Beans, Beans, the Musical Fruit! 1001;52 (or thereabouts)

March 18, 2012:  Dad always planted potatoes on St. Patrick's Day, down in Southern Illinois.  This week in SouthEast Michigan, to commemorate the Spring Planting Itch that is surely in my blood, I pulled out the dried beans that had wintered (on the ground or on the trellises) in my garden, and shucked them.   (Alternate Persona Linguist's Note:"Shuck" is such a great word, so flora-specific.) Love it.)  Most of the beans, of course, I ate last summer, when they were nicely green, fresh, and succulent.  But Old don't make these babies Bad, just Different.  If they don't get picked in their youth, they transmutate into seeds for next year's crop.  And into alternate, dried  food.  So I gathered up the survivors, and shucked 'em and checked 'em.

I was impressed.

As you can see, the Kentucky Wonder Beans (little brown ones) look ready to roll.  Their much bigger and dramatis brethren are Scarlett Runner Beans.  Pink and black and big all over, my my my.   Last year was the first time I planted them.  And wow.  They grow like Jack in the Beanstalk Beans: overnight.  They have pretty red flowers all over themselves.  They grew to the top of my pergola and beyond, thereby entering themselves into Favored For Cheap Summer Neighbor Shut-Out category.  

And God are they Lovely.

Its a shame to put them back into the ground, they're so pretty.  But that's what I'll probably do with at least some of them, in a week or two.  With the weather so warm so early, I'll probably stagger the plantings and do a few now, a few later, in case Mother Nature indulges in a flirtatious little freeze before March leaves us.

But the Really Cool Revelation I had when holding them in my hot little hands this week was that they would make excellent dried beans.  The kind I could keep in a nice mason jar on my counter to look at all next winter.  And eat.  I'm forming an Apocalypse Gardening Egregrium (ok, I made that last word up so the acronym could be A.G.E., but it works), and the 4 people who compose it have been told that they can exhcange food with each other in seasonal increments.  (Or duck / chicken eggs, if we get Cindy in on the mix.)  So it is essential we have a variety of foods, with varying maturity dates, not to mention protein rich foods, as we get our Egregrium on its maiden feet this spring.  Right now, Scarlett Runner Beans are my projected contribution to variety/ protein. 

As my bean lust grows, I've been purveying the beautiful (and free) catalog of Seed Savers Exchange, overwhelmed by the variety of dry bean seeds they are offering (and by the very existence of SSE). Scarlett Runner is among their number, so I'll stick with it this year.  Garden space is, alas, limited, as all addicted gardners lament.  We can only grow so much.  Ahhh, but we can dream.  (Note:  run to your computer, google the Seed Savers Exchange, and experience the illumination therein.  People Do Care About the Planet.)

While checking out the SSE catalog and drooling, I also came across a little beauty called Jobs Tears, which is a marginally edible plant whose dried seeds have a little hole in the middle, and thereby are natural beads--like in necklaces? And  YES I'M GETTING SOME!!! I will become the creator of Jobs Tears necklaces by next winter, if all goes well.  My other non-edible ergo functional plant alumni include the lovely sponge gourd which I was semi-successful with last year (they are actual stiff sponges, which could scrub the paint off my Honda [what doesn't, these days, its a 2003]; and my snake gourds which make really cool rainsticks (percussion instruments, which some of my musical friends politely "hm" at when I make percussion with them). 

So, I'll let you know about the mason jar full of beautiful pink and black beans by next winter.  Likewise the natural bead business.  They have to be planted, grow, bloom, produce, and dry before then, but I have faith.

I could try mustard seeds, come to think of it.

Memory 1001:31

This morning, sunlight and music dissolved my thick fog of sleep.  A hearteningly bright February sun slipped between

the slats, accompanied by the ethereal guitar of J. Blaska

 /www.youtube.com/watchv=ewCkKvDl_dA&feature=related .  Last night's aspirin immobilized all traces of arthritis, bursitis, and other souvenirs of age.  My senses, drifting around in the zone between Dead and Alive, felt like Heaven.  It was a fine way to start the day.  Maybe this kind of awakening is a preview of that famously discussed final act we all expect to share when the time is right: "Go Towards the Light."

So morning pours in my window in the morning, and sublime instrumental guitar pours into my head, and I am still sleep-stupid (which can go on for quite some time between deep sleep and awake). And there is enough dream-state left to resurrect memory as reality.  So this morning, I remember Hawaii. Or maybe it remembered me.  Either way, it appeared in my head like reality.

On the island of Kauai, if you drive all the way around the island from the tourist hotels and beaches, to the other side of the island--past the whale-sighting beaches and the tents tucked away between the huge tree roots and the helicopter rides--you eventually run out of road. At least, 12 years ago I did. And when the fading road went over a foot-bridge, it dissolved into a thin twisting ribbon of beach, with trees undulating between jungled forest and ocean. There was a bench someone had left on the bit of beach between the trees.

And on an island in the middle of a vast ocean, on a small beach facing the playground of whales, no one was there but me.

I remember this place sometimes. And there it was this morning, in my head, between the Light and the Music. I was, in this morning's quasi-reality, on the little beach in Kauai, years and distance notwithstanding.   Bliss.

I love Memory. The phenomenom of Memory doesn't really fit linear time.  Memory is not just Past Events, it is also Present and it is Future. Or it is Everytime.  Once something enters our consciousness, if we choose to remember it can be re-created.  Or we can hope for something and thereby remember our hope for it, drawing the future to ourselves; Expectation as Reverse Memory.  Or Memory is a fiction book.  Once a book is written down, its action remains constant.  At any time, you can experience the action or timeline of the book by opening it to a specific page.  Whether the action described happened in the story's past or the story's future, it is happening at the moment you read it.  You can go back to that page and that described event over and over, and it is still happening when you read it.  It has happened in the past in the sense you have read it in the past, and it will happen in the future in a sense if you have not read it yet, ever.  The Memory of a book is not unlike our own memory: it runs in a loop.  And the re-reading of it is a selective comfort.

As I get older, memories are a great source of joy and comfort.  Even if remembered events and people had negative aspects, I am getting good at harvesting the happy parts. One of my friends noted that its sad to lose Memories.  I can't imagine how that would feel.  But if space abhors a vacuum, so must the mind.  Whatever fills my thoughts, even if it is the simple view of what is in front of me, I am practicing The Art of Choosing Beautiful Thoughts.  A useful future tool for ageing.

Like Barbra Streisand sang in The Way We Were: "Memories can be beautiful, and yet-- what's too painful to remember, we simply choose to forget."  Good idea.  If I ever lose my mind, to paraphrase Cat Steven's (Moonshadow), I won't have to be particular about what I remember.  I hope I remember Hawaii, but I would be equally happy to remember Australia, Alaska, Greece, or Idaho--places I have never been, yet. 

It's got to be the thought that counts.

Bottle of Wine 1001:30

Some time back, a 107- year-old bottle of wine was snatched up for $3 at an estate sale.  A few days ago, it was subsequently re-sold to me, at a markup of $2.   A bargain for $5.   I had to have it. Several of my alternate personas ached to get their little fingers on it and begin touching it.  I share with you our happy fingers in this little story.                                             The bottle is 10 inches tall.  Inside are patches of sediment stuck to the side--and floating around, due to its recent travels.  The bottle cap is oxidized metal, capped like a soda bottle.  The wine has a deep gold color.  It's label reads "DANDELINE WINE  =  1905,  Made by Grandma Eckel." 

I acquired this wine at the regular Saturday Morning Sketch session at the Scarab Art Club in downtown Detroit. The transaction and product were eyeballed by a drove of visually acute individuals, with trained and interested consideration of its physical data: sediment, label, bottle, cap.  It's potability was proclaimed "vinegar."  All agreed it makes a pretty picture.  I do not plan to drink it.  I do love it, though.  My dad made wine, from any cheap, plentiful, and available source.  I myself have a yard full of organic dandelions, and every spring am tempted to utilize them, in some way.  Maybe this year.  Meantime, I make the acquaintance of Grandma Eckle's bottle.  The label, the bottle, the cap, the sediment, the age, the history, and Grandma Eckles' handiwork itself.   Closet Anthropologist, out of closet. 

I like the label. The label states the year, the vintner, and mis-spells "dandelion"--derived from French, "dent de lion", tooth of the lion (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dandelion ).  The spelling as "dandeline" is mis-heard/ compression of foreign words, as well as limited familiarity with the word in written form.  Books weren't laying around as accessibly in 1905, to confirm standardized spelling.  It is fun to see this small example of the evolution of standardization of a language.  Closet Linguist. 

The label is typed by manual typewriter.  Mark Twain, fyi, was an early tech type.  Typewriters did not lend themselves to practical use until late 1860s, and Twain  bought one in 1874.  He didn't do all that well with it.  But it follows that the label on Grandma Eckle's wine was 31 years into accessible typewriter technology.  My mom has a manual Royal typewriter from the 1940's, and even at that date it was quite a prized posession at our house, up through the 60's.  It was like the telephone when I was a child: kids weren't allowed to use the phone for casual use.  It was, llike the typewriter, an expensive, mysterious, grown-up technology, by standards of a poor rural area.  So a reasonable conclusion about The Bottle is that pre-WW1, someone was urban, technologically involved, and well-off enough to have a typewriter.  Someone cared for their grandma's wine--and their grandma--enough to type out a label and name the year.  A-ha, Watson.

The label is interesting.  It is pretty certainly manufactured.  An internet search query of "when were gummed labels invented" turned up the surprising answer that back in the 1600's books of printed labels were appearing, meant to be cut out and pasted onto bottles (1).   I switched to a search for "history of manufactured gummed labels" and found several hits for Avery Dennison, a still-viable company which began its history by making paper boxes in 1864 (2).  They began making labels and tags in 1864, but it wasn't until 1935 that they began an official line of self-adhesive products.  So possibly the label was self-adhesive--it looks it. It is also possible that someone labeled it after it had been sitting around for a while.  That would explain why the label looks gummed, and why a typewriter was used in 1905.  But Who Knows.  Closet Storyteller, taking the bait.

 And then, theres the bottle itself. 

To Be Continued:  Oh, the Lovely Bottles . . .

1. Appearance of gummed labels.

http://books.google.com/books?id=N4N9bsxc2LYC&pg=PA34&lpg=PA34&dq=when+were+gummed+labels+invented?&source=bl&ots=9gSMlVhiRo&sig=MOigjC9ElV-w0iKxHlai-vHu3Nk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=imYUT5uBLqH10gG5wMzCAw&ved=0CCIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=when%20were%20gummed%20labels%20invented%3F&f=false

2.  Avery Dennison  http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Avery-Dennison-Corporation-Company-History.html

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning

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