Presenting: The Toy

Presenting: The toy. Out for the first ride today. 

The bike is great. The motor is very weak. Needs a tune-up desperately. 

Going out, I was surprised how pleasant the weather was. It is all uphill from the driveway to the new service road but the sun was shining and there was hardly any traffic. Coming back the same way, I was looking forward to a relaxing coasting down hill. 

Typischer Fall von denkst'e. 
Going out, the wind was behind me, coming back it was against me: I was cranking hard, all the way home, like going up hill again, in gusts up to 8mph as measured on top of the flag pole. I'll have to remember that! And I will, you betcha!

It has red flashing LED in the back. Here it is. The purpose is, of course, to alert drivers of cars and motorcycles that something has just passed them. 

Oh, I love that brotform!

Oh, I love that brotform. You do not need to flour it this heavily, though!

Whole Grain Bread Recipe

1/2 cup barley

1/2 cup ten-grain

1/2 cup bulgur

Each in half cup water, heated in microwave for 2 minutes at half power

1 cup all purpose flour

1 cup pumpkin seeds

1 cup sunflower seeds

2-1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp salt

1 Tbsp bulk yeast, started in a little lukewarm water - let sit till it foams up

Mix ingredient, then add one cup of water. Continue mixing until you have a heavy very sticky but not too wet dough. 

Add flour or water to obtain the desired consistency, stirring all the while with the dough hook (Kitchenaid)

Cover with a towel and let stand till evening, about four hours.

Refrigerate over night.

Remove from fridge mid-day and let warm a little, then knead and form and place in brotform for proofing.

This is a rather dry and stiff, but not sticky, dough. 

Place in 100-degree oven for proofing, but add no more heat. Let cool-down progress naturally. 

Loaf rose nicely (about two hours).

I baked it at 450 degrees for 45 minutes and got about 170 degrees in center. The web recommends 195 to 200 in center, so put it back in the oven at 350 degrees. Used a thermometer to make sure the center reached 195, but did not measure the time.

This made a loaf of 1200 grams, 2.64 pounds.

Things to think about.

Iivo sent a link to a commentary on a movie we had seen together on his birthday last December: "The Light Will Die." The way I looked at it then, Interstellar was one of those very sic-fi phantasies. Apparently, our world was doomed, once again, and some heroic astronauts went out into the universe to look for a place where our race could find a new living space. It was along the line of Jules Verne and by its routine and repetitiousness of subject, it was not even as great a phantasmic vision as those Jules Verne presented to us a long, long time ago.

Then came Iivo's link to this commentary, and it once again showed me how shallow my own everyday thinking has become and how I should look with more humility at the creative efforts of others. A  modern movie might just as well contain some deeper thoughts than the flickering images of human events might let you know. The story line of this movie is not about space flight at all. That part is just a prop to the deeper thoughts about dying and death, about religion, and, as this commentary points out, "metaphysical and emotional themes about fatherhood and survival."

This commentary was published in The Aquila Report, a paper that I have not paid any attention to before, but Iivo's heads-up prompted me to browse a little farther and another commentary caught my eye and kept me reading and thinking until late into the night. This one, by David Robertson, carries the title "What Happened When I Almost Died."

Now this Robertson is not to be confused with the baseball player, I think, because right in the beginning he relates what "happened after he conducted a wedding." Baseball pitchers very seldom conduct weddings, so this must be a member of the ecclesiastic league. What happened to him was that he collapsed and was taken to the hospital and found to have two bleeding ulcers, one of them over an artery, which of course spurted blood most profusely and brought him to the gates of the promised land. He was brought back by the medical arts and prayer from people who know him and heard of his desperate situation and prayed for him. I wish you would search The Aquila Report and read this commentary for yourself. For me, it brought back memories simply because of the close similarities with what happened to me last summer.

I got up in the morning as usual, and had my usual breakfast of raw bits with banana and milk, and went on the road to do a bit of shopping down in the valley. Somewhere near noon time I began to feel so terribly thirsty that I stopped at a grocery store and got me a big bottle of spring water. This is very uncommon for me. I have been known to go days without a drop to drink. After all, we consist of mostly water and evaporating a few percentage points is no big deal. Or is it? By mid afternoon, I had almost finished this bottle, but drinking water did not make feel any better, so I pushed myself back up the mountain and home. That evening, I decided not to have any dinner. I just felt so blah there was no interest in food or even a thought lost on my usual glass of wine. I finished the water, took a tall glass of fresh water, and went to bed early.

Later that night I woke up with the need to go to the bathroom and while there I started feeling rather very lightheaded and was glad to get back to bed and stretch out. The trips to the bathroom were repeated in the dark maybe three or four times during that night, and on each of those trips the lightheadedness got worse as soon as I stood up, until I passed out during my last trip. I came to again after a while, crumpled up on the floor, but feeling better, and I stretched out on the carpet to regain some strength, which appeared to have left me almost completely.

After a while I thought to have gathered enough energy to make it back to bed, and I actually reached it, but very unstylishly, lurching into the bedroom and falling like a log over to foot end of my mattress, where I rested for some time until I could grapple into a more formal sleeping position.

About that time it occurred to me that I might need some help. I got my cell phone and got to turn it on and dialed 911 and the friendly voice on the other end of these areal wires led me through the procedure by a lot of questions and eventually announced that the crew was on its way.

It occurred to me that the rescuers had no way to get in to the house. I toyed with the thought to direct them over to Chip's house to get the emergency key, but Chip's sleeping and waking habits are such that I discarded this idea very quickly. It was probably between two or three in the morning when all this went on.  So I asked the dispatcher to 'hold a second' and crawled out of bed and over to the front door and got the latch unlocked and crawled back to bed. By that time I had realized that this awful lightheadedness hit me every time I lifted my head a bit higher than my heart, and that is where the crawling came in. It allowed me to stay about as close to horizontal as is possible.

The EMT crew came and found their way in and took me to the hospital, where the doctors found out that I had two bleeding ulcers...

There is a page on the internet that says 'an average man of 150 lb. will have around 8 pints of blood. Not many average men I came across since I left boyhood weigh 150 lb., but if I prorate this given weight to my 200 pounds that would grant me shy of 11 pints of blood and the doctors at the hospital said I had lost between four or five of them before I came to the ER.

When I came to the hospital the bleeding had stopped. Actually it had stopped some time ago because that urge to go to the bathroom had not returned to me since the last downfall I mentioned above.
I am sure nobody prayed for me but there absolutely must have been some protective hand over me, even if you admit the scientists' explanation that the bleeding stopped when the pressure in my veins dropped so low that the opening in my artery closed on natural tension alone. That's one thought I have often: my fate was not in human hands.

The other thought is a bit more complex: I have watched so much death invade my family, and sat for so many days and nights at the side of the beds of loved ones, that I began to see death as not only unavoidable, but as desirous. We talk so much about 'the promised land' and 'going home' that the thought of being the one who's going holds no terror.

There are times when the awareness of being alone is overwhelming and I pray to get passage to the promised land.
And yet, when the time came and I could have stretched my hand out for my ticket, I hesitated and called 911 instead. Why? There was no pain nor the sense of real discomfort. There was no conscious thought about picking up that phone. There was, so I think, a will to live that is stronger than man's desire to 'go home'.

To once again quote from Dylan Thomas' poem:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day:
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Just a letter to mark a day.

Dear Laurie,

Your "good manners message" was received here with raised eyebrows and sharpened attention. Do things like this still exist? I lost out on a date once because I tried to open the car door for her. I had her coat rudely ripped out of my hands when I tried to help her with it. Without a smile, she pushed past me and knocked me into the door post when I tried to enter the restaurant first in order to ensure it was a place suitable for her visit. Etc. And over the years I settled for the thought that what we had learned as good behavior did no longer count in the modern world. But none of the girls who went against my grain in these small ways became the grandmother of your children. Now, after your message, I fear I have a long and hard upward haul back into a mode where I was when I left dancing lessons in senior high, hovered there for a while, then slowly began to slip – once, again, and again. Thanks for the eye opener.

Still with the warm memory of our transition into the new year, I am slowly recovering from the cold that I brought to you from Sneads Ferry. Not that anyone there gave it to me – no, they all remained untouched, but I picked it up there, because I had it during the short day-and-a-half here before I started out to come to you, and almost did not. I hope I did not deposit it in your house? And as things begin to look better through the burning and tearing eyes, old plans come back to life again. Originally, I thought to get a birthday card for you up there, but as things developed, this plan was shattered. Then I thought to make up for it by getting one here and mailing it, but, under the restraining grip of the bacterial assault, I missed this connection, too, and now am forced to send you my greetings through this uncouth media of digitized mail.

There is, however, in considered foresight, a birthday greeting from me "hidden" in Opa's room, between the little book shelf and the wall in the far left corner when you come through the door. Oh, you found it already! It is, as you must have read from the label, a (ask Google) – a round basket made of natural cane, used to proof bread dough before baking. I saw those offered by Bob's Red Mill when I ordered a shipment of 5-grain cereal, and since I remember these things from way, way back, I got me one. That last bread I baked before Christmas, of which you tasted and declared good, was proofed in one of those baskets. The first rise of that dough was scarily ineffective, and the second also totally unsatisfactory. That's when this first basket came through the mail and I washed it and dried it and threw the dough in it, covered it with a towel, and let it stand – and wouldn't you believe it, it rose to more than double its size after all the stress it gave me at first! Back then, when you tasted the bread, I could not tell you about this for fear to give away my plans for your birthday.

Now, one such story proves nothing, but I am looking forward to your own story of resounding success. May it give you joy in providing your family's daily bread. 

The use of this ancient baker's helper is remarkably simple: flower the dry mold liberally, place your dough in it (it has a capacity for a two-pound loaf), let it take its final rise, and simply dump it onto a baking sheet or stone or whatever you use to bake, this last area prepared the way you always prepared it in the past. Generations of bakers have graduated with these things and the result, including the distinctive pattern on the finished loaf, will assure many more generations making use of it.

In this sense, I wish you a great birthday, and great days to follow. May health and wealth and happiness be yours tomorrow and always.

With love, Opa

From stock like that, how could my man not be terrific?! It is so wonderful to be known, and gifts when I feel most known are the ones when I feel most loved. I'm so excited to try this new dough proofing basket! Thank you, sweet Opa! Many happy returns all around!