This morning, between chores, I wrote a couple poems. I should say I tried writing a couple poems. They were so bad that I ended up printing them out just so I could have the satisfaction of throwing them to the garbage. Then they were locked up in the electronic journal I regularly...Read More Here...

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This has been a great day so far. Nothing short of being run over by the UPS driver could ruin this one....Read More Here...

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I learn foreign languages with the aim of reading the literature. The drawback is it takes years. In fact, the only language with which I feel confident with is French, which I learned at school. I remember a holiday in France with no access to English books when I read 'Madam Bovary'. There must have been lots I didn't get, but no doubt it helped that I'd already read an English version.


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One of my favourite authors of all is Elizabeth Bowen. And the other day I went back to one of my favourite of her novels, The Heat of the Day, which I can't recommend highly enough. Her characters and settings are so memorable that in between times I forget how much of a modernist she was: the writing has the kind of density which is born of a precise attention to physicality but also to thought and sensation, and it can be quite elliptical. It's like looking at a photograph so full of texture and form that your eye feels it powerfully, even when your mind isn't yet quite sure what, exactly, it's seeing.

And one of a novel's-worth of wonderful paragraphs caught my eye, and even if it's not the kind of prose you aspire to write yourself, it seemed to me an education in how to evoke an intensely physical, even terrifying, event so that not only do we feel it strongly, but there's real action, real drama. It's actually a flashback to when the main character, Stella, first met the man who was to become her lover, Robert, in a bar during the London Blitz. (in my Penguin edition it's page 95). Many of the usual ways of making sure the reader feels events and settings vividly aren't used in this paragraph: it's not rooted in a character's viewpoint - there's no mention of the characters at all - and at no point does it describe how anyone feels. There's no emotion here, in other words, except what's evoked in the reader by how it's written. Try reading it aloud.

Overhead, an enemy plane had been dragging, drumming slowly round in the pool of night, drawing up bursts of gunfire - nosing, pausing, turning, fascinated by the point for its intent. The barrage banged, coughed, retched; in here the lights in the mirrors rocked. Now down a shaft of anticipating silence the bomb swung whistling. With the shock of detonation, still to be heard, four walls of in here yawped in then bellied out; bottles danced on glass; a distortion ran through the view. The detonation dulled off into the caracting roar of a split building: direct hit, somewhere else.

The answer to the question "Why do you think this is so good?" is "Because it makes the hairs rise on the back of my neck". But the more interesting question is "How do you think Bowen makes it so good?" So these are a few suggestions about How:

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Okay. So we’ve been pounding the coho salmon the last eight days. (Another 6 of the pesky rascals this morning in just under two hours.) But what do you eat with all that grilled goodness you might ask? What follows is our current fave salad recipe. It is outstanding with fish, over Romaine hearts, with feta cheese in a wrap, and many other ways. It is a bit of work but the recipe makes LOTS and will keep over a week in the fridge. And, as stated earlier, it can be served in a variety of ways to suit your mood and taste. I don’t post recipes very often…this is the third one in over six years of blogging. This one is worth it. We refined and modified it until it morphed into what you see below. Bon appetit!

Dave’s Healthy as Hell Salad ...Read More Here...

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Volcano was never performed in Noel Coward's lifetime, despite his success with Blithe Spirit,(1941) Brief Encounter (1945)and Private Lives (1930). It's doubtful that it would have got past the censor as one of the characters is gay. The central relationship is based on an affair between James Bond author Ian Fleming and a wealthy female plantation owner, so a potential producer could have risked a libel action.

A more immediate objection nowadays would be to the colourless characters and the lack of plot. Coward built his home in Jamaica but in keeping with the vogue at the time, the play is set in a fictitious island in the South Pacific. Apart from a lot of talk and cocktail drinking as well as some wincing (after an off-stage mule-trek up the volcano), almost nothing happens.

The acting, especially by Jenny Seagrove as the banana plantation owner in love with a philanderer, is fine. The characters themselves are so two-dimentional we don't really care about them.

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That pretty much describes our last couple of days. We have caught, eaten, shrink wrapped, and frozen salmon. The Kings aren’t in at the moment but the Cohos are plentiful and readily available. They are also tasty fresh off the grill. (Skin side down if you please.) and Thimbleberries and Blueberries are still out there but past their peak. That said, patience and perserverance still yields enough to make a batch of jam or jelly. We ran out of jelly jars at the camp and had to resort to making it fresh and then freezing it in plastic. It still tastes great and will...Read More Here...

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Can a limerick be serious? By tradition they are inherently goofy so there would be that hurdle to overcome from the outset. Also a serious poem probably would not carry the ribald theme so prevalent in limericks. But, for kicks and giggles, let’s give it a try and see where it leads us:

A green field lies, rain freshened.
Bold, brash thunder threatened
Just yesterday,
Never a ray
Of light – Armageddon.

Okay, so we’re able to eliminate the goofiness and ribald nature of the limerick but...Read More Here...


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The Keewenaw Food Cooperative is sponsoring a customer/owner appreciation day on Friday, August 17th. There will be special foods, samples, and music through the afternoon. Speaking of music, yours truly will be playing mandolin, fiddle, and concertina from noon to 2:00. Just look for the guy with the big smile over in the corner. I always try to look serious but ...Read More Here...

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Actually it was four hours and fifty minutes. I drove the big boat today northeast for just under five hours and arrived safe and sound at Lac Labelle. Normally the trip takes a little over five hours but the wind and waves were out of the southwest and gave me an additional two mph. (That means my average cruise speed was a stunning 14mph.) Yeah, she’s a slow boat but seaworthy as any dolphin and a great fishing tug for me and the missus. Here at Lac LaBelle the internet isn’t familiar with terms like light-speed or bandwidth...Read More Here...

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