Marie Javins's Blog, page 7

2022 National Bundt Day Part 1

We're holding the local celebration of National Bundt Day at the office today, like I did in 2018 and 2019.

2020 and 2021 were outside--I am going to miss doing it outdoors because non-DC friends could attend, but at least this way us editors can interact with other colleagues. Sometimes people not actually involved in making the books think we're snobby, when in fact we're just deeply cynical, smartass, and immersed in getting books to to the printer.

I tried making two Instant Pot Bundt cakes and they're just too dense. They don't rise and get fluffy. It's like eating condensed cake, smashed up like a bit of bait. Bait for luring in colleagues who don't understand the creative end of the biz.

The best results came from the regular old from-scratch chocolate cake with cream cheese center. This year's attempt at Tunnel of Fudge was a complete disaster. I tried the recipe on the Pillsbury site, and the results were spectacular, but not in a good way.

Steamed Jiffy Mix

An experiment is underway with a cheap cake mix and my Instant Pot.

Craftsy + Chicken

Here are the finished baby changing pads. 

I didn't have a baby to model, so I used a paper maché rooster.

Craftsy

I haven't taken out my sewing machine since face masks were back in stock a couple of years ago, but tonight I finally pulled out the Burbank one and worked on baby changing pads for two different editors.

I'll finish them tomorrow night and mail them out by the end of the week.

It was nice to do something with my hands and not the computer for a change.

Ancestral Yard Sale

In 2016, I visited the Humphrey Museum where my great-grandfather's sister had lived. It was quite the experience, and the museum has since closed, its contents auctioned off. Occasionally, a piece shows up on eBay.

What a strange feeling to watch family heirlooms auctioned off as trinkets. But they were owned by a non-profit and they really are just trinkets.

All I would have wanted were my great-grandfather's elephant figures from around the world.

I wonder if my global trinkets will be doled out on eBay one day. Maybe I'll do it myself at some point, get ahead of this.

Halloween in Burbank

Burbank goes all out for Halloween. Here's the scary clown house.

Who?

Remember the falconer at the office last month, the one whose job it is to drop by and scare off pigeons?

 She works with her husband, who was at the office tonight with his owl.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Moka Pots

I do love my Bialetti Moka Express. But every few years, it stops working. The actual mechanics of a Moka are pretty straightforward, so every time it stops working, I think "oh, just clean it out, change the gasket, we're done here."

But it never works like that, and I usually just buy a new one after a new gasket doesn't stop Moka from sputtering a sad little trickle instead of flowing smoothly. (Yes, I could buy a fancy espresso machine but my kitchen is small and I'm stubborn.)

This time around, I bought the gasket, and that worked for a while, but then Moka sputtered again.

"I know," I thought. "I'll get a new funnel! It's because I smack the funnel against the trash when I empty the grinds, and I've knocked it out of shape so the seal isn't firm."

That was a nice idea, but a new funnel also didn't work.

I looked online for a new Moka, but I couldn't figure out how to find the right size. Mine is a six-cup Moka, but I've got a six-cup Moka in Jersey City, and that is weirdly a smaller size. Rather than delve into what is going on there, I just went to YouTube for help resuscitating the one I have.

There sure are a lot of opinions on Moka pots on YouTube.

In the end, I followed one guy's instructions on how to disassemble the pot in ways I hadn't considered before--I had to use a wrench. I learned about the great debate of soap vs. no-soap for the Moka pot. (Hint: You can believe the guys who say soap is necessary to get the accumulated oil out, or you can believe the guys who say to fill the boiler with vinegar once a week and run a cycle. I did both.)

I also learned to fill the boiler with water, put in the empty funnel, and hold it firmly with a knife to confirm it's working. And finally...the key turned out to be I had to circle the funnel rim twice with teflon tape, the scrunch it up tight under the rim.

I went way farther in deep on Moka pot techniques than I expected to, but now my old, oversized 6-cup Moka Express works as smoothly as the day I bought it.

I did not go as far as the guy who used a Dremel to polish his Moka pot. Maybe next time.

Brought to you by the department-of-absurd-deep-dives from the sometimes-the-internet-doesn't-suck division of my laptop.

The Ancestral Quarry

Last Sunday morning, I left my mom’s house early and headed up Interstate 66 toward Dulles Airport. I still think of I-66 as the “new highway,” because it was finished after Star Wars debuted, after I was in junior high, after my parents split up, after the last time I would have gone with my dad to see Lost John Austin, the alcoholic quarryman moonshiner who had raised him.

When my dad died in January, my mom, sister, and I did a deep dive into the past, finding a geologic map that showed the location of the Austin-Barbour Quarry on Bull Run Mountain. Lost John and his BFF Lewis Barbour had owned this quarry. Lewis had lived walking distance from Lost John’s trailer, in a wood cabin with a stone chimney, farther up the rutted dirt and rock road, if you could call it that. I think there had been a Mrs. Barbour when I was small. I don’t remember when Lewis moved into the trailer with Lost John, who himself had been married to my dad’s oldest sister long before I was born, before she died of something preventable. Hillbilly life in the 1950-60s was just different, particularly if you were a mountain man with a distrust of doctors.

Lost John was white. Lewis was Black. This was not unusual, and the area they lived in is now known for protected ruins of historic Black farms. What interests me about this, and about the story of Lost John being threatened by the KKK for dating a Black woman, is that we often see the world through educated liberal modern prisms, and these were just folks living their lives, long before we were all attacked as “woke,” though being on the outskirts of the Shenandoah Valley means the Civil War was still very much on the minds of locals. Lost John once found the ruins of a Civil War campsite. He thought it must have belonged to Mosby’s Rangers, but I have no idea what became of that notion or if anyone official ever followed up on it.

I was running early on Sunday and took the turn-off at the road to the town of Antioch. I felt I’d recognize something and find my way on instinct, but the map coordinates assured I wouldn’t get too lost as I followed my nose. I knew I had to turn left at a T-intersection. I figured there would still be some landmarks, some indication of the little stores where we’d stop for bubblegum cigars and Yoo-Hoos, even though as long ago as my 1970s childhood, there were already battles with encroaching gentrification.

When I got to the gravel drive leading to the quarry coordinates, I zipped past because as I’d just been taken by surprise by the steep road on my right. Bull Run Mountain Road. That’s it, I thought. He lived up there. I was right—I knew it when I saw it, though I’d last been up that road in 7th grade at the very latest.

The steering wheel gave a disconcerting tug, willing me to turn around, so I agreed to the car’s request, finding a cutout to u-turn in, and headed back to the gravel road.

There were a number of mailboxes at the top of the hill, and I knew I was semi-trespassing. I worried a bit about the rental Hyundai I was driving. Who was I going to call if I got a flat tire? I drove slowly and cautiously on down the hill, heading to the quarry instead of the homestead, passing nice, newish houses set back from the road.

To the right, the land was all posted, to the left were the homes. My phone app eventually informed me I’d arrived, that the quarry was over to the right. I saw nothing by leaves and trees, and a wild clearing beyond. I parked the Hyundai as far off the road as I could and cautiously passed the “no trespassing” signs, looking for clues.

There were plenty! Old liquor bottles. Rusted industrial machinery. I stepped carefully, even more unwilling to cut my foot than I had been to get a flat tire.

A woman and her son pulled up in a Suburban. “Excuse me,” she yelled across the briars. “Can I help you? Are you looking for something?” I knew my excursion was now over, and put on a dumb tourist face as I walked back to the road. “Do you know if there’s an old quarry around here?”

“I’ve never heard of that. This land is owned by the VOF, and you could get fined. And this isn’t a good place to park, we all honk our horns as we drive past other cars here.”

I apologized and got back in my car, looking cheerful and clueless. Inside, I was exhilarated. Because just as I was driving back up the drive past the site, I could see a craggy embankment rising out of the forest, and I could imagine it looking the way it had in the seventies, a stone outcropping with a bulldozer nearby, and my dad looking for Lost John, who might have been down there, or might be sleeping off booze in an old car somewhere.

There’s a 1984 article about Lost John from "Country Magazine" where the quarry is described like this: “While the word “quarry” is correct to describe Lost John’s place of business on the mountain, the actual operation did not fit the usual image the word conveys—there was no ravaged pit in the earth. When Lost John took me up the mountain one day to see his operation, I didn’t know we were there until he pointed to a rock outcropping through the trees and led me to the modest pile of rubble at the base.”

Maybe I was staring at it now. Or maybe I needed to find a way to park somewhere and hike in further, some other time. I headed up the hill, up to the tarmac of Bull Run Mountain Road toward the old driveway.

I couldn’t find any remains of the old rock road that went up in to the trees, leading to the clearing where Lost John’s trailer had been, with the drive continuing to Lewis’ old cabin. I felt sure that when the asphalt ended and the dirt road section of Bull Run Mountain Road began, I could just close my eyes and let the Hyundai take me to the base of the drive, more by timing and the curves of the road than by sight, but that seemed a poor plan, so I just drove slowly up the mountain until I was sure I’d overlooked it, then turned around and headed back down to the paved road, back toward I-66 and Dulles Airport. Later, I’d use Google Earth to identify some possible sites, but I really needed to be ready for interaction with the MAGA-immersed son of Lost John if I wanted to find the site. And I don’t think I’m THAT curious. Though I would like to see the spot where I learned to shoot a gun, where my dad was raised, where Spotsy was dog-sat when we went on vacation.

My dad had nothing good to say about Lost John in spite of maintaining a relationship with his pseudo-father, but John was quite the character, and while no one in my family adopted Lost John’s affinity for blind-drunkenness, I can appreciate how he’d show up in community meetings and play his harmonica through his nose, and give the wealthy landowners of Bull Run something to talk about.

Back East Again

After New York Comic-Con, I headed to my mom's house to meet Charlie the Envigo Beagle before going back to Burbank. Charlie is real cute, though he is a bundle of rescue-dog-anxiety. 

He was kind enough to learn to poop outside for me. Progress!