Category: Writing

Writing about writing, autobiography, cross posting selected work from other places.

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Writing

Into the City

Book Shelf
Book Shelf

LAKE MACBRIDE— Having never been a fan of the UNESCO City of Literature designation for Iowa City, I can see why people like it. It gives the social mavens something to preen over. In telling the story of Iowa’s development into a cultural oasis among fields of row crops, mine is somewhat different than what I read and hear about from the source of brightly lit night skies to the south. The main benefit of what the late Darrell Gray described as the U.S.S. Prairie Schooner has been an increased ability to hear writers, authors and lecturers invited by the local literati to speak or read from their work. Last night it was Margaret Atwood.

I don’t know Atwood or her work at all, so it was easy to listen to her talk without prejudice.  Somewhere in a box, I have a copy of “The Handmaid’s Tale,” which someone posted on social media is “canonical.” First to admit my deficiencies, I looked up canonical and it means, “included in the list of sacred books officially accepted as genuine.” Genuine is good, and when I find my copy, I’ll give it a try.

What most engaged me was Atwood’s question and answer period. Between you, me and the Internet, I didn’t care much for some of the questions, especially if they revealed too much about the questioner. One teacher went on about a group of women students and their class. She had one of Atwood’s works on the syllabus, but it appeared she wasn’t very knowledgeable about it. An awkward moment that soon passed. While I’m complaining, in the row in front of me was a couple behaving like they were in Juliet’s boudoir, and one or both of them needed a shower to wash away an offensive body odor that reminded me of stints in the oil patch of West Texas. Get a room people and take a shower before coming out in public. My neighbor to the right made a comment about reading the Guardian on my handheld device while waiting for the event to start. Nonetheless, we live life’s diversity, and these things were not a real distraction, even if recalled here.

I perked up at the question about the e-book – paper book divide. Atwood said the market share of e-books had declined from 30 to 20 percent, and that e-readers were better suited for short works. That resonates. She also mentioned her “Three Reasons to Keep Paper Books,” which can be found here, and is worth a read.

Margaret Atwood was smart, witty and attentive to the audience. I was happy to immerse myself in the weird, smelly, nosy and boisterous literary scene in the city just to hear her speak.

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Writing

Autobiography, Blogging and Canning

Apple Sauce 2013
Apple Sauce 2013

LAKE MACBRIDE— The afternoon was spent making applesauce with the last of the fallen apples from the Sept. 19 storm. They stored well, and six quart Mason jars and a pint are processing in the water bath canner. It’s local food more so than most: they fell about 30 feet from the kitchen window during the storm.

After experimenting with applesauce techniques, I cored, but did not peel the apples, cut each into about 16 pieces, steamed them in a bit or water until they released their own juice and begin to fall apart, and processed them through a food mill. I also made chunky-style apple sauce, using a potato masher before spooning it into a jar. No spices or sweeteners here. They can be added when serving, but this applesauce really needs no additives.

Is the story of my applesauce afternoon worth writing or reading? I don’t know about the latter, but the process of writing helps me understand life on the plains in a way that takes the rough, dull and lonely parts out, rendering it into a sweet pulp to serve to friends and family, and packaged to give as a gift. Seriously. Who wants to hear about the rough, dull and lonely parts of life anyway?

There is the actuality of the time spent and the image above. If that’s all there were in this post, an autobiography of a moment in time, it would not be worth reading. The hope is that by imagining a life, and writing it down, some value can be added, and if we are lucky, an epiphany reached.

According to WordPress, there are more than 72 million blogs on their site. Add in the other sites and there is a lot to read, many thoughtful, some hate-filled, and more than a person could ever consider. For the blogger, it is a way to write, an outlet for expression in a world where only a very small number of writers get read, and even less get paid. We need outlets.

There is a first draft quality to a blog post. A flawed freshness that can be like the life from which it is expressed. Sometimes it is sticky, syrupy sweet or messy, and that goes with the territory. We’re not the Scientific American or Harvard Business Review in the blogosphere. What we hope to be is an expression of the imagination. Taking the desultory moments of a modern life as the ingredients of something better, something universal. Bloggers mostly fail to reach the sublime, but once in a while, things come together.

So there it is, the ABCs of writing in autobiography, blogging and canning. Write about what one knows, do actually write on some platform, and think in terms of a finite product that is useful to someone, to nourish a body, but more importantly, one’s intellect and spirit. There are benefits, not the least of which can be jars of applesauce.

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Writing

Technology in the Present

GUI Search
GUI Search

LAKE MACBRIDE— To support a couple of significant projects, more computing capacity is needed in our home on the lake. It seems unlikely any funds will be disbursed to support the projects. Rather, old computers and equipment will be located, resurrected and deployed in a way to create a couple of new work stations and bring focus to these new intentions. What does that mean?

Like many who have been on-line since the mid-1990s, we bought, sold, donated, gave away and recycled a significant number of computers. I lost count, but over the years, at least 20, with a number of them still in the house. At first, the trouble was finding a way to dispose of them without tossing them in the landfill. Some were given to a local political activist for potential use in campaigns. Too, for a while we donated old equipment to Goodwill, and now, they have a local specialty store called Reboot that will take old computer hardware and recycle it. In the case of those remaining at home, ample storage space and entropy have accumulated ten CPUs or so. There are plenty of working processors for new projects.

What are the projects? Two are most important. First, there is the persistent need of consultants to focus on business development. Determining how we will pay the bills and seek fulfillment at the same time requires a minimum number of distractions. For this, I chose an old laptop the battery charging function of which ceased to work and is too expensive to repair. It works fine while plugged into an electrical socket. Whatever work is not backed up may be at risk, but that can be addressed with good backup habits.

Secondly is a big writing project that requires a focus on words on a screen. For this project, no Internet access is needed or wanted. Regardless of the information available on the web, the craft of writing is done a word or phrase at a time, and distractions of any kind are unwelcome. For this work station, I picked a CPU returned from a family member with a monitor returned from another. The main challenge will be getting the same version of Microsoft Word installed on all three CPUs without feeling guilty about using the same license on more computers than the software package allows. There is also the issue of finding the disk, which eludes me at present and will eventually show up (I hope).

Operating systems? The desktop CPU has Windows XP, and the two laptops have Windows 7. XP is on the writing CPU, so that will take me into a different world when I boot up, and that may be okay. Regrettably, it has a 2002 version of Microsoft Word on it, and that’s too different from the 2007 version on the other two.

All of this is minor accommodation to a person who continues to recall the MS-DOS command prompts, and using computers before the introduction of the graphical user interface. One suspects people don’t even recall what is a GUI, but they have gotten much better.

Just about done with the setup, so now, let the working begin, he said hopefully.

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Writing

Leaving Colorado

Tejon at Bijou
Tejon at Bijou

Writing on Tejon at Bijou (This post was first published on Feb. 3, 2012).

Unexpectedly delayed by the snowstorm, I have time on my hands. All of the big stuff at the apartment was hauled away or packed for the trip back to Big Grove. Near the door are the boxes we finished packing last night, waiting to load, hopefully tomorrow. There is time for writing.

I drove to the Arc Thrift Shop and made a donation of unwanted items found during the apartment cleaning. On the way back, I stopped at Starbucks at the intersection of Tejon and Bijou in downtown Colorado Springs. I ordered a grande brewed dark roast, sat at a table and connected to the free WiFi for a session. It is the table and chair that is lacking at the apartment, not the WiFi.

Of the places in Colorado Springs, the downtown area on Tejon is a favorite. Constantly strolling people make downtown seem alive and vibrant. The coffee shop is not busy, what with the snowstorm and all, so I don’t feel bad about renting a table for an hour or so at $2.09. Checking email, and other applications is actually nicer using a table and chair.

This may be the last trip to the Springs, but I have fond memories of visiting here over the last two years. It doesn’t feel like home, but I feel comfortable here. The mountain view is exhilarating. A constant reminder that humanity is but a brief blip on the radar screen of eternity. But there is something more.

I have been exposed to a different social environment. First in a neighborhood near Colorado College where the broad boulevard that is Cascade has large, old homes mixed in with college students and drug users. Next at the Knolls off Uintah where up-scale apartments housed what looked to be a transient but affluent population, based on the vehicle license plates. And finally in an apartment complex where working poor and lower middle class people try to make it. The observations and conversations could fill volumes, but what I heard in the parking lot a couple of nights ago says a lot, “Not ever in your life…don’t you think you are better than me.” Evidence that living life is about respect; giving it, wanting it and earning it.

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Writing

Cleaning Onions

Trimming Onions
Cleaning Onions

LAKE MACBRIDE— Napping when the email arrived, an hour later I woke, read it and made it over to the farm at a quarter to noon to clean onions. It was solitary work removing the tops and roots, and sorting them into crates. It took five hours. While I worked, one person was at a meeting in town, two sorted and cleaned potatoes, and another sorted spaghetti squash. Silent, but communal work in support of our local food system. Around 1 p.m. everyone else had finished and was gone, leaving me with my thoughts and work.

One of the ironies of this year has been that while working a lot of hours in local food production, my time in the kitchen has been limited. I prepared a number of seasonal dishes, but there was little experimentation or cooking for pleasure. Most of the kitchen time was spent preserving food, rather than preparing meals, converting that part of our home to a temporary mini-factory.

Rendering fresh produce into a shelf-stable product is a vital part of summer abundance. This year there are some new items: dill pickles, sweet pepper sauce, and grape and raspberry jam. As fresh cooking turns to pantry cooking, the household is ready.

In the declining light of the barn, something enveloped me. It was as if the world had been shut out as my pile of onions leaves mounted. I returned briefly to youth, and the holiday time. When there were trips to the drug store to see what seasonal offerings were made. There were trips to used book stores, to secure a supply of winter reading material, even though there was plenty to read already in the house. An trip to the liquor store to buy some wine made of German Riesling grapes, or distilled French spirits: Armagnac, cognac and Calvados. The luxuries of plain living all.

When the onion cleaning was done, the sun was setting and I headed home along the gravel back roads littered with fall foliage and deer crossings. For dinner I cooked veggie burgers and served them on buns bought from the day old rack at $1.40 for eight. Condiments were ketchup and a slice of onion, sides of coleslaw and baked beans. Comfort food for a hearty meal.

What did my onion day dreams mean? It’s hard to say, but the actuality of that feeling took me back to a time of less worry, and living in each moment. A time when our potential seemed unlimited as we left home to see what the world had to offer. In some ways, that journey was never completed. Who knew it would end up in a quiet barn cleaning onions?

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Writing

Flesh Wouldn’t Yield

LAKE MACBRIDE— Friday morning the frost was thick. While walking the kitchen compost jar to the bin, the blades of grass crunched under my plastic shoes, leaving green footprints in the frosty lawn. After emptying the jar, I stopped by the vegetable plots, and as expected the tomatoes and peppers were bitten. Chard, collards, turnips and arugula looked like they might recover this time, but another milestone in a season of gardening has been passed.

Work called me to a farm where I was hired to help clear the field. The biggest part of the work so far has been deconstructing the tomato cages. Tomatoes are an important part of a CSA, so producing enough good looking ones is important. Some put in a lot of plants, hoping to glean the best for customers and offer bulk crates of seconds for those who may want them. Others cast the die in an amount that seems right based on prior experience. Tomatoes were a mixed bag around the county this year, and those who had a surplus of good ones sold them to others who didn’t. There were plenty of seconds for processing and my pantry .contains plenty of canned tomatoes.

When I arrived at the work site, we walked through the pepper patch. When I tried to take a bite from a perfect looking green bell pepper, the flesh wouldn’t yield. Frozen solid and ready to be plowed under. I thought, if the rest of the good peppers were harvested and placed in the freezer now, they could be preserved for later use. However, there was other work to do and once the day thawed, it would be too late. The exigencies of work life intervened with my frugal impulse.

The rest of the day we dug potatoes, harvested Brussels sprouts and polished green peppers picked before the frost. We also continued the tomato cage work, although a few hours remain to be finished. The focus was on getting the fall share out Monday, and there is an abundance of produce to be processed for delivery.

As winter arrives, and food thoughts turn to the pantry, I stopped at the orchard and bought a bushel of WineCrisp™ apples for their storage capabilities. When they are ripe, I’ll buy a bushel of GoldRush for the same reason. While it is kind of apple-geeky, you should know about the propagation work being done at Rutgers, Purdue and the University of Illinois in developing these apples without genetic engineering. Fit reading as we move indoors and settle in for a winter not far away.

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Writing

Last Days Before the Hard Frost

Moon Set
Moon Set

LAKE MACBRIDE— For two nights, I’ve covered the Swiss chard, arugula, parsley, collards, peppers and turnips with old bed sheets to protect them from a hard frost. The temperature hasn’t dipped down, so no damage. Not that we’ll eat a lot of this produce, but one more meal made with arugula, another soup stock of turnip greens, and one more dish made with flat leaf parsley would stretch the food budget and taste good as we go into winter. Snow is forecast for Tuesday, but I doubt it.

The work at the orchard will end soon. An abundance of apples remain, but most trees have been picked clean. The customer count reduces each weekend, and with it, so slowed my work until it was done yesterday. Except to drive tour groups on the John Deere tractor next Sunday morning, and to join my cohorts in the end of season staff potluck soon thereafter.

Work in our local food system has been a new connection to nature and agriculture. As if the world outside our compact geography slipped away and I’d gone native. It’s something I should have done long ago.

A trip to the county seat seems a long excursion. While a number of gatherings of friends there have been unattended, there are no regrets in staying local. There are new friends to be made in the environs of our life in Big Grove.

As the moon sets, and the day begins, much work lies ahead. The frost will come, and soon. In the meanwhile, the challenge is to make the most of each day’s diminishing sunlight— splitting time between intellectual work and the reality of temperate climate and the geography of local friends.

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Writing

New Blog Feature – Restaurant Crawl

Restaurant CrawlLAKE MACBRIDE— During the next few months I’ll be making a restaurant crawl to every eatery in our area. The results of this activity will be written about and linked on the circled page above. Click on the image to find the beginning list of restaurants with links.

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Writing

Domain Renewed for 2014

Harvesting Fallen Apples
Harvesting Fallen Apples

LAKE MACBRIDE— During the more than four years since retirement, writing 300 to 750 word posts each morning has become a way of life— something to start the day, clearing the path for engagement and productivity. As the seasonal farm work ends in October, I hope to regroup and refocus here, but what the hell: it is hard to predict what will happen.

I do know this. The website pauldeaton.com will continue for another year, as I renewed my agreement with WordPress. It has been worth the $18 per year for the domain name registration and mapping. Now comes the task of writing something worth reading. I hope readers will hang in as the process works.

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Writing

Salt Fork Kitchen Debut

Salt Fork KitchenSOLON— Readers have asked for a review of Salt Fork Kitchen. While I did attend the grand opening on Sunday, I’m not ready to give the new restaurant a full review after only one visit.

Salt Fork Kitchen will struggle with the fact that it occupies space where restaurants have continuously failed since our family moved to the area 20 years ago. When one walks in the door, the experience is dejá vu, and all the work done by the new proprietors competes with memories of meals and experiences past. The bar is in the same place, the tables appear the same as the last go-around, and while the framed images on the wall are different, the look is as it has been. Strike one.

Huevos Borrachos
Huevos Borrachos

There is often a thick looking man leaning on the railing outside the main entrance smoking a cigarette. He was there Monday, day two of the restaurant, and one presumes he is affiliated with the business. There is a reason Iowa went smoke-free, and his presence and the aroma of burning tobacco in the air is not inviting. Strike two.

On the positive side, the wait staff was friendly and helpful, and my breakfast of huevos borrachos, or drunken eggs, was different and tasty. The coffee was good.

The bill was reasonable. I was the cashier’s first customer, and she handled the transaction cheerfully. Percentage-wise, I left a big tip, with hopes that next time first impressions can be set aside to take stock of what has the potential to be a great local eatery.

Salt Fork Kitchen didn’t win me over the first time, but this is a small community, and a person has to eat breakfast or lunch in town from time to time. I’ll be back, with a more balanced view of Salt Fork Kitchen.

UPDATE: 10/22/13 The Solon Economist wrote an article about the opening of Salt Fork Kitchen. Find it here.