4th year to make these, they are given by New Mexico Literary Arts each year to a group and/or a poet who has given a lot to the community.

I got them glazed and they are firing as I type.

Life is full.

5/8/2012 addendum

Here is photo of finished tile:

2012 NMLA Gratitude Award Tile to James McGrath

2012 Gratitude Award Tile to Society of the Muse of the Southwest

on March 4, 2012 I got a surprise in my email – notice from Jack Matthews that he had given me one of his Prairie Sagebrush awards for a post I wrote in January of 2011, entitled “January Yard Observations.” He has awarded this to many very wonderful pieces of internet writing. You may link to the list as well as to his inspiring blog by double-clicking on the award image.

Sandia Mountains, Christmas Eve 2011

Oh dear, a bit of fiasco -
called it “Laurel&Hardy-esque” just now to a friend.
But hoping to cause a bit of cheer,
by sharing these crazy steps I took
to make dessert for Xmas dinner.

I have loved the tubs of tapioca at Trader Joe’s – not as hard to digest as ice cream, but very creamy-satisfying. And in my fridge last week I found a bag of bulk tapioca – large-size balls. I thus decided to make tapioca for our dessert and serve it with some fresh berries, since our wee grand-nieces love those.

I began by asking on facebook if anyone knew how to make it from scratch, and did not get a single answer. My friend Michelle said she always followed the directions on the box. Being in bulk, I had no box. Found a blog post that got me ready. I decided to triple the recipe.

As I began to cook the custard and tasted a ball, I had a realization: it was couscous, not tapioca. I decided to go ahead and make it with the couscous, and just tell everyone, be honest. Not pretend it was tapioca, or pretend I didn’t know. Yes, I had bought large couscous in bulk, not tapioca!

Well, the 20 minute period went by with no thickening happening in the big vat of couscous, milk and eggyolk. I tasted it again – chewy – like stale cheerios – and thought, “this will not taste good.” So I fished out all the cous cous, turned off the stove and headed out to the store to buy tapioca. But, being Christmas Day, not a single grocery store was open (I drove to 3). I did stop at Walgreen’s, bustling as it was, and bought a can of whipping cream.

Back home, only 2 hours left to finish (had begun 2 hours before), got my stools set up in front of the stove (am recovering from minor knee surgery and can’t be long on my feet) and started stirring the vat again. Turned up the heat. Still wasn’t thickening. Got out the cookbook my sis had given me for my birthday years ago, Moosewood Desserts, and in the custard section found ‘Couscous Date Pudding’ page 215 — ah ha! But I had tasted it, and knew I didn’t want that flavor or texture …

Why was the custard not thickening after coming to a boil again? I went to the cookbook’s custard section and looked at the ratios of milk to egg – more egg in the custards, and my recipe had more milk. I realized I needed a grain to add. Got out the iron pot to cook some rice. It slid off the counter and I caught it with my newly-mended knee on the way down, out of reflex. Oh what a pain. Rice on the floor to sweep up, too.

Back to the cookbook, found on page 216 ‘Indian Pudding’ that had mostly milk and, cornmeal! It was baked, and had many spices added, but my custard wouldn’t need baking after 2 hours on the stove. Spied the small sack of white fine ground cornmeal, so in it went, along with cloves, cinnamon and ginger. Wow did it thicken quickly then. Luckily no lumps formed. Ladled into the pretty cups and glasses, 3 raspberries atop each, relief at last. It did not scald and get wasted, I had a dessert to bring.

Stan Laurel, I know I am related to you.

from Wikipedia, Laurel & Hardy in ‘Way Out West’ (1937)

Late afternoon walk:
Ides of November
V after V of Cranes.

Planets and stars out -
sun faded on horizon,
low Crane warble!

-ccsb 11/15/11

Bosque Panel install September 2010

_________________________________

3 lines, in the Japanese Haiku tradition, serve me well to help my noticing, and help me notice more. I had pleasure of being a part of a Renga group a few years ago and got to experience the rhythm of sharing back and forth, as well as noticing with 3 lines, or 3 lines + 2 lines. Our group was wonderful in that it was the meaning, not the exact form, that was the goal.

© 2007 Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York

Of course, I realized the drawing was a woodcut later – that best of looks with line so finely describing subject.

We have friends who run an etching studio and my spouse runs a letterpress printing press. Imagining the life of a man of the 18th century who created illustrations for the mass-production of the day – printing by hand – allowed me to get closer to these presses in my life. I could fantasize how our life would have been centuries ago if we were constantly engaged with printing work. And to be able to draw every day? What a life to imagine.

Thomas Bewick’s life on the eastern coast of England north near the border with Scotland is revealed by biographer Nancy Uglow from her study of his many letters. I did not expect to get such an up close view of his mind nor his tastes. Bewick sided with the colonists in our revolution that was sucking funds from his country. He was anti-war, and he supported people wanting republic over monarchy. His favorite past-time was spending weeks walking overland observing wildlife up over the border in Scotland. These outings formed the backbone to his dedication to illustrating the first collections of illustrations of wildlife – forerunners of future field guides. His generation saw huge changes in land ownership on that island …
page 83:
“…Bewick mourned the loss of fells and wild spaces. ‘The poorman was rooted out,’ he wrote later of enclosure, ‘and the various mechanics of the villages deprived of all benefit of it.’ Like so many, he took Goldsmith’s lament in “The Deserted Village’ of 1770 as his anthem:
Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn
Thy sports are fled, and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain.

And his choice of subject matter portrayal in his woodcuts subtlely showed his values on justice …
“At the end of his first major book, the General History of Quadrupeds, Bewick placed a telling vignette. A boy holding out his hat leads two blind fiddlers past the smooth walls of a new estate, adorned with urns and busts: the land is firmly guarded, with a signboard on the wall announcing ‘Steel Traps and Gins.’ But beneath the sign an ominous crack has appeared. Some day that wall will shatter and fall.” (Nature’s Engraver by Jenny Uglow)
Thusly the wood engraver shared his opinions through his illustrations.

Only just now, while writing this and looking at images in a google search, look at what I find in a fellow WordPress blogger’s post –

http://robertarood.wordpress.com/2007/09/25/natures-engraver-a-life-of-thomas-bewick-by-jenny-uglow/

–someone whose impressions of the book are so similar to mine. Please read it – I own up that this writer does her subject a finer job of praising. I do realize that taking 3 years to finish a book will do that – render the subject matter a wee bit foggy.

But you can see she also says she didn’t want to finish it!

Bewick's Wren photo by Minette Layne via Wikipedia

Thomas Bewick, 'The Ant and the Grasshopper', wood-engraved illustration, from 'Fables of Aesop and others', 1818. Printed by E. Walker for Thomas Bewick, Newcastle. National Art Library Pressmark: G.28.Y.1b

above image from http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/a/aesops-fables/

If it weren’t for Teresa Evangeline’s post on Hokusai, which i read tonight, i wouldn’t have made this post about Bewick.
Thank you, Teresa.

logo designed by head storekeeper Joe Hernandez

by Cirrelda Snider-Bryan

Being a member of La Montanita is not new – in fact it is old – twenty-seven years. My sister got me to join first food co-op, Ochá, before that. 31 years of food coop membership in Albuquerque! It is ‘old-hat’ to me – a comfortable and beloved old hat.

As in: jars for bulk flour, grains, herbs, spices, maple syrup are the way I still buy and store food. Though I don’t buy all the things I used to buy in bulk (tofu, laundry detergent, honey, oil), I could, ’cause (except for tofu) the co-op still carries them all that way. Neat to see people continue to buy in bulk and skip the throw-away package.

As in: knowing people just from shopping there. How I run into folks in lots of places who were members back then, too, run into them in the schools and in line at the credit union. We chat and remember the working member jobs we would do. Third grader I taught became Valley cashier when that store opened.

As in: ‘Fair Wage’ and ‘Food Shed’ are reasons I don’t complain about prices. Board and Staff continue to build efforts to be fair, open, pro-active. They model “best practice.”

Co-op ‘of endearing mountain’ — heap of hope for the future our daughter inherits.

tree between our yards

The wonderful simple down to earth practicality of my neighbors of my parents’ generation. Betty and Albert Sanchez grew a chile crop next door in their backyard from their saved seed. They worked with their old water well for irrigating that filled with sand so often in later years – a sure sign of the dropping of the water table. They were the ones so generous with providing the larkspur “Spur,” Yerba Buena, Cholla and Plum Tree transplants from their own yard to ours. Betty deliciously recounted how she cooked los quelites  – the wild lambsquarters – with bacon and the hearts of the red chile. What gifts they gave me. Gracias a Diós por ellos.

While we were over there, the bats were darting low in the grey dusk light, and skimming over the water like swallows do in the daylight. After a couple rains these past few nights, the mosquitos are thick.

There was enough light to tell that the ditch water is still black from ash from the Las Conchas fire runoff. We have been seeing that all August long – our dog comes out from the ditch with a dark tinge on her fur from that black water.

Bat tile by CC