Rockland Harbor

We finally planned enough time for a walk all the way out to the lighthouse on the breakwater.

These two adult and one immature herring gulls were looking back towards Rockland at the beginning of the breakwater.





We enjoyed watching these sailboats as they passed the lighthouse into the harbor.




Then they were overtaken by this coat guard cutter, but it kept going and didn't pull them over.



Here is the view looking back from the lighthouse towards Camden Hills.





The breakwater is 7/8 of a mile in length.

American Toad

Bufo amercaniis

Tree609

Tuesday dusk

POEM 17

Thinking, tangling shadows in the deep solitude.
You are far away too, oh farther than anyone.
Thinking, freeing birds, dissolving images,
burying lamps.

Belfry of fogs, how far away, up there!
Stifling laments, milling shadowy hopes,
taciturn miller,
night falls on you face downward, far from the city.

Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing.
I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you.
My life before anyone, my harsh life.
The shout facing the sea, among the rocks,
running free, mad, in the sea-spray.
The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea.
Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky.

You, man, what were you there, what ray, what vane
of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now.
Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses.
Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light.

It collapses, crackling. Fire. Fire.
And my soul dances, seared with curls of fire.
Who calls? What silence peopled with echoes?
Hour of nostalgia, hour of happiness, hour of solitude.
Hour that is mine from among them all!
Megaphone in which the wind passes singing.
Such a passion of weeping tied to my body.


Shaking of all the roots,
attack of all the waves!
My soul wandered, happy, sad, unending.

Thinking, burying lamps in the deep solitude.

Who are you, who are you?

Pablo Neruda

Air France

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the passengers and crew on the missing Air France flight 447.

Lobster

Lobsters were on sale at the local general store today. What kid doesn't like to look at a tank of live lobsters? Willow put the pressure on me when I commented the price was good. $5.99 a pound for hard shell.

So I bought this one which weighed 1-1/4 lbs and cooked it off when we got home. Dropped in a pot of boiling water and boiled for 12-15 minutes, or until an antennae pops out easily with a quick jerk.

Lots of folks eat theirs shelled, hot and dipped in melted butter. I prefer lobster rolls, so I chilled mine for picking this afternoon.

I have many years of professional cooking under my belt,and I learned how to pick lobsters from a wonderful woman named Andrea. Most chefs know their way around a french knife well enough-10-14 inches of wide blade which comes to a point. I have frightened many friends merrily chopping away while meeting their eyes in conversation. Andrea, however, was a different story. She scared ME.

Proper knife use teaches one to have the back of the blade in contact with the holding hand or fingers, so you always know where the sharp end is at. Well, picking lobster starts with dismembering it-the tail gets snapped off the body with a twist, the large claws and knuckles in the same manner. This is where most folks pick up the mallet. Not Andrea.

After twisting off the smaller pincer, she showed me to hold the end of the claw/leg with the back curve of the large pincer resting on the cutting board. Then with a wild wave of the french knife, she would stick the knife blade in the end of the large claw above where the small pincer had been removed, and then with a twist, neatly split the shell revealing the claw meat.

Then she would repeat the process with both knuckles, and then the other claw. She could pick a lobster in under a minute. I use the technique she showed me, but am a little more hesitant with my wild swing. I raise the knife only about a foot before the thwack, and often have to repeat once or twice to get the blade deep enough for the twist.

Andrea, on the other hand, used to raise the knife about two feet above the board with each thwack, while meeting your eyes in conversation. "Thwack, thwack, thawk!!" One side done...eek!

We used to chuck the bodies and legs, but tonight I grabbed a toothpick and picked out each individual leg. I might have gained another tablesppon of meat out of eight legs, but that was ok. Into the Hellman's mayo they went, slapped on a grilled bun with a shock of lettuce. Mmmm. I had three-well, they were a little skimpy, but Yum.

Rest in Peace, Freddie. (lobsters were called Freddies at one place I worked)

Cemetery squirrels nuts about U.S. flags

Rogue rodent discovered robbing graves of Old Glory


By STEPHEN TAIT
Times Herald
• May 30, 2009

If he didn't see it happen, Ron Ceglarek said he probably wouldn't believe it.

A squirrel -- weighing about 3 pounds -- got up on its hind legs, tore a small American flag from a small staff next to a grave stone, rolled it up and carried it up a tree to a waiting mate building a nest.

It happened not just once, but about dozen times.

"He plucks them right off," Ceglarek, superintendent of Mount Hope Cemetery in Port Huron, said of a rogue squirrel that is stealing flags. "If I didn't see it, and I didn't follow the squirrel, I never would have believed it."

complete story with photos:

http://www.thetimesherald.com/article/20090530/NEWS01/905300301

Time for a little Brecht

More rain. I have been spending hours researching family history on my Mother's side. My father's side has already been covered back to 1066 on Granpa's side (in fact, Granpa wrote a big book on it) and Gigsy's (paternal grandmother) back to the 1600's. You think that would be good enough for me, but that big blank hole on my mother's side was getting to me.

Some things about family history are fun. I already knew that a g-g-g + granpa had been an instigator in the Gunpowder Plot. Then I found out that a more recent one had married an offspring of a man who refused to sign the Constitution, wrote the Virginia Bill of Rights, and wasn't happy until the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. So, he's a great great something grandpa too.

Back to Mom's side. On her father's side I actually managed to go back six or seven great grandfathers to where he came over from Germany. Then his son's wife was scalped by Indians. She managed to chuck at least one child into the thicket to hide them (she had six at the time). She was then taken, along with one of her sons, and another woman. Unfortunately gggggrandma was pregnant and unable to keep up, and was tomahawked and scalped en route. The other woman managed to escape to sound an alarm, and a party went after the Indians. The Indians, led by Chief Killbuck, a Delaware, had split into two groups, and there was a great fight with one of them.

Gggggg uncle, then aged 11, made his way into Ohio with some of the tribe and lived with the Indians for 10 years and ten months. During that time, he had children with Killbuck's daughter, Naddie Nyeswanan. He later returned after being collected by my gggggggrandfather, his brother. I have no idea at present what became of Naddie, but there are Killbuck descendents with gggggguncle to this day.


Somewhere in that time period one of those great grandpas instigated an uprising against the colonists in favor of King George. Mostly it was in protest of the huge taxes being levied to pay for the colonist's army. It included raising a British flag in defiance, which helps me to understand why my mother used to love to shout, "Raise the flag!"

Now I understand why I get so riled up about politics-apparently it's in the blood on both sides!

Well, I was stumped trying to chase back my maternal grandmother's line, so I tried to persue maternal great X 7 grandpa back into Germany. The name spelling reverted, and I spent several hours learning all about Europe's warring history in the early 1700's. I actually found a matching name going back to the 1500's in the Netherlands if I added a "van".

Not many of those leads were in a language I could read, but I stumbled upon a later Brecht still in Germany. Actually my original American ancestor was so mad about the taxes he went back to Germany, along with one of his sons, so I suppose this one could be a distant cousin.

Here is a poem by Bertolt Brecht
[Original]

Ich will mit dem gehen, den ich liebe.
Ich will nicht ausrechnen, was es kostet.
Ich will nicht nachdenken, ob es gut ist.
Ich will nicht wissen, ob er mich liebt.
Ich will mit ihm gehen, den ich liebe.

Rainy Day Poems

Ok, they're not about rain, but they're poems. ;)

Poverty

Ah you don’t want to,
you’re scared
of poverty,
you don’t want
to go to the market with worn-out shoes
and come back with the same old dress.

My love, we are not fond
as the rich would like us to be,
of misery. We
shall extract it like an evil tooth
that up to now has bitten the heart of man.

But I don’t want
you to fear it.
If through my fault it comes to your dwelling,
if poverty drives away
your golden shoes,
let it not drive away your laughter which is my life’s bread.
If you can’t pay the rent
go off to work with a proud step,
and remember, my love, that I am watching you
and together we are the greatest wealth
that was ever gathered upon the earth.

Pablo Neruda


To Have Without Holding

Learning to love differently is hard,
love with the hands wide open, love
with the doors banging on their hinges,
the cupboard unlocked, the wind
roaring and whimpering in the rooms
rustling the sheets and snapping the blinds
that thwack like rubber bands
in an open palm.

It hurts to love wide open
stretching the muscles that feel
as if they are made of wet plaster,
then of blunt knives, then
of sharp knives.

It hurts to thwart the reflexes
of grab, of clutch; to love and let
go again and again. It pesters to remember
the lover who is not in the bed,
to hold back what is owed to the work
that gutters like a candle in a cave
without air, to love consciously,
conscientiously, concretely, constructively.

I can’t do it, you say it’s killing
me, but you thrive, you glow
on the street like a neon raspberry,
You float and sail, a helium balloon
bright bachelor’s button blue and bobbing
on the cold and hot winds of our breath,
as we make and unmake in passionate
diastole and systole the rhythm
of our unbound bonding, to have
and not to hold, to love
with minimized malice, hunger
and anger moment by moment balanced.

Marge Piercy

Analogies

I read this except from an AP news article a couple of days ago:

"Cheney has always been straightforward. But when he walked in Bush's shadow he had to temper his public remarks, stay on the White House message. He could manipulate the levers of powers behind the scenes, which conjured up the image of "Star Wars" villain Darth Vader."

By DEB RIECHMANN
Associated Press Writer

Honestly, did she ever watch the Star Wars saga? He is much more analogous to Darth Sidius, aka Senator Palpatine, aka the Emperor.

My apologies to Ian McDiarmid.