Yesterday's Storm

The storm passed and left a day like a cool remark in its wake.  

I sat alone in the gloom of the cold predawn morning and thought about what I'd just seen and heard in the night.  I poured my second cup of coffee and stared outdoors at nothing, not really noticing how absent the sky was of yesterday's abuse.   I wrote a few checks, read the headlines in the morning paper, thought I'd straighten up a bit.  After a bit, I was back at the table, cradling my cup between my palms, lost in thought.

The dishes in the rack dried silently, and one drop of rinse water hung ambiguously off the tines of a fork.  

I saw light playing on the cracked and broken asphalt out in the street, beyond the cracked panes of old glass and peeling paint.  A crow, black as obsidian, worried at a lump of something lying on the pavement.  It flew indolently away, wings rustling like a silk jacket.  

The clock ticked, patient, or impatient.  I was no good at telling which it is and tired of trying.  

I'll tell you my story now and just see where the pieces lie when I'm done.  You be the judge of it, like you always are.  Maybe you'll see some sense in it, who knows.  Every time I look back at it all, I can't make heads or tails of it and, to tell you the truth, I'm not sure I care anymore.  It seems injurious and indecent to just keep it to myself for years more than I already have.  Like I said, I'll tell it, you be the judge, and then I'll be on my way, like yesterday's storm.  

A Sign on Easter

Brilliant rays of light gleamed off the ocean and sand, but they were quickly shrouded in the clouds of an approaching storm.  In the space of a minute, the morning was flooded briefly with intensely bright sunlight, as if beamed straight from heaven.  Could have been a sign from God, but maybe that was too obvious.  Something more coincidental happened just then.  

I was walking on Cannery Row early this Easter morning.  Assuming you've read novels by John Steinbeck, you know that this very street was the heart of a busy industry of canning, shipping, packing and supply companies, all intent on canning sardines.  Now there are tourist shops and, at the far west end of the street, the Monterey Bay Aquarium.  Just east of Prescott where it Ts into the The Row, lies a vacant lot that's surrounded by chain link fence and littered with broken bottles and weeds.  On the sidewalk outside the fence, in the dust and debris was, literally, a sign, right at my feet.

The canneries are all gone, but they used to stand along what was then called Ocean View Boulevard.  The buildings that housed them for about 40 years were stinky, noisy and dank.  Older local residents remember the cannery days very well and say, "It stunk to high heaven."  But they remember being called to work by the loud whistle that blew when catches of the silver fish arrived by the tons on fishing boats.  It was hard work and shifts ended when the last fish was cooked and the last can was packed and sealed.

The sardine industry went bust, and one by one the buildings were shuttered and stood vacant.  A few bars and odd concerns remained, but mostly there was rust, boarded windows and cement foundations after fires burned through.  I saw one of the shuttered buildings go up in flames.  The fire raged, lighting up the night like a huge torch.  Arson was suspected, of course, but nothing happened.  What remained was an ugly remnant of former boom times, and people began to look for renewal, an end to the blight.  1984, the Monterey Bay Aquarium opened, and since then The Row has risen phoenix-like from flames, rot and ruin.

Change has occurred slowly.  The sun bursting through storm clouds this morning was instantly symbolic of the renewal and change along the Row.  Today is Easter, a Christian holy day signifying rebirth, the energy of spring, and resurrection.  Coincidentally, there in the sidewalk was a reproduction of Easter brand sardines packing label.  I don't know that I would have made the connection between urban renewal and the resurrection of Christ but for the sign embedded in cement at my feet.  Seeing it, the connection was obvious.  All I needed then was heralding trumpets and angels singing for it to have been truly God sent.

Parsley Petrale Sole

I went to Sea Harvest seafood market on Foam Street in Monterey this morning and picked up some very nice fresh petrale sole.  Sole is a very mildly flavored flat fish -- one of the several who make up the flounder family with both eyes on one side of their head -- that cooks very quickly.  Petale sole is found in our Pacific ocean, usually caught in sandy-bottomed areas of our bay; very local in origin.  


I found a few recipes online, most of which require breading or flouring or both, then frying in butter.  Only one recipe was different, so I used it, modifying it to suit our meal.  


I had eight fresh fillets.  I used two sticks of organic butter (room temp), half a box of panko bread crumbs (4 oz.), 8 oz Gruyere cheese and two large heads of Italian parseley.  


Here's what you do:   


Set oven to 400 degrees.  Get our your food processor; fit it with chopping blade.  


First, remove the stems from the parsley and then chop medium-coarse on a board with a chopping knife.  Put chopped parsley in food processor.  


Cube the butter, throw it in the processor with the parsley.  


Pour in the panko crumbs.  


Cut the Gruyere into small cubes, toss into processor.  Pulse/chop until smoothly blended.  It will look like pesto that's dryish and it will be pretty stiff.  I had to start and stop the blending process to push the stuff down around the blade, repeating until blended.


Rinse and dry the fillets.  Lay on pans sprayed with cooking spray. Spoon parsley mix onto each fillet.  Smooth into a low mound on each one.  I allowed each fillet to show a margin all around.  


Bake until fish is opaque - maybe 10 minutes.  Parsley will brown a bit.  You may want to broil it to finish it off with tinges of brown.  Serve piping hot with a twist of lemon garnish.  Very pretty to serve as a Spring entree.


Serve with a spring vegetable and salad, some good French bread.  Not a bad way to enjoy the season. 


Happy Easter! 

Warm and Charming in a Cold Ocean

It's cold enough to snow outside.  It never snows here because it's too warm, even when it's cold.  That is, it's just cold enough to squawk about how uncomfortable you are, how your feet and ankles feel like uncoordinated stumps of wood and your lips won't move much when you try to speak.  But, it's too warm to show proof to your friends by waving photos of your frozen self up to your knees in slushy snow or standing next to icicles.  The ocean looks great no matter what, and when friends see our cold ocean photographed in winter, they say, "Oh, it looks so pretty.  Sure wish I was there."

I guess it goes to show that even a near-death experience can be a thing of beauty.  It was 49 degrees at 7:30 this morning, the ocean was 51, and, with the wind-chill factor figured in, it felt like 20 below or something in the freeze-your-chichis-off range.  The sunlight, beaming in thin slivers through the gathering clouds overhead, glanced off the restless surface of the sea and looked like tinfoil.  Or shiny chrome.

Because I knew how cold the water is, I wasn't very enamored of its chrome-like glitter.  They say familiarity breeds contempt.  I have no contempt for the Pacific, but I do have tons of respect for it.

Which brings me to sea otters, those cute little furry wonders of the ocean that charm the pants off of everyone who sees them.  They aren't actually fat, not like seals, sea lions and other big ocean-dwelling creatures are.  Instead, they're incredibly furry, wrapped from head to toe in the densest fur imaginable.  They spend a large portion of their time grooming oil and air bubbles into their coats so they can remain water repellent.  And they eat and eat and eat, bringing up shellfish from the rocky ocean bottom to bash open with rocks also hauled up from below.

Sea otters float around on their backs, looking nonchalant on imaginary chaise lounges, waving at tourists, grooming their fur, whacking shells on rocks on their bellies.  You see them, nonplussed, riding up and down in storm swells, ducking through cresting waves, thriving in the cold water like you or I do on our living room recliners.  At Pt. Lobos, famous for many reasons now but known in whaling days for a harbor where blubber was rendered, you can stroke a sea otter pelt on display and learn about the differences between otters and seals.  The fur is soft, plush and nearly impossible to part down to the skin.  It has a thousand hairs per square inch.  Just for fun, count the number of hairs on a square inch of your arm.  Not such a big number in comparison.

The mean glitter of the ocean at dawn today warned of cold, so I heeded the signs and stayed dry.  I saw an otter foraging, a sea lion cruising the shoreline and peering over at me as it swam slowly by.  Gulls, cormorants, grebes, and pigeons sailed or perched on high rocks and outcroppings, high and dry.  Down below them, the otter charmed one and all with its ability to thrive in the freezing water.  I'm always tempted to wave at them, but they're too busy staying warm to notice the likes of me.

Fools? Not Just in April

Even though I try, I don't know what motivates people to do things I'd never do in a million years.  There are at least 3 billion people swarming the globe now - most likely, the number is much bigger - and a lot of them are doing things this very instant that I find unbelievably odd.

I had lunch with friends a couple of days ago.  Ubiquitously, silent HDTVs were showing scenes of extreme skiers helicoptering to the highest, most vertical peaks of craggy mountains and then shooshing down at breakneck speeds.  To add a dash of extra sizzle to the experience, they were doing cartwheels and flips - on purpose - off of cliffs, over treetops and down avalanche chutes.  Surfers were launching themselves down the faces of enormous black-water waves that rose up out of the ocean like sea monsters.  Just to pique their fancy a bit, the surfers would zigzag up and down the faces of the waves.

Skiing is not odd, nor is surfing.  But, skiing down a 60-degree slope on two very slippery planks of breakable material attached to molded bowling balls on your feet is so far beyond the bounds of ordinary in my life that I can hardly cope with it.  It's daring and exciting to a life-threatening degree, but not odd.

Odd behavior, though, goes more to just plain goofiness.  Like Guinness Book of World Record kind of stuff.  That guy who held his breath underwater for 17 minutes on the Oprah show was odd.  The guy who built a platform on top of the highest building in our town, above the flagpole, and skated around in tiny circles for as long as possible definitely was odd.  He was up there for three days, is what I've read.

Gettin' the girl is usually the motivating force for most of male behavior, but it doesn't explain everything.  What girl would be attracted to the guy who swallowed 75 goldfish?  Or the guy who decided to fly away in a lawn chair with balloons attached to it as his mode of transportation.  No plan, all action.  

The man gets a wild hair, a nutty urge, an irresistible impulse and launches himself out of a cannon or sits in a chair with dynamite underneath it to see what it feels like.  Who knows....I guess an April Fool is born every minute because there never seems to be end to silliness.  Spring is in the air every day for them.  Trouble is, they interpret "spring" literally and leap into situations that they may or may not survive, and all we can do is shake our heads and wonder.  Happy April 1 to every fool out there.  You make me laugh, and I definitely appreciate that, though I'd never return the favor in the same way, thank you.