Linear narrative was not doing a very good job representing life as I experienced it

“There are so many of us out there, trying to turn Spyrograph flowers into rocket ships.”
Jill Talbot, Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction

“A mind that moves associatively (as my mind does and probably your mind too) like a firefly in a grassy yard on a late June evening, has more fun (and other things too, of course, like static, like trouble) than a mind that moves logically or even chronologically.”
Jill Talbot, Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction

Big Empty Space

“The first time I walked through the spacious house, I didn't see possibility or a new start. I saw a big, empty space. These rooms looked like all I did not have, every room a challenge, rather than an opportunity.”

Jill Talbot, Loaded: Women and Addiction

Krista Diamond

 When I was 19, I signed up for a summer outdoor adventure program. For two weeks, I sailed the coast of Maine, living on a 30-foot sailboat with 10 people. We slept on the oars, dove into the cold Atlantic each morning, saw phosphorescence dance beneath the current each night. When the wind wasn’t in our favor—which was often—we couldn’t sail so we rowed. We rowed in the fog, in the rain, in the wet cold past uninhabited islands where sheep improbably grazed. We rowed and we sang. We rowed and we cursed. And on breaks from rowing, we ate. We ate graham crackers with peanut butter and then graham crackers with regular butter and then best of all, graham crackers with peanut butter and regular butter. All of this fat was so good. So good at keeping us warm and full and happy. Those peanut-butter-regular-butter graham crackers made us kinder to each other. They allowed us to see the ocean as beautiful. They gave us the strength to guide the sailboat home. Krista Diamond & more

Edgecliff Drive

Okay so I'm waking my dog and my dog pooped and I clean it up in a black plastic bag and carried it on my walk. I am on Edgecliff Drive where I've walked for 29 years. It's trash day and all the bins are at the curb but they are already emptied.

I came upon a bin that had a plastic bag liner. So I thought great, and I dropped the bag in along with a soda can I found at Elyse's bushes.

A huge black construction truck drives up next to me and puts the window down. "Did you drop a dog poop bag in my barrel? I saw you looking around and then drop it in?"

I was looking to ask your permission, I said but I didn't see anyone.

And your dog peed on my tire!

Do you want me to let my dog pee on your tires and rims?

I glanced at his beat up Chevy truck the kind with the huge tires. The door had red painted script Verona's Home Improvement on the driver's side door. Duly noted, I thought.

I had no idea this was a crime, I said. I saw the trash barrel liner and thought oh good, I can throw my trash in the bin. I had no idea my dog peeing on a tire was bad either. I'm sorry.

Don't let it happen again he said.

Oh, I did drop a can in too, one I found at Elyse's bushes, I said pointing to her house.

The recyclables, that's okay, he said softening.

 He was about 37 years old medium build with bald spot and black hair at the sides.

Last time I was parked up here the police were called and I explained to the motorcycle cop that I just cleaned up a pile of trash out at the island.

This is my linear park. I tend to pick up trash. I chatted with the cop and it turned out we had friends in common.

I've been walking up here for many years and so I've come to know nearly everyone a little bit.

I took off my sunglasses and took off my black leather trash picking gloves reached over and shook his hand. I'm Emily.

I'm Ethan, he said reaching out of the truck cab window.
 

Oh, the folks that lived in your house had 2 dogs

 I have one dog, he said

 and the wife was pregnant. They put up the big chain link fence. I recalled.

 I'm new to the neighborhood. I moved in last October,

Welcome to the neighborhood, Ethan.

Brownies using Bananas

The brownies came out even better!
 For folks with gallbladder sensitivity a dessert that is not overly rich.

Ready In: 40 mins

Serves: 16

Ingredients

  • 1  cup sugar (or 4 overripe pureed bananas)
  • 34 cup (whole wheat flour)
  • 12 cup dark cocoa or melted baking chocolate
  • 2  eggs (optional) or flax eggs
  • 14 teaspoon  baking soda
  • 14 teaspoon salt
  • 23 cup yogurt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  •  nonstick cooking spray

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Mix all dry ingredients.
  3. Add yogurt and mix well.
  4. Batter will be very thick.
  5. Spray an 8x8 pan with nonstick cooking spray.
  6. Spread batter evenly.
  7. Bake for 30-35 minutes.
  8. Remove and cool.
  9. Dip a knife in warm water and cut into 16 squares.

Not one Good Memory

It's been many years since my mother died and I have wracked my brain for one good memory of her. I am still looking. Make sure when you die your children have good memories of you.

Harmon Champions Woonsocket “You have to try to shed as much light of positivity in society since there’s so much negativity and so, if anybody asks me, I’m going to boldly speak about what I’m trying to accomplish both personally and professionally,” she said. We’ve got to put some type of goodness in the world.”

https://www.valleybreeze.com/news/history-making-harmon-finds-community-connectivity-in-woonsocket/article_f2780386-1d07-11ef-903a-1716733878e4.html 

WOONSOCKET – As part of Stages of Freedom’s African-Americans in Military History Month, the non-profit is saluting long-time city resident Sharon Harmon, the first Black soldier to achieve the rank of colonel in the Rhode Island National Guard.

Throughout her distinguished career and community activism, Harmon has focused on diversity and inclusion, forging a path for those coming up behind her.

In 1979, her father sent her from her native South Carolina to visit his sister and three nieces in Woonsocket. Harmon says she loved encountering so many types of people.

“I had never heard of a Cambodian, never heard of Asians, the Puerto Ricans, and it was just great to have so many different diverse people to hang out and to play with,” she said.

Back home as an only child, she said she missed the “connectivity” she felt in Rhode Island, and it was that and the freedom of living with other girls that finally enticed her return the day after high school graduation. She has lived in Woonsocket ever since.

Harmon enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in 1985 and transferred to the National Guard in 1993 to attend officer candidate school. She has served in many roles, earning multiple awards.

Harmon made history as the first female African-American to achieve the rank of lieutenant colonel at the National Guard, then made history again as the first Black soldier promoted to colonel in August 2022.

“When I meet with leadership now, I’m still the only Black individual at the table. However, I don’t feel excluded,” she says. “Leadership seems to be open to diversity…and feel that I’ve earned my seat at the table.”

Harmon is now the National Guard’s joint resiliency director, where she has built upon the family program to include two other efforts: the Resilience Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention Department and the Integrated Primary Prevention Program, designed to help service members and their families feel stronger and avoid drugs and alcohol.

One of her favorite roles is serving as mentor.

“I want others to achieve that goal of colonel … so I’d like to help anyone looking for help, regardless of color or gender, and I know that there’s a need for a diverse group,” she said.

Because she plans to retire next year, Harmon especially encourages women.

“I’m constantly talking with some of those ladies … behind me to let them know to keep pushing, keep driving, helping me to… pave the way for the future generation,” she said.

Harmon’s Woonsocket roots run deep now, having raised her children here, both of whom plan to remain in the area after college.

With her master’s degree in education, she taught special education for the Woonsocket School Department and says she is proud of her involvement in community groups such as the Children’s Crusade and the NAACP. This year, she joined the Rhode Island Coalition of Black Women and is excited about its LEAD program where she mentors a group of young Black girls.

“I enjoy learning from them while I try to give them some of the things … that helped me get over any hurdles or difficulties,” she said.

As a member of the Woonsocket Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board, she reviews city policies and procedures to seek out racism and bias.

“If we don’t invest our time into the city we live in, no one else will, and if you want it to be productive and you want it to be a great city, we have to do all we can, even when it’s moving slow,” she said.

Harmon sums up her service with a characteristically hopeful outlook.

“You have to try to shed as much light of positivity in society since there’s so much negativity and so, if anybody asks me, I’m going to boldly speak about what I’m trying to accomplish both personally and professionally,” she said. We’ve got to put some type of goodness in the world.”

Crinkle Cut DIY

 I keep skins on...

https://masonfit.com/how-to-make-crinkle-cut-fries/

Fundraiser for a Woman to obtain a Life Changing Dog

 https://www.valleybreeze.com/news/a-helping-paw-how-a-service-dog-could-change-life-for-destinee-santos/article_886eabb8-1d3c-11ef-a002-bf8f6c39202a.html

ghostarmy: the inflatables were designed by Fred Patten at the U.S. Rubber Company in Woonsocket Rhode Island. (Patten also designed the inflatable one-man liferafts carried by fighter pilots in the Pacific.) The tanks were manufactured by a consortium of companies that included U.S. Rubber, Goodyear, and the Scranton Lace Curtain Manufacturing Company, in Scranton PA.

 

ghostarmy 311

Theresa Blais (nee Ricard)  was one of the workers who put together tanks at the U.S. Rubber's Alice Mill in Woonsocket. She was 16, and every day after school she was paid 49 cents an hour to work the 3-7 shift. She needed her ID badge (above) to get in to the building. Terry and her fellow workers referred to the tanks as "targets." "We were painting, they called it cementing, these big tubes. We'd cement them and fold them different ways to make sure it fit."  

Blais says she didn't know exactly what the dummies would be used for.  "When you're 16 you don't pay too much attention," she said.(Quotes from an interview in the Valley Breeze by Louise Tetreault.)

As far as is known, none of the rubber tanks made during the war survive today. 

Save the Cooking Water for Bread or Soup Making

Pasta water is another starch-filled liquid perfect for bread-baking. If your pasta or potato water has been salted, reduce the salt in your bread recipe a bit.  Also bean water and vegetable water (kale carrots, etc from the pressure cooker!) This water drained off boiled potatoes is cloudy thanks to starch leached from the potatoes. It'll make great bread!

What I Learned About Life at My 30th College Reunion “Every classmate who became a teacher or doctor seemed happy,” and 29 other lessons from seeing my Harvard class of 1988 all grown up By Deborah Copaken

Intelligence, it has been said, is the ability to hold two opposing ideas at the same time and still function, and if universities could be said to have one overriding goal as institutions of higher learning, it is to teach its students this critical skill, Harvard no more than others. Seeing the coin from either of its two sides has never been more important, particularly now, in this nuance-lacking era of divisiveness and nationalism. It’s no wonder that in fascist regimes, the intellectuals are always the first to be silenced.

Article

‘Everywhere I go there’s a memory for me,’ Selleck says. ‘I can go away, do all these high-powered scenes, then come back here and just watch the trees I planted grow.

‘Before an audition, I’ve always said to myself, sometimes out loud, you’re enough, Tom. You’re enough to find your own way,’ Selleck says. This crops up a lot in his memoirs. ‘Errant thoughts’ is what he calls it, but it often comes across as imposter syndrome.

‘The ultimate acceptance of “you’re enough, Tom” was Spielberg and Lucas wanting me. And I always held on to that.’ Did he dwell on what might have been? ‘No, people bring it up, but I put it to bed long ago. It made my work better, that they’d thought I was enough.’

Retirement is anathema to him. ‘Acting is a very unusual life, and when you have it for 50 years, you either handle it or go crazy. There’s fewer and fewer people at the age I am, so the talent pool thins out. A lot of people didn’t handle it, some people passed away… So there’s work, which I hope continues.’

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2024/05/04/tom-selleck-interview-moustache-magnum-pi-blue-bloods/

You Never Know: A Memoir is out on May 9 (HarperCollins, £22); pre-order at books.telegraph.co.uk

& video

Octavia

I read a lot of science fiction as a kid. And, of course, that meant reading boys books because that's what kids' science fiction was. I made up my own stories to put myself in them. I wound up writing science fiction from the point of view of girls and women, just because I was a girl and I am a woman. I wound up writing science fiction from the point of view of Black people because I am Black. But I've also explored and I, in a strange sense, I suppose, found out what it might be like to be a white male or whatever. One of the things writing does is, is allow you to be other people without actually being locked up for it.

OCTAVIA BUTLER

There should be a clean clear surface with much disturbance below.

 1) There should be a clean clear surface with much disturbance below.

2) An anagogical level.

3) Sentences that can stand strikingly alone.

4) An animal within to give its blessing.

5) Interior voices which are or become wildly erratically exterior.

6) A novel wants to befriend you, a short story almost never.

7) Control is necessary throughout. Constraints allow the short story to thrive.

8) The story’s effect should utterly transcend the naturalness and accessibility of its situation and language.

9) A certain coldness is required in execution. It is not a form that gives itself to consolation but if consolation is offered it should come from an unexpected quarter.

JOY WILLIAMS               

Savor

 SAVOR HOW EXERCISE MAKES YOU FEEL

Exercise can be an escape from the drudgery of real life. A good workout relaxes you. Food tastes better. The sunset’s prettier. Work stress is somehow less pressing. You’re confident after a workout because you’ve proven to yourself that you know how to use and inhabit your body.

Taking a moment to appreciate that feeling makes it easier to recall it and use it to motivate you to your next workout.

Cuckoo Cuckoo

I just was walking home from my downtown loop with my dog, ROMEO.

A resident I'd never seen before who lives at 558 East School Street just came out and told me not to walk on her side of East School because she didn't want to hear me say hello to Jean of 552 East School Street, her neighbor! I thought, Whaaaaaat?
 
 I've lived here 29 years.
 
 She said, I don't care! I don't want to hear any conversation!
 
I mumbled CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKOO CUCKCOO CUCKOO as I walked home getting louder and louder the further way I was in fact I am now shouting CUCKOO around the house as I am doing things. 
 
Wow!!
 
CUCKOO!! I'm still MAD. Yes, I could start WWIII today.

I imagine shouting CUCKOO anytime I walk by her door just like today I shouted HURRY UP from inside my kitchen when I heard my neighbor Erin shout that at her poor imprisoned dog who gets one chance a day to pee.

NOISE enrages me and stupidity enrages me just as much. Yes, I am being stupid too. I have an antagonistic streak. Why is it that people's response to FEAR is to TRY TO CONTROL EVERYONE AROUND THEM?

And back in the day, Linda tried to own lane 5 at the YMCA pool and one morning she and Monika started fighting over it. Yes, a cat fight over a swim lane. I guess I answered my own question.
 
I plan to be very quiet from here on out today. No more humans please.

Your job in this life is your “life-work” Isaiah Frizzelle

If you remember who you are, you won’t be so eager to remind anyone else. That’s success!

As I gear up for the next meet up/signing… I’m processing all of this life journey stuff. 😂

I’m reminded that life gets to be so dope! And I mean something real cool. I look back and laugh to myself sometimes because man, It’s a been a ride with many surprises.
Even yourself!

You can’t doubt what you’re capable of while literally showing what you are capable…I mean you can but why would you? Stop trying to apologize for your mere existence so other people feel comfortable. Stop fearing your significance.

Life leaves little clues as you move through it, constantly reminding you of what it means to be yourself, and knowing the worth and value of that.

Your job in this life is your “life-work”, so don’t be so busy working overtime trying to prove your worth.

Write your story, Literally. Own it, embrace it, enjoy it and make magic out of it. 🪄 ✨

You got work to do!

Walker Percy Birthday: You can get all A's and still flunk life. Walker Percy, The Second Coming

“The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o'clock on an ordinary morning:

The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.

The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn't have to.”
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

“The peculiar predicament of the present-day self surely came to pass as a consequence of the disappointment of the high expectations of the self as it entered the age of science and technology. Dazzled by the overwhelming credentials of science, the beauty and elegance of the scientific method, the triumph of modern medicine over physical ailments, and the technological transformation of the very world itself, the self finds itself in the end disappointed by the failure of science and technique in those very sectors of life which had been its main source of ordinary satisfaction in past ages.

As John Cheever said, the main emotion of the adult Northeastern American who has had all the advantages of wealth, education, and culture is disappointment.

Work is disappointing. In spite of all the talk about making work more creative and self-fulfilling, most people hate their jobs, and with good reason. Most work in modern technological societies is intolerably dull and repetitive.

Marriage and family life are disappointing. Even among defenders of traditional family values, e.g., Christians and Jews, a certain dreariness must be inferred, if only from the average time of TV viewing. Dreary as TV is, it is evidently not as dreary as Mom talking to Dad or the kids talking to either.

School is disappointing. If science is exciting and art is exhilarating, the schools and universities have achieved the not inconsiderable feat of rendering both dull. As every scientist and poet knows, one discovers both vocations in spite of, not because of, school. It takes years to recover from the stupor of being taught Shakespeare in English Lit and Wheatstone's bridge in Physics.

Politics is disappointing. Most young people turn their backs on politics, not because of the lack of excitement of politics as it is practiced, but because of the shallowness, venality, and image-making as these are perceived through the media--one of the technology's greatest achievements.

The churches are disappointing, even for most believers. If Christ brings us new life, it is all the more remarkable that the church, the bearer of this good news, should be among the most dispirited institutions of the age. The alternatives to the institutional churches are even more grossly disappointing, from TV evangelists with their blown-dry hairdos to California cults led by prosperous gurus ignored in India but embraced in La Jolla.

Social life is disappointing. The very franticness of attempts to reestablish community and festival, by partying, by groups, by club, by touristy Mardi Gras, is the best evidence of the loss of true community and festival and of the loneliness of self, stranded as it is as an unspeakable consciousness in a world from which it perceives itself as somehow estranged, stranded even within its own body, with which it sees no clear connection.

But there remains the one unquestioned benefit of science: the longer and healthier life made possible by modern medicine, the shorter work-hours made possible by technology, hence what is perceived as the one certain reward of dreary life of home and the marketplace: recreation.

Recreation and good physical health appear to be the only ambivalent benefits of the technological revolution.”
Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book

May Swenson

It's the birthday of poet May Swenson, born in Logan, Utah (1913). Her parents were Swedish immigrants who came to the United States as converts to Mormonism. She was the first of ten children, and she became the black sheep of the family when she started questioning the Mormon faith at the age of thirteen. She began keeping a diary and composing poems, later saying that writing was the one place she felt free to express herself: "I'm two eyes looking out of a suit of armor. I write because I can't talk."

Monday, May 27, 2024

If you write, fix pipes, grade papers, lay bricks or drive a taxi - do it with a sense of pride.

 

“Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.”
Rod Serling

“Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.”
Rod Serling

“There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.”
Rod Serling
 
“We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.”
Rod Serling

“There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man ... a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination.”
Rod Serling

“Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete”
Rod Serling

“This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable...Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. . .
Next stop The Twilight Zone.”
Rod Serling

“...the worst aspect of our time is prejudice... In almost everything I've written, there is a thread of this - man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.”
Rod Serling

“Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.”
Rod Serling

“All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes -all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard, into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance. Then we become the grave diggers.”
Rod Serling

“The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone.
[closing narration: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", Twilight Zone episode aired March 4, 1960”
Rod Serling

“for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized”
Rod Serling

“You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing asunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.”
Rod Serling

“Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.”
Rod Serling

“You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.”
Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

“It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.”
Rod Serling

“According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man’s prerogative - and woman’s - to create their own particular and private hell.”
Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

“If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.”
Rod Serling

“If you write, fix pipes, grade papers, lay bricks or drive a taxi - do it with a sense of pride. And do it the best you know how. Be cognizant and sympathetic to the guy alongside, because he wants a place in the sun, too. And always...always look past his color, his creed, his religion and the shape of his ears. Look for the whole person. Judge him as the whole person.”
Rod Serling

“In his grave, we praise him for his decency - but when he walked amongst us, we responded with no decency of our own.

When he suggested that all men should have a place in the sun - we put a special sanctity on the right of ownership and the privilege of prejudice by maintaining that to deny homes to Negroes was a democratic right.

Now we acknowledge his compassion - but we exercised no compassion of our own. When he asked us to understand that men take to the streets out of anguish and hopelessness and a vision of that dream dying, we bought guns and speculated about roving agitators and subversive conspiracies and demanded law and order.

We felt anger at the effects, but did little to acknowledge the causes. We extol all the virtues of the man - but we chose not to call them virtues before his death.

And now, belatedly, we talk of this man's worth - but the judgement comes late in the day as part of a eulogy when it should have been made a matter of record while he existed as a living force. If we are to lend credence to our mourning, there are acknowledgements that must be made now, albeit belatedly. We must act on the altogether proper assumption that Martin Luther King asked for nothing but that which was his due... He asked only for equality, and it is that which we denied him.

[excerpt from a letter to The Los Angeles Times in response to the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.; April 8, 1968”
Rod Serling

“Imagination... its limits are only those of the mind itself.”
Rod Serling

“Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.”
Rod Serling

“The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in, becoming narcissistic.”
Rod Serling

“Every man is put on earth condemned to die. Time and method of execution unknown.”
Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

“A sickness known as hate; not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ - but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the Twilight Zone - look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether.”
Rod Serling

“If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.”
Rod Serling, The Twilight Zone: Complete Stories

“The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.”
Rod Serling

“It has forever been thus: So long as men write what they think, then all of the other freedoms - all of them - may remain intact. And it is then that writing becomes a weapon of truth, an article of faith, an act of courage.”
Rod Serling

“For the record, suspicion can kill, and prejudice can destroy. And a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own, for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.”
Rod Serling

PTSD

 Image

Like so many, my dad was plagued by PTSD and nightmares after the war. In college he switched his major to language and literature because, as he said, "I needed to get it out of my gut...write it down. This is the way it began for me." Image: Rod Serling 1943 & 1975

"Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it. It flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it." The author of that quotation is anonymous, which is perhaps appropriate as we celebrate Memorial Day weekend. Most of the names of those killed in our nation's many wars are unknown to us.

Meaning Behind the 13 Folds

The flag-folding ceremony represents the same religious principles on which our great country was originally founded.

  1. The first fold of our flag is a symbol of life.
  2. The second fold is a symbol of our belief in eternal life.
  3. The third fold is made in honor and remembrance of the veteran departing our ranks, and who gave a portion of his or her life for the defense of our country to attain peace throughout the world.
  4. The fourth fold represents our weaker nature; as American citizens trusting in God, it is Him we turn to in times of peace, as well as in times of war, for His divine guidance.
  5. The fifth fold is a tribute to our country. In the words of Stephen Decatur, "Our country, in dealing with other countries, may she always be right, but it is still our country, right or wrong."
  6. The sixth fold is for where our hearts lie. It is with our heart that we pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
  7. The seventh fold is a tribute to our armed forces, for it is through the armed forces that we protect our country and our flag against all enemies, whether they be found within or without the boundaries of our republic.
  8. The eighth fold is a tribute to the one who entered into the valley of the shadow of death, that we might see the light of day, and to honor our mother, for whom it flies on Mother's Day.
  9. The ninth fold is a tribute to womanhood. It has been through their faith, love, loyalty and devotion that has molded the character of the men and women who have made this country great.
  10. The 10th fold is a tribute to father, who has also given his sons and daughters for the defense of our country since he or she was first born.
  11. The 11th fold represents the lower portion of the seal of King David and King Solomon and glorifies the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
  12. The 12th fold represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies God the Father, the Son and Holy Ghost.
  13. The 13th and last fold, when the flag is completely folded, the stars are uppermost, reminding us of our national motto, "In God We Trust."

The Omnivorous Michael Pollan

The Omnivorous Michael Pollan

After transforming our notions about food and health with 2006’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” writer and UC Berkeley journalism professor Michael Pollan followed up with a 2009 manifesto, “In Defense of Food,” which he then distilled to a collection of simple guidelines in “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual” later that year. This month he releases an updated edition of “Food Rules” (The Penguin Press) with wry illustrations by Maira Kalman. “The idea is to reach a lot of people who don’t read books,” he said.

Shortly after the first “Food Rules” debuted, Mr. Pollan, 56, began soliciting new dictums from readers and audiences at his speaking engagements. Keeping the best suggestions (“Place a bouquet of flowers on the table and everything will taste twice as good”) and discarding the less useful (“The French fries you pick off someone else’s plate carry no calories”), the new edition includes 19 new rules, bringing the total to 83. “If people just get three rules out of this book, I’m content with that,” said the author, who sat down with us in the backyard of his Berkeley, Calif., bungalow, to talk “forgiving” tomatoes, finicky worms and the cost of Maldon sea salt.

My wife and I usually eat lunch in the garden. Judith has a studio in the basement where she paints, and I write upstairs. It’s a great luxury to be able to work from home and have lunch together every day. Although many days we have nothing to say to one another, because we’re too absorbed in our work, and we just grunt at each other. So it’s not always as romantic as it sounds.

I’m making sauerkraut. I bought a Harsch sauerkraut crock with a water-lock seal. I’ve experimented with a lot of fermented things—kimchi, home-brewed beer. We brewed our own English pale ale using a kit from Oak Barrel Winecraft in Berkeley. It wasn’t bad.

We have zinc countertops, which are beautiful but higher maintenance than I would have liked. The island is made of elm from a street tree that fell in Oakland. There’s a man out here named Evan Shively, a wood recycler, who has barns full of big slabs. Our elm slab has a gorgeous grain and a food-grade finish so we can make bread on it, but you wouldn’t want to scratch it. Though I just scratched it last week.

For pots and pans, we use a hodge-podge: our 12-inch cast-iron skillet that gets used every day, our big All-Clad fry pan and a wok with a conventional handle and a flat bottom. You can do a lot of things with it besides stir-frying. You can stack a giant mass of greens, like six cubic feet of green matter, and let them gradually sink down.

Tongs are a great invention. That’s the thing in my hand most of the time when I’m cooking.

Our garden has three cook surfaces: the gas grill, the charcoal Big Green Egg and the fire pit. My brother-in-law is in the barbecue supply business and built a big grill that sits across the top of the pit. We can enclose it with a metal frame that we wrap with foil and cover with a painter’s tarp. That makes a great oven. We’ve roasted whole pigs in it and done paella on it.

We grow a lot of kale and collards, which don’t need tons of light. You can’t really ripen a big tomato here, or at least I can’t. It’s not hot enough. We do grow cherry tomatoes. I’m convinced Sun Gold cherry tomatoes are the most forgiving tomato ever hybridized.

We have a compost pile and a worm bin. I take the choice bits from the compost that the worms will like and I give them that. Which is kind of a pain, because they don’t like onions, they don’t like lemon peels, they don’t like acid. They like eggplant, peels of various things like squash and melons, eggshells, lettuce and other greens.

We cook very simply and grill a lot. If we’re having guests, we’ll grill fish, or in the winter we like to do braises—duck, chicken. I also love slow-cooked pork.

I couldn’t do without olive oil and salt. There’s a domestic olive oil called Katz I like a lot. It’s a little pricey, so we also use a Costco olive oil, at least I think it’s olive oil. It’s fine for hot applications. For salt, if I’m splurging, I like Maldon sea salt, but only on salads or at the table. Seven dollars for salt is kind of obscene though it actually lasts a long time. Otherwise, we use Diamond kosher salt.

An ingredient I really like is porcini powder. It’s delicious in soups, especially vegetarian ones—it’s like adding meat stock.

When I’m snacking, I’ll have nuts. They’re fattening, but they’re filling, too, so you don’t need that many of them.

I have a weakness for potato chips, but there are never any in the house. I like the ones they give you on JetBlue. My sister has a rule that when you’re traveling, there are no rules.

I won’t eat meat in an airport. They really need some better options.

I drink more tea than coffee. I sip tea while I’m working. Usually Japanese green tea or pu-erh.

Every morning, Judith and I walk down the hill and have a cup of coffee. We usually go to the Cheese Board—one of the few ’70s co-ops that survived—and walk by the pastries. I said to her, “We go to the Cheese Board every day, and we never get a pastry, what’s wrong with us?” But I don’t have a big sweet tooth. I’m satisfied with one bite of a sweet. That’s not self-discipline; the second bite won’t taste quite as good.

We’ve done an annual pig roast for the last few years, usually in November. A good friend of mine, the writer Jack Hitt, is from South Carolina and his passion is cooking whole animals. Every year at Yale there’s a Jack Hitt Memorial Pig Roast—though he’s nowhere near dead—that he supervises. And he comes out to teach at my program. I got to know Mark Pasternak of Devil’s Gulch Ranch, who has really nice pigs. The pig can’t be any longer than 47 inches from snout to butt to fit in our fire pit. It actually ends up being a reasonable way to feed a lot of people. For $200 you can feed 75. We do the sides, beans, two kinds of rice (red and yellow), corn bread, rolls and homemade barbecue sauce.

The best food gift I’ve ever received was a bottle of really old balsamic vinegar. I’ve had it for five years and only use a drop at a time, because I saw in a store that it was like $90 for three ounces. One drop of that on a piece of salmon, and you have an amazing dish.

A great gift my wife gave me is a hand-crank Italian pasta maker. Usually those things end up on a shelf, but we actually use it. I mostly make fettuccine.

I’ve been experimenting with whole-wheat pasta and breads. Store-bought whole-grain pasta is seldom very good, although it’s getting better. There’s a really good local flour, Community Grains, that I use. Conventional milling technology splits off the bran and germ right at the beginning. If they are selling the whole grain, they just add those parts back in later, which apparently is not as good as keeping them in the whole time. That’s the Community Grains premise. Whole grain is one of the important things missing from the Western diet.

I could live on bread for the rest of my life.

For cookbooks, I like Tartine Bread, David Tanis’s books, the Chez Panisse books, Suzanne Goin’s and I use Mark Bittman’s book a lot. If I don’t know how to make something, or want to remember the proportions in a roux, I’ll look at Bittman’s iPad app. I’m ruining my iPad. They need a cook-proof iPad with some sort of kitchen condom.

—Edited from an interview by Emily Kaiser Thelin

Savory Sourdough Banana Bread

I use pumpkin in my sourdough multi grain yeast breads but I wonder if I could use banana the same way. Savory banana bread. Like this. https://www.bluebonnetbaker.com/banana-yeast-bread/

Family Narcissism

I always thought that when my parents died we would bury the narcissism with them. I was dead wrong! My sister seems to have embodied the very characteristics not worth emulating.

But then I remind myself that I escaped the family regime and my siblings did not. How many families are like this?

I'm reminded of the two brothers in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. This is how it is for my sister and me.

She wears our mother's clothes and talks about her being a great entertainer. I talk about the child abuse and threats and maltreatment. 

Thank God my high school teachers helped me run away. My mother was threatened by my youth and talent, and she threatened to give me a colostomy. I've learned later in my life that I do have a long intestine which caused problems for me as a child. Apparently I had inherited my father's intestine.

My mother's ex-husband was my biological father. She married (eloped) when she was 16 and he was 18. He was a tall, lanky, sun-tanned blue-eyed lifeguard. She was a budding artist who had been sexually abused and had to escape her family.

She just repeated the abuse. She was a psychological mess, taking valium and speed, and I pictured her going through life like a gorilla with a chainsaw. A chainsaw headed for my guts. So I escaped.

36 Years in Woonsocket Rhode Island and still loving it!

I never knew I'd FALL IN LOVE with a CITY!

46 years in Rhode Island!! Since 1978.

I ran away to RI when I was 17!!

Saturday, May 25, 2024

Cooked a vat of Chili and Wacked Weeds

 I made a vat of chili and then weed wacked my postage stamp yard. A perfect day. Love to all.

Roethke

It's the birthday of poet Theodore Roethke, born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1908. He grew up working with his father and uncle in his family's greenhouses, and later said, "They were to me, I realize now, both heaven and hell, a kind of tropics created in the savage climate of Michigan, where austere German Americans turned their love of order and their terrifying efficiency into something beautiful." His uncle committed suicide in 1923, and his father died of cancer that same year.

Roethke kept notebooks, lots of notebooks, more than 200 of them over the course of his life, jotting down random thoughts, scraps of phrases, conversations, and criticisms (of himself as well as others). Some of these notes eventually found their way into his poetry, but not many of them did; his biographer Allen Seagar estimated that only 3 percent of the lines he jotted down were ever published.

He was a dedicated and exuberant teacher, but sometimes resented the intrusion teaching made into his own work. He wrote, "It's no way to live — to go from exhaustion to exhaustion." He suffered from bipolar disorder and in his manic phases would work himself so hard that he ended up hospitalized. He died of a heart attack in 1963.

The greenhouses and plants of Roethke's youth often served as a central image in his poems, like "The Geranium":

The Geranium

When I put her out, once, by the garbage pail,
She looked so limp and bedraggled,
So foolish and trusting, like a sick poodle,
Or a wizened aster in late September,
I brought her back in again
For a new routine —
Vitamins, water, and whatever
Sustenance seemed sensible
At the time: she'd lived
So long on gin, bobbie pins, half-smoked cigars, dead beer,
Her shriveled petals falling
On the faded carpet, the stale
Steak grease stuck to her fuzzy leaves.
(Dried-out, she creaked like a tulip.)
The things she endured! —
The dumb dames shrieking half the night
Or the two of us, alone, both seedy,
Me breathing booze at her,
She leaning out of her pot toward the window.
Near the end, she seemed almost to hear me —
And that was scary —
So when that snuffling cretin of a maid
Threw her, pot and all, into the trash-can,
I said nothing.
But I sacked the presumptuous hag the next week,
I was that lonely.

online retailer’s foray into the physical world

 “Nothing is better than seeing the actual things. I want to touch and feel it before I buy it.”

Rather than sectioning the store into faux rooms, a la IKEA, Wayfair broke up the Wilmette location in the style of its website, by topic. The first floor houses couches, dining tables, and office chairs alongside small goods customers can walk out with: color-coded cushions, candles, and drinkware. Near the entrance is The Porch, an onsite restaurant selling mezze boards and chipotle chicken melts alongside coffee, pastries, and brunch. The second floor is reserved for mattresses, patio necessities, children’s furniture, and big-ticket purchases, such as refrigerators and ovens. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/05/25/business/wayfair-big-box-wilmette-illinois/

Michael Smith's Chili

I pressure cook my beans in advance (2 separate batches to keep their color) and skip the bacon but this is THE BEST CHILI EVER!! The WHOLE tomatoes makes HUGE difference. I also add pureed Chipotle peppers in Adobo Sauce.

 https://chefmichaelsmith.com/recipe/spicy-chili/ We love Michael Smith's recipes. Check him out.

Dinner for 4-6

Ingredients

1 lbs bacon, chopped
2 whole onions, chopped
1 head garlic, separated peeled and sliced
2 chopped red peppers
3-5 heaping spoonfuls chili powder
2 lbs ground beef
2 28 oz cans whole tomatoes
1 19 oz can black beans
1 19 oz can kidney beans
Salt and Pepper

Procedure

Heat a large pot over medium-high heat and add bacon. Add a splash of water and let the bacon render it’s fat. As the water evaporates, the bacon will brown. Pour off excess fat and add the onions, garlic and peppers. Cook until they are softened and just beginning to caramelize. Add chili powder and ground beef and stir well, chopping the beef up with a wooden spoon. Add tomatoes and beans and season with salt and pepper. Simmer for an hour. If you have a chance, make this a day in advance and reheat when needed. The flavours will brighten and meld as it rests overnight.

Don't Panic

Don't panic. Midway through writing a novel, I have regularly experienced moments of bowel-curdling terror, as I contemplate the drivel on the screen before me and see beyond it, in quick succession, the derisive reviews, the friends' embarrassment, the failing career, the dwindling income, the repossessed house, the divorce . . . Working doggedly on through crises like these, however, has always got me there in the end. Leaving the desk for a while can help. Talking the problem through can help me recall what I was trying to achieve before I got stuck. Going for a long walk almost always gets me thinking about my manuscript in a slightly new way. And if all else fails, there's prayer. St. Francis de Sales, the patron saint of writers, has often helped me out in a crisis. If you want to spread your net more widely, you could try appealing to Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, too.

SARAH WATERS

Friday, May 24, 2024

Sourdough Sesame Poppy Breads

 with pumpkin puree and Irish oats, bran and wheat flour. They are baking now. Who knows!! 

They are delicious but bumpy looking. I brushed the tops with olive oil.

With a dab of margarine you can taste the honey. They are  a cross between a muffin and a bread!

I just found this and mine are similar but different. 

https://www.davidlebovitz.com/multiseed-muffins-birdseed-nancy-silverton-recipe/

Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity. Lao Tzu

The mind must be given relaxation‚ it will rise improved and sharper after a good break. Seneca     

Life is all about balance. You don’t always need to be getting stuff done. Sometimes it’s perfectly okay, and absolutely necessary, to shut down, kick back, and do nothing. Lori Deschene   

Sleep fully, then work intensely. Focus deeply, then relax completely. Give each phase your full attention. James Clear      

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are. Chinese proverb

Isaiah Frizzelle

“How someone treats you is a reflection of them not you.” And that goes both ways.


Giving people more of what they don’t value decreases its overall worth. Sometimes, the lesson for both parties is to recognize its importance.

There’s a lot of talk around this and There can be many factors for this phenomenon so let’s consider a few:

Sometimes it can be a perceived level of superiority-People may think they are better than you so what you offer doesn’t measure.

Sometimes it can be a perceived level of inferiority- people may feel the need to belittle you because they feel they don’t measure.

It can be a fragmented parental dynamic at play that shows up in their other relationships whether it be entitlement, enmeshment, or abandonment altogether.

****But the wondering of all the “why(s)?” Is not your work.

People may overlook who you are or the good offered precisely because it is abundant, and you might not see your own worth because you continue to give generously despite receiving less.

At some point, we have to recognize our agency to choose the relationships we cultivate, whether professional or interpersonal, especially when we are not being valued.

So let the question not be about what they do, but instead, what are you willing to do about it ? And are you someone who models the behavior of giving more where they are treated less?

Leave people to the things they deem important so you can invest time in who and what reflects back the same.

“Eventually people will start to treat you how they treat everyone else in their lives”- @nedratawwab

“Worst move ever-mismanaging a real one” @seasoned_dialogue

Everyone is fragile. Everyone is vulnerable. Don’t be afraid to open up beyond small talk.

 Enthusiasm is a form of social courage.

If you get bad vibes with an icy crew, don’t beat yourself up trying to break in. Listen to your intuition and move on. You’re too old for this.

Article

Ask yourself what underlay their acts and versions of the past.

Love your characters. Ask yourself what underlay their acts and versions of the past. Sometimes I pray to see people I’m angry at or resentful of as God sees them, which heals both page and heart. And one big fat caveat: lead with your own talent, which may cause you to ignore all I’ve recommended.

MARY KARR

Oda of Brabant (1134-1158) went to extreme measures to avoid an arranged marriage: she cut off her own nose.

Oda of Brabant (1134-1158) went to extreme measures to avoid an arranged marriage: she cut off her own nose. Her family then allowed her to pursue the religious vocation she desired. She eventually became a prioress in Belgium and although revered as a saint, she was never officially canonized.

From her vita: ‘Having closed the door she began to pray to God for help; she seized the sword … and hurried to cut off her nose. But her hand was shaking and she had not been trained to strike with a sword, and her feminine blow was not enough to cut through the greater hardness of the nerves. Indignantly she said, “Oh sword that is considered sharp, how is it that your biting sharpness does not wish to destroy the beauty of my face?!” Saying this, she lifted it up to herself again, and pressing the blade harder, cut off her nose with a sideways stroke and caught the precious river of rosy blood in a basin; and thus she fully destroyed the beauty of her cheeks and face.’

Image source: Jean de Caumont, Blessed Oda detail, stained glass from Park Abbey, Leuven, c. 1638. Photo: Ellen Shortell.

Nancy Hart Poem

 Eclipse

Too bad you don't look up, except
on rare occasions, like the Eclipse.
So what if it took decades
for you to lower the phone, set it
aside, and watch as the moon leisurely ate the Sun.  Even then, you had to play
a song on your iPhone, that tiresome one, Total Eclipse of the Heart, which I never liked and took all remaining daylight
to erase from my head.

Nancy Hart

Sourdough Sesame Poppy Seed Bread with Irish Oats & Pumpkin

The way I bake and cook is the way I do everything.  IMPROVISATION.

I open my fridge and just start doing stuff. Then I look up a recipe after to see if anyone on planet earth has done this. 

Yesterday I took leftover homemade coleslaw and leftover chick peas cooking liquid and pureed it and made cold vegetable soup. The idea hit me when I was in the shower. 

Like my mother used to I have the inside of the fridge memorized. Lower right bottom shelf, carrots & lettuce, lower left drawer tahini, top left shelf sundried tomatoes, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and a lemon. 

https://thefancypantskitchen.com/recipe/seeded-pumpkin-breadsticks/

Chaos Theory

It's the birthday of Edward Norton Lorenz, born in West Hartford, Connecticut, in 1917. He started out as a mathematician, but turned to meteorology during World War II. In an attempt to explain why it's so difficult to make a long-range weather forecast, he spawned chaos theory, one of the 20th century's most revolutionary scientific ideas.

 Chaos theory is sometimes known as "the butterfly effect," a term coined by Lorenz in an attempt to explain how small actions in a dynamic system like the atmosphere could trigger vast and unexpected changes. He discovered the effect in the early 1960s while entering values into a computer weather prediction program; instead of entering the number to the full six decimal places, he rounded it to three to save time, and the resulting weather pattern was completely different. He first framed it as the effect a seagull's wing has on the formation of a hurricane, but he changed it to the more poetic butterfly in his 1972 presentation, "Does the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?"

Though the term dates back to 1972, the concept actually predates Lorenz's discovery. Science fiction writers had been playing around with the idea for several years in their time-travel stories: Usually the hero goes back in time and makes some seemingly insignificant choice that ends up changing the course of history. Writer's Almanac

Margaret Wise Brown

Today is the birthday of the author of the classic children's book Goodnight MoonMargaret Wise Brown, born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1910. Brownie, as she was known to her friends, had a revolutionary idea about children's stories: Kids would rather read about things from their own world than fairy tales and fables.

 She was a lovely green-eyed blonde, extravagant and a little eccentric; with her first royalty check, she bought a street vendor's entire cart full of flowers, and then threw a party at her Upper East Side apartment to show off her purchase. She was a prolific author, writing nearly a hundred picture books under several pen names and sometimes keeping six different publishers busy at once with her projects. She was known to produce a book just so she could buy a plane ticket to Europe.

At one time, she dated Juan Carlos, Prince of Spain, and she had a long-term relationship with Michael Strange, John Barrymore's ex-wife. When she was 42, she met James Stillman Rockefeller Jr., who was 26, at a party and they hit it off immediately. They had a similar whimsical take on life, and were engaged to be married when she died suddenly; she had had surgery a few weeks before, and was kicking up her leg like a can-can dancer to show her doctor how well she felt. The kick dislodged a blood clot that was in her leg, and the clot traveled to her heart, killing her.

She never had children of her own, but she left the royalties for most of her books to a nine-year-old neighbor boy, Albert Clarke. Her estate was once worth a few hundred dollars, and now amounts to about $5 million — or rather, it would, had Clarke not squandered the inheritance, spending his life in and out of jail, throwing away clothes when they get dirty, and making a succession of bad real estate deals.

She said, "A good picture book can almost be whistled. ... All have their own melodies behind the storytelling." Writer's Almanac

Sanctuary Herbs of Providence

 https://sanctuaryherbs.com/our-farmers/

https://sanctuaryherbs.com/tea-of-the-month/

https://sanctuaryherbs.com/product-category/herbs/

Sanctuary Herb Farmer Nhia and Choua Xiong 

Window Boxes of Herbs

When I bought my house 29 years ago I fantasized about window boxes of herbs off the back room which was our dining room at the time. Now it's the mud room catch all room but I still want to have herbs in reach of my kitchen. 

I love to add herbs to soups and homemade crackers and yogurt dips. I plan to go to Joblot and Bileau's to support the locals.

Love your babies!

Longley Building Film

 Run of the Mill IV: Longley Building Screening

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Wednesday, May 22, 2024

Snowflake Button

It was so hot today (88 degrees) my candle was melted and bubbling up in the car. I opened all of the car windows and drove to the pool. After dinner Bill and I wanted to drive and walk ROMEO-dog in Blackstone 1 mile down the road. Bill pressed the snowflake button on the dashboard. It was the AC!!! Such a great discovery.

Orange Espresso

 Orangensaft-Espresso

The orange juice espresso is an unusual but delicious combination that may sound strange at first - but its taste is all the more surprising. This drink is a popular breakfast drink in Brazil, where it is known as "café com suco de laranja".

The acidity of the orange juice complements the rich and bitter taste of the coffee, making for a refreshing and energizing drink. Here is a simple recipe for making this drink at home.

https://www.honest-rare.de/en/recipes/orange-juice-espresso/

Clear Velour-Textured Waters of Killingly Pond Half in RI Half in CT

From RI you'd take I-295 to Rte 6 west to Rte 101 west (in Scituate) all the way to the CT border. (At the border you could turn right onto Riley Chase Rd, but it's so small that you'd probably miss it.) So keep going into CT for about a half-mile and look for Pond Rd, a sharp right. Follow Pond Rd for less than a half-mile and turn right onto Dam Rd. There will be parking for a few cars on the right side of the road, at the dam. Park, get out, and continue walking along the dam and up the hill. There'll be a dirt road on your left with a house a little ways up it on the left. Just keep going, this is a public way onto a small peninsula that is technically open to the public. Keep going and you'll eventually see openings on the right that lead to the water.

David Lebovitz Chocolate Biscotti Recipe

https://www.davidlebovitz.com/chocolate-biscotti/

The pastry department is always the most popular part of the kitchen amongst the rest of the staff in a restaurant. For one thing, anytime there is a staff birthday, you’re called into service to make the cake for the party. And since everyone has a birthday, everyone has to be nice to you the other 364 days of the year. Another thing is that regular cooks like to snack on anything sweet.

When I was a professional baker, whenever I made biscotti, the ends and broken bits would end up on a plate in the pastry department. Almost immediately, as if on cue, the staff would swoop down for the kill the moment the rounded ends hit the plate, and scarf them down.

After chewing for a moment, invariably, someone would always say, You know…(pause)…I like biscotti better only once-baked.” That’s fine with me, but the word biscotti means twice-cooked in Italian, so they’re not biscotti unless they are crisped again, after baking.

Another thing that cooks like to do was to say, anytime I had to walk through the kitchen carrying a cake or tart, without fail, would say, “Hey! Is that for me?!” followed by a chuckle at their brilliant humor.The first few times, I just smiled gamely and let them pretend they were actually amusing me. After the 756th time, it became a bit tiresome

But when you make them yourself, you’re welcome to help yourself, which I do with these chocolate biscotti. These crisp, twice-baked treats are the perfect dunking cookie with a shot of espresso or glasses of vin santo. These aren’t overly sweet but pack a nice bite of bittersweet of chocolate flavor.

Chocolate Biscotti

Use a good-quality cocoa powder. You can use natural or Dutch-process for these, whichever one you like. Just remember that the chocolate flavor of the finished cookies is dependent on the quality of cocoa powder you use. So it’s worth using a decent one. I used Valrhona. See notes below on ingredients. If you like extra-crisp biscotti, you can flip each one over midway during the second baking, in step #6. I sometimes smear one side of the cookies with melted dark chocolate. (And omit the sugar glaze.) When dipped in a warm espresso, I can’t imagine anything better.
Servings 50 cookies

For the biscotti

  • 2 cups (280g) flour
  • 3/4 cups (75g) top-quality cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 3 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 cup (200g) sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract
  • 1 cup (125g) almonds, toasted and very coarsely-chopped
  • 3/4 cups (120g) chocolate chips

For the sugar glaze

  • 1 large egg
  • 2 tablespoons coarse or crystal sugar, (see Notes)
  • Preheat the oven to 350F (180C) degrees.
  • In a small bowl, sift together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
  • In a large bowl, beat together the 3 eggs, sugar, and vanilla & almond extracts. Gradually stir in the dry ingredients, then mix in the nuts and the chocolate chips until the dough holds together.
  • Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. Divide the dough in half. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into two logs the length of the baking sheet. Transfer the logs onto the baking sheet, evenly spaced apart.
  • Gently flatten the tops of the logs. Beat the remaining egg and brush the tops of the logs liberally with the egg. (You won’t use it all). Sprinkle the tops with the coarse or crystal sugar and bake for 25 minutes, until the dough feels firm to the touch.
  • Remove the cookie dough from the oven and cool 15 minutes. On a cutting board, use a serrated bread knife to diagonally cut the cookies into 1/2-inches slices. Lay the cookies cut side down on baking sheets and return to the oven for 20 to 30 minutes, turning the baking sheet midway during baking, until the cookies feel mostly firm.
  • Once baked, cool the cookies completely then store in an airtight container for up to two weeks. If you wish, the cookies can be half-dipped in melted chocolate, then cooled until the chocolate hardens.

Notes: The sugar I use in France, is called cassonade, a coarse-grained, naturally-colored sugar that resists melting.

In the United States, one can find similar sugars, such as C & H Washed Hawaiian Sugar or Florida Crystals demerara, available in supermarkets or natural food stores. Turbinado or demerara sugars are also available online. If you don’t have any, you can skip the egg wash and sugar glaze.

Valrhona cocoa powder is available in bulk on Amazon. The best-value is the 3kg pack, which conveniently comes in three separate sealed bags so if you have two baking friends, it’s easy to go in on a shipment.