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I could write, tonight, about some of those things that Nature uses to suck you in, like the pleas­ant sun­set I just saw. It was mel­low, rather than spec­tac­u­lar. A glow­ing tan­ger­ine sun descend­ing slow­ly behind the ridge, with clouds daubed onto the sky by some minor 17th cen­tu­ry Dutch mas­ter. The sort of sun­set that makes you feel the sphere of the Earth rolling under your feet, but does­n’t look like it was con­jured up by Indus­tri­al Light & Mag­ic. But I would rather write about the nas­ti­er side of Nature. Read more »

I took the dogs out after a late after­noon show­er, and there was a quite spec­tac­u­lar rain­bow, con­trast­ed against the retreat­ing storm clouds. I let the crit­ters romp in the wet grass and clover while soak­ing in the sym­phonie fan­tas­tiqueof smells the rain had brought out.

So when I returned to the house, I felt I deserved a feast. The prop­er ingre­di­ents were at hand. I put on some Haydn, and dined on steamed beets and cau­li­flower, and a fresh­ly made tour­tière. Tour­tière is a meat pie, usu­al­ly game or beef or pork, served by French Cana­di­an fam­i­lies through­out through­out the coun­try, and occa­sion­al­ly mak­ing an appear­ance in New Eng­land or Min­neso­ta. There are hun­dreds of vari­ants (that of the Sague­nay region being par­tic­u­lar­ly bizarre). In some places it is made “à l’é­cos­saise”, with oat­meal added, and some­times “à l’ir­landaise”, with pota­toes added, where Scot­tish and Irish influ­ence made their mark. It is wide­ly said to have been devised to cook pas­sen­ger pigeons — which flew across North Amer­i­ca in great black clouds of mil­lions before they became extinct. How­ev­er, I sus­pect that this was mere­ly one con­ve­nient fill­ing for an all-pur­pose pie brought by Canada’s ear­li­est Nor­man and Bre­ton set­tlers. In Cana­da, meat and game were sta­ples for the inde­pen­dent habi­tants, though back in France, such dish­es would have been only for the rich. In France, today, the word tour­tièremeans a shal­low pan for mak­ing pies, though I don’t think any­thing much like the Cana­di­an dish exists there now. It doubt­less descends from the Mid­dle Ages, since the meat is slow­ly sim­mered with onions, sage, rose­mary, savory, nut­meg, cin­na­mon, cloves, all­spice and plen­ty of black pep­per before it is enclosed in a thick, flaky pie crust… a very medieval style of cook­ing. True to this archa­ic pat­tern, it should be served with some­thing sweet on the side: pick­led beets, a sweet rel­ish, or even a chut­ney. In this case, I had some beets handy. At a Christ­mas réveil­lon, it would be served as a desert course, com­pet­ing with the apple and blue­ber­ry pies. A doc­u­ment­ed recipe from the year 1611 is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal to the one used in my family.

Do not, under any cir­cum­stances, imag­ine that a frozen tour­tière pur­chased in a super­mar­ket gives even a hint of this del­i­ca­cy. Those are fraudu­lant abom­i­na­tions, no mat­ter how folksy-look­ing the package.

The Com­mu­nist Par­ty in Bei­jing is broad­cast­ing care­ful­ly staged fan­ta­sy images of “cel­e­bra­tions” in Lhasa, as the Olympic Flame makes it’s appear­ance in Tibet. In real­i­ty, the city is locked down. All traf­fic is stopped, Tibetans are not allowed to walk about with­out spe­cial per­mits, and a huge for­eign army patrols the streets. Tanks, guns, beat­ing batons are every­where. Near the Pota­la, a hand­ful of hand-picked stooges are present to be pho­tographed cheering.

This is the real­i­ty of the “Olympic Spir­it” — at least the ver­sion of it approved in the Age of Cor­po­ratism and Dic­ta­tor­ship. If I hear even one oth­er per­son using that sick­en­ing phrase, I will turn my back on them and walk away. There is no sense talk­ing to peo­ple who live in a world of lies, and aban­don their fel­low human beings to slav­ery, then spew out pro­pa­gan­da garbage claim­ing they rep­re­sent noble values.

For the next three weeks, I’ll be at my friends, Steve and Ruta Muhlberg­er, mind­ing their farm while they’re away. A pleas­ant atmos­phere, and not much work involved, as there are only three hors­es, two dogs and some cats to care for, nowa­days. And the fields are so lush from rain that the hors­es can pret­ty much fend for them­selves. There is also an infi­nite sup­ply of blue­ber­ries and rasp­ber­ries, unless the bears vac­u­um them up before I can pick them. Fresh berries, fresh eggs, milk straight from the cow. Sun­light, star­ry skies, crisp clean air. Boy, do I ever need a dose of this stuff. I have a small amount of con­trac­tu­al work to do, while I’m here, but for the most part I’ll be work­ing on my own stuff ― a rare and blessed lux­u­ry. Read more »