Hub of Earth

I heard Dr Tom one day or was it Madame Susan
i heard this artist of words from both. sift the sand of time

I stood at the hub of my wheel wrestling with the earth
death and life surrounded me. shotgun and the poison rain
seeds of life springing under my feet
the spider web of life before my eyes

and i was there, dammit I saw it with my own eyes!
the gleam of a spark in my woman's eye
i saw it
the moment I got a good tackle
flying like superman
there is day when we stand at the hub of the earth
we are in our moment
let it be not to shoot another man
been a lot of those in our past. I had
rather not that be me

fleeting moments we get in our lives
critical junctures when things happen
a fork in the road
I have been on that less traveled road so long
i can still see the highway over there
somewhere over the hill. This dirt road gets me there.
I got a big bunch to haul. I gotta avoid that 18 wheeler.
He gives even less fucks than I do.

today was going to be the day.
and another comes tomorrow

but I am still here and there she is and
tomorrow is another day

i go to serve the machine
salute and wave to the officer as he stands at the ready
to take your ass down
after all. it is just a wonder on the wall

 stopped trying to make sense of the concrete jungle long ago
 trying to navigate my way through the waves
 hands on the tiller, there comes the day
prayers and hopes. light a candle for me baby

lake street dive, 'bad self portraits'

Beisbol and dust.

Sometimes we get the call

fate hands our task to us

and we go and do it

that there is Joan Miro, dog barkin at the moon he is

and so credit is given and well deserved

climbing Jacob's ladder up and down

we go

we exist here and now

barking at the moon

yep

fun too

I had to go steer the elder father figure on to the house

he's in there sleeping in my bed

whilst i play at words and make things dance 

because I am still not ready for sleep

it is my turn now

to burn the midnight oil

to be the one awake 

in these late watches

It is mine to find the tickets

to make the way before us

get the hats, buy the beer and find food 

he can glad hand the kind officers watching the crowd

and whip their ass with nonsensical stories of fifty years ago

I still think it is a good thing for the FoFo to embrace the social network

same as the scientist 

you mfers better get a clue

the politicians that mark your wages and declare laws before us

had damn well be aware of us

and if you choose to ignore them

that is on you

It was nice that my team won tonight

but they are hamstrung and wounded

this is a season of trying to sort through the debris

to find what can be kept and saved for next year

my time with my dad might be short

and the hours I have with the pre-teen daughter 

fly before me

seize them all

never again willingly 

dear god deliver me from ever ever

walking away 

when I have it in my power to stay

time is fleeting

and the wheel doesn't roll back around again

very often

there is the now

use it

seize it 

it is what we have

Poke Sallet. Phytolacca of many species

Tony Joe White "Polk Salad Annie" 1969

Words change. Sometimes they become obsolete in the terminology of the linguist. Sallet as a food is one of them. Sallet is not known to the Chrome Dictionary. I wonder if it is in the Merriam-Webster. Nope. I stopped down and commented on it. This is what I wrote 

 No, it is not turnip greens exclusively. Or any greens for that matter. It is an obsolete form of salad. My 1971 Compact OED includes it. A Dictionary of Archaic & Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases ..., Volume 2 By James Orchard Halliwell-Phillipps maintains it was obsolete in 1852,"Sallet. A salad. Hall." but I would maintain that it is still used provincially in the American south to this day but typically in regards to Phytolacca americana though we all know salad can be any collection of greens. As it is understood today and particularly in regards to poke it is a cooked green as opposed to a fresh one. Polk Salad, Poke salad, poke sallet all refer to the same food. Tony Joe White recorded Polk Salad Annie in 1969. Thinking of poke as our typical fresh salad green has caused some at least apocryphal tales of folks suffering from shall we say gastro-intestinal distress?

I did however find it in the Urban Dictionary.

poke sallet

The term poke sallet is an old Southern term for the cooked young leaves of the poke weed. Sallet comes from Middle English and refers to a mess (another Old or Middle English term) of greens cooked until tender. The term Polk Salad is a gentrified way of referring to poke sallet, and I'm afraid it reflects our inferiority complex when it comes to standing up for our Southern terminology. We are not making a mush of Polk Salad; actually, we are being true to our English ancestors who settled here a long time ago.

Some folks around here always add a little molasses and fatback to the water when they cook their poke sallet. That's the traditional way.

Don't you just love Tony Joe White's song Poke Sallet Annie?

by Flem Snopes July 12, 2008

Sallet is another variation for the spelling of salad, archaic, obsolete and I am among the people on the planet that wants to call this dish by this name. I am hard-headed sometimes. Everybody else calls it salad which has led to some unfortunate dining experiences. Despite its reputation as poisonous there is no reason to avoid this plant. Euell Gibbons called it the 'Cadillac of greens'. There are festivals held in its honor. This song was written with an acceptance of it as a normal, everyday part of the diet. It was even the subject of a dissertation in 1757 at the University of Pennsylvania. If you have access to that work, I sure would like to see some of it. Perhaps Google can be of assistance....

A little background first I suppose would be in order. Poke has a couple of different names, but the varieties are essentially the same. Phytolacca is the Genus. That much is straight forward, they haven't decided to change that part yet. 5.5+ million hits and here are the first five for Poke Salad: Wiki Wild Pantry Don't Eat Poke Salad Annual Poke Salad Festival and Cooks/Recipes for Poke Salad

AUTHOR(S): Callahan, R.; Piccola, F.; Gensheimer, K.; Parkin, W. E.; Prusakowski, J.; Scheiber, G.; Henry, S. 
TITLE: Plant poisonings - New Jersey. 
YEAR: 1981 CITATION: MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep, 30(6), 65-67 [English]
FDA #: F07132 
ABSTRACT: Within a 2.5 month period in 1980, 27 New Jersey residents were poisoned, in 2 separate episodes, by eating wild plants. The poisonings were serious enough that 21 persons sought medical care; 4 were hospitalized. Pokeweed poisoning Passaic County: On July 11, an outbreak of gastrointestinal illness related to eating pokeweed leaves affected campers in a large day camp. Initial reports indicated that the outbreak was limited to a "nature group" whose members had sampled a salad made with this wild plant. The group, comprising 52 campers and counselors, had been offered pokeweed salad prepared from young leaves picked, boiled, drained, and reboiled that morning, a method that reputedly ensured the plant's edibility. Sixteen (31%) of the 51 interviewed met the case definition (vomiting accompanied by any 3 of the following: nausea, diarrhea, stomach cramps, dizziness, and headache on July 11). Nine others who were not part of the nature group also had tasted the salad; 5 (56%) of these became ill. Of the 21 ill campers, 18 (86%) experienced nausea, 18 (86%) stomach cramps, 17 (81%) vomiting, 11 (52%) headache, 10 (48%) dizziness, 8 (38%) burning in the stomach or mouth; and 6 (29%) diarrhea. Persons became ill .5 to 5.5 hours (mean 3 hours) after eating the pokeweed. Symptoms lasted 1 to 48 hours, with a mean of 24 hours. Eighteen persons were seen in local emergency rooms or physicians' offices. Four of these were hospitalized for 24 to 48 hours for protracted vomiting and dehydration. Food history analysis was done for all 60 persons. Salad was the only food item significantly associated with illness. Twenty (43%) of the 46 persons who ate pokeweed became ill compared with 1 (7%) of 14 who did not eat it (P .01). Moreover, for those who ate the salad, illness was associated with eating at least 1 teaspoonful compared with less than 1 teaspoonful (p=.02). Vomitus analyzed for 7 persons was negative for Staphylococcus aureus. 

There is disagreement about edible parts, season of edibility, and methods of preparation of pokeweed and even about whether the plant should be eaten at all. Indeed, the camp counselor in the Passaic outbreak had been preparing pokeweed salad for many years without apparent ill effects. 

and this

Jaeckle, K. A., Freemon, F. R. 1981. Pokeweed poisoning. South. Med. J., 74: 639-640.

Just google it. It is a book link and Google frowns upon taking whole sections of print from their stacks. 

 and this

In Vitro Antioxidant blah blah blah

What I find fascinating about poke is that it is considered either a green of the highest order or a poison. There is no in between for most people. The scientist sees it differently. They throw things at various and sundry cells just to see what happens. Every PhD had to do a dissertation and every researcher needs something else to research. It was probably a given that they would try this plant out.

I suspect this was one of the early plants that the Euro encountered when they came over the Atlantic. I would venture that it was among the foods served at the first Thanksgiving dinner. There are festivals in celebration of this plant. As cited in from the Poisonous Plants link I did finally manage to find a case of poisoning from eating the greens, but the counselor did not suffer any ill effects nor did over half of those that consumed it. I have eaten it for years. It is delicious. I did not find any citations of poke sallet poisoning in the festivals celebrating it and I sure would love to see the actual case notes from that Passaic case. The other citations I found from the Canadians referred to somebody making a tea from either roots or berries. There is evidence of this plant being used by herbalists in lands other than America. It is cited in "In Vitro" as being used in Iran. There is also a citation in the Canadian link to turkey poults and hogs being poisoned by it, yet its typical vector for being spread around an area is defecation of the seeds by various birds. It is ordinarily found where a bird will perch after consuming the berries and defecating the seeds. I wonder if their system is less likely to break the seed coat and the turkeys more likely to which would release more of the toxin than just the fruit part itself.

This is just skimming the surface some. I might come back and add some more to it, but I have wanted to get this blog entry finished for a while. It deserves some more work, but I have much to do today and I am already being lobbied to get my butt in gear.

Fun, Fun and More Fun

Back earlier in the week when it was contemplated
about goingout and doingstuff
she wasn't feeling exactly great
would you rather me stay back?
no no, fun fun and more fun
ok, so here i am again. Saw a pink and black Harley
last night at the local bar
then a Roothog Barback that I know knew the score
that last shot of Patron did me in. Liquor first then beer
or just stick to the cold malted beverages

Headed out on the town
Feels good after a week of stone, bone and dirt
bloody arms and sore back
liquid muscle relaxer helps, but not in excess
woke up sideways in the bed that we did
I better go easy on this wonderful night

I'd kinda like it to last