Lammas loaf

Lammas, or Lughnasadh, is celebrated one week from today, on August 1. In its honor, I have a sourdough loaf in the oven. It’s been months since I last baked bread and the house’s AC is coping with having the oven on while outside the temperature is exceeding 90℉. This year, between spring burning prohibitions and summer drought, and skies smoke filled from Canada, we’ve not been able to work celebratory bonfires into our schedule at appropriate times. I know it’s early for “baking season,” but it feels good to be getting back into the routine.

sliced sourdough loaf

Photo by J. Harrington

Now, it’s not my intent to do a “bread and fishes” routine with this posting, but earlier today I (re)discovered an organization known as the Native Fish Coalition which is developing an approach for holistic stream restoration. The pilot is on a stream in my state of origin, Massachusetts. The target species is brook trout. This serendipitous sequence has re-enthused my waning interest in fly fishing, brookies, and habitat restoration. Those interests had, like bread baking, drifted to the wayside over the past few months. Summer ennui?

As a long-time member of Trout Unlimited, I was curious to learn TU’s perspective on native fish conservation. Turns out TU has a National Workgroup on the subject. I hadn’t picked up on that over the years. Now I’m going to do some reading on what each organization has accomplished and hopes to achieve in the future, particularly regarding brook trout, and see what volunteer opportunities that presents. Not bad for a sultry summer weekday.

We hope you keep cool during our hot spell and that the thunderstorms we’re expecting don’t become another severe weather alert. However, since I’m not doing bread and fishes today, I’m not above casting (some of) my bread upon the waters, if we get enough waters. If not, I may see what happens if I cast a fly upon them. (I know. I’m ashamed. The heat’s got to me.)

Bread

By Richard Levine

Each night, in a space he’d make

between waking and purpose,

my grandfather donned his one

suit, in our still dark house, and drove

through Brooklyn’s deserted streets

following trolley tracks to the bakery.

There he’d change into white

linen work clothes and cap,

and in the absence of women,

his hands were both loving, well

into dawn and throughout the day—

kneading, rolling out, shaping

each astonishing moment

of yeasty predictability

in that windowless world lit

by slightly swaying naked bulbs,

where the shadows staggered, woozy

with the aromatic warmth of the work.

Then, the suit and drive, again.

At our table, graced by a loaf

that steamed when we sliced it,

softened the butter and leavened

the very air we’d breathe,

he’d count us blessed.

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