Memorial Day Musette
Memorial Day
To all who have to work on a holiday – as I do – a salute! Granted, my job has little to do with a relaxed holiday afternoon at the beach or a park, but there are plenty of other folks who serve meals, pump gas, and tend the myriad businesses that make holidays possible for the rest of us.
But this particular holiday is unlike any other. Maybe ‘fun’ isn’t the best choice of a descriptive word since Memorial Day is hardly a concept filled with merriment. I think about my father’s generation, those men who fought WW2, now dying at a rate of 1100 per day. They’ve been described as the Greatest Generation, though to be fair, I think this quotation may be more exact:
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet……Admiral William F. Halsey.
On this Memorial Day, think about those who’ve gone before us, giving their lives for our freedoms. Think about those who serve today on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. Step aside from the politics of the moment, and pray that those soldier, sailors, and airmen come home safely and soon.
Bike To Work
One pleasing aspect of working on a holiday is that the traffic is almost non-existent in the morning. I rode to work at 7AM and probably saw no more than a dozen cars in seven miles. It was eerily quiet. A raccoon stood in a small pond watching as I rode by, and a hawk burst out of a tree in the pecan grove. I have to find my bird book because I’ve never seen one like it. The hawk was almost all gray except for a lighter gray head. I saw some bluebirds, too. They may have been the bluebirds of happiness, but they flew off making rude noises.
Tour de Owasso
On Saturday, I rode around town doing some errands. There were books to return to the library, and I poked through the used books at the Goodwill store, looking for gems. I stopped at a couple of yard sales too, but ended up coming home empty handed. No goodies were found.
It’s fun to wander through the neighborhoods early in the morning. It’s still cool, for one thing, and the traffic is light. Sometimes when I do the ‘tour’ I stop for coffee in one of the shops. It’s very relaxing.
My kids are both teenagers. Their idea of an early start is the crack of noon. Mary’s a night owl too. She and Lyndsay stay up very late watching old movies and having girl-talk. So Saturday mornings are mine – all mine! I can do whatever I want!
Usually that means I drink too much coffee and overdose on caffeine and sugar. I’m SUCH a wild man!
Bread
I made bread in the machine yesterday afternoon. It’s turning into a regular Sunday ritual. And I’ve started tinkering with the recipe, this time by adding some honey to the mix. That made the dough a little more active than usual. Actually, it flew past active and went directly to feisty! The dough climbed out of the bread maker, and zipped out the patio door. It ate the neighbor’s cat, and then went to the grocery store where it consumed every bit of flour they had. When last I saw it, the doughball was about 50 feet across and growing. In the last hour, it climbed the Williams Center in downtown Tulsa, where it’s now fending off attacks by WW1 fighter planes.
Maybe something’s wrong with that yeast.
Don’t expect to read about this in the newspapers or see it on television. It’s the liberal media, you know.
To all who have to work on a holiday – as I do – a salute! Granted, my job has little to do with a relaxed holiday afternoon at the beach or a park, but there are plenty of other folks who serve meals, pump gas, and tend the myriad businesses that make holidays possible for the rest of us.
But this particular holiday is unlike any other. Maybe ‘fun’ isn’t the best choice of a descriptive word since Memorial Day is hardly a concept filled with merriment. I think about my father’s generation, those men who fought WW2, now dying at a rate of 1100 per day. They’ve been described as the Greatest Generation, though to be fair, I think this quotation may be more exact:
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet……Admiral William F. Halsey.
On this Memorial Day, think about those who’ve gone before us, giving their lives for our freedoms. Think about those who serve today on battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan. Step aside from the politics of the moment, and pray that those soldier, sailors, and airmen come home safely and soon.
Bike To Work
One pleasing aspect of working on a holiday is that the traffic is almost non-existent in the morning. I rode to work at 7AM and probably saw no more than a dozen cars in seven miles. It was eerily quiet. A raccoon stood in a small pond watching as I rode by, and a hawk burst out of a tree in the pecan grove. I have to find my bird book because I’ve never seen one like it. The hawk was almost all gray except for a lighter gray head. I saw some bluebirds, too. They may have been the bluebirds of happiness, but they flew off making rude noises.
Tour de Owasso
On Saturday, I rode around town doing some errands. There were books to return to the library, and I poked through the used books at the Goodwill store, looking for gems. I stopped at a couple of yard sales too, but ended up coming home empty handed. No goodies were found.
It’s fun to wander through the neighborhoods early in the morning. It’s still cool, for one thing, and the traffic is light. Sometimes when I do the ‘tour’ I stop for coffee in one of the shops. It’s very relaxing.
My kids are both teenagers. Their idea of an early start is the crack of noon. Mary’s a night owl too. She and Lyndsay stay up very late watching old movies and having girl-talk. So Saturday mornings are mine – all mine! I can do whatever I want!
Usually that means I drink too much coffee and overdose on caffeine and sugar. I’m SUCH a wild man!
Bread
I made bread in the machine yesterday afternoon. It’s turning into a regular Sunday ritual. And I’ve started tinkering with the recipe, this time by adding some honey to the mix. That made the dough a little more active than usual. Actually, it flew past active and went directly to feisty! The dough climbed out of the bread maker, and zipped out the patio door. It ate the neighbor’s cat, and then went to the grocery store where it consumed every bit of flour they had. When last I saw it, the doughball was about 50 feet across and growing. In the last hour, it climbed the Williams Center in downtown Tulsa, where it’s now fending off attacks by WW1 fighter planes.
Maybe something’s wrong with that yeast.
Don’t expect to read about this in the newspapers or see it on television. It’s the liberal media, you know.
posted by Ed W at 6:28 PM
2 Comments:
I was thinking about panniers a few weeks ago. I'm kind of a word nut and noticed the connection between the Latin panis which means "bread." I thought that pannier must be a French word for something like "bread box." On subsequent investigation I was surpised to learn the word "pannier" has been in the English language for something like 600 years and it indeed comes directly from the Latin word for "bread basket."
That's as far as I can get on ruminating about pannier and bread, though I know there's a connection in there beyond that between cycling and bread. Oh, and to "ruminate" means to chew or eat as well as to cogitate or think. So weird cyclists like me who like bread ruminate bread while ruminating on panniers and life and cycling. Perhaps you can run with this theme some more - you're way more clever than I.
Try cutting your yeast back by about 25% when you use honey.
The sugar in the honey loves all that yeast and they kinda have a party:-)
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