Irene Cometh and Beantown Clobbered By Motown

The rain woke me at 6:30 a.m.  Not my usual Sunday wake-up time.  No wind yet.   Decided to get up and make the pesto sauce in the blender before the power went out.  Nice fresh basil picked yesterday.  You never know how the garden will survive a storm.  My flowers are just at their peak again.  Sigh.  All the heavy pots are crowded together in a protected spot.

Decided to take a shower while I could still see.  Too weird to shower in the dark.  Cats seemed calm.  Reading New York Times Book Review to find Kindle books for an upcoming trip.  Looked at "combined" best seller list and saw nothing, and didn't even find anything on the hard cover best seller list.  Maybe I will just read what Obama did.  Looked like a good list in spite of the sniping.  So far as I know, almost off the recent presidents have liked mysteries and crime stories.

Thought about cleaning a few leaves and crud out of the storm drain, but that is probably a lost cause.  Still considering.  Last night's Boston baseball was too tedious with all the rain delays in the double headers.  The Sox did well.  Not so with the Patriots.  What happened there?  Beantown clobbered by Motown. 

Now I am running the dishwasher to get the last dishes.  Laundry done.  Food prepared.  By the way I make the pesto for a chicken pesto dish.  It's just bite-sized pieces of white meat chicken dressed with Pesto Genovese.   My recipe is from the old Time-Life Cooking of Italy series.   Best Pesto Ever!  In addition, we're having the rest of the orzo salad, a Mediterranean salad that was delicious.  I first ate the chicken pesto at Bertucci's, a Boston restaurant chain that started in Kendall Square and always had the best food.  It was part of an antipasto platter.  I don't think they have the dish anymore.  It is alas, gone, like the stuffed clams and the mussels au gratin at Legal Seafood.  So chez Grapeshot we have delicious foods that require absolutely no prep tonight.  And wine.  Leftover peasant plum tart for dessert.  Lots of Sunday papers to read and the necessary light to read by.  Plenty of cat food.  Yes, the cats must eat. 

The serious part of the storm is to get here in a few hours.  We're ready, but of course, nature can play some nasty tricks.  Very nasty.  Stay safe.

Goodnight Irene, Goodnight

At chez Grapeshot, hurricane preparations underway.   This mostly involves taking everything off the deck, the porch and out of the yard that could become a missile.  Stowing away plenty of ice and water.

We had food in the house but I decided not to bake focaccia today--too much to do, so I popped into the store early this a.m.  More folks that usual, some with carts really piled high.  Everyone but me buying potato chips.  What is that about?   However the young guy behind me in the checkout line had lots of water and three loaves of bread, so he'll be ready.   

On the way to the store I noticed that most houses had not taken down the hanging baskets of decks and porches.  Hmmm.  Maybe later today.  We did a flashlight drill and discovered two without batteries.  We have 7 flash lights (I took some out of the car) two battery lanterns and one kerosene lanterns, plus a lot of candles.  Everything ready to go.

I'm making an orzo salad and some chicken pesto.  Stuff that doesn't require heating, although our gas stove will work if one lights a match to the pilot lights.  A gas stove is a huge plus, unless, of course, a gas main ruptures.  Last hurricane when we lived in Wellesley, the electricity was off for four days and we   used a camp stove and the charcoal grill to cook stuff as the freezer defrosted.  Definitely some bizarre meals.

Charging my Kindle.  Doing the laundry because we are sure to lose electricity, always a bummer in the evening.  I suppose I could write with pen and paper.  Now there's a thought.

The air is so still and sultry.  Not a leave stirring.  The calm before the storm.  Woodpeckers feeding like crazy.  Do they know?  I put out fresh nectar for the hummers yesterday.  They had eaten the feeder almost dry.

Sky full of confused gray clouds.  All different kinds in layers.  I need to observe to make sure I have my storm in the Florida Straits right.  And for something related to my latest novel, see the next post.  It was really eerie.

So battening down the hatches with a sense of purpose and determination.  We had a good little neighborhood where people will help each other.  Onward,

Grapeshot

Some Things I Am Wondering About

Why are there so many tanning salons?  How can the multitude of nail salons survive?   I don't use either, although at one time I did tan a bit.   Nails?  I have gardening nails, which is to say short, broken, dirty and best hidden behind gloves.

Why do the #%*^@ chipmunks eat the tomatoes this year?  I had to pick them all green and bring them into the house before they nibbled all of them.  Grrrr.

 How does the cat always know if someone is sick or under the weather?  He acts extra lovey.   Cats just know.  Interesting about the zoo animals anticipating the earthquake.  Now there's another riddle.

I am reading Death and the Maiden by Gerald Elias and enjoying it immensely. Also on my third reading of Proust.  Reading great works at different life stages is always rewarding.

We had a Thai beef salad this evening, and Significant Other has decided he does not like rice noodles which are slippery as eels.

Into the city tomorrow night for a nice dinner  before the storm hits.
I'm writing a short story that is like pulling teeth.  Double grrrr.

Onward,

Grapeshot       

Make Mine Meze

Tonight we're having a meze platter with homemade hummus, shrimp salad and cucumber salad.  I've been prepping off and on all day and can hardly wait to dig into these goodies.  The garden has yielded LOTS of ripe cucumber, and I've been using them up but now it's time to be generous to the neighbors.

Mostly we eat a cucumber salad I created.  Dressing is made with sour cream, mayo, and a little white vinegar.  One could also use yogurt.  I chop up scallions, dill, a small clove of garlic, parsley and even cilantro in the food processor and mix it with the dressing.

Empty the processor and get out the slicing disc.  I peel the cukes, cut them in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.  Feed them into the Cuisinart and mix in with the dressing.  Lots of dill makes it extra good.  If you like, sprinkle a little kosher salt on the cukes after slicing and let them drain for 40 minutes or so.    They come out extra crunchy.  This is a great salad, even if you have to buy the cukes.  Dill and parsley from the garden, of course.

The meze platter recipes are  at this link.  Meze Platter for a Warm Summer Night

Use tomatoes from the garden if you have them.  Ours have succumbed to chipmunks and blight.    Alas!  The mint and the oregano and rampant.  Parsley not so good.  But the cucumbers reign.

Onward,

Grapeshot

Daniel D. McCracken Obit in New York Times

My first COBOL class, back at the College of Lake County in Grayslake, IL required us to buy McCracken's  Simplified Guide to Structure COBOL programming.  It was the best manual I ever had, bar none. McCracken was God.  I had one Other Manual which better explained the obscure Usage is Index business, but McCracken made the obscure Clear as crystal, and by the time I finished My COBOL career, the book was beat up and dog-eared. I never knew who McCracken was until I saw his obituary today, but he was my mentor and my right arm.  He started writing computer manuals in 1957, long before I ever came into EDP as it was often called in those days.  Electronic Data Processing.  Part of a lyric from Hair.  Then it was called MIS, then IS, then IT, and having been retired for lo, these six years, I don't even know what it's called anymore.  Totally out of touch.  Don't own a smart phone.  I have an IPOD touch that I use on the road for email, calendar and address book. My small friend keeps asking, "don't you have any apps?"  No dear, I don't.  Once upon a time, McCracken's paperback COBOL manual was all I needed.  


At one time, I could make COBOL along with a few ventures into Assembler subroutines do anything.  Bar codes?  No problemo. Manufacturing, retail, logistics.  Yowza!   I could make tables read tables with fancy indexing routines that were awesome.  I could "go to, depending on."  All thanks to McCracken.  I actually knew everything there was to know about COBOL.  Makes me feel like the last living dinosaur.  McCracken helped "ordinary practioners improve their computing skills."  The term "reference bible" was bandied about.  Yup.  That was McCracken.  Wish I had hung onto my book, just for the hell of it.  Now I'm sorry that I didn't write him a fan letter telling him how much I had learned from his book and how it had helped me


Today I discovered he was a fellow Montanan, born in Hughesville to a mining engineer father.  Not too many people have been born in Montana.  He was a father to seven children and always kept up with his field, going on to teach Java programming.  I recall discussing with a colleague whether we should learn Java.  Android was perhaps his last teaching endeavor.  What a giant among techies.  He taught until he died at 81.   

Daniel McCracken, you were a hell of a teacher.

 

 

 

New neighborhood denizen: a Scottish Highland Calf

I've been waiting (in vain) for a new calf to make the scene.  We've had a succession of young bulls come and go.  Maggie and Iris are so obstreperous that they must intimidate bulls who are not, well, bullies.  There are two other cows who came in the fall or maybe a year ago last fall and still seem tentative in their relationship with the two queens of the pasture.  Now one of the diffident cows has become a mom.  In all the commotion of going and returning from Nantucket we somehow missed the big event and the calf must be at least a couple weeks old.  He/she likes to lie in the tall grass with his ma. 

The little critter looks just like this but without the muzzle.  Don't know what that was all about.  Here is a poem I wrote a couple years ago about my favorite calves.     It's called "Calves Together."

That summer, we were calves together in the tall grass.

You came first, to brown Mary Anne.

Golden Iris is my mother.

They dropped us in the tall grass.

We grew together, gamboled together,

Licked each other, slept together,

Lay flank to flank in the tall grass.

The milk we suckled tasted of summer and green apples.

In the heat of the day we found shade

The rain kept the flies at bay.

We frolicked in the pasture, bleating and kicking our heels,

Calves without a care.

Glad animal spirits, nursing and nibbling the tall grass.

Drinking from the creek.

Seeking the green shade

Calves together.

 I just love the cute little critters.  August is not such a great month to be born, as the flies really bedevil the cows.  I saw all my fruit and vegetable scraps for the cows, as well as any stale bread.  No meat.  No dairy products.  Their hunger is insatiable.  Mooooo.

Far Away Isle Revisited

I discovered this great article about the late, lamented Opera House restaurant in Nantucket.

The Opera House, Nantucket

The Far Away Isle

Dressed for dinner in days of yore.  Dolphin Guest House in background

We were in Nantucket for a couple days, and I've decided that July and August are not the months I want to be in Nantucket.  Hordes and hordes of people.  Almost as many vehicles, mostly SUVs, pickups and trucks.  Lots of trucks.  Bumper to bumper.  Bicyclists on the sidewalks avoid the street.  Restaurants so loud you need earplugs.  Everything expensive.  Too many people.  Oh god, the people.  We spent a ghastly amount of money, just 4 people and 2 days.

When lobster was cooked outside by the docks.  Site of current Ropewalk Restaurant

Of course some things never change.  The Nobby shop, Murrays, Tradewinds, Barbara's Bookstore and the Hub.  The Ropewalk seems the same, but I still remember the year they boiled lobsters in huge iron pots in that spot and a folk singer held her guitar and sang.

The "traditional" ferry hasn't changed THAT much, except for, well, the airline type seats and wi-fi and did they always have an elevator?  Leaving the harbor in Hyannis hasn't changed except that the houses look very well cared for and there are so freakin' many of them, like two feet apart.  I love the house with its own lighthouse.  The big monstrosity with the moorish arches is soooo out of place.  What were they thinking?  Where was the zoning board?

Coming into Nantucket one sees the familiar breakwater and the jetties.  Big fat grey houses where some more modest ones used to be at Brant Point.  A couple hold outs.  When we first arrived in Nantucket, the harbor had rotting pilings and a ramshackle ferry dock.    Everything up to date now, of course.  In the old days when you returned from the beach in late afternoon and climbed into the shower, the power usually went out as half the people on the island did likewise.  Now there's a new water tower and a new power plant.  Lots of new stores.  The Mad Hatter is gone, the Opera House is long gone.  Ralph Lauren has a glitzy store where Nantucket Looms (now moved) used to be.

One never did and one still does not cringe at the sight of men in tank tops and black socks, so that is still a Good Thing.  Downflake Donuts are now "mid-island," whatever the hell that means.      Mostly powerboats at the slips, and a few atrociously big sail boats and I wonder if the sails on the current monstrosity are ever actually, like, unfurled.

When the poet asked, "where are the snows of yesteryear," he could have been speaking of The Far Away Isle.  It's airport is the second busiest in Massachusetts.  Private jets, don'tcha know.  Just like East Hampton.  Lots of trophy wives, flaunting their blond hair and skinny legs.  Is this sour grapes?  I used to have blond hair and skinny legs too.  Without the bling, of course.  Definitely without the bling.

There are still blond little kids begging for stuff at The Sunken Ship, and lined up for ice cream.  Those places haven't changed either.  Captain Toby's seems a shadow of itself and 21 Federal is now a pricey Italian restaurant that refers to itself as "affordable."  One man's "affordable" is open to debate.  It's the thought that counts, I guess.  Ice cream cones are $8.00+ if you want large.  Our local dairy store sells them for half that, but then when you see the trucks trundling on and off the ferry you understand why everything costs so much.  Our former boarding house is now a private home, a duplex we think.  The landlady's daughter baby sat for us.  Ah, paradise, enow!  I lost a good pair of sunglasses sailing over the Tuckernuck Shoals.  Wonder how barnacle encrusted they are now.  Those are pearls that were her eyes.

The Ropewalk Restaurant on Nantucket's Dock

Okay, I am getting maudlin.  It's just that the wonderful place, Nantucket, has become a little too wonderful.  I miss the ramshackle restaurant over the water where the seagulls mooched part of your fish, the old Nantucket lightship, the possibility of giving the oldest kid $10 and telling him to take the little kids to dinner, or sending the kids off to a movie while the grownups have dinner.   I even miss the man selling popcorn OUTSIDE the theater.  He put some bright orange goo on the popcorn, and when I asked if it was butter (or course it was not butter) he adamantly declare it was "real butter" and always had been for 30 years.  I don't know what they are building on the old movie house lot.  Looks like another movie theatre, but it will probably cost $12 a head.  I only hope they'll have some g-rated movies so the parents can have a noisy, expensive dinner somewhere without the kids.   Some things never change.

One can thank the many preservation societies for acquiring so much open land, and not letting weird architecture and chain stores (except Ralph Lauren) get a foothold.  By the way, the RL store Is Not your Macy's RL dept, but rather the store of the full page ads in the New York Sunday Times.  Yowza!

A more charming downscale Nantucket

The upshot of this post is that the Far Away Isle that I once knew has disappeared into the mists of time, now further and further away, but never actually . . . gone.