Pilfed from the great Stan Yen

Ah, nothing new under the web.
A week ago I did an originality check for “A funny thing happened  on the way to the compost heap” ( which Chas and his mom Carol think should be the title of my book).

Excuse me,  but I don’t do derivative.

Well, turns out Tallasiandude who has a blog called Gray Matter Gruel (which is sort of what acorn mash is) had titled a flickr pic with almost the same words, except he used “pile” rather than heap.
So I wrote him a You’re So Original You Stole My Idea First fan note, and I parenthetically (assuming he lived in Oakland, gee, because he has an oak tree?) invited him to drop some acorns off at the legendary bike shop Velosport.
Turns out Mr. Dude lives in Mossachussetts.
Whoops.

He gamely attempted the acorn smashing thing, but I think his standards are too high (he mentions sorting! And re-sorting!). Inevitable result: frustration, and a decent blog.

Cover of a small, perfect book

Kid's eye view

When Carol Cunningham gets excited about an artist, it is impossible not to drop everything and run off to look at a show.

Something about being eighty-four years old…and us having all the time in the world for her….

Hence, discovery of the impressively obsessed Sara Burgess, a tall, elegant Brit who says she’s very into bikes but is clearly more recently impassioned about cutting thick white paper into delicate shapes.

On her website she claims “not to have been formally diagnosed with OCD”.

It’s impossible not to be grateful for this so-called ‘condition’ since Carol (doesn’t suffer) has it too..how else can a person spend ten hours at a stretch without eating, carefully pulling precisely the right leaden letter out of a box with twenty six letters in both regular letters and capitals, numbers and punctuation…and they all look like kitchen sweepings tucked into neat little square cages in the California job case?
I am grateful.

I wish I had it.

Being an approximatarian bobtail vaut-rien means never finishing anything (but always with panache!) and thus: having VERY LITTLE TO SHOW for the hours I spend thinking things up.

Sara Burgess (and partner Damien) have just put the finishing touches on an interdisciplinary study of the problem of the disappearing fishes of the ocean.
I imagine doing something seemingly impossible with an exact-o knife is satisfying when one is wrestling with a problem so massive that it will be generations to accomplish (assuming that there are zero hurdles in the next hundred years…)
Bonne chance mes amis….

Skillful (self) execution

Rode with neighbors Chris and Matt– a red letter day,  because I wasn’t unwelcome.  Perhaps I tried a bit hard to become unwelcome….let me explain…

A million years ago, I rode a few months with the Wednesday boys  who met at Sunshine Bicycle Center here in Fairfax.

I didn’t wait to be invited. I just rolled up on beat-up Peugeot three inches too big, wearing my shortsleeve men’s madras shirt, khaki shorts,  and Clark’s wallabees (no cleat) with chartreuse socks.  Try to imagine what ten guys hanging out before the shop opened,  rocking their  latest (and it was new back then)  lycra  might be thinking. I didn’t realize at the time that guys check out every detail of outfits as much as we women do.

1981 was my first season as a racer, and as long as my boyfriend and I were together, I was immune to the heavy macho vibe. I raced every weekend, driven in style in Gary’s BMW sedan with the back  seats ripped out to accommodate our bicycles.
He puffed up with proprietary glee on those Wednesday rides, whenever I  hammered up the hills at the front. He  relished the fact that I was undroppable by Marin’s fastest. We both pretended not to care that my enthusiastic sprints for the city limits went un-contested (except by him).
“You’re racing more in one month than most of these these guys will do all summer”, he’d tell me. “They’re all show.”

I was pretty sure I was going to be a champion, and hoped my breaking-in period wouldn’t involve broken bones. I let the grumbling roll off me. Besides, my hands were full, trying to figure out how to ride in a straight–really straight–line, and not freak when someone rode alongside at 25 mph. These things take time.  Over the next couple of months both the women in the racing scene and the guys I trained with ’schooled’ me. And yes, even the women wished I would just take up wind surfing…

That autumn, I  broke up with Gary, and unwittingly entered a new era. Without his protective support,  I was food for the hounds.

I can’t forget the last time I rode  with them. My former mate was out of town.  By letting me lead through the maze of Fairfax streets, the gang ‘dropped’ me the only way they could:  by  veering off-route en masse behind me.

Otis G. and Garry Somers stood  waiting at the usual corner.

“Where’d everyone else go?” said Otis.
“They were behind me a second ago.”

From a different direction,  the pack approached.

I glumly rode along at the rear,  and  heard one of them hiss,  “can’t  she take a hint??”

I headed back home.  Numb.

Is it any wonder I hesitate to ask if I can barge in on someone else’s ‘regular’ ride?

For five or six years I’ve seen Chris, my neighbor, return muddy from what had to be a nice 2-3 hour dirt ride. Every time, I would supress the urge to invite myself along. It was especially hard to resist once his wife  told me that he rides circles around the young lions in his fire crew.

My competition chakra—ignore the gray hair—burns with the need to take  them all on.

Still.

But someone would grumble “It’s not a race”.

To which I might retort, “Oh, right“.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any ride consisting of more than one man becomes a race.

Which brings me to this week, when  a certain Matt H. and his kid Sam appeared at our place to shoot pix of CC and I for the boy’s art school fort polio…

The dad (busily ‘keeping out of Sam’s hair”) admired our hovel, and  mentioned a regular appointment on the trails with Chris, my down-the-street neighbor.

“CAN I COME?” I hinted subtly.

“Sure, we go on Wednesday. Tamarancho if the weather’s good”.

With beginnerish anticipation, I met up with them on Iron Springs, and  we cruised onto “Alchemist” (the trail that links Goldman Trail to Iron Springs Road). I ought to have heeded that “newbie  phelan”, and just played it cool.

But then I wouldn’t be Being JP.

I announced that I like to pass people, even  on singletrack trail, ’cause it feels more like racing’.   Thank God  I told them, rather than ambushing them with my prowess.

“Just tell me  you’re passing, OK?” Matt shot back.

Ten seconds later I warbled “PASSING!”

Jamming myself into the four inches of trail alongside the poor guy,  I  jacquieknifed my front end, twirling off the bike in a reverse somersault down the leafy  trail’s edge. Musta been a hidden root under the leaves just as I made my move.

I meant to do that,  I thought to myself, dragging my (unharmed) bike back onto the trail. I  was covered with leaves.
Out loud, I said:  “Permit me to demonstrate my superior bike handling skills….heh!”.

Matt looked a bit taken aback, and Chris just said: “You ride in front“.

Inside, the voices mocked: “fool, salope, eedjit, stronza, corkskalle”.

I behaved the rest of the ride, and actually stayed behind most of the time so I could hear ‘em talk.

Maybe they’ll ask me back, but I won’t hold my breath.

Primitive at work processing acorns

The streets are full of acorn powder, the gutters full of unbroken acorns. Every four or five years it's like this, and I always tell myself that I have to learn to do what the Miwok did.

Modern primitive with drill-operated food mill

Thanks to Heather Crawford, and Mia from the Trackers, I’ve  cracked the mystery of the  nut that rains abundantly down from the local valley oaks, which are technically in the ‘white oak’ category.

They are (I came to learn) among the lowest in tannins.

First you gather (fun part, if you’re a natural hoarder).
Then you crack and peel (more fun than expected).

A few of simple moves: grab an acorn (so smooth it might jump out of your fingers) ,  balance the thing on its tip, and tap the rounded end with a hammer.
At first I was working with a normal v-shaped nutcracker, and it took a minute or so per nut. Then CC (the primitive in the above shots) decided to join me for a smash-a-thon.

I went for a second hammer, after watching him tap six or seven, then peel them, assembly-line fashion.

The most recent batch are unblemished–no worm-veins or mold. Not that a few worms would stop me.

The bowls filled up.

We kept popping the nuts.

“It’s kind of hard to stop!” CC grins.

With a couple of grocery sacks full of good dry acorns, and a paltry couple of mixing bowls (small) filled, it’s obvious that we will need about ten or twenty hours to get it all ground up in the old fashioned grain mill.  CC mollified the hand-cranked apparatus to take a drill bit, while I pounded the nuts into the hopper And then: where to store our damp acorn meal?

The mash has  the most delicate wood-and-nutty aroma, nothing at all like other nuts we know.

Then you leach out the tannins: Soak in a bowl draped in linen or cheeseclothx3, strain, repeat with fresh water. Use the brownish water in the garden. In a couple days the mash will not taste at all bitter.

Since  I’d already done a batch of nuts in my crummy blender four days ago, I had coarse, but still quite fine to eat, nutmeat to play with the last few days. Here are the pancakes I made:

1/3 cup wheat flour (or potato flour if you’re gluten intolerant) ,

2/3 cup acorn mush,

an egg

a cup of ‘bad’ milk (or good)

3 pinch salt

1/2 TB  baking poudre

Hot iron skillet…medium flame, good spatual..

They were pure heaven.

So satisfying that even Mr. Eats-Every-Two-Hours was able to go four hours until his next gluten-free meal.
I may try to live a few weeks without wheat some day, but I’m not ready (nor have I any digestive problems) to live a breadless existence. I think I’d need to move to Japan, where rice-based cuisine is the norm.
But maybe there can be an acorn-based diet around here (again).
Nutrient-dense…and maybe even a future local industry for bored teenagers. Estimated cost of a pound of the meal: $110.00 given the four wombat-hours it took to fabricate.

From free ingredients (well, mostly).
It’s enough to make you persuade you that the cosmos bestows precisely what creatures need…

All we know is, we love those trees even more…

flapjacquie

Eschew muddy feet

My Shimano MPsomethingorother model shoes (circa 1991) served me eighteen years, with  a major kick at the finish: the  4,200  mile transcontinental 42 below ride. In that last couple of months, they served as raggedy,peep-toe cleats that punished me with  damp for every ‘dab’.

I decided to take them (and myself) out for a ride. My horrible flu was abating; the sulfa drugz were doing their job.

I needed to see if I had any fiber left in my noodle-y legs and goop-clogged lungs.

So up the road I went, knowing that sundown’s at five nowadays.  I had some stuff to drop off at Joe Breeze’s house–a note for the kid, and some floral tisane (Osmanthus fragrans flowers) for Connie B, my sister-doppelganger.
Having a mission helps me complete a ride.

The last three times I’ve been up “Bo-Fax” road, I’ve turned around at the first opportunity, which is the Meddow Golph Club. It felt like a defeat each time, since I’d hoped to do my very favorite ride: Pine Mountain.
But sometimes your legs (or your mind) say “no!”.

These days, I obey that voice.
I  seem unable to ignore signals that I’m tired or just don’t feel like a real ride.

But since I’d packed a news clipping  for the younger Breeze concerning the Farmville craze, plus  a sachet of cool tea–flowers for the missus, I had a great excuse not to die, not to give up.

And to make it more fun, I dropped into a long–forgotten shortcut that puts me at their doorstep within an hour or so…a cool ridge line run with magnificent vistas and no people for miles and miles around. Just chaparral–sharp pants-perforating branches, tight turns navigated using mental sonar, and the occasional wren–tit registering surprise at the intrusion.

Down in  Fairfax town, Joe was home. I handed him the tea (and a careful descripton of the Latin name of the plant)  and showed off my old “sandals”.

“I wore a pair for about as many years” Joe said, adding: “Hey,  what size do you wear? “

“Forty”

“I have some shoes that are too small for me…”

And he brought forth a pair of 1993 shoes, the next generation after mine; three straps instead of two,  yellow and blue, rather than subdued orange, gray and blue.

I put them on, he pressed down on the big toe, like a regular shoe salesman. “They seem to fit just fine”  he observed. “I think they might just be a really small pair of forty-ones.”

“Can I throw mine away here?”

“Sure, just leave them there on top of the trash can.”
For about the first time in a decade, I hurled a pair of truly worn-out shoes, and thanked Joe for his generous gift.
I I can’t think of a better person than you to get these.” Joe said kindly.

And off I rode, no wind on my toes, into the twilight of Dogbark Lane.

cycling on the promenade 1

Originally uploaded by byronv2

I think they have something there. They ARE the fattest people in Europe, and it should not be a deterrent to riding if your ass is kind of wide…

Berries for the visiting photographer

….was captured in color photographs…not the hand tinted postcard stuff –real magic thru chemistry. The inventor’s name was Sergei Prokudin-Gorkii, and he got carte blanche from the Tsar to roam the empire, aiming to take his triple-slide show to schools.
The revolution wiped away everything he had, save the 2000 plates he left the country with.

To gaze upon these pictures a second and third time, it dawns on the viewer that there aren’t any automobiles. Plenty of foot-paths, short-cuts-to-the-church-on-a-hill, and dirt roads (but not many).   I suppose the serfs were all at work, out of camera range. Still, it looks edenic. Eden, minus the bicycle. But I know that Nabokov rode a bike…hmmm.

The Library of Congress bought the glass plates from his heirs in 1944, and only in 2000 did digital chromatography make complete restoration possible, yielding the museum show, The Empire that was Russia.

—–(Ugly transition)

Want my news? I’m sick, but happy.

See SALIVATION ARMY blog!

Today’s subject: NO CALORIE LEFT BEHIND.

Zanzibar Beach Bicycle (Vertorama)

Originally uploaded by Panorama Paul

bicycles rule.

(Letter to a reformer)

Esteemed Lloyd (Thacker, founder of the Education Conservancy)
I just found an interview with you when I dug up past (‘condensed & edited”)  interviews by Deborah Solomon.
Sunday’s NYT magazine had her interview with  Thorbjorn Jagland (Norway Nobel chairman), mostly about why they picked Obama. One of her questions rankled me:

DS: Here in the US, socialism is one of those words…where people worry you’re going to take away their cars and make them ride a bicycle.”
TJ: “Look at the welfare state (we) built. We have better cars than most of the Americans.”
DS “What do you drive?”
TJ “A Volvo“
Me to self: DAMN, why didn’t he tell her that he ALSO RIDES A BICYCLE —he must—everyone over there does!
I’m at home sick w/cold so my ‘dudgeon’ is high but my energy for getting real work done is not there.

But I can blog!

Thanks to a guidance counselor, I went to a school  I’d never heard of, before rankings were common (I think–might be wrong…this was in 72-73). Since those days I’ve watched its ‘brand’ develop—and have been appalled by the whole ‘laundry service’ and ‘marketing’ thing….I believe they have jumped in both feet, and don’t much care what alums say (unless they care to donate funds for a yet another new science building or sports complex, once known as a field house).

When I was there, nearly no students had a car, but now they almost all do. Some even have two.

So…reading YOUR interview w/Ms. Solomon over 2 yrs ago got me thinkning more..
I was wishing you had mentioned ‘community colleges’ when asked about where one can get a good education these days.
Why am a writing you?
I jst was in DC hearing friend (Kay ryan , poet-in-chief of US) describe how she wants to celebrate community colleges –she started college at Antelope Vally Community College, in the desert near Lancaster California.

Here’s Kay  in the Library of Congress Gazette: “Right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly- –and with very little financial encouragement-saving lives and minds. I can’t think of a more efficient, hopeful, or egalitarian machine, with the possible exception of the bicycle.”

Now I ‘m a bike nut, pure and simple.
Kay is, too.
And I’m passing this on to you because…er, I believe you will remember to include community colleges in the next interview you give.

Hope so,  JP

Alison & bike on Metro

In the poet's corner, attic of Library of Congress

No sooner had I stepped out of the tunnel at the Shady Grove metro station, than I was greeted by the warm autum breeze and a flower-seller  missing four teeth.

“Is this the ‘kiss -and-run’area?” I asked sheepishy.

“Yep.”

She could tell I wasn’t a flower buyer. I had a tiny backpack and that hobo hat on. Behind me I heard a voice speak.

“Aren’t you Jacquie Phelan?”

Nearby stood a woman pushing her bike out of the trains station.

She (Alison Horton, a transplanted Californian) said she’d heard of me and WOMBATS, liked what I was doing etc.

“I’m in town to hear the muscle poet  (aka the Poet Laureate of The United States, PLOTUS) Kay Ryan read at the Library of Congress tomorrow night. YOU should come..it’s free and I promise you, Kay will rock your world…”

Damn if Alison didn’t take me up on it, coming to Coolidge Auditorium the next day without really knowing what she was getting into.

Amid a home team of Fairfaxians, Alison and I got great seats down low, and I caught up with Poe, Sam, Laura and David.

“Tthis is going rather well”  said Kay  as a tsunami of applause engulfed her.

She read, and even re-read  an hour’s worth of wisdom-nuggets…Deer Park, the Gordian knot one, some new ones….since her little pile of books had been left on the plane, she was going without notes. I pray some kind person will send the precious trove back to her.
One of Kay’s great causes is the role community colleges play in the “freeing” of people…how it’s not just big four year institutions that inspire our citizens but unsung and undervalued institutions in every community.  She likened them to the nitrogen-fixing bacteria that nourishes the soil that the legumes grown in…’the students return to their community…they stick around’.

Then a reception after that–quite lavish, the government-issue spread of white wine, sparking water, good cheese, crostini and vegetables.  . Poets, artists, very animated mix of people….Grace Cavalieri (one of the Poetry Project’s producers) enthused about my ‘rebellious’ hairdo. That makes three compliments in one day. As a dispenser of sartorial compliments myself, it is gratifying to think someone voted ‘yes’ for my Medusa ‘do.
Trooped over to Mr. Henry’s a celebrated hamburger joint, whose waiter, Marvin Ross was a major dear. Forty years in service to the thirsty, starved, and the impatient. A writer (Marianne something) wrote a hilarious account of trying to work there…

Toasts were raised, plates were licked clean, and everyone disappeared before the metro closed.

Woke up the next day at noon, in Bethesday Maryland. I owe my unseen hostess a big thanks.

I love this town where people love your hair, know your name, and  spontaneously come to a poetry reading .

Great City.

Wombat Mary Costello (71 summers and counting) took me up in the Gambrill forest to sample the incredible combo plate of Frederick trails.
We spent a couple hours, shared left d’oeuvre pizza in the middle of the trail, and got a shot or two while I adjusted to the new time zone. Wished Kay were able to just borrow a bike and be chauffeured as easily (I will find out if she would LIKE that), since one  of the major bonuses of living in this area is Proximity To Public Trails.