Monthly Archives: January 2005

Friends Along the Way

New Haggis Traditions

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A couple of years ago, Barry came home from work and asked me, “Are we doing anything January 25th?” I was in charge of our social calendar.

“There’s a PSCC raft-up at Port Madison that weekend,” I replied.

“Oh well,” he shrugged. “My coworker, Dave, just invited us to something called a Burns Night party.”

I lit up like a Christmas tree and started jumping around. “Wow! Cool! Cancel the sailing! I have always wanted to go to a Burns Night!” Barry, understandably, was taken aback.

Somewhere back in the dim recesses of my brain, I knew about Burns Night, when Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, is celebrated. I’d read about it in my childhood, and had been fascinated by the poetry, pageantry, and haggis. I could go sailing any time, but a real Burns Night celebration was not to be missed.

When we responded to Dave with a positive RSVP, he provided additional instructions. Each of us was to bring a poem to read out loud and a chair. Dinner would be served in courses. The dress code was formal.

When we arrived and took our places, the only thing on the table was the Scotch. There was quite a lot of it, with different kinds to sample. Our host was busy behind closed doors in the kitchen, so we all entertained ourselves with the Scotch. It was destined to be a boisterous event.

The first course consisted of cock-a-leekie soup, a simple chicken and leek soup. Of course, the guests were less than sophisticated. “Hey! What’s that?” someone commented. Admittedly, in the dim light, it looked a bit bug-like. But it was a prune, a standard item found in cock-a-leekie soup. Meekly, we ate our soup. More Scotch followed.

Our host’s attire was the subject of much conversation. Instead of his traditional tartan kilt, Dave was nicely attired in Seattle’s hottest new thing, a Utilikilt. Made of denim or khaki, Utilikilts are targeted at manly men, with big sturdy pockets and loops for hammers and tools. They’re a little controversial.

Dave had experienced the controversy first hand when he wore his outside one day. He was standing on a street corner when someone in a passing car shouted a rude comment, along the lines of “Kilts are for Scottish people!” Perhaps for an American, a Utilikilt is an affectation. But if they’d stuck around long enough for Dave to respond, with his musical Scottish burr, they might have been embarrassed to realize that this guy knew his way around kilts.

After the soup, it was time to pipe in the haggis. Since we didn’t have a live piper, someone hit “play” on the stereo and the room filled with bagpipe music. Dave ceremoniously carried the haggis out and placed it on the table, and we all drank to it (more Scotch) and stared at it. It didn’t look too appetizing, but then again, that might have been the dim light. The more Scotch we drank, the better it looked.

When I was a kid and I first heard about haggis, I thought it sounded like the grossest thing on the planet. But over the years, I’ve mellowed, and things that seemed horrible now just seem kind of …. tasty. Like raw oysters. Yum. What grosses me out these days is the way food is processed. Like Lutefisk. Now that’s gross.

A traditional haggis is kind of a stuffing, made from the parts of a sheep we don’t normally eat, chopped up with onions and oatmeal and packed into the sheep’s stomach, yet another part we don’t usually eat. It’s then tied shut and boiled for a long, long time.

Think of it as a kind of sausage, stuffed into a very, very large casing.

Dave had been on the phone for weeks, trying to order an authentic haggis. The deal fell through at the last minute, and he decided to make one. However, the parts of a sheep that we don’t normally eat are impossible to buy. He had to substitute lamb for the offal. And instead of a stomach, he steamed it in cheesecloth. Not the most beautiful haggis, not the most authentic haggis — but it was tasty, and we had plenty of Scotch.

The other dish served was neeps and taties, meaning turnips and potatoes. At the time, even the Scotch didn’t improve the neeps. But I’ve changed my tune on turnips since then. I was forced to change by my month in Newfoundland, where your only choice of vegetable is peas and carrots (canned, mushy) and turnips (fresh, buttery). Bring on the neeps, I say.

At the end of the dinner, we turned to the entertainment. Dave read us something by Burns, which none of us understood. Then he read us a poem he had written, which none of us understood. Then the rest of the group began to read poems they’d brought, which, fortunately, were in English. Some were serious, some were funny. With the amount of Scotch we were drinking, some of the serious ones were funnier than the funny ones.

The following year, Dave had refined the dishes and the ceremony. He’d also wisely bought one less bottle of Scotch. One of his friends got into the spirit of the event and wore Dave’s extra kilt. Barry wore a nice shirt and tie, but deliberately wore slippers instead of shoes. The poetry was even better, with some people writing original pieces for the occasion. Barry and I did a dramatic reading of e.e. cummings sizzling poem, “may i feel said he.”

This year, we didn’t get an invitation to the main event, so Barry and I had to come up with our own tribute to the Bard.

I made cock-a-leekie soup, complete with bug-like prunes. Before we ate it, I said Selkirk grace:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

And for the main course, I minced up some lamb and onion and oatmeal, put it in a greased bowl, and cooked it in the pressure cooker. It came out as a rounded gray blob, surprisingly tasty. Barry thinks I should call it “lamb loaf.” But considering that we piped it in and drank a toast to it, I think I’ll call it haggis.

Photograph below: The haggis is piped in. Now the chef gets to have a drink!
Meps and the haggis

Websites describing Burns night often list a sequence of events similar to the following.

BURNS SUPPER – Official Sequence of Events
1. Chairman’s speech to welcome company, normally a few short sentences.
2. Then the Grace follows. Traditionally, Burns’s Selkirk Grace is used:
Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.
3. First course of dinner now served, eaten and cleared away.
4. Chairman rises and invites company to rise to welcome haggis being piped in.
5. Once haggis is placed on table, chef and piper have drink then leave.
6. Address to haggis now given and company stand to toast haggis and it is cut open.
7. Company sit and meal continues.
8. Coffee served and Chairman announces an interval (usually 10 to 15 minutes), when company can relax before speeches etc.
9. Immortal Memory by speaker (average time 25 minutes approx).
10. Toast to the Lassies speech (no longer than 10 minutes).
11. Response to the toast (10 minutes).
12. Then usually an Appreciation of the Immortal Memory is given, (10 minutes). Some other toasts or speeches may now be given, depending on Chairman.
13. Now entertainment begins (songs and poems etc), after which the Chairman calls on company to sing “Auld Lang Syne”.

Here is the sequence of events that Barry and I used!

BURNS SUPPER – Amended Sequence of Events
1. Call to supper (“Hey! It’s getting cold!”)
2. Reading of grace, with inappropriate accent
3. First course, cock-a-leekie soup
4. All rise while haggis is piped in
5. Toast to haggis (“Here’s to you, Mr. Haggis!”)
6. Eating of the haggis
7. Clearing of the dishes and loading of the dishwasher
8. Putting away of the leftovers (do we have to pipe in the leftover haggis tomorrow?)

For more fun reading, here’s someone with a whole site describing their Burns Night celebration. It sounds like the Scotch is pretty important.
http://www.auldlangsyne.org/

Or this one, which is full of haggis recipes, sorted “in order of increasing use of animal parts that would normally be thrown away.” In other words, from lesser to greater grossness!
http://www.smart.net/~tak/haggis.html

A slightly easier mock haggis recipe.

Awfully Funny, Cats

Something to tickle your funny bone

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If you are like me, you get lots of jokes in your e-mail box. Some are funny, some are not so funny. Sometimes, people just try too hard to be funny.

For me, the best humor comes from things that aren’t supposed to be that funny. I’ve found a couple of them on the Internet lately.

Searching for a photograph of a dog wearing a sweater for a practical joke, I found a site with over two dozen photos of dogs in sweaters. My favorite is “Killer.” After picking myself up off the floor laughing, I noticed a link at the bottom to cats wearing sweaters. “Wow,” I thought. “Did they really find a similar number of cats that wear sweaters? What unusual cats!”

Take a look at the dog page, and then click on the Scratching Post link at the bottom. As you’ll see, crocheted sweaters aren’t quite so popular with cats:
www.crochetnmore.com/thedoghouse.htm

On another day, I was looking at websites for real estate agents. I don’t know anything about this Seattle real estate agent, but her Elvis sightings sure tickled my funny bone. The best part is, she didn’t just take photos of Elvis. She had photos taken of herself, with Elvis. There she is, is in every single photo!
Seattle Dream homes — “Elvis ‘n’ Me”

Philosophy, Politics and World Affairs

The sky really IS falling

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Looking back at the essays I’ve written for this site, I see a lack of controversial topics. It’s time to change that.

I am angry, I am sad, I am frustrated. My dream of early retirement, living on a boat and sailing around the world, is threatened. I thought all we had to do was work hard and save our money, and we could then enjoy it. Sure, there is turmoil in the world, but it shouldn’t affect us personally. I was wrong. It will affect us personally, and sooner rather than later.

Joseph Conrad described my awakening in his 1900 novel, Lord Jim:

“It’s extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it’s just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertbeless, there can be but few of us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much — everything — in a flash — before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence.”

My awakening came about a week ago, on Monday. Barry and I had enjoyed a delightful retired day, visiting with friends. In the evening, we sat talking with Dave over a bowl of red beans and rice. From his pocket, he pulled a folded piece of paper, a printout from a laser printer. “Have you seen this?” he asked.

It was a page from somebody’s website, as evidenced by the lengthy URL printed at the bottom of the page. A technical-looking graph was centered under the unwieldy title of: “Uppsala Hydrocarbon Depletion Study Group — Oil and Gas Liquids 2004 Scenario.” Barry and I shook our heads, puzzled, but curious.

Back in the 1950’s, a fellow by the name of Hubbert figured out a way to model the production of an oil well. It looks like a classic bell curve. Each well starts out slowly, then produces more and more oil. Eventually, it reaches a peak and begins to decline. Interestingly, the model also works for a group of oil wells. So you can model the production of all the oil wells in a county. Or a state. Or a country.

The Hubbert model was applied to the whole U.S. oil and gas industry, and predicted that 20 years later, the top of the curve would be reached, and from then on, there would always be less and less oil and gas available in the U.S. In the 70’s, it happened, just as they said it would. I remember the lines at gas stations, schools closing to conserve heating oil, and Jimmy Carter lowering the thermostat and putting on a sweater.

But in the 1980’s, the U.S. became users of global oil, relying less and less on our own supply. We had no choice — here in the U.S., there was less and less available.

It’s been a long time since the 70’s energy crisis. Like many people, I became complacent. As long as there is plenty of oil in other parts of the world, and as long as the U.S. has the money to buy it, there should be no problem. Right?

Dead wrong.

You can use the Hubbert curve to model any group of oil wells, including all the oil wells in the whole world. That’s what Dave’s printout showed, the model for the whole world.

Dave took out a pen and marked a little “you are here” arrow. The year 2005 is right at the top. Like a roller coaster ride, we’re poised to tip over and start going down. Supplies will go down, while demand will continue to grow.

We sat around the table, talking about the implications, until late into the night. “Transportation’s going to be the first thing affected,” one of us commented, thinking of personal transportation. “What about transporting goods around the world?” I added. The discussion turned to the impending implosion of the airline industry. From there, one word came up: “Plastic.” We tried to imagine a world where the gas in your car has to compete with the fossil fuel used to make your plastic grocery bags. “Even food,” Dave pointed out, saying that much of it is fertilized with fossil fuels. Eventually we came around to the economic implications: No more fuel for growth in the stock market. Imagine a stock market that will shrink by five to ten percent every year.

I went about my business for the next few days, but the impending change was always on my mind. Why isn’t anybody talking about it? This is the end of an era, a paradigm shift beyond imagining. Does anybody know this is happening? Where are the news stories, the government statements?

The government knows. As Dave commented, “Why do you think Cheney’s energy commission is keeping their proceedings secret?” They know, but they’re afraid the public will panic. A blinding light bulb went on in my head. You mean to say the Iraq war really IS all about oil? Asked why the topic is getting so little press, James, a friend who is a journalist, says, “It’s not an exciting story. There’s no who, what, when, where, why.”

I was frustrated by this, and then I started getting angry. I’m angry because our culture is so wasteful, and I can’t do anything to stop the impending train wreck.

When I drive on the freeway and I see all the people commuting, one person per car, I want to shout the truth at them. “Ride the bus! Carpool! Get a bike!”

I’ve always hated stores that shrink-wrap the fruits and vegetables, so you can’t smell or feel them. Now, thinking of the wasted styrofoam and plastic wrap, I detest them. But I can’t stop people from shopping at Publix or Wal-Mart. I thought about standing in front of Wal-Mart with leaflets. I don’t think they’d let me do that for very long.

At the height of the dot-com boom, a friend of ours took a trip to Japan for the weekend. It was a total lark. He came back with a bunch of pictures of himself standing on Tokyo street corners, and a funny story to tell over beers.

But at what cost? His 747 burned gallons of jet fuel per mile. What if everybody on the plane was flying for a lark? Maybe I could accost people at the security gate and say, “Are you sure this is a necessary trip? Can’t you just do your business by phone or e-mail?”

I know everyone would accuse me of being Chicken Little. The sky is falling! The sky is falling! But it really is. According to www.peakoil.net: “A volatile epoch of recurring price shocks and consequential recessions dampening demand and price is now regarded as more likely, with terminal decline setting in and becoming self-evident by about 2010.” Buckle up, folks. We’re headed down on the roller coaster, and it’s going to be an interesting ride.

Philosophy

The Cycle of “Stuff”

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“The world is too much with us, late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”
–Wordsworth

I feel strongly that the more you pay for a possession, the more it owns you. That’s why I’m a thrift store junkie.

When I buy something at a thrift store, I pay so little that I consider the cost to be merely “rent.” When it’s time to part with the item, I can give it away freely, or sell it for about what I paid.

Ten years ago, Barry and I were in acquisitive mode. We spent our time at thrift stores and yard sales, picking up dishes to fill our cupboards and clothing to fill our closets. We bought furniture, books, CDs, tools. We had rented a 3-bedroom house in suburban West Seattle, and to live the American dream, we needed to fill it.

One afternoon, we stopped at a garage sale in the neighborhood. I don’t recall if I bought anything. But the memory of that sale has stayed with me ever since.

It was not your average clean-out-the-garage to get rid of 1970’s shoes, souvenir ashtrays, and stained placemats. This house sported a “sold” sign in the front yard, and the volume of stuff spread on tables in the yard looked like it would fill the house to bursting. Good stuff.

As I poked through the garage, looking at rakes and edgers, I overheard the owner say, “We’re moving onto a boat.” For me, it was a watershed moment.

I was filled with envy, wonder, amazement. Imagine living on a boat, being free to sail anywhere in the world. It didn’t occur to me that the process of getting to that freedom would be painful or difficult.

How could I know then what was in store for me?

Within three years of that yard sale, I was eager to sell our house and move aboard, too. We’d graduated from our daysailer up to “big boats,” and now counted liveaboards among our sailing friends.

But Barry is powerfully stubborn. And he wanted to enjoy the house we’d bought, with its landscaped yard and view of Mount Baker. As a result of the acquisitive phase, all 2400 square feet were furnished with chairs, tables, desks, sofas, beds, and artwork. Every closet was full. Barry was proud of his workbench in the garage, with its wall of hand tools, shelves of power tools, and sturdy vise.

There was a basic difference between us: My early childhood experiences were nomadic, pulling up roots and relocating every few years. Barry grew up living in one house and went to school in the same city from kindergarten to college.

It has taken a lot of effort and struggle to get rid of the stuff from our acquisitive phase. We held a yard sale, advertised things on the Internet, gave away or loaned the most precious items to family members and close friends. I made trips the dump, almost in tears over the unnecessary waste. Whenever I struggled with what to keep and what to get rid of, I would take a walk through one of the massive thrift stores. A new trashcan cost 99 cents. An alarm clock for $1.50. That made it easy to part with the old ones.

But still we fought. Blazing rows over what to keep, what to get rid of. Screaming, throwing things, sulking. I was afraid we’d end up with 100 boxes; Barry feared that I’d get rid of everything.

Finally, our possessions were whittled down to 29 boxes, three pieces of furniture, two bikes, and a tiny rowboat. Plus one 2400 square foot house, now the subject of the blazing rows, disagreements, and sulking fits. It owns us, and it’s time to sell it.

We moved into the house, temporarily, with our meager possessions. It’s a strange form of camping. We sit and sleep on the floor, but we can cook gourmet meals in the kitchen. We have hundreds of CDs, but had to borrow a small stereo to hear them. Most of the 11 rooms are empty, echoing. We can’t sell it like this; it needs to be cleaned and furnished, or “staged,” in real estate language.

In 2003, we sold our vacuum for $10 to a couple with a 20-year-old son. “Now he won’t borrow ours, and return it with a broken belt,” they said. Being thrift store junkies, we drove to the Goodwill yesterday and found a vacuum cleaner for $10. It’s the largest physical item we’ve bought since the Squid Wagon.

I’ve come to terms with the fact that owning possessions is cyclical. I came to the world with nothing, and I’ll take nothing with me. In between, I get stuff, get rid of it, get different stuff. Keeping the cycle in mind, I don’t get attached. When I acquire something, I think, “How would I get rid of this?” When I sell or discard something, I think, “How would I replace this?”

I won’t need the vacuum cleaner for long. In a couple of months, it will find a new home, and I’ll soon forget we ever had it. I am not owned by my vacuum cleaner.