Academy of Projections

 

Wood Smoke

Academy of Projections

Canales

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

  

            Simplicity has been a prevailing theme these days.

            Included in this have been late night video searches for meal preparations from the early 1800s. Several iterations are in the books. The best examples have been silent with nothing more than a mike picking up background noises, but the preparer of the meals, a lady dressed in period clothing, says nothing. It is a reminder that visual learning is a most powerful influence on us.

            She is very skilled at her craft.

            The focus of her preparation has been a big open-hearth fireplace. It is equipped with a pot crane and her cooking paraphernalia is extensive. The combination of cast iron, copper, pewter, and pottery are nearby to complement each task. Unexpected efficiency is the outcome.

            Salt, butter, eggs, cornmeal, molasses, cream and milk are standards. To a lesser extent, sugar, flour, coffee, and pepper appear and are incorporated in the process. In one segment, the lady churns butter in a vertical churn completing the process by washing the finished butter as she shaped it into a pad with a pair hand carved wooden spatulas.

            The use of these standards prompted memories of modern days yet long ago. Our churn was a square glass jar with a metal churn that was screwed into the top of the jar and cranked by hand horizontally. Even as little kids we were skilled at making butter including announcing the progress and expected time of completion of each batch. We could wash, salt, and pad the finished butter into pads, too.

            In early years, milk came from our maternal grandparents. In later years, the fresh milk came from a neighbor who still milked a cow. From that milk, cream was skimmed for the purpose of making butter and or cooking. Just like the lady in the video, fresh cream was always on hand (but her cream was stored in a cool cellar or a spring house rather than a refrigerator).

            The ingredients for her meals were either grown or harvested by the family. In one segment beets were boiled along with beef as the main course. In another, red cabbage and potatoes were combined with homemade sausage. In each, something sweet was added and it was made around a combination of cornmeal and molasses-based recipes.

            If there was a word of consistency in the extended story lines, simplicity could be used. If there was a word that came to mind observing the kitchen and the lady at work, either silence or solitude might fill the bill. To observe that process and that of today’s kitchen with cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, and the chaos of constant chatter the difference is stark.

            Complication runs the real risk of diminishing all quality of life. It detracts from substance.

            Academy of Projections

            Dr. Peter McCullough has introduced a concept that is old and yet new again. In fact, it may well be a trait of the human condition that has brought civilizations to their various knees and ground the ability of governments to function to a standstill.

            The idea is not McCullough’s by any means, but rather comes to us from Jonathan Swift’s third book of Gulliver’s Travels in 1726 and the Island of Lagado.

On this island, Gulliver finds unsupervised and countless inhabitants scurrying around basically performing pointless experiments that benefit no one. The array of such experiments is quite astounding. There is an attempt to transform calcine ice (roasting ice) into gun powder. There was another experiment to reduce human excrement to its original form (food from which it was formed) to be recycled back into the system as a conservation ploy. There was yet another experiment whereby a bellows with an ivory muzzle was inserted into the anuses of dogs only to observe the dogs were dying when air was pumped vigorously from the bellows. They kept killing dogs trying to reverse engineer the process to figure out what was going on.

            All in all, the collection of work from these Academy of Projectors was combining to register a zero on the greater of scale of importance to humankind notwithstanding it gave the scurriers something to fill their days and stimulate their minds thus their argument could be made that it was important work.

McCullough, of course, is implying that historical insight wasn’t too far off the mark from today’s issues. Stated in yet another way (and implicit in the $31 trillion dollar debt this government has incurred) there is a whole interconnected and gargantuan academy of self-stylized projectors across our landscape.

Alas, Lagado has been rediscovered for what it is and what it has always been. There is no basis for it being important or sustainable.

Canales

Indeed, simplicity has become more than a prevailing theme.

            The system of canales in the yard of my maternal great grandmother becomes the case in point. She was a truly amazing and inventive human being.

            Her yard along with its gardens and orchards was amazing.

            There were two orchards. The one up by the cottonwood planked barn was north from the house. Most if not all of those heritage pome varieties of fruit are now gone along with their genetics. There was another orchard south from her bedroom with its screened porch. That orchard was planted on a slope and had to be hard to water (it, too, was dominated by apple and pear varieties because of their ability to avoid freeze losses).

            Almost all those trees are also gone.

            The garden as I knew it was north of the house adjacent to the first orchard, but there are references to yet another garden east from the house that was not there by the time I came along. Unlike the orchards, there is more memory of what came out of the garden, though, than memory of the garden itself. Everyday on her table was something that came out of that garden whether it was canned or fresh.

            The yard was an oasis. It was an escape from the harsh reality of the sun, the rocks, the dirt, and the difficulty of creation from frontier life. It was watered by an ingenious system of canales, little concrete ditches where, given every chance, we chased fish and rode our stick horses. She adjusted her sets and her grass (in a world where nobody had grass), lilac bushes, cherry trees, and her rose bushes were maintained.

            Now, it’s our turn. As our generation ages, the role of eldership is being forced upon us similarly to important influences just like her. There is a common theme, too. Given a choice, we’d opt for the diligent simplicity of that time and place.

 

            Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico. “In similar fashion, Frank DuBois is owed a debt of gratitude by many folks. Call him and tell him so.”

Thanks, Steve