Hurting feelings

Remember when you were a kid and you grabbed a stick and played swordfight with some friend or a sibling?

Greatest fun in the world, until and unless one of you actually scored a point of pain, jabbing a tender place -- hopefully never an eye. Then the tears and the recriminations erupted.

I love words. I wouldn't be a blogger if I didn't.

But wordplay is swordplay, of a different type.

Every now and then, something that I write is going to jab a tender spot in one of my readers. It's happened four times now, with four different people. Usually, it will be absolutely unintentional. Unless You are a misogynist, a terrorist, a slow driver in the fast lane, an abuser or molester of children, a bigot or a fan of Charles Manson, I probably don't hate you and didn't mean to hurt your feelings.

I hope that we can always understand that. I don't link people whose blogs I don't greatly respect. And I write in sincerity. I believe what I profess to believe.

A smart bit of psychology

"So what do you do?" he said, bouncing the little ball up and down, playing the part of an obnoxious kid in the classroom.

I stood in a corner, looking over the room-full of new teachers, wondering what their answer might be, wondering what my answer would be if I were a teacher.

"Call security!" someone suggested.

What would you do, indeed, as a classroom teacher confronted with a ball-bouncing, directive-ignoring, will-testing little kid?

How do you overpower such a child pyschologically, how do you break his will and impose yours?

That was what we all seemed to wonder.

The facilitator wandered up to the front of the room, where a panel of experienced teachers was in place.

"What would you do?" he asked one of them.

"Hey, let me show you how to juggle," the teacher said, extending a hand casually for the ball and tossing it back and forth for a few minutes.

I imagined a class rapt with attention and surprise.

"Bring your ball in tomorrow before class and I'll show you some juggling tricks," the teacher continued.

Then he handed it back to the "child." And he bade him sit down so that the regular lesson might continue.

Heads nodded.

I came away profoundly moved. This veteran knew better, much better than I or these others had, how to reach the heart of a child. How to win by strategy, by friendliness, not by a battle of wills. How to proceed without fear or anger.

Happy Sukkoth

Happy Sukkoth (Jewish Harvest Festival) to any Isis readers who celebrate it!

Foraging

One of my little pleasures in life (besides growing a garden where I can grow vegetables without a bunch of pesticides and a long ride in some truck to get to my table) is to find edibles in the wild.

Some call it foraging.

Euell Gibbons wrote the classic book on the subject back in 1962, "Stalking the Wild Asparagus." Now that is one guy I would love to have for a neighbor.

From his book I have learned the right way to enjoy dandelions - when they are young and tender -- and about other nourishing goodies such as candied acorns, daylily pods and (non-poison) sumac berries. From other sources, I learned about the edible bulbs of spring beauty and how to chew the stem of a sweetgum leaf for, well, the sweetgum. But I am still a novice.

And until today, I had completely ignored the last half of his book, on wild mushrooms.

My parents are into wild mushrooms but they live thousands of miles away and so their knowledge is hard to share.

Ela suggested that I had photographed oyster mushrooms the other day. And after three other experts looked at the photos and agreed, including my parents, I took the chance. Like Trisia noted below, deadly mushrooms tend to grow out of the soil, not out of logs. And they don't tend to grow in huge clumps either.

So I dabbed the alleged oyster mushrooms with a wet paper towel -- you're never supposed to rinse or soak mushrooms in water, it makes them tough -- then sauteed them with a little butter. I took one careful, little bite.

Absolutely, utterly delicious! Not like the store-brand mushrooms at all. A little gamey and with just a hint of bitterness that only added to the flavor.

I couldn't help myself. I ate almost the whole pan full.,

Five hours have passed. I am not yet dead.

I have entered a wonderful new world.

Unexpected discovery

Of all the pictures that I took last weekend, I did not expect the mushrooms to take center stage. But Braveheart Ela recognized what they were and started me on a journey of discovery.

Those are oyster mushrooms, She said. Edible.

So I went online. A mushroom guy online that She recommended, agreed. I emailed the photos to my parents, too, across the country. They are mushrooms hunters and they agreed, too.

Still not 100 percent at ease, I found a mushroom expert who lives in my city -- found his phone number, at least. I hope to hear from him tomorrow. Even if I don't, I'm ready to give these mushrooms a try. I know what deathcaps, destroying angels and toadstools look like -- and I know that none of them spring from logs, as oysters do.

Sweetie is going to observe my reaction. If I die, She won't sample.

So if this is the last post I ever put up, everybody was wrong and I will my books to a Girl's school in Afghanistan. I have no money and nothing else of value.

Conclusion of my walk through an East Coast forest

Fallen trees provide a feast for fungi.

You never know what will wash up along this creek -- I've seen lawn chairs, road signs, even a plastic sword.

This, however, made my heart stop for a half-second or so ...




... until I realized it was just a doll.

This area is also awash in poison ivy, which didn't bother this little butterfly. I had to get down on my belly, dangerously close to the plants, to get this photo of him sitting on one of them.



After a few hundred feet more, we reach the western boundary of the woodland, where someone's boring lawn has taken the place of the diverse natural landscape that once flourished here.

Now we turn back to head into the deeper and wilder woods that is my favorite part of this journey. We hop over a small, muddy creeklet and up the hill again through a meadow created by the gas company, as they have a pipeline underneath it.

In this meadow, more poison ivy grows -- avoiding it is like picking your way through a minefield. But the abundant sunshine here encourages less hostile plants to grow, too, like this little flower.



This is the most challenging part of the hike, through a deep woods where it is very easy to lose track of where you are. I've tried laying limbs in patterns, to help create a path, but I still get off course every time and wander for a few minutes until I finally find this mysterious clearing where some kind of factory once stood. Slag heaps are piled up, grass pokes through old asphalt and young pines are at work to heal the scars, too. A box turtle lives in this wet lowland but I didn't see him today. Probably some cottonmouths are to be found here, too and I proceed with caution.





I tried quite hard to photograph a giant grasshopper that was hanging out in a pine tree, but the shot never came out quite right. I did capture this unidentified yellow flower, though.



I've been out here two hours and I need to go home. So I will wander semi-lost for a few minutes until I find the gas line cut again, cross through the poison ivy and reenter my back yard.

Overgrown tomatoes, a fig tree, asparagus and grapes are what you see there.