Walking

Building Something Is About Lifting the Spirit

thinking of El Cosmico

and the piecing of this.

Watermelon Berries

t r e p t o p u s a m p l e x i f o l i u s

An Alaska native wild berry

The leaves grow one around the other onto a lovely twisted stalk & the berries have a slight watermelon flavour. Apparently the tender spring shoots are delicious raw or steamed and I'm told the berries make a nice fruity jelly.

I'd like to try this recipe. May be nice for a hot summer evening's dessert? I find jelly (as in, jell-o) is really weird -morally & texturally- but this might be kind of nice in a small quantity with a slice of chilled melon.


Watermelon Berry White Wine Jelly

INGREDIENTS

• 14 cups fresh watermelon berries
• 3 cups raw cane sugar
• 2 cups dry white wine
• 2 (5-inch) sprigs fresh rosemary sprigs
• 3 2/3 cups cold water
• 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons unflavored gelatin (from three 1/4-ounce envelopes)

• Special equipment: a 6-cup nonreactive mold (see cooks' note, below) or glass loaf pan

PREPARATION

Bring berries, sugar, wine, rosemary, and 2 2/3 cups water to a boil in a 6- to 8-quart pot, stirring until sugar is dissolved, then reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, until all berries have burst, 8 to 10 minutes. Pour into a large colander lined with dampened paper towels and set in a deep bowl, then let stand until all juices have drained through, 10 to 15 minutes, and discard solids. If you have more than 4 cups berry liquid, boil in a small saucepan until reduced; if less, add water to bring total to 4 cups.

Stir together gelatin and remaining cup water in a clean small saucepan and let stand 1 minute to soften. Heat over moderate heat, stirring, until gelatin is dissolved. Stir gelatin mixture into berry liquid until combined. Pour berry mixture into lightly oiled mold (see cooks' note, below), skimming off any foam. Cool to room temperature, then cover with plastic wrap and chill until firmly set, at least 12 hours.

To unmold, run tip of a thin knife between edge of mold and jelly. Tilt mold sideways and tap side of mold against a work surface, turning it, to evenly break seal and loosen jelly. Keeping mold tilted, invert a plate over mold, then invert onto plate.

NOTES

• Stainless steel, glass, and enameled cast iron are nonreactive, but avoid pure aluminum and uncoated iron, which can impart an unpleasant taste and color to recipes with acidic ingredients in them.
• Unmold the jelly onto a serving plate 2 to 3 inches wider than the mold to allow for spreading. Use a flavorless vegetable oil to brush the mold before filling.
• Watermelon berry jelly can be chilled in mold up to 2 days.

M A I T R I

Sanskrit for unconditional friendship (with oneself). The seed of well-being, of glad-to-be-alive, and of illuminating our relationship with pain.

This may help illustrate.

In terms of a life's work I suppose there's no better use of a life.

To be of use

(in a mechanical sense maybe related to Michel Gondry's contribution to Tokyo! and in a more base way to this from B.C.)


Back to life, back to reality.
In gratitude I offer up a delicate florescent flotation on the sea, pictured here in the inlet at Haines, AK.

The Southeast Alaska State Fair

in Haines.

How fine it was to be in America again. I've missed it dearly. Most especially my beloveds there: SP and WK.

Steadfastness

And two kinds of blue.

A photo from a few evenings ago. We were down at the river for a swim under the hot summer night sky, then back up in the coolness of the closed-up house.

Off to this for a long weekend.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Alice dans le payer merveille)

Taking it out and chopping it up with Cookie, Lily and Tuck, traversing canyons, swimming with the swims, chasing wild beasts. It's her first trip to the WhyTea!

And another Alice, almost as surreal, from the prodigious Jan Svankmajer.

End Time

The other day my Mum, Sister, Carter, Finn and I spent the afternoon at Fort Edmonton Park. It's a serene kind of place. I find myself getting pleasantly drowsy, calm after a few hours there.

We used to live just up the hill from where the Fort sits on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. My brother and I would sometimes wander down there on rainy days when it was dead. We'd slip into the grounds through a hole in one of the fences, an apple and a carrot in each pocket to treat the horses and a few coins to buy brown paper packets of anise and horehound candies.

Stationery supplies, books and pysanky on the shelves of a shop in the Ukrainian Village.
Girls in cotton dresses working the penny arcade at the 1920's Midway. The costume maker produces two outfits for each employee: one for everyday and one for Sunday.

Guest Bloggers: Carter & Finn

Hi, it's Carter and Finn! We showed our Auntie a website called Wordle and we started to try and figure out how to get it onto Auntie's blog. We used her blog to make a Wordle for you that we'll post tomorrow. And then we thought we should put some pictures we took today on Auntie's camera of us with Alice. Alice is cute and very cuddly and she waddles around wherever she goes. When she's going down the stairs she has a weird thing where she puts her paws on one half of the step and the back of her body on the other side of the step so she's going down sideways. She does that because she's like a long squirmy noodle with eyes and four paws and a tail.

CARTER:
I love animals, nature, exercise and sword fighting.

FINN:
I love candy and skateboarding.

Just Little

My imagination has always been easily captured and held by scale. Today, for the first time (clang clang) I realised this tendency is magnified (pardon the expression) when I'm feeling overwhelmed.

So here my thoughts return to a particularly difficult day a few summers ago when I walked through Den Hague to spend some hours in Madurodam, the tiniest city in the world, where blackbirds loom over churchyards and begonias take over buildings.

And I'm thinking about Robert Moses's Panorama and a new way of mapping misery, with pink plastic triangles made by Damon Rich. I'd like to hear this conversation he and Martha Rosler had a few years ago.

Living Rooms

in the early morning.

It's renovation season in the city and the jackhammers and backhoe in the neighbor's yard started at 7am. As my Grandma Hanson would say, "for the love of Pete!" though i don't much mind when it's light like it is.

Anticipating this (or half of it - the half that's Meryl) and this.