Roasting Pan

      We cooked a ham for Easter yesterday (actually, it was three hours heating up a ham) and after letting the roasting pan soak overnight, I got around to washing it today.

Our un-pristine pan

   We only use the roasting pan once or twice a year and for the most part it's still pretty pristine. Today, though, after I'd given it a thorough cleansing, it was no longer pristine---you could see where the juice of the meat had seemingly soaked right into it. This is pretty well aligned with any roasting pan I've ever been associated with and it was with a certain sense of nostalgia that the roasting pan today did not come out totally clean. 
   In this way, it is developing a kind of history of its own and every time it gets used the history will become deeper and more varied. Part of what I appreciate about it is the familial aspect. The pan is only brought out when there are gatherings of family and loved ones and it is with some respect that I bring it into the kitchen on these occasions.

Ah yes...the chip

   Almost immediately after we bought it a few few years ago, we noticed a chip in the lid. As it was brand-new, there was some discussion about returning to the store. I remember standing there looking at the chip and, as much as it was a flaw, it was also totally in line with any other porcelain enamel roasting pan I'd ever known---there was always some kind of dent or chip or flaw and the fact that our new roasting pan now had one of those really only endeared it to me, in a funny kind of way. We kept that pan and I'm glad we did. I also look forward to the next time we need to add another thin layer to its history and feed a bunch of us around a family table. 
   
   

Bit Of A New Look and A Walk In The Woods

      Okay, if you hadn't noticed, the blog looks a little different today! Did a little work on the header (the part where the title of the blog is) in an attempt to spruce things up a touch. You can still see me standing on the same rocky outcrop but I've added a couple of extra images. The red "B" is a letter which was carved onto that same outcrop some time in the late thirties by my Grandfather, Ernest Baker. His cottage stood at the top of the hill overlooking the beach and he carved that "B" into the rock to mark his boundary line. A few years ago, when we at that beach to scatter my Dad's ashes we actually managed to find it, and marked with red, just to see it better. I imagine it's back to its natural colour by now. The second image is of that same beach and was taken from a postcard back in the forties. The rocky outcrop can be seen at the far end of the beach. My grandparents lived in Gibsons, B.C. back in those days and this was where I spent my summer vacations. It was a magical place for any and all who visited!
   On top of the new look, "Neanderings" passed 25,000 page views today! Not a huge number in the blogging world but it was kind of a nice round one so I thought I'd mention it! I've also added a couple of extra countries to the list of where my page views come from and I'm now up to 104---kinda cool.

Kind of a random pic but our plan is
to go back to this same spot every week
and take another pic, just to show the
change in foliage as Spring progresses.
We'll see if that actually happens......

   Okay, it's Easter weekend and the weather's been gorgeous so Doralyn and I decided to head out for a walk through nearby Warbler Woods. We kind of overdressed for the weather and were already quite warm by the time we got there.
   With no leaves on the trees you can see quite deep into the forest and it's actually pretty cool---you get a much better sense of the topography. What we hadn't counted on was all the mud! There were quite a few spots where we had to go around instead of through and it made the many hills just that much more treacherous. Ran into quite a few other people but for the most part it seemed to be single guys, occasionally with dogs.

A pretty dead tree, but still good for the wildlife!

   A couple of the iffier-looking trees had special signage on them, indicating they were wildlife habitats, so not to cut them down or disturb them. We did neither!
   The farther we walked the muddier it got, it seemed, so I think we were actually happy to eventually make it out the other side of the woods and head for home. It's not an easy stroll through them, to say the least and we were both pretty winded, what with all the hills we traversed. As part of my extremely irregular running routine, I use the hills when I think it's time for hill repeats. What I do is run up them and then walk down the other side. Then I walk to the next one and run up it. Yesterday I was exhausted after walking up them so I guess there's more work to do!

Did I say it was muddy? Thank
goodness for the occasional
wooden walkway!

   

A Writer Gets Back Into It (Maybe)

      Back in the mid to late eighties, I wrote poems. It seemed as though I was writing them constantly and I wrote about pretty well anything and everything. 
   I had entered this process in rather a roundabout way. I discovered that there was a creative writing class one night a week at the local college, Fanshawe. As a kid, I had always enjoyed and been somewhat proficient at writing but, at the end of my school career, this had gone dormant. As an adult, however, just finding out that this class existed sparked a renewed interest. So I signed up!
   Initially, I felt as though I wanted to write short stories and this did seem to be the focus of the class and what most of my classmates were there to do. Our teacher, Pam Tikalsky, made sure that we talked about and experienced other genres of writing, however, and poetry was of course one of them. I happily went along with this as poetry was also something I'd also enjoyed as a younger person.
   I then found that I was enjoying the poetry process even more than the short story writing. 
   The most appealing part of writing poems was that it was a way to take a single thought or idea and then investigate it thoroughly, right there in front of me. Having done that, I could then go on and tackle the next random thought. This became a very joyous process.
   Part of what made this an enjoyable endeavour was the constant encouragement and feedback from Pam. Along the way, she at some point suggested it might be worthwhile to start sending out poems to literary magazines, in the hope of getting published.
   I dove into this with a fair amount of zeal, making constant trips to the library downtown so that I could sit by the racks of literary mags and peruse. I ended up with lists of journals and the names of poetry editors and I began to send out batches of poems. 
   Very quickly, I began to have those same batches of poems being sent back to me, along with accompanying rejection slips. This, of course was not unexpected but at the same time was very dejecting. At one point I was very close to giving up the whole process when the miraculous occurred---an acceptance! 
   I had a poem accepted by a small quarterly magazine called Canadian Author and Bookman and I was on top of the world! This did not end the process and I continued to send out poems. Therein followed a long period of non-acceptance which was only tempered by the fact that I had already published at least a single poem.
   I saved every rejection slip and along the way I developed this weird relationship with poetry editors, most of whom were kind enough to send me back brief messages of encouragement and advice, along with their rejections. They were people I'd obviously never met but at the same time  were sharing a little bit of my journey with me. Most of them were poets themselves and, I'm sure, had been through the same process at the beginning of their careers. We poets are somewhat fragile and these other poets, knowing this, treated me with as much kindness as they possibly could muster.
   Eventually, more poems got published, in even more

A pile of stuff from the olden days...

prestigious journals and then.....I stopped! To this day, I am not even quite certain why this happened. I think my feeling at the time was that I'd run out of things to write about. It was also about this period that my creative energy turned to writing musical pieces. They're a little hard to describe but the term "movie music" occurred simultaneously to both Doralyn and myself and I'm happy enough to describe them this way but....really...this is a whole new blog post.
   About this time last year, I became aware of something called the 2 Day Poetry Contest, run by a Canadian magazine called Contemporary Verse 2. The idea was to spend two days writing a poem. The only hitch was you had to use ten extremely random words that the magazine provided! And I can't even begin to tell you how random the words were! If you want, you can read about it here.
   Well, I didn't win but the whole experience was pretty amazing and it kind of renewed the poetic fervour in me. Recently, I also became aware of the NYCMidnight Short Story Challenge. This is another contest which involves being given eight days to write a 2,500 word short story. The only hitch with this contest is that you are given a genre, a subject and a character which you must then incorporate into a short story. But that's only the first step! If your story is among the best, you go on to the next round which entails writing a 2,000 word story in three days with a fresh genre, character and subject. Then, if you get past that stage, the final stage involves a 1,500 word story which needs to be written in just twenty-four hours with, of course, a different genre, character and subject. The first story (involving a mystery, a bird watcher and a horoscope) has been sent off and results should be in sometime next week. Fingers crossed!
   

Yoda, sitting on the good stuff.

So currently the writing bug has arisen from its deep hibernation. I recently shared a poem I'd written about Doralyn and it was very well received by those who read it and suddenly I started to wonder if I should just start getting back into it a little.
   I went and dug out my pile of old manuscripts, rough copies (and rejection slips!) and sat down to re-acquaint myself with a former life. 
   Some of it was total garbage (it didn't get rejected for nothing) but some of it seemed to still stand the test of time. Whatever that is. I then began the process of separating good from bad and pulling out a handful which needed touch-ups.
   What I'm currently attempting to do is send out a complete manuscript, hopefully for publication in book form. If all else fails, maybe at least I'll get a little feedback. A quick check on the internet and pretty well the first thing I see is a well-respected publisher right here in London who just happens to accept manuscripts between now and the end of April. And, on top of everything else, he's just around the corner! So why not?!