INDIAN SUMMER

We do not always have Indian Summer in Maine. Some years the summer ends gradually, sliding into the coolness of fall and fairly quickly into the coldness that leads to the deep freeze of winter. Some years there is nothing gradual about the transition-- it's lovely one week, and the next week the bottom has fallen out completely and we're scrambling to stay warm. This year, it is classic Indian Summer-- a cold spell, with a hard frost in much of the state, a meteorological alarm bell ringing so loudly that everyone can hear it clearly followed by a "sorry, that was just a test" message, and temperatures back up a couple of days later kissing the 80's, temperatures we hadn't seen for more than a month, and not just one day, but day after day after day of, "wait, I guess I don't need a jacket" puzzlement, because it's fairly late in September and we *did* have the cold snap-- didn't we? It is a blessing and a joy, all the more so because one cannot simply expect it to come. Without being rare, it is not common. It happens and when it does it is a pleasant surprise, a sort of bonus, extra time to get ready for the impending hunkering. And we are pleased and we smile and we are grateful.

OBLITERATING JACKSON

Andrew Jackson. Fifty Years ago we heard about what a great and clever President he was. Now he's in the doghouse. Trail of Tears anyone? Not really mentioned when we were in grammar school was Jackson's animosity toward native Americans, nor the high priority their relocation was in his presidential administration. No one is one thing. But this is pretty high on the Unforgivable Scale. Given that the government-- yours and mine-- is so reluctant to address the imbalance in representation in US currency (currently it's Old White Guys Seven, Everyone Else Zero) it is up to us to try to fix things. You can get a nice little stamp for around twenty bucks, and some nice Japanese ink, and obliterate Andy, one double sawbuck at a time.

The Fan. The fan had been sitting next to my spot at the dining table where my computer lived most of the summer, and over time, it got slower and slower and slower, finally, even on the highest setting, just sort of growling, but not actually turning, let alone fanning. Rachel had mentioned that there was an electronics pick up at her office coming up, and they would take anything of the sort that was broken and I said aha, I'll get rid of it that way. But when I went to actually unplug the thing and carry it out I was seized by a fit of irritation. It *shouldn't* be broken, there was no *reason* why it should be broken. It's not as though it had any moving parts. Well, it did, actually, but not the sort of parts one expected to, you know, *break*. So I... tore it apart and cleaned all the bits and squirted in a bit of oil and tightened everything up again and....poof! Like topsy it goes. Quieter, too, than it did before. I don't know where this idea that I could fix things came from. I once showed up at my parents' house and my mother said, "hello my cassette player is broken, can you fix it?" just like that. Why would she expect I'd be able to repair such a thing? No matter, I took the machine apart, saw that a drive belt had broken, looked around and found a suitable rubber band and put it all back together and just as in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, there you go! Sure, I fixed it but again, why she expected me to be able to fix it and why I was*able* to fix it, I do not know. Innate mechanical aptitude? From where? I grew up in a house with a pair of pliers, a standard screwdriver, and a hammer. We were not builders, we were not tinkerers, we did not repair things.. The closest we any of us ever got to fiddling with the guts of anything was when we changed typewriter ribbons, which it seemed we needed to do frequently because the one thing we did do was write, and given our handwriting, that meant typing. Anyway, the fan is fixed. You should hear it-- it's like a sleeping cat, snoring more gently than does my own cat, she who you can hear in the next room....

COVER IT UP

Towel Power. That's the ticket-- it's something we use all the time when cooking, to keep things that finish at different times hot, so that when you get everything on the table it's not just the last thing that's warm, with everything else in various stages of cooling. Putting a thick wooden cutting board on the bottom, and layering a whole lot of kitchen towels will keep the vegetables or potatoes or pasta hot, while the whatever-else-there-is finishes up. Radiation and convection go to work as soon as you put an uncovered pot on the table. Radiation and convection are.... the enemy. You can keep both at bay with a slew of towels. Try it, you'll see.

BASIL. SO MUCH BASIL

I generally make pesto once a year. I suppose I could make it any time, really, but for me there's a pesto season, and it comes at the end of summer, or the beginning of fall. Either a friend will have a massive basil overrun, or if not then I can head to the Italian specialty grocery store in Portland, where a "bunch" of basil will be huge and beautiful and cheap. I can also pick up the shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and pine nuts I'll need. The work, of course, is all in the basil-- taking the leaves off the stems. So many leaves. I made my pesto this year in two batches, because the store didn't have enough basil when we got it the first time, but each go round was about seven bunches, which produced around a pound of leaves. I've gotten faster at getting the leaves off the stalks and stems, but I'm also more interested in washing the leaves to get rid of a greater portion of grit, and I've started blanching the basil because it keeps the color a prettier bright green rather than letting it go a less appetizing brownish green. The blanching is also the last-chance for grit to fall to the bottom of a pot of water. Some people might think making five or six pounds of pesto is too tedious, but it's actually a great pleasure. One works at one's own pace-- there are no clocks or deadlines, and the result-- between 60 and 90 ounce and a quarter frozen cubes in the upstairs fridge and the basement freezer-- means that with no notice at all, pasta-and-pesto is always an option.

READY, AGAIN

In late February of 1980, I found myself outside in the freezing, windy, darkness of the heart of winter, chipping ice and snow off a pile of green firewood to try to get something, anything, to feed our fairly large wood stove, a stove that if we were able to give it anything meaningful in the way of fuel, would be able to keep us toasty warm. We were in our early twenties and learning by doing. This is the same method terrible parents use to teach their children to swim-- they toss them in the water and yell, "good luck!" Of course, we had done this to ourselves and had no one else to blame. Lesson learned, for the last thirty-some years I have kept three winters' worth of firewood on hand, in the basement. We'd use a couple of cords over the winter, and replace them the next year-- to be burned three winters later. This was a fairly good system, but over the course of three decades, a fair amount of debris, detritus, sawdust, bark, and shards of wood accumulated in the basement floor. This was undesirable for a number of reasons, not least of which it all absorbed and held moisture. You'd rather not have all that moisture just hanging around, there is no advantage, and some reasons to discourage it. So for the first time since the 1980s, I left my wood run out, so I could get to the basement floor. The floor was then cleaned up, first by William, who filled bag after bag after bag with the dibblings, and then by Chloe, the Hired Hand. She was able to finish what he had made a good start of, and then jigsawed together a slew pallets that I had gathered and brought to the estate, and wrestled into the basement with the help of Martin some time before. Once accomplished, Chloe pitched five and a half cords of wood in the basement, through a new hatch I'd built with Dave, my friend and carpenter, and then she started stacking. And stacking. And stacking. So much stacking-- with the half a cord of wood Rachel and I had already chivvied into the basement, she stacked about five and a half cords, roughly 700 cubic feet of (heavy, mostly green) wood, leaving me just about half a cord to finish the job. I'll get the last bit done soon, and then we'll be back on track, and after three years we'll once again be burning three-year-old wood every heating season.