Fleur-de-HayBale

There is a certain danger in having a laptop when negotiating mid-life divorce insomnia.

The other night I woke abruptly with a solution—hay bale garden. I’m still not sure where it came from but it melded a series of unrelated items on my to-do list into one project.

1.    Need to get rid of the stack of two-year-old dusty hay bales taking up room in my mother’s barn.

2.    Decide what to do about two grassy patches inside my newly fenced-in vegetable garden. The grass would be a hassle to mow and could have been turned into garden space had I the foresight to smother the grass with cardboard last fall, readying it for spring tilling.

3.    Figure out what to write on my next blog.

If I were still relying on my old clunky computer, I would have gotten out of bed, put on thick socks and a robe, and headed down to the basement to the dank depths of the “office”.  Instead, I switched on the light, reached for my laptop, propped up my pillows, fluffed up the comforter, and Googled “hay bale garden”.

I clicked and tapped through a bunch of straw bale gardens then I hit pay dirt, so to speak. There was a video of Suzy Bartels speaking on Hay Bale Gardening to a group at the Plumsteadville (PA) Grange. And that’s where this story started taking twists and turns.

Future Fingerling Potato Patch

Bale gardening is an elevated form of raised-bed gardening. (A brief pause for an agricultural teachable moment. Straw is dry stalks of wheat or oats, often yellow in color, has no nutritional value. and is used for bedding; hay is dry grasses or legumes, such as alfalfa or clover, with a greenish color, nutritional value, and therefore used for feed.)  

With bale gardening, there is no weeding, no tilling, and not a whole lot of bending. If your soil is poor or poorly drained, bale gardening solves those problems too. For me, lining my two grassy areas with bales (on their sides, bristle-side up, so the twine is not touching the ground) and then filling the interior with loose hay would help smother the grass while providing planting room this season. And, it cleared a space in my mother’s barn.

Nonna: "What's she doing now?"

With my trusty wheelbarrow and 15 trips from the barn to the garden, I created two pocket gardens between my dad’s original raised-beds with 30 bales of hay. In the larger garden, about 12’x14’, I’ll plant pumpkins, squash, and cucumbers to tumble down into the inner hay-covered courtyard. In the second narrower bed, 6’x14’, I’ll plant peppers and eggplant up above in the hay bales and in the lower section, I’ll line the bottom with soil and plant my fingerling potatoes, covering them with more soil, and adding soil as they grow.

With May Day approaching, you too can design a bale garden and plant by Memorial Day. After arranging your bales, you soak them daily with water for two weeks. The third week you apply a cup of high nitrogen fertilizer on each bale to get composing action going, repeat two days later, and two days after that. Each time, you water the fertilizer in, but you don’t water it through.  By the end of the third week, if you put your finger in the bale, it should feel hot, which means it is composting. On the fourth week, keep bales moist and let them cool. By then, your bales are prepped and ready for planting. Use your hands to make two holes in each bale and fill with a little compost or soil, and insert your seedling. Water in.

If we don’t get enough help with rain from Mother Nature, you will have to water plants occasionally, as you would for any garden plant, but hay helps retain moisture better than straw does.

That’s it for today’s simple bale garden lesson. Tomorrow’s blog, the twists and turns of frank farming. Laurie Lynch

May Day Special: Robyn Jasko, Kuztown resident and co-founder (with husband Paul David) of websites Dine Indie and Grow Indie, has written Homesweet Homegrown: How to Grow, Make and Store Food, No Matter Where You Live. The book is available at bookstores and on Amazon.com May 1 for $9.95.

An Apology: Yesterday I attended another writing conference and learned that as a blogger I'm supposed to respond to all blog comments. I promise to do so in the future.

Fleur-de-TaitTaters

The class, Preserving the Herb Garden with Cindy Tait Law, was a homecoming of sorts.

From 1969 until the mid-1990s my mother was the proprietor of The Country Sampler in Boalsburg, PA, the quaint “birthplace of Memorial Day” on the outskirts of State College. She and two friends opened the shop in a former Clover Farm Store because they were avid cooks and entertainers—and there wasn’t a shop around that sold wooden stirring spoons or any of the kitchen gadgets they yearned for.  In no time, “The Sampler” was the place to find Romertopf clay pot cookers, Sabatier knives, Bodum coffee presses, and Cuisinart food processors.

In the rear of the store they installed a mini-kitchen island where my mother or a guest chef would present cooking classes in the evening to spark culinary adventures for Centre Countians.

While I was finishing up high school and then enrolled at Penn State, I spent term breaks and holidays helping out at The Country Sampler. And that is where I met Cindy Tait. She was a little bit older than I and much wiser. We spent countless hours solving the world’s problems while trying to stay warm in the shop where cold air seemed to gush through the worn floorboards. We greeted customers offering steaming mugs of Russian Tea (an instant tea-Tang concoction spiced up with cinnamon, allspice and cloves) on cold December nights before the holidays. I remember Cindy’s specialty was dusting merchandise on the display shelves and mine was wrapping gifts in the even-colder storage room. But, oh, we loved it when there was a cooking class. Imagine getting paid to be entertained with a class and then to sample the goodies!

Cindy has come a long way from those early Sampler days, and she is now in charge of product development at Tait Farm Foods, creating chutneys and sauces and preserves and vinaigrettes at Tait Farm just outside of Boalsburg.

My mother and I went to Cindy’s class and learned about rolling basil “cigars” and freezing them in snack baggies, steeping Thai basil in white wine vinegar, and freezing pesto in quart-size baggies, pressed flat and thin, so it’s easy, fast, and safe to thaw in the refrigerator before adding it to pasta. She tempted our food imaginations with herbal salts and herbal honeys and herbal butters.

But my personal favorite was what she calls Sage-Roasted Potatoes. After making them for a pre-Easter dinner, and again later for a photo shoot, I’m inclined to call them Stained-Glass Potatoes. They are delicious hot out of the oven, warmed up for leftovers, and, truth be told, even cold as a midnight snack. The stained-glass part of the title flashed in my mind because they are miniature works of art, herbs pressed in an arrangement and roasted until golden.

Stained-Glass Potatoes

Russet baking potatoes

Olive oil

Kosher salt

Fresh sage leaves and/or rosemary sprigs

Preheat oven to 350°. Brush a film of olive oil on baking sheet. Sprinkle the sheen of oil with coarse salt. Arrange sage leaves in an attractive pattern on top of oil, making sure the “right” side is down.

Cut potatoes in half lengthwise. Place potato halves on top of sage leaf patterns, keeping each “arrangement” contained under each potato half.

Place baking sheet in oven and roast for an hour. When the timer goes off, you can lift one potato half up and take a peek…the sage should be stuck to the potato, and the potato should be a crusty, golden brown. If it isn’t, return potatoes to oven until they turn golden.

This is such a simple and delicious variation on ordinary baked potatoes that I’m sure you will want to give it a try. Or, as they say at Tait Farm, “Bon AppeTait!” Laurie Lynch

Another Tait Farm Story: Late last fall I visited Tait Farm to send a few Central PA gift boxes to Marina’s adopted Belgian families, my adopted Aunt France, and yes, I treated myself to an old favorite, Harrison’s Fig and Olive Relish (that I eat with a “relish” on sandwiches, cream cheese and crackers, even stirred into my homemade yogurt), and a new favorite, Lavender Scone Mix.

In late January or February I got a call from Aunt France. She finally tasted the strawberry-rhubarb conserve I mailed to her. “I’ve been salivating for this since Christmas,” she told me. I asked why she waited so long. “Well Laurie, that’s a long story.”

It turns out that France couldn’t open the jar. She twisted and strained and twisted some more, but the lid wouldn’t budge. Weeks went by and the jar just sat there, staring at her. Then it was time to take her strawberry-red vintage Mustang convertible to the service station. France put the jar of conserve on the bucket seat next to her. When she dropped off the car, she told the woman at the desk her plight. The woman disappeared with the jar, and came back minutes later. The mechanic had loosened the lid. “He told me he washed his hands and used a clean towel and everything,” France recalled. Then she went home and had toast topped with Tait Farm Strawberry-Rhubarb Conserve.

Check It Out: www.taitfarmfoods.com

Written On Slate: “Talk of joy: there may be things better than beef stew and baked potatoes and home-made bread—there may be.”—David Grayson

The Last Word: “Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism are all very good words for the lips.” –Charles Dickens

Fleur-de-Words

My favorite morning greeting comes when I walk through the sheet metal shop on my way to the lunchroom refrigerator where I store my 1 p.m. meal.

Kutzown Ken greets me in Pennsylvania twang: “Morning Laurie” but what my garden-starved ears hear is “Mornin’ Glory”. And don’t we all wish our mornings were filled with morning glories—Grandpa Ott’s on the kitchen garden arbor and Heavenly Blue on the chicken fence.

Mystery Plant

Running through my brain are Paul Simon’s words:  “All lies and jests, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest.” That sums up my workday.

Spring fever came early, and there are moments when I’m not sure I can make this adjustment to an office environment. Sure, it was ok in November, December, and January—but heavens, it’s spring! And I’m in a cave.

Sharon the receptionist not only faces the front glass door and a wall of windows, she has a skylight overhead. Not so in my portion of the building. When the sun breaks through the Central Pennsylvania clouds, the only way I know is when she sends me an email. Sharon also keeps watch on a computerized weather monitor and alerts the roofers to rainstorms or nasty winds heading toward their job sites. She’s a regular Mother Nature sitting up there with a big welcoming smile. Who? Me? Jealous?

My workplace buddy John, who has a windowless office near my windowless cave, teases me about my office light dimmer. There is a light switch near my computer that I flip on in the morning and off when I leave in the afternoon. But it took me several weeks to realize that there is also a little tab that can brighten or dim the light—well, actually, John told me about it when I was sitting in the semi-dark with the light switch on. So, when he found out about the sunshine emails from Sharon, he decided that was my cue to play Mother Nature. When Sharon emails a sun alert, I turn the dimmer switch up to full brightness; if I get notice that a thunderstorm is approaching, down goes the dimmer.

John is also my roofing terminology translator. It started when I heard him discussing crickets with one of the crews. 

“I know you’re not talking about Jiminy Cricket,” I said one morning, “but what’s a roof cricket? Certainly crickets can’t hop up on roofs.”

Close-Up

He patiently described a roof cricket (and there are actually “chimney crickets”—did Disney know that?), and how it is used to divert water. A few days later, the lesson was on “scuppers”. Scuppers are small openings in a roof railing that prevent water from pooling on the roof, channeling the rainwater through the railing and off the roof. Scupper. Don’t you just love the way the word tickles the roof of your mouth when you say it? I’d like to name a dog Scupper.

My farming ears really perked up one day when I heard the guys talking about a cow tongue drain. I had to see one of these. Well, a cow tongue drain outlet looks like a cow yawning after a big sip of water, big fleshy tongue hanging off its lower lip.

That’s not all. My Fleur-de-Lys French-ness got all excited when one of the estimators was writing a proposal for a “porte-cochere”—a carriage entrance leading through a building or wall to an inner courtyard.  Or, in this case, a drive-through entrance at a hotel.

But the perfect irony of workplace words hit me in a fit of scanning boredom.  In the quiet moments between my more arduous tasks of typing invoices or scribbling work orders for roof leaks, I scan the contents of the job folders for 2010 and 2011. If you’ve ever tried to slide staple-pried and dog-eared papers into a scanner that feeds the text, photos, and drawings magically into the computer, you know these are temperamental creatures. I sit there, sometimes hours on end, shoving documents into the feeder tray, anticipating the inevitable “Paper Jam” alert. Irritating at best…until I realized I used to spend my afternoons making strawberry preserves or elderblossom cordial. Now, I’ve graduated to paper jam. Yummy! Words do put a smile on my face. Laurie Lynch

A Little Help, Please: As I work in my Dad’s old gardens, I’m discovering brickwork I forgot about and an occasional plant I am not familiar with. Such is the case with the bold beauty pictured above. Can anyone help me out with an identification? It’s a daisy-like flower, blooming as I type, and 2.5- to 3-feet tall. Leaves are soft and fuzzy, and kind of arrow shaped.

Written on Slate: The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and lightning bug.”  --Mark Twain

Fleur-de-Vintage

I love vintage clothes, vintage fabrics, vintage toys, and even vintage vintages. I once used the description “vintage vegetables” (as an alliterative substitute for heirloom vegetables) in a piece I wrote and a PASA fellow complimented me on my unusual word choice.  But when the computer geek at the Apple store said I had a “vintage iMac”, I knew this was not a good thing.

Yes, there are expiration dates on jars of mayo, peanut butter, and olives, and sadly most marriages don’t last a lifetime, but when a computer is going on its sixth birthday, is it time to call it quits?

In my case, it was. My iMac was stuck in perpetual sleep mode and resuscitation was doubtful.

Fritillaria imperialis (Crown Imperial)

I wasn’t ready for one of those flip-floppy tablet things, but I did want to go semi-mobile so I chose a laptop. The iTechies insisted they could transfer everything from my old computer onto the new, which they did. But, when I got home, I couldn’t open any documents. Long story short, after many sleepless nights, fruitless searching of boxes, and finally a software purchase, I now can get back to writing my 500 words a day—even if I have to bump everything up to 14-point just to read it on the screen. I didn’t anticipate that my fingertips would overhang the tiny keys, nor did I know how to massage the touchpad. Not expecting miracles from dear old Mom, my son Richard saved my mouse from its previous life and showed me that I can still use it when my laptop is sitting on a desktop, thus easing the transition.

Enough of all that. It’s time for catching up. Laurie Lynch

In Bloom: This handsome gent is a native of Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, and produces a musky odor that repels mice, moles, and squirrels. As an extra bonus, even deer don't like to nibble on Fritillaria imperialis.

YoYo Yogurt: I got several emails and links about yogurt making and it looks as though there are probably a dozen different techniques and many of you are much more skilled at it than I. I’m going to stick with my heating pad method because it works for me. There’s a good solution out there for you.

One reader mentioned the book Wild Fermentation, which says to use no more than one tablespoon of starter per quart of milk. This keeps the yogurt culture from being crowded. I’m embarrassed to say that I own that book—and didn’t even think to use it as a guide—because a certain son of mine is interested in other fermentation processes and had hijacked the book to his dorm room!  Wild Fermentation also suggests making yogurt in an insulated cooler and references The Joy of Cooking.

Karen makes her yogurt directly in the crockpot, so my too-hot hypothesis was not cool at all. She sent along two links with methods she has tried and found successful:

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2008/10/you-can-make-yogurt-in-your-crockpot.html

http://girlsguidetobutter.com/2010/02/crock-pot-yogurt/

HARING HEART:  I got another email from Al Haring about his son Keith’s heart art on the cover of Architectural Digest; “We had not been aware of the heart that Brooke (Shields) has hanging above the mantle (nor the wrapping paper) and were surprised to see it.”

He sent along the following link that has a slide show listing all of the places in New York where Keith Harings can be found, for all of us armchair art gallery goers!

galleristny.com/2012/03/haring…

Beds just waiting to be planting with F-d-L seedlings.

Fleur-de-Central: The mild winter blending into an early spring means we’ve got lots of new gardening projects going on. Seeds I saved from my favorite F-d-L vintage tomatoes germinated (will I ever stop planting triple what I need just in case there is major seedling failure?)

I’m renovating my Dad’s old raised-bed gardens and wrapping them in fencing to keep the groundhogs and rabbits out. I’ve decided to turn a planter on my Mom’s deck into an herb garden. Fresh herbs will be an arm’s length away when we dine outside. And, the garlic I harvested last summer at Fleur-de-Lys and planted in State College in the fall looks fabulous!

Fleur-de-InsomniacYogurt

One of the things I’ve adopted wholeheartedly about living in State College again is taking classes. In January and February there was a Saturday morning series on campus called Food: Strategies for Growing Enough for Everyone, with such topics as The Global Pollinator Crisis and Where Will the Food Come from in a Hotter, More Crowded World? Then, there’s this wonderful grassroots community organization called Spring Creek Homesteading that has what they call “re-skilling” classes on a variety of topics, from making herbal lip balms to home beer brewing and weaving potholders.

Last month my mom and I attended a Yogurt and Granola Making Workshop. I connected with our instructor Nynke immediately. She was wearing a colorful apron decorated with cooking utensils and ingredients, each design with the vocabulary word written beneath – in Dutch.  Nynke’s homeland is The Netherlands, a neighbor of Belgium. That’s close enough for me to conjure up a bond that includes my daughter Marina. It just so happens that Marina is taking a Dutch language class so, needless to say, Nynke (and her apron) held my attention.

Nynke began making her own yogurt because it is “no waste”.  She makes a batch of yogurt in a quart Ball jar and doesn’t need to deal with buying yogurt in all of those plastic containers. Without the packaging and promotion, homemade yogurt is also cheaper. That made immediate sense to me. To top it off, we have a wonderful farm, Meyer Dairy, less than two miles from the house. You can see the Holsteins grazing in the pasture, and yes, sometimes smell them, but the fresh milk is the best! And even better, the milk comes in returnable glass bottles. Again, no plastic waste.

So, one Saturday morning Nynke showed us the basics of making yogurt at home, and it couldn’t be easier. There are two ingredients: a quart of milk and 2 tablespoons of  “starter”, which is simply plain yogurt, no sugar added, with “active bacteria” listed on the label. And, once you make your own yogurt, you can just use 2 Tbsp. from that to start the next batch. Nynke bought her quart yogurt maker on amazon.com, and there are other products out there including something called “Yogotherm.”

Because my past life is in boxes, I did not want to buy another kitchen gadget. Nynke suggested a warm oven, the sun on a warm day, or a heating pad – anything to keep the yogurt at a consistent temperature for four to eight hours.

Now Nynke is one of those cooks who tests food temperatures on the inside of her wrist, and the crucial part of yogurt making is all about temperature. Here are her instructions:

1. Heat four cups of milk in saucepan until almost boiling (180°F).

2. Let the milk cool to 105° -115° F.

3. Pour warm milk into glass jar with starter (2 Tbsp. yogurt) and keep at 105°-115° F for four to eight hours. Then, refrigerate.

4. You’re done!

We did the initial stages in class and she fast-forwarded the four-to-eight-hour bacterial fermentation part by bringing in a quart of her yogurt from home. Then, we moved onto homemade granola. Kids play.

I was raring to go! I bought a quart bottle of whole milk at Meyer Dairy (you can also use skim or 2%) and a container of plain Oikos (Stonyfield) Organic Greek Yogurt. On the label were listed the live active cultures: S. Thermophilus, L. Bulgaricus, L. Acidophilus, L. Bifidus, and L. Casel.

My mother had a crock-pot, so I figured I’d improvise. I poured water into the bowl of the crock-pot, and set the dial on low. Meanwhile, I heated my quart of milk slowly until it formed a “skin” on top, just before boiling. By heating the milk this way, you kill the undesirable bacteria and “denature” the milk proteins so they set rather than form curds. Just stir the skin into the rest of the mixture.

After cooling the milk, I poured it into the Ball jar with 2 Tbsp. of Oikos and plunged the quart jar into the warm water bath. I covered the jar and crock-pot with a clean kitchen towel and left it to ferment in peace. I went to bed. About four hours later, I checked on the brew. So far, so good. At 3 a.m., my normal women-of-a-certain-age waking hour, I looked again. No change. A hour of putzing around, and it was still sour milk soup, not yogurt. I refrigerated it, hoping that would solidify. Wrong.

OK, so my wrist must not be as sensitive as Nynke’s. Before starting I had searched my mom’s kitchen for a candy thermometer—she had to have one somewhere. Nowhere. I know I have one, but it’s packed in an unlabeled box somewhere…so I broke down and I bought a candy thermometer. A $4 expense, but I was back in business.

The following night, I went through the same routine, only with a candy thermometer to gauge the temperatures along the way. At 3 a.m., my bewitching hour, I was roaming the halls and peaking under the kitchen towel at my brew. Warm sour milk soup, not yogurt.

I tussled with my pillows and cursed the moonlight until dawn trying to figure it out where I went wrong. Finally, it came to me: Perhaps the jar was getting too hot resting on the bottom of the crock-pot, thereby annihilating and liquidating all of my good bacteria. 

So, evening No. 3 I began again. I had roasted vegetables for dinner, so I had a warm oven in which to place the quart jar. Every hour I was up and checking the jar and oven. Was it too warm? Not warm enough? How do you keep a warm oven warm for eight hours, especially when you keep opening the door to check on it?

The night reminded me of my pre-Easter nights of peep tending. Were they warm enough under the heat lamp? Too warm? Did the bulb burn out? All those trips to the barn in my muck boots and PJs. Around midnight I decided the oven was no longer the least bit warm. What to do? I found an old heating pad in the linen closet and wrapped my jar in the pad, plugged it in and turned it on low. Around 3 a.m. I checked the batch. I made yogurt!

Forget the cost savings and plastic waste reduction—eating homemade yogurt is like biting into a ripe tomato on your garden vine—it can’t compare to the store-bought product. So, now I’m an insomniac yogurt pro. For breakfast, I have yogurt with granola. If I’m feeling really decadent, I drizzle some golden honey on top. And, for those of you who like fruit yogurts, add fresh fruit or go Euro-style and add a spoonful of strawberry jam. If you’re like me and up at odd hours of the night, making yogurt gives you that warm nurturing feeling. You can take the woman off the farm…but she’s still a Mother Hen. Laurie Lynch

Like Mother, Like Daughter: While I was experimenting with yogurt making, Marina was in Antwerp at her boyfriend’s family home having kitchen trials of her own.  When she visits Ziggy’s family she often bakes a sweet treat. They love her banana bread, so Ziggy’s father suggested she make some to sell at their bio supermarket Terrasana (Earth and Sun). All of the ingredients had to be “bio” (organic), but luckily Marina could get all of them–including 80 some over-ripe bananas—at Terrasana. She made some loaves with sugar but most with stevia (“It’s just that type of crowd, Mom.”)

The night before the big special, she baked 27 loaves in six hours. But the real challenge came the next day when she was the guest baker at the store with her Bio-Banana Cake (In Belgium, you can charge more for cake than bread…) The BBC sold for $21,95 euro per kilo (about $13 US a pound), and each loaf was about a half-kilo. Some loaves were sliced and weighed for individual servings, costing anywhere from $1,20 to $2,20 euro. The amazing thing is that almost all of the transactions were made in Dutch!

“My Dutch was tested, and frustrated some people,” she said, but she also realized she knew more of the language than she thought. Comments from shoppers ran the gamut from “It’s too expensive” to “I don’t eat butter/flour/eggs/bananas” but, there were plenty of sales, one repeat customer—and hey, Marina understood what everyone was saying!

Speaking of Good Eggs: I got together with friends who were attending a campus event, and they brought a gift from a mutual friend – a dozen blue and brown eggs. Linda adopted several of my hens last spring, and shared some of their hen fruit with me, across the miles.

Fleur-de-LiteraryTour

On the last day of the San Francisco Writers Conference, we took a literary tour of North Beach, the “Little Italy” neighborhood where baseball great Joe Dimaggio grew up and the “beat generation” of writers--Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and others--gathered.

It was one of those days when the sun warms your face and the magnolia blossoms stir your heart. We walked past outdoor cafes, bakeries, and salami shops. Along the way, our guide pointed out a bar, a church, a mural, an alley, told a story, and read a snippet of a poem to set flame to our literary souls. It was here that I was given a short-course on Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet laureate of San Francisco and owner of the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, City Lights Books.

“Dog” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

… And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory

and past Coit’s Tower

and past Congressman Doyle of the Unamerican Committee

He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower

but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle

although what he hears is very discouraging

very depressing

very absurd

to a sad young dog like himself

to a serious dog like himself

But he has his own free world to live in

His own fleas to eat

He will not be muzzled

Congressman Doyle is just another

fire hydrant …

“The Old Italians Dying” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

… You have seen them

every day in Washington Square San Francisco

the slow bell

tolls in the morning

in the Church of Peter & Paul

in the marzipan church on the plaza

toward ten in the morning the slow bell tolls

in the towers of Peter & Paul

and the old men who are still alive

sit sunning themselves in a row …

(Don’t you just love that “marzipan church”.)

“The Green Street Mortuary Marching Band”

 …where all the café sitters at

the sidewalk café tables

sit talking and laughing and

looking right through it

as if it happened every day in

little old wooden North Beach San Francisco

but at the same time feeling thrilled

by the stirring sound of the gallant marching band

as if it were celebrating life and

never heard of death …  --L. Ferlinghetti

I’ll wrap up the tour with one of the newest artistic additions to North Beach—Language of the Birds (2006-2008) by Brian Goggin with Dorka Keehn. This sculptural installation at the corner of Broadway, Grant, and Columbus streets is a flock of 23 books, flapping above the heads of pedestrians, while words and phrases from 90 authors of the neighborhood—Italian, Chinese, and English—drop to the sidewalk. Solar panels are mounted on Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore to illuminate the fluttering books at night.

There were books above us, words below us, and as one joker in the group said, “There’s even a dangling participle!” Laurie Lynch

Hearts Follow Hearts: Al Haring got the Brooke Shields magazine and sent a thank you, and this link to another Keith Haring and Brooke Shields heart …

http://gotham-magazine.com/channels/home-page/insights/relics-from-keith-harings-iconic-pop-shop

Written on Slate: Every man’s memory is his private literature. --Aldous Huxley

Fleur-de-Mouse

If there was one catch phrase that came home with me from the San Francisco Writers Conference it was “word of mouth and mouse”.

Yes, the words and story are important, as is your audience, but to broaden your audience and, frankly, to generate interest in your book among publishers, you’ve got to use your computer mouse. That means breaking into the whole scary world of social media. One fellow went so far as to say that tweets are the new haiku! (I’ve never even seen a tweet, so I really can’t comment.)

The four days of back-to-back lectures covered prose, publishing and promotion, punctuated with open windows that welcomed early spring breezes and the gentle rattle and ding-ding-ding of cable cars descending California Street.

Although I had a packet of newsletters for critique, this wasn’t the forum. The conference was all about proposals and compelling premises – a step beyond my meager “elevator speech”.

But, oh, the information! Alan Rinzler (editor and publisher for Toni Morrison, Hunter S. Thompson, Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan and others) gave us the sobering facts:

•   Eighty percent of American families did not buy a book in 2011.
•  Fifty-seven percent of new books are not read to completion.

Still, Rinzler talked of hope for the writing world, where technology enables readers to get to know authors, and authors can establish communities of readers. Writers, he said, have a built-in compulsion to make sense of their lives and “cannot NOT write.”

In preparation for the conference, I read books by several keynote speakers or presenters including Lolly Winston’s Good Grief, Lisa See’s Dreams of Joy and two of Michael Larsen’s books (co-founder of the conference). I also went to several sessions as a selfish reader, hosted by writers already known to me, Cara Black, whose murder mysteries in Paris I’ve mentioned before, and Ellen Sussman who wrote French Lessons. And, of course, I was introduced to a whole slew of new writers and went home with a long list of titles to read, including Linda Lee’s Smart Women Stupid Computers, which will be published shortly.

I passed up the Speed Dating with Agents session. It was $50 per person and I just was not ready to go there, in any sense of the playful (but frightful) title. I did, however, book 15 minutes on the red couch with Kevin Smokler, billed as “wise person in residence” at the conference. I told him I needed a book shrink because I had been writing my memoir...foodie farmer and rent-a-peep queen…but then I got divorced, lost the farm and lost my purpose.

He told me books on farms are over done. I kept looking at the floor, tears blurring my eyes and words evaporating in my mouth. He said that I have to decide why I want to write the book. So, dear folks, that is what I must do—that, and write 500 words a day, and farm out much of this technology stuff, at least for the time being. So, you see, I’ve got a serious case of brain fog, and have to work it through. But, I cannot NOT write, and I promise there will be a book, even if it’s published posthumously.  Laurie Lynch

Grace Cathedral Labyrinth

Floating Through the Air: Author Bharti Kirchner, in the workshop Making Your Setting a Character in Your Novel, emphasized the role the five senses have in writing. A spell checker is fine, she said, but you also need a “smell checker”.

The Happy Wanderer

Spiritual Visits: Just a short walk from the conference was the beautiful Grace Cathedral. We walked the outdoor labyrinth and I saw a delicate, new-to-me vine called Hardenbergia violacea (aka the Happy Wanderer). It’s Zone 9, so it can’t be grown in Pennsylvania, but all of you happy wanderers out there should look for it.  We also visited the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption, and someone there has a sense of humor.  After Mass, Trig wanted to show us the gift shop downstairs. We got in the elevator and there were no numbers to press – only the letter H, going down…

Paterno/Cemetery Update: JoePa is definitely buried at Spring Creek Cemetery near my mother’s home. In infinite township wisdom, 17—yes, I counted them—17 No Parking signs (P with a slash through it) have been posted on the short stretch of road. I guess the P with a slash through it could also mean No Paterno…

Next Blog: A literary tour of North Beach.