Month: January 2021

Sunset

Sunset Over Superior By David Jacobi

Your eroticism is expressed

In a heavy agitated style

Demanded by previous generations

With resolve and determination

As I read the lengthy records

Of your spiritual experiences

Like a ship on the sea in full sail

How beautiful they might have been

I gave expression to my appreciation

If only aware of starving dogs

Give nature time and make lewd jokes

And when you go down make a good sunset

Like snakes of rain coiling on a windshield

Slicing the throat of the bully of mediocrity

You might get by in that bracket

Or become part of the ghostly hunt

During the celebration of contemporary decadence

I envision a nostalgic cult of lost innocence

Overwhelmed by an annihilating boredom

Cultivating a vigorous inability to feel

Life proceeds in particles

2011 By David Jacobi

2020 Reading

I love reading year end and new year lists. For the first time I kept track of all the books I read during a year. I read both fiction and nonfiction, and the subject matter was all over the place, which I expect to happen again this year as I continue to downsize my library.

Contemporary American Novelists 1900-1920 By Carl Van Doren

In The Wake Of The Plague By Norman F. Canter

Thurber Country By James Thurber

The Apostle, A Life Of Paul By John Pollock

American Heritage, June 1966

Great Events of the 20th Century By the Editors of TIME

The Troll Garden By Willa Cather

What A Way To Go By Adele Q. Brown

The Medieval Establishment By Geoffrey Hindley

A Journal of the Plague Year By Daniel Defoe

A Lady’s Life In The Rocky Mountains By Isabella L. Bird

Five Chimneys By Olga Lengyel

Sweet Thursday By John Steinbeck

Profiles Of Modern American Authors By Bernard Dekle

In Dubious Battle By John Steinbeck

Trout Fishing In America By Richard Brautigan

Bend Sinister By Vladimir Nabokov

The Metamorphosis, In The Penal Colony And Other Stories By Franz Kafka

Laughing Space Edited By Isaac Asimov and J.O. Jepson

Smiling Through the Apocalypse Edited by Harold Hayes

The Great Gatsby By F. Scott Fitzgerald

Earth, My Friend By Peter Townsend

The Steamboat Bertrand By Jerome E. Petsche

Making and Using Dried Foods By Phyllis Hobson

A Pictorial History Of Westerns By Michael Parkinson and Clyde Jeavons

Black Elk Speaks By John G. Neihardt

Founding Brothers By Joseph J. Ellis

How To Live On Almost Nothing And Have Plenty By Janet Chadwick

The Indian Frontier of the American West 1846-1890 By Robert M. Utley

Listening Point By Sigurd Olson

Winesburg, Ohio By Sherwood Anderson

Death’s Acre By Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson

Never Have Your Dog Stuffed By Alan Alda

Oh What A Paradise It Seems By John Cheever

Unsolved By Kirk Wilson

Yankee Weather Proverbs By Peter Miller

Oroville California By James Lenhoff

Undaunted Courage By Stephen E. Ambrose

There’s A Man In The House By Harlan Miller

Winter Creeps Along

Ice Pine By David Jacobi

I read a few articles recently about an increase of interest by people wanting to move from cities to small towns and rural properties. In many areas rural prices have been rising in response to the desired exodus. Since we bought our place out here in 2018 I have not seen a single for sale sign on our road or anywhere around us. The neighbors we have met have lived here for a long time. It seems that when one lives in the country something keeps you there. A blizzard blew threw recently, dropping several inches of snow and leaving the usual high drifts resulting from 36 to 48 mph wind gusts. Our two dogs, Marley and Steve, love to lay down and crawl along the big drifts and then roll on them. They stand up caked with snow then shake it off. I don’t know how many rabbits are living out here now but it seems every other time I enter the machine shed I scare one up, and there are tracks in the snow all over the acreage. We have two squirrels around the place but no songbirds are to be seen or heard. After the last blizzard I filled two of the bird feeders but so far nothing. Last time I was in town I noticed the river was almost completely frozen over, which usually brings the eagles out of the river valley over the plains looking for food. Sure enough a few days later I was driving along our road and saw one fly up and land in a barren, empty field. I came to a stop parallel to it and we looked at each other for a few moments. It flew off and I watched it go until I could see it no more. Winter creeps along.

Obscure America: Clubs

A vacuum cleaner collection

Here are five obscure clubs.

Concrete Canoe Club – Civil engineering students build and race concrete canoes.

Giga Society – Membership of the Giga Society is ideally open to anyone outscoring .999999999 of the adult population on at least one of the accepted tests. This means that in theory one in a billion individuals can qualify.

Ejection Tie Club – Life membership of the Ejection Tie Club is confined solely to those who have emergency ejected from an aircraft using a Martin-Baker ejection seat. The club has over 6,000 members.

Obscure Song Club – Their goal is to increase members’ and non-members’ knowledge of, and performance of, songs, particularly obscure ones.

Vacuumland – For vacuum cleaner collectors and fans.

Beef Stroganoff

Ground Beef Stroganoff

This is a very quick and frugal meal that our family has enjoyed for years.

Ingredients:

One pound ground beef

One small onion, diced

One clove garlic, minced

½ tsp paprika

One can cream of mushroom soup

One can sliced mushrooms, drained

½ cup sour cream

1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce

1/3 cup milk

Brown ground beef with onion, Worcestershire sauce and garlic. Fold in all remaining ingredients and heat through. Serve over corn chips or cooked noodles.