Watching Lightning

I was at the coast this weekend. To say the weather was unsettled would be serious understatement.  Each ten-minute period seemed to bring a different weather mood. The alternating brilliant sunshine, overcast, wind and rain were punctuated with thunderstorms. We were walking on an open road high on the hill when a storm a couple of miles off sent a sky-filling blast of lighting. It was unnerving.
However, once we reached the cute small house where we were staying, it was fun to watch the storms. Large windows gave an expansive view of the ocean. From this snug lookout, we could see thunderstorms arrayed at intervals across the horizon, slowly marching toward the land. Lighting filled the sky and thunder rolled. We could see shafts of heavy rain descending from each cloud.  At intervals one would arrive at our section of coast, drenching our windows with rain and hail, all the while booming and flashing, before drifting off over the land a few minutes later. It is a very different thing to watch storms from a secure shelter rather than exposed outdoors.
I grew up in the Midwest and Southeast where thunder and lightening are common, and I relish the infrequent thunderstorms here in the Northwest. This extravaganza of storms was a rare treat for me. That night I awoke to more lightening and thunder. I counted seconds to see how far away the storm was. Lying snug with a warm comforter tucked under my chin, I was full of a sense of the majesty of nature and the joy of a kid who likes to watch storms.

Being in Touch

“Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh," he whispered.  "Yes, Piglet?"  "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw, "I just wanted to be sure of you."”

How comforting it is to reach out a hand and find your friend or loved one right there beside you. I have been thinking about the extensions of that touch. As a loved one departs on a journey, we say, "Stay in touch."

People used to write letters by hand. A letter contained not only the thoughts of the distant friend, but also a tangible sense that they had actually touched the paper and inscribed the words, perhaps even dotted the paper with tears or imprinted a kiss. A letter one could hold against the heart, even a typed one.

The telephone brought us the sound of our friend's voice. How precious that was, with little sense that it was brought to us by jiggling electrons over untold miles. The old telephone ads said, "Reach out and touch someone." Or record a message on their answering machine.  Now our cell phones extend that touch to almost anywhere. "Hello Dear, I am on the bus and thinking of you." I have even called home from a meadow high on the side of Mt. Rainier, were there happened to be cell-phone reception.

Email has almost been the death of letter-writing. It is convenient, quick and does not impose on the recipient's time in the same was a ringing phone. With Instant Messaging you can get some of the immediacy and intimacy of a conversation. And what about Facebook?  Reach out to a lot of your friends at once and enjoy the comments with which they respond. It is quite addictive. My computer-programmer son spends most of the day connected by Instant Messaging to colleagues and friends all over the world - he calls them friends even when he has never met them. Now if we choose, we can be in contact with our friends virtually all the time.

I will be "out of touch" this weekend. I am going to a house perched on a cliffside far above the beach. There will be sweeping vistas of a major storm that is coming in. There will be no cell phone and no computer, just some good friends, good food, and good books.

Invincible Boots

Hooray for boots! Bring on puddles, snow and mud!

I have skinny little dainty feet, very far from sturdy furry hobbit feet. As much as I admire beautiful fashion boots, it is the work boots that make me happy. My trusty hiking boots are steady and safe whatever the terrain. My wellies never met a slop or slush they didn't disdain.

In my years of working as a water-resources geologist, I wore hiking boots, wellies, hip boots and even waders. One of my colleagues played a trick on me by handing me a pair of waders with a hole in the foot. When I jumped into the stream, my foot was promptly swamped in a stream of cold water. He is the same guy who tried to scare me with a dead snake. Boys will be boys.

There was a poster in the Columbia Sportswear store a few years ago, showing a young woman garbed from top to bottom in waterproof gear and boots. The caption read something like, "In Oregon, this is beauty."

I feel beautiful in my invincible boots.

Butter

OK, I have been putting off writing about butter because it seems rather self-indulgent. But butter is another of those foods that makes me happy. Just think of the lovely foods it goes into - from cookies to a plate of spaghetti with browned butter and mizithra cheese, not to mention toast.

My mother remembered when margerine was sold as an unappetizing white, crisco-like blob along with a package of dye to make it yellow. For decades we were indoctrinated to believe that hydrogenated corn oil was much more healthy than butter. My arteries and I resent that deceit.

I have made butter. It isn't difficult. Just beat some cream past the whipped-cream stage and suddenly it separates into curd-like blebs of butter and thin buttermilk. Strain out the butter and knead it together - voila! It appears you can make butter from any kind of milk - it would be interesting to try sheep or goat butter, or perhaps even yak butter. More flavorful and aromatic butter is made from slightly fermented cream, and is called cultured butter. The natural color and flavor also depends on the diet of the cow (or other creature).

Have you ever wondered why Mediterranean cuisine doesn't use butter much or why only clarified butter is used in India? It is because unclarified butter spoils quite quickly without refrigeration. Ghee doesn't. In more northern climates, the cooler temperatures allow butter to be kept longer. In fact, in medieval Ireland, firkins of butter were buried in peat bogs and kept for years. The flavor must have been interesting. Archaeologists still find these barrels in bog excavations - they contain greyish cheesy stuff, no longer edible.

Where would we be without the exquisite sauces of France and the shortbread of Scotland and lemon-curd and thousands of other delectable butter-requiring foods?  Our celebratory tables would be sadly lacking.

An Organized Kitchen

Tim has a talent for organizing the kitchen. I said I wouldn't write about him, but here he is again. His organizing principles are: you should be able to see things and they should be within reach when you need them. This is a skill I don't seem to have.

In our kitchen, commonly used items are hanging from hooks, standing in crocks, or on glassed or open shelves. The rarely used items do go in drawers, and unfortunately there isn't room for a pan-hanging rack, so those are in a cupboard. Spoons, potholders, seasonings are right where they are needed. Knives are on a magnet bar, in plain sight. We haven't gone as far as Paul Child, who installed pegboard with the outline of all the kitchen tools.

It may look untidy compared to the bare and beautiful countertops in magazines, but our home kitchen is a joy to work in.

Fossil Seashells

I visited the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago with my father back in 1969. We especially enjoyed the paleontology dioramas - I being a newly-declared geology major. As we strolled past millions of years of history from about 500 to 400 million years ago (no land animals appearing for a long time yet) the animals that most struck our fancy were the Nautiloids. My dad described them as "ice-cream cone creatures". They were the top predator of the day and reached lengths of 13 feet or more.

These phenomenally successful creatures are represented today by the Nautilus, which as we know is tightly coiled, (as well as more distantly related squid and octopus.) Starting some 400 million years ago, relatives of the nautiloids appeared called ammonoids - these were also coiled.
Both the straight and the coiled animals start out very small. As they grow, they construct a larger shell section, walling off and abandoning the old one (except for a very nifty little tube that allowed them to adjust their buoyancy by adding or removing gas from the empty chambers.) Oliver Wendell Holmes described this in The Chambered Nautilus: 
Year after year beheld the silent toil
That spread his lustrous coil:
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year's dwelling for the new,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

As the ammonoids evolved, they began to make more and more complicated boundaries between the old and new chambers - we call these sutures. The complexity of the sutures is used by paleontologists to determine the age of the fossil. The photos below show simple and extremely intricate suture patterns. For those of you inclined toward math, the complex ones are fractal.

We as humans are short-lived creatures and tend to ignore the vastness and wonder of earth's history-book. These beautiful fossils open my mind to unimaginably ancient chapters.

Thirtieth Blog Post

Today I am celebrating making it to thirty blog posts. When I started, I wondered if I could write every day. There have been days when ideas don't come, but so often there is an inspiring thought and off I go. I didn't expect the exercise to be so rewarding. I didn't expect the blogging itself to be a blessing.

I am very good at worrying in the middle of the night. Especially at about three in the morning, if I awaken, there is always something to worry about. It doesn't matter how trivial or unlikely the issue appears by the light of day, it will produce plenty of grist for the worry mill. Since I began this blog, I have only to focus on what small blessing to write about next. This short-circuits the worry machine, and sends me back to sleep.

The process of writing, in itself, is like a meditation. By the time I hit the "Publish Post" button, I feel centered and refreshed. The posts are not of equal quality, but, as Julia Child wrote: ""No matter what happens in the kitchen, never apologize."

Blessings to all of you who read this and have encouraged me.