Did you see the hands on that girl?

Dee, brother John Jr. and sister Donna, at Means Rest, Pleasan Valley, MD

It is said that you can tell the eventual size of a growing dog by the size of its paws when a puppy. Here, we noted on our recent Maryland trip, in an old snapshot of Denise at age about 12 that she had the outsized hands of her father, John Means.

We know, her friends and loved ones, that Dee grew into the hands nicely, and they compliment her overall being. They don't look big now in her current proportions.

But her Dad has always had to bear his mitts as potential bludgeons. They are kind hands and expressive, but they are what they are. When he is photographed his hands are his main characteristics.

They appear to be awesome fists, hanging unclenched at his legs, that would rather be dealing with wagon-loads of baled hay, or, 'Time's Up, Buddy!' lights to punch out.

They hang at the end of his muscular arms like the arrows that go with the peace sprig in the American symbol.

When Big John shakes your hand, your hand is enveloped and disappears always unscathed, thank heavens!

Why must everyone take me so seriously?

OK, we've been to the fraternal orders where certain serious hats are worn.

But those serious days are over. Serious anachronisms have been put aside.

Yet when I don the woodpecker hat people right away assume I am being deadly serious.

NOT SO!

The correction is: I was once startled, not frightened, by a Pileated woodpecker in the WI northwoods. Out jogging on a wooded backroad, I heard a peculiar bird-call at my left in the trees, at the margin of the road. Jogging on, I looked to the side and saw what I thought to be a prehistoric bird, huge wingspan, flying even-stride with me and progressing from tree to tree staying abreast of me as I ran. This species, the Pileated, I later found out, is very rare and nearing extinction.

The large, bright red-crested bird flew alongside of me for about a quarter of a mile. I took it to be mystical omen, another meaningful event of the sort I had in those magical surroundings. (See http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2009/05/it-was-getting-dark-in-those-woods.html)

Of course, I found a felt woodpecker mask and began wearing it, but not, NOT in such a serious way as people seem to think.

Ex: I keep a precariously balanced stack of books at my bedside. Indeed, I do sometimes wear the woodpecker mask when I read abed, but believe me, though I consider myself woodpeckerian in my digging for nourishment from the bark of that tree of books, I ONLY WEAR THE GARMENT IN JEST.

At the public library, in semi-frustration, I've given up wearing the woodpecker hat. I'm tired of being taken so stone-cold serious by my fellow Waukeshans. Now, with usual smiles, I slip within in the racks of books, and at the check-out desk I only sometimes wish I had the mask on to keep other library users from tittering into their mittens about my odd given looks.

A Pileated Woodpecker

click to enlarge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pileated_Woodpecker

Maryland Crab Feed

Zach Means

holds aloft a Chesapeake Bay hard-shell crab,

another in a long series of creatures he is to consume

in the lingering happy hours assembled on the Means Rest front porch in Pleasant Valley, MD

with clustered family members, traditionally sitting around a long groaning board

of comestibles, shell-bearing and otherwise.

Partaking of such gifts of the sea is a science studied not by this midlander editor, who is used to other species of larger crab, such as the Alaskan King, where one gets chunks of meat of a size that can be handled more easily. (He gets them rarely, due to the price.) But the editor is let off by this eastern shore family of pickers and leg suckers, for he is not a blood Means. His daughter, however, Erin and her friend Patrick dug right in and acquited themselves admirably. See later post.

This crustacean festival was merrily held earlier this month, in celebration of the 60th wedding anniversary of patriarch and matriarch John and Jean Means. To our knowledge, nobody ate 60 crabs, but someone might have. An ample number, 4 bushels, were parceled in, and many eaters' guts were filled, and devourees'spilled. Part of the fun seems to be in seeing how much extraneous matter can cling to one's oblivious fingers or mouthal regions. A veritable H. Fielding Tom Jones scenario.

Sister-in-law Doreen, Zach's mom, shown to the side here smiles hungrily after eating only her approximately 20th crab.

Zach, her college son, a shot-putter and hammer-thrower, illustrated at the top , handles that crab as though it weighed only a few ounces. Which it did.

More on a post to follow.

And the garden gnomes shall save her?

Jane Vollmer's 'magnificent' adventure -

and her pickled fish recipe:

Jane Vollmer, now 84, spent a night in the cold woods last week in back of her empty-nest home across from the Menomonee River north of Marinette.

She'd bundled up in the evening to take a solitary walk and admire the fall foliage. She slipped on a log, fell and broke her shoulder. She couldn't right herself; too much pain. And her knees, surgically repaired, couldn't bear the strain of righting her. So she drifted in and out of consciousness the entire night in the chilled north woods. The rescuers summoned via 911 by finder son Alan, said Jane's body temperature had dropped to 54 degrees. Another hour and she would have been dead, they reckoned.

But the Vollmers are a very tough family.

Jane bore 11 children who were often more than a handful. Her rugged and feisty husband, my beloved friend, Bill died 19 years to the day that she took this nearly fatal fall. We SRNers were reminiscing about the Vollmers last night with our friends John and Cindy Helt. Fall foliage figured into that, too, for we were there for a fish dinner at the Fox & Hounds restaurant and then to spend pleasant hours with them in their Hogsback Road cabin in the town of Erin. Helt is the new pastor at St Paul's UCC near their Hogsback Rd. home. (See http://raccoonnews.blogspot.com/2009/08/sure-wish-i-had-that-car-now.html and search other entries in the SRN under 'Vollmer'.)

Our history with the Vollmers goes back over 27 years, when John became the minister, fresh out of seminary, at the Vollmer's old church, Friedens UCC, at 13th & Juneau MIlw. Thus, when I told the Helts about Jane Vollmer's mishap we were on common ground.

Sometime way back, Jane wrote out in pencil on a scrap of paper her recipe for pickled fish for Cindy, and last night while we were talking about her miraculous survival of this accident, Cindy said she'd once gotten the best recipe from Jane for pickled fish that she still uses! She immediately fetched it from her kitchen recipe archives and loaned it to us so it could be included in the raccoon news. It, below, is an historical document:

click to enlarge

Bill would catch the fish and Jane would fry them in a big cast iron skillet. Wall -Eyes fresh from the Menomonee River across their road, Twin Island. The fishing family (all 13) caught so many fish that they sometimes pickled them in jars.

We spoke to Jane today about this. She is already home from the hospital and recuperating. She remembers writing that recipe out for Cindy so many years ago, and her heart was warmed to learn that her recipe is still in use.

Having told Jane we wanted to do this, we pass the recipe along to our SRN readers for their own enjoyment via this instrument, with Jane's blessing.


Jane related to me this morning on the telephone that a nearby neighbor has a collection of garden gnomes, and a friendly dog who often keeps a watch on Jane's comings and goings. "Wouldn't you know it, that darn dog never came around when I needed him!" But she imagined (?) that the gnomes were dancing around her, making her angry. All through the night they kept at it.


.........................................


This is an old photo of the Vollmer family. It has appeared in the SRN before. Jane was found in her nearly expired condition by son Alan, middle front row. Alan is the Vollmer's youngest. He lives close-by.

Worth watching (again, if you've seen it)

This morning I clicked on the NY Times per custom and found another video clip of an old Dick Cavett show doing his fourth and final segment of a long interview with actor Richard Burton. This one deals with Burton's drinking problem, and gives his Camelot memorization of the pulling of the sword from the stone, thus realizing his character was to be the rightful king of England.

When I watched this approximately 3o minute segment - attached below - I was displeased that the video ran with some hesitations, but I waited them out and they rectified themselves, and it was worth it. I so much admired Welshman Richard Burton, yet was never fond of Cavett, seeing him as an overly self-effacing interviewer with a too cute smile. But Cavett is tolerable in this, and catching more of Burton's gifted stagecraft, and his heartfelt advice to fellow recovering drinkers ( we have many friends and family members thus afflicted) makes this a more than worthy SRN inclusion.

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/09/richard-burton-a-regretful-au-revoir/

Congratulations Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2009

It is a red letter day!

His remarks this morning:

http://www.c-span.org/Watch/Media/2009/10/09/HP/R/24121/Pres+Barack+Obama+Awarded+2009+Nobel+Peace+Prize.aspx

They ARE connected

Maj. Gaynelle O'Neil, USA, ret'd, sends the raccoon news some jarred jellies from her home state of Oregon. Now that her long military obligation is concluded,
she unpacks her memorabilia, including a jar of schoolyard marbles about which she will write something soon, and settles into a 100% unharried & unsoldierly lifestyle. A lifestyle that has her making jams and jellies. The one spread on the fresh bread above is blackberry. From Oregon.

Nel gets into the kitchen practice while thinking of her grandmother who blessed her loved ones with fare like this, and taught Nel how to prepare it.

In the spirit of that, we spread the jelly with one of our own grandmother's table knives, in service in our own family going back to the turn of the 20th century, or earlier. The knife is silverplate and is rusting around the edges. We use it and wash it tenderly.


The knife, I guess, is feeling right, spreading something like Gaynelle's (grandmother's) jelly.

"All things are connected!" Chief Seattle. Duwamish