a little red hen

Loving To Read Obituary Pages

Where did the attraction begin?  In the 1950s and 60s, I worked in public relations in New York City.  Oh, there were so many, many daily papers that I had to read.  Mornings it was the Herald Tribune and the New York Times (image here from last week).

Not the tabloids, the ones whose big, bold headlines I'd see in the hands of subway riders and on newsstands. There was the Daily Mirror, deceased,  the Daily News, still flaunting its increasingly regressive conservatism.  In the afternoon, more that are history:  World Telegram & Sun, the Journal-American.

It was never a job requirement to read obits:  I just liked to read about the lives of others, see images of them from another era.  Ultimately, that curiosity led me to become a psychotherapist in midlife.  (I'll also be interested in your family's photos from the past.)

Reading about the deceased in the Times has continued.  Every now and then there's someone I knew or can connect to through people in my own past.  John Updike, whom I met briefly in a Harvard dorm when he came to borrow a tux from my then-boyfriend Christopher "Kit" Lasch.  I also have a letter* with Lasch's sketch of him; they were college roommates.  Most of the notable people from my era were men.  Rarely do I find a woman's obit except for a few, like my friend Barbara Seaman, who made significant contributions to women's lives with her first book, "The Case against the Pill."

Like Updike in the photo here, all of us smoked cigarettes (to be specific).  Somewhere in my stuff is a photo from 1954, my junior year at Oberlin.  I wear a short-sleeve gray cashmere sweater bought on sale in St. Louis where my family lived then.  In my hand, purposely, is a cigarette.  Updike died of lung cancer--Lasch and Seaman of other forms.  Did I stop early enough in 1968 when I was thirty-three?  Hoping so.

Back to my reading of obits--continued the NYTimes habit as we moved around.  Left NYC in 1968, continued to read the Times in Oberlin (faculty wife this time), and in Baltimore where we landed next.  Also read the ones in the Baltimore Sun once I had a sense of who was who in the community. Back to New York in 1995, still flipping to those back pages in the Times.

What about Portland, Oregon?  We've been permanently for over two-plus years. Why not read these too, all about everyday women and men.  Oddly, these are more satisfying. Years ago, I said to Ron, "Amazing reading obits in The New York Times could make you believe that women never die."  Surely among all those forgotten ball-players, forgotten Hollywood bit players, there could be a woman or two.  Rarely.

Women are a larger presence in the Oregonian.  I learn details of  their lives as working women in the Northwest.  Often there are photos of them both young and old like Ruth S. McDonald here who died at 89 last September.  Most are homemakers.  But there's more to learn here about Ruth's working life.  She was born in 1920, on a farm near Madison, Nebraska, town of about 3,000, whose largest employer is Tyson Fresh Meats.

She moved to Omaha, was working in the Blackstone Hotel as a waitress when she met her Army husband.  They moved to Vancouver, Washington, and both worked at the Kaiser Shipyard.  She had two sons, grandchild, great grandchildren.  Returned to waitressing at sometime in the 20th century, retired from Ye Olde Towne Crier when she was 70!

"She was a true professional who took pride in her work."  Donations suggested to  Sisters of the Road Cafe known for its programs of community-driven solutions to poverty and homelessness, and Bradley Angle, center for domestic violence survivors.  First time I'd seen organizations like these in the obits.  Think Ruth and I would have had some important conversations about tikkun olam (healing the world) if we had met.

*My letters from Lasch went to an archive at the University of Rochester.  To write this post, I saw the link for the first time and cannot figure out where and if the letters are there.   Have to ask my son, Nick, who is behind the curious small world story of how they landed there.  Another time will write about how little personal information Lasch seems to have made public as I noticed in a review of recent biography.

Katrina vanden Heuvel shares upbeat vision in PDX

How many references for a blog title?  Am I talking to self here or just me and Marianna at Hattie's Web?  Photo from couple of years ago when we met, walked over to the Pearl Cafe. 

"Upbeat vision" is such a delicious idea that featuring the words makes me giddy.  Outlandish and in-denial position these days?  Some of us grandmothers of young children ponder this often--Marianna and I among them.  We both are readers of The Nation Magazine, that not-glossy, picture-free, skinny lefty rag that delights or infuriates us.  So much for those claiming we only talk to ourselves in agreement.

As Marianna floats along on a Nation Cruise--an adventure almost unimaginable on my calendar--I question why that is any "more" or "better" than my going to a Nation fundraiser the last day of November.  It is not. Note to self:  watch that judgmental stuff.  Marianna and I were children in complex families where financial and personality issues loomed large.  We emerged with  with deep concerns on sorting out who we were/are and the lives of others.

In my own family of origin social justice was a keynote.  One of the reasons Hattie and I are  friends via blogging and real time is our penchant to sign petitions for causes (here's one today), march with signs in public, let others know what we support whenever possible.  We understand how lucky we are to have emerged from our darkish childhoods into adult lives to where we are today.

Though The Nation has been around for a long time, sometimes seems the place where aging leftists go to complain, Katrina vanden Heuvel as Editor reminds me how many young activists and thinkers are visible these days.  Marianna is a particular fan of Chris Hays of MSNBC; my own is Rachel Maddow at the same network.  It's also good to consider how my own "silent generation" has contributed some good to the present times.   My contemporary, Victor Navasky, my contemporary, had the foresight to bring Katrina into The Nation.

About the fundraiser.  We knew no one there, not a surprise.  We're always struck how the left has not discovered that the cause might be better served by a bit of reaching out.  Are we too uncomfortable with ourselves, fearful that the person we don't know might have politics a tad lefter than ours or a cause we do not care about?  We had a good time after Ron snagged a woman walking by who seemed to have an open demeanor.  As a result, had our best laugh of the evening.  Originally from New York, she and her spouse who soon came along, spoke about their early days in the City as adjunct faculty for a "third-rate university." 

Where? "That's where our son is an Associate Professor, lucky guy!"  I replied with enthusiasm. See, you just never know how small a world we live in.  Not very experienced with fund-raisers, it was curious to me that the evening was so very low key.  After Katrina gave her talk about the importance of readers increasing their support, people went up to speak with her.  I took photos.  

Shortly after, there was a book-reading at Powells' where Katrina spoke about her latest, The Change I Believe In: Fighting for progress in the age of Obama.  Poor woman, she had only a moment to eat, then had to be upfront again--with a far larger and livelier audience.  The place was packed; Ron and I split up to find seats.

Mine was next to a friendly woman my age who said she wished there was someone who'd go on a Nation Cruise with her.  She'd enjoyed the trip a few years ago.  On the other side was a man whose father had been a Wobblie!

Generally though the audience was younger than those at the fund-raiser.  Why didn't I get up and shout, "Folks, The Nation needs your subscriptions!"  That's one of the points Katrina made, and one electronic readers dodge around. By the way, I never have a link to Amazon, that book-destroyer.

She stays on message: we need to be as pragmatic and clear-eyed about Obama as he is about us....it's important for movements to keep working with the president, and pushing him when needed--criticizing, engaging, and supporting when called for.  As with Plan B and the fear of teen pregnancy.

It's invigorating to be the choir preached too--don't care what anyone says.  Katrina delighted the crowd.  Just before the very, very long line for book-signing, I slipped her another one of those immodest proposals.  Suggested that The Nation initiate Teach-Ins around the country about Occupy.  Oh, not those Nation reader groups listed in the back of the magazine.  The woman next to me, like others, have said she had to quit one because one person came to dominate with his opinions.  We had that in Baltimore too.

Could there be a better design:  Potlucks for the left?  We do need something that gets us to come together in real time, to do the hard work that Marianna and I talk about--for our grandchildren's futures.

"Congress is trying to destrop the internet (no hyperbole)"

Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos wrote me a moment ago.  Probably you too.

Also in the mail, Roots Action has a petition for me to sign to tell my senators to  STOP THE SENATE WAR AGENDA TODAY!  

Some days it seems that email is all about the next petition to sign--Elizabeth Warren's run for to be a significant senator from Massachusetts (Emily's List)--or a few bucks for the environment to Portland's excellent and quirky SCRAP.  They need a new truck!

All get a response but first, there's the plea from Markos.  If you and I do not respond to this one, then we're cooked.  All the good people and causes will be blocked, maybe we will not be able to talk virtually as we are doing in this moment.  As he puts it so clearly:

Big Pharma and the recording and movie industries are on the verge of passing a bill that could very well destroy the social web, including Daily Kos.

This is no hyperbole. Watch the video above. It is literally an existentialist threat for Daily Kos and any other site with user-generated content, from Facebook, to Reddit, to tumblr, Sound Cloud or YouTube.

This is the holy grail of the entertainment industry—to destroy the internet, and thus, destroy the biggest danger to their business.

Watch the Vimeo, soon, please.  Thanks.   (Since there's an extra, pass one along to a friend.)

  

Approaching Occupy Portland...hearing about Vancouver, B.C.

How to support a movement seen as necessary, important, but beyond one's participation?  Since October 7 when Occupy Wall Street began, that question has been on my mind.

It was so close here in Portland, Oregon, yet so far away.  Contribute some change to Occupy Portland.  Last week Pay Pal notified me that Red Owl Media had returned the money.  There has been a problem between those who wanted Occupy Portland to become a non-profit, those opposed.  Money collected in two places.  Now returned.  It is all part of the formlessness of the effort.

Last week I left a canvas bag from the local, longtime Peoples Co-op with a miscellany--bags of millet and garbanzo flour from cooking classes at Bob's Red Mill, jar of Ron's strawberry jam, bedroom slippers I was discarding, toothbrushes from the dentist (have to stop taking these: we use electric), pony tail hair bands purchased for grandchild Zoe.  And another bag:  Keep Portland radical.  Talked with a neighbor who had purchased a blanket from our thrift shop, made the bus trip downtown and left it with someone at the edge of the encampment.  Hearing that I'd taken the short walk inside to hand over my stuff to a place about food, she asked, "How was it?" 

Smelled awful, even on a sunny day there was an overcast, scruffy feeling--people living outside for a long time, and coughing.  What could we expect?  Radical political action is not attractive.

[Problem with this report, had to take down]  By chance, what is happening in Vancouver, B.C., was broadcast as I was writing this post.  The responses to questions by a volunteer medic are worth listening to especially the hard ones about a young woman found dead at this encampment.  Is it my imagination or does this Canadian broadcaster seem far more respectful than ones in the U.S.?

Have watched the live streaming from here and NYC.  Think how different it might be in New York where people around me would be talking about frequently, arguing its merits.  In Portlande, even at Portland State University, there is not a sense in the halls that some of their peers are in tents only 10 blocks away, that what is taking place is work by those who speak for all of us who would never occupy but feel voiceless.  But maybe that's the norm in other cities where many have opted out of full engagement with any kind of politics.

Lunch today at Pearl Bakery with Alon, who taught the delightful  Sociology of the Bicycle.  He has been to GA (general assembly) meetings at Occupy Portland, works with Education and Outreach groups there.  It was good to talk with someone who has real time experience with the group.  We have been concerned that our unsolved social problems in Occupy cities--homelessness, mental illness-- street people in need of food and a roof might overwhelm the political intentions of those who began the occupations.

He is hopeful; we want to be too.  Love this video.

 

UPDATE Monday, Nov. 7, 2011, 8:15 p.m. (PST), Local TV news:

In an open letter to the Occupy Portland movement, Mayor Sam Adams said the current safety conditions at the encampment were "not sustainable," changing the previous day-by-day approach of the city.
Citing specifically increasing arrests, drug use and violent behavior, Adams said the purpose of the letter was to stress the urgency in dealing with these problems...."I have said from the beginning that I believe the Occupy movement would have to evolve in order to realize its full potential."

 

OCCUPY PORTLAND supports Occupy Wall Street

On Saturday we talked in the safety of our apartment about Occupy Wall Street.  Then Sunday we learned of the massive arrest on the Brooklyn Bridge, many thoughts.  The link is from the Boston Globe because the New York Times has annoyed me with its brush-off reporting.  Not a suprise.

Marching on the Bridge ourselves sometime in the past ten years for CHOICE--which year?, not the 1980s in D.C.--we were suddenly aware that we were being filmed by the police.  Why?  Because we were disorderly in Bloombergland.  This must have been after the 2004 Republican convention in New York:  the big wake-up call about "acceptable" protest behavior in the City.  Then there was the ban on taking photos in the subway, after 9/11, the effect of which lingers long after its ending.

Back to my own Saturday night.  Ron and I were being a bit skeptical about Occupy Wall Street:  who was involved, would it wake up policy makers.  "Do you suppose," I asked him, "that we're talking like the old folks in 1968?"  About the anti-Vietnam War protesters.  About the way Oberlin students (where we were then) had trapped the Navy recruiters in their car--just around the corner from our house.

Many of us have been wondering why there have been no protests from people who have lost their jobs, their homes over the past couple of years.  Because, though they may have lost just about everything, they remain attached to a system that appears to hold out promise of something better in the near future.  Young people protesting today see a different, darker reality ahead.

 

New York's deep history shaped by the rich

Why is it that I have to be reminded that New York City has always been shaped by the rich?  Those highly entrepreneurial Dutch settlers who pulled a fast one, actually many, many fast ones on the Lenape Indians, brought slavery to what they called "New Netherlands," but were eventually outsmarted by the English, and you know the rest of the story.

[Not a history blog here, just a Little Red Hen resource provider.  Read Kenneth Jackson's Encyclopedia of New York, for a left-of-center view there's Eric Foner on life among the working classes, when you're in the City, do a walking tour with Big Onion.]

Our son and his spouse suggest places we can visit while enjoying their Roxie.  On we went to another of the Historic Hudson Valley sites. Last visit it was Sunnyside, mid-19th century home of the writer, Washington Irving in Tarrytown/Irvington.  Roxie was a trouper as we stood near the Hudson, then squeezed into the small house with other tourists.

This time with better weather, it was Phillipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow and earlier years-- around 1750.  As we stood in the house, our tour guide explained that we were not really in someone's home.  Maybe a faux home would be a better description; the Phillips, an Anglo-Dutch family spent their time in Manhattan on Pearl Street.  This was their office, so to speak, where they conducted their extensive farming, milling, and trading business.

How much property did this successful family own? Though we were told on the tour, these details are not on the official site but were noted at TravelLady magazine (filled with more detail about how the place operated, who worked where).   52,000 acres from northern Manhattan to Croton.  Their holdings included 23 African slaves.  [The Rockefeller estate is nearby.] One of the impressive aspects of our tour was that we were told these facts by our guide, told what were the kinds of jobs done by tenant farmers who had to be trusted by their distant employers and, of course, slaves and who were unble to barter for freedom.  Detailed information on slavery at the manor on this video.

Unlike TravelLady whose visit was in 2007, we were at the Manor after the ruinous storms and flooding of Hurricance Irene in August.  At her site are photos of the Grist Mill when it was in operation, producing flour.  No longer; it will take a new round of fund-raising to fix it.  Natural disaster must have occurred in earlier centuries. I wonders how this changed things:  local people laid off, slaves sold?

Along with Roxie, I was intrigued with this gourd container and the corn cob  wrapped with twine to create a stopper for it. 

Thanks to our first guide at the manor house whom we asked about her shawl (handwoven there), we were directed to another guide, also informative, the fiber expert.  In the photo, she is explaining the origin on the farm of each color in her coat.  Roxie proved adept at carding and rolling wool into rolags.  We thought she'd been here before but, no, her parents said... maybe another nursery school adventure.

With all the sights and sounds in the afternoon,  the variety of beans --and their names--(Roxie took home a black and white soldier bean), being able to touch the cheese in hardening stages, sheep roaming about, it was something we did not catch on camera that happened very fast just after this cow was led to the barn.  A farm cat rushed past us, climbed quickly up a tree, rushed to the ground with a baby squirrel in his mouth.  In seconds he/she began to eat.  Ron was fascinated; Roxie missed it and was taken with the excitement of onlookers. 

If we visit again in April, we might be able to  see a "Sheep to Shawl" festival at Phillipsburg.  The link, to a 2009 event, shows the traditional border collie sheep run held at many wool fairs and Manor guides enacting slaves.  The costumed staff added a great deal to my experience, help to move me back in time.  Made me wonder what it would have been like if I'd been costumed when I was a docent at the Tenement Museum on New York City's lower east side.  A simpler setting in 1997 than now, the choices might have included myself as an immigrant German Jewish widow in 1860s, orthodox Jewish woman post World War I, or early 1930s first generation Italian housewife. 

With all my political and moral critiques  of the rich in America and what they have done/are doing to our lives, I am grateful that we had another wonderful afternoon with Roxie--thanks to the enormously wealthy people who decided to provide this connection to our pasts in New York.  It is an ambivalent life.

Aug. 5

Aug. 5

When a man is asked to sing of his anger

the risk is that without remorse virtue dies

War then is in the face, in this homelessness,

the despair which couldn't wait couldn't ask for

 

We don't talk to each other anymore

email global reach managed minutes morning

to noon in the hospitals we are all old

forbidden to talk of lost sons, asked to smile

 

Enough, they'll hear the news, men in photographs

die and nothing will seem simple, their faces

especially where sorrow stretched everyhing

 

Maps point to? and defeat looms where? out there where?

Here the naked body is where terror lies

Guilt builds monuments, the way we spend our time

-ELENA RIVERA

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Seeing this poem two years ago in  The Nation startled me.  Why did the poet chose this particular date, my birthday?  It was published on March 31, 2010.   Saved it on my bulletin board because it intrigued me.  Never a notable date, I recall one factoid, a kind of Chinese fortune cookie one:   the transatlantic cable was laid.   Yes, Wikipedia confirms that happened August 5, 1858, though it was not a particularly successful or long-lasting effort till later.

That engineering feat was not important enough for Wikipedia's BIG list for my birth date.  With an odd synchronicity, on my birthday (and this time I was around for these in the 1970s) less creative history took place:

Congress placed a $1 billion dollar limit on military aid to South Vietnam in 1974.  Five years later in 1979, again on August 5, Maoists attempted a military uprising in Afghanistan.  What is it about the summer?

August 6, the anniversary of U.S. dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and August 9, the day the next bomb devastated Nagasaki, will be commenorated nationwide.  Sunday here in Portland, Oregon, Physicians for Social Responsibility and other peace groups will gather at the Japanese American Historical Plaza.

It will be a three-hour fair with speakers, informational booths "...to engage participants in learning about, and taking action for, a world free of both nuclear weapons and nuclear power."

How will we remember, have our voices heard?  Rhetorical questions, an opportunity to speak again once more of my wish, along with yours, for peace in our time.

 

 

Rye Bread as Doorstop!

When I fail, it may be an opportunity for ART...or HUMOR...anything to delay the moment of discard.   Vollkornbrot was destined to be too much of a reach for my sourdough ambitions and my teeny-tiny oven.

1996 was Year One of our First Retirement in New York City.  At Fairway perhaps, I saw a local bread labeled "Bread Alone."  Nice title, good to eat.  In a way similiar to restless, educated 20th century Manhattanites of a certain class--some money saved up (stockbroker, ad exec,) post-hippie (don't you like that better than "boomer"?), Daniel Leader left the City for upstate--the Catskills.

He opened an  organic, European-style bakery in Boice, N.Y.  Ten years later he wrote the book, "Bread Alone:  bold fresh loaves fom your own hands" with Judith Blahnik.  I bought it in the energetic early retirement, do-everything mode, and because I loved the cover illustration.  "Began sourdough rye starters,  potato & caraway seed, 2/29/96--whew!" a red pen notes inside the cover.  Have no memory of this nor what happened next.  All I recall is being put off by the heroics of Leader's techniques.

All these years later in Second Retirement, I'm prepared for all kinds of bread challenges--and less distracted by life in the Big Apple.

Using my own rye starter, in May, I returned to Leader's book for    "Sourdough Rye with Potato."   Challenged to fit three loaves in the oven, I used a medium-sized cast iron skillet and two black metal bread pans. (Have to reduce recipe next time.)  Thought it was a terrific loaf though labor intensive with huge amont of very wet dough.  Ron  lent a hand on kneading.  Quite tasty with pieces of potato which can be seen in the slices.

Last month, emboldened further, I took on Vollkornbrot, the doorstop pictured above.  "The name means 'whole kernel bread'...a tradition in Germany and Scandanavia" Leader writes.  It uses whole rye berries (soaked overnight), an ingredient that intrigued me, pumpernickel flour/rye meal that I substituted for cracked rye.

The detail in this book includes activities I ignore:  getting the correct temperature of your kitchen, flour, etc., taking the temperature of the dough after mixing.   Baked 2 1/2 hours in a 300-degree oven, as per instructions and "...rest at least 24 (or even 36) hours before eating."  Never got there.  As if to punish my girlish, do-it-my-way approach, the goddess of bread gave me the inedible result pictured at the beginning of this post.   

But there are others to try!  I am aided in my obessessive pursuit by an especially cool "summer" in Portland, Oregon.  I enjoy taking pictures of my production to keep track of what I've done.  It's a habit that takes me back to young parenting, particularly our intensely documented first child.

You're wondering, I suppose, what two old people trying to watch their girth do with all this largesse?  Invite us to dinner, we bring a loaf with us.  Neighbors where we live are always glad to share   and the freezer holds slices for non-baking weeks. 

An important goal now is to find a way or ways to give a loaf to someone I do not know, someone who might truly need it.  Been talking to people about how that might happen; that is where I hope my Kneading to Know idea will travel forward.

Transforming Enemies into Friends: Cyprus Friendship Program

Earlier this week, Ron and I had an unusual experience.  A notice with the provocative title, "Transforming Enemies into Friends," appeared on bulletin boards where I live and gave a brief descrpition of the Cyprus Friendship initiative for teenagers from that troubled country.

The 90-minutes  program was a boost for the 75 senior Americans in the meeting room, all of us overstimulated by bad news on the economy, the future of social security, the British tabloid mess.

Six young women, 16 and 17 years old, participants in this ambitious international program, told why it has been important for them to be far from their own country for a one-month stay with host families in Portland.

Three of them are from Turkish Cyprus, three from Greek controlled Cyprus.  It was painful to hear how they have to live their lives where the two factions do not interact, the consequence of a war 37 years ago.  To get a sense of the ethnic division in Cyprus, a quick look at this map makes it clear that there are two distinct parts--yellow and white.  Each considers the other the enemy.

Each of the girls in the photo is sitting with her partner from "the other side" she has lived with for the past month. They spoke eloquently--and in excellent English-- about the pain of the split not only in their country but also in their families.   What had been the response among family and friends to their participation?

Some families were reluctant for their daughters to attend, even fearful or opposed.  Others were hopeful, like the teens themselves, that the opportunity to live in peaceful coexistence could be empowering for the girls and a model for a better future for Turks and Cypriotes.  How powerful social media are around the world was brought home by the young woman at the right end of the table.  On Facebook, yes, they are on Facebook, she could not believe the harsh reactions of some of her friends:  she was equated with the enemy.

What she learned is that her partner in the program would be more of a friend in her future than some of these naysayers at home. All of them want to return here for college which they find "very expensive."

What struck them most about peers in America?  That family ties were not as strong as theirs.  They were proud of the connection they had to their own families, most of whom have spent generations struggling with ethnic conflict.

After their presentations, the girls were eager to talk with us old people.  There's a surprise! Ron and I explained that the United States had its own history of people at odds with one another for reasons as unreasonable as those in Cyprus.  Immediately, two girls spoke about their visit to Canada and learning how badly the native population had been treated by white explorers in earlier times.  They were quite startled and wanted  explanation when Ron remarked, "You know, we are all immigrants here."

Being in their presence lifted our spirits away from local or national concerns.  All of us in the room expanded by sharing their hopefulness about the future.

HASNA, the sponsoring organization has a number of other programs for women, water and agriculture in Turkey.   Their peace-building ograms in Cyprus began in 2001; there are other efforts directed to women, water and agriculture in Turkey.   Support is needed with donations and for American families to hosting pairs of girls and boys in cities around the U.S., explained in detail at the Cyprus Friendship Program.

 

KNEADING TO KNOW, process/outcome/future

For the past month I've hoped that it would occur to me how to move the energy of public beadmaking to the next phase of its/my life.  

What had I learned? The dough I was kneading survived well and became, of course, another two loaves.     That it would be possible to carry around a bowful of indoors, outdoors, through the changing temperatures of Portland spring and have it survive as another loaf when it went into the oven.  Best French bread produced so far; perhaps made finer by many hours of travel and kneading!  Recipe was the "long method" from Sunset Cookbook of Breads.*

The flour and water in the jar also performed.  Wild yeast found its way there, as I'd told my audience it would.  Once returned to my kitchen, it produced another bread that connected me to another new recipe in an old paperback from my 20th century baking days.**

But I missed the chance to share that success with my class.  Would the students have appreciated a result that was harder to the touch and teeth than the other bread?  Would it have mattered?

Had I even made the point about the wonders of collecing wild yeast?

As personally satisfying as the entire venture had been, something was missing.  There had not been enough time to have a more meaningful exchange.  The ideal would have been to have others kneading the dough, to have more of an exchange between myself, between one another of people experiencing kneading.

Was it sufficient to mention world hunger in Manifesto #3 and have that make an impact on those who took the "Bread not Bombs" button?  Would anyone besides me wear the button?  Trying to do too much, not an unusual problem with my projects.

Here I am, the day after July 4, 2011.  The photo on the right marks the beginning of "Kneading to Know."  Meanwhile I've thought about venues for another performance--the Farmers' Markets are now in full season.  Would one of them be the right place...can I find others to do this with me?  Ron has volunteered to be another kneader...or two.

Meanwhile the bread adventure continues...more loaves ahead.

_____________________

 *1977 edition of this Sunset magazine book can be found through used book sites.

**Sourdough Raisin Casserole Bread from Rita Davenport's Sourdough Cookery (1980 paperback, out of print)