Sourdoughs

"The final solution is supposed to be the relief wells BP is drilling, and on the day I realized even these might not arrest the blowout, I decided to stop thinking about it all." This is how I feel about all the bad news of continuing foreclosures, unemployment, corporate personhood, consolidation, genetically altered food, fish farming's effect on natural runs of salmon, ex-Treasury Secretary Rubin, and on and on.

There is plenty of good commentary on these things, yet somehow nothing ever gets done to remedy them. We are back to the pre-Great Depression days of the wealth being consolidated in only a couple percent of the population. But the momentum is in their favor. I can hear all the "Oooops" coming from Washington D.C. Not all by accident either. And talking about all that isn't my intent here. I'm just trying to get a cup of coffee in peace.

In fact I've been planning all summer to visit Petersburg for 9 days starting on Aug. 24. I'm hoping to get out in a skiff and show Terry a whale, camp out in a Forest Service cabin and in general forget about strategic planning for awhile.

On the brighter side, I found that I was allergic to wheat and caffeine. I'm serious. Since cutting those out, I can hike up Crater Lake Mountain like walking down the block. Wow! What a difference. My sinuses cleared up as well. There's a guy I know who does muscle testing and can simply (and inexpensively) find out what you're allergic to. Jesse had been a skeptic of this for a long time, but he's eating fresh spelt bread with me and has become a believer. I can even do quadratic equations in my head now. Just kidding.

The big question is, where should I go around Petersburg to catch a coho or something. The choices are many. I just don't know how the runs are faring in all the creeks. They have been trending downward ever since I was a kid, when my rubber shoe pacs almost came up to my knees. (That was before xtra-Tuffs by the way) I would like to try Castle River if for nothing but the solitude and memories of camping there in the sixties.

I suppose I'd better bring warm clothes. It got down to 80 yesterday and it felt like a cold snap. Back to high ninetys and low 100s for the next week I hear. I'm going to only use a fly rod, unless I see some cohos jumping out in salt water, then it's Flash-N-Glo time, baby.

The best news is that just today, that old salt, John Finley of Kodiak, gave me his sourdough pancake recipe. For his bread flour, he uses equal measures of millet, flax(less of this), oats, barley, and buckwheat. For pancakes he just uses millet, oats, and buckwheat, or spelt I suggested. He says that making sourdoughs is like sprouting the grain berries first. I've heard before that sprouting is a good thing. I told him I'd trade some of my planned crabapple wine for some of his planned gooseberry wine.

Hopefully the deer can be kept away from my mother's gooseberries. I'm not sure if that is possible though. Well, we'll get some red huckleberries for her to make us a pie or two I'm sure. I'd better check around the old house there to see if I can repair anything too. Sure have been no lack of projects. I just calculated that the family house is eighty years old now. It was built the year of the stock market crash, in 1929. My grandmother went to work for the steam laundry in Petersburg to try save the house from the bank, but it was the laundry owner who came to the rescue, out of her generosity.

I'm sure all this has been written about before. Before WWII, the newspaper editor interviewed the family for a long series on their lives in Petersburg from the start of the town. So, if all goes well, I'll be packing my new LED headlamp for the trip north soon.