I recommend 'The History of Pendennis' to you with special emphasis

Dear Philip,

Thank you so much for your recent note. You too might have been observant of the odyssey of your mail, from being left in error by the USPS in my mail box at Riverbend to its rescue by a dear neighbor, combined with other mail, re-routed to your home address and picked up by your attentive family and re-routed again to the Townhill in Vermont. It arrived here unscathed just a couple of days ago. Your laudatory references to our past years are balm and tickle my ego and, again, I thank you.
I do like the tone and spirit of your writing, Philip! I do believe you have the gift that I claim comes down from your great-grandfather, my own dad, who earned his life - and enabled ours - with his creative writing.

Having finished the reading of the Virginians some time ago, I took on to the 'Newcomes' by the same author and was very close to ask you to stop spending your time with the Virginians and devote it to the history of this family. Yet, I was myself so captivated by it that time flew by and I landed, by prompts contained in this book's pages, at 'the history of Pendennis', again by the same author.
Pendennis is a name and character often encountered in these writings and one does not doubt one moment that the identity of Mr. Pendennis is really that of the author himself. Which gives credence to the impression that some of the stories he is developing are not entirely phantasy, but based on his personal life, embellished by his creative artistry.

Mr. Arthur Pendennis is the son of a patrician family living in the western part of England. His father's efforts at improving his life are described and his eventual marriage to a young woman of notable standing in society. Their life at their country seat follows and results in the appearance of their one son, Arthur. The early years of this boy go by unremarkable. Nevertheless, it is a wonderful account of the growing of a boy. There is first love, of course, and heartbreak, followed by escape into a new environment: college. This section I loved. It describes so well what I myself encountered during those years and what you will undoubtedly be confronted with during the coming four years of your own studies. But next, towards the center of the book (I will not bore you with page numbers, because like all of my current reading this book is in electronic form and the page numbers change depending on the size of the print selected by the reader) the hero of the story is introduced into the literary life of London. It is because of this central section, and knowing your dreams of becoming a published writer, that I recommend 'The History of Pendennis' to you with special emphasis. This book was published in mid-1800. You might snicker and say that the conditions today are quite different. Maybe so, in some technical details, but not in the matter of personal relationships between members of the literary circle and the need of publishers to print that which will be bought. I, myself, had the opportunity to roam along the edges of the society of the printed word and have some proofs to show that my product was published, so I claim the right of authority to say that Mr. Pendennis' experiences are no different than what an ambitious writer of today might encounter. You will also find a great many sections that discuss life, sometimes in form of a discourse between friends, sometimes between enemies, and sometimes in a monologue and you see in these debates many of the ideas developed which even today plague our society.

Personally, I confess that I am totally captivated by Mr. Thackeray's writing. It is so evident that he is not spilling fantasy, but life experience, and his style is such that even when he describes the most despicable atrocities of his times, or the shortcomings of man even today, one is left with a good feeling because of the way he expresses the negative. If you have spent some time on the Virginians, you have received a smattering of what I am talking about.

Use your browser to get into the library of Gutenberg.com and enjoy some really, really good reading and writing, including some wonderfully informative content of life as it was then, and recognize the threads that are still hanging on to our present day social patterns. At least I think that some old habits are good to practice even today.

With my best regards and most heartfelt good wishes for this brief interim period between the high school and the yet higher college years. May you be granted the strength to sustain in the next your successes of this first phase in your education. "Ahem!"

Your Opa

An Occasional Jug of Fresh Milk

Today, after hard labor with the weed whacker, I fell for two pieces of 'Indian lamb' which Riina packed for me yesterday, and I had some steamed veggies and Winking Owl Sirah (under three bucks at Aldi's) and after that some rosemary ham with hot provolone with butter on Artisan Sourdough bread and then I topped it with a glass of Madeira because I heard no bed-time bells ring, as much as I was hankering for them after this long day which started before five in the morning.

So I topped my evening of gluttony with a glass of fresh, unpasteurized cow's milk, thinking that a push for alkalinity would be good for me at this point. I shook the bottle before tilting it but that made no difference in the character of this product from the Morse's farm. The taste and feel of the usual pasteurized 1% enriched and fortified and whatever milk I normally have for breakfast is enough to - well, you know the hard hitting cliches that are to follow here. I feel hard and painful pangs at the thought that too soon I will have to leave here and return to an area where the power of our political leaders effectively blocks my way to such goodness. Gosh, you can't even buy un-pasteurized fresh apple juice down there in the flat lands!

I went to see the Morses, both the elder and the younger, and I asked them to let me come to their barn for an occasional jug of fresh milk. I emphasized that I wanted to buy it, because, before, when we went to get some milk at the barn, they gave it to us and I never felt good about it. But producing milk is their liveliood and I cannot easily consent to take from them for free what they work for to sustain the lives of their families and their own.

I am glad I did insist. I can drink this milk without apprehensions. This is a throw-back of seventy years for me! I remember well, in Thalwil, just after the end of the war, when my mother sent me out to get milk at the dairy and made sure I understood that I had to ask for pasteurized milk. Up to that day, we had picked up our milk at the barn of a neighbor's farm, sometimes watching it being milked straight from the utter into our pail! This pasteurized milk was something new then and I since realized that it was the hope of the modern world that this would, finally,deliver us from tuberculosis. The mountain sides in Switzerland were littered with sanatoriums, filled with patients in all stages of that affliction and we all lived in apprehension of contracting it, somehow. As children, we were tested for its presence at least once every year, and, as children, we understood only that there was some vile threat hanging over us and the mysterious ado around Madame Curie's apparatus was going to reveal if we 'had it or not'.

But boy, tasting this fresh milk today, unaltered in any way by human hand - what difference is there between it and what the enduring phobia of our leaders permits us to buy in the stores. What wholesome goodness are we missing, by going with 'common knowledge'. I hope milk is eventually going the way of eggs, and pork, and - even! - lard! And uncounted other things  the plenty of the Lord's creation is putting in front of us and man, for one reason on or another, declares to be unfit for human consumption.

I Was Introduced To Sleeping Hammocks the Hard Way

Enos, so I had to learn, is a brand of hammock used by outdoorsmen and -boys. I was introduced to sleeping hammocks the hard way: if you hung them up and tried to get into them from the top, as into a place where you intend to sleep, you most likely overestimated your jump, going up one side and rolling off on the other. Sometimes that hurt! If you strung your hammock up low enough so you could get into it safely over top, your low end hung so low it almost touched the ground and invariably one of the trees you used as your bed post would grow a root up under you during the night and the next morning you would get out of your hammock bruised black and blue as if someone had beaten you with a clobber over you back, and too stiff to move farther than to the breakfast fire and swearing never ever to do this again. And I never did.

So, Enos designed a hammock which its owner enters from below, standing firmly on the ground! The way the Enos sleepers do it, they get under their hammock, hook the elbows into the curling side seams on the right and the left, lay up one foot into the side curl, then the other on the other side, and then with a twist of their bodies they roll upside up and are safely off the ground so that badgers and bear cubs and - skunks - can safely circulate underneath you and not feel disturbed by your presence.

That's my translation of 'Enos'. It has, against expectation, nothing to do with Greek mythology. To who's coming I have no answer. That, I would guess, time will tell. If there is no sudden international conflict where we would need all hands on deck, I hope everyone is coming. Please, let there be lasting peace!

Biscuits Made With Lard

I wanted to go for a little walk this morning. Day before yesterday I went and it was 84 degrees and humid when I started out and almost 90 when I finished. And was I finished! This morning, it was 52 at the front door! I think I bide my time and make me my breakfast first; then, when nature made up her mind about what to offer us today, I go for a walk. Oh, what blessed liberties!

In a local food store I came across small packages of lard, about the size of four sticks of butter. Curiosity overcame me and I searched the web for Cooking with Lard. I was surprised by the things I found. I went back to that store to get one of those little packs and this morning, for the second time, I will have biscuits made with lard, not Crisco. Mmmmh!

Lard biscuits! Do you want me to bring you a pack of that lard? The package sais 'needs no refrigeration', but lard has a very low melting point . . . . This is an Armour product, the meat packer I got my world famous ribeye steaks from, in the White Rock years.

In Favor of the Metric System

In a work of Sir Walter Scott, The Pirate, I come across a term which is defined:
“Lispund, the fifteenth part of a barrel, a weight in Orkney and Shetland.” Of course, this is in the context of rum, which would suggest volume, not weight. The weight, after the consumption of one Lipsund, might be attributed to the head of the drinker. Nevertheless, the only holdout to a sane understanding of weights and measures is the 'English system' but it has come a long way, baby . . .

I said 'holdout'! - Vive le metric! - 1 times 10 equals 100, times ten equals 1000 - - - etc. and for measures you have kilos and meters and liters in the main, and need only to remember the endearing grams, and milligrams and nano grams etc. . . .

Who's the winner? ☺️

"...but needs be"

Dear Laurie,
As time flies I'm sure you have begun to miss your two men. But time will fly on and soon they will return. I am with them in thought and wish I could quietly follow them in the background to see how they cope with the challenges if such foreign environment - not to talk about the joys of hearing the sounds, seeing the sights and tasting the tastes. What privilege to thus burst out of the confines of our regulated lives!

Meanwhile -

In Vanity Fair, I read the following (part of a) sentence:
" - whose bearing was so meek and humble that she could not but needs be a true lady.”

(Excerpt From: William Makepeace Thackeray. “Vanity Fair.” iBooks.
This material may be protected by copyright.

Check out this book on the iBooks Store: https://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewBook?id=498914944)

While I fully understand the meaning, I do not know about the rules that bring such a turn of words about - but needs be -

It goes along with the question I posed earlier on the same subject. Can you enlighten me?

Relaxing under the conviction that all is well up your way,
Opa

Rich on Wine

The region in Switzerland where I lived my first days of consciousness is not known for its wines. As a matter of fact, other than a few grapes that are lovingly grown in privet arbors and on back porches on the sunny side of the house, there are no grapes. But as I continued to become aware of my wider surroundings, I was gradually introduced into the wide variety of wines produced from a number of generic grapes. There are, of course, the main regions in the French-speaking part of Switzerland, those vast vineyards along the slopes on the north shore of the Lake of Geneva, then the Valais, where the Fandant is coming from and nobody in Switzerland would think of making a pot of Fondue without that specific wine. Then there are the vineyards on the eastern slopes of the Jura over the shores of the lakes of Neuchatel and and Bienne. And then not least of all there on the southern slopes of the Alps, the Tessin. But there are also small varietals not recorded on the big maps, like Maienfeld in the eastern part of Switzerland, on the upper Rhine, just north of where the craggy slopes of the Alps rise up. There are only small vineyards there, but oh what delectable drops are produced here. 

Once I read a report on the international Wine exhibition in Boston. The reporters were cruising the exhibits and stopped also at a table where a Swiss delegation had set up their samples. After tasting, one reporter remarked on the excellence of the samples and asked the attendants of the stand why these wines were not available on the American market. Answered the Swiss with a wry smile, "That's because we like to drink them ourselves."

Thus, we had enough to chose from to cover any occasion, but for really festive meals we would branch out to the French wines, and often we had wines from the Alsace and from the Mosel and the Rhine where it flows from Switzerland along the western hills of the Schwarzwald, and if we visited a country we always would stick to the regional wines, bringing home more fond memories and a strengthened knowledge that there is no end to the variety one can find in wines. By leaving out those major wines from Italy, Spain, Southern France, South Eastern France, etc. I do not want to indicate that they were of no importance to us, or that we did not like them. It is simply that this article is not meant to discuss all wines in the world. If you would like an impression of what that task would be like, go look at the list of wines posted by Wikipedia. I simply want to lay the ground work: describing a wine as having tastes of red raspberries, or peach, or apple means nothing, really. Wine is made of grapes, unless it is an apple wine, etc.

Vermont As Brenda Next Door Saw It

The picture? Oh, that is Vermont as Brenda next door saw it when she went out to the mailbox.

How to Cook Tender and Juicy Pork Chops in the Oven

This link comes to you after I tried the technique: it works! It delivered a pork chop that literally had the juices drip out of the corners of my mouth. And the other wonderful part is, it puts the end product on the table in just minutes (after some passive prep time).

Try it, but be careful with the instructions you get through the link. The searing of the chop on my stove resulted in a little-bit charred look. The side that was on the pan during the oven cycle is the one you see.

The oven cycle itself, which should take '6 to 10 minutes' is questionable. Luckily, I had my digital thermometer in the chop and saved it from certain cremation just in time: 143 degrees after just a little after four minutes. How much more juicy and tender would it have been if I had been there just one minute earlier?

Of course I wanted to have a juicy chop first of all. But the taste is difficult to praise enough. Intending to smoke them, I rubbed them with the Nahunta rub and let them sit under cover in the fridge for some five or six hours. Passing the time with all sorts of things, I also checked the weather forecast and found it not very inviting to sit out there by the smoker for a long time, so I changed course and came up with this promising link. I brined the whole packet of rubbed chops (3 of them, 1-1/4 inches thick, average weight just about 1/2 lbs, bone in) in a concoction of 2 cups apple cider and 2 cups water with a hand full of mashed and chopped garlic cloves. They sat in that brine overnight in the fridge. I took them out this morning and patted them dry and put them back in the fridge as an experiment: I wanted to see if there was enough sweet in that brine to give me a pellicle as I had gotten it with the salmon, yesterday. It did not. So, I followed instructions: rubbed my chosen chop with olive oil and sprinkled fresh ground pepper and salt on both sides, patted each side lovingly before turning and then went into the cooking procedure as described.

The Kraut came out of the can and needs no further comment. I zapped it in the microwave and it was hot and yummy in just two minutes. The slice of pineapple came form the earlier plan to smoke the chops. It is amazing how this fruit pairs with pork!

Recalling the creation of my dinner in this way made me hungry again. I think I go and fix me another one.

PS I put two chicken thighs in the same brine. Tomorrow is supposed to be a friendlier day and perhaps I get back out to the smoker with them . . .

Popeyes

The music at Oak Hill Missionary Baptist Church in Hernando, Mississippi, is pretty amazing, but it's not the funk or the faith that sets them apart in the Deep South - it's that fried chicken is banned from church socials.

Rev Minor enforced the ban after he became worried about his congregation's health - he was conducting too many funerals.

There goes another good thing!