We Just Live Here

Why the drying clothes are not directly in front of Betsy the Woodstove.  

Actually, I need to get to her to stir the beans or have some tea, so I'm just kidding, Price!  (But don't tell him.)

 

His wounds are almost gone; this is how a melting kitty in front of the stove looks.  The big scar down his middle is from the operation.  He don't care.

The Smell Of Email In The Morning

The first order of business in the am is answering the email. Most of it is business, but then there's FXcuisine, which leads to my making comments like this, proving once again how full of anything about everything an author's mind is:

"Yum! "Magenbrot" literally means "stomach bread." We're always told to use herbs and spices as an aide to digestion -- and the Germanic countries turned them into goodies.

It's hilarious watching Americans socking down Jaegermeister as a cocktail, when it's really a digestive aide and cough syrup!

(The little poem on the bottle goes:

"Das ist des Jaegers Ehrenschild,
dass er beschuetzt und hegt sein Wild,
weidmannisch jagt, wie sich's gehoert,
den Schoepfer in Geschopfe ehrt."

"It is the hunter's shield of honor,
that he protects and cares for his game,
sportingly hunts, as is proper,
honoring the Creator in (His) creation.")"

I've been accused of "knowing everything" up here (not always a compliment in a rural area -- I grew up in one). A guy who lives on Eagle Point asked:

"Do you know where the motorcycle gangs came from?"
"The ones in the fifties? Those were those soldiers let loose after the war."
"Damn! You DO know everything!"

He told me one of the reasons the young men of his generation were so eager to go to world war two was because they'd been promised the women of Europe and America -- grateful -- and the women of Germany and Japan -- forced.

Me: "Hell, that explains that photo of the sailor and the nurse!"
"Yup," he said. "They said we could have all the women."

I guess since rape in war has been made a war crime, that kind of explains one of the reasons war ain't so popular any more.

Beware of learning to write. You end up with a head full of detritus.

Ask Mary Roach. I recently read her Spook, about the search for proof of the afterlife. She says she starts out knowing NOTHING about the subject she's chosen to write about, and all the way through points out her "d'uh!" moments. In a world where most writers are poor attempts to imitate Hemingway, or poets who think they are Karouac (SAVE me from the ticky-tacky poetry rhythm readings* about somebody's dead mother!), Roach's style is erudite, breezy, intense and hilarious. She's like John McPhee with a sense of humor.

Highly recommended, btw. I haven't yet read her Stiff or Bonk (oh, just guess what THOSE are about).

(*I once cleaned that weird, jerky reading style out of a poetry reading meeting by using it for the ingredients from a bottle of cat shampoo. Every single meeting people brought it up again.)

Next Book Nearly Finished

Welcome to another Link-o-rama, wiki-style.

AFTERDEAD 1.3 (see AFTERDEAD black-and-white 1 and 1.2 at Lulu is nearly finished. A lot of the pages are in color and will be appearing at Webcomicsnation.

It includes a story that ran in Gay City, Volume One, about difficulties Pfirsich faces -- with his accustomed aplomb -- as a postman on the frontier.

The longest story, "Little Man," combines my recent longing to see a roller derby match and the discovery on an academic film site of a peculiar trade in home-made films that occurred within the Afrika Korps. I wish I could still find the site; the utter goofiness of the history, written in serene, dry academese, had the disaffected historical tone of the narrator in The Hallelujah Trail. "Little Man" includes a flashback to Pfirsich's Afrika Korps days; how could I not use Winzig and Udo to represent our own culture's black and white vision of adult representations of sexuality?

Here is a sample page from "Stalkers:"

Every cook I know is interested in this question. After recently reading hunting magazines, I realized what it was every hunter wanted to hunt. If you don't believe me, check out the t-shirts in any hunting store, and their language in their mags. It is thinly disguised. "Stalkers" provides the usual practical solution to an historical problem. The Reichers, I sometimes think, reflect that practicality that is an inheritance of my French background -- the provencal version. The only nobility in my blood comes from a gang of very minor English baronettes, near Nottingham. We retain a small carpet, an inlaid table, and a geneology. If I killed many, many English people, I could inherit the throne (then again, who couldn't?).

The final book version of Musswolf is included. It's on a traditional theme, from Pfirsich's viewpoint.

As soon as I've finished AFTERDEAD 1.4, it will be collected with 1.2 to 1.4 -- with color inserts -- at Booksurge (available through Amazon and http://www.donnabarr.com/) and then the smaller versions will be pulled off the site.

Because Lulu prints books differently, the collected AFTERDEAD II will have to be in black and white.

Nettles and Seafood

To answer comments: Yes, we can pick up seafood on the beach. Check out an older blog, Clallam At Bay and the link to Wolf Food.

Nettles: treat 'em like spinach. Lasagna, ravioli, omelets -- and the luscious French spring treat, cream of nettle soup.

They can also be used like bee stings on winter injuries. The welts I put on my bad thumb, arm and knee are down, the electrical buzz is passed, and all the bad places are healed.

(This is an adult remedy; they really DO feel bad if you're a kid).

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