Peg Duthie's Blog, page 7

the work continues

Worst legislature in the nation shouldn't be a contest, but goddamn if Tennessee doesn't keep stepping up to that plate. The latest is an attempt to penalize Nashville and Memphis public schools for remaining virtual.

This is also where Nashville is at:

Today four doses of COVID-19 vaccine were offered through the Standby List. One person who was offered a dose elected to give it to their husband instead.

The day's list of 7,800 entrants was deleted at 3:30pm, to start over for Friday.

— NashvilleHealth (@NashvilleHealth) January 21, 2021

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unpacking Misfits Market shipment 1

There are several terrific Beths in my life. My honorary aunt Beth in North Carolina is a public health physician and film professor whose pack of dogs include a very fluffy Rafa (named after Nadal). Here's me holding Harvey (named after the rabbit) a few years ago:



Another, whom I'll refer to as Danish Beth, was active on Diaryland back in the early oughts. I'm hazy on how we initially connected, but we had a fine time in Boston on a couple of occasions, and we still exchange holiday cards.

The one I'll call Miss Beth is a Mississippian who doesn't suffer fools and put soup in our freezer when the BYM was convalescing from a bad encounter with a Dodge Journey. Early in the pandemic (March 14), a meme making the rounds said, "You’re stuck in quarantine for 14 days with the third person who pops up when you type @. Who are you quarantined with, and will both of you make it out alive?" My response was that Miss Beth and I would do just fine -- I wouldn't have to tell her, "Shut up for the next three hours, I'm making/fixing things" because she'd be doing the same, with breaks for soup and bourbon, and she replied with "you'd let me nap!"

So when Miss Beth had good things to say about Misfits Market, I hit her up for a referral code (25% discount for her and me) and signed up for a subscription. I selected what I wanted for the box Sunday night, and this is what arrived on my porch this morning:





My base subscription is the "mischief" box every other week ($22 + tax + $5.50 shipping). These items were covered by the base (10 selections from around 20 options)

Eggplant
Purple Top Turnips
Fuji Apples
Sweet Potatoes
Zucchini
Yellow Summer Squash
Butternut Squash
Red Radishes, Bunched
Kent Mango
Green D'anjou Pears
Yellow Potatoes
Russet Potatoes

I requested these items as well, for an additional $24.09:

Organic Watermelon Radish
Earth Greens Organic Baby Spinach, 5 Oz
Organic Meyer Lemons, 2 Ct
Organic Broccolini
Organic Blackberries, 6 Oz
Sunions Organic Tearless Sweet Onions, 2 Ct
Garden of Eatin' Sesame Blues Tortilla Chips, 5.5 Oz
Organic Blueberries, 6 Oz
Organic Honeycrisp Apples, 3 Ct
Element Farms Pea Shoots, 3.2 Oz
Organic Portobello Caps, 6 Oz

I'm satisfied with most of the items. They substituted arugula for the broccolini; I'm finicky enough about bruised salad leaves that I wouldn't have picked that bunch, but I think I can get maybe three salads out of it regardless. The other items that were more bruised or softer than I care for were the eggplant, the apples, and one of the Meyer lemons (and the radish leaves also went straight into the compost bowl), so I'll be using those up first. I'm not too worried about the "tamper proof" spinach clamshell arriving with the film loose in one corner (things were pretty loose in the box, and a good jolt by a squash could have caused the damage), but that's a consideration if you're fastidious about that kind of thing. (I would be pickier inside a supermarket, but that goes for pretty much everything.)

It won't replace all my produce shopping, but it will eliminate a chunk of time in chain grocery stores, which will help me manage both my temper (there is almost always a price discrepancy or five, and I'm enough of my mother's daughter that it's a mighty struggle to let those slide, even when I realize the saner option these days would be to head on out rather than arguing about 50 cents) and my contact with strangers (which, with a superspreader strain projected to become dominant by spring . . . *grits teeth, reaches for knife and pen*).

[Should you want to give Misfits Market a try, here's my referral code: COOKWME-TH9FUJ]

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2021 so far

1 new poetry challenge: https://tupelopress.networkforgood.com/projects/120791-peg-duthie-s-fundraiser

1 flashfic rejection

far too much coughing

1 upcoming choral project (if I ever stop coughing)

4 jars of honey drops

20 hours in the work saddle (already)

1 power outage (20 minutes before my first scheduled meeting with my new intern. The day was . . . hectic.)

1 new client (yay referrals!)

1 old toothbrush wielded against appliance scuzz

4 incoming holiday cards

2 half-pints of beer.

2 days above 60 F.

Frost on my windshield today.

A pot of miniature roses

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preserving

Well. The past week included more collisions than I would have cared for with figurative handbaskets and pavers, but I managed to get to bed within an hour of either side of midnight most nights. (The exception was the night before nochevieja, when filing all the FSA paperwork and herding Picasso ducks to the designer kept the candles burning past 3:30 a.m.) Yesterday I closed my work laptop by 5:30 p.m. (in time to catch Ailey's Revelations Through the Decades while the streaming window was open) and my personal laptop by 11:45 p.m. (with a promise to myself to refrain from checking social media until after noon today, which I kept).

This current round of reflux has been enough of a nuisance for me to dial back on citrus and other trigger foods for a while. I'd bought a sale bag of grapefruits before deciding this needed to happen. Fortunately, I now have water-bath canning in my culinary toolbox:



I also prepared a batch of pickled clementines two days ago. One of the jars didn't seal properly, though, resulting in orange syrup splattering across my counter yesterday morning. (At least I tested it before delivering it to the recipient!) So far, the seals on the jars of tomatoes I canned back in October-November have definitely done their job; I usually have to pry them off with a knife, and the jar I used in Wednesday's oxtail stew was no exception.

For Thursday, the BYM picked up ribs and beer from Various Artists Brewing. A week earlier, I'd picked up a Feast of Seven Fishes from Nicky's Coal Fired. It ended up covering both Christmas lunch and dinner, plus a cannoli nightcap on Boxing Day and a risotto break the following week. I'm dreaming about re-creating the baked clams, and getting the pasta again. (The octopus in the seafood salad was also outstanding, but that's one I'll leave to the professionals.)

Christmas Eve also included a Zoom service and social hour hosted by my church.



I'd contributed tracks to three of the carols, and the video for a modern setting of "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" (way less lugubrious than the traditional Calkin hymn!) was created by Trigg. I had been on the fence about catching the service (I worked fifteen minutes into it), but I was especially glad that I had done so when I saw the reactions in the chat as the segment aired. It's archived on YouTube (the carol starts at 42:27):



( In other news (behind cut-tag for profanity) )

Christmas itself was marvelous. Like today, I jettisoned my extensive to-do list in favor of a long nap, and I have no regrets. (Aiming for much more sleep in 2021 is definitely going to be a thing here.) Because of the title of this entry, I will note that the bounty included apricot preserves from American Spoon (all the more delightful because I had talked myself out of ordering from them just a day or two earlier). Because of the title of this blog, I feel compelled to celebrate here the most over-the-top present I opened that morning:



That's a bar of zirconium, y'all. Carefully machined, sanded, and polished by my friend Bill, with its own fitted cherry stand. I've done enough wood- and metalwork to have an idea of how long it took (augmented by conversations with and messages from Bill this year about his adventures in acquiring and working with other elements. He had particularly sulfurous comments about antimony . . .). I can't stop admiring it. :)

2020 ended with the BYM turning in an hour before midnight. I wasn't making a point of staying up (I'm usually the one dozing off before the guitar falls) but there had been a poem I had been trying to write all month, so I buckled down to fleshing it out and hit the Submittable button forty minutes before midnight (and again at twenty minutes 'til for another packet). Then I put away laundry while peeking at the lights still up on my street and on Holly. A year ago the ones on Holly would not have been visible because of trees the tornado knocked down.

Tonight's dinner is leftover rice with black-eyed peas and Chinese sausage, with sparkling wine. It reached 74 F in parts of Nashville today, so I spent part of the afternoon cutting spotted leaves off the rosebushes, and tomorrow I'll spray them.

Friends, here's to a year with an abundance of roses and other rewards. And, if you aren't blogging or tweeting about your goings-on, drop me a line on what you are seeing, hearing, tasting, or considering? Message me for my address if you'd rather send (and get) a (post)card. :)

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Hark! How the birds new songs are making

Today's subject line comes from "Shepherds! shake off your drowsy sleep," where the second line invariably makes me giggle and the tune (Besançon) is the same as the one designated for the Advent carol "People, look east."

I am moving through today more slowly than I planned or expected, and I am okay with that. I have a cough -- most likely from reflux -- that has been severe enough to keep me off this week's singing/recording projects. I worked 53 hours this week to make sure our next exhibition opens on time, signing off on almost all the proofs at the end of an 11-hour day and missing an online happy hour en route. I continue to be enraged by traitors and covidiots, and Autumn Sky published my poem about zombie minks last week ("Uncontained").

I like to think that as I get older, I at least get a shade less stupid. More able to admire something tantalizingly shiny or plush while at the same time recognizing "not the right thing for me right now" or even "not for me ever," be it a dance workshop in January or the many amazing music/theatre presentations streaming this month. What's already on the laptop, let alone in the house, could occupy me spiritually and possibly even profitably for years.

. . . and yes, I realize that this has been the theme of virtually every blog entry I've managed to post (and many of the cards/letters I put in the mail) the past umpteen years. What can I say? It's who I am -- and this year, of course, has exacerbated my ever-present awareness of how limited our time is on Earth. My dad died when he was 58, after literally decades of my parents warning me about our family's poor health history. He and most of his nine siblings succumbed to cancer before I turned thirty.

It turns out the charity we specified in my aunt's obituary doesn't have a field for memorial designations on its web form, and my cousin is fine with Restaurant Opportunities Centers United as an alternative. So that was one needle moved. To my delight, a longtime mainly-online friend (our in-person meetings have included a regatta and a bachelorette party, but for 20+ years, it's been mainly mailing lists and blogs and emails, initially sparked by our mutual interest in Dorothy L. Sayers) donated to the Jewish Liberation Fund in my honor for Hanukkah. I used more oil in one night than I usually pour all month to deep-fry falafel. It wasn't a particular success, but the BYM approved of my riffs on Tavern's kale salad (which I learned to make at home mainly by adapting Nigella Lawson's similar recipe for spinach salad with pinenuts and sultanas). I have pulled together the ingredients for making bourbon balls, but somehow we have like three bags of boba instead of the powdered sugar I thought was still on one of those shelves. Derp.

Still, holiday observances and preparations will continue. We do not have a tree, but one of the sunroom residents is servng admirably as a Christmoose:


I have been rereading parts of Stephanie Laurens's Osbaldestone series, and also Jackie Lau's One Bed for Christmas (the latter because another woman I met via the Sayers list just received a T-Rex costume, which happens to be a Thing in that story).

There's more to write - here, in cards, for submissions, and elsewhere. My tulsi-galangal experiment turned out okay, and the mason jar of lemon-juniper infused vodka smells pleasantly potent. There is an Ailey groove to get back into (thank you Universe and friends for the nudges in that direction). But the next business at hand is a nap. Pacing matters. :)

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bao and bows

Among the items and services I donated to this year's auction at my church, the offer to read sonnets didn't spark any interest, but the winner of the three-month subscription for homemade bao prevailed over other bidders by their willingness to pay more than $125 for the goods. I delivered carrot and mushroom bao to them last month; today's batch was pork:



I worked Sunday night and until 1 a.m. today to clear enough of the decks to take today off, both so I could deliver the bao freshly steamed and to give myself room for rebalancing life with ghosts old and new. My mother would have been 77 today. My Aunt Cherry died this morning. I downloaded Marissa's Grief, as Faithful as my Hound to listen to later.

I have made more batches of bao this year than in any other. I have delivered them to households dealing with COVID-19 and with bereavement, as well as just sharing with friends and colleagues because I was able to. My mom taught me a hack: when you don't have time or energy to make the dough from scratch, Pillsbury Grands or the equivalent will do. As with pie crust, I can taste the difference, so I make my own when I can, but it eases my mind (which in turn adds ease to my prep) to have backup options in the fridge.

That said, I very recently learned that the Quakers are organizing against General Mills/Pillsbury, and that others are on board (see Ora Wise's plans in the Grub Street survey of people at MeMe's).

Both my boss and my financial planner called me this morning at 10 a.m. The call from my financial planner was, well, planned - we needed to touch base about my IRA, and doing so on Mom's birthday was appropriate. We discussed the election, and I was like, "My dude, democracy isn't safe yet." Speaking of which, here are a couple of currently active groups:

https://thecivicscenter.org/
https://postcardstovoters.org/2020/11/15/234/

Current reading includes Kenny Lao's Hey There, Dumpling!. I forget where I read that one should eat dumplings on the first day of winter solstice for good luck (although my intermittent reading pile also currently includes Carolyn Phillips's All Under Heaven), but there are worse invitations to fortune one could extend . . .

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"Monteverdi? No one ever sings Monteverdi for me!"

- Thomas Peck [NYT obit], responding delightedly to my first selection for my Grant Park Symphony Chorus audition



Living Bread


Eleven years later, I'm rehearsing Monteverdi,
Byrd and Palestrina, taking care to ingest the texts
so that, in singing "panis vivus"
my mouth will be rich with the wonder therein.
Eleven years later, I'm not the musician
(not yet) you thought I could become, but what I have managed
to keep comes in part from the whispers and the rants
you hurled at the chorus that hot and lively summer.
Eleven years later, I've even less in confidence
yet sing with far more knowledge, burdened with the silence
of doors I shut precipitately, courses scuttled in haste--
nothing fatal, nothing even truly wasted--
but struggling afresh with pitch and recollecting your kindness,
I promise anew to my future and your ghost:
my voice being made for psalms and stories of love,
I could not choose the substance of the gift
but I can shape it.

(First posted on World AIDS Day 2002. Still true.)

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villanelle

Wrote a couple of poems in rage last week.
Autumn Sky Poetry Daily published one of them yesterday:
https://autumnskypoetrydaily.com/2020/10/28/thrice-and-once-tis-time-tis-time-by-peg-duthie/



Speaking of villanelles, ours is a household where my spouse associates the term with Killing Eve rather than iambic hexameters. These days, when Jodie Comer is mentioned, my mind immediately goes to her marvelous reading of a Vita Sackville-West letter (h/t rebellion_bear ):



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red and more red

While friends and family in Minnesota get out their sleds and send snippets of madly grinning reindeer in response to the seven-plus inches of snow they got yesterday, I continue to play frost roulette with my garden, hoping that the tomatoes and peppers will ripen some more before I have to bring them in.



There are so many shades of green and red to enjoy right now. With the Christmas (aka Prairie Fire) peppers, waiting out the shift from orange to red has become a daily exercise in patience for me. Many of the peppers are red enough for cooking, but holding off harvesting until they deepen from, say, mere or Mandarin Red to Fiery Red or High Risk Red has been satisfying. The dried pepper wreath is coming along.

Autumn Sky Poetry Daily published "What I've Been Trying to Tell You about Dancing" last week.

Speaking of dancing, I attended a Philadelphia-area Zoom social earlier tonight. Here's some of the dancers demonstrating "Red and All Red," a dance from 1757:



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mooncake bunnies

I'm a such a sucker for kawaii packaging. I hadn't planned on buying more mooncakes this season, having already splurged on two boxes and a CAAN festival feast last month. But, BUNNIES!!!

(The cakes are gorgeous, so I placated my household budget gods by designating three of the four as gifts to colleagues/family. And I subsequently received a box of four from a vegetarian friend who had purchased them before realizing that they contained lard.)

Autumn Sky Poetry Daily published my poem "Vinegar" this week.

Herding deliverables to their destinations has been grueling, and I missed dances, chats, and services this week. And an alternate service I attended for a few minutes was off-key enough that on five hours of sleep across two days, I couldn't take it. On an un-whiny note, though, it's indeed a silver lining to have multiple options for all three, and to be able to catch some of the recordings later. This week's video sessions also included London Art Week's webinar on 15th-century frames, whose presenters in turn recommended Closer to Van Eyck, which may be of interest to the medieval/Renaissance, restoration/conservation, and interactive programming nerds who happen to be reading this. Today's dance (hosted by Iowa English Country Dance) included "Hazelfern Place," which I had not encountered before, and a breakout-room craic with dancers/musicians in Atlanta (with bonus rubber chicken) and Bristol (UK).

Pounding through piles of pages (and spending hours de-snarling some tech tangles) also meant not restocking on groceries until today, so we'd run out of eggs, bacon, waffles, lettuce, and other staples by this morning. But I was able to produce Uncle Nearest jello cups and deviled eggs for a tiny outdoor gathering, and spiced banana muffins to cover a couple of breakfasts, so go me. I have more work and correspondence to whale through tonight, but first I'm going to make chili with some of the tomatoes I grew:


The green bananas are to help ripen the green fruit I'll have to bring in early because of rodents or frost. speaking of which. . .

The BYM (gestures toward scrabbling in the walls): Can you do something about that squirrel?
Me: Burgoo.
The BYM (shouts at the scrabbling): Hear that, mf? KENTUCKY IS IN THE HOUSE.

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