Stop and hear the hornpipe and jig
as the springtime rolls in, pushes away
winter’s white cloak.
It draws the living from their depth
to click heels – stomping the last
of the chill- pointing to summer’s thrill
as it leaps and bounces and reels.
**************
Something for the emergence of spring, also in keeping with the recent St. Patrick’s Day festivities.
Charlotte,
prickling leaves while
her reclining posture
whispers an invitation, told
of truth.
The wind
awaits her voice
that mocks despair, her tree
ruffles yet remains quiet, and
steadfast.
Damsel,
in blue gingham
by angel’s wings she sings –
broken, igniting fierceness,
she mends.
***********
Some observations about this poem. I’ve never personally known or physically met anyone named Charlotte. I follow a couple of blogs and have read several other blogs this week written by women named Charlotte. It’s coincidental, yet fascinating to me that so many Charlottes present their writing on blogs that I should read in one week. I love the sounds the name makes. It’s a name made to be whispered.
For a few months now, I’ve been been collecting and reviewing, editing and reviewing, fretting and stewing, anxiously awaiting reviewing. I’ve been putting together my first collection of poetry. It is a chapter book that is my first attempt at widespread publication, entitled Accidental Songs.
It was both exhilarating and frustrating. The selection process for poems in a collection lays bare all the insecurities that I had in writing them in the first place. I believe that some of them are great poems, some of them are not that great. Some had to be cut altogether, others were recut and reformed into something that fit the overall idea for the collection. But as the sum of the whole, I think they all contribute something to the collection, and that was what I wanted.
I want to thank Sarah Wesson and Sherry O’keefe for their time and valuable comments during the manuscript review.
And I want to thank my wife for being the incredible supportive spouse she is. Thanks babe.
Of course, I invite you to visit Amazon.com and have a look for yourself. I’m proud that I could accomplish this effort. If you should choose to purchase a copy, Thanks!
It was Friday.
A cold snowy day. My wife was home from work, sick with a cold and I was the dutiful caregiver – supplying her with ice cold drinks and extra blankets.
We decided that we wanted salads for lunch. My wife’s favorite salad is a Sante Fe style salad, with chicken, lots of crunchy tortilla strips and usually ranch dressing.
Luckily, I had cooked half of a package of chicken tenders two nights before (when I made a chicken pot pie), but seasoned with a homemade taco seasoning – comprised of chili powder, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, black pepper, red pepper and cumin. These days, I am intrigued by the opportunity to play with the spices we have in our cabinet. Sure, it is more difficult than just using a packaged taco seasoning, but it appeals to the scientist in me.
Anyway, I had cooked those chicken tenders on Wednesday night. They were looking for something useful to do. I cut them into small chunks, and set them aside.
I pulled out a bag of Romaine lettuce. Now, you may ask, why didn’t you use a whole head of lettuce? Fewer things in the kitchen bore me more than chopping and cleaning a head of lettuce. This is interesting, because I will prep and cut onion, peppers, tomatoes, squash, cucumber…even carrots, just about any vegetable. Lettuce bores me.
I poured the precut salad mix into a bowl and inspected it for undesirable components, rinsed it, and moved on. I chopped two Roma tomatoes (see comment above) and added to the lettuce. I grabbed a handful of grated monterey jack/cheddar cheese – this is about a cup – and mixed it into the salad bowl. Finally, I tossed in another handful-and-a-half of tortilla strips.
For the dressing, I mixed 2 parts of Country French with 1 part Chipotle Ranch and stirred. This gives the “right” combination of sweet and spicy. Flavor chemistry is an interesting subject. The Country French sweetness is detected by a combination of receptor proteins in the roof of the mouth and the back of the tongue. These receptors synapse with the glossopharyngeal nerve and the chorda tympani, which means the signals are transferred up the center of the neck as well as along the sides of the skull, through the inner ear.
Spicy flavors, on the other hand, are detected by the VR1 receptors in the mouth. What is interesting is that they are designed to detect heat, such that we don’t consume hot food that will burn our mouths. The detection of capsaicin (the chemical in most peppers) is accidental, but activates the “heat” response of the VR1 receptors.
I poured the dressing over the salad mixture and tossed liberally to coat the lettuce, cheese, tortilla strips and tomatoes. At this point, I heated the chicken in the microwave for about 90 seconds.
To serve, I scooped out a serving (or two) of the salad mixture onto a plate, then topped it with the warm taco chicken. What you get is a delicious, yet incongruous, mixture of ingredients.
Crunchy, yet smooth
sweet, yet spicy
vegetable, yet chicken-y
warm, and cold
Serves 3 to 4 people, was eaten by 2.
So, in summary:
5 or 6 chicken breast tenders, cooked with taco seasoning or similar spices, then chopped
1 bag Romaine Salad
2 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 Cup Monterey Jack/Cheddar grated cheese
1 1/2 cup thin tortilla strips
2/3 cup Country French Dressing
1/3 cup Chipotle Ranch Dressing
Soundtrack for making the salad:
Ramblin’ Man – The Allman Brothers Band
Smile – Nat King Cole
I heard the words
and their correctedness,
in picturesque suffectedness.
She spoke them with such emplity
and vocal resnoguity.
I could not dare not write them down
and use them later for colored sounds
To poke at the sentence
bruskly and paciously,
or converse on the gartan
defendled loquaciously.
And if the strunogrammatic skills that I now display
cause you to mattle or otherwise say,
What silliness falls from there on page?
My stars! This is nonsense.
It’s nothing so sage.
It’s second hand outwisms
pure and just plain.
So read and enjoy it,
my emplitious refrain.
I’m thinking about rivers
and how they flow away
-unsettled-
pressing the tall grass
and shearing
against the shoreline.
How they wash out the mud
and stir up silt
-channeling it all downstream.
Downhill rolling,
carrying the devices
of their own undoing,
they splay out
into the mud flats
stagnant
leaving behind
implements
that shape
and mold
the landscape,
accrued as the water slowly fades.
and somewhere,
a trickle of water
is dreaming of a torrent.
When I look into the snow, I watch a single flake fall. If I follow it,
the spiral trail echos until it disappears among its forebearers
and covers the dead grass.
The next one tracks a different route,
but it achieves the same goal
as its predecessor, and the next one, and the next…
If I lose focus and see only the field, the snowfall moves in groups.
The trailing falls away as it becomes something
more wracked and solitary.
I am immobile.
Later, I can see the ground where my dogs make paths.
They follow the same tracks they make in summer months
to investigate the smells of the borderlands.
In the snow, the paw prints map the trips to their favorite tree
and circle back the long way around. It outlines a crescent shape
that lays a shadow against the porch light.
My neighbor has a grove of pampas grass
that looks like a huddled mass of people paused –
making their way around his house against the force of a winter gale.
There are no tracks.
There is a lot more in him than you guess, and a deal more than he has any idea of himself.
-Gandalf, speaking to the dwarves about his choice of Bilbo to be their burglar, in The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.
Today (December 17, 2014) marks the release of the third and final movie installment of The Hobbit, directed by Peter Jackson, and perhaps our last film adaptation of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, unless someone tries to unravel The Silmarillion or tries to flesh out any number of short stories. I plan to see the movie (not today, or even this week -probably), because this story is such an important part of my literary life. I read The Hobbit for the first time as a 14 year old, then moved on to the LOTR Trilogy. I recently read it again (a couple of years ago, prior to the film releases), and was still amazed by its light-heartedness compared to the later trilogy – though the films are trying to invoke that more brooding environment.
My enjoyment of The Hobbit has always centered around Bilbo Baggins. He was written as such a likeable character and an everyman that readers (and I think, especially adolescents) could relate to. He wasn’t adventurous and had never sought out grand change – yet, he had the internal bravery to go beyond his comfort zone when faced with the choice. He wasn’t thought of as much of a warrior or a contributor to the dwarves group. He was very much an outsider, culturally and personality-wise. He didn’t fit their idea.
Bilbo Baggins, as depicted in the Rankin/Bass film production of The Hobbit (1977)
Yet Gandalf knew…and took a chance.
Either he knew something of Bilbo’s ancestry (as Tolkien suggests some of Bilbo’s ancestors were more adventurous hobbits – which made them something of a novelty to the culture) or he recognized something in Bilbo’s personality that made him appealing in the role of burglar.
Perhaps, it is because he was so small.
Perhaps, it was because he was so self-effacing.
Perhaps, it was because hobbits are generally resilient and self-preserving, yet light hearted.
Whatever the reason, Bilbo ultimately proves his worth to the group and grows in confidence by saving them from various situations until the dwarves accept him. He returns to his home at Bag-End a wiser, more confident hobbit.
And while he was also the fortunate finder of a ring of power and being literally invisible is much more useful than just being ignored, the ability of people to achieve things under unusual circumstances should never be underestimated. Certainly Bilbo had to prove himself, but he also was put in circumstances where he had to do something. He chose to help out Thorin and Company. His self-preservation didn’t win out. This is seen later in other hobbits in the trilogy: Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin all faced challenges and stepped in to do something.
That is the redeeming part of Tolkien’s Middle Earth Saga, that hobbits and other creatures (Ents?) viewed as unimportant tipped the balance and achieved great things.
Think about that.
Ain’t that the berries…
was an expression my high school band director used when expressing excitement and surprise over something.
As he used it, this is an equivalent expression to:
Way Cool! and That’s the bees knees* and That’s great!.
Presumably, the origin of this saying has something to do with things being just as awesome as berries (which are pretty good – particularly in jams, pies, cobblers, and some simply by themselves). It is an interesting equivalency. And while the awesome culinary delights of berries are mostly undisputed (though some may have their favorites and not-so-favorite), there are other properties of berries that are quite unique and contribute to their awesomeness.
The extracts of berries contain flavonoids, phenolic acids, lignans and complex phenolic polymers (polymeric tannins). Among the flavonoids, the predominant group of anthocyanins give color to berry fruits (characteristically orange, red, or blue). These color compounds are interesting, because they can be used to study a variety of chemical interactions.
I find blueberries interesting because they are blue food. There are edible fruits that are green, yellow, orange or red, some purple…but this is the only naturally occurring blue food. In some of my recent reading**, I found an interesting research study on the potential use of blueberries for improvements in night vision. There have been numerous studies that claim this fact, but all have been subject to criticism for poor control studies. This recent report was inconclusive on the fact of improving night vision; however, it suggested a strong correlation between anthocyanin consumption and recovery after photobleaching (that moment when you step out of the dark into the blinding light, and you go.. Whoa! that’s bright!..and it takes you a moment to adjust.). The anthocyanins in blueberries may assist that recovery time.
Another interesting berry fruit is cranberries. Like them or not, this staple of the Thanksgiving meal has also long been used as a folk remedy for urinary tract infections. In 2008, research*** was published that showed that cranberry juice cocktail inhibits the ability of E.coli bacteria (one of the common bacteria that causes UTI’s) from forming biofilms. This in turn makes it more likely that the bacteria can be flushed from your body.
In raspberries, there is a diversity of antioxidant and anti-inflammatory phytonutrients unlike any other commonly consumed fruit****. Raspberries (both red and black) have been studied to determine their antioxidant content, and it has been suggested that raspberry ketone (rheosmin) increases metabolism in our fat cells, which has an impact on the management of obesity. Further, rheosmin can decrease activity of pancreatic lipase (a fat-digesting enzyme released by the pancreas), which may result in less digestion and absorption of fat. Another benefit is that by providing a rich supply of antioxidants and anti-inflammatory nutrients, raspberries can help lower risk of oxidative stress and excessive inflammation, reducing the potential for cancer cell formation.
It is amazing that these small fruits pack so much punch in flavor and health benefits. So I suppose there is something to the expression –Ain’t that the berries.
===================================================
*Another curious expression that I’m not sure about.
**”Blueberry Effects on Dark Vision and Recovery after Photobleaching: Placebo-Controlled Crossover Studies” Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry 2014, 62 (46), pp 11180–11189
***New Biological Activities of Plant Proanthocyanidins,ACS Symposium Series Vol. 984, Chapter 7, Brandy J. Johnson, James B. Delehanty, Baochuan LinFrances S. Ligler, 2008, 101-114
****Anthocyanin content, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticancer properties of blackberry and raspberry fruits. Journal of Food Composition and Analysis, Volume 23, Issue 6, September 2010, Pages 554-560.
The morning revealed
as an imaginary hand
pulls a coverlet back
to unconceal the skies.
And though stars
of a poet’s versifying
fade into the light
-the day undenying-
they remain watchful
for hopes and wishes and dreams
gratifying.
Taps and Ratamacues 