Happy Solstice all! Let us lift a glass by the fireside and toast the return of the Sun!
From 1969, by Sunforest featured on A Clockwork Orange soundtrack,
"Overture to the Sun".
From Richard Thompson and friends in a taxi, a cover of a song from the 1611 hit parade "Remember, O Thou Man" by Thomas Ravencroft. Typically dour of those times, Ravencroft is just a sunny ball of finger wagging, admonishing all wretched sinners to repent. Happy Holidays all! Thompson and crew wisely lighten the atmosphere by segueing into a wonderful and hilarious juxtapose: Fats Waller's "My Very Good Friend the Milkman".
C with a reindeer at the downtown East Lansing Winterglow.
Making Kolache
My mother was a very good cook and she especially shone during the Winter holidays. One particular thing we looked forward to was the kolache, a Slovak pastry that she learned to make from Dad's mother. It is a buttery, sweet dough with a nut filling. I attempted with mixed results to make a vegan version. Vegan baking can be a challenge and one thing you must reconcile is that whatever recipe you adapt will taste different. Nothing tastes like butter except butter regardless of what marketing tells you. For the dough, I replaced the butter with Earth Balance vegan butter and the cream cheese with marzipan. For the nut filling, C is allergic to walnuts so I went with hazelnuts. Instead of egg white as a binder, I used ground flaxseeds. The dough, which is refrigerated overnight was a nightmare and very hard to deal with. In the end, the kolache were quite large but tasty. The almond/hazelnut flavors co-existed nicely and while the dough was not as flaky, it had a nice tooth. I expect these kolache will be as good as their original version with the morning coffee. Yum.
One of my favorite pictures of my mother, Bette, taken in the garden Fall 1973 wearing her "Sopwith Camel" coat. As she approaches her 90th year, her mind has been lost to the ravages of Alzheimer's and dementia. While C gently asserts that she is not suffering, it's hard not to believe that some part of her realizes the nature of her being and I find this grievous beyond words. From the poet Billy Collins, an elegant articulation of such a state although for my mother, I am afraid she is very much past "Forgetfulness".
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Ut quiescat, primum venire.
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