Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
and auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my dear
for auld lang syne -
we'll take a cup of kindness yet
for auld lang syne ...

Robert Burns

Naturalists know that one way to locate a particular bird or other animal is to show up at an area that has food that that individual enjoys. You're not likely to find a panda in the wild where there is no bamboo. To see flycatchers and swallows, it's important to find an area that has flying insects. Squirrels like pine trees, trees with nuts. (Birdfeeders make them happy, too.) Dolphins follow the fishes.

Recipes come and go, and there are a few that seem to last through the ages. Others are fads, embraced for a few years, and then forgotten. When I was a mom in the early nineties, a recipe for Amish bread flew from neighbor to neighbor, along with a container of live yeasty culture with instructions how to maintain it for loaf after loaf in your own kitchen, and how to grow more to pass on to the next neighbor. The baked product was a lovely textured, mildly sweet bread.

Beef Stroganoff, a Hungarian dish with noodles, beef, sour cream and paprika, was an every day staple in Europe, I believe. There was little difficulty finding it in many restaurants and kitchens some 40 years ago in the US, but its visibility seems to have waned.

Several cakes, probably still around, but unknown to many were immensely popular in the 1960s. Devil's Food is a dark chocolate cake with rich chocolate frosting. German Chocolate cake is a milder, lightly spiced chocolate with milk chocolate frosting. The filling between the layers was a candy-like concoction of nuts and shredded coconut.

Old cookbooks are a great source for forgotten, but wonderful foods and how to prepare them.

we are each of us angels ...

'We are each of us angels with only one wing, and we can only fly by embracing one another.'

- Luciano de Crescenzo

library

Sometimes we don't notice the architecture of a building because we are more interested in the contents. We focus on the aisles of food in a grocery store, or on the screen in a movie theater. Here in a central Texas library, I usually focus on the aisles of books, or on my work at a table. Yet this is a cheerful spot, with a clean, modern feel, the pale colors easy on the eye, and I sometimes gaze upward. The ceiling is high, and daylight flows in through square, set-back windows in tidy rows above the shelves. The ceiling is interesting with suspended curved rectangles of thin material - like a faux plywood - attached to a wood brace. Perhaps these panels are to help with insulation - of temperature, and sound as well. But it has the feel of the construction for a sailing ship, as though we were in a bright, spacious hold in progress, or the belly of a gentle whale, the panels like the arc of ribs. The architecture is well-suited for a library, a peaceful public resource.

Hanukkah Solstice haiku

longest night -
sheaf of distant stars
shines bright -
nearby sacred candlelights

The last three books I finished reading were all children's books. Nothing like a good picture book to bring in a bit of cheer. All of these have wonderful illustrations, creative and bright. Some of the pictures are very thoughtful and deep.

The first is about a tortoise and a hare, the tortoise calm and deliberate, the hare 'hurry hurry' and quick-minded. The story's brief, but the illustrations of fields and critters held my attention for quite some time (and inspired me to write about dandelions the other day). They're simple, gently humorous, carefully detailed, and beautiful. The next book was about a rabbit who is a magician's assistant. He gets lost in the city during a street show. These pictures really capture the feel of a city at all times of day - the buildings, streets, sidewalks, alleys and bits of park here and there. The city people - say in the transit tunnel - are interesting - human but respectfully distant at the same time, just like city folk tend to be. And the sketch of the magician's den at the beginning of the story, filled with fascinating clutter, is just as entertaining as the the first pictures of field in the tortoise-hare book.

The last picture book that I just finished right here just now is about an awkward click beetle. The author's colorful use of mixed media is gorgeous. There's a picture of two beetles, a tree, a crescent moon and crazy stars that would look great on my wall. The picture of giant loafer-clad feet approaching a beetle on its back is very scary indeed.

Hurry Up and Slow Down by Layn Marlow 2009
The Magic Rabbit by Annette LeBlanc Cate 2007
The Very Clumsy Click Beetle by Eric Carle 1999