Saturday, January 04, 2025

 

COMMENT - THINKING ABOUT SLEEP

Really thinking about sleep this morning. I could use a little more myself.

For most of us, sleep is something we do without thinking too much about it throughout our entire lives, from the moment we are born until the moment we are finally laid to rest.

In fact, during an average life span, a person spends the equivalent of 27 years asleep!

Sleep is such a natural thing that most of us usually don't give it much thought. When we do take the time to think about sleep, it's usually because we feel we haven't gotten enough of it, or because we feel we need more than what would be considered a normal amount of sleep.

Despite our daily tendency to take sleep for granted, it really is a fairly controversial topic. There are many different opinions about the subjects of why we sleep, how much sleep we should be getting each day, where we sleep, what makes the ideal sleep environment, why we don't sleep enough and why we sleep too much...just to name a few.

A few of these questions are answered at nodiet4me.com/sleep

Donovan Baldwin



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# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 7:43 AM 0 comments

Thursday, January 02, 2025

 

ESSAY - WHAT DOES POETRY "HAVE" TO BE?

BY DONOVAN BALDWIN

John Keats
To my mind, just as a collection of paints, pens or crayons, clay or stone or wood, can be used to create a thing of beauty, a thing of ugliness, a glorious praise, or a damning indictment, poetry can assume any guise at the will and whim of its creator. Like the public, the poet who views poetry as one or the other will usually have difficulty accepting, perhaps even seeing, the views of another "artist".

The religious painter frowns at the frivolous cartoon or risque nude. The "imitation of life and reality" artist, snorts at Picassoesque visions and representations.

Yet, over the ages, both, all, emerge as reputable representations of art... schools, periods, in the art, and/or the artist.

So too, poetry.

The poet, limerick writer, advertising jingler, political ranter, or romantic swooning swain (or swainette), become recognized by somebodies somewhere as a professional practitioner of his or her art.

So, gird your poetic loins, pick your weapons, your words, and, as they said in the 60's... "right on", or, in this case, "WRITE ON!!!"

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# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 9:35 AM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

 

ESSAY - A NEW YEAR'S "TOAST" TO 2025

Grandma Blue in her kitchen
It's January 1, 2025, and, for those who can get their eyes open, I give you a toast.

No, not the one you did last night, but bread, buttered and browned.

When I was a wee lad, my mom made toast in the oven, in the broiler pan. Gas range, real flames above the buttered bread. Had to light it with one of the kitchen matches we kept beside the stove.

That's the toast I grew up with.

You would butter the bread first, then arrange the slices on the rack, and slide it under the flames. Every few minutes you would open the door and pull the rack out, checking to see if the toast was done.

Of course, "done" had different meanings to each family member, and mom wasn't always worried about whose expectations were being met.

Eventually, I achieved an age and leveled up (as they say these days in video games), to the point where I could be entrusted to oversee the making of toast.

Everybody got what I liked. Yellow and buttery in the middle, golden brown along the edges with streaks of delicious, buttered, crunchiness running to the middle in spots.

Toast was not only my first cooking experience but, in a way, my first exposure to art. MY toast was not only functional and factual, but it was fantastic in appearance as well.

Disclaimer here; I said "buttery"... actually, Mom used oleo, margarine... artificial stuff. I loved it.

My maternal grandmother lived in Atlanta, Georgia, 330 miles away from our home in Pensacola, Florida. We only got to visit her every other year or so, but, when we did, I was introduced to something strange... a toaster AND real butter.

Although I held my tongue, I really didn't like Grandma Blue's toast. It came out a dull, universal brown, and you smeared this pale stuff with little or no flavor on it. Still, over the years, I learned to look forward to it, because it was at Grandma's... like the steel shower from Sears in her basement.

At least at Grandma Blue's, the butter went on the toast while it was still hot from the toaster. When I went into the army, you ran the bread through a toasting machine, grabbed some butter, and hoped it would still be warm by the time you got your other food, your drink, found a seat, and settled down to eat.

But, this did not complete my toasting... New Year's or otherwise.

At a small hotel in London, they brought cold slices of toasted bread to the table in a wire rack. I would smear the cold butter on the cold toast, and it would crunch as I bit into it.

English people: I love England, and London was fantastic (even if I did nearly kill myself and others turning down the wrong way RIGHT in front of Buckingham Palace.)

Damned Americans!

Anyway, take it from a southern boy from the U.S., toast should not be served cold and brown, but, most of all, it should not CRUNCH!

I miss the toast Mama used to make, but, having traveled extensively over the more than 3/4 of a century I've been on this earth. I've learned to take my toast where, when, and how I can get it.

I forgive all of you and that's my "toast" to you on this first day of January, 2025.

Damn. Now my coffee's cold!

Will this NEVER end?

Grandma Blue in the picture, by the way. I miss her, and her toast.

By Donovan Baldwin

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# posted by Donovan Baldwin @ 6:58 AM 0 comments

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