RESOLUTION FOR READERS

A decade ago I found this list and have enjoyed using it so much that I'd like to share it with you for 2012.

1. I will reread a book that I loved as a child.

2. I will finally read that classic from high school that I’ve been avoiding.

3. I will find a book of poetry and read some aloud.

4. I will spend an hour in aimless browsing at a library.

5. I will read a book written in the year I was born

6. I will create a journal and keep notes about the books and magazines read.

7. I will assemble a list of my favorite people and send them my ideas about
books (favorites, recent reads, and the like)

8. I will read a book to a child.

9. I will gather a few friends and read a play out loud

10. I will read a book on the history of my town.

11. I will read a book written from a political point of view totally opposite my own.

12. I will read a book about a place I’ve never been.

13. I will reread a book that I just didn’t “get” when I was eighteen.

14. I will read a book written by a non-American.



Adapted from a list created by Camille DelVecchio, Penfield (NY) Public Library

DEC 28 - GOOD RIDDANCE DAY!

I just saw an interesting story on TV a few minutes ago about today being "Good Riddance Day" -- and while the reason for my interest took place a few days ago (December 23, to be exact) I'm celebrating it today!

I crawled off my bed of healing and managed to get here for a short notification that I have said good riddance to my crappy gall bladder in an emergency surgery on December 23, and then a second procedure on December 24 where the doc went down through my mouth to search and destroy a gallstone that was stuck in the bile duct. As if that weren't enough, while still in the recovery room I suffered a bout of atrial fib and because it was a holiday no doctor could be found to tend to me.

Finally a kind-hearted young female doctor arrived and I was shepherded through the return to a normal beat and finally arrived in my room. I came home on Monday evening, and all I can say is that one doesn't bounce back as quickly at 76 as one does at 36 (hysterectomy) or at 46 (appendectomy.) But here I am, sore and shakey but on the road to recovery. Some Christmas, huh? Thank god for husband and children and doctors and nurses and morphine.

I'm not crazy about the pix of the Gall bladder above, but it is to show you what I said "Good Riddance" to for 2011.

TEMPUS FUGIT FOR SURE!

Imagine walking into your favorite supermarket on December 22, shortly before Christmas, rounding a corner and coming face to face with a wall of candy such as the one above. Believe me, it is a jaw-dropping experience.

I knew where the candy canes were last week, but they sure weren't there this week. I had noticed as we walked in the door this morning that there was a huge display of ingredients for making Christmas edibles - Karo syrup, sugar, boxed cookie mixes, spanish peanuts and mixed nuts, along with every kind of pot, pan, bowl, and storage container one could possibly use for making these goodies, and I figured right at the front door was a marketing ploy to make sure that Christmas stuff would sell.

I figured there were a lot more Christmas items left in the usual spot. But was I wrong. It was February 14 in that aisle, for sure!

As if that wasn't startling enough, I turned around and found behind me a forerunner of this year's Easter items.



Jer and I were puzzling over this whole thing when a lady in a red Ralph's jacket walked up to us and explained:

Our Ralphs store is the guinea pig (her word, not ours) for all the items Ralphs wants to track for customer use and approval. Yes, people do buy Valentine's day candy before Christmas. If it is eye-catching, they figure they'll see just how good it tastes. Items that sit on those shelves week after week without moving are not ordered for the other Ralphs stores. It's all about Marketing, she said. We are the guinea pig store.

And now it makes sense that so many things appear and disappear in that store during the year. I hate to seem like I'm being paranoid (or worse yet, weird) but it seems that everything I find and like will ultimately disappear, because I am the only person who buys and likes it. Jer and I have laughed at how many things we have started using on a weekly basis disappear -- sometimes with a notice (close-out sale) or just never restocked after I buy the last one on the shelf. I do believe that when we check out, ringing up our items is like putting the kiss of death on them.

It was reassuring in a funny way to know just why we have always laughed at how far ahead the seasonal items are put on display -- Valentine's day and Easter before Christmas, Halloween items before Fourth of July, and Christmas items before Thanksgiving. Now we know. Not all Ralphs do this; just ours and for a good reason, whether we like it or not!

After the Ralphs lady left, I happened to notice down at the far end of the aisle, in the same location as the Christmas cooking items at the other set of doors, were the remnants of this year's Christmas goodies that should have been where the Valentine's candy now sat. They were there, catching the eye of people who came in through that set of doors, reminding them that Christmas is still ahead of us.

So all is well at our Ralphs. They are not crazy, as we were beginning to believe.

SEE WHAT MOBY DICK HATH WROUGHT!

For some reason I have always been fascinated by tedious things.... although I'm not sure it is the thing itself that interests me or the fact that someone can actually choose to do something tedious. I tend to think it is the latter.

My first foray into tedious things was a try at needlepoint. Granted, I didn't know what I was doing when I started out, but it didn't take long for me to decide that doing needlepoint was like doing penance for all the sins I had committed in my life and doing it in advance for all the ones that I might commit in the future. I hated it. I did one small 5x9 picture, hated every stitch of it, and threw it away when I finished. For many years I avoided any such similar endeavor, until in 1977 or thereabouts the counted cross-stitch craze from North Caroline made it out to California. I took one look at it, said to myself, "I can do that" and started working a 22-to-the-inch counted cross stitch picture. I loved it, and in fact over the years I've done more than I can count.

I don't understand why I liked the one and not the other, but what it showed me is that there is something in me that says tedious things are pleasant and good for my soul!

A second time when I got interested in doing something tedious - and I surely don't understand this one - is that sometime in the 1969-70 period I decided to copy the New Testament by handwriting it into a notebook. With my whole family active in Christian circles it seemed like an unusual, devotional-type thing to do and I found great satisfaction in doing this. The product wasn't what was important, the discipline was. However, that ended when my marriage ended; it seemed that everything I had understood had fallen away and any semblance of discipline was no longer operative. The notebook went into the trash along with my marriage.

Now what does all this have to do with a blog today?

I have had it in my mind to re-read Moby Dick. The first time I saw those words was in my 10th grade English class when Miss Weiherman passed out copies of the book for us to read. I didn't understand one word of it. Through the years I've seen them mostly in cross-word puzzles, and each time they do I think I should re-read the book in my old age; perhaps I would understand it now!

This morning while investigating the entries I've placed on Google-Reader I came up with this:



This looked a whole lot more interesting to me that re-reading the book itself. Whatever it is in me that responds to this kind of discipline really took over, and I went to the book publisher's website to see what it was all about. I was fascinated by what I read.

Moby-Dick in Pictures: One Drawing for Every Page

Inspired by one of the world’s greatest novels, Ohio artist Matt Kish set out on an epic voyage of his own one day in August 2009. More than one hundred and fifty years following the original publication of Moby-Dick, Kish began illustrating Herman Melville’s classic, creating images based on text selected from every page of the 552-page Signet Classics paperback edition. Completely self-taught, Kish refused to set any boundaries for the artwork and employed a deliberately low-tech approach in response to the increasing popularity of born-digital art and literature. He used found pages torn from old, discarded books, as well as a variety of mediums, including ballpoint pen, marker, paint, crayon, ink, and watercolor. By layering images on top of existing words and images, Kish has crafted a visual masterpiece that echoes the layers of meaning in Melville’s narrative. In retrospect, Kish says he feels as foolhardy as Ishmael, the novel’s narrator, and as obsessed as Captain Ahab in his quest for the great white whale. “I see now that the project was an attempt to fully understand this magnificent novel, to walk through every sun-drenched word, to lift up all the hatches and open all the barrels, to smell, taste, hear, and see every seabird, every shark, every sailor, every harpooner, and every whale,” he says. “It was a hard thing, a very painful thing, but the novel now lives inside me in a away it never could have before.” Kish spent nearly every day for eighteen months toiling away in a small closet he converted into an art studio. In order to share the work with family and friends, he started the blog “One Drawing for Every page of Moby-Dick,” where he posted art and brief description about his process on a daily basis.

So now the issue becomes: shall I trust that I can find this book in my local library? or by interlibrary loan? or WorldCat? Or shall I trust Santa to put it in my stocking? Or should I just go back to my original idea and check a well-worn Moby Dick out of my library?

I'm not even sure what I want to do. At this point in my life I'm not only trying to stay with short term projects but am trying not to start new ones, so any of these selections may be off the table, period. However, I did want to share this wonderful "find" with any of you who like literature, art, discipline, and odd things!

And below is the art work for just one of the 500+ pages.

MEETING A PARSNIP

It is a given: if the cashier at the supermarket is not close to retirement age when I unload my groceries for him or her to ring up, I will be asked, "What are these?" when my choice of parsnips come down the little conveyor belt. Only us old folk know what a parsnip is.

I had a young female cashier say to me one time, "I thought parsnips were something just made up for a fairy-tale." Another one said, "Oh, they must be something only old people know about." That one made me laugh, because to be truthful, I don't think I ever cooked them while my children were at home. But my mom used them a lot, always in stew but also she braised them, which was my favorite way of eating them.

She'd use the vegetable peeler on them to get the outer skin off. She'd halve them once crosswise and then again lengthwise. She would melt some butter, lots of it actually, in a skillet, put the pieces of the parsnip cut side down in it, add a little water, and then cook them very slowly until they were tender. Parsnips are sweet. It's rare to find a sweet vegetable, but parsnips are one of them. Braised, they are so succulent they just melted in one's mouth.

In the picture above there are some turnips next to the parsnips. My mother always used turnips in her stews too, and potatoes as well. But when the stew is done I can hardly tell the difference in taste between the turnip and potato pieces (actually the difference is more in texture) so I think potatoes and parsnips complement each other better in a stew. Oh, the parsnips are so flavorable!

I read in this week's LA Times an article on latkes for Hanukkah, and the lady writer, a cook, said she always grates some parships to add to her latkes. For her recipe she always uses 1 parsnip for every 2 potatoes. Now this lady wasn't using the already-prepared dry latke mix from Manischevitz or one of the other prepared potato-pancake mixes. She did it the old fashioned way, hand-grating the potatoes and parsnips. I haven't done them that way for a long, long time. Jerry is quite happy with me using the Manischevitz mix, so why do it the hard way? But I think I'm going to give it a try this year. I can just imagine how good those newly-designed home-made latkes will taste with a slight tinch of parsnips.

But then to top off my incursion into all things parsnip, I read this receipe below and thought I needed to try it too. MMmmmmmmm! Does it sound good -- a wonderful thick soup for the winter.

SWEET CORN AND PARSNIP SOUP

Total time: 1 hour and 10 minutes
Servings: 6 to 8
Note: Adapted from the Organic Panificio Cafe.

2 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 cup diced onion
1 stalk celery, chopped
5 cloves garlic, smashed
3 sprigs parsley, plus chopped parsley for garnish, divided
4 sprigs thyme
1/2 bay leaf

3 cups (1 pound) fresh, sweet yellow corn kernels (from 5 to 6 ears)
1/3 pound peeled and trimmed parsnips, coarsely chopped

2 1/2 teaspoons sea salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon cracked white pepper, plus more to taste
6 to 7 cups milk, more as desired

Raw sugar, to taste if desired
Mascarpone, for garnish

1. In a 4-quart, heavy-bottom soup pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Saute the onions, celery and garlic along with the parsley sprigs, thyme and bay leaf until the onions are soft, about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

2. Stir in the corn, parsnips, 2 1/2 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and continue to saute until the parsnips are tender, 20 minutes, stirring frequently.

3. Stir in the milk and bring the mixture to a simmer. Simmer for 30 minutes.

4. Purée the soup using an immersion blender, or in stages using a standing blender, then strain.

5. Adjust the seasoning to taste and sweeten if desired with raw sugar. This makes about 7 cups soup.

6. Serve warm, with a small dollop of mascarpone and a sprinkling of chopped parsley.

Each of 8 servings: 226 calories; 9 grams protein; 26 grams carbohydrates; 3 grams fiber; 11 grams fat; 6 grams saturated fat; 29 mg. cholesterol; 822 mg. sodium.

Three cheers for good vegetables and good recipes. And for parsnips.

WHAT'S GOING ON?

If you watched the news last week you probably saw that poor old Pasadena, north and a bit east of Los Angeles, was hit by hurricane-strength winds that took down more that 100 huge trees, took roofs off houses, and made spaghetti out of electrical lines. Although a wind had been expected - our usual fall/winter "Santa Ana" winds - no weatherperson predicted the strength of the winds that we got. It took a week to get the streets drivable again and to get everyone back with power.

We had a surprise rainstorm on Tuesday of this week and it was so cold we actually had snow down to the 3,500 foot level on Wednesday of this week. Here's what our mountains looked like from Mimi's Cafe in Rancho Cucamonga. Usually we don't get this kind of snow until January.


Then Wednesday we had a tanker truck catch on fire and stop directly under a bridge on one of our freeways. The fire was so hot it cracked the cement on the overpass and the freeway is now in its third day of being completely shut down while the overpass is demolished.


The freeway, of course, is a major east-west road for people working in the LA area, and what has normally been a 45-minute commute has turned into a 2 hour drive.

The weathermen predicted another Santa Ana for today, so we prepared for the ordinary winds but after what happened earlier we all held our breath while we watched the wind get stronger and stronger.

Here's what our TV is showing:





And now our TV is reporting that a gunman has taken over a commercial building in the San Gabriel Valley and so far three people are reported dead.

Each of these events is bad enough on its own; when they hit one after another you just have to wonder when the next shoe is going to fall.

And we just have to keep pushing the "e" word out of our mind, because we are overdue. A little scary, I say.

MY BOOK PICKS FOR 2011

If everyone else gets to pick their 10 best something, then I'll do it too. Except since it is 2011, I'm picking 11.

However, my book list is a bit different, as I'm picking the 11 best books I read this year, not my favorites of those published this year. If you've followed my blog, you'll have read about many but not all of these. And just so you'll know, I've put an asterisk behind all the non-fiction books.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here are my 11.


The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake – by Aimee Bender
The Forgotten Founding Father – Noah Webster* by Joshua Kendall
Chang and Eng by Darin Straus
Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English by Natasha Solomons
Twilight at the World of Tomorrow*by James Mauro
The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell
In the Garden of Beasts* by Erik Larsen
The Elephant's Journey by Jose Saramago
Just My Type: A Book about Fonts* by Simon Garfield
Lost in Shangri-La* by Mitchell Zuckoff
The Greater Journey – Americans in Paris* by David McCullough