My last kettle

Most of the country is freezing cold right now, so I shouldn't complain about a few days of rain, gloom and above normal 45 degrees. It does get a person down though. I'm sure the native people used to hole up in their long houses eating dried salmon, getting on each other's nerves.

Good reading weather. I just finished a book called "The Anthologist" by Michaelson Baker. If you like poetry and fiction you would enjoy it, because it's an unusual story about a broke poet who can't bring himself to even write an introduction to an anthology. The book becomes a rambling love story about poetry, and how important it is in our lives. He finally gets past writer's block by asking himself a simple question: What was the best moment in my day?

And then the daily writing follows. Blogging isn't always poetry, but poetry is often blogged.
(Sometimes too often :-)

The best moment in my day came when this new English kettle arrived in the mail. John ordered it over the Internet, and it was worth the long wait.

My Last Kettle

British, no nonsense
And handmade,
Fine for a Queen,
But mine.
Chrome with a pure copper heart.
Surely
The last kettle I will ever own.

I'll put the kettle on
for a nice cup of tea...

Even the shriek is genteel.
Everything about it
Simply, honestly,
Beautiful.

Tortilla soup and Janus

The month of January gets its name from the ancient Roman god called Janus. The statue above is from the Vatican. Janus is always two-headed, because one head looks forward into the new year while the other looks back. In Roman times, Janus was top dude in a temple of peace, where the doors were only opened during wars (which was probably most of the time.) The temple was a safe place where new beginnings and resolutions could be made. Now we head to the gym instead.
And speaking of backward glances and resolutions, I looked in the freezer this week and realized we blew through 7 pounds of butter in a very short time. All that baking! All those big holiday meals!

I made tortilla soup last night for dinner, easy and good. Its healthy and light if you go easy on the cheese and fried tortilla part. Lots of cilantro, lime, chicken, onions and peppers cooked in the last of the turkey bone stock from the freezer. Now, if we can only stay away from the last of the Christmas candy...

Party time

Amanda tells me Nova stayed up until 11 playing with her friends at a New Year's Eve party.

She looks pretty in pink, but I don't think her little boyfriend wants to dance (yet!)

Goodbye Christmas

There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter.
One is the January thaw.
The other is the seed catalogs.

Hal Borland

It took two full days to take Christmas "down" at our house, which is all work and no play like the "up" part. In between packing I also made trips to Home Depot's "Home Storage Event" to buy plastic tubs to replace the flimsy cardboard boxes. H.D. is smart-- first they sell you the stuff in November, then you have to go back later and buy containers to store it all in.

I have to admit, the open feeling is nice with the big dry tree out of the house. But when you finally get everything hauled back in the attic, there's an astonishing amount of dirt left behind. The tree left a swath of pine needles across the rug, floor, porch and right down the front steps into the yard.

But now I can think about spring. I got a Henry Fields seed catalog yesterday, and I always like looking at the pages with oddities like the Maypop. It's the weird looking thing in the lower right corner above. The catalog says it has Exotic Flowers; Tasty Fruit. I recognize the Maypop as a Passion Flower vine, but Henry Fields never gives botanical names. Or how about a Dwarf Pineapple or Pomegranate? Luscious fruit in the kitchen window? I have to remind myself that some of the most invasive plants I ever made the mistake of planting came from this catalog, arriving in the mail like innocent dead sticks.

I'm looking out the window at yellow buds on the forsythia, so in a couple days I'll bring some branches in to force into bloom. It would be nice if there wasn't another hard freeze (it does happen in Seattle some winters) but that's almost too much to hope for...

MOHAI

We haven't been to the Museum of History and Industry for years, so drove over there on new year's eve day. A good time to get some perspective on history, and they had a Arts and Crafts in the Northwest exhibit that I wanted to see before it closed. This old museum is in a beautiful location, near the Arboretum on Lake Washington and adjacent to Foster Island, a popular birdwatching trail.

It was too cold and wet to walk along the lake, but here's a picture of John in the parking lot in front of a BIG bell. And free parking is also a BIG deal in Seattle.
Here I am in the lobby in an antique sleigh. (I didn't break any rules, they let you climb on it for hokey pictures like this one.) Only thing missing is the horse...

MOHAI is a wonderful history museum, and I love dioramas. This one shows a native person glumly watching the arrival of the first European boat. When the visitor presses a button, the projected image of a ghostly ship moves slowly across the scene.
And here's a graphic mural of the Great Seattle Fire of 1889 when our city burnt to the ground. Anyway, along with many more displays like this, there were rooms full of historic photos and enough trivia about local industry to keep the history buffs interested. Like all museums, what you see is just the tip of the iceberg; I just got an email from the Society of American Archivists telling me that MOHAI has 3 million photos and 100,000 artifacts in their archives.

The Arts and Crafts exhibit was small but classy, with a few nice pieces of furniture and photos of northwest bungalows before people ruined them with wall-to-wall carpet and painted woodwork. Beautiful stuff. William Morris once said:

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful...

Another decade bites the dust...

AMC did a "Three Stooges" marathon yesterday, and my brother pointed out it was an appropriate way to wind down the decade.

It's interesting to look back at the quaint things we were worried about 10 years ago, like our computers shutting down the planet. The news was full of stories about hoarding food and water and guns, and getting ready for pioneer life off the grid. Well, that didn't happen-- and little did we know worse was ahead: 9/11, wars, economic catastrophe and freedom lost. And after all that, most Americans are poorer, less safe, and liked less by the the rest of the world. Will things ever get back to"normal?" Sure, but who wants to guess what the new normal will feel like.

But in our little world, there's also been the joy of babies, gardens, music, birds, horses and the greatest blessing of all -- good health in our family. Amanda is the light of our lives, we were proud of her in the Peace Corps, and then delighted when she made us grandparents for the first time. John has a good job, a fancy new airplane finally took to the skies, and Sizzle gets her hay every morning. On top of that, we've had some wonderful trips including Grenada. But above all else, enjoying friends and family with good food and many bottles of wine.

"Starship Junco," by Patricia Rogers

Are you ready for the next big adventure?
Happy New Year everyone!