One more day

[altivo]

Just one more, then ten off. I need the break, though it probably won't be restful what with hay loading and other stuff that needs to get done.

I wanted to dye the rest of that white wool with walnut hulls, but when I went to check our black walnut tree this afternoon I found no nuts. Either it produced none this year or else the squirrels are so desperate that they took them already. Unless I can find another source within the next couple of days, I'll have to choose some other dye source. Indigo would go well with the yellow, but I'd have to buy that. Same for cochineal or logwood. I'd rather not mix synthetic dye and natural.

Library directors for our consortium met yesterday afternoon, and I gather that my name came up several times. Evidently I was being recognized as the "leading" cataloger, which is probably a bit of a stretch. There are others as skilled and knowledgeable, but I'm perhaps less hesitant to make decisions. That's sort of a leadership skill, I guess. Anyway, it was apparently hinted that I do something like give classes or seminars to the others, which I feel is way out of line. The real problem is that not all the libraries value good cataloging equally. Those who tend to think that the catalog is "a waste of time" are still not going to contribute much to a consortial effort in that respect.

Absolutely clear sky at sunset. Too bad we aren't having aurora now. Though I guess the moon will be up shortly to spoil what dark sky we have. Mosquitoes are still out there, but much reduced in numbers from a week ago. This may be their last gasp for the season. I hope so.

Watching the hummingbirds at work this morning, I was even more convinced that at least one of them is a female Anna's rather than a ruby-throated. She is significantly larger than the rest, and less colorful, though very much a hummingbird and quite a strong flyer.

Comments

[moonhare]

The real problem is that not all the libraries value good cataloging equally.

No kidding? ;o) You know my tales of woe.

Hope your ten days are relaxing. My vacations will start in October. I still have close to four weeks to use up before the end of the year.

[altivo]

I continue to be astounded by these people who think we don't need catalogs and should just put books on the shelves the way they do at Borders or Barnes & Noble.

Evidently they have forgotten or never knew how to do specific research or scholarly work of any kind.

As far as I can tell, it doesn't come from any serious assessment of user needs, but only from the shallow realization that they don't know how to catalog properly and don't want to hire anyone who does have the requisite skills. So they try to brush the whole thing off as "unnecessary." It's the same problem as the people who "weed" collections by throwing out the books that look worn and ugly. They end up with bright shiny shelves, but no classics at all; and then they have to use interlibrary loan to provide Ivanhoe (just sent it out yesterday) or even Huckleberry Finn when someone asks for it.

[moonhare]

Our Director 'weeds' our fiction collection by number of uses, and whether or not the book is listed in the Fiction Catalog. Shabby books that have gone out within X number of years get replaced. Anything listed in the Fiction Catalogue is also repurchased. I give her credit, even if she's sentimental: if we own a 'last' copy of an item she won't discard it.

I'm saddened by the policies which are being instituted in our non-fiction. It seems that there is a prevalent theory that 'all that' can be gotten online therefore we don't need to carry so much. Bins of these books are being discarded. I had to argue (not that my voice carries any weight with the ref staff) for keeping our collection of the Book Review Digest dating back to 1917 (I know I'm the only one to ever go through these but it just seemed a shame to let them go).

Huckleberry Finn? *snicker* Send 'em to Gutenberg! Or better yet, 'Blooms'.

[moonhare]

Sorry that this ended up as a posting reply and not a thread reply... and rather than delete I'll just leave it be ;o)

[altivo]

Gutenberg or no, old or not, there are books that every library should have. And in my opinion, any public library in the US should have several of Mark Twain's novels, including Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer both. It's not as if these were expensive, either. New hardcovers could be had for under $10 last time I checked.

Project Gutenberg is great for old works that are also obscure, such as Dumas' Black Tulip or Thayer's Wired Love. But in general, I don't think we should tell people that they have to read from the computer screen. What if they don't have a computer? What if they have no computer skills? We still get lots of users in those categories.

[schnee]

I'm perhaps less hesitant to make decisions. That's sort of a leadership skill, I guess.

It sure is.

Pity about the lack of black walnuts; we have a bunch of walnut trees in the neighborhood, but I doubt I could just send over some nuts. *s* Not that I'm sure if they're black walnuts, anyway (up to now, I wasn't even aware that there existed such a thing, I'll confess).

[altivo]

I believe the black walnut (Juglans nigra) is a North American native species, but I suppose it may have been exported to other places. More likely though, what you have are Carpathian or English walnuts or some other relative.

The black walnut has nutshells so hard that you almost need a jackhammer to get them open, or so it seems. The nutmeats are very fragrant of and flavored by cyanide-like compounds, but not toxic. At least, not in the amount you're likely to eat given how hard they are to get open. The papery husk on the nut is the source of a rich brown dye and in fact will stain your skin like henna does.

[schnee]

I believe the black walnut (Juglans nigra) is a North American native species, but I suppose it may have been exported to other places. More likely though, what you have are Carpathian or English walnuts or some other relative.

Yeah, it's definitely not black walnuts, at least. this is what the ones we got look like, BTW. (And yeah, it probably says a lot about me being a suburban kid with no real exposure to nature that I initially thought they might be pears...)

(As far as black walnuts are concerned, the German Wikipedia says that they were introduced to the Rhine and Danube forests in the 1900s. Interesting.)

I'm curious, too, have you ever sampled them? I'm not particularly partial to the taste of "regular" walnuts, but I'm curious. Not that I'm likely to find any on the German market, of course. (Which is a pity. Google just turned up a recipe for Tennessee banana black-walnut cake with caramel frosting that sounds quite interesting.)

[altivo]

I'm not fond of the English walnut, which is what people mean here when they just say "walnut." Those are very tannic, to the point that they make the inside of my mouth sore after eating even a couple of cookies or a slice of nut bread.

The American black walnut has a very distinctive flavor. It puts me in mind of bitter almond, and you might be familiar with that being European. (It's almost impossible to get here.) The flavor is quite strong and aromatic, and you very rarely would eat the actual nut alone. They are so hard to shell that you usually end up with them broken into small fragments to begin with, suitable for use in baking. That's where I'm most accustomed to finding them.

They blend well with chocolate. So well, in fact, that I actually like chocolate brownies or fudge that has black walnuts in it. (I don't normally care enough for chocolate to even bother eating it if it's offered.) They also go well in what we call "German chocolate cake" here, though I have no idea whether it's truly German or something of Pennsylvania Dutch origin. They can be used in cookies or muffins, and for that we usually mince or grind them to a coarse meal and use them sparingly. As I said, the flavor is very strong and can easily overpower everything.

You might find some for sale there, actually, and this is about the right time of year, but I'd expect them to be pretty expensive. They aren't cheap here when you can find them. Because they are so difficult to shell, most often you only get them if someone has gathered them and cracked them by hand.

We usually crack the shells by putting them into a metal working vise and screwing it down until they crunch. Some people put them between boards and drive a vehicle over them repeatedly. My grandmother used to put them on a blacksmith's anvil one at a time, and hit them with a sledge hammer. Honest, they're that hard.

[schnee]

Wow, that's quite hard indeed. *s* I think a vice is what I'd use, too; Google suggests there's also special crackers for black walnuts, but quite a few designs ultimately just seem to be vices, too.

I'll keep an eye open for them, but honestly, I don't believe I'm going to come across them. Turning to Google again (which is good at turning up specialized mail-order stores that sell things you won't (easily) find in stores) yields nothing useful; the only results are a couple of places that sell black walnut *plants*, and one B2B portal that offers the fruits but that a) doesn't sell to consumers, and b) only markets these to craftsmen, for ornamental purposes, so it's unclear to me if these even edible (they might be treated in a way that makes them inedible).

Are they typically available in grocery stores or on farmers' markets in the USA?

[altivo]

Sorry for the delay in answering your last question here. I've been away from the computer much of the last few days.

No, I don't think I've seen black walnuts in the grocery stores, though I may have seen some at farmers' markets once or twice, and I believe I've seen the crushed nutmeats offered by specialty baking catalogs at a fairly high price (something like ten times the price of coffee beans, say.)

They are so difficult to get to a marketable form that no market has ever really been created. The wood from the trees, on the other paw, is sought by craftspeople and has a hardness, density, and color to rival the tropical hardwoods. It makes beautiful furniture and ornamental objects, as well as durable toys and tools.

Here's an odd trivium for you. Wood shavings are often used as bedding for horses kept in stalls. Black walnut shavings have to be avoided, though, because they contain a toxin that is absorbed through the horses' hooves and which causes laminitis (founder, a very nasty condition that can be fatal to horses.)

Black walnut trees also produce chemicals from their roots that inhibit the growth of many other plants near them. Not all are sensitive to this, but we've noticed here on our farm that apple trees do not thrive near the black walnut.

[schnee]

Very interesting, I didn't know any of this. *smiles* Mmm, and I'm really curious as to what these nuts actually taste like now. When I visit the USA again, I shall be sure to try and find some somewhere. :)