Clearing Nettles

Not much to report. Past few days have been centered around food: preparing food, reading about food, cleaning up food.

I went to Blood Farm in West Groton to pick up a Chine end pork roast, which I am currently cooking, at low heat, for the next eight hours. Should be grand.

I read on the internet that the place has slow service. There was one person ahead of me in line and I probably waiting twenty minutes with my roast and pig ears in hand.

The smoked pig ears were for Slappy, and enjoy them she did.

While waiting, a man came in, upset that he had brought in his deer and that they had given him the whole carcass and he just wanted the head. He kept asking workers to help him, but no one seemed to know what to do. Finally, an older butcher -- he looked Latino -- heard the man and went outside to help. With a few cuts of his knife, no more carcass! Head only!

Today I have to clear out the rose bushes so that we can fit two cars in our tiny driveway. That's my big project, as well as cleaning out the chimney for the pellet stove, which we fired up for the first time last night.

Since I have to sit around the house while the pork slow cooks, I'm hoping to get some writing done. And it wouldn't hurt to get some exercise. Unfortunately, my knees are so bad that I'm limited in what I can do. A nice long walk? Who knows?

Turkey Plus

Okay, the turkey that tasted so good on initial sampling ended up uneven upon carving, with dry white meat. I don't care for white meat so much, so this didn't bother me.

But I can now retract my earlier assessment and say that my turkey was not as good as my mother's. This year.

Heavy on the Horseradish

My first turkey is done and cooling. I tried it. I don't like to brag, but it's the best turkey I've ever eaten.

It's not bragging, really. For the past two weeks, I've been going to Barnes and Noble and checking the net for recipes and tips. I'm not a huge turkey fan, so I wanted to do this right. I don't like the dry stuff I usually get, and this is almost more like a slow roasted pork, it's so tender. I've been up since six cooking. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the family to show up, when I'll finally let myself polish off one of the two remaining I.P.A.'s. My brother gets the other.

It also isn't bragging because I've only been eating one person's turkey for the past thirty some years of my life. My mother is a good cook, but a little conservative. She's remarkably consistent -- same bird every year all that time. But I've had enough of that bird, and wanted mine with bacon and oranges and garlic and fresh rosemary.

I also made a walnut stuffing and the cranberry relish recipe I heard about on NPR this week. It turned out to be even better than expected. Did I go a little heavy on the horseradish? Guilty as charged!

Jess is taking a shower after cleaning the house all morning. This is our first Thanksgiving together. It seems to mark a turning point. The weather is unseasonably warm. My knee hurts, but the sun is out and the cats are clearly excited at the constant company. I'm just hoping they don't take to hopping up on the counters during the meal. They seem in that spirit today. Hopping, that is.

I finally got my Netflix squared away. The new XBOX has a program that lets you steam titles directly off Netflix for free, assuming you have a subscription. There are diverse titles available, and I already have my queue loaded with Herzog and documentaries and David Attenborough programs.

I can be all modern with my XBOX, but I'll keep my old man taste in movies. Bring on the polar bears and spelling contests! I'll watch it all and eat apples with cheddar to boot.

Fifteen minutes to go. The family arrives soon.

Tissues and Toilet Paper

This morning I diverted my truck route to head to my mother's house. I dropped off a frozen turkey -- one of the contractors gave it to the Boss, but I'm serving him Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow and had already acquired a bird. So it went to the freezer, and the trip also gave me the chance to pick up a pan for the turkey.

When I pulled up in the truck, a strange looking bird of a type I had never seen before came up alongside me and pecked at my sneaker. It followed me around the house and to the porch. I suspect it would have followed me inside, had I opened the door for it.

"Hey, Mom," I said, "There's a strange bird outside following me around."

"I've seen those. There's a whole family of them. Are they pheasants?"

"I don't think they're pheasants. I think it's a wood grouse."

I have no idea why I thought it was a wood grouse. I've never seen a wood grouse before.

When I walked back outside, the grousebird was waiting for me. It followed me to the front yard and I sat on a rock and tried to pet it. It sat next to me, within a foot, but would protest and peck at my hand if I tried to pet it.

I went to the front door and opened it and asked my mother to bring me something for the bird to eat. She brought me an old cylinder of Quaker oats.

I put some in my hand and offered it to the bird. It ate some, and looked angry. It bit me hard in the finger, but not enough to break the skin.

As I drove away, the bird stood in the driveway, craning it's neck, protesting. It looked lonely and sad. I think it thought I was its mother.

*

Jess had to bring the Dufflebag to see his Dad tonight. While she delivered the boy, I sat on the couch playing Gears of War 2.

At some point, the door opened. "Oh shit," I thought, "Jess is back already." I was supposed to finish the shopping for Thanksgiving and pick up some tissues and toilet paper before she got back, and cursed myself for losing track of the time.

A strange, tall, pale white man entered the house.

He looked at me, casually.

"This isn't Adam's house, is it?"

"Nah." I replied.

He looked around.

"Hey, is that the new Gears of War?"

"Yep."

Bear in mind, I was wearing a headset and playing a live game with Macarena.

"Is it good?"

I had been drinking Dogfish Head 90 minute I.P.A.s and felt a little woozy. "Yeah, it's . . . it's . . . great. I really like it."

"Okay," he said, and went back into the night.


*

Addendum:

I googled the noble wood grouse, and it looks nothing like the bird I saw. I did take pics from my cell phone, and will post tomorrow.

The curious may find the true wood grouse here.

Taking Temp

The profile of playwright David Rabe in last week's New Yorker details the life of his father, a man who gave up teaching English. Financial desperation forced him to start working in a slaughterhouse, and the young Rabe grew up in a household shadowed by a sense of failed dreams and economic anxiety.

I don't want to be that Dad.

*

At my Halloween party, guests brought so much beer that I've been able to live off the excess since then, which is saying a lot, since I do enjoy beer. At one point there must have been twelve different beers in the old ice box. And now, I'm down to the last bottle: a Sam Adam's Holiday Porter. I'm drinking it now, and trying to savor it.

*

My mother called today and asked me, for the first time, when my birthday was. My mother always remembered -- my dad often forgot or had to be reminded. She actually could remember, when prodded, but she wasn't sure.

*

George was kind enough to secure a copy of Gears of War 2, and I spent some pleasant hours this weekend blasting the kidneys out of locusts and grubs. Sometimes, I get wrapped up in the games and will continue to play long after they are fun. The campaign mode was short and simple enough so that I felt immersed, but also able to stand up after an hour's time and not feel as though I was one step closer to amoeba.

The online mode is even more fun, as it gives me yet another avenue in which to poke fun of my friend and XBOX fan Macarena.

Speaking of Mac, he is going to lend me supplies for beer brewing. I'm inspired by the food issue of the New Yorker -- in which I recognized lifestyles I can probably aspire to and probably would enjoy -- read and you'll see why.

I've begun to notice that people who leave bjj because they are injured or can no longer make the massive time commitment, often turn to cooking as a hobby, and they are like arts in some respects. Adrenaline, aesethetics, the fusion of material acts with transcendental values, the feeling that the process reflects a certain psychology, and and the sense that our personal qualities, good and bad, are reflected in organization, knife-cutting, patience, and intuition we bring to the dish. It's as though if we could bake the perfect bread, then it's fate's loss if we aren't kings, and a sorry loss to fate at that.

*

With the restored water heater has come the restored baseboard heating to the second floor of the house. Whereas before, we arose on cold wood and scurried downstairs for warmth, now we sink into winter on the morning steps downstairs.

My morning ritual is to dress and then go outside to warm both our cars. I never used to warm up my car first, preferring instead to sit and shiver inside, but Jess has shown me the wisdom of this, and I begin each morning with a freshly cooked breakfast sandwhich, one often made from delicious Jimmy Dean sausage and some locally made, quality mustard (high/low!), taking off in a toasty car, the sun still yet to rise.

When I worked at the gym at NYU, we occasionally encountered a man who would sneak into the upstairs bathrooms to shave. It was demeaning to all involved to drag this guy out of the building, but the administration was strict.

We didn't know much about him, and, in retrospect, I should have asked. I'm pretty sure that on a few occasions I actually covered for the guy while he finished, although I certainly asked him to leave at times as well. Sometimes, he was only half done shaving, so he'd leave with shaving cream still on part of his chin. He also seemed to cut himself a lot, perhaps from using dull razors or from rushing before he got caught.

According to the assistant operations manager, the man was a former professor. That was why he knew about the gym. At some point in the past he either developed a mental illness, or became an addict, or did something else to lead him to a life on the streets.

There have been times in my life when I've thought about that guy and realized how close I've come to going that way myself. After all, going to graduate school was itself a way of escaping demons. I was galvanized by the death of my friend Rob back in 94. He died of a heroin overdose. Quickly thereafter, I decided I had to take action and do something with my life other than what I was doing: a vague hallucinatory mix of drugs and inertia and strumming guitars. Of course, it's possible I could have chosen that direction anyway, but it's what pushed me to dive in.

I bought some GRE test booklets and spent six months studying the history of English literature. When I took my subject exam, I scored in the 98th percentile, which isn't surprising since I read nearly every major canonical work and memorized a slew of rhetoric terms in Greek to prepare.

Little did I know that I would soon go off to grad school, where a twenty year passion for literature would be extinguished in a matter of months. There's nothing wrong with this. In a sense, it propelled me into history: instead of living and thinking like a pre-post-modernist, now I was in the New New Age and found myself, blinking my newborn eyes, and wondering what wastelands lay beyond.

I have never found anything as intellectually engaging as I did back then, but I have found much that is more sober, insightful, and useful. I am less provoked and more deliberate. But not without my limitations.

*

I made lunches for all five days this week and spent only 5.63 to do it. I bought three pounds of pork (on sale), a jalapeno pepper, a head of garlic, and a head of green cabbage. I found some leftover lemongrass and thai rice. The resulting dish is hearty and complex enough to not get tiresome after three or four days. The pork, like most pork in this country, was too lean, and thus slightly dry and tasteless. It was not as tasty as some of the chicken dishes I'd made recently, but I still suspect it's going to be tastier than just about anything I could while on the road. And you can't beat the price.

My local grocery store doesn't have organ meats -- otherwise I might have kicked it up with some kidneys.

*

This weekend I applied or made inquiries to Home Depot and the Wachusett Brewing Company. I can now reduce the list of career themes to: food, fighting, fixing things, writing, and teaching. Those are the points at which we now spin.

*

One of the guys from William J Malcolm and Son installed our water heater this weekend. It ended up being more complex we first supposed -- our low basements ceilings made finding a suitably sized heater difficult. But, in the end, the plumber did excellent work and we now have hot water. Plus, I still have three dollars in my pocket to last the week! That doesn't sound like much, but it's a cup of coffee on a cold day, and sometimes, that's all you need to make it through. And, given the expenses of the weekend, it's a miracle I came out with a full tank of gas and the hope of a warm cup of the black in the early, cold afternoon.

After helping Tracie move to her new home in Stow earlier today -- she is a jiu-jitsu student who injured her back and recently had emergency surgery -- I insulated the basement against the cold air that was getting in through two boarded up windows. The plumber brought the problem to my attention and reminded me that the sharp cold could cause the pipes to freeze. I did most of the work with some trash bags and a staple gun. Now, the basement is somewhat darker and looks even more forbidding, but it has a touch of warmth, even on a cold day such as this.

The Place of Salmon

I went to the local library tonight to research the town's history. The library is, itself, an historic building, housing a few peculiar artifacts that I'll detail in later entries.

It is small, but with books well chosen. In other words, there was an appealing randomness to it all, with enough to make me think I could go a few years and read hard there and not tap the stacks. I applied for, and received, a library card and took out, for my first borrowing, Richard N. Smith's history Divinity and Dust. Smith himself had an interesting voice. The book is tightly written, and slightly eccentric. He graduated from Harvard in the 1970s, had dealings with the state Republican party (a Mass republican) and peppered his chapters with enough quotes from Emerson, Thoreau, and Jefferson to make me think he'd be a great drinking partner on a cold night.

Maybe I'll try to track him down. Scratch that. I will track him down, and report back here.

*

Random Townsend facts and insight:

1. The town is multicentered and, aside from the barrel industry, seems given to cottage industries. A history of the Finnish in Townsend listed occupations as various as auto dealer, musician, upholster, oil furnace repairman, educator and photographer.
2. Speaking of Finns, the Finnish name for Santa Claus is Joulu Pukki.
3. Speaking of Finnish, they came to speak a mixed language called Finliskaa, which was mostly English words in a Finnish accent and with Finnish endings. Example: bedirooma.
4. Speaking of autos, early car owners padded their garages because of the unreliable shift from forward to reverse. Additionally, because the early Fords were built with reverse as the strongest gear, people typically climbed Bayberry hill backwards.
5. Townsend boasted one of the last paternalist-oriented industries, barrel making. When the industry declined in the fifties, with barrels generally only bought by the whiskey manufacturers, one of the major figures in town, A.D. Fessenden, owner of the local barrel plant, seemed to take personal affront when his workers unionized. The plant closed in 1960, but the workers didn't seem too upset. They quickly realized they could make nearly twice as much money doing less monotonous work in nearby Groton.
6. I enjoy the random. Shrubs was a popular drink in the town's early days: it combined a fruit base with rum or brandy. This was a popular New England drink. I'm game. Pour me a pint.
7. I live near the Squanicook -- I read today that the word means "Place of Salmon."

*

I still haven't managed to secure either a water heater or the money to buy one with, but I worked a lot of overtime last week, so I'll pick one up on Friday. Two more days without a dishwasher or shower. Nothing compared to farm life, but still.

I told George that Jess was working to get me into the painter's union. "You were just talking about teaching and becoming a paralegal!" he said, exasperated. "I need to make money!" I said. For me, there is no different, material or otherwise, between painting and teaching and I just need to help pay the mortgage. Obviously, I would rather write for a living. I can join the painter's union and still get into teaching down the road.

So, then. I must be doing a lot of writing, right? Well, I did some research in the library tonight and got home at eight, my first period of rest since leaving for work at six this morning. It's now almost nine. All I've had to eat was a slice of bread and a half of a cold baked potato. And yes, I'm still tinkering away, writing short articles for websites and trying to keep myself to 400 to 600 working words a day. Easy enough, but not. My mother called me four times today, crying, because her computer had crashed and she couldn't figure out how to make it work. So I'll put in a likely nine hours tomorrow, and then go deal with her computer, and then drive all the way here, and I'm hoping, at that point, to have one concentrated thought that isn't just I should but my fingernails or a slice of pepperoni pizza would be delicious but yeah, I've got 600 words on the subject of Townsend, or MMA, or food, or beer, or the economy, or Obama, or AC/DC, or sex and patriotism, or early country blues, or the cold, or the dog, or any manner of beginning and ending that might rise or not . . . .