Beckett's better bread!

We got some grief last night from the Daughter Person about the way we left readers hanging on how the artisan sourdough cheese bread turned out. It turned out well, according to the same Daughter Person, the Son-In-Law and the Better Half. Worth doing again was a comment we heard several times. Because we're such a people pleaser, we'll do so, but we'll mess with it a little since the "crumb" we were anticipating would have been much more open than the crumb we got. (If you follow the link and scroll down a little and look right, please note that we have yet to produce a loaf of bread with the crumb shown in the sourdough batards. That's about what we were hoping for with the cheese bread.Our crumb was tighter, with much smaller holes.) Once again we're guided by Samuel Beckett's observation: "Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better." So, in conclusion, the bread was declared a success by all except the baker, who said "it's edible."

artisan sourdough cheese bread, first loaf

Photo by J. Harrington

It's that time of year when good folks start making lists. Not lists to Santa, but lists of personal goals for next year. Ours, despite our scattershot attention, will be focused in (on?)

• poetry (get back to writing it)
• baking bread (with more open crumb)
• fly fishing for trout (once a week during the season)
• finish buckthorn pulling behind the house
• try to become happily reconciled with Anne Lamott's "...Notes on Hope"
  

  What comforts us is that, after we make ourselves crazy enough, we can let go inch by inch into just being here; every so often, briefly. There is flow everywhere in nature — glaciers are just rivers that are moving really, really slowly — so how could there not be flow in each of us? Or at least in most of us?

• Other-to be determined?

sandhill cranes in fog near Baraboo, WI

Photo by J. Harrington

We've noticed that our life has become too much like some descriptions we've read of the Platte River, "too thick to drink, too thin to plow" or "a mile wide and an inch deep." On the other hand, the Platte has a magnificent gathering of sandhill cranes during their Spring migration. Have we just described another benefit of imperfection? Seeing the cranes around Baraboo last Autumn, especially the ones in the morning fog, was a transformative experience. Lamott's reference to flow is what hooked us on reading her latest book and working it into our life. Rivers are flowing water. Water is life!

Like You

Roque Dalton, 1935- 1975

translated by Jack Hirschman

Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky-blue
landscape of January days.

And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears.

I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.

And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone.

---

Como Tú

Yo, como tu,
amo el amor, la vida, el dulce encanto
de las cosas, el paisaje
celeste de los días de enero.

También mi sangre bulle
y río por los ojos
que han conocido el brote de las lágrimas.

Creo que el mundo es bello,
que la poesía es como el pan, de todos.

Y que mis venas no terminan en mí
sino en la sange unánime
de los que luchan por la vida,
el amor,
las cosas,
el paisaje y el pan,
la poesía de todos.

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