Farm Centennial

The Farm, outside of tiny Clarendon, TX, celebrated the centennial of the Harrison family having moved it---piecemeal---from a second location to its current spot.

It was a big party this year, as evidenced by the number of cars representing the array of visitors:

What can a person say about this kind of party?

I guess this person, me, will struggle with things to say. It feels like it's been years for me since the Centennial Reunion.

We made the drive like usual--two days from Long Beach to an hour southeast of Amarillo, a pretty straight shot on I-40 (once you get there). We stayed at the El Rancho (again) and cruised into panhandle Texas near dinnertime the next day. From there it was a steady flow of beer and starting fires (for the briskets) and kilns (for the glazed pottery to make room for the bisqued work that needed to be glazed and fired). Having just arrived, and already in the weeds with work, and all being flooded with beer.

Going to bed late and waking up with a headache while dozens of people pass through where we're trying to sleep (the new bunkhouse that Corrie and her brother Peter worked on regularly the last few summers). "Uggh...look at these two...still cuddling," I could hear as I tried to block out the sound and sunlight.

Cooking. Lots of cooking. As always I appreciate the need and I like doing the work, and as always it was rewarding. Briskets, slicing briskets, cooking all manner of things for dozens and dozens of people. On one of the Big Days, Chef Gonzo himself (Mr. Eames) and I blasted through a hundred burgers, worked six bags of fries in ovens and I even made my famous green pasta for a Texan audience (I brought my homemade pesto from, eh, home). Once the food was done, I shed my sweaty and greasy tanktop and re-donned my short-sleeve button up and still managed to look like an insane person:

Seeing the cousins and second cousins interacting was great. All the different combos were classic, especially Camille and Colton, born on the same day ten years apart:

My niece Brooklyn took a special shine to me, likely stemming from the time we got to chill back in May, and she kept at me with a special attention. Here she is taking off with my water bottle, one of my never-let-this-go affectations I afforded myself:

My mom, Grandma Kate to the kids, got Cass a kite a while back (between 14 and 26 months) and we finally got it kicking ass. In the picture below, the kite is up in the upper right corner while Cassius is down on the lower left...it's pretty epic:

The time is always so magical, like being transplanted to the early twentieth century, or the late nineteenth century, in rural Texas to made a go of it. But it's not a fake transplant, it real. Very real, as the AC doesn't work and its relentlessly hot, and the bugs are fierce, and the laundry needs t be hung up, and supper needs to get made, and dishes pile up with alarming frequency.

At least you get to get into chaaracter:

This year I left early, needing to fly out of Amarillo for a conference. Corrie and I got to leave the kids with Ron and Carol, the former of which had foot surgery the day before my flight. Carol had a mending Ron and two Starling kids to look after for a single night, so Corrie and I could get away and spent a single night in a hotel in Amarillo. THE FIRST TIME WE SPENT A NIGHT AWAY FROM CAMILLE, and only the second we spent away from Cass. The first real date night in 8 years.

I flew from Amarillo to LAX, and took a cab from the airport to the hotel where I stayed in downtown Los Angeles. I didn't even make it home until four days later, by which point my feet were a little worse for wear, since I had been wearing the same pair of sandals since mid-June:

I took no shoes to Texas.

They're also worse for wear, but I enjoyed looking like Huck Finn all the time. Having to wash my feet each night before bed was annoying (and I didn't do it every night...eww). I love the sandals, but I'm glad to be back into some real shoes.

Happy Centennial Harrison Farm! 

First Dates are Fun

Before we realized that the fever that Camille had the previous day (that was subsequently gone) and the tiny rash that soon covered her entire torso presented itself meant she had scarlet fever, we did some stuff. It's been a Daddy Daycare summer.

On the day in question above, before we learned that she was dealing with scarlet fever, we had all sorts of stuff planed. One was normal swim, a second was a new summer swim camp with possible lunch outing, and later there was a yripto the art supply store and even gymnastics in the afternoon.

First (regular) swim went well (as always). But summer swim camp was too much. Originally, Cass was supposed to be there with her, which probably would have made it a bit easier. As parents, we were told we couldn't be around the swimmers, that we would need to take our places in the shaded seating area across from the pool. I'm dropping my four-year-old off at what looks like a swim race and then going THIS far away?

She's there, I swear. She didn't do well. I'm chopping it up to a combo of the situation and the remnants of her fever the previous day. She was in such good spirits that it all seemed like not a ludicrous idea.

Anywho, afterwards, we went to a diner for lunch, both had breakfast, and I realized it was our first meal at a sitdown restaurant ever. It was out first date:

She just corrected me as I typed this: "No daddy, it was our first lunch date."

Well, I had a magical time. 

Other Daddy Daycare activities had centered on local things, like the library complex downtown: it has a big playground, a ton of books inside, places to play with Lego, places to color, and even activities and games outside, along with free lunch if you're there at the right time. 

Being a kid, am I right?

Noodle Time!

I met for the first time a few weeks back at the reunion one of my cousin's wife. She is Chinese and shared with me some of her spicy noodles that she'd been eating. She was generous and excited when I accepted her offer to sample the noodles. When I showed my appreciation for how awesomely hot they were---profuse sweating for half an hour---she went to their room and brought me some stuff. 

The first was this big bag of yellow gear:

The Liuzhou Luosi style noodles is a river-snail broth, very hot, with fermented bamboo shoots and crisp tofu squares. In reality, the broth is both river-snail and pork bone, but you get the idea. Would you like the spicy river-snail noodles?

Umm...yes!

Inside that big yellow bag is a bag of rice noodles, and the following other smaller bags:

The directions go something like: cook the rice noodles until mostly done. When nearly there, get another two-cups of water boiling and add all of the smaller packs. Then drain the finished noodles and add them to the working broth. It was two servings, Camille wouldn't sit next to me because she said it smelled bad (that was the fermented bamboo shoots), and I felt like I had to put forth a heroic effort to finish them and not stink up the house. The spice is not like a Mexican hot sauce, not like a Louisiana hot sauce (fermented peppers), nor was it like a Thai chili heat. It was Szechuan pepper, which is more like a tingling. But I'm sure there were traditional hot peppers used somewhere.

Holy hell, it was good.

But that wasn't all I was gifted.

They also gave me a box of "Hot Dry Noodles:"

I didn't know what to make of it, but I accepted it and thanked her profusely. Inside were two individual servings: two bags of rice, two bags of chili oil, two bags of sesame puree mix, two bags of seasoned broth, and two bags of fermented green bean pieces.

Like the other stuff, you cook the noodles, drain them, and start putting in the stuff. The bags are numbered and I did it that order: chili oil, sesame, seasoned sauce, fermented green beans. They were dry, because rice noodles will absorb a ton of liquid. Normally, these are the kinds of noodles you cook, then drain, then pend a few minutes rinsing with cold water so you can handle them when they'rte cooled down and no longer crazy sticky with starch. 

This dish was also SO good, but not nearly as spicy as the river-snail noodles.

Now I'm looking for these, or reasonable facsimiles...

4th of July 2024

We've got Daddy Daycare going strong this year with Camille---Cass is in a summer program, so it's just me and Cam. You know, fun stuff, like light reading:

 But we also paint in the mornings. Which got me thinking about, or appreciating, some of the best American painters from the past. I was helped by my phone app, reminding me about Frederic Edwin Church. 

efui

It was here that I narrowed my focus and decided to compile a lust of 5 incredible American masters of 19th century. Why then? Why not? I like Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, and on this, out country's Independence Day, I was thinking about the first artistic movement from this country: the Hudson River School. Monumental landscapes? Peering portraiture? Allegory?  (I also didn't want to get into Hopper and O'Keefe today)

Anyway, here are five American painters and some of their masterpieces.

Winslow Homer, "Gulf Stream":

Frederic Edwin Church, "Rainy Season in the Tropics":

Albert Bierstadt, "Valley of the Yosemite":

Mary Cassatt, "Breakfast in Bed":

John Singer Sargent, "Repose":

Happy 4th!

Sherwood Reunion 2024

Family reunions! Get togethers! Meeting cousins for the second time ever (in some cases) and for the first time in at least 10 years! We had it all. Well...almost. My brother Dan couldn't make the trip, but overall it was great. I also didn't take too many pictures---trying to "be in the moment" people call it.

But of course I took some pictures. Like of my kids with my dad. 

My dad's the fifth of ten kids, all of whom made it, just not all on the same day. That in itself was pretty impressive.

This year the shenanigans was held in Denver. Well, Westminster, out HWY 36 to Boulder, but the Denver environs. This made a strategic sense: some siblings drove in from Tennessee, some drove in from New Mexico, and some drove in from Minnesota. Some of us flew in from LA, while others flew in from other places, like Montana and Maine.

Also, my dad's wife is immuno-compromised, so picking a centralized location made it possible for him to make appearances (he told me he would have skipped it, otherwise).

The logistics of the whole deal means that the ten years since the last one makes a certain sense. Now, Corrie's family---with their big reunions every other year---shouldn't be the exemplar...they have more space and a comfort level with being all up in each other's business.

Anywho, in the last ten years, I settled into my job, Corrie birthed two kids, started and maintained her own firm, and beat cancer. It's been...it's been life, yo.

This year we stayed with Beth, Corrie's cousin. Actually, we stayed at her house in Denver, which she uses for an AirBnB. Right now, she can't, because the secondary residence in the basement has an asbestos issue, and now everything's up in the air. But Beth was gone, where she generally lives and works now, a few hours away. We had a whole, cute little house all to ourselves, for no cost. We did some tree-trimming and other yardwork activities during the short time that Beth did show up, and that was pretty cool for those of us who haven't hard yards in a few decades.

The evening skies were awesome:

But it turns out that living in Long Beach has wussified us: the mid-90s temps was TOO hot for us, but the daily thunderstorm and downpour was pretty cool.

Steamy park over from Beth's

Seeing my dad's family is generally pretty great. It always seems like my dad's group (me and Dan) lived and grew up away from everyone else, while they all tended to have spent holidays together and traveled together, and had many, many shared memories.

This trip was neat in that all of the Bob & Peg great-grandbabies were there. There was Cass and Camille, then My cousin Jake's son Jackson (who got along famously with Cass, as they're just over a year apart, and since they live in SaMo, we should be able to arrange playdates), my cousin Mike's son Jimmy, and my cousin Dan's son Asa. So far, those are the five: Cass, Camille, Jackson, Jimmy, and Asa.

Most of my cousins were there, too, and we all enjoyed trying to get caught up with the past ten years. My cousin who was in China last time was here with his wife. Another cousin's wife is a representative in the Montana state legislature (D, so that was nice). Another cousin is headed off to Iowa to teach in special ed, and another lives in Portland, Maine.

It was an eclectic, intellectual group. Hell, I have a 23-year-old cousin I still haven't met, which shocked her mom, my dad's sister. I heard many stories and told many more.

It was a special time and trip, and I'm glad I kept my phone away. Some people got pictures, and I'll put some up if I get some I like.

We flew home a few days after it ended, getting to spend some extra time with my dad and Beth, and having a whole new sense of kinship.

More Map Shenanigans, Part 2

Every time we drive on I-10 and pass through Beaumont, CA, with about 160 miles to go to Arizona, I think back to myself and remember driving to see Tony in Louisiana, driving from Austin. On that drive, you take US 290 southeast, skirt Houston and meet up with I-10 again, then head through Beaumont, TX as the last big metro area in Texas before you reach the Louisiana-Texas state line. So I start to imagine, in those moments on that hot California desert stretch of interstate, about a Beaumont to Beaumont drive. Are those the biggest same-named cities along the same freeway? Maybe, but I finally got to Google Maps to take a look:

1500+ miles? Okay, nice. I still wasn't sure about places in the US with he same name, and after a quick Internet search I realized that Arlington, TX and Arlington, VA have the same name and have a specific cultural cachet, so far apart are they?

Okay, 1300+ miles. But really, while the Rangers play baseball in Arlington, and Jerry-world, where the Cowboys play, is also in Arlington, but Arlington, TX is really DFW, and Arlington, VA is more closely associated with Washington, DC, so really this iteration of Arlington to Arlington is more like Dallas to DC. So...

And then I thought, sheesh, what about Portlands? Portland, OR and Portland, ME. I didn't need any Internet search to think about those two cities, the two as a kid I always lumped together because I was fascinated with the same-name phenomena. I knew they'd be farther than either of the last two pairs:

Okay, almost 3200 miles. Sounds about right. My real takeaway from that part of my looking was: Wait, is Portland Oregon north of Portland Maine? This is a bet I would have lost. Check out the circled latitudes below:

There's a whole state above Portland, Oregon. I guess there's a while state above Portland, Maine, but out west it's a different state. In general, the western states are further north than most Americans understand. I'm always looking to unpack that a little more...

Happy Birthday to my Son

Today's the day itself: eight years ago Corrie and I gained a roommate. My son Cassius turns 8 years old today. We went to the beach yesterday and the day before we had his birthday party at the compact amusement park called Adventure City. I mentioned it before with one of the Daddy Daycare posts.

We invited and brought some of his friends, and a great time was had:

One of our guests was Moses, a boy from Cass's school and another one of our neighborhood kids. Olivia, an older friend also came, and the three of them were getting along famously:

Two of the other invitees had other obligations at either the last minute or unbeknownst to us until the last minute. 

Adventure City is also a great place for the kids Camille's age:

I ended up riding lots of rides with Camille, as the other kids ran around from ride to ride to petting zoo to ride. Camille mostly did the same, but needed a different level of supervision.

Cass was born early but eventually caught up to his friends in size, and has since lapped most of them. He's tall, beautiful, super smart, loves animals and is one of the most compassionate youngsters I've ever met.

I love you, Cass!

He tries to dodge the camera...

Wants to look serious

Another day signifying another year around the sun. Much love adventures to come!