Black harp black wheat black beer for the Black Month

A quick break from croppings for beer. This is dedicated to Rouchswalwe, the expert. 

Telenn du is a beer dark in colour but light in texture, like a feathery Guinness.  It is made with organic buckwheat, known here as blé noir, black wheat, because it is much darker and coarser than ordinary wheat flour.  It's also called sarrasin, because originally it came from somewhere far away, they knew not where.  Sarrasin comes from Saracen; there are still myths that it was brought back to Brittany by the Crusaders, but really I think it came out of Central Europe.  It's just that the Saracens were the archetype of the foreign and mysterious, hence the sarsen stones at Stonehenge, the blue stones which form the central circle so much older than the rest, so no one could work out where they came from, therefore they must have been saracen.  In fact they came from Wales.  The words Guinea, Muscovy and Turkey also came to mean anywhere exotic and fabulous, and were applied vaguely to anything of uncertain non-indigenous origin, like turkeys, and guinea-fowl, and Muscovy ducks.  Funny it was always poultry.

I'm quite a fan of buckwheat.  It's full of goodness and free of gluten. I like it cooked as a grain like rice, and I also like galettes, buckwheat pancakes, wrapped round sausages, or filled with all kinds of stuff: ham, bacon, eggs, cheese, onions, mushrooms, cooked tomatoes, even trout or salmon and spinach and creme fraiche, though my neighbours have been known to pull faces at this idea.  You can make them as carnivorous or vegetarian or even vegan, since they're made without egg, as you choose.  We don't eat them often enough as Tom doesn't really like them.  One of my students makes them from scratch, most people buy them, and hers are like fairy food.  I have never eaten kig ar farz, the buckwheat dumpling cooked in a bag with what is pretty much a standard pot au feu of meat and veg.  It is so local to one area of western Finistere that it is unobtainable here, and I am told you really need exactly the right kind of bag to cook it in.  I can't find a decent link to it in English, of much in French either.  It is one of my ambitions, hopefully a more easily realisable one, to partake of it, either by travelling to the right neck of the woods or by cooking it myself, but I'd need to get a few people round to make it worthwhile.

Buckwheat has an earthy, slightly mushroomy flavour.  I imagine I can taste this in the beer, or perhaps I really can.

Telenn du means black harp in Breton.  I wonder if this is a reference to Guinness or just a coincidence.  The Breton for buckwheat is gwinizh du, apparently, black wheat again.  We are also in maes du, the Black Month, which is how November is regarded in Breton, it seems.

But where the grain and the beer is concerned, black is beautiful.  It's light silky bitterness would nicely offset the roasted turkey, and even candied sweet potatoes... 

Happy Thanksgiving !

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Postscript - Please take the time to read Setu's wonderful crêpe lore and related matters in the comments.  Delicious!

Croppings - texture

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More precious than rubies...

I am a little fed up with the anonymous spammers who have been scattering their noisome pellets at random in the comments of older posts here, and occasionally on my other blogs.  The whole matter puzzles me: who on earth would possibly buy on-line pharmaceuticals or DVDs, let alone take up loan, from a spam comment on an out of date post on an obscure blog?  Even I wouldn't know they were there if I didn't receive comments through on e-mail, but once I do I can't abide the thought of them there and have to go and scrub them off.  I suppose there's an outside chance that someone might decide to click on the invitation to see a teenage pop star without her habillements on, thereby allowing themselves to be jumped by a bit of malware, but it all seems so vague and unlikely.  I don't understand it and neither do I want to. 

I could of course put on the comment verification again, but it is a bit of a drag, and would put all the rest of you to trouble just because of a small amount of inconvenience, and I'm not sure some of these might not be activated by real people anyway.  I could not allow anonymous comments - if the spammer has a Blogger ID I always report them, but then just occasionally a real anonymous person drops in with something wonderful for me, like the person who sailed in the Aztec Lady in the Tall Ships race back in the 1970s and always wondered what happened to her, or a non-blogging friend or family member.  I know these people could do Open ID but even that might scare off a reluctant or non-savvy but genuine person.  I could perhaps close comments on older posts, but the same thing applies, I sometimes get something interesting left on a really old post, like the woman who had picked a load of horse chestnuts and was going to eat them until she read my post about how you shouldn't - OK, I know I'm probably exaggerating the importance of my role there, she'd have found out anyway, but it was fun getting the comment.

So I'll probably leave things as they are, and put up with the nasties, for the sake of my real commenters, because...

A couple of times lately, and before, visitors here have complimented me on their fellow visitors, on what a loyal readership I have, and one who is dear to me saying how happy she was to know that people like the rest of you existed.  I say 'complimented', and somehow hearing such words makes me feel pleased and proud beyond anything, but I don't exactly know whether this is right or not.

Some parents, my mother was one, and Tom another, have difficulty with the idea of pride in their children, are somewhat uncertain how to react when others say 'you must be proud of them'.  This is not because they don't take immense pride and joy in their offspring, that they don't love them without reservation and admire their achievements (I know this now), but that it feels like some kind of inappropriate arrogating of those achievements to be vicariously proud of them; or because, being uncertain or short of love and pride in themselves, they feel they have no right to express it about their children, not wanting to cast them as extensions of themselves.  Or perhaps they fear giving those children the impression that they are only loved when they are doing something worthy of pride, and mistakes and perceived failures will lead to a withdrawal of that love. 

Somewhat similarly, I wonder if I have the right to be proud of you all, as if your warmth, responsiveness, imagination, kindness, intelligence, generosity and marvellous variety was anything to do with me, rather than flowing entirely from yourselves as it does.  I have never been one of those collectors of people in the outward world, for a number of reasons, but I turn you over and over in my mind like a pile of wondrous, rare treasure.  Whether you come every time and bring a warm glow to my heart, or just drop in now and then as a lovely surprise, whether you're new on the block or have been around forever, whether you stay around or roll off eventually, whether I've beheld you face to face or never will, whether you respond best to pictures or poems or chatty ramblings, or all of the above, whether you leave a stone or a smile or long and discursive reflections then come back for more and a chat, I never cease to enjoy your company and your words, which, I fear, I never do justice to in response, either here or at your own places.  I know that you range in age from your mid-twenties to your mid-eighties, are of many faiths and none, and live on pretty much every continent, except, to my knowledge, South America and Antarctica (please, if someone is reading this at some base camp on the latter do just leave me a word, I'd love to know, and I've even left on 'allow anonymous comments'... Of course you might be fibbing but I'll take a chance.). 

You may not be legion compared with the readership of some blogs, but you couldn't be a better crowd for me.  And with all your diversity, you have always, always, behaved yourselves impeccably here, with courtesy and respect and tact and tolerance.  As if you'd do anything else.

So, whether or not I should, I am enormously, heart-swellingly proud of you, and grateful and delighted that you continue to come here.  And, in fact, it's totally right to be proud of other people, whether they're your kids or anyone else, and to let them know it.

So, rather loosely, here are some croppings which seemed to me to go nicely with the title of this post.

Thanks, all of you.

~~~

Cropped land-, sea- water- and townscapes

A good question, from Plutarch: 'Is there a shibboleth among photographers which prefers them to print the picture they compose in the view finder?'

I do believe there is, at least among photographers of the old/film school. One photographer whose book I read, while he had accepted that digital had become the normal way to take photos, justified this by saying that as a photographer one should want to spend as much time 'out there' (an expression or idea of which I am always leery) taking photos rather than in front of a computer screen editing them.  I think that's probably a bit pretentious.  No one thought time spent carefully developing pictures just right in darkroom and studio made one less of an action man.  I think doing anything well means being prepared to take some pains over the boring bits of it.
I suppose that when film cost money, cropping was wasteful, so better to apply the techniques of composition through the viewfinder.  I think there's a bit of pride in being able to compose a good shot sur place, I think I am quite pleased when cropping proves to be unnecessary, but I don't think it's very important.  There are other aspects of setting up a shot that can't be edited in or out afterwards, however clever you are with photoshop, but if a bit of tidying up round the edges helps, why not?
There are plenty of arguments to be had about the nature of what is and isn't authentically creative; whether old-fashioned, hands-on skills were/are superior to modern digitally engendered ones.  I like old-fashioned making in lots of areas, and wouldn't want to give it up, I'm not sure that many people would. Digital photography does feel a bit like cheating sometimes, but it's enjoyable cheating.

I too usually trim most of the photos I post here a little, most are improved by a slight shift of composition, or getting rid of some extraneous distracting element at the edges.  Many of those I'm putting in this series, however, are what might be called extreme crops, really just very small fragments of much larger, less than wonderful pictures.  I'm finding it an interesting exercise in itself.  I don't use an SLR, so powerful macro shots are not possible, but while these don't really replicate the effect of a good macro lense, it requires a similar way of seeing, and the blessing of loads of megapixels is you can ditch a lot of them without getting pixellation appearing.   Sometimes they lose definition, and detail, as with some of these sections of landscape, which makes them look a bit unreal and dreamy, or the removal of much of the context makes them into abstracts.

Anyway, it's good clean fun and a way of doing some sorting out, and the way it's going it will certainly take me to the end of November...

More croppings, birds and beasts

So before I know it I've collected a whole exported file of scores of cropped details.  A few ground rules are needed.  I only crop in a ratio of 5:3, that's a widescreen format apparently.  It's more challenging.  And I'll try to sort them thematically a bit when I post them.  So here are some non-human non-plant beings.

Long-eyed beauty

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Rumours of my connections with the Lord of the Flies have been greatly exaggerated...

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Strut

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The Limousin bull (he appears quite often in my other blog)

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One for Crafty Green Poet (Bunny Hugger!)

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Gull

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Not very fast mail

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Blue regard

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Hitting soft sand.  She had to get into one.

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In which I pretend to be a techno-minded person

Tom has been grumbling about the slowness of the computer.  The blue screen of death has been in abeyance of late, but has occasionally shown its baleful visage.  I promised to defrag to improve the former problem, but when I did, I was informed by the sagacious wizard that it was quite unnecessary, it wouldn't help, but that there was a mere 18 g free space left in the memory. 

Time to face facts, we are carrying too much and it could all disappear never to return.  We need an external hard drive.  Perusal of Amazon revealed for 40 quid I could buy ten times more storage than the computer ever had, and we could buy it from the UK in sterling, which is a somewhat more ready resource than the euro for us at the moment.  It arrived today, and I am really quite taken with it, even though I've not used it yet.  That something the shape and size of a paperback can potentially contain so much is a mighty wonder to me.  Yes, yes, I know you all know about such things already, but I am still quite unworldly in these matters.

But a detail that really impressed me was that the power adaptor comprised an interchangeable plug,

just slide off the guard and you can slide on the plug interface of your choice, chunky British oblong three pin, or neat continental round two pin.  Sweet!

Then just when I'd sent off the order, my memory card reader, a very tacky blue plastic thing which came in a bundle with the Canon, died a death at the point where the cable goes into it, the metal bit just collapsed (I'm good at these technical terms as you see...).  I was obliged to download one lot of pictures directly from the camera, a tedious and cack-handed procedure if ever there was.  Now, I may not be very multi-media savvy in many regards, but it always surprises me how many people don't use card readers, even printing and developing businesses don't always offer to print your pics straight off a card, but require you to put them onto CD or USB key.  I suppose it depends on the procedure you're used to, and I know many 'puters have them built-in (oddly, it seems to me, our printer does but the laptop doesn't), but they really are a boon, in my opinion, and you can get one from Amazon from under two quid.  Plus postage, so having missed the chance to get one with the bigger order, I decided I needed it too quickly to wait anyway and went and bought one from Leclerc's Espace Culturel or Media or whatever it's called now, for about 9 euro.  Again, I am disproportionately charmed by it simply as an object.  It looks like a USB key, but pop each end off,

put the card in one and put the other into the USB port, and off you go, no annoying cables, no batteries required.

So, time to get shunting.  Well over a year's worth of photos, incompletely edited, a few little movies, all my amazingly important documents, can simply be dragged and dropped into the outside hard drive, where, in all probability, they will never be looked at again.

One of my excuses for doing daily blogging this month was to go through and use some of the old photos that were thus languishing, but I keep taking more instead.  My mother had a fabric hoarding habit; she collected pieces of fabric, all kinds of lengths and types, from market stalls, material shops, remnant bins, clearance places, and stored them in chests and hampers.  We were great makers, and whenever two or more Masters sisters were gathered in one place we always had a glorious rummage through them, and bore them off with projects in mind or got sewing there and then.  Nevertheless, her acquisition of material outstripped our ability or will to use it up.  I don't know what happened to it all in the end.  I feel that my photos are a bit like that; I keep hanging onto them becasue although only some are really worthwhile in themselves, I can often see a small section and think 'oh but that would be nice made into something else...' but I don't get around to doing the snipping and stitching and shaping required to do it. 

But here are a handful of snippets, bits I've cropped out of otherwise mediocre shots which I feel stand up as abstracts or vignettes on their own. 

Faded celandine

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Burned out log

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Small fry

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Reedmace papyrus

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Grub on a post

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Tagetes

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More of the same tomorrow.

Down under cloudbanks...

Down under the cloudbanks, woods and water
are a brown study, clouded yellow. 
High among mistletoe, jays screech and grind
like doors unwilling to open or close.

They recall green parakeets in a black walnut tree,
a batik hanging, from when beech leaves,
gold lights in toffee darkness, the unseen,
known blue flashing wings, were not enough.

The jays have nothing to scold, it seems,
but scold they will.  I think I am averse
to figures in my landscape.  The air is tepid,
moist; the accents are uncertain, you, too diffuse.

Can you shape the low cloud into being,
turn vapour to a burning bush?

~~~

(Verbal doodling.  To say it is a first draft is not quite so, that was on a garage bill in my pocket for a leaking aerial.  Down at the watermill, so deep in the valley neither light nor mobile phone can find you...  It really is just about the weather. I think.)