Category: Creativity

Creating something every day for 365 days

So far behind…

Posted on by Dale

The past couple of months have been a drag, which you may have suspected after my account of our trip to Germany in December broke off mid-trip. For that I can only say that the wifi in the Motel One chain is weird and unreliable, and it was cold.

Then the holidays, and more cold, and so much crap being sprayed about by whatever fan we as a society have been cursed with that I couldn’t see sinking myself even further into nonaction (and not the good kind) by ranting about it here, plus all kinds of paralysis over on my Lichtenbergian blog due to the impending possibility of a world premiere for William Blake’s Inn, and soon you’re talking about real stagnation here.

So I am now going to raise myself out of my torpor by talking about an amusing kind of failure, a backlog of cocktails.

Some background: I subscribe to several emails from websites like liquor.com and diffordsguide.com which send me recipes nearly every day. I’ll go and look them over, and if I think one might appeal to me, I copy the recipe into a word processing document that is always open on my desktop. When the page is full, I print it out and start experimenting.

That’s the theory. The reality? See this photo?

On the right, my bar book. On the left, twenty-one pages of cocktails that have built up over the past year or so. Either I don’t get around to making them, or I’ve run out of a key ingredient or there’s some syrup or tincture you have to make first… You get the idea.

How bad is it?

On those twenty-one pages there are 189 cocktails.

Of those 189 cocktails, I have approved 26 of them and eliminated 14, i.e., I have tried 40. That means that I have made only 21% of the cocktails that I claimed to be interested in.

I hereby commit to doing better.

The Parable of the Setting Sun

Posted on by Dale

A young person journeyed far, on a pilgrimage to gain wisdom from those who possessed it.

One night, as she walked along the road, marveling at the stars above and the earth around her, she saw many people seated in a meadow, all facing the same direction. All were weeping and beating their chests. Some threw themselves prostrate upon the ground in their grief. Their clamor was heartrending.

She approached one and asked, “Who are you? Why do you weep? What great tragedy has befallen you?”

The man replied, “We are the ones who have seen the day and mourn its passing. We sit facing west, mourning the setting of the sun, our grief overwhelming us.” He paused. “This is our wisdom. It brings us no joy.”

“But…” the young person began, but the man was no longer listening. With a loud cry he rejoined his fellows in their clamor.

She stood silently for a moment, observing their pain, and then walked away, toward the east, where the sun was already rising.

Utah 2023: Day 8

Posted on by Dale

I took nearly 100 photos in Arches National Park.  I shall not post all of them.

Also, I’m almost out of words.

Arches is such a popular destination that they now impose timed entries. Our entry time was 1:00, so we were going to be traipsing about during the hottest part of the day.

Everything has names. This is the Courthouse. No, I don’t know either.

The Three Gossips.

Park Avenue. We named one formation the Donald J. Trump Hand of Destiny. See if you can find it.

A pretty little yellow thistle.

La Sal Mountains + cloudage.

A particularly egregious hoodoo.

This is Balancing Rock. It’s not really balanced, of course; it’s all one piece, although eventually the limestone layer beneath the top will erode and it will collapse (as did its MiniMe a couple of decades ago).

Hoodoos.

An arch in formation. There are thousands of arches in this park, ranging from little “windows” to the most famous, Delicate Arch. Hold that thought.

I liked the way this piñon trunk became a barrier for the dirt.

The South Window arch. No one else seemed to be concerned that this massive arch of stone seemed to be resting on a layer of crumbling rock.

The view on the other side of the South Window.

Panorama.

As we started walking around to the North Window, I happened to notice this bit just kind of wedged up there in the South Window.

The walk around to the North Window, with cloudage. The cloudage was particularly ebullient today.

North Window.

The Turret Arch, which is right there with the South and North Windows.

Panorama.

Cloudage, dumping rain on the La Sal Mountains.

This one is hard to make sense of, but it’s the view of the descent from Turret Arch, with the South Window across the way. That’s my shadow at the bottom of the photo, and the shadow of the arch midway. It’s harder going down than up.

The cloudage just keep getting bigger and bigger.

Meanwhile, on the other horizon…

I have to correct an erroneous guess I made yesterday in the Valley of the Goblins. I had posited that the greenish surface on one outcropping was a copper deposit, but that is incorrect. It is actually a layer of volcanic ash that was laid down on a salt bed hundreds of millions of years ago. Chemical reactions turned it greenish.

And finally, the approach to Delicate Arch! The most iconic image of Arches National Park, indeed, of Utah itself.

We had some choices. If we turned into the first parking area, it was about an hour’s walk up to the arch itself. If we went to the second parking area, there was a thirty minute walk up to a viewing area some distance from the arch. And there was a second path from the parking area, a mere five minute walk to a viewing area.

Since it was the end of a very long, very hot day, we opted for the five minute walk.

Are you ready?

Prepare yourself.

It’s iconic.

.

.

.

.

.

.

::drumroll::

We collapsed in helpless giggles. Here we were at one of the most famous locations in the U.S., and there was no way we were going to get any closer to it. Marc referenced Spinal Tap‘s Stonehenge screwup, and it was even funnier.

So here, have a closer look at Delicate Arch.

This inspired a couple more Bad National Park Reviews:

  • “They need to build a road up to that Delicate Arch.” — me
  • “You should move Delicate Arch closer to the entrance so that we can see it first.”  — my Lovely First Wife

Moving on.

I am — as you have already surmised — fascinated by the cloudage, especially when it is as magnificent as it was today.

Believe it or not, there was more to see (available by car). Here is the Fiery Furnace.

Somebody lives here.

At that point we called a halt, opting to return to Moab, shower, and head for dinner at the Sunset Grill, which is atop a mountain there in Moab. Here’s the view of the sunset while we waiting for our table.

We sat outside on a spacious veranda overlooking Moab. The meal was delicious, especially the desserts. The waitstaff was garrulous and charming. And as we were finishing up, a moth fluttered into our space and landed on Mary Frances. Before she could react by brushing it away, we all cried out for her to freeze!

When she saw what it looked like, she was delighted to have such a gorgeous piece of living jewelry.

It stayed on her until we were ready to leave. We coaxed it off her onto the table, and it finally flittered off.

A quick search when we got back to the motel revealed that it was a sagebrush sheep moth.

Here’s the view of Moab from our dining area.

It’s not as big as it looks, though certainly larger than Torrey. For one thing, Moab has two grocery stores! Torrey has to drive 90 minutes to their closest grocery store.

Next: CANYONLANDS NATIONAL PARK

—————

Did you guess right?

A suggestion for bar owners

Posted on by Dale

Hi there, owners of cocktail establishments! I have an idea for you.

If you have TV screens in the bar, and if you can stream from the intertubes, then set at least one of your screens to show BEARS, YOU GUYS, at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park (Alaska). It’s a livestream of the salmon run up the river, and all the brown bears that start arriving to eat fish and fatten up for the winter.

I promise you, patrons will be rapt. They will cheer the bears on. They will create narratives for the bears. They will rate the bears’ fishing strategies. They will squee at the baby bears. They will, like the rest of us, worry about Otis.

And then: FAT BEAR WEEK, YOU GUYS! Post the bracket! It’s just like March Madness, only WITH BEARS!

Feature salmon on the menu.

Encourage teams with t-shirts.

Print out the official National Park Service guide to identifying which bear is which.

I’m telling you, start featuring the bears on your slow night each week, and by the time Fat Bear Week arrives, your place will be packed with customers.

DA BEARS!

A Parable of Light

Posted on by Dale

On another plane than this one:

A man lay dying and called his friends to him.

He said to them, “I know that soon I must die, and I have seen that my life has produced no great works or deeds. I console myself with the thought that I have been as kind and generous as I know how, but I cannot help but ask — what good can one person’s kindness do in the vastness of this world?

His friends murmured sympathetically — what, indeed?

“But,” he said, “I have seen a vision. On another plane than this one…

“I saw myself suspended alone in an infinite darkness. I seemed to be made of glass, so that you could see through me.

I was surrounded by a vast, infinite darkness — the void of the universe, and I was alone.

That darkness was complete. I could see nothing but myself.

Every time I felt a kindness, though, of thought or of deed, it came from my breast in a burst of warm light, which flowed out from me and soon dissipated in the darkness.”

The man’s friends listened politely. He continued.

“But then, in the distance, the faint remains of my light of kindness met… another soul, perhaps? I could not see, but it was as if my light had encountered a node of some kind, which glowed briefly itself before fading.

It began to happen more often — more and more glowing nodes in the darkness, bursting into light and fading into the void.

And then I began to see, as more and more light suffused the void, that all these nodes — lit and unlit — were connected by fine filaments, and the more nodes were lit, the stronger those connections became until I was looking at a galactic mycelium powered by warmth and kindness.

Of course, not all nodes gave off the same amount of light. Some shone brightly — others barely glowed before fading. Very occasionally a node would explode with light, completely overwhelming and then freeing everything in its vicinity.

Slowly, the vast darkness was diffused with light, light that had come from me, light that ebbed and flowed, tenuous light, faint light, but light.

I began to understand that I had been receiving bursts of light myself from others before me, and that I always had been. I knew some of those lights were gone now, but what I received from them I passed on so that the light did not fail.”

“I saw all of this, on another plane, and I knew this was the answer to my question: What good can one person do?” The man smiled at his friends.

“There comes a time…

…he said…

…when your light is no longer enough.”

He paused.

“Nor is it necessary.

In my vision, I saw that my light was gone now, too, and I watched as the darkness spread before me like ripples in a pond.

But though I was no longer giving light, the light I had already given continued its journey through the network of nodes, of souls, each soul now giving its own light to the universe. I watched as the light, my light, traveled far ahead, leaving an expanding darkness behind, until there was nothing more.”

He spoke.

“The rest is peace.”

“But…” said his friends.

He spoke no more, not on that plane or any other.

MINIONS! Why does it always have to be Minions?

Posted on by Dale

Bear with me — I am unused to writing fanfic.

A little while ago, during The Decoratoring™, I had a holiday Pandora station playing because I am a good husband like that, and at some point I apparently snapped because I suddenly started singing along to “Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire” — in the voice of Gru, from Despicable Me.

It made sense at the time.

Suddenly I thought how wonderful it would be to release a holiday album of Gru singing Christmas classics. Imagine it — I know you’re smiling right now just thinking of it.

And then I thought, we could probably get Steve Carrell and Julie Andrews to pull together something like this for charity. THE MINIONS SINGING THE CHIPMUNK SONG, YOU GUYS! Turn turn kick turn, YES, IT WILL WORK!

But what charity, you ask? I thought about leaving that to our artists, but the problem of homelessness weighs on my mind a lot, so let’s make it contributions to organizations that are working to end or at least reduce our houseless population.

Then it hit me: A MINIONS HOLIDAY SPECIAL that ties into the charity fundraising CD.

You can see where this is going, and so here you go, a half-baked treatment for The Minions Do Christmas: Homeless for the Holidays. (We can negotiate the title.)

[SCENE: GRU’S HOUSE, CHRISTMAS EVE.]

Chaos: the GIRLS [MARGO, EDITH, and AGNES] are hyper, squealing, writing enormous wish lists, play-acting the toys they hope to get, etc. GRU waits patiently, gleefully, to fulfill their wishes.

GRU’S MOM[1] is grumpy. “You’re spoiling these girls. When I was little girl, I was lucky to get turnip for Christmas.”

GRU: “Yes, yes, we know, but things are different now. Look how happy they are.” The girls are oblivious and clearly adore MOM (and she them, though she tries to conceal it — can’t spoil them, with love and all that business, you know).

The GIRLS finally finish their lists and hand them over. GRU distributes the lists to the MINIONS to buy everything, but AGNES’s list is too long, so he tears it in half and takes half for himself.

GRU forces his MOM to go with him to buy all the toys, leaving the GIRLS to decorate the house with NEFARIOUS.

(As GRU and MOM drive through the streets, we see in the background, among the holiday hustle & bustle, homeless families.)

As GRU’s car fills with packages, MOM gets testier and testier until she finally pitches a fit and leaves the car. GRU, in a snit, drives off, figuring either he’ll come back to get her later or she’ll get a cab and come home by herself.

In a rage, MOM flings her purse to the ground/street, where it is promptly run over by a bus and destroyed, so she’s without ID or money. She begins to walk.

Meanwhile, MINION shenanigans as they shop, maybe some GIRL antics as they decorate. (It is important to note that because of the GIRLS’ varied personalities and interests, the MINIONS are loading up on all kinds of toys, not just “girl” toys.)

GRU pulls into his driveway, goes in, discovers MOM is missing. The GIRLS panic, but GRU tries to remain calm. They pile into the car to go look for her.

MOM is becoming disoriented, not sure which way is the way home. Her confusion is noted by a boy who asks if he can help her. She grumpily replies that she’s not even sure if she has a home (or words to that effect). He interprets her dilemma as one of houselessness, so he tells her to come with him — he takes her to the homeless shelter where he lives with his mother. It begins to snow.

The homeless shelter is clean and well-lit, but it is filled with families with children who have nowhere else to go. MOM is nonplussed, but she is polite enough with the people whom she meets and is soon enjoying interacting with the children there.

GRU radios the MINIONS to let them know of the problem and in true MINION fashion they swing into berserk helpful mode. Hilarity ensues.

Back at the shelter, one of the workers approaches MOM and asks if there’s anyone they should call. Sure, she says, and scribbles down GRU’s home phone number. She goes back to enjoying herself.

NEFARIOUS, home alone, is working on a MOM Tracking Device (with a helpful MINION of course who finds himself tagged in hilariously uncomfortable ways). The phone rings, he answers it and learns that MOM is at the shelter. He springs into full alert and radios GRU and the MINIONS.

General screeching of tires and traffic shenanigans, until GRU and the GIRLS pull up at the shelter and dash inside, where they discover MOM safe and sound and having a good time with her new friends. They are introduced, and it slowly dawns on them where they are and who these people are.

EDITH and MARGO come up to GRU, distressed: None of these kids are going to have any Christmas. GRU is likewise upset [and maybe something happens here…]

Suddenly the MINIONS burst into the shelter, squealing and bringing all the presents they’ve spent the day shopping for. GRU and the GIRLS and MOM all look at each other and make the unspoken decision. They turn to the families and shout, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Party time as the children receive gifts from the MINIONS and unwrap them. Pizza is delivered (we see GRU paying for it). Merriment abounds.

Segue into the low energy of a party winding down. One of the MINIONS begins to sing “Silent Night,” and soon he is joined by MOM. A chorus of MINIONS takes over as she goes to GRU and tells him she is proud of him, etc.

AGNES and the GIRLS come over to GRU. AGNES tells GRU she wants to go home.

Home.

They all realize what that means in this context. They all are trying to think of a way to help, but MARGO quietly says, “There’s nothing we can really do, is there?”

GRU is forced to admit that they cannot solve the problem themselves. EDITH is angry; there must be something they can DO!

Wait, GRU says slowly, I think I may have an idea…

[CUT TO LIVE ACTION STEVE CARRELL, JULIE ANDREWS, maybe some animated MINIONS]

They make a pitch for homeless action groups [TBD] and promote the CD as a means for the audience to contribute to these groups…

[BACK TO ANIMATION]

GRU, MOM, and GIRLS are walking in the front door of home, to the unfinished decorations. NEFARIOUS greets them with hot chocolate, and they decorate the tree together. GRU is suddenly stricken that he has given away all the GIRLS’ Christmas presents, but they tell him they’ve already had Christmas.

Not to worry, though, KEVIN comes in with three presents, one for each of the GIRLS, and they declare them the best Christmas they’ve ever had.

Swell gemütlichkeit, begin to roll credits. NEFARIOUS tells MOM he has a way to keep her from getting lost again, if she will just step over here out of camera range — we hear the distinctive thnk of the tagging machine and her scream.

FINIS

—————

[1] That’s her name. Even after three movies, GRU’S MOM’s official name is GRU’S MOM.

Greece, Day 2: Part 2

Posted on by Dale

The view from our hotel room:

We reconvened at 6:30 — it being far too hot to be out and about before then — and after some comedy trying to round up enough taxis to get us all to the main square (the bus having the rest of the day off), we set off on a walking tour of the main shopping district.

Not a lot of shopping going on, since it was Sunday and almost all the stores are closed. There were a few international brands open on Sunday, but this is generally disapproved of.

In one of the crossroads, there was this distinctive sculpture. I’m not sure that this was what Elfi was referring to when she talked about a statue/shrine to Hermes being the indicator of a place of commerce, but I will leave it here with no comment.

Every now and then there would be a small church or monastery. This one was sunken below street level as the city was built up around it.

The interior has not been restored.

There were street clowns. They were not exciting.

The cathedral of Athens, built for the coronation of their first king in the 1820s.

Lots of people hanging about, many small children — in a city of 5 million, most of whom live in apartments, public spaces are alive with activity.

Next to the cathedral, a tiny Byzantine church, the Church of Theotokos Gorgoepikoos and Ayios Eleytherios. Just so you know.

From everywhere, the Acropolis.

Kitties! They were sunning themselves and completely uncaring of the humans around them. The one in the center was old and feeble looking and it hurt my heart. However, it appeared as if all the feral cats were regularly fed by the neighborhood; we saw many meals put out for them.

After our walking tour, Efi left us to our own devices, with instructions on where to go to get a taxi back to the hotel. We ended up at Drunk Sinatra based on its cocktail reputation.

The food was okay, just pizza, but the cocktails were as advertised.

To start, I had The Risk and my Lovely First Wife had the Call Me (unpictured). But the best was the One Night Stand:

I had two. I will be attempting to replicate this one at home since I have all the ingredients.

It is worth noting that Athenians dine very late; we started at 8:30, and by 9:30 the place began hopping. When we left at 10:30, the area was packed.

We only got a little astray in heading back to find a taxi, but we prevailed. And so to bed.

Useful Kitchen Stuff

Posted on by Dale

A couple of months ago, a friend on Facebook asked for advice on upping their kitchen game. I failed to respond, because my brain immediately went into overdrive. I did make a note in my to-do list, but we all know how that goes.[1]

Today, though, I am stuck at Southtowne Chevrolet while they figure out why my 2012 Equinox is making weird little beoop noises and claiming that the engine is overheating, so I might as well get this one off my list. Here are my suggestions for bumping up your efficiency and overall coolness in making your meals.

I’m going to presume that you already have decent knives: a chef’s knife, a paring knife, and a bread knife. I also presume you have a few whisks, a ladle or two, all the basic stuff.

Here’s more.

First up: a grapefruit spoon. You may already have one of these as part of your flatware set, but if not, go to your nearest kitchen outlet and buy one. It’s the easiest way to de-seed tomatoes, peppers, etc.

Prep bowls. You may think these are just trendy affectations, but your life will change if you start using them. I have a set of smaller glass ones, but you may also find slightly larger ones useful. These are especially good if you don’t have counter space; you can do all your chopping and measuring and set your materials aside without having to keep shoving the bits around your chopping board.

You may already have a chopper/scoop, but if not, it’s dead useful for corralling all that stuff you chopped up to put in your prep  bowls.

If you ever have to roll out dough, then go to Home Depot and Michael’s and buy yourself some pieces of wood or metal. I have 1/8″ strips of aluminum, 1/4″ strips of lath, and pieces of craft wood that are 1/2″ x 3/4″. With my flat rolling pin, all I have to do is set these down on either side of my dough and roll away. Pro tip: They’re also handy for slicing bread like focaccia by sliding your bread knife along your guides and for rolling out hamburgers. Use freezer paper to keep the meat from contaminating your wooden roller.

(I know you can buy rolling pins with interchangeable disks that do the same thing, but those arrived on the scene after I figured out this solution.)

Silicone mats are ubiquitous these days, but when I first bought ours we were trendsetters, I tell you. Very useful for cookies. I just recently bought the copper ones to use on the grill. Very nice.

Tiny spatulas and whisks are more useful than you might think.

You can find wooden tongs in a lot of places, and they’re great at retrieving toast or muffins from the toaster. I also have more than a few wooden spatulas for sautéing and shoving stuff around in the pan.

I found this long-handled spoon/fork thing at some chi-chi kitchen store (in Greenville, SC, I think) and I thought I would use it at burns for dining, but it has proven to be ace at scooping out the last of the mayonnaise.

This last one is fairly niche, but if you need it, you’ll know. These long tweezers are for cocktailologists to smugly retrieve cocktail cherries or other garnishes from their jars and plop them in your craft cocktail, probably with a flourish. But I have found that they are also excellent for manipulating food items in your fryer: I have begun frying my own tortilla chips and these are primo for stirring and keeping apart the little buggers as they frolic in the oil, and for retrieving any items that have finished before the rest of their cohort.

—————

[1] Cras melior est and all that.

Empty calendars, feelings about that

Posted on by Dale

This morning, my to-do app presented me with today’s tasks, and one of them was to “email TCOs of the past two burns” — which means that I needed to open up the placement databases for Alchemy 2018 and Alchemy 2019 and send an email to the Theme Camp Organizers to let them know that registration for placement at Alchemy 2020 would soon be upon them.

Of course, that’s moot, because the burn is canceled —all burns are canceled — for 2020, so that depressed me.

But then my eye fell on a notebook on my shelf that I truly couldn’t remember being there; it was full of morning pages that I had started writing in September of 2013, right after I was retired from GHP by the vindictive Governor Nathan Deal (whose actual target was Dr. John Barge, Supt. of the DOE). All my pain and grief were there for me to revisit (along with some positive things like the cross country trip and the composition of Five Easier Pieces).

And there on one of the last pages I bothered to write (12/2/13) was this:

For some reason, I began thinking about Burning Man and what my cadre might have to offer.
Here’s the image that came to me:
Three Old Men — loin cloths — gas masks — large walking sticks — single file — in sync — slow motion dance with the walking sticks.

Well.

When I went back to my to-do list, suddenly the placement task was not so depressing, because unlike GHP, the burn will be back in my life. This is only temporary.

The Parable of the Fire

Posted on by Dale

The people came to a wise man and asked, “Tell us, who is good?”

The wise man said:

There were three men, each of whom was building a fire.

The first man has enough wood to build his fire, plus enough to keep it going until bedtime. His fire starts slowly, but soon it is crackling merrily. He is sure to be warm.

Sometimes the flame is high and hot; other times it flickers and is warm. The man makes adjustments as needed, moving logs and adding more to keep the fire going.

He knows that eventually it will be bedtime — should he add an other log to keep it warm, or should he let it die down? He knows there is an end to the fire and to the evening.

The second man has a very large woodpile, enough for months of fires. He uses lighter fluid to start his fire — his father gave him that — so his fire starts explosively, high and hot, and he expects it to stay that way.

He adds logs to the fire constantly, piling on even when the logs beneath have barely started to burn. He will always have more logs.

The third man, alas, has only two or three logs and not very much to start his fire with —some twigs, perhaps some cardboard. His fire starts slowly, oh so slowly, and it never becomes what you would call high or hot. In any case, it will not burn for very long.

The wise man turned to the people and asked — “Which of these men is good?”