Sink To Soup To Song

 

This is my view of the sink when I'm using it. That's my compost bucket which has rusted through several times but Mr. Moon somehow patches it and don't ask me how. Mr. Moon Magic, perhaps. 
He's a magic man? 
But I just think that is the prettiest sink ever and I love the color so much. It honestly brings me pleasure to just stand at it. How lucky I am! I remember back around 1977 when my first husband and I lived in a shack (there is no other word to describe it) which had no running water although we had an iron hand-pump out back. I had several metal wash pans that came with the house and I'd pump water into them and wash dishes in one, rinse them in the other, and then lay the clean, wet dishes on a towel on a bench someone had built there. There was room for the washing pans too. We did not HAVE to live in a house with no plumbing but we were the back-to-the-land sort of hippies, or at least as back-to-the-land as we understood it to be. We had an outhouse, too. And Lord, was the shack house cold. Insulation had not been invented when it was built. It was made of pine and you could see the ground beneath the floors between a few boards and light from outside between cracks in the walls. We did have electricity but we got our heat from a wood stove. 
It's a wonder we didn't die in a fire in that place. It did eventually burn down when a person renting it decided to plug in a window unit AC which was way too much to ask of the wiring. Rather unbelievably, neither of the two people living there died but, being drug dealers, they had all their money in cash which burned up along with all their other possessions. 
I know I've told this story already but it's a great story and explains a lot about why I am so damn grateful for things like running water and ecstatically grateful for hot running water and central heat and air. 
Oh- I forgot to say that Hank was about seven months old when we moved in. 
Boy oh boy. But we survived! And no one got chilblains! In fact, it wasn't such a horrible experience and I still have vivid memories of the way the front and back doors sounded and felt when I closed them. They were built of the same heart pine as the rest of the house, sturdy and thick as castle walls. The band my husband was in at that time often rehearsed there and I cannot for the life of me remember why. Perhaps we had the largest house of anyone in the band. This is possible although there were only two very small bedrooms, a kitchen, a living area, and a hallway. No bathroom! Or perhaps we were far enough out in the country that no one would complain about the noise. 
Who knows? Not me.

It's been a stay-at-home day but not a particularly lazy one. Glen asked me this morning if I'd like to drive over to the coast area to get stone crab claws and oysters to bring home, and stop at the amazing plant nursery Just Fruits, to see if they have any other fruit trees we want. I did want to go but just not today. I had been looking forward to a day spent at home and suggested we go tomorrow after an appointment with Ms. Jalisa which will probably be the last scheduled one. And so that is now the plan. 
Also, I've really been wanting to make the NYT's app's Best Black Bean soup and that takes all day long because black beans are loathe to give up their structural integrity and go all soft. The recipe, which is a very, very good one, fucks up in one regard- it claims the beans will soften in 1-2 hours and that's just a lie. It even says not to presoak the beans and not doing so adds hours to the time it takes to cook them. But I am aware of this now and include that in my estimate of how long it's going to take to make the soup. I generally end up transferring the beans to my pressure cooker at some point and today was no different. After four hours of cooking, they were not even in the same neighborhood as soft but I pressure cooked them for half an hour and that did the trick. The soup is still on the stove, simmering at a very low temperature. 

Two very meaningful things happened today, one to Glen, one to me. 
One of the daughters of Anne-Helene, the beautiful and wonderful Norwegian woman who lived with our family for awhile in the late eighties and who died back in June of last year, sent me a Facebook request a few days ago which I instantly accepted. I woke up this morning to a message from her that was so beautiful and loving that I could not even begin to take it in. This daughter and her sister had heard stories about me and my family their entire lives and after Anne's death, they found my blog and I'm sure did a search on it for their mother's name and were able to read the things I wrote about their mother. Or, as the daughter wrote in her message this morning, "The best mum in the world." 
Sometimes I love the internet so damn much. I will be in touch with this daughter and her sister too, if she wants, and tell them stories of what I remember about Anne-Helene, which is a lot. And all of them are filled with love. 

And the thing that happened to Glen was that a woman he'd known years before he ever met me called him to tell him that her father had died (at the age of 97!) and she wanted to tell Glen that her dad wanted Glen to have his woodworking tools. 
What an honor! 
The father had helped Glen build the cradle he made for Lily back in 1985 and let him use his wood shop and tools then. Glen hasn't talked to him in decades but he somehow made such an impression that he made sure Glen would get these tools. 
I just went to take a picture of the cradle and this is what I found. 

Yes, that's Maurice employing her ET method of camouflage. 
That cradle could easily last another two-hundred years. 

Pretty crazy that both of those things happened today. And yet, they did. Voices from the past. Loving voices of the past. 
Both of us graced and gifted by them.

Bruce Springsteen has written a new anthem, as only Bruce Springsteen can do. Years ago I realized that that is what he does and he does it like no one else because his soul and his heart are deeply embedded in each one. 
Look. There is no one like Bruce Springsteen. Ask anyone who's been to at least one of his concerts and they'll tell you that those concerts are life-altering, mind-blowing, expectation-shattering experiences. 
I've been to two. The first one I went to, which I believe was in 1979, left me realizing that there are people among us who are truly of a different realm. Later on, I began to think of him as a rock and roll Bodhisattva. 
Look. I don't have the words. He's Bruce Springsteen and no one else ever was or is or ever will be. 

The point here is- he wrote a song about ICE in Minneapolis on Saturday, recorded it on Sunday and released it yesterday. He names names and there is no pussyfooting about. Bruce Springsteen doesn't mess with that shit.

Go ahead, Trump. Spew your tainted, sour, bile. 

You can lie but artists will never not call you out. 

Woody Guthrie

Enough.

Love...Ms. Moon