Guy Fawkes and fruitcake

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Tomorrow (Nov. 5) is the end of Daylight Savings Time for the year. The darkness is not just rising, it has arrived.

Nov. 5 is also Guy Fawkes Day, of which more below.

Three words

In her delightful illustrated book, Principles of Uncertainty, Maira Kalman talks about “apartment collections,” things found on windowsills or walls, “tangible evidence of history, memory, longing, delight.”

Such evocative words! Let’s examine those last three.

Memory

We are made of the dust of memory, our own and that of the cosmos. The elements that form our bones and brains were birthed billions of years ago in the cauldron of the emerging universe. Today our bones hum with memory, the rhythm of the sea that was our home, the rhythm of the weather, the rhythm of the heartbeats of our ancestors, down to us through the millennia.

Memory wakens when we sleep. Memory forms and reforms us. We remember, we anticipate, we act.

Unexpected peace on a windowsill. We see these little vases and we remember comfort, longing, delight. Photo © Fran Gardner

Longing

Longing, too, goes back over generations, to the beginnings of our race. We all long for the same things, starting with food, shelter and safety. After those needs are satisfied, we yearn for one more thing: connection.

Think of all the ways we connect: with nature, with words, with pets, the wind, the rain, water of all kinds. With music, with sunlight.

Sunflowers are symbols of longing, yearning for the sun. The massive oak beyond captures longing in its warm branches. Photo © Fran Gardner

But mostly, we connect with other human beings.

At first, we search for ourselves in others, a reflection of our own worth.

As we mature, we go beyond our own reactions. We learn to see others as fully formed humans, not just appendages of our own egos. And as we realize these connections, our lives unfold in the richest ways imaginable.

We connect with people who share our lives, who like the same games or the same music or the same hobbies, who nourish us with their presence. Our friends, our family. Strangers brought to us through spirit.

Dead wood connects the life of the forest with the decay necessary to perpetuate it. Photo © Fran Gardner

I like my own company. I don’t mind being solitary, but my life would be worth little if it weren’t for the other people in it.

Delight

With connection comes delight. We delight in our friends, in the stories that are everywhere about all of us. We delight in the things of our senses, sure, but again, we delight most of all in our exploration of one another. We delight in assuming another’s essence, breathing the same air as our beloved, realizing that what connects us is deep and immutable and everlasting.

Guy Fawkes Day

Like our Fourth of July, Guy Fawkes is a night for bonfires and fireworks as the British celebrate the foiling of a plot to blow up Parliament on Nov 5, 1606. Parliament was late convening that year because of the plague.

Who was Guy Fawkes?

Fawkes was an Englishman, born into the Anglican Church, but
he converted to Roman Catholicism. In 1605, many RC were unhappy that the new king, James 1, chosen to succeed Queen Elizabeth I, had done little to ease the persecution of Catholics.

James, the son of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, also lent his name to a new Protestant translation of the Bible, a version still revered for its soaring poetry.

The fires were lit in thanksgiving when the plot was reveled on Nov. 5.

Here is a version of the popular bonfire chant:

Remember, remember the fifth of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot, 
I see no reason why gunpowder treason 
Should ever be forgot. 
Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, 
’Twas his intent 
To blow up the King and the Parliament. 
Three score barrels of powder below, 
Poor old England to overthrow: 
By God’s providence he was catch’d 
With a dark lantern and burning match. 

What day was that?

In a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, Rocky the flying squirrel asks: “Bullwinkle, do you know what day it is?”

Bullwinkle the moose: “Guy Fawkes Day?”

That wasn’t the answer, of course. But because as a nerdy kid I had actually heard of Guy Fawkes Day, I found this funny enough to remember.

I loved “The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.” Didn’t you?

Poetry break

Autumn rain

Rain like a curtain,
Misty beyond,
Gray clouds lower.

Color warps
As drops drum
On dirt and pavement.

Grass and flowers wilt,
Trampled by rain,
Weakened by the season.

Trees lurk behind the curtain.
Birds shiver, ruffling feathers
In sodden nests.

Honking geese
Have a better idea,
Skimming southward
In arrows of black.

Apple trees drip,
Fruit forgotten at their ankles.
Fall fades away,
Color blanched by rain.

Anniversaries

On March 26, 1658, Samuel Pepys* had a bladder stone removed in a surgical procedure. We know this because Pepys kept a famous diary and recorded the event.

*You likely already know this, but “Pepys” is pronounced “Peeps.”

Pepys intended to celebrate on March 26 of every year thereafter, remembering his release from nearly unendurable pain, although he sometimes neglected the anniversary.

I, too, celebrate a great, successful surgery.  I’ve chosen Nov. 4 as the anniversary of my cataract surgery, although the procedure was done in September and October, 2014.

I celebrate, like Pepys, because surgery changed my life. His freed him from pain; mine made me free to see.

Pepys’ surgery

Sam had his stone removed by Thomas Hollier of St. Thomas’s and St. Bart’s, two London hospitals. I found a description of Pepys’s surgery in Claire Tomalin’s biography, Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self.

Of course, there was no anesthetic. And the stone was big, reportedly the size of a lawn tennis ball of those days, about 2.25 inches in diameter.

The surgery took place in a private home. Once the patient was bound to the table like a mummy, with strong men standing by to hold him down if needed, she writes,

The surgeon got to work. First he inserted a thin silver instrument, the itinerarium, through the penis into the bladder to help position the stone. Then he made the incision, about three inches long and a finger’s breadth from the line running between scrotum and anus, and into the neck of the bladder, or just below it. The patient’s face was sponged as the incision was made. The stone was sought, found and grasped with pincers; the more speedily it could be got out the better. Once out, the wound was not stitched—it was thought best to let it drain and cicatrize itself—but simply washed and covered with a dressing, or even kept open at first with a small roll of soft cloth known as a tent, dipped in egg white. A plaster of egg yolk, rose vinegar and anointing oils was then applied.

It took Pepys about 35 days to recover.

Eyes are easier

Cataract surgery was a lot less traumatic. There was no pain. I awoke in surgery and the ophthalmologist, Thomas Poothullil, asked me to look at the clock. That was silly. With my old vision, I could maybe see a white blur on the wall.

Nevertheless, I looked. The clock said 4. My life changed in that instant.

A life of less vision

I got my first pair of glasses at 6. I was startled to see that trees had leaves, not just green splotches, on their branches.

Over the years, my vision worsened. I was near-sighted, then myopic, which is extremely near-sighted. My field of focus was 3 to 5 inches from either eye. I couldn’t see the big E on the vision chart. I couldn’t see the chart.

My mother, and many others in those days, blamed my reading habit. Much as I loved to read, she never gave me books as presents. As if that mattered; I read anyway.

My longtime ophthalmologist, William Baer, told me that close work like reading or needlework had nothing to do with myopia, but I’ve found plenty of references that contradict that.

For decades, I wore contacts, as glasses with a 13.50 or 14.00 prescription were heavy. I was strict about knowing exactly where my glasses were at night, when the contacts were out. In the shower, I held containers next to my nose to read whether I had shampoo or conditioner.

On the plus side, when I took off the spectacles, my eyes were like magnifying glasses. I could read tiny 35mm slides or thread a needle with ease.

I explored Lasik surgery but the doctors said I was too myopic. “Wait til you’re in your seventies,” I was told. Then I could have cataract surgery.

Fortunately, vestigial cataracts started to form in my mid-60s. I had the surgery, opting to have one eye near-sighted and the other far-sighted, what’s known as monocular vision.

I haven’t worn glasses since, except for reading small print.

I raise a toast to my restored vision. Coffee kombucha, New Deal’s Mud Puddle chocolate vodka, and cream. A keto White Russian.

I think Samuel Johnson might have been myopic. See how he’s peering at that book.

You say potatah

After years of pronouncing the word “data” as “datta,” I finally felt clued in that the proper pronunciation is “dayta.” On some “Star Trek TNG” episode, Lt. Cmdr. Data huffily corrects someone who calls him “Commander Datta.”

Now I am so attuned to the pronunciation that I notice it all the time. Much as I am inclined to correct people (the old copy editor), I keep quiet on this one.

Which is a good thing, because a little research shows that there really isn’t a preferred pronunciation.

Some sources say “dayta” is chiefly Brit. and that “datta” is more American. But really, it’s more a matter of preference than correctness.

The online dictionary that pops up from DevonThink, the app I write in, shows these pronunciations: /dā′tə, dăt′ə, dä′tə/. (I think the third one is dah-ta). Click on the microphone link, and the disembodied voice says “datta.”

Listen to the rhythm of the talking heads on your favorite cable news channel. Chances are you will hear both versions. And they will both be correct.

Those of you with Latin in your background will recognize data as the plural of the noun “datum,” something given, a gift.

Our gift is to pronounce it any way we want.

Fruitcake

Six or eight weeks before Christmas is the time to make the intense, dark kind of fruitcake that benefits from sitting wrapped on the shelf, marinating in brandy and melding into goodness.

I had a marvelous, complicated recipe for that kind of fruitcake. I would make it in October or November, wrap it in brandy-soaked cheesecloth, and send bricks of it to relatives who may or may not have eaten it. I kept the recipe on a 4x6-inch card in a file box, but now I can’t find it. I remember it called for a little jar of grape jelly.

I’ll share another recipe below for the best fruitcake I’ve ever eaten.

Helen Keller makes fruitcake

This fruitcake memory is part of a story Helen Keller wrote for The Atlantic. It ran in August 1932, well ahead of fruitcake season.

I have in the past made that intense dark fruitcake. In my childhood, even before my education had been begun, I was allowed to take part in the elaborate ritual which, in those days, marked the making of a fruitcake at Christmas time. Although I was blind, deaf, and speechless, the thrill of the occasion communicated itself to me. There were all sorts of pungent and fragrant ingredients to collect and prepare — orange and lemon peel, citron, nuts (which had to be cracked), apples, currants, raisins (which had to be seeded), and a host of other things. The family encouraged me to assist in these preparations, for they discovered that this was one means of keeping me, at least temporarily, out of mischief; and I, for my part, was just as eager to help, because I was always permitted to claim my wages in raisins.

All in all, this concoction of a fruitcake was a long and complicated task. If there had been some oversight in the preliminary planning and an important ingredient was missing, someone had to make a trip to town to fetch it. While the mixing process was being carefully attended to, a roaring fire was built in the stove. At last, when everything was ready and the fire was giving off just the right degree of heat, the great pan was placed reverently in the oven. The climax of the ritual was now at hand. The temperature had to be maintained for several hours with the utmost precision, and everybody had to walk about on tiptoe lest some unguarded step shake the floor and cause the precious batter, swelling with the heat, to fall. In the end, if all went well, we were rewarded with a very miracle of a fruitcake, without which Christmas would not have been Christmas.

To-day this ritual, so delightful to children, so exacting to the mothers who superintended it, is fast becoming a lost art. The modern housewife has only to go to her compact kitchen cabinet to assemble the ready-prepared ingredients, even to shelled nuts. If one should be lacking, she telephones to the corner grocery. The cake almost bakes itself in an automatically regulated gas stove, while the lady of the house goes about her other duties. Or perhaps she achieves her fruitcake by buying it in a tin container at her grocer’s. Whether she bakes it or buys it, her labor in either case is simple and quick compared to what it was even a few years ago.

Fruit poundcake

I typed this recipe on its 4x6-inch card when I was a teen and practicing touch-typing by copying recipes from magazines like Woman’s Day or Family Circle. It sat in the file with a few hundred other recipes for about 50 years before I made it in December 2016 for the first time.

It was marvelous! What had I been missing, all those years!

This is a real pound cake, with 1 pound each of sugar, flour and butter, and a dozen eggs. Once I finished hyperventilating over the vast ingredients list, I really enjoyed making it.

Typed on a manual typewriter in about 1967, with an inventive border separating the ingredients and directions. The squiggle at the top right indicates this was a recipe I had tried and liked.

I have a nesting set of four melamine bowls, and I used all of them to make this cake. One filled to the brim as I made the meringue with 12 egg whites.

From small to big:

• Red bowl: Candied fruit and raisins

• Green bowl: Sifted flour and cream of tartar

• Black bowl: Egg whites

• Big white bowl: Creamed butter and flour (from the Cuisinart), then the other ingredients

The egg yolks landed in a 2-cup measure.  I made sure to separate each white individually before adding it to the others to prevent yolk leaks.

The cake was even better after it sat a few days. The butter and eggs kept it moist.

I only had one 9x5 pan, so I used three 8-1/2x4-1/2 inchers instead. Smaller loaves turned out to be a good idea.

Fruit Poundcake

2 cups mixed diced candied fruit
1 cup light (sultana) raisins
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
4 cups sifted flour
2 cups butter
2 cups sugar
12 eggs, separated
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons grated lemon rind
1/2 teaspoon ground mace

Preheat oven to 350. Grease and flour two 9x5x3-inch loaf pans.
Combine fruit and raisins with 2 cups flour and the cream of tartar; toss lightly together. 
Cream butter and 2 cups flour until light and fluffy. 
Break up egg yolks with a fork. And vanilla, rind and mace. 
Beat egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Beat in sugar, a spoonful at a time; beat until firm. 
Fold a quarter of the egg whites into the butter mixture. Pour over remaining whites and pour the yolks on top. Sprinkle fruit over batter; fold gently until evenly mixed.
Pour into prepared pans and bake 50 minutes, until golden brown.
Cool in pans 15 minutes before turning out.

Checkout

Bus feet

I notice a lot of things from my front-row seat in the handicapped seating area at the front of Trimet buses. Just ahead of me is a big yellow sign that reads, “Stand behind yellow line.” A fair number of riders ignore that sign.

In aloha pants, you’re free to do most anything. Photo © Fran Gardner

This guy gets to stand in the front. He’s training the driver.

Buh-bye

Surely you have something better to do than read fruitcake recipes and stare at bus feet. I hope it involves writing, which is so good for our souls, yours and mine.

Or drawing. Or quilting. Knitting, cooking, caring for children. Petting animals. Whatever nurtures your creativity, creates connection, brings you delight.

Take care this week, and please come back. I promise you more words, only different.

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