If I could sing only one song, I'd sing of you

For me, this is a time for looking back, for asking myself did I live as best I could … climber, warrior, healing, husband/lover, healer, father, author – I’ve been up and down that dusty trail a time or two and the best thing about me is you.

If I could sing only one song, I'd sing of you, Leslie.

These are good times - stressful, I know for you, with retiring (again) and the changes ahead. Yet here we are, Berkeley, baking, going to the market, slowing down, enjoying, back to Cali in 6 weeks and everything still in bloom. These are the days.

I posted this somewhere else: I'm thinking there's all sorts of activism and the Dharma may or may not be in what we do. Several years ago my wife gave up an enormously satisfying (and difficult) path of helping people in difficult straits to be in charge of the environment where it was happening. She took on a lot of grief and lost a lot of joy in administering space for others to do the helping. But somebody has to negotiate the lease, buy the supplies, raise the money, etc. At some point I realized she was following a boddhisatva path, giving up paradise for the greater good. I have such huge respect for her doing this, not to mention everything else. And I think it's activism - actively making it happen - relieving suffering - Dharma.

Hear it ring, so pure and holy.

I am officially old and in the way

I posted a restrained account of receiving the clear message that I am officially old and in the way. Then, whatever, nevermind, and I deleted it, but want to make note of this week, when, in wonderful symmetry, I brought in $10,000 for the clinic and also got the message.

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Old and in the way

That's what I heard him say

They used to heed the words he said

But that was yesterday

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Photo: unnamed tarn somewhere along the 4 Pass Loop in Maroon Bells, 2008

More bread and so on

Beautiful Vision
We haven't bought any bread since December. No-knead pot bread has been a true breakthrough - crusty, good taste, good to look at, easy, and forgiving. This week, during a cold spell I baked another loaf. It started off rising slower than I planned and the bread-making slipped into my three day work week and I had to put it in the refrigerator to slow rising and once it rose too much and in the end, another good loaf of bread, hot and crusty from the oven. Photo left: moments out of the oven and the bread is still in the pot.

Photo below: orange marmalade, another breakthrough, so good! On a par with Mr. and Mrs. Robertson's, they of the thick-cut marmalade we bought in Hong Kong. Pear or peach preserves next. I hope to never buy preserves or marmalade again.

The full BREAD recipe is here. I made a summary (below) because the article uses a lot of words. But I recommend you read it.

4 cups/20 ounces/567 gm flour (3 all-purpose, 1 bread)
1 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt
¾ tsp instant yeast
2 cups ice water

Stir dry together, then vigorously stir in ice water.

Oil top, cover, fridge 8-12 hours
In cool room let rise 8-10 hours
Stir
Oil top, let rise until ~doubled
Fold using oiled rubber spatula until mostly deflated
Cover, let rise until doubled (2-4 hours)

Preheat oven and bowl to 450 – lower the middle rack 1st
(Go fast) Light olive oil to hot pot
Dough in – use oiled spatula
Spray water generously and put top on, shake it to level dough
Bake 55 minutes
Top off, reduce heat to 425
Bake 20-25 more minutes

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Changing the subject, I wrote this a week or so ago: Over the years, especially during hospice and when the Khmer came to Dallas I was advised by several people that if I didn’t slow down I would burn out. I never did slow down – and here I am, 65 years old and finally finally burned out. I thought all along that I had it right and now I know.

It's better to burn out

than it is to rust

-o-

I am tired
I am weary
I could sleep for a thousand years

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Yesterday and last night we got 12.5 inches of snow - the greatest accumulation ever recorded in Dallas. Our electricity went off around 9p and came back on around 11p (I was asleep, so I'm guessing on the time). I love the snow - in small doses - having lived in Indiana and Colorado. A beautiful day and now in the evening, our welcome lights on the arbor sparkling in the snow.

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It was a nice surprise to stumble across this on the net (in a Roma website): "From Charles Kemp's page, formerly on the Baylor University Website, and too valuable to be removed from the Web http://www.ringofgold.eu/charleskemp.html"

Bread

Fragrance rising, filling the house, reality.

In late December I started baking again, using the Tassajara Bread Book from days of yore. The first loaves were perfect: taste the wheat(!), coarse, not too heavy, and toasted up to perfection. Next I baked French loaves, which turned out not as crusty and coarse as I wanted. I took a loaf to the baker at Eatzis and he gave me some good guidance. Though I didn’t retain or understand all he told me, still, very helpful. I got some bread books from the library, most notably, Artisan Baking by M. Glezer, and I started reading over and over again the recipe for Acme Bread Company baguettes. There’s a lot to learn: poolish, scrap dough, turning, couche, so on and so forth.

Then, during days when the temperature was in the teens, I baked whole wheat again. Despite my best efforts the dough never rose enough and we ended up with small, dense, and less flavorful loaves.

Photos: Today. The front loaf is whole wheat, as is the one to the right. There are two flat baguettes and a boule on the left. Three loaves of banana bread at back.

Yesterday I made the poolish and scrap dough for Acme baguettes, and while I was doing that, baked some banana nut bread – in part to help warm the kitchen. This morning I made a two loaf batch of Tassajara whole wheat while the Acme bread was working. I put the first ww loaf directly on and close to the center of the hot baking stone.* The loaf stuck fast, so I put the other loaf in a bowl in the refrigerator so I could bake it later. When the loaf that was stuck to the stone came out it had a little bit of a dogleg, but such a taste! The loaf also had a piece of stone baked into the crust - talk about rustic!

Turned the oven up, used an espresso machine to blow steam into the oven (awkward and evoking several comments from Leslie), and slid the Acme loaves on parchment paper on to the hot stone (for me, dough on parchment paper on stone better than dough directly on the stone).

The result: amazingly flavorful, crusty, chewy loaves. I think if I took one of these to Acme they’d say, well, you could do this and that, but this here is a good loaf of bread (for an amateur). For example the baguettes are pretty flat because I didn’t use a couche, despite having gotten and prepared the canvas. For some reason, it was just too much. I need to work on the cuts. I can’t wait to bake again.

*I went to a stone company and got two pieces of slate. I trimmed one to a perfect size and the other is an okay size. Baking on a stone means a crusty and unscorched bottom crust.

Overall, accelerating

Charles Kemp

I’m thinking about this. My life didn’t really take off until Vietnam, except I did fall in love before then. Vietnam - suddenly real, fast, hard and then the integration years 1967-1972 (Leslie and all). Then undergraduate school and nursing, then graduate school and hospice. Traveling. Our home, our marriage, working together. Teaching, refugees. David! Teaching, writing, refugees, community health, family, and finishing out at Agape, backpacking, traveling these past 5 years. Entering retirement. The point of this entry: all this and pretty much/generally it’s been accelerating or at least going forward all through! God, the energy that’s gone down, slowing these past few years (it’s ok). It’s all just un-____ing-believable! Photo: Christmas morning - 2009

1604 Annex was a pretty rough place

Charles Kemp

1604 Annex was a large, densely packed apartment complex with dark wandery corridors with lots of corners and a number of hidey-holes under stairwells and whatnot. Most of the apartments were one bedroom with 3-6 people living in them. The gangsters hung out mostly at the two back entrances, but there was always a good-eye in front and back. I knew a lot of people who lived there, including a Guatemalan woman. She was friendly and nice and we’d talk now and again. One day she invited me to her apartment, which, like so many other apartments in the neighborhood was sparse. The only thing in the living room was a pretty funky old couch and I was sitting there and she brought me a coke or something and sat down right next to me – as in sitting against me. We were talking and I realized she was working as a prostitute and was offering me sex. I don’t remember exactly what I said – something like, “You’re really pretty and I dig you, but I can’t do this (I do remember sounding pretty lame to myself). But I guess she was okay with it because we moved apart some and talked and I finished my drink and left. We were friendly after that, and not even very awkward.

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Photos from la clinica - above: He walked for three days and nights in the Sonoran Desert; at right: child with H1N1 and asthma

I think we all want to sing our song and have it heard. We want to be and be seen as we are. As we are: unarmored, clean, strong, hopeful, beautiful…

When you find out who you are,
Beautiful, beyond your dreams.

After years of no serious baking, I've started baking bread again. Coarse, crusty old loaves of whole wheat goodness. Last week I baked 4 loaves of whole wheat bread - just what they used to have (maybe still do) at the SF Zen Center. Whole wheat, water, honey, oil, yeast, a little salt. Kitchen warm, kneading and kneading the dough, the fragrance of yeasty rising dough, and then the aroma of baking bread, then the bread - with way too much butter ... It's fun to make pies, cookies, etc., and it's something more to bake bread.

Christmas Eve

Last Friday, after we were finished with patients (it happens now and then) Christina, one of our volunteer physicians and I were sitting in the pharmacy talking. She is associated with the Children’s Medical Center REACH Clinic, where children who have been physically or sexually abused are treated. If you think about it in any detail, it’s just unimaginable – a pelvic exam on a 5 year old – how do you process doing that? Having it done? I just don’t know.

We were talking about faith and work. It was one of those conversations that reverberate in one well after it seems to be over. Talking with Christina I mentioned, for the first time in years, our work with Jonathan’s Place, a shelter for battered, abused, and neglected children. Photo: Chris from Jonathan's Place and me.

What happened was that someone I knew called and asked if we could help with the children at Jonathan’s Place. They had lost their pediatrician and needed someone to do admission physical exams on the children in the first 24 hours after they were removed from their parent(s) and to treat any acute illnesses. I said sure. The way it worked was that someone would call to say they had two or five or however many children needing exams and they would bring them to the clinic at the end of our regular day. We (my students and I) would be set up for them so when they got to us we could move them as quickly and calmly and kindly as possible through the process. I’ll tell you truly it wasn’t easy, mapping out the bruises, lacerations, etc., and trying to be supportive to these frightened children.

I remember two girls, ages about 7 and 10, both raped by their father and the older child comforting the younger.

After we’d been doing these exams for a few months I called Chris, the young man who was our main contact at Jonathan’s Place and told him I was committing to do this as long as they needed it. He could call anytime and I would come anytime. And that’s the way it went for the next about 1 ½ years. Most weeks there were 1-3 children, sometimes less, sometimes more. That was one of my last commitments beyond my family, and in terms of how much energy I had it was really more than I should have made. But it was just a few hours a week.

I was thinking about how my students were involved in this and what a good job they did with the children. I was thinking what a great blessing it was that they were a part of something so much greater than school. And with that blessing, “A sword will pierce your own soul too” Luke 2:35.

So now that I’m leaving,
I’m weary as hell.
The confusion I’m feeling,
Ain’t no tongue can tell.

Photo: Sophea and science project in Phnom Penh (she's in middle, looking at the camera, to the left of the girl flashing peace sign). She sent this photo today and it gave me such great joy I wanted to post it - strangely, here in this painful post. So take a break, click the photo to make it larger and say hi to Sophea.