Will you won’t you will you won’t you take us to the dance?
Today the Scatter Family Land Schooner sets sail for the wilds of the Olympic Peninsula, where the winds whip westerly and the mountain peaks glisten like gold. (Actually the winds tend to blow toward the east, off the Pacific Ocean, and the mountains, when you can see them through the drizzle and the pelting platitudes, are white with ice and snow. But Mr. Scatter is feeling alliterative this morning.)
This is a land where the crab grow sweet and pure, where the brawny geoducks plant their lurid necks in the sand, where good hot coffee rarely comes from the Land of Starbucks but from thermoses and home-grown oases of dryness and warmth. A place where wool plaid is still a fashion statement and a ramshackle emporium called Swain’s General Store beats the thermal-lined undergarments off of anything Walmart can offer, at least in terms of interesting cool stuff from all sorts of odd corners of the collective imagination.
A place where the Expanded Scatter Family Thanksgiving Feast awaits, and where we wish you well and happiness at your own.
As we cruise up Hood Canal we vow to keep our eyes open for a well-dressed walrus and carpenter prowling on the beach. They seem to have a way with oysters. And we plan to snag a few dozen for ourselves.
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Above: Sir James Tenniel, 1871 illustration from Lewis Carroll’s “The Walrus and the Carpenter.” Wikimedia Commons
November 24th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Father and son in an oyster stew
Father was feeling blue
Father, said son, aren’t you too near the top
Something might happen to you
Just then the cook scooped him up with the spoon
And swallowed him down with a frown
Father swam under a Uneeda biscuit
Just as the son went down.
Happy Thanksgiving to all Scatterers from muw, who will be whipping up her sweet potato rum casserole here on the outer slopes of Mt. Tabor.
November 26th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Hood Canal! Good place to search for seafood. Have a wonderful thanksgiving. Fun to see the Tenniel illustration. Thanks for posting that.
November 27th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Thank you, Martha; I believe we may have met Young Mr. Oyster. A delicious lad.
And, yes, Jeanne, aren’t those Tenniel illustrations great? It seems so much like a British working-class seaside resort town, the kind Mrs. What’s-Her-Name the meat pie lady so longed for in “Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.” In the end we saw no walrus or carpenter on Hood Canal, but we did make our usual stop at the Hama Hama oyster farm and picked up four dozen plus a couple of chunks of smoked salmon. The four dozen oysters, baked, fed five adults (three children wrinkled their noses in disdain) succulently if not completely: Mrs. Scatter grumped that they were too small. Excellent flavor, though; the only problem was none were left over for oysters Rockefeller the next day.
Today we are ensconced high on a hillside in Port Angeles, staring over the strait on a rare sunny day with Vancouver Island visible in the distance. Somewhere below us Black Friday rears its ugly head, making Mr. Scatter think of strange Satanic rites. When did this dismal phrase worm its way into the common parlance? What, for that matter, turns a model into a supermodel (or, as I noticed in the newspaper the other day, a “former supermodel”)? The English language is a strange creature, but not as strange as the creatures who create it. Later today, a trip to the waterfront, where the Younger Large Smelly Boy will climb a wooden tower and ceremonially spit into the ocean (well, it’s salt water, if not yet technically ocean this far eastward).
November 28th, 2009 at 8:31 am
Nice that the oyster is at least temporarily your world Bob. And agree re phrase Black Friday, but how about this for a piece of craziness: there is a photograph in today’s O of a woman ironing (you heard me, IRONING)a plastic bag in order to reuse it. Just how does that reduce the carbon footprint I ask? Does it not take electricity to iron the bag? Can’t her leftovers go into a wrinkled plastic bag? I ask you.
November 28th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
Ironing the plastic bags! I’d be afraid I’d burn them, and they’d melt all over the iron, and then both bag AND iron would be ruined and I’d be dealing with scrap metal and hard plastic, as well.
My problem with the “science” of economics is that it so rarely measures true costs; just bottom lines. What is the cost of the electricity used to iron and reuse the plastic bag versus the cost of just rinsing the bag and reusing it, or of recycling the bag/putting it in the garbage? Getting the whole cost of an action or transaction can be terribly difficult, and economists rarely attempt it. Is it cheaper/more energy-efficient to sell your 10-year-old minivan and its 17 miles a gallon for scrap and buy a 45-mile-a-gallon Prius to take its place, or to just keep driving the van for another eight years and THEN replace it? How do the cost and environmental impact of the electricity that’s integral to the Prius’s operation measure against the higher MPG rating? How does one figure the net environmental impact? (Note that I don’t use the phrase “carbon footprint,” which seems to be reaching that unfortunate point of religious meaninglessness: a ritual incantation that’s uttered for spiritual reassurance, its original meaning lost in a wash of feel-goodness, in particular the feel-goodness of moral indignation.)
I also saw a story about a fellow who was building an energy-efficient 4,000 square foot home. How energy-efficient can a 4,000 square foot home be? Isn’t that a lot of raw material?
Mr. Scatter is feeling contrarian today, and he is missing the word “conservationist.” It implies a sense of balance; an acceptance of environmental matters as a process that requires thought and tradeoffs and sometimes sacrifice rather than automatic religious or political reaction; and an understanding that actions have long-term consequences.
Mr. Scatter thinks the concepts of conservation and long-term benefit would be handy things on Wall Street, too. But Mr. Scatter is not an economist.
November 28th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
thank god, although some of my best friends are economists…
November 29th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Haha! I was just thinking “thank god” too. We have spent our time in Oysterville - not enough. One February night laying on the sand dunes, staring at all the stars, the weather as pleasant as can be. No city lights to interfere with celestial gazing. And speaking of “catch phrase” English, I almost skipped buying a new camera on Black Friday because the salesman said “at the end of the day” *twice*. I enjoy your writing a lot. I know it’s your profession, but it’s done quite well and you seem to enjoy pleasing our visual ears. Best to you and your family. Do I know your wife, the Henry James fan? Well, enough BlackBerry hunt and peck with thumbnails. Cheers
November 30th, 2009 at 9:27 am
Hmmm … all right, is that “thank god” because I escaped a life in the dismal science, or “thank god” because I obviously don’t understand a thing about even the rudiments of economics and had better just stick to the artsy stuff?
Jeanne, I haven’t been in Oysterville in far too long. You probably know it was the hometown of Willard Espy, the wordmonger and light versifier who created the Espygram and other linguistic whimsies.
And, yes, it’s true: Mrs. Scatter’s secret identity is mild-mannered reporter Laura Grimes, chronicler of that great series “The Henry James Procrastinations: How I Wrestled With Great Literature on the Bus.” She is also general manager of the internationally renowned Third Angle New Music Ensemble, and mother of two Large Smelly Boys. But all of that’s a secret.