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Dear friends, this poem comes from Jack Butler’s The Kid Who Wanted to Be a Spaceman and Other Poems, published in 1984 by August House Press.  (It was also reprinted in the 1997 essay collection Jack’s Skillet:  Plain Talk and Some Recipes From a Guy in the Kitchen.) Jack Butler is also the author of Jujitsu for Christ, Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock and Dreamers, all available via the usual suspects for out-of-print and hard-to-find books.  There are poems I like, poems I love and poems I adore, but there are very few poems that make me wish I had written them.  This is one.

Preserves

Great love goes mad to be spoken:  You went out
to the ranked tentpoles of the butterbean patch,
picked beans in the sun.  You bent, and dug
the black ground for fat, purple turnips.
You suffered the cornstalk’s blades, to emerge
triumphant with grain.  You spent all day in a coat
of dust, to pluck the difficult word
of a berry, plunk in a can.  You brought home
voluminous tribute, cucumbers, peaches,
five-gallon buckets packed tightly with peas,
cords of sugar-cane, and were not content.
You had not yet done the pure, the completed,
the absolute deed.  Out of that vegetable ore,
you wrought miracles:  snapbeans broke
into speech, peas spilled from the long slit pod
like pearls, and the magical snap of your nail
filled bowls with the fat, white coinage of beans.
Still you were unfinished.  Now fog swelled
in the kitchen, your hair wilted like vines.
These days drove you half-wild – you cried,
sometimes, for invisible reasons.  In the yard,
out of your way, we played in the leaves, and heard
the pressure-cooker blow out its musical shriek.
Then it was done:  You had us stack up the jars
like ingots, or books.  In the dark of the shelves,
quarts of squash gave off a glow like late sun.
That was the last we thought of your summer
till the day that even the johnson grass died.
Then, bent over sweet relish and black-eyed peas,
over huckleberry pie, seeing the dog outside
shiver with cold, we would shiver, and eat.

Thursday, July 1: This project is getting out of hand.  Since I’m trying to determine why it is necessary for us to intensively farm chickens so that we can get the 87 billion eggs for which we are impatiently tapping our feet, I’ve been spending a lot of time at webpages for companies like Michael Foods and Sunny Fresh Foods (a division of Cargill).  Of course we don’t see pictures of the chickens; hell, we don’t even hear about the chickens.  It’s all about the eggs, or rather, all about the ESL, IQF, imitation, white-only, dried, frozen, bagged, precooked, attractively browned, value-added egg products.

I mentioned this this morning to my downstairs neighbor A, as we sat on the deck, she drinking coffee, I sipping at another pink breakfast drink.  I need to do my own research on this, but to hear A tell it, a certain Arkansas-based chicken monolith has managed to get itself in serious Dutch in Arkansas for its pollution of the state’s aquifers with carelessly-disposed chicken manure.  This is another consequence of factory farming:  according to Page Smith and Charles Daniel in The Chicken Book, once upon a time chicken manure, properly treated, was a much-coveted fertilizer.  When the bulk of egg production switched from small farms to larger commercial farms, chicken manure was carefully collected and used in both home and truck gardens.  It was only after the split of production into meat birds and egg birds, and after the introduction and wide application of chemical fertilizers took place, that the disposal of manure became the environmental catastrophe that it is today.  As Smith and Daniel put it, “The present uselessness of chicken manure, once so prized as an ‘organic’ fertilizer, goes along with the systematic killing of male chicks.” Now chicken manure is worse than useless, it is dangerous.

A knows some chicken farmers who have contracts with Arkansas-based Chicken Monolith, and she said they told her that due to ABCM’s ongoing battles with the Arkansas DEP, they are cutting their losses, pulling all of their Arkansas contracts, and moving their business to Missouri.

There are still active springs all over Eureka Springs.  In the walking tour brochure, they mention one where the water always flows, but caution that under federal guidelines, the spring water is no longer safe to drink and walkers should avail themselves of the nearby water fountain.  I wonder if we have ABCM to thank for that, too.

***

More industry hideousness:  In tracking down information on Sunny Fresh Foods, another value-added egg producer that competes with Michael Foods, I find an article in the Foodservice Find column in the archives of the Food Product Design website.  The article is entitled “Convenient Chef Shortcuts,” and is another paean to pre-cooked, flash-frozen, chemically enhanced (but we include mirepoix, so it’s okay!) foodstuffs, all of which the consumer, and by extension the industry, cannot live without.  I know I should not be surprised when a company marketing director talks about why we need her product, because it’s her job.  But god, it makes me feel like a relic when I read this:

Certain products create problems in large-scale production. “Imagine shelling eggs for a buffet feeding 200 people,” notes Terry Zauhar, director of marketing, Sunny Fresh Foods. “Shell eggs not only pose an issue with waste, convenience and food safety, but impact yield as well.” As a solution, a wide range of egg products exist, including frozen liquid whole eggs; seasoned and unseasoned frozen liquid whole eggs with milk; frozen products for baking, such as liquid whole eggs, egg whites, sugared yolks and plain yolks; cholesterol- and fat-free frozen products; frozen diced eggs for salad bars; and refrigerated hard-cooked eggs. Refrigerated liquid whole-egg products evolved from the frozen category and offer added convenience, because they eliminate thawing.

Or this:

Research and development programs have evolved through the years to offer innovative product solutions. “Refrigerated hard-cooked eggs were originally packed in 20-lb. pails of brine solution, which could potentially make the egg a bit tougher,” notes Zauhar. “Current technology uses atmospheric packaging, which eliminates the potential texture problem as well as the issue of shipping water.” Other technology gives precooked frozen product a homemade quality. “We’re now able to provide fried egg patties using technology that produces a product similar to that cooked in an old black skillet or frying pan, in contrast to the first generation of products,” he adds.

Or this:

Foodservice suppliers can leverage technical expertise that offers advantages over chef-prepared recipes. “Standard scratch recipes usually will not have engineered handling characteristics, such as thick batter for quick manufacturing or depositing; correct moisture without free water to ensure that the product eats well without sacrificing shelf life; or products that are less sensitive to mistakes, such as meringues that easily are over-mixed, or roux that can be burned,” says Freeman.

I love that phrase “the product eats well.” I’m guessing that eating well and tasting good are not synonymous.

Nothing has changed, nothing.  Thirty years after the Hesses wrote that the dirty little secret of American luxury dining is frozen precooked foods, we are treated to verbiage like this:  “Today’s chefs require valuable, timesaving products. These may be concentrated soups or sauces; seasonings or flavors mimicking authentic, fresh ingredients; pre-marinated, pre-breaded and precooked meats; or other pre-prepared entrées or desserts.” I live in New York, a place full of restaurants applauding their farmer’s market-based, seasonal menus, so it is easy for me to fool myself into thinking that things have changed for the better.  They have not.

***

7:02 p.m.  Sudden storm.  Oh, my word.  I can feel this one through the bottoms of my feet.  It is raining harder than I have ever seen it rain here.  I have sat through my share of showers, but this is stormy rain, the kind that smacks the pavement and bounces back up, the kind I love to watch in Astoria.  I was sitting here, reading depressing egg stories, when I heard something crackle over my head, like something was about to fall.  The dishwasher was on, but no, it wasn’t that.  I looked up at the skylight:  rain, and plenty of it.  I opened the front door, just in time to see the rain come down so hard that the bluff across the street looked like it was diffusion-filtered.  I know that by leaving the door open, I am risking mosquitoes, or the creepy not-quite-a-wasp I killed in the kitchen last night, but it is worth it to watch the rain, and to hear it, and to smell that dirt smell, the kind that makes you want to plunge your fingers into it and say mmmmmmmmm.  This being summer in northwest Arkansas, the rain will probably stop and we’ll be treated to one more blinding burst of sunlight before everything finally sets, but o, I hope not.I want one more nice big burst.

Dear friends, as days go, I could not ask for a better one.  It was a day full of gifts.  There was lunch with the lovely bunni.  (If bunni ever invites you to lunch, please accept with alacrity.  You’ll be glad you did.) There was a package waiting for me when I got back from the market this morning, containing this magnificent tea towel made expressly for me by the lovely receptionista:

Believe me when I say that the picture does not begin to do justice to the actual towel.  The colors pop, the stitching is both elegant and sturdy, and the egg looks very, very mean, just the way I like it.

Even the farmer’s market was good to me today.  This should not come as a surprise, but it was.  Lately I’ve been taking the farmer’s market for granted, vaguely dreading the trip downtown, feeling weary at the thought of fighting my way through crowds, sun beating down upon us, glare from the pavement tiring me within 10 minutes of arrival.  Today, though, something clicked in my head, specifically a memory of a Saturday from this past January, when it was 3 degrees with a -5 windchill, when I knew that even if I could marshal the strength to go outside, there would be nothing at the market for me to buy.  I thought of that day, and how bleak and frustrated I felt, and I arrived at the market feeling happier, more secure and well-placed, than I’d felt in a long while.  We now have ingredients for ratatouille:  onions, yellow squash, zucchini, tomatoes and three perfect lavender Italian eggplants with skins that squeaked against each other when I pulled them out of the basket.  Those eggplants, those tomatoes, particularly the red zebra tomatoes I bought for the first time today, they are such a pleasure to hold in hand; it is almost better to hold them than to eat them.  Almost.  We have new garlic, the stiff-necked variety known as rocambole, pronounced “rockin’ bowl.” We have Italian plums for plum cake and nectarines for anything we damn well want.  We also have yet another flat of cherries; apparently last weekend was not the last weekend for sour cherries after all.  This time tomorrow, I will have pruny fingertips and grubby nails from spending the day pitting cherries, and I will be glad for it.

We also have chanterelles, or at least we did until dinner...but that is for another time.

Dear friends, while I sit here and compose both an interesting list of things to do this weekend and an interesting way to tell you about them, I am turning the reins over to my pal Walt, who, due to circumstances beyond all control, was unable to join the guestblogging party whilst I was in Arkansas, but who had something to say all along.  This is just too fine not to share, and Walt has graciously allowed me to share it with you.  Thank you, Walt.  Without further ado...

Dear Tony Randall,

My regrets about your recent death.  I hope everything went well. 

I wanted to meet you.  They say you greeted your fans with rock-steady good humor, that you could regularly be seen walking down 8th Avenue or straphanging in the 1-9 train, and it’s easy to imagine a brief, friendly encounter outside your former castle, the Beresford. 

Bakerina has a story about her Mom and a friend eyeing you at some function, working up the nerve to approach you, and you reacted with a preemptive twinkle and said, “Well, what are you waiting for?” Even your verbal cadence was a combination of grammatical discipline and humane flair that I found amusing and deeply admirable.  Someday I hope to be more like you, that is, capable of explaining the proper rules, big and small, with rock-steady good humor, and also capable of bursting out with, “Well why the hell not?”

So Mr. Randall, I’d like to propose an idea to you.  The idea is that people should lie while they eat. 

I think it’s a good idea. 

I do research on how social relationships sometimes are pre-coded into architecture and furniture.  Food is personal, for one thing, fraught with emotion and memory and guilt and unspoken pleasures.  For another thing there are damn few things harder to change than kinesthetic subroutines.  Once you’ve programmed your body for years to take a shower the same way, or drive to work the same way, or reach for the light switch, your body’s habits under the skin are tough and persistent.  So, Tony Randall, both because the subject of food is personal and emotional, and because lying to eat would mean changing a basic three-times-a-day human physical subroutine, put those things together and there’s a 0% chance that any American alive today (no offense sir) would ever make a habit of it. 

I still think it’s a good idea. 

Lying to eat?  Some tender-brained people might argue our forefather Og stood while eating, or God forbid squatted on a sharp rock, therefore that position is natural, and therefore the best.  This kind of mental hopscotch forgets that Nature doesn’t have our best interests at heart, and anyway, Og’s lifestyle choices are as open to review as yours or mine, even if we knew the first thing about Og, and we just don’t.  He might have eaten at a dead run for all we know.  Og is no model of suavity. 

Other people might say, look, this is a matter for Science.  It should be easy to examine the human body and extrapolate backwards into the optimal dining position, the position easiest on the stomach, the best for digestion.  And it’s true, the human body is engineered to amazingly consistent specifications and does exhibit amazing design integrity, if you overlook its having no clear purpose, so this is not a totally dumb idea.  Not totally.

Unfortunately, Tony Randall, the more you look closely at ergonomics, the less you know.  We’re skating on a thin, thin, thin layer of Wissenshaft here.  The best and most comprehensive book about seating, by Dr.Galen Cranz of Berkeley, concludes that the best chair is one a backless stool, because the spine assumes a healthy proper ‘S’ shape on a backless stool.  She calls for more research on the topic, which in English means, “we just don’t know.” The best and most comprehensive book about sleep, by the great Dr. William Dement, says the basic research into the best sleep surfaces has not been done.  Wissenshaft just doesn’t know.  The mattress companies aren’t particularly interested in finding out.  Another thing Wissenshaft does not know is the optimal physical position for eating.  You’d think that the stomach would work better when not compressed, but, shrug, who knows? 

A few cruel busy restaurants make you stand at counters, of course.  Orange Julius used to, I think.  These stand-up counters come up to about 46 inches off the ground, which is nice in one way – no kids in the store.  But my feet hurt. 

Most other restaurants in the western world silently and smugly assume, in that way that furniture silently and smugly provides you with social choices, that your dining experience happens in a workstation – comfortable upright seating, lots of flat surface at 28 inches off the ground, task-oriented lighting, manual tools and supplies on the table.  Dining room furniture for homes forces us into the same task position.  At this standard diningstation the furniture wants you to sit up straight at a 90-degree angle and lean forward and attend to your food as if it eating was a task. Look around some time – restaurants contain some great workstations, which may be why I leave restaurants with such a feeling of accomplishment. 

But I really don’t like to think of dinner as a task.

What would happen if those chairs tilted back?  Is that better?  Instead of 90 degrees, and rocketing past the insulting 3 to 5 extra degrees of “relaxation” in an airline seat, let’s just tilt back on the horizontal axis back to 115 degrees and have dinner.  (It’s hard to go past 100 degrees and concentrate on business, but you get reflective and relaxed; back to 135 degrees, halfway back to supine, you start feeling removed.) I predict there’d be a thunderous shift in the economy away from restaurants, whose patrons would require more floorspace and would physically relax and stay longer, pressuring their sales per square foot, and towards dry cleaners from all that dropped gazpacho.  Also I predict a run on nosehair clippers.  This is more relaxing than the diningstation, maybe, but probably not the best way to eat. 

Jesus Christ.  If you take Jesus Christ as a model of suavity, you’d lie down for dinner.  (Some people are turning to him for dietary advice, so I don’t see why this is much different.) The Last Supper was probably taken in a semi-recumbent position, stretched out, leaning on one elbow, on a couch, with pillows.  This helps to understand John 13:23, which is otherwise sort of puzzling.  And it sounds rather pleasant to me.  Jesus Christ himself deserves no extra credit here, since people had been reclining for meals for centuries before and afterward; according to Rudofsky, the Romans had a standard built-in dining configuration called a triclinium, three angled platforms on three sides of a low square table.  There’s a good example in the House of Caro in Pompeii.  For centuries this was the natural, inevitable, unquestioned way to have dinner. 

Of course, Mr. Randall, it’ll never happen in America.  It seems too dangerous.  I suppose there’s some danger in lying around on the floor with food, on pillows, some danger in leaving your less flexible cohorts behind, some danger in not exercising proper command and control of your food.  Some danger in enjoying yourself too much, like the Romans did, maybe tangling with a friend and maybe blurring the distinctions between lying and being laid (I knew you would help me keep that straight, thank you). 

It would be a change of habit, and therefore immoral, to relax and linger over a lovingly prepared dinner in any kind of sensual way, so maybe we shouldn’t talk about it anymore.  As much as I’d like to hear you burst out with, “Well why the hell not?”, I realize those days are gone. 

So please forget I said anything. 

All best to you.

Walt

Dear friends,

I wanted to post something long and thoughtful and laudatory here tonight, but in the end I decided there is no better way to say it than to just say it plainly.  Please go directly to Regina Schrambling’s web page, gastropoda, and read it now.

I’m trying to decide whether I am so impressed with her ruthless honesty, wicked humor and verbal grace that I want to aim for the bar that she has set, or whether I am so intimidated by all of the above that I just want to pack up my laptop and go home.  Either way, she leaves me lost in admiration.