other hand, smelled great to start with and still does.