Kaimusailing

I finished reading The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood. It was a paperback copy from the pile of books in the communal kitchen. I searched my ebook archive on the laptop and found a whole lot of books by Atwood. The Year of the Flood is a sci-fi novel about a pandemic. It was published around 2010. It is inventive but while we are in an actual pandemic now, it is too inventive.
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I finished my research on free energy from generators that use no fuel. One comment is there are two types, one type is the scammer who wants to sell you his secret plans, etc., the other type is the enthusiast who is doomed to failure but presses on, sometimes discovering something new, sometimes entertaining. Wasted effort mostly.
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A beautiful Hinckley 59 is on the hard just astern of Kaimu. The name of the boat is Wanderer and is one of only two Sou’wester 59 ketches ever made. There are a few 59 sloops or cutters up for sale on Yachtworld. Prices are in the $500K range. Not outrageous.
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It is Easter and on Good Friday I remembered receiving the project catamaran that became Kaimu on Good Friday the 13th, but that was April, 2001, 20 years ago. The boat still needs work but is very good shape for her age. Better shape than her skipper.
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I had purchased a boneless pork butt and now could make some soup with it. I did the usual, get the 6 quart stock pot, put a colander in it, dump in a bag of spinach, pour in a couple cups of water and set it to boil. Begin trimming a bunch of kale from its ribs, cutting it into little pieces with some Harbor Freight $1 scissors. The kale went into the pot on top of the melting spinach. I prepped an onion by cutting it in half on the meridian, then cutting that in half on the equator. Easy to make onion dice, lay down and cut from the end, making thick slices, up from the end. Then stand it up and trim off radially. After all the onion quarters were reduced to segmented slices they were thrown into the pot which by now had reduced all the greens to a mush.
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The boneless pork butt was now extracted from its package, bloody, rinsed. Placed on the cutting board and trimmed of fat and connective tissue. Probably only 20 per cent was thrown away, but that would be unusable, fat, gristle, after cooking there wasn’t that much to decant off the broth.
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The spice mix was again made with two cups of hot water, 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, orange marmalade, 1 tablespoon of chili powder, cumin, cocoa, whisked together. Pour over the steaming vegetables and the trimmed pork. There was another unnamed spice.
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I let the pot boil for an hour, then two, tasted some of the meat. Then it was falling apart. Tonged the meat out onto a cutting board, lifted the colander out with the steamed and condensed vegetables. The remaining broth had a little fat on it and was passed through a fat separator. Veggies returned. A jar of medium salsa was poured into the broth. Without mixing it, several scoops of broth were put into the almost empty jar. It was shaken and poured into the pot.
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The meat was cut into little pieces or shredded. The pot was boiling again and the meat was returned to it. I scooped out two scoops and tasted the soup.
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It was good. I sent out text of the soup and a picture of my soup bowl. They came around one or two at a time. I enjoyed that they enjoyed the soup. Happy Easter.
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The day after Easter is known as Pizza Night. All went well. We listened to mp3 audio from a channel that plays old Windham Hill music. A particularly beautiful and haunting voice caused us to ask around, who is that?, Enya?
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The mp3 player had a display, but it was dark, I touched a button and could read “Gustav Holst..” Well I know of Holst from the movie 2001 A Space Odyssey, and I had an album of his “Planets” tone poems. I went on YouTube looking for Holst music and listened to several pieces. Then a flash mob rendition of “Jupiter” played and it was the melody of the music we had heard. You can watch the video too, at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3cpOrB1GW8
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When I searched Holst Jupiter Female Vocal, etc., nothing. I was watching string ensembles, pianos, female vocalists, but not the one we had heard. I went on Wikipedia and researched more about Gustav Holst. It seemed a poem by Sir Cecil Spring Rice was put to music, the music of Host’s Jupiter. Holst found the match of the poem to the music. It has become an English anthem, sung at Churchill’s funeral and Kate Middleton’s wedding. The vocalist in our rendition is Charlotte Church, who was successful from the age of 11, singing with her beautiful voice.
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There are many other renditions of this music theme, not a bad thread to search. Now just think about Stanley Kubrick, who liked some classical music when it was out of fashion, and that is how I know this music. He incorporated it in the Space Odyssey, but he did a lot more. His lighting work in the Shining was innovative. We don’t live long enough.
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There was news from Cornelia Marie and from my daughter Stephanie, but cannot be revealed as yet. Stephanie’s Stanford womens NCAA team won the national championship by one point, “That’s how we do it’, she said. Cornelia Marie went out of her way to pick up two of the main cushions for the Catalina in Annapolis and brought them to Sunsplash and put them aboard. More than what I would have wanted to ask.
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I went shopping for ingredients for Cream of Chicken Florentine Soup. That included the kale spinach mixture and some artichoke hearts. On the way back I got the idea to take a photo of the front of Store #2 which proclaims, “Play Here”, and “Ethanol Free Marine Fuel”.