I am sorely tempted to tell stories.
I have a big account that is a problem.
oh it has a host of problems.
too many cooks. way way too many cooks
with too many hats to wear
there is no clear line of demarcation
s between who does what and why
a 20 million dollar barn
there used to be magic mushrooms that grew there
and now I have to try to figure out how to kill the fairy ring
so they can trod down the Event Lawn
so I can regrow it again
a thousand dollars here and a thousand dollars there
who's counting?
i read of growing orchids in the desert
the hanging gardens of Babylon
what sorry bastard had to make them grow?
what wizards of green had to muster up their best spells to make trees grow
where they throw all manner of BS at them
the event lawn of Central Park gets a lot of traffic and trash too
man, quit your bitching
Human wheels spinning in our orbits
Each of us a hub of life extending
I'm going to have to admit
My spin and sparkle don't always have the desired results.
But what can one do but keep rolling the stone?
We roll the bones.
We pays our money.
We takes our chances.
I can hope for you.
It's my job.
I have a gift of encouragement!
Be brave. Fear not.
Do it. Give it your all.
Whatever you turn your hands to do.
I am my own little wheel.
Spinning in the silent crash
Trading electrons in a shared orbit
The chemical equation persists
Half a dozen comments I typed and deleted
half a life time spent wondering where I was
Never expected this, not a bit of it.
Seems we never do. If your life turned out just like you planned it.
Be sure to share the recipe.
Mine sure didn't turned out like I thought it would and I don't think I am finished yet.
Miles to go yet and time
well it isn't on my side any more. On the back side of forty I can at least imagine
the finish line.
seen some go before me
some well before their time
hearts I hope to see again
Some old and gray and some in the fullness of life
strange as it may seem
feels like I just started
I see a father running hard for memories and life
I see a father walking in halls of power
trying to do the right thing
and me a father
trying to be what I figure I am supposed to be
I didn't know, I am not sure I do now.
Broken windows. Eyes of stars.
Cistercians on an island across a sea of sand
mine were certainly not silent
1500 Years. Why yes.
A long time ago I wrote another line
of a green tree and vine
again I find myself entwined
I welcome it. Please wrap yourself on me.
Carry on. The miles and time unwind.
I do not not think there is an end to them.
Run rabbit run. And take the sparrow with you. Tell the snake to crawl away lest they also fall under my scythe of raining death. Oppenheimer sat down beside the glass sand of atomic apocalypse and he cried at the work of cunning minds and skillful hand. Fear of the yawning chasm overtook his heart staring at the chaos. All they told me to do was make grass green. They didn't tell me about tater beetles and sarin gas.
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?
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?
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: WikiWild PantryDon't Eat Poke SaladAnnual 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.
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.
there is a coal on my shoulder
someone make it go away
with a knuckle and a fist it might
too tired to care
my thunderbird
drives like a dream
slide over here and let me put my arm around you
going too fast
make them have wings
i was here
and then I was gone
you kept on moving
that was to be expected
I sincerely hope it all went well
earl breaks it down for me
scruggs he's gone too
the possum isn't or wasn't nearly as photogenic
as chesney and dr dre
save me from what might be
no, no, no, I will still be over here
with what I have in hand
qwerty at the ready
seventy years ago
over there in Berlin and
where were they?
hurt me all the time
allll the goddamn time
i hope you know this will go down on your permanent record
oh yeah?
did i happen to mention I was impressed
i forget for what 8 was for
kiss off
at the sound of the grinding gears
i fired it up
don't stand too near
you might wear some of it home
hauling nine thousand gallons
where is the paradise?
i think you lied
it is not here or there
there is just the now
same as it ever was
it flew away
and I ran away too
every time I closed my eyes
fare thee well
I heard a widow say one time when she was sitting in the back yard looking around
"The grass keeps growing." Life had kept on moving while she was dealing with the big sad.
Everybody gets sad, it is a fact of human existence. What we do with it and how we deal with it is up to us.
Last time I visited this page I was starting to realize that what I thought was there was not.
That what I wanted and what she wanted were and are two entirely different things. That can be a shock.
I had to let it go. I had to step back and look around at all the other stuff of a relationship.
Do we actually get along? Do we enjoy each other's company? Are we good for each other?
I can honestly say "no" to all of those questions. It wasn't fun all the time as a matter of fact there were some that were genuinely worried about me when they saw pictures of me. From across the ocean somebody saw the sadness behind my eyes. That was probably 6 months ago, before I finally said, "You want me out? Fine, I am gone." That wasn't the first time she had said it, but that time I took her up on it. I made it stick when she called me about fifteen minutes down the road and I made it stick again when I came back to get the rest
of my stuff. I gave in later. I gave in when she said, "Come see me". Maybe I had to go back one more time. Maybe I needed reminders of why I left. It is still hard for me to let someone go. It isn't as though there aren't others out there that want my time and my body and brain. There are lots of fish in the sea and apparently they like my hook.
I like flowers. Growing turf for football, soccer, golf or cows requires all the brain power of a gnat. Dirt+water+sun+some sundry elements/ leafy green material= Turf. Yeah, sure the golf course goes to great lengths to present a table top in the form of a green to confound lowly humans into breaking their putter into pieces so that they will buy another one, but they have a whole barn full of toys/equipment to fool you into believing that it requires a degree to run the place. The lady who owns one of the most exclusive private clubs in Texas, daughter to the man who established Colonial has exactly three fellows of Hispanic/Latino ethnicity who combined might have fifteen minutes of formal instruction in the art of turfgrass cultivation. I asked the man when we went on tour if he had problems with migratory birds bothering the greens or fairways looking for grubs or other insects. His reply was yes it happens occasionally, but it really was not much of an issue. I inquired as to his method of excluding these federally protected species of avian attackers of good golf. "Oh, I just tie the dog between two trees for a few days and then they leave." Yeah, it requires some serious brain power to grow grass. Flowers on the other hand will confound the most dedicated of gardeners. As if they were bent on a suicidal deathwish they receive our loving attention with all the regard of a catatonic patient. Coddling, coercion, cajoling in any measure will garner me nothing with some of the more recalcitrant ones. Some survive and even thrive as a means to spite me. "Oh you ignore me now! I will show you, you sorry sonofabitch! I am gonna bloom my ass off! Take that!" They perturb and intrigue me. They never cease to surprise me. Grass is easy, corn is easy, flowers are hard.
