At the Football Game with Pat, Brad and Peter: We Love Our Redwoods (Who Should Really Be Named the Mute Inglorious Miltons)

which is a reference to Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard for those of you playing at home

Pat's Rose is Old. We Fortify Ourselves in Art. Works for Cats, Too, Likely for Guinea Pigs and Parrots. For the Rest, Applications Being Accepted.

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Brother Peter Moore unearthed this.

The House Dog's Grave

by Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)

I've changed my ways a little; I cannot now

Run with you in the evenings along the shore,

Except in a kind of dream; and you,

If you dream a moment,

You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door

Where I used to scratch to go out or in,

And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor

The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do

On the warm stone,

Nor at the foot of your bed; no,

All the nights through I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet

Outside your window where firelight so often plays,

And where you sit to read‚

And I fear often grieving for me‚

Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard

To think of you ever dying.

A little dog would get tired, living so long.

I hope that when you are lying

Under the ground like me your lives will appear

As good and joyful as mine.

No, dears, that's too much hope:

You are not so well cared for as I have been.

And never have known the passionate undivided

Fidelities that I knew.

Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided...

But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.

I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures

To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,

I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

The Fantasy Draft is Over.

Brigid of Kildare, the Patron Abbess of Irish Whiskey/Image via Wikipedia

Started at 10am and went to about 5pm, with a short break for lunch.

I had a little Irish in a flask to spark my morning coffee. Then Tola dragged out the bottle of tequila -- very good; sipping quality.

(Over there on the right: Brigid of Kildare, Patron Abbess of Irish Whiskey.)

Then at some point Peter, who works for Kermit Lynch, started opening red.

Like the baritone bee, I was flying most of the day with a low buzz.

I won't bore you with my drafting strategy, since the only people who care about my drafting strategy were at the table and know its knots and wrinkles first hand. Suffice it to say, I followed it, buzz or no, so any failure will come from preparation, not execution.

This is the league's 26th year. Of its founders, only I am left alive -- in the sense of having been in the league every year since its founding.

I can see me at the Pearly Gates explaining to St. Peter why I should slip inside, mentioning my loyalty to the league.

"Back in 2009, you should have paid the extra quarter and drafted Jermaine Dye," Pete will say, letting the line back up. "But getting Orlando Cabrera for a buck -- that was nice. Those relievers look a little shaky, though. Let's just say you've passed Go and here's 200 bucks. I'm sending you back to try it all over again. Only this time: more kindness to strangers, more speaking truth to power and *definitely* more steals -- ten here, ten there; they add up. Capisce?"

Feasting with Panthers

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Just home from the fantasy baseball banquet. Were I a trendy type of bloke, I would twitter the result. But "trendy bloke" is not a category I occupy. Let me just say this. When the delicious dessert came out -- thank you, Brad -- I keep shouting,"Liqueur! Liqueur!" at which point host Peter Moore brought out some St. Georges absinthe.

I had ... a taste. It's not the way one is supposed to drink absinthe, since I believe there is a rather elaborate ritual, involving filtering into water and sugar cubes. But there's something to be said for sampling the raw material, which really is a liquid licorice stick. Yet it was all elegant and de riguer, if I'm not abusing my French idioms.

Pretty damn interesting to have someone roll out a bottle of absinthe, some good stuff made on Alameda Island, which is of interest only to locals.

The lady E. was talking recently about some personality index that asked you if you would prefer loyal friends or interesting friends. I said, of course, loyal, but E. didn't think so. She said that you really can't count on loyalty, as friendship decays. But, she said, "interesting" is something else. "Interesting" endures in a way loyalty cannot. I conceded her the point. That's why I love my baseball league. I've lived my whole life yearning to be next to people worth writing about even if I lack the talent to do them justice.

Oh you wonderful eccentrics, you mute inglorious Miltons,
Walt Whitman would have enjoyed you, and I mean that in the nicest way possible,

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)


Postscript: Peter posts the menu.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Saturday February 28, 2009

Leftover Chicken Sandwiches

League Banquet
BCL, Mike, Russ, Kevin, Paul, Brad, Matt, Bob
Redwood Hills Farm Goat Cheese in many forms also stuffed in Peppadew Peppers and in Medjool Dates w/ Kumquat Zest
Short Ribs
Pappardelle w/ Parsley & Olive Oil
Asparagus
Brad's Pistachio Cake

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Bob Wieder: Still Funny After All These Years

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Tonight is the glorious annual banquet in celebration of yet another year of existence for the Patrick Finley Memorial Fantasy Baseball League, which I once stood astride like a living god but around whose higher echelons I now skulk like a beaten dog.

At last when I say that I am a modest man, I can also add that I have much to be modest about. (Thank you, Samuel Johnson.)

It's a wonderful time. It's quite a feast because we have it at the home of Peter Moore, Cook of Cooks, who lays out as good as grub as you are gonna git, my deft alliteration limning the seamless excellence of the food experience first to last. Also, Peter works for a wine importer, so the stuff he brings out of his cellar -- which, to be honest, is actually at knee level -- is ummmm-ummmm good, as an oenophile might say.

League members are exchanging emails about who might bring what, though mostly no one brings nothing because what Peter already has is so good. A good guest might bring a bottle of wine -- and now we round the last turn into this post's straightaway -- but as I wrote to Peter and the league I would never dare do that because:

The best bottle of wine in our house, except for the bottles that Peter himself has brought into our house, Peter wouldn't use to give his dog an enema.

To which Bob replied:

Damn. And I just laid out $6.99 for a 2006 bottle of Pupflush chenin blanc.

Well no joke. The 2006's are particularly fine.

Friendship is Weird. Sometimes It's Also Delicious.

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Celebrated P.'s 57th tonight at his place at his table.

You could celebrate your birthday by pressuring folk to take you out to a fine restaurant and pressuring them into paying for you meal. But P. invites folk to his house and cooks a divine meal for them. There was a salad that was like a platoon in a WW2 movie, filled with many ingredients that in combination spell victory.

Except the ingredient from Brooklyn doesn't die.

And there was spinach wrestled to the stove and made delicious. And chicken from some special chicken farm where the chickens not only range free, they have tap classes.

A., the beloved wife, of whom it is said she can't boil liquid nitrogen -- I mean, try to *stop* it from boiling --made a lovely cake. I think it was a sponge cake. It's name was Bob. (This may be a joke. I'll look in my textbooks on the nature of humor and get back to you.)

Thus, my recommendation: A woman might not cook but you love her still. A friend? Check his spice rack.

As I Said to Peter: The Menu Was More Memorable Than the Game. And It Was a Good Game.

From The Secret Restaurant (with bonus dog butt)

Sunday February 1, 2009

@ Sweet Adeline

Super Bowl @ home w/ Michael & Pat
Soul Food Farm Deviled Eggs w/ Fresh Wasabi, Mayo, Salt, Wasabi Tokiko
Buffalo Turkey Wings w/ Butter, Hot Sauce Garlic Marinade & Teriyaki Bourbon Pineau De Chartres Marinade
Point Reyes Blue Cheese & Ranch Sauce
Arezmendi Pizza
Edith's Kale w/ Currants
Sweet Adeline Corn Bread

Sasha checks under the tub to make sure Kitty isn't there. (Kitty has been in my room the entire time Sasha has been here)

Posted by Peter Moore at 8:50 PM 1 comments

What I Ate Yesterday

From Peter Moore's Secret Restaurant

Thursday December 25, 2008

Joe, Garrett, Madelyn, Michael, Mer, Dan, Trish, Annette, Suzy, Renée, Marie, Roger, Gail, Robert, Sura, Mimi

Fois Gras on Brioche Toasts w/ Yuzu Juice
Dates wrapped w/ Coppa & Lonza stuffed w/ Goat Cheese & Satsuma Mandarin Orange Slices
Padron Chilis
Bollito Misto w/ Macgruder Ranch Tongue, Brisket, Chicken, Fatted Calf Cottechino, Carrots, Onions, Garlic, Bay, Chicken Stock, Gattonetti Tomato Juice, Salt, Black Pepper, Celery
Mustardo
Salsa Verde w/ Stiinging Nettles, Anchovies, Garlic, Mint, Sherry Wine, Salt
Grated Carrots w/ Saffron, Cardomom, Butter & Milk
Roasted Red, Yellow, & Chiogga Beets pickeled in Balsmic, Rice Wine, & Cider Vinegars (respectively)
Cheese from Farmstead

Roger's Root Vegetable Gratin
Tricia's Green Beans
Renée's Foccaicia and Tiramisu
Spanikopita
Robert's Pork & Beans
Gail's Bouche de Noel
Madelyn's Cookies,
Garrett's Marshmallows

Posted by Peter Moore at 1:45 PM 1 comments

I brought ice cream! (But it didn't make the cut. Which is understandable.)

My Worst Christmas Ever

Which this is. But that's not really a complaint because it shows how high the bar is set. It's the worst ever because it's the first time in 43 years E. and I have not been together on Christmas. It's also the first time in either 41 or 42 years that we have not had a cat in the house.

These two facts intersect in a most unpleasant way. If little Oliver had not been so ill or would have already died, would I have gone with E. to her mum's in Florida? I don't know. Staying with Oliver was reason enough. I did not catalog other reasons.

After kitty died and I got him buried, I could have jumped on a plane, but by that time the stories of thousands stuck in the nation's airports were breaking, and pain and loss are one thing and masochism is another. But now I wonder if I should have bought a last-minute ticket even if I had to spend Xmas day en route, trying to work my way back to you, babe.

All that said and as I said, this being the worst Xmas doesn't mean it will be miserable. I'm off in a minute to walk around Lake Merritt. Brother Peter Moore, responding to only the bare minimum of hint dropping and poignant silence, has invited me to his place. I will be the 19th guest, I am given to understand, so I won't be that intrusive. I anticipate a refugee camp vibe, the more the merrier or perhaps the more the less miserable.

So I can be manic or morose, but I need not be center stage. I suddenly think of J. Alfred Prufrock!

No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,	115
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at times, the Fool.

Oh Google, you bitch. The quote is a bit harsher than I recall. But it came to mind, so I must accept it as found. That's the iron law of blogging. Play it as it lays. Revision and concision are luxury items.

But the point remains. Today will be a good Christmas, merely the worst I've ever had.

The best was in Atlanta in 1975. After finishing my degree at Duke in 1972, I got a three-year term appointment at NC State, where I had been teaching year to year while finishing grad school. Pretty quickly I was told that it was a terminal appointment, and I needed to look elsewhere.

I looked elsewhere. I looked and I did not find, partly because I had this weird inexplicable pride that *some jobs were beneath me.* Then, E. was accepted to architecture school at Georgia Tech, and I said this time I would follow her.

We arrive in Atlanta the summer of '75. Unemployment is 10 percent nationally. I job search. I fail in that search, as the months pass. We are supposed to spend the Christmas with my parents. I cancel. I am too depressed.

I am *very* depressed, actually, because we are running out of money, and E. is paying out-of-state tuition. I have been looking for work as an advertising copywriter for no particular reason other than it is yet one more of those jobs that sound cool, though given my blue-collar background I have no clear idea about the nature of the work, the preparation for the work, the necessary connections for getting the work.

A day or two before Christmas something snaps, and I try to snap back. I knock together a very clever job package -- very desperate sounding and very amateurish, I now realize -- get it photocopied and on Christmas Eve E. and I put the packages together and mail them to every ad agency in the Greater Atlanta Yellow Pages.

I feel better. We have done nothing to decorate our home other drape the tinsel of my despair on "the black dog." Sometime after sunset we go in search of a tree. We find a Christmas tree lot, but it has closed, and a few bedraggled trees have been thrown to the side. We liberate one, give it a home as one might a stray animal. We decorate it with the pine cones sprayed with gold paint that we collected during grad school.

We go into the kitchen -- it was in its way a wonderful kitchen, about the size of a packing crate and quite cozy -- and bake cookies while we watch "Holiday Inn" on our five-inch black-and-white tv stuck amid the mixing bowls on the counter. It is long after midnight. It is Christmas Day.

I forgot something important. Though I had prepared my job package several days before, I had spent all my hope and energy in its preparation. My claims were thin. My boasts were foolish. To hope was to deceive myself. But E., seeing me in my misery, announced that we would finish the job, stuff the envelopes, and we would send them. She did not ask me to alter how I felt, only to act in spite of how I felt.

We are going to do this, she said. She got up. And I got up. And we did what needed to be done.

I have almost never been at the brink in my long life. I do not wrestle with my demons. I have them in for tea and civilized conversation for they are my demons, after all, and not inclined to make much trouble. But that day of that year I was as close to the brink as I have ever been, and my wife ... did what she did, what she does, what she has always done.

Out of that mailing came a single offer of a part-time job as a advertising copywriter. Out of the circumstances of that job -- which I reserve for later but don't you worry; when you have a blog, everything gets said sooner or later -- came my first job in journalism.

And here I am, thinking of my best Christmas ever, counting the hours -- 500, give or take -- till my wife comes home. It is not such a bad Christmas.