A Couple of Weeks Off

I'm taking a week or two off from blogging. I'm getting a bit burned out between this and work lately. I post daily and see pictures of a piece of ham get 30 comments and an essay that's like opening a vein get four. I understand why, but still I wonder some nights it's worth the time away from other things that during this time of year I really need to do.

Life has piled it on lately,and I've grown disillusioned about human nature in general. When this happens, I need to just hole up and be by myself with my thoughts for a while and then I'll be fine. Some open sky, a knife, a gun, some beans and cornbread. No ropes, ties or broken fences. I hope you will all be here when I come back, but I understand that sometimes when one is away, the cattle wander off.

I'll be back soon.

Air and Water. Water and Air.

Air and water. Water and Air. The two elements of this world that I love the most. Part of my childhood was spent on the waters of a lake in Montana where we stayed at a little cabin some summers, years before Californians discovered it and developers took over the place, building vast condos that blocked out the sun.

My brothers and I would get up while it was still dark, and march down to the waters edge, hoping to get there to see the dawn explode over the water. During the day we'd float upon it in inner tubes, flotillas of youth, between fishing and swimming. I could spend hours there, just watching the way the water shaped itself around the rocks and me, the gentle waves moving against the shore, like breathing. In the bright cold water, there would be bass and crappie and all wonders of strange life.

We'd wade along the edges, gingerly looking, while not harming anything that was there, hoping to find a prehistoric shell to take home, knowing that at some time, this whole land had been ocean. We occasionally found bits and pieces of things, but nothing ever matched the one perfect shell we got on that trip to the Oregon coast to meet out cousins one summer. Many of you have seen a sand dollar. They're commonly sold in souvenir stores. But what you see is only the remaining skeleton of a living sea creature. When living, the sand dollar is covered with fine hair like cilia that cover tiny spines, soft, and almost purple in color. But the remaining shell is beautiful, fragile, white. The essential essence of what this creature was.

Until I was about 10 I wanted to be a Biologist, preferably a marine biologist (that or a spy, biologists didn't get to have cool guns and shoe phones). Then one morning, when I was in my early teens, as I ran and launched myself off of a dock, airborne for only a moment before splashing into the ice cold water, I heard a sound. It was a small plane flying up over the high altitude lake, causing me to look up in wonder, not ever having seen one in this remote area. Wondering who the pilot was and what that must be like. My world in that moment, was more than one with the water, but was the world of air and sky, and though I felt as if I was living in a alien world in either, among creatures that were so different from me, somehow I knew I would belong there.

After that, on summer nights when we'd build a fire and sit and listen to the lapping of the waves, dreams of my airborne future filled my head. The sound of the water, growing and swelling in rhythm to my heart beat, an accompaniment to the laughing and roasted marshmallows, the joys of a night on the water, under open stars. My heart had shifted, I would likely major in the sciences I loved, yet the affirmation and promise of the rushing waters that carried those aerial dreams needed to be a part of me.

It wasn't too many years before I was taking lessons after school and soon was practicing "turns about a point", ground reference maneuvers, low over collections of small lakes. It was a perfect time, for those hours I was free. I've always been that way, devoted to family, but chafing at a leash, electronic or otherwise that follows me when I am earthbound, making me long for the sky.

Tonight I needed to get back up there watching the clouds go past, thinking back to my first flight over 20 years ago, to the first person I ever kissed, to the smell of Lycoming exhaust mixed with the scent of fresh cornfield, to the distant memory of what it feels to be free. Patiently sitting, watching, remembering everything past, hoping for everything good of the future, in a bone deep calm that only a pilot or people who make long road trips probably understand, until it's finally time to descend. To descend through layer on layer of cloud, thinking back, layer and layer of memory. Memories in an airplane, the first, the last, in the heart of the nation or over still mountain lakes, winter to summer, hours to minutes. From that first flight to this one, the distance seems endless.

Water and Air. Air and Water. I make that final descent for the airport, the heat of legions of cornstalk pressing in around me, the sun so bright I glint into the glare, trying to catch a glimpse to the runway, rousing myself from the almost stupor that descends from an hour aloft. It's like being a child, being coaxed from the back of a car after a long drive to make a quick stop at a gas station when all you want to do is crawl back in the cool seat, book in lap, moving 70 miles an hour towards the place you most want to be. In my mind I was already on the way there, passing all the small towns in which I would never live and people I'd never get a chance to talk to, rushing headlong towards the place where the rest of my life was awaiting me. Somewhere just up ahead in the blue.

The blue of the sky glances off the blue of the reservoir, I soar past small islands of clouds as the sky and the water and the whole universe appear as an infinite expanse of deep blue calm. The being and cadence of rushing water is part of who I am, as is the rush of wind past the cockpit, directing the currents of my future, setting the pace of my desire, powering the shape of my dreams. The undercurrents of air and sky over time has shaped who I am, eroding away all that is non essential, til all that is left is pure white thought, a pristine light shell that is my soul.

Air and Water. Water and Air. I descend into the deepening blue, dreading the anchor of earth again.

Retro - what?

Bobbi has got a new blog!!


Go visit and be amazed.

And for those of you who will ask?

Based on the inductor and the worn manufacturer's label, I believe it's an adjustable toroidal transformer coil, a Variac from the General Radio Company of Cambridge, though I don't know if they call themselves that any more.

I think the" Good Doktor" used one in her little experiments in the barn. Using it to tune her creation from 'peaceful' to 'homicidal maniac'. Either that or it powered the ice cream churn. One or the other.

THE WOLF IS IN MY SOUL

Meet Miss A - Malamute Mix and a Member of the HOTR extended family

The wolf is in my soul

Strong life force

intuitive and loyal

Take me not from my

wild nature

For the wild nature

carries what I need

dreams, words, songs,

All I need to be

all I need to know

Seeing through the eyes

of woman's intuition,

like the starry night

I gaze into the night

through a thousand eyes

In my pack I find integrity

In my tribe I find peace

I speak and act

on my own behalf

open but never tame

My heart is of the wolf

bearing battle scars of time

Writing my secrets on walls

refusing to be ashamed

of my free spirit

You can find me wild,

in open air and woods

In forests of solitude

whispering words

from instinctual need

Does my pack heed

my words as I stop

to see if you catch up.

For I have many things

to show you

Join me and run

through those last hard miles

Howl at that weathered door

stand sentry at the window

of your dreams

Unleash your wild heart

...........Brigid

Fighting for Glory and Occassionally Green Plastic.

Checking out at the grocery store today, I noticed a lot of things hanging near the register to invite a last minute purchase. Chocolate, gum, breath mints for dogs (What the. . .?) But there were none of those packs of toys that would hang off the pegs at Mom and Pop groceries stores when I was a kid. Sure, stores now have a whole AISLE devoted to toys, but when I was little you were pretty much limited to the gumball machine, the lame "bucking" horse you could ride for some change or those those small finds of toys hanging there to lure you.

Green plastic army men were a perennial favorite. My older brothers had to order them from the back of comic books when they first came out. Originally introduced in the 1950's by Marx, they would order them from brightly colored ads in the back of the comic books. When I started collecting mine from the rack at the grocers they had hardly changed in design. I bet any one of us, whether we are 60 or 50 or 38 and holding could remember "crawling guy", "throwing the grenade guy"," minesweeper guy", and "bazooka guy", all in the classic cardinal green army style.

I enjoyed getting mine at the store but I envied my older brothers who got theirs, hundreds of plastic soldiers delivered in a real footlocker (genuine U.S. made cardboard). Our dad's generation had to be content with conducting warfare with hobby shop metal soldiers which were purchased in limited numbers due to the price. We, the product of the consumer friendly late 60's and 70's, could buy whole legions of little men to command. There were so many you didn't have to worry about losing one or two to the dog (he's got me Frank! Arghhhhh) or leaving one behind enemy lines when Mom called supper. You always had more. You knew that although there would be a skirmish that involved firecrackers and some Private inevitably losing his head, you had backups. Reliable, dependable.

Unlike most toys now, they were simple. Two to three inches tall, no moving parts, nothing painted or stuck on,but they didn't do real well in heat (Sargent Miller meets Colonel Soldering Gun didn't do so well). But they did hold up well, pretty bullet proof other than that.

Girl toys were OK, but for the cost of some silly Barbie dress I could get a bag of hundreds of soldiers to deploy after school got out for the day. And play we would.

Now it seems you have to push the kids out the door to get them to play outside. Not us, with a coat, some soldiers, and a couple of dogs, we watched carefully for that first break in the snow. We knew the signs that told us spring was almost here, that first slice of spring sun bursting from the sky, opening cold fissures in the landscape. Snow had been fun, but we were tired of the many days of snow, stampeding flurries of twenty below that swirled around the family home with all the spontaneous elegance of a brawl, keeping even the hardiest kid indoors. We couldn't wait to get out in the sun, with the landscape to ourselves. Out where entire wars were fought and domains were challenged, melting snowballs flying from the last remnants of snowy forts, ancient strategies drawn out with mittens on a battle plain of white and green as we gathered our troops around us.

Summers were anticipated glory. We'd be out after breakfast and play all day, with kids gathered up from around the area, a posse of potential. We'd drink from the hose if we got thirsty and ripped more than one pair of knees out of a pair of jeans, which our mothers would patch, not replace. We exposed our bellies to the sun, offered up skinned elbows to the skies, gaining confidence in our movements, in ourselves, breathing deeply, nourishing ourselves on the scent of grass as we laid out battle plans worthy of Clausewitz.

photographer unknown (google.com)

Our imaginations were not provoked by PlayStations or GameBoys. Our play burst out of something within our own minds, shouting forth as we charged the next hill, darting past "throwing grenade guy" with "bazooka guy" to take another hill. To us, with the agile minds of children, it was all real. We scurried between small valleys and miniature cliffs. An empty Styrofoam cup with the end cut out with our pocketknife became a tunnel, a scoop of dirt became a foxhole. Overhead all we could see was the drowsy bowl of the summer sky, filled with possibility and tinged with smoke from battlefield fires that only we could see. The sound of the barrage was both remote and near, our childlike voices providing the sound effects, a vibration in the earth sensed with our minds, rather than felt, as our battalions moved onward, taking more ground.

We advanced until we reached the neighbor's yard, a pristine landscape where the war had not reached, where there would be no quarter given, where soldiers were not to pass and disobedience would be death. Step foot across that boundary and tear up Mrs. Copenhagen's prize flowers, and there would be no mercy. We stopped, gave our wounded some water from the hose and retreated back towards the house.

But like most of my generation of the West, we loved to be outdoors. We learned to fish and later to hunt, a continuation of the early childhood games we played, except this time the strategy did not involve small soldiers, but involved steelheads, and the only make believe "counting coup" we did was the "one that got away" stories.

It had been a good battle. We lost some soldiers, yes, but the summer day flowed endlessly. We were immortal, the clouds rushing by faster than our troops could advance. Glorious days. Only the sound of the dinner bell would bring us in, dirty and hungry and aching to be outside again.

Do children even play outside like that any more? I have only two friends with small children. One is like his Dad, smart as can be and energetically explorative. Only a heavy rain will lure him in to play a game. The other, is seemingly addicted to video games, a book a foreign object, and rarely off the couch. Both good boys, but I know of the two, which will succeed most in life.

There's a playground which I pass on my way home, small, built at the edge of one of the subdivisions on the south edge of town. I rarely see children in it. Perhaps the kids have all grown up and moved. Perhaps they're indoors. Kids want to play electronic games, videos, TV, all of which capture their attention within the confines of a home. I look at photos of myself as a child and they were most often taken outdoors, we kids lean, muscled. I watch the kids as they leave the bus now that drives them a whole two blocks from school and many are already battling obesity. Young colts hobbled by an electronic rope, too many growing jaded before their time,.

Certainly, as children, we had our indoor activity. There were times when the cold and the rain kept even the range cattle looking for cover and for those days there were trains and books; fun learning about tools with Dad in his wood shop. Dad would set up Lionel trains in the garage and the joy of small plastic action figures would continue, Cowboys and Indians attacking the train, sometimes with some Army soldiers serving in the ranks.

The outdoors made us strong, made us self sufficient and capable. It made us search for something up ahead on that horizon, something we would not find in our room on a computer or on a PlayStation.

Back home recently and digging in Dad's yard to tend tend his vegetable garden for him, I unearthed a tiny plastic soldier, and that tiny battered warrior, recreated a flood of memory of childhood days when my younger brother and I played for world dominion out in the back yard. The touch of its small battered form brought back the scent of the earth in our back yard, the shade of the apple tree that sheltered us, the warmth of the sun.

Was this little figurine simply a forgotten toy or was he buried in some forgotten childhood military honor? Like anything long lost, he spoke to me of why we remember things and why they are important. I wrapped his green plastic form carefully in a tissue and brought him home, bringing him back past the eyes of TSA, one last covert mission to bring him home, where yes, games are still played.Today, after strong storms, the sun is out, peeking from behind the sky. I've been on this computer long enough chatting with my family, all career military or law enforcement. Some retired with honors, the two youngest still serving. I gather my rain coat and my ball cap, Barkley rushing to join me as we head out into the fields around us. I have no troops with me, simply a black lab and he'll chase me, barking in a game of "take the next hill". The trees watch down on us, like sentient commanders, as the wind blows gently, chilling the skin, sparking my soul. That soul of a solitary soldier, true.

Make Hay, I mean PIZZA, While the Sun Shines.

My oven is finally fixed. It was a decent day off. I mowed off the back land, got the oven repaired, went over a PowerPoint on blunt force trauma injuries for a colleague (yeah I know, I never truly take a day off) and hit the grocery store. Expect popovers this weekend.

However right now it is almost 90 and the humidity is much greater than these parts normally sees. So I will save the inauguration of the stove until morning and will cook my dinner on my little barbecue. No need for the big gas grill, this is all I need.

But I wanted pizza. Pizza on the barbecue? Yes. It's easier than you think. The method I used mimicked the heat of an oven. It's preferable to cook it on a small thin pan to evenly distribute the heat. I used a little disposable one left over from the holidays. There are recipes for grilling the dough, flipping to grill it the other side and adding topping then, but my goal was simply to cook it with a minimum of fuss and oven like results. But without heating up my house so sleeping would be cool and enjoyable later.

Start by rolling out your dough about 1/4 inch thick and try to keep it pretty even. This was dough made from scratch in the bread machine. (recipes for pizza are in sidebar). You don't need to go find the calipers for this one, but it shouldn't be too thick. You also don't want the toppings too thick so they cook through and evenly. I went for Canadian Bacon, finely diced pineapple (not the big chunks most pizza parlors use), a little sharp cheddar, mozzarella and some dried herbs.

I have a charcoal Style BBQ that's about 28 inches x 28 inches. This will take a fair number of briquettes, I probably used about 60-70. After they are lit and covered with ash (about 10-20 minutes) you need to arrange them around the edges of where the pizza will be, so they surround the cooking area, but don't actually rest in a pile directly under it.Place the grill part of the barbecue back in place and close the lid, making sure the little vents are open to ensure the most efficient heating. Your goal is a barbecue temperature of about 425 - 450 degrees before putting the pizza on the grill. This mimics the effect of an oven and the edges of the crust will rise up, staying crisp on the outside and chewy in the middle while the center of the dough, rolled thin, stays tender to the bite. (If you want the thin, crisp style of pizza, forget the little pan and cook directly on a rack but that's a whole different set of instructions).

Use a little cooking thermometer on the center of the grill if you have one. When it's good and hot, place the pizza on the small pan in the center of the barbecue and CLOSE THE LID. For mine, it cooked for about 16 minutes. Do NOT peek until you are at about 13 minutes. Remove, let cool a few minutes than serve out on the deck with a frosty beer while you look out at all you did todaySummer's kind of nice now, isn't it?

click to enlarge picture

Outdoors 9-11

This last week I had a chance to get a long walk out in the woods out past where the corn stops growing. I took a light coat in case of rain, as it's been unusually cold and wet, and of course, a trusty .45 in a Blackhawk holster. This is my "outdoors hiking, moving, fall and winter holster". It's not as sleek as many other holsters I own, but in the clothing I wear outdoors it works, and works very well for what I need it for. This particular holster is unique in that there's a locking mechanism that keeps the gun in place during other than just strolling movement, as well as acts in preventing someone else from grabbing it. Yet with a little practice, it is as easy as pie for you to draw.

Cabela's says "Thumb breaks can slow your draw and get in the way when you re-holster. But you won't experience those drawbacks with Blackhawk's patented SERPA Technology™. It engages the trigger guard as you holster your firearm and secures it until you release using the normal drawing motion with your trigger finger alongside the holster. No snaps or straps to get in the way. The textured Carbon Fiber model can be worn on a belt or used as a paddle holster."

I've had mine four years and it works without a hitch and has held up very well. The one thing I noted when I first put this on was how SECURE it was. I could pole dance with this thing and it wouldn't budge.

It's home to a .220 and draws with the finger indexed where it is supposed to be, off the trigger. Unlocks easily, re-holsters easily and locks with no insertion force. This is a holster that's NOT going to make it easy for someone to take this gun away from me.

The drawbacks? The paddle attachment that comes with it really grips my jeans when I'm carrying. That's wonderful from a retention aspect, but at the end of the long day, sometimes it's a bear to get off. The belt slot attachment works better with belts up to one and 3/4 inches (when you remove the two spacers). I would recommend practice with it as well, quick firing capability is there, but it's something you should practice with, as it might be different than what you are used to.

But it is my favorite holster for being outdoors with a vest or jacket on to conceal the bulk that's more than some holsters. I've spent a lot of time in the back country. All of it alone. I've camped, but not in a "National Park", because frankly, until recently, as a lone female, I wasn't going in one unarmed. If you're in the outdoors and you have an encounter with a criminal or an aggressive animal, there is no 9-11 box where you can call the police. And just like in the suburbs, 9-11 isn't going to do you a lot of good if you're staring down the face of a knife in the hands of some thug and the police are not going to be there in the next 10 minutes.

There were four bear attacks in parks last year that I know of. Small risk when you consider the millions of visitors. But think again. Bears aren't the biggest danger. The last year I could find statistics on violent crime in the parks from was 2006. For some reason, they haven't posted them where they are easy to find since then. In 2006, there were 116,588 reported offenses, including 11 killings, 35 rapes or attempted rapes, 61 robberies, 16 kidnappings and 261 aggravated assaults.

Crime and violence are working their way into our rural areas and our parks. The days of mellow nights under the stars with perhaps your only fear, that of cowtippers or Yogi the Bear stealing your picnic basket, are over. Urban problems are creeping ever outward, with alcohol or drugs being part of most violent incidents. Hideaway methamphetamine labs and marijuana fields in rural areas and forests are one reason, society degrading as unemployment skyrockets is another.

When the "guns in national parts" debate was ongoing the detractors said that guns would "ruin the outdoor experience". I don't know about you, but some whacko defending his meth lab intent on raping and killing me would certainly ruin MY park experience.

I don't fear the local four legged predators, the most common around here being coyotes. I fear the two legged animals. So I carry when I'm outdoors. Like the coyotes who share my land, I am alone even when I'm in my pack, dispossessed except for those times I am in the outdoors, for it is only the outdoors that feeds and nourishes me. I haunt the shadows of the wilderness that my own race continues to destroy. Yet, like the small field rabbits that are the coyote's prey, I just want to go about my way, unmolested, free to travel in sunlight or darkness without fear.
Some say we are safer out here in the country, in these small towns of America. Despite the country setting, and red white and blue speckled mailboxes, there is no truly safe place anymore, especially for a woman. Though there are certainly more crimes where more people live or where the the law-abiding are disarmed, the heart of evil roams equally at will through asphalt and country roads. Predators are among us, watching from a line at the corner market, waiting in the darkness of a rural parking lot or that untraveled, unbeaten path. Waiting for that sign, that manner, that tells them that you are un-toothed and un-fanged, a soft and vulnerable target.

Our primordial past is closer than we realize. Watching us. So I carry something large, and black as night, in a holster that holds up to it's job. Because not every creature in the woods is some furry gentle creature seeking sustenance at my door in the night.

SOCIALISM - As Explained to Barkley

I worked hard all year, barking at strangers, fetching game birds and keeping Mom company. So I earned a toy!!! I'm proud of my toy.
MY TOY! Hard work and loyalty DO pay off!

But Barkley, there is a dog down the road that lays on his ass and whines all day and does nothing. HE doesn't have a toy. So the man will come and give him YOUR toy.GRRRR! (Yes, Barkley I feel the same way about it.)

Setting Sail on the Sky

It's been an incredibly hectic couple of months and after a particularly busy week, my best friend noticed my rather somber mood and asked if I was in "The Doldrums". I really wasn't, I was just a little tired but I hadn't heard that expression in years. In colloquial usage, "being in the doldrums refers to being in a state of listlessness, despondency, inactivity, stagnation, or a slump", as characterized in Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

The Doldrums are the strip-zones of low pressure which roam equatorial seas, and they are notorious for their punishing tranquility. Silver water soaking up ethereal skies; painting the ocean with warmth, painting a ships direction. The Doldrums are noted for their calms, those periods when the winds suddenly back away, trapping sailing vessels for days or even weeks. As sailors have long known, though, the Doldrums are also given to unprovoked bursts of violence. Across their lines, storms suddenly sweep, hot wind, hot water forming fierce air masses that rise and falls in thundering downdrafts, winds forming into sinews of air, waterspouts looming in shadow, like the spires of an old hall of Justice. Night was more treacherous. For although the moon still lit the iridescent pathway to Europe, there in the vast, often changing darkness, great dark birds flew in the forms of vast winds that whipped up the ocean. Night predators looking for the small, the weak, ebony wings beating the air, their cry a clap of thunder as they sought their prey.

Though my sailing experience was limited to small rivers and lakes, I can only imagine the seagoing exploration of such an area, into moments like we experience in flight, when on wing you pass beyond the borders of the real world into a realm so quietly elemental that it seems otherworldly.

As I sit here, I think about long journeys over sea and land, of crossing high mountain passes while points of lightning struck in the distance, cleaving the atmosphere, separating water and air, pointing out this life of separateness I lead. A journey of shadow and dew, of dreams of light that sparks more than the night, but something within me. How many have made this journey? These long flights across the equator, flirting with whole seasons in the the span of hours, abandoning the winds of the north, repudiating colds reaching fingers, as my aircraft descends into a summer lovers smile of radiant warmth. I miss those times. The night's quiet freedom, the day's flaws hidden in the ebony of velvet night. The air was a substance whose ethereal beauty so entranced me that on long flights I had continually check my bearings and the time, that I lost track of the time, the fuel, the mountains, and ended up in a more permanent dream state. For when your soul is entranced it is easy to get lost, sometimes with consequences you never foresee.

I remember getting slightly lost on my first solo cross country where I flew right over the airport to which I was expected to land, looking down and seeing a lake that wasn't on my map. Following my instructors teachings, I had the good sense to check my position every 10 - 15 minutes, so by backtracking I was soon back on course, but not before witnessing a flock of geese flying right along side of me, honking almost as if asking me to join them. I would have missed that had I been on course. Sometimes you can find yourself by getting lost, by looking out and down on the world and reinterpreting it as a consequence. Rather than being shaken by my error, I simply laughed in surprising coincidence, as a goose dived from the sky in salutation.

As I descended the view of the sky transfixed me and for a moment I felt intensely aware of everything below and above me. The Greeks wrote of Hyperion, the Titan god of light, one of the sons of Ouranos (Heaven) and Gaia (Earth), and the father of the lights of heaven--Eos the Dawn, Helios the Sun, and Selene the Moon. His wife was Theia, lady of the aither--the shining blue of the sky. Hyperion's name means "watcher from above" or "he who goes above" from the greek words hyper and iôn.

Up there among the clouds, I felt for just that moment, that mythical sense of watching from above, looking down on a world. The realities of the earthbound life took on the substance of dreams , while the wild freedoms of dreams became this reality, this moment, a reality in and of itself. I was a watcher up above, looking at my life as it laid out before me, nothing each detail,

Here now, earthbound looking up at a sky tumbled with movement, I am still the watcher of all around me, though a mere mortal always. So I sit in my chair, in the gathering darkness of storm clouds, waiting for the lights to come in the distance, lights flicking on from neighboring houses and farms, like glittering stars upon a stormy sea. Each faraway light, in the ocean of shadows, was a home, in one, people were dining, or reading, or sharing their day. In another perhaps they were making love or tucking in a precious child. Those small flames will shine out into the night and touch me, as I quietly bed down in my own safe harbor while the skies are storm tossed around me. As I turn the night off to go to sleep I offer a quick thanks to my Creator for the memory of many safe flights home, leaves rustling like water outside, moving ever so slowly as I drift into the night.

Free Range Chicken

www.savagechickens.com

The appliance repair people finally called. It was either going to be
(1) you get a new range under warranty or
(2) we have the part that was shipped via Djibouti.

The part is in, to be installed on my next day off, this Friday. So another work week of non- kitchen cooked meals. I've got pretty good at alternative methods, but tonight I was craving homestyle chicken and noodles after no breakfast and a wimpy salad lunch. How to do it without a stove?

Easy.

Grill some chicken tenders on the barbecue with just a little seasoning salt.
Slice and toss them with some caramelized onion and garlic that you've cooked in a cast iron skillet over the coals in a tiny bit of butter. Remove the chicken and veggies to a covered small bowl and keep the cast iron pan handy. Do not wipe it out and keep it warm.
Get some water simmering as best you can and cook some WIDE fresh noodles in a separate pot. Pick a good quality Italian or Amish style noodle, no wimpy generic noodles for this dish.

Make the sauce in the cast iron pan. Traditional chicken and noodles has a cream sauce but this Home on the Range version has an alfredo style sauce with the addition of an extra kind of cheese and some special seasoning. It's fool proof and can be made in minutes.

You will just need three kinds of cheese, some milk and seasoning.

Lightly steam or grill some fresh broccoli or other veggie while the sauce simmers. Toss it all together and serve with some more fresh grated cheese.

Dinner in a little more than a half hour without a stove.

BATTLES ON THE HOMEFRONT

Unemployment is up at nearly 10%. If you add in the number of people who have jobs but their hours have been cut drastically, the number of people affected is near 20%. The Vice President stated today, after billions of OUR money has been spent, gee "I guess we underestimated the economy". Words that in any time, would make me angry, but now, as three friends of mine, and a family member, educated, talented people, find themselves unemployed, hits home even more.

There will always be those that do not wish to work. Those, sound of limb and health, that would rather stand with their hand out, expecting those that do work to pay their share to them, simply because they occupy space here. I will fight tooth and nail to keep my hard earned dollars from going to the lazy and the greedy, something that's happening much too much recently. But what about those people like my friends, my neighbors, who have worked all their lives , want to work, and work HARD, and there's nothing for them?
In my state, the Elkhart-based Indiana National Guard's 1538th Transportation Company returned from Iraq this past week, to cheers and tears of pride as their family members greeted them as they marched, these 182 citizen-soldiers marked, in formation, into a hangar at Indiana's Stout Field.

I know none of them personally, though myself and my friend Sparrow sent a number of care packages over that way when they were overseas. We are proud of our soldiers, for stepping up. We were happy to see them come home unharmed, for the 1538th sustained no casualties during almost 10 months in Iraq, providing security and ferrying numerous supplies for U.S. military convoys. Perhaps as they said, it's because their unofficial motto is,“Drive it like you stole it.” Perhaps it's because these men and women know how to work safe, and work smart in the worst of environments. Certainly someone I would want to have on my team, or my payroll.

For ten months they put their lives on the line, crossing landscapes distant and impenetrable, with little in the way of daily comforts, things we take for granted at home or at work. There was no comfort from the blazing desert sun other than a small wind that might come from nowhere to thin the smoke and the heat, wind that might carry on its back, enemy fire without warning. In the far distance, gunfire flicked across the hard, unforgiving land, like hail on a metal roof. But the distant sound didn't stop them. They moved and worked, bringing needed things to others who served. Hours across landscapes fought with dangers, clinging stubbornly to hope as they crossed the churned soil, among scraps of burnt out life and remnants of liberty. Fueled by hope, that soon they would be home. Back to their jobs, their families and their lives, things that when they left, were whole and sustainable. Sometimes those thoughts were all that may have gotten them through the days and nights.

But in a area which has been devastated by the economy, they come home to find their jobs were gone, many of them receiving the termination letters not too long after Christmas. The employers had honored their military commitment, their civilian jobs protected by the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act, but that is no help when massive layoffs occur in the the total work force. The local economy was as flat as a penny placed on a train track. The RV industry, a prime employer in the area along with other key manufacturing sectors, had limped to the side of the road, it's tires flattened by soft sales, high gas prices and the reining in of spending by anyone with common sense.
Elkhart-Goshen's unemployment rate was 17.5 percent in May of 2009, , an increase of 11.4 percentage points from the year earlier. That's much larger than the national jobless rate of 9.5 percent in June, which is itself at a 26-year high.
(ref: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31707683/ns/us_ne...)

When interviewed, the soldiers spoke matter of factly, not looking for handouts, simply looking at options, for they are fighters, some having to move back in with parents, some likely having to delay much awaited plans for marriage and children. Not all of them were young, some were in my age group, serving our country later in live, coming back to jobs they'd held for a lifetime already, only to find the doors shuttered, weeds growing up around once profitable local businesses.
The face of the poor and the homeless used to be a stereotype of laziness and poor choices. That has changed. We as a nation have changed. The face of the unemployed is more than the lazy or the uneducated or the young. It's our friends and neighbors. But for timing, a choice or two and luck, it's you and I.

In the past few years I volunteered at a shelter. Not always the most pleasant of tasks, dealing with the homeless, the battered. Many people would meet these people on the street and instantly turn away, a pivoting of one's whole self back towards the sanctity of their safe little world. I can't say they were all pleasant, or thankful, or people I'd want as a friend. Yet, who was I to judge them on first appearance, or their lack of things we all take for granted, a job, food on the table, the ability to get up each day and pay our own way, supporting ourselves and our family.

One night I was there when we had a severe storm and the power went out. It was in early spring when winter had not yet given up its hold and ice pellets rattled the roof. The old building got cold quickly. With the wind still howling, it wasn't safe to drive home yet, so we sat together in the kitchen area, with blankets, trying to keep warm til the power came back on. I was sitting near one of the homeless women who was staying there after living in her car after losing her job and running out of benefits. She had just found some work at minimum wage, but still did not have enough to rent an apartment. Coming here was a last resort during the cold remnants of a Midwest winter. She sat off by herself with a warm fleece blanket, locked into her own healing place. I sat on a chair, shivering, as there were not enough blankets for all of us.

After a time, the woman came over, soundlessly, and put her blanket around me, wrapping it around our legs as she sat next to me, to help keep me warm. Her clothes were worn but meticulously clean, her too thin arms still showing the muscle definition of someone who worked strong, her fingernails clean and short. On the surface, someone that some people might dismiss, but when I looked in her eyes I could see it, someone who has battled life and survived with determination and pride.
If I had met this person on the street, poorly dressed, needing a decent haircut, I too might have have passed without caring, taking little notice. Yet on that night she shared one of the few things she called her own, with me, a stranger. I don't know what happened to her, but with these words I have to say to her. Thank you. I can't make up for the way people may look at you or treat you or save you from what has happened to you in your life. I can only blanket you with these few words to cover you with reassurance. Reassurance, that you are strong, you are a fighter, one worthy of the rest of us taking a deeper look at you and and what you can offer.

To the soldiers of the 1538th I can only offer you these same words. Words that your honor will be rewarded. I can offer you a prayer that you will soon be able to apply those resources that helped you come home to our state whole and healthy, as you find work for someone else. We as your neighbors are behind you, we as your State are proud of you. Simply telling you "sorry, we underestimated the economy" is NOT a welcome home sign worthy of your service.

HAVE A FLINGING FOURTH

The neighbor's teenagers playing their music too loud as they come up the country road? The same youngsters gathered around, smoking cigarettes upwind of your property just because Mom and Dad aren't home?

Forget that sissy method of telling them keep it down, which will instantly label you "old geezer". Just get yourself a trebuchet.

After all, nothing says "pipe down" quite like a rotten sheep carcass on fire arcing over the back fence onto their stereo.

We've got combines and tractors, corn and trucks. But looking around the countryside there aren't enough trebuchets out here.

In those boring days before gunpowder, folks had to come up with other methods of tossing death and destruction at each other. They started by simply throwing rocks at one another, advancing to flinging giant stones, and then to hurling a few boulders. Street crime was probably not a problem, Imagine some thug coming up to you on the street and saying "catapultum habeo. Nisi pecuniam omnen mihi dabis, ad caput tumm saxum immane mittam."(I have a catapult. Give me all the money or I will fling an enormous rock at your head).
But as a weapon of warfare, they have been around a long time. Being half Scandahoovian I was curious as to when they reached the Vikings. The Vikings may have known of them at a very early stage, as the monk Abbo de St. Germain reported in his epic De bello Parisiaco (time frame 890) that engines of war were used on the siege of Paris. Nordic people or "the Norsemen" were documented as using engines of war at the siege of Angers as early as 873. The trebuchet is essentially a gravity powered energy conversion machine, turning potential energy into kinetic energy and using it to throw something of mass.

The counterweight trebuchet appeared in both Christian and Muslim lands around the Mediterranean in the twelfth century, flinging projectiles weighing several hundred pounds at high speeds into enemy fortifications. Fortifications had evolved over the course of the Middle ages, the most well recognized being the castle. The castle served as a protected place for the local elites (sort of like Congress). Inside was refuge from armies too large to face in open battle. The ability of the heavy cavalry to dominate a battle on an open field was useless against fortifications. The siege engine was then further developed and honed.

In June and July of 1191, Richard the Lionheart (the Duke of Normandy) laid siege to the city of Acre as part of the medieval Crusades.

The Duke concentrated on constructing siege machines and placing trebuchets (literally, stone hurler) in suitable places. He arranged for these to shoot continually day and night. He had one excellent one which he called "Bad Neighbor" (Malvoisine). The constant bombardment shattered the Cursed Tower after breaching the city walls. On one side the Templars' trebuchet wrought a frantic devestation, while the Hospitallers trebuchet hurled and hurled, to the abject fear of the Turks. Besides these, there was a trebuchet that had been constructed at general expense, which they called "God's Stone-Thrower". (Which was much more effective than the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch). A priest, a man of great probity, always stood next to it preaching and collecting money for its continual repair and for hiring people to gather the stones for its ammunition. This machine at last demolished the wall next to the Cursed Tower for around "two perches' Length" (10-11 yards ). *

Range and size of the weapons varied. In 1421 the future Charles VII of France commissioned a trebuchet that was said to have been able to shoot a stone of over 1500 pounds but that was not the norm. Rate of fire could be noteworthy: at the siege of Lison in 1147 it was said there were two engines were capable of launching a stone every 15 seconds. (my question? How to you reload those babies?)

Many times trash and debris were lobbed over castle walls to rain down upon unsuspecting masses or invading armies. On occasion, disease-infected corpses were flung into cities in an attempt to infect or terrorize the people under siege—a medieval form of biological warfare.
Then gunpowder was invented and rock warfare became passé quickly, with the trebuchet losing its place as the siege engine of choice to the cannon and later, firearms.

Thinking now you want to make your own just to supplement your weapon collection? You can start by getting one of these wooden war engine kits from ThinkGeek.com that let you bring back all the fun of flinging. Each one can assemble in just a few hours, and provides a fantastic scale model of an actual war weapon of yore. ThinkGeek suggests starting with a few lobs of paper over the cubicle wall at your coworkers. But it's said that the trebuchet is better for long range targets (like the network printer). It's not intended for kids (yes you can put your eye out with this thing) and if you lob a flaming Bic lighter reinforced with thumbtacks at the boss you are likely to be fired.

Still it sounds like fun. For a small price, you can order Wooden War Engine Kits to lend a medieval flair to any office warfare arsenal. The Catapult Kit is rubber band powered (not included) and can hurl paper balls and other small items approximately 10 feet.
The ThinkGeek Trebuchet Kit is counter-weighted by 78 pennies (also, not included) and has a range of around 20 feet. Both kits are pre-cut and pre-drilled, and require gluing during assembly. All you need to put these little ones together is strong fingers, a cutting tool and the glue. But you can go bigger for an additional cost that's not much more than a box or two of .45 acp hollowpoints.

Here's a Floating Arm Trebuchet that you can build.Also Pre-cut and pre-drilled, with computer cut pieces for tight engineering, this is a functional model standing 34" tall, 18" long and 12" wide when built. The guillotine-action and a plunging beam can hurl a golf ball over 200 feet. Nice! It has detailed instructions complete with diagrams and equations for calculating the machine's efficiency with lots of photos.

You can't hide this in your cube, but you can take take it out on the deck.
Friends RobD and Andrew are coming over with ribs to cook. I have a trebuchet. I have fireworks. Who says a holiday on call has to be boring!

You all have a safe and fun day!!!

* From the 13th century writing: "Itinerarium Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi"

Once More -

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head Like the brass cannon;
let the brow o'erwhelm it.
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
-William Shakespeare - King Henry V

FOR OUR FUTURE

I am occasionally asked to speak to young people at schools, from private to inner city, on career day, and sometimes the kids expectations of what my work entails is rather humorous. I guess after watching too many episodes of CSI or Without a Trace the real world of what I do seems pretty dull - "there I was. . . trapped. . . in a meeting!" For I have never chased a bad guy through a dark alley wearing 5 inch high heels and a blond wig, no one has ever shot at me or attempted to steal secrets from my briefcase (all they'd find was an autopsy report, an issue of Popular Mechanics and a Snickers bar) and unlike that girl in Alias, I couldn't afford to live in a luxurious townhouse in the DC area on my salary.

Whatever the stories the kids want to hear about, I do stress one thing. That you don't have to be a rocket scientist or an heiress to pursue your dreams. It simply takes a lot of sweat and determination. I'm heartened by examples of hard work and sacrifice. One of my friends is a local teacher, and has had a few shining examples of students this last year, on their way to college on scholarships they earned and better things. I see though, with many of these kids I talk to, that too many of the next generation have this sense of entitlement that previous generations never had. Entitlement is a dry rot in the very fabric of our lives now. I don't blame the kids, I blame those that set the example, and too often that's society in general, coming from the highest level. When I was in high school, few of us drove to school, and if we did it was in the clapped out car we bought ourselves. Look at the high school parking lot now. $30,000 trucks, $25,000 SUV's, Lexus, BMW. Kids expect that. It makes the job for the responsible parents and the teachers even harder, but there are times you have to say - put away the game boy, turn off the TV, shut off the Ipod and get the children down to business of earning it themselves.

Despite what certain political figures have said, the "American Dream" does not include having it handed to you. Liberty includes the freedom to go hungry some nights if you aren't willing to work for it. The chance of success also assumes the chance to fail.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.- Thomas Paine

The sense of entitlement, the belief that we dominate global commerce and geopolitics and always will, ensuring a lifetime of goods and ease. . . . I see it way too much. I know I'll take some flak for saying this, but I've seen too many people out there raising their kids with a sense that delayed gratification is a punishment, more intense than grounding them. There is a belief that children need to be wrapped in cotton padding so that they never stumble or fail. We all want our kids to be well and safe and happy, but raising them in an environment were nothing disappointing ever happens to them is doing the future great harm.

For as the economy changes, global conflicts escalate, as we are seeing as I write this, these kids are in for a rude and socially cataclysmic surprise. I consider myself very lucky. Had my parents offered me expensive electronic toys, $200 cell phones, laptops and cars and designer clothes, ski vacations and spring breaks on a beach somewhere while I shuffled along with a C average I probably would have taken them up on it. I WAS a teenager. But they didn't. I was expected do my best to make Honor Roll, to work, and put myself through school as they did in the generation past the depression. They taught me that life has its choices and many that you make will kill you. There was a sense of accountability, not entitlement. Did it make them Mr. and Mrs. Popular in the parenting depart? Absolutely not. But it saved my life more than once, literally and figuratively.

I put myself through graduate school flight instructing, a license I got after college when my geek gene was in high overdrive. I loved to fly, it looked like fun, it paid about twice what I could make working retail or other standard part time jobs. But what they don't explain when you're putting in the hundreds of hours of study it takes to be a Certified Flight Instructor is this. In this wondrous exchange are the frequent days that if mother nature isn't doing so, students will be actively trying to kill you. And smiling while doing it. Because the student hadn't yet learned that just because you weren't yelling at him didn't mean you hadn't just avoided bent metal by nano-seconds. That would come after solo.

There was one fellow to whom I was demonstrating how to recover from a stall, the event where the angle between the chord line of the wing and the relative wind is such that airflow is disrupted and the wing stops flying. You practice it with some altitude beneath you and with regularity. It's one of the first things you learn and it's drilled into you from the beginning. The nose drops on it's own, you gently lower the nose, you level the wings and you add power. Piece of cake. Except in this case the student took my words "just gently lower the nose" to mean shoving the control yoke full forward with 180 pounds of push. I didn't know it would go that far forward. Forward, straight into the ground, coming up at 100 miles an hour.

For a moment, the woods below rushed up to greet us with a deathly slap, air rushing past with the speed of infallibility, mocking the effort of lift, the effort of life. But, for altitude and instincts born of hours of repetitive movements, that might have been our last flight. But it wasn't, and with a firm juggle of controls and the movement of the throttle we were climbing back up, with the power of an engine and the untended breath of youth. Inhaling life from death, not realizing just how close it was until it was over. In that moment I was reminded that nature did not care if we were young and high up on the food chain. The sky, with it's solitude and freedoms, creates a perfect stage for exultation or loss and we are very small actors in the arena.

With that, I grew up fast, and any reasoning I had that the world owed me a living was quickly dispelled when I realized that the world didn't even owe me life.

I look at the work ethic of my parent's generation, and my grandparents. That is one of the things that has made our country successful. That the majority of us believe it is a privilege, to be allowed to work and earn money. Not a right because we're standing on U.S. soil, but a privilege of those citizens, who ask no favor or handout of anyone or anything save the chance to pit their talents and strengths and will against what the future can dish out.

I hope these kids can see that. That their dream will not be handed to them on a silver platter with a Platinum credit card. That they will struggle, and they will, at times, fail. My Dad had a sense of value for all that is earned and wanted to pass that on and I try to do my little part as well. Thoreau once said "judge the cost of things in terms of how much life you had to expend to get it". So what I have managed to achieve has the greatest value to me.
I hope that in my show and tell items, the stories, and simply a ear to listen and share with them, that many of them, with so much to offer the country in skills and hope and heart will see a sense of that. That they will learn, with every challenge, be it emotional, rational or rhetorical, they will not look for something that was handed to them, they will look for something that is within them. And with their dreams our nation will grow strong again.

Half Priced Bonanza

click to enlarge and see titles

I got to visit a Half Price Book store this last week. There's one right next to where my friend Angie works so it's a regular stop to chat and buy books when I'm in the city. Don't forget to go to the back of the store where they have the "all under $3 Section", a lot of them in excellent condition only $1. With some careful hunting through the higher and lower shelves there that aren't picked over as much, I brought home several bags of really good condition books, for less than forty bucks.
Always nice to add a few more things to the bookshelf.

DEAD OVEN DAY 12, THE ADVENTURE CONTINUES

h/t Mic at All Recipes

Now the "simple to fix" part is on "backorder".

I was going to try pizza on the grill, but I just wasn't that hungry. So for tonight, a big salad and some Garlic Naan (recipe in comments, not the sidebar). It's a South Asian leavened flatbread.

Tonight, cooked on the grill with garlic and butter, I don't mind so much I can't make popovers in the morning.
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DAY 10 WITHOUT AN OVEN.

When you purchase an extended warranty on an appliance for way too many dollars, you don't get a choice as to who will do the warranty work. When my expensive stove/oven went Tango Uniform two weeks after the manufacturers warranty expired, I called the store and got set up for repair/replacement by the extended warranty people. After waiting 5 days for a technician and asking a friend to sit at the house all day waiting for him, as I'm out of town, he arrives. Yay! Reinforcements! It's just the electronic timer, an easy fix, he says. I'm told on a Tuesday after he makes a call "we have the part in stock! I'll be here Thursday to install it". Thursday, waited all day. No show. No call. When I called Friday after waiting some more, I was told the part "was ordered and would be in Saturday". Saturday- nothing. Monday I called again. They said the part that was in stock, which they ordered, wasn't ordered, but it was ordered now and it would be in Tuesday. Want to make a bet I don't see it this week as "it's a holiday!"and I live out in the boonies?

So I polished a broadsword or two and made something tasty without the appliance - Chinese Sesame Chicken. With extra red pepper. I think I need to read up before I call the appliance warranty people again. Apparently, they've read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and are following this advice.

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near. Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."
- Sun Tzu, the Art of War
But despite their efforts, they haven't won the war. I'm eating quite well with alternative cooking means.

Passing Landscapes

People often ask me where I'm going when I take a vacation, or just a few days off. The islands, a spa, or a jaunt to someplace exotic? No, for me, just a few simple days holed up with a kitchen and my dog, books and the sky. The last thing I feel like doing on my days off, is what I do when I work, dashing around airports trying to get somewhere fast, eating bad restaurant food, hurrying here and there to try and pack a years worth of living in a few days.

On my days off, I'd prefer to do my living, now, quietly in the moment or like today, making a few things from the kitchen to share and then driving into the city to see friends.

We too often pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that we blow right by it. In the adult pursuit of bigger and better, we fail to stop and just look at what we have right here as we pass by it, things hidden by the layers of indifference casually tossed on us by others, dreams gathering dust while we toil to somehow make our world conform to what we are told it's expected to be. And everything in a hurry. Maybe it's the specter of mortality, maybe it's just this new generation of entitlement that's trying to nudge us out of the way, but people seem to want to have everything now. No one seems willing to consider that the time it takes to make it is what makes the final product taste so sweet.

I'm one of the few women I know that cooks. Almost everything is available at the store, prepackaged. People have forgotten how good simple, real food is; the chewy tang of sourdough, a pan seared steak, garlic and deep rose wine, and the snap of a green bean fresh from the garden. The depth of a cheese, the warmth of a swallow of rich liquid, the burst of juice from a single strawberry.

Maybe it's from the days of flying small airplanes that I learned to savor life, perhaps it's just the process of becoming slowly born that is coming into midlife. But flying certainly. You really learn to appreciate the slowness, the stillness of a day in a small taildragger. Moments in such a craft where you literally stand still aloft, sometimes a sense of where your craft is in relation to the earth, sometimes with a stiff enough headwind and a small enough engine, for real. The flight may be minutes or it may be hours, but in a tiny little two seat aircraft, with the steady drone of the dependable, little Lycoming guiding your way, you simply drift along in the clouds, within yourself. Up ahead is the horizon, and you know it's your destiny to reach it, you've planned the flight and loaded the gas, you've set your heart and soul upon its reaching. What you expect to greet you is up ahead of you in the blue, and it only remains for your little plane to follow.

In a small airplane, the sky will give you time, since the sky, although changing, is still eternal. There's no rush; you keep the horizon in your window but still look down, savoring the journey. The tumbled landscapes of glacier stone, and great pristine rivers, thin as a strand of pearls from up here. It's like the unhurried sense you get on a day-long road trip; time filled with the immaculate sameness of hours bathed in the sun's warm honey. Anything that really requires your mind, the engine setting, a scan for traffic, occurs in brief, unhurried intervals. Your vehicle continues on to your destination, carrying you with it, carrying your thoughts as you forge ahead, of tears, of laughter you've not known since youth, of love, of mechanical, rhythmic memories of the past that you carried with you as you started this journey.
Those memories are not always happy ones, which is part of the trip you will make. As the miles flow past, you realize that when you are young, no one really tells you the truth about love. About coming into your heart and what it means. And even harder, the memory long ago of the one person you were expected to share those things with, but could no longer. Especially in a vehicle on a rushed trip you didn't want to make. Talking matter of factly about how life has formed you as you've flown through the years, seemed banal, like proving a right angle or finding the equal distance between two lives. The two lane highway rose slowly into the foothills of the mountains as you tried to navigate through a silence that carried with it the weight of a dead end. Staring straight ahead, you saw the fields clutching onto the skeletons of flowers that long ago died, of bare, windswept trees, and clusters of burrs that stick to everything with a tiny pinprick of pain. Things were sticking to you. You didn't have a thing to say. Not that it mattered. For you had lost your voice years ago.

All that was left was the lack of words as you opened the window to carry the silence into the wind. Wind that would carry that moment to where it would simply bounce off the landscape like a piece of discarded trash, delicate, crumpled tissue best left to be disintegrated by time. Better left behind as the sun began to relax on what would be your renewed journey; the road pulling away from discarded thought, the highway lines breaking up like Morse Code as you moved forward. Moved away from that day, that particular road, til it is long behind you.

Soon nothing is left but the memories that you are making now, that you hold tight to you, moving on into new skies, open roads. Time ticks past as the diorama of your life unfolds in the window up ahead, the rush of the world, fast food, fast life, suspended for a few hours. The pace of your travels will drop you into an unhurried state of motion, where you won't get near any speed limits, but you'll feel as if you've lived twice as long and experienced twice as much.

It's been a few months since I've been up in a small airplane, but I remember it well, especially that moment when the day sky matured into dusk. It had been a hectic few months of work and the sameness of schedules, and I just needed to get out and feel the wind on my face, and watch the stars come out from their hiding spots. The point was not to get to anyplace fast. The point wasn't even really to get anyplace. I think Heraclitus, of whose writings are only left fragmentary remains, said it better than I, expressing the nature of reality as flux in words, the way I'd express them in flight tonight.

The rule that makes

its subject weary

is a sentence

of hard labor.

For this reason change gives rest.

That night, I needed some quiet change, a break from my labors, a journey forward - back into myself. I'd taken off from a small town airport, with no agenda but to see my day translated before me in the small windshield of my plane. Soaring over fields of plenty, the landscape one of infinite calm, shadows deepening, blurring the margin of cornfield and sky, the rising moon popped out from an opening break in the clouds. The space that held the moon widened and I could see the beginnings of stars, close enough to clasp in my hand.

Mark Twain said in Huckleberry Finn "We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened". But I know they were made. Made to serve as tiny points of light to guide a distant traveler back home. As the day set behind me, I slowed and turned back towards the strip while some light remained, utter silence now other than the song of the engine. Wind in my face from a little side window I popped ajar, I felt one with the air. It felt like all life, all my past, my future was contained in this sky and I'm not just passing through it but I'm part of it. It's one of the most contented, coherent moments one can experience,

The moon was halfway up the sky, as I got back to the airport, its light and the remaining daylight providing the guidance I needed to to land at the little country strip. As the wheels gently kissed the ground, the day changing into night, my breathing was slowed in true rest. As I secured my little red craft in the hangar for the night, I touched the cowling of the engine. It was warm, as was my soul. I took a big drink of water from the remaining bottle, felt it quench something in me. Realizing I was hungry, I took a small square of darkest chocolate from my pocket and placed it in my mouth, it melted on the heat of my tongue, as I stood still, my hand on the engine cowl, feeling it cool, wondering how I ever thought life was complicated. Wondering why I ever worried that I had to hurry to get where I was going, for where I was headed was within me all of the time. It's Sunday and I have to work early in the morning. Soon, like myself on that night, you too will have to return to work, to the sameness of life, to deadlines, but for tonight, there is no rush. We need those moments alone, those hours in the air, those miles of open road. Those times of solitude, for souls like us, are simple moments of inwardness. In our simple code of life, quietness and remoteness stand guard over courage heightened by change. This is our own compass north, the self in isolation, resolve, depth, emotion, thought and reason held in, until they are amplified within our being, becoming music to life's unhurried journey.

Life on the Range - a day in photos.

The day starts early out on the Range. A little walk out back to see what's what. A coyote passed within feet of me the other morning as I backed the truck out of the drive, emboldened to where he came within feet of the house. He'd better not today.

Back into home to help others start the day.

There's always folks wanting to be fed.
Gather up some eggs, it's time for breakfast.Slay the giant thistle.
To the Farmer's Market to barter and share.
The front yard was mowed. Minor repairs and upkeep keep every country person busy.
Barkley has been for a swim in the pond.
So now it's time for the Home on the Range Recipe of the Week . .

Veal Scallopinni
OK, OK, already. Put those big brown eyes AWAY there Clyde.

This Week's Home on the Range Veal Scallopinni
Grilled Chicken !
and Vegetables. The meat and veggies are dusted with Penzey's spices and a little olive oil, that's it, then on the grill, the veggies wrapped in foil to roast right over the coals.
Served with Disappearing Appetizer. Three types of peppers, onion, roasted corn and Roma tomato, with a dressing made of key lime juice, honey, ancho chili powder, chopped garlic, cilantro, sweet Hungarian paprika and olive oil. Honestly I've made this and had people stand around with spoons eating it out of the bowl while the dinner grills but it's mighty tasty on a chip while dinner cooks.
This combination was really good but the local chickens are still giving me the evil eye.

That's life out in rural America my friends. It's not the exciting life that you'd see on TV, it's not a life of luxurious abandon and decadent spending. It's the smell of grass, fresh vegetables, and sweat. It's the sound of the wind through the corn, of a rooster's crow, of laughter. It's the discarding of weighty thoughts about the world beyond your fence line as you grow and tend, the simple gathering of that which you need to sustain yourself and your family, gathering that which nourishes your life.

Life on the Range is more than a place. It's more than a photo or moment or a word, it's the redemptive power of self sufficiency that no one can take from you. You can't buy it at the grocery store or get it in a stimulus check. It's something you learn, by toil and tears, and it's worth every bit of the effort. You sleep deep and freely, the barn in hushed quiet, the gun at your ready, in case the predators forget their place.

A day on the Range, and one richly blessed.

Pressing On.

Baa Baa black sheep
Have you any wool?
Yes Sir! Yes Sir!
Three bags full.

Yesterday was a start of 3 days off. I was in the city briefly and stopped by to visit a friend. As she and I talked about the reloading process the question came up. Do I reload so I can shoot, or do I shoot so I can do more reloading? The work area is all set up, a screened door to the back yard keeps a nice breeze flowing through, but a fan was a necessity, it's been pretty hot lately. I got a new Lee O Frame press this week and got it mounted to my little bench. I've got some RCBS dies. . . . plus a Hornady scale, a Lee powder measure and the Lyman reloading manual. Let's try it out and make a practice bullet with the brand new press. Ta Da! THE BARNEY BULLET! In any case, it's going to be a fun summer, as long as the primer supply holds out. I got lucky and found a small supply of $32 for a thousand at a tiny "ma and pa" gun store. I've got dies for .45, .380 and .223, probably all I will need for now. I've got a big box of round-nose lead bullets and Hornady XTP Copper Jacketed. Finished product notwithstanding, there's something almost Zen-like about reloading, when you get going at a good pace, a rhythm and grace that with practice becomes a ballet of powder, press and hands. If you've never reloaded, remember, the first step is always the hardest. Trying something new. Embracing something long forgotten that at one time you loved. Embracing something you've never done but wanted to. Tiny leaps upward propelled by longing and only held back by the gravity of timidity.

It's not much different than taking that first solo in an airplane. . You have been given the tools, you have the capabilities. But it's the fear of the what you don't know that holds you back, while upward something enticing but new beckons. You've learned through your lessons, that the sky is sometimes gentle, sometimes capricious. Flying can be just efficient transportation or something almost spiritual in it's quiet, divine in it's vastness. And frankly, you're just a little afraid of it at this point.

But you couldn't resist the siren call and now it's time for your first solo. So you gingerly taxi away from your instructor, who is probably as nervous as you are, and you turn your eyes upward, and drink the air and breath the light and and make that first leap. And the beauty and the vastness of possibility hits you and the exhilaration of all that awaits takes your breath away. And life is suddenly fuller because you can do something you never ever thought you could do. Anything new can be daunting. Reloading was for me at first. Now I stand in the shop in my garage/shop area, a vast cavern of a space with hot and cold water and lights and tools. The fan is blowing my hair and I concentrate, yet my mind is completely open to thought. The soft hush of my movement, the sounds of the press, stabilize into a gentle inaudible song with just the occasional background chorus of the the world far away, and I am lulled into a quietness of efficiency.

Some would say it's a dull way to spend an evening. I find it a totally relaxing way to spend some time. I'm not out in my little plane, but I'm just as relaxed. It's not that much different from that first solo in that little open cockpit plane. I have goggles over my eyes and my hands move in rhythmic efficiency while somewhere the person who taught me grins, knowing the craft continues.

It's a nice, cost effective way to wind down after a long day. As the light starts to dim, I simply bask in the brisk pace of creating something, clouds outside disbanding with the disinterest of late day and the view out my little shop door looking out to the trail of someones little airplane up above. A first flight for someone perhaps? The plane moves onward through the evening, vanishing upward like the smoke from an expended cartridge.

Egg-cellent

Urban Trend has some nifty things on their website, including egg molds AND a personal branding iron. I had one of those for Brigid's Home on the Range Cowgirl Shoot Em Up Ranch and Labrador Farm. But none of the cattle survived the branding.

But I was tempted to get some of their nifty egg molds to make fried eggs that looked like guns.

But some mornings I have trouble making eggs that look like EGGS.

I'm not one to waste anything, so if I put them on top of Brigid's Black Beans and Rice, with cilantro and colby/jack cheese, none of the ranch hands will complain. Your choice folks, this or a pop tart.

click on photo to enlarge.

I thought so.