17-April-99 Activist

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Actually it was Arlene who was doing the community activist thing today. I was chauffeur.

Andover-Newton Theological Seminary is selling some of its undeveloped property, which is a nice piece of woods in our immediate neighborhood. The community is naturally concerned about what's going to be built there, additional traffic, impact on the already crowded local school, drainage, construction traffic and noise, light pollution from the new buildings, and a zillion other issues. There have been several meetings of the community with ANTS, developers, and city officials. We've passed out leaflets about several of those, and this time the woman who's been most active on the community side asked Arlene to organize the leafletting for the next meeting. After many phone calls she had got people to agree to do the leafletting, so we counted out the papers, made a folder for each volunteer, and dropped everything off. We drove on streets not more than three blocks from here that I've never been on, little cul-de-sacs that end up against someone's backyard fence or abruptly turn into gravel roads for two house lengths. Will the developer of another parcel do anything to preserve the 1930s-vintage gas station on that property? Stay tuned.

In the middle of the afternoon there was a noise at our door. I went to see if someone was there. Hi, Fran! We had been leafletted.

I spent a lot of the afternoon indexing stamp mounts. Several good-sized orders have come in lately, and in any big order there are bound to be a few stamps that we have to make up. I use a soy oil base printer's ink and stamp the image on the top of every stamp mount. It's enough effort to clean the indexing stamp that I do between four and twelve mounts of each design, depending on how well the design sells. Too many means tying up money in mounts, but too few means having to clean off the indexing stamp again when more orders for the popular design come in.

Our lives changed last summer when we bought a Weber charcoal grill. Once I caught on, we cooked on it at least twice a week until October. I grilled a halibut steak on it earlier this week, and fired it up again this evening to grill a steak and an eggplant. If there's anyone out there who has a grill and doesn't do vegetables on it, get with the program!. Here's what I do: grind half a teaspoon each of rosemary and thyme in a mortar & pestle along with two pinches of salt. If you don't have a mortar and pestle, rub the herbs between your palms. Mix into three tablespoons of olive oil. Wash an eggplant, cut off the stem, and slice lengthwise into slabs up to half an inch thick. You don't need to peel the eggplant; are you afraid of a little fiber? Paint the slabs with the herb and olive oil mixture and let them sit while the fire gets started, then grill on both sides until they start to brown. If you hate eggplant, use summer squash or zucchini, or all three, and the measurements aren't critical. Throw some slices of sweet potato on the grill, too, but they don't need the herbs.