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Photographic Interlude

October 12, 2010 - View Single Entry

I'm temporarily out of words, so you're in luck, Travvy fans: here are some new pictures!

When Travvy finished his Rally Advanced title at Taunton on October 1, our buddies insisted we get our picture taken by the official trial photographer, Mike Wilkinson of Wilkinson Phodography. (Weary proofreader that I was, I didn't notice the pun for about a week.) Here it is. A framed print is going up on the wall at Karen Ogden's Positive Rewards Training Center in Vineyard Haven. Travvy is now officially Masasyu's Fellow Traveller, RA, CGC.

From Taunton Trav and I headed west to Camp N Pack. Camp N Pack had a photographer too, Barry Millman of Threepairs Photography, who roamed around the camp taking candids of dogs and people doing neat things. He shot several great ones of Travvy and me. One of them is in my October 4 blog entry about camp. Here are two of the others.

I love this one. I'm going to frame it and hang it up on my wall.

How's that for an elegant, handsome boy? The full shot has me at the other end of the leash. I ordered it cropped to show just Trav, but Barry included a copy of the uncropped print as well, as a bonus. A portrait of Rhodry and his feline friend, Dis Kitty, sits on my desk. I've been waiting for a good one of Travvy to join it. This is the one.

Great Drying Day

October 08, 2010 - View Single Entry

It's barely 2:30 in the afternoon and already nearly all my laundry is dry and put away: it's a nearly perfect drying day on Martha's Vineyard, bright, sunny, and breezy.

Well, "windy" is more like it. I made several trips out to the deck to pick underwear off the floor and replace it on the drying rack. Each trip meant dislodging Travvy from his spot in front of the door. Finally he gave up and took refuge on my bed.

The clothesline said "early fall" more colorfully than the calendar. Eight T-shirts shared the line with two flannel shirts and a sweatshirt, three pairs of shorts and a sleeveless cotton dress were flapping alongside three pairs of long pants. The odd item was the aqua bandanna I wore to cowboy night at Camp N Pack. I think it enjoyed its escape from the scarf drawer.

A couple of weeks ago I treated myself to three pairs of new hiking socks. I wear my socks till the holes are big enough for toes to stick through or the fabric gets so thin that my boots raise blisters on my heel. What I forget is how comfortable and cushiony brand-new socks are. The three newcomers have survived their first laundry day. Hmm. That old gray pair might need replacing soon . . .

September License Plate Report

September 30, 2010 - View Single Entry

Montana showed up a few days ago and saved September from zerohood. The YTD tally stands at 44. Still missing are Alaska, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Kentucky, and West Virginia. C'mon, guys, time's a-wasting. You've got three months to show up where I can see ya.

Rocks and Blocks

September 29, 2010 - View Single Entry

If Sisyphus had been a New Englander, the gods might have sentenced him to clear rocks from a quarter-acre paddock. If superhumanly vigilant and persistent, not to mention fast and blessed with fair weather, Sisyphus might have managed to produce a rock-free paddock. In that event -- or more likely as soon as it seemed that he might be down to the last few dozen rocks -- the gods would send rain, winter, or a series of freeze-and-thaws and Sisyphus would be back where he started.

My writerly mind is like that quarter-acre paddock. All my adult life I've been clearing it of rocks, blocks, and other obstacles, but more keep appearing, over the fence, through the gate, and (most often) from underground. It's rarely that I'm not writing at all; I'm always writing, if only blog entries and e-letters. What I'm not writing is the stuff that matters. The stuff that matters takes a long time. Since Mud of the Place and the two really good essays I've written since then, "My Terrorist Eye" and "And Will Rise?," have gone pretty much nowhere, I'm just not motivated enough to disappear from sight for two or three years and work on Squatters' Speakeasy. (I've conned myself into working on To Be Rather Than to Seem by persuading myself that it's really a bunch of short essays or blog entries.)

Last Saturday I went to the memorial gathering for Eileen Wilson, co-founder of the Vineyard Playhouse. I worked with Eileen a few times and reviewed many Playhouse productions; I even helped edit The Dogs of Summer, a neat book she wrote about West Tisbury dogs. The gathering was wonderful -- full of stories, songs, and even a film of Eileen doing a dog-related monologue. I've been wanting to write about it, but I haven't let myself make the time: answering e-mail, organizing files, or playing another game of Spider comes first.

Writing about the gathering is this sizable boulder that's appeared in the paddock. Not far from the gate -- I'm not sure I could squeeze out the gate if I tried, and I don't want to find out either way. Eileen catalyzed so much -- productions, the Playhouse, the theatrical careers and other enseeavors of so many people, many of whom I knew "back in the day" and on Saturday saw for the first time in about 15 years. Most of these careers and endeavors are now going on off-island, and there's just about no one doing what Eileen, and Mary Payne, and Yann Montelle were doing in the 1980s and early '90s. Wintertide Coffeehouse was part of that scene, bringing people together and encouraging creative sparks to fly and catch fire.

And now there's nothing. Just that big rock blocking, or maybe not blocking, the gate.

Culinary Advances

September 28, 2010 - View Single Entry

Recently I copyedited a book about wine tourism in California. We don't have wine tourism on Martha's Vineyard: the only winery was closed in 2008 and the vineyard land sold to the filthy rich people who already owned the designer farm next door. Needless to say, they are not running a winery. The late George and Cathy Mathiesen, who founded Chicama Vineyards in 1971, encouraged hikers, joggers, horseback riders, and cyclists to use the dirt road through the vineyard. Among the first acts of the new owners were the erection of fences and the locking of gates so that no one could cut through. But I digress . . .

The Vineyard's relationship with tourism is like a drunk's relationship with booze: it makes his life miserable, but he can't live without it. (The same can probably said for most "tourist destinations," not to mention most of our jobs.) So I'm curious about this thing we're addicted to. What motivates people to turn tourist? What are they looking for? The wine tourism book I worked on offered plenty of insight, much of it delivered in first-person narratives by people working in wineries, restaurants, and other tourist-attracting concerns. (It would have offered more if the authors had known enough about tourist-trap life to ask better questions. I could digress at some length about that, but not right now.)

So in California wine country, tourists pay big bucks for oenological (that means "related to wine") and gastronomic adventures. One of these gastronomic adventures is pâté de foie gras. I'd heard of pâté de foie gras ("fat liver pâté") but didn't know exactly what it was. According to the book, a California law passed earlier in the decade outlawed the selling of fat liver pâté after 2012. I looked it up and was grossed out in about two seconds, even though I have no special fondness for geese. The goose livers are fattened by force-feeding the geese far more food than they would consume on their own. The chefs and consumers of fat liver pâté, of course, claim that the discomfort to the geese is minimal, and if the geese end up dead, wouldn't that happen if the entrée were roast goose?

Everyone's the hero of their own story, as I'm so fond of saying, and that includes tourists and the people who make their livings serving tourists. (It also includes alcoholics, but once again I digress.) My question is, Does craving for pâté de foie gras occur in the wild? Are some people born with it, or does it maybe appear at puberty along with secondary sex characteristics? My theory is no; it's an acquired taste. Even people who love it at first taste could almost certainly live without it. I love Nutrageous bars and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, but I can go several days without either. A person who organized his or her life around the obtaining and consumption of pâté de foie gras would, quite justifiably, be seen as a fanatic. But people do acquire a strong enough taste for pâté de foie gras that they will pay a lot of money for the pleasure of eating it, and even the compassionate animal-lovers among them will come to tolerate the force-feeding of geese in order to obtain abnormally fat livers.

I, on the other hand, don't see the point in acquiring tastes that are going to cost me big bucks to satisfy. I wasn't introduced to lobster at a young age, and when I first tasted it, I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. When I turn down lobster, people stare. If I say, "I don't like it," I'm told I haven't given it a chance. This is true -- why should I? If lobster were cheap and readily available, sure: I'm sure I could acquire a taste for lobster. Since it's neither, I'll pass.

I am not, however, the gastronomic equivalent of tone-deaf. My palate can discriminate among all sorts of tastes, and sometimes it's the gastronomic equivalent of orgasmic. Sunday, for instance, I made hummus. I love hummus, but I don't often buy it because it ain't cheap. How hard could it be to make hummus? The hardest part turned out to be finding tahini at the upscale grocery store. It turned out to be shelved next to the peanut butter, where I wouldn't have thought to look if a cashier hadn't pointed me in that direction. By the time I was done, my blender was threatening to go on strike, but my hummus is delicious. Hummus spread on sourdough raisin toast? Oh my. Back in Puritan days, such self-indulgence would have got me locked in the stocks.

Hummus on toast. No chickpeas were killed, tortured, or even inconvenienced in the making of this dish.

Earlier this month, I discovered the wonders of slow-dried cherry tomatoes. Yesterday I halved about a dozen, put them in a cast-iron skillet, and left it in a 250-degree oven for about two and a half hours. When done they looked like this:

The plan was to use them in the quiche that I was going to make later in the day. Trouble is, by suppertime I'd eaten them all. This is why I'm not trying to acquire a taste for lobster, pâté de fois gras, or $100 wine. Once upon a time I had a tourist's taste for Martha's Vineyard. Now Martha's Vineyard is just hummus on toast.