The White Meal

Normally, I like a plate of colorful food--it just looks more appetizing. Things began to fall apart yesterday when the market had no Brussells sprouts. I found fresh looking caulifower, and tonight when I was putting the meal together-eeek! Pork roast, cauliflower, mashed potatoes, and applesauce. It was all tan and white. I added some paprika to the buttered breadcrumbs on the cauliflower, but it didn't help. Should have at least chopped up parsley and sprinkled it uber alles.

The first white meal I encountered was when we first moved to Boston and the "boss" invited us to dinner. Although it was a weeknight (clue 1) we dressed up a bit. The host and hostess had dressed down. (clue 2). When we went into the dining room for dinner, the steam iron was on the floor under the window. (clue 3). The meal was white, and tasted O.K., but had that sterile look. The boss and his wife didn't like us, even before we arrived here. It was a clannish company, and closed down shortly thereafter. No one made an effort to get to know us, and the cold shoulder was omnipresent.

The first company party we attended, all the women got up and danced to Alley Cat. I had never been to a party where the women got up and danced.

We had other friends whose idea of a company dinner was boiled fish, boiled potatoes and cauliflower. White as the driven snow. Later, I read that someone in NY was famous for his/her "white dinners."

Give thanks for parsley and paprika and the odd cherry tomato garnish.

Grapeshot

Recovery

It would be hard to stay ill with such a view of the Charles River.

Dr. Lear, the fictional professor in Festival Madness, lives in the condos across the river. He keeps his boat, the WYSIWYG, nearby across from MIT. Some bad person, we won't say who, tossed a Molotov Cocktail at the boat and its occupants, my protag and Dr. Lear. Caused a lot of excitement. Reminder: this is fiction. And aren't we glad?

If The Dog Could Blog

Friend of a friend took off from Gerlach, NV for Soldier Meadow, NV, a place of beauty and isolation and even danger, for the land is wild, the snakes are big and plentiful and coyotes and mountain lions are always stalking a ready meal. (MRE).
http://www.soldiermeadows.com/

The friend of a friend took his dog along, as one would. The dog is a 40 pound dog, a pound dog, formerly a city dog, then a suburban dog, not a farm or ranch dog. The dog had been to Soldier Meadow before, which may or may not account for his behavior, which was to take off over the hills after a rabbit. Doggy doings.

Except he didn't come back. And when the dog's master and friends called and whistled and searched, the dog was, like, gone. After a harrowing search, they finally returned to the West Coast, minus one pet. Of course all sorts of horrible images came to mind. Big ugly rattlers, stealthy cougars. Hungry coyotes. Innocent suburban dog.

This was about a week ago, maybe longer. Today I heard that the dog, hungry and tired and undoubtedly footweary, had appeared at the ranch. If animals could blog, that dog would have some story.

Three Mad Meows

Annie, a contemplative cat, trying to figure things out.

Friday, as you may recall, is Cat Blog Day. I think it was someone blogging Proust who first mentioned it. Grapeshot, writing as Odette, has a Proust blog (Reading Proust in Foxborough) as well as Suck It Up and a new blog, The Cheeseparer, is also up and running. As you may have intuited, The Cheeseparer is about money saving tips during times of recession and inflation. I have discovered the whole world is blogging this, and most newspapers also have articles about same. The Cheeseparer
looks for the most interesting and useful articles and provides links and commentary. Once I have a little more free time (ha! ha! ha! hysterical laughter!) I'll put in some el cheapo recipes that are a) tasty and b) nutricious.

Back to Cat Blogging. When S.O. came home from the hospital after a sojourn of 6 days, Annie came to greet him, but it was more like a dressing down. Meow! Meow! Meow! Each meow louder and more strident, angrier, as it were. Where were you? Why did you leave me? Don't let that happen again!

So all is still not quite forgiven, and S.O. is holed up in the bedroom, which is Thisbe's territory.
Thisbe, who took to the absence by following me all over the house and then refusing to leave the foot of the bed, has her own tale of woe. The bedroom is her safe refuge and under the bed
is the safest spot in the house.

Yikes! There has been a parade of visiting nurses and physical therapists and they all come into the bedroom, unlike most guests who gravitate to the living room. Where is a cat going to be safe?

Dare one comment on hospital food? Well, it ain't gourmet. Oddly enough, the cafeteria selections at the institution, were quite edible, in fact the Buffalo Chicken Wings were outtasight! But the poor patients: yech.

So here we are with some lovely bouquets adorning the house and two cats who are still out of sorts. Whatchagonna do?

I haven't written one word, not even a query. Later, later.

Grapeshot

Spring Is In the Air

The buds are set on the rhododendrum in front of the farm porch. The bad rabbits are eating the tulips, (above right) and the sedum and the chives (above left) are making valiant efforts. Spring is in the air.

Soon the voice of the spring peeper will be heard in the land. The turtle is already crooning on the telephone wires.

I saw the first chipmunk out of his den and scampering across the yard.

Last year, an unseasonably warm spell in December brought up the daffodils and the crocus, and then winter got them. So sad. The rabbits are all but two of the tulips and now those are endangered. Nature against nature.

What's a writer to do?

Grapeshot

A Feeding Flock of Robins

While running back and forth between the hospital and home, I haven't been inclined to write or even watch much TV, but I have, nonetheless, continued to take sustenance to my friends, the Highland Scottish Cattle.

A few days ago I noticed a humongous flock of robins in the pasture, and they continue to be there day after day. Must be something to eat. Maybe worms thrive in the cow patties, or some other delectable (in robin) goody is to be found.

Yesterday the cows ate the old Easter tulips. Speaking of tulips, the very bad rabbits are eating mine already. I am somewhat at a loss what to do. They did this last year, and totalled them. I won't plant anymore. The rest of the bulbs did not sprout up this spring. I'm still not sure about the muscari. Major bummer. Thanks a lot global warming.

I finished the novel, Oil, an excellent novel. Was prepared for more violence at the end. Suspect the movie went overboard showing the gore which was not described in any disgusting detail. The movie, of course, was There Will Be Blood.

Onward,

Grapeshot

The Miracle of Medicine

Significant Other (S.O.) has a partial new knee. The great thing about his latest medical miracle is that it is less invasive surgery than a full knee replacement, with a shorter incision, recovery, a shorter everything. Lots of pain, still, as least for a couple days. Maybe shorter but not lesser pain.

They have cute little pain charts in the hospital, rating pain from 1-10, with 1 being a smiley face and 10 an unhappy face. 10 should be Munsch's The Scream. S.O. rates 10 as passing a kidney stone and I would liken it to childbirth or a 3rd degree burn. Everyone has his/her own pain experience. Pain is immediate, and therefore one really has no memory of it. You can remember, yes, that hurt like hell, but the hurt itself if gone, and aren't we glad.

Anyway, S.O. is supposed to come home today, if he can master stairs, and I already have the fancy bedside tray out. Cats are wondering where he is. Annie keeps looking at me with questioning eyes.

Onward,

Grapeshot

Strawberry Sour Cream Streusel Cake

In case you haven' t planned an Easter dessert, this will serve 10-12, is easy to make and doesn't dirty every dish in the kitchen. If memory serves (and sometimes memory does not), this is a Nigella Lawson recipe and we should all thank her very much. I believe it was in the New York Times. Haven't seen her recipes there for a while. They should bring her back for an encore.

Strawberry Sour Cream Streusel Cake

For the Strawberry Puree:
8 ounces strawberries
3 T. strawberry jam
2 t. cornstarch
2 t, vanilla

For the Cake:
Vegetable oil for pan
3.4 c. sugar
2 c. plus 2 T. flour
1 t. baking powder
½ t. baking soda
12 T. (1 ½ sticks) cold butter, cut into ½ inch cubes
1 cup sour cream
1 large egg
1 T. vanilla

For the crumble topping:
2 t. Demerara or turbinado sugar

Prepare strawberry puree: In a blender, combine berries and jam. Make a paste of cornstarch and vanilla, and add to blender. Puree until smooth. Set aside.
Prepare cake: Heat oven to 375 degrees. Oil a 9 inch springform pan and set aside. In a large bowl, combine sugar, flour baking powder and baking soda. Sprinkle in butter cubs and rub them in by hand until mixture resembles large coarse crumbs. Remove ½ cup and set aside. To large bowl, add sour cream , egg and vanilla. Mix well.
3 Using a little over half the cake batter., drop dollops of batter into the pan. Pat batter across bottom of pan and about 1 inch up sides; mixture will be very stick and somewhat uneven. Add strawberry puree, making an even layer across bottom of pan and leaving a rim of dough above it. Cover with remaining cake mixture.
4 Prepare crumble topping: In a medium bowl, combine reserved ½ cup dough and Demerara sugar. Stir with a fork to mix. Sprinkle evenly over cake.
5 Bake cake until lightly golden, about 45 minutes. Cool complete before serving.,
6 Yield One 9-inch cake.

I served the cake with a side of slice strawberries, but whipped cream is also good. Of course, whipped cream is good generally. Of course you could do both. Yum!

Oil, A Novel

I am half-way through the novel, Oil, by Upton Sinclair, a novel from which the movie "There Will Be Blood," was taken. Although I was an English major and certainly knew of Sinclair and his muckracking books, I had never read him. Always sounded too much like sermons.

This is (so far) a wonderful novel, and I am enjoying it so much, with great characters, a compelling portrait of California in the 1910-1918 (so far) time period, and what a treatise of the discovery and drilling for oil. I wonder if Sinclair spent time as a roustabout in his early years. It's really interesting, as I am inclined to like learning about something when I read, even in fiction, maybe especially in fiction. Why, otherwise, do we read?

So far the book isn't too muckracky, although now I see that coming on. Something that amazed me was that Sinclair knew early on (1925 or before) that the peace treaty concluding World War I would lead to another World War. You have to respect someone with that kind of knowledge and foresight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair

I'm reading the book for insight into California in the early years of this century, and that it has in spades. Now I feel obliged to read The Jungle, his most famous book about the meat packing industry in Chicago. We lived there when they still had the "Stockyards" and there was a neighborhood called "back of the yards." For years The Cattlemen's Cafe was the place to eat. All long gone, now.

Au Revoir,

Grapeshot

Life, As Usual, Imitates Art

Yesterday we were showing an out-of-town friend the Stata Center on the MIT campus (designed by Gehry). She was very excited as we circled the building, moving from one interesting view to another. Then apropos of the mention of a redevelopment of part of the Brooklyn waterfront, she said that some people hate change and they are probably the most sensible ones.

In Festival Madness, I have a scene between the main character and an MIT professor emeritis, walking around the Gehry building and he is talking about change and how even information technology people may hate change.

One of those really weird moments.

Some other weird moments this week. In Borders, looking for a birthday present for said friend. She is an historian of sorts, European History, and the new book about the conference in Vienna (1816?) looked like fun. S.O. were looking at the book, trying to make a decision, when a very old gentlemen approached with what I took to be his verging on elderly son. Old man stared at the title, "Vienna, " and announced, "I was born there." I made some inane but friendly remark about only having been there once, and he said, "they killed everyone," and walked away. I assumed "they" were, of course, the Nazis, and his memories were sad to say the least. We bought the book.

Big checkout line, and in the line was a mother, a son (maybe three years old) in a stroller, and an older daughter, perhaps nine or ten. Kid in stroller was screaming at the top of his lungs, "I want that game, I want that game." Over and over ad nauseum. Obviously, he wasn't going to get "that game," and he wasn't going to shut up. A sensible woman would have told the little girl to take him outside and walk the stroller back and forth until she had checked out, thereby sparing the customers the assault on ears and sensibilities.

My friend remarked, "she should have slapped him on the head," but I said, "my god, they would arrest you for that nowadays. " Finally another clerk appeared and led the back of the line to another register where the screaming was less intrusive. The clerk appeared to think a slap on the side of the head might be a good thing, too. By then, pretty much everyone did.

Kid was still yelling and now kicking when taken out of the stroller and put in the car seat. He didn't get "that game." My god, the racket. Made a good case for birth control. Honestly. So it went at Borders.

Yesterday, a stroll through two museums, Harvard Square and a fitting end of the day dinner at Legal Seafood.

The Old Porn

Once upon a time in a northern suburb of Chicago that was nicer than most but not as nice as some, there lived a man named Schrorr. He had a wife who had anxiety attacks and a grown daughter who seldom visited and a vision of what he thought he wanted. One year he wanted a new swimming pool and lo, he caused a beautiful gunnite pool with a diving board to appear in the back yard of his three bedroom ranch. That year, Schrorr swam occasionally. The next year he swam less and finally he swam not at all and the cover stayed on the pool until it sank into the murky waters.

Another year Schrorr decorated the big evergreens in his front yard with Christmas lights, but the lights were never taken down and a few years later they still clung to the tree, all broken and derelict.

One summer, Schrorr decided he wanted to walk in his woods, and lo, an army the size of Santa Ana’s appeared with rakes and gravel and the army constructed walking paths in the woods behind the three bedroom ranch where Schrorr walked once or twice. Never thrice.

The little suburban neighborhood of three bedroom ranches had parties and Schrorr appeared once with Mrs. Schrorr, who did not have a panic attack. Schrorr got a snootful and became glassy eyed and stumbling and had to be taken home.

Schrorr bought a new lawn tractor, and one season he drove it and the next year he did not and lo, the tractor took it’s place beside the pool, the decorations and the paths, now completely overgrown and weedy with young oaks and shagbark hickory growing on them.

It is never too late to turn over a new leaf and lo, one year the Schrorrs performed spring cleaning in the three bedroom ranch. Huge piles of stuff and stacks of magazines were laid out several days prior to the arrival of the trash truck. The white truck lumbered down the street early in the morning, and the suburban dad who lived next door to Schrorr in a four-bedroom ranch was curious because the truck stayed so long and the dad finally got up to see what was going on, and the trash pickup guy was tossing some of Schrorr’s magazines into his cab of the truck and other items into the business part of the truck.

The neighbors pieced it together bit by bit. Schrorr, or perhaps Mrs. Schrorr, had rid the household of an enormous collection of pornography, and all the neighborhood boys had come upon this, lured perhaps by old inner tubes and pocket knives and cool stuff that young boys covet. The parents had to search high and low under mattresses and beds and in the darkest recesses of the closets to locate the secreted magazines. Schrorr was ever after known as The Old Porn.

One of the items salvaged by the suburban Dad's kids was a genuine Italian Borsalino hat, a fine felt hat worthy of Schrorr. The family treasured it for years until the youngest son took it off to the University of Iowa and lost it. The Borsalino was the family's last vestige of Schrorr, but his fame lives on in the oral history of that house and of that suburb in the old days.

lSchrorr and his wife eventually moved, and the tractor disappeared and lo, the pool was uncovered and restored to its former glory. The paths remained overgrown and in fact disappeared back into the dense woods. And The Old Porn became the stuff of legends.

Another Take on the Faux Memoir Business

http://www.ingalagringa.com/onmymind/

It is always cool to run across someone who seems to be original in the best sense of the word. I can understand why she's pissed. The fact is, that people believe what they want to believe. Trite, but true.

For example, I have heard from a number of people that my "accent" is heavier than my husband's. Kids, I was born in Montana and raised in Colorado, while my Significant Other grew up in Germany. Insofar as I know, I haven't picked his slight accent up, nor he mine. People believe what they want to believe.

And that's why it is so easy to put a fictional memoir out there. 'Nuf said.

Grapeshot

French Food

The meat pie that provided 3 scrumptious meals is history, and I had to think hard about why it was such a savory dish.

The combination of bacon, red wine, meat, onion, carrots, mushrooms, garlic and herbs and spices is dynamite, a typically French concoction with a flavor that never stops. Consider that these are typically common ingredients, no shopping at the inconvenient ethnic food store, no expensive ingredients, no fancy cooking technicques, no sinkful of dirty pots and skillets--have we found the perfect meal? Just add a salad and some bread. Actually, I added a couple small potatoes to the mix, so it even had starch, especially if you count the pre-made pie crust which you better do.

The time involved is the chopping and slicing, browning, and then a stint in the oven. Most home-cooked meals involve slicing and chopping. Now that I am not in the work force, I have found a new cooking process, which I do in steps, and it does make life easy.

Step 1. Round up all the ingredients. Put the non-perishables together on the counter, and put the stuff that needs to remain refrigerated together in the fridge. If you need to bring an item to room temp, this is the time to do it.

Step 2. Prep. Measure out anything that needs measuring, and do the sliicing and chopping. Cover anything that will dry out.

Step 3. The actually cooking. In the case of the meat pie, there is a slow simmer in the oven, then the crust is put on the "pie," and the pie is baked.

Naturally the time will be the same, but the work is broken up, so and the steps can occur hours apart and the cooking chore is not so onerous. This works for me.

I am thinking of blowing off this writing blog and starting a money-saving tips blog, since I have been through several recessions, layoffs, and various financial crises and know a bit about belt tightening and it looks like we're due for a spell of it. I'll let you know.

The new blog, should I start it, will be The Cheeseparer. Cool, eh? Now go make a yummy pie, or ragout, or something bourgignon or au vin.

Grapeshot

Make Mine Meat Pie

Or just about any kind of pie.

Brain is always working overtime. Not a good thing. Pork chops on sale. I could buy three, we eat two one night and use the third with some frozen pork tenderloin and a piece of duck breast for a meat pie. Oops! Discovered I had use the big piece of tenderloin for my soup from a nail.

Nonetheless, frozen peas, organic carrots, mushrooms, onion, scallions, shallots, garlic, and red wine: all the good ingredients plus a frozen pie crust.

Significant Other off to the store to buy more pork chops. Now we’re cooking. Realized the recipe didn’t call for carrots or mushrooms. What the hell? We'll have kind of a pork stew meat pie.

Cooked up everything is the red wine and now it is in the oven with a pie crust on top, in a wine/sour cream sauce with the veggies scrumptious. Threw in 2 potatoes. Again, what the hell? Meat pie from a Nail.

This needs to last 3 nights. We'll have a salad of iceberg with cherry tomatoes, cukes and hmmm, something I can’t remember, oh yea, hearts of palm. Organic dressing. Tasty.

Weird Danish dessert from the Ocean State job lot. A foil packet of sour cherries and sauce. We eat it with vanilla yogurt. The job lot is my secret source for grocery bargains.

Another day with no writing, but I did a humongous cleaning of the files. Read the Times and the Globe. Still big fallout and opinions about the faux memoir business. Everyone has an opinion. Lots of Schaden Freude. You have to feel kind of sympathetic to anyone who fucked up that badly.

Sorry for the profanity. I watched The Wire and In Treatment and that word is omnipresent. I used it on the phone the other day when I was speaking to a computer and trapped in voice mail hell and it did about as much good as you would expect. Felt good, even rightous.

I really need to get cracking. Onward,

Grapeshot

Gloomy Saturday

Today I fed the cows in the pouring rain. They looked so wet and bedraggled, and old mama was as mean as ever about hogging the food. The babies might have benefited from a nice dry barn and some hay.

I got dressed for my workout and never went, which means I schlumped around all day in sweat pants and a baggy t-shirt, then an old ratty sweater over that. A fashion statement to be sure.

I am becoming my parents. I misplace things. Lots of things. Sometimes I find them (the kick stool) and sometimes I don't (the family wedding rings). The trick, I have decided, is that once something has a "place," don't move it, because you will never find it again in all your life. Once my mom put her wedding ring in a tea cup while she was doing dishes and didn't find it for years. Ring is missing again, and my fear is that it was lost during our move. So I spend about half my time looking for stuff. Sometimes it's a blazer or my pajama tops. Dumb stuff.

Things appear to get up and move around the house and hide themselves. It is possible to misplace even big stuff. Once I lost my car at O'Hare Airport. Another time I left the lights on while I raced to catch my flight. I have lots of O'Hare stories because we lived in Chicago? Did I ever tell you about the time I was almost strip searched?

In my early stupid years, it was always sort of a game to smuggle some trifle, usually a banned book or a bottle of booze. Don't ever try to sneak in a sausage. The cute little Dept of Agriculture dog with the green coat will find it. He never loses nuthin.

Today's lost or misplaced item required me to clean the worst corner of the "storeroom." In the process I straightened up the office supplies, discovering that we had quadruplicates of everything because the supplies were stored, shall we say, randomly. The whole procedure was ugly, and I have a huge mess on the floor or stuff which could be entirely tossed, but I feel a keen need to sort through it first. And I never found the missing items. They seem to have vanished in the fog of home.

And of course I didn't write one freaking word. Didn't work out. Finally watched the movie, Grand Canyon, which was pretty good but very dated. Cooked dinner. That was about it. Pretty much a wasted day, except the store room sparkles, because the mess is on the office floor.

Well, onward. I believe I'll read some of the magazines which came while we were gone. The mess will not disappear. Why is it that everything else goes missing, but the mess lies there as big as life and in your face? Sometime to ponder.

Definitely onward.

Grapeshot

Who's That Hiding Behind the Foster Grants?

Is it Iphegenia in Brooklyn? No! It's Grapeshot in Florida at the Sleuthfest Mystery Conference. What a fun way to spend a few days with mystery and mayhem and seafood dinners and good company.

http://www.mwa-florida.org/sleuthfest.htm

Lee Child is always a great guest of honor, accessible and fun and what a raconteur! He dispenses good writing advice as well. The writing team of PJ Parrish gave a great seminar, and the editors and agents were awesome, friendly, too.

Mystery writers are such wholesome types because they kill on paper and hence have fewer

"issues."

Onward. Lots of writing to do. I always come home "all fired up." Then there's the laundry, shopping, mail, etc. to deal with, but before the mood leaves, must write!

Today is cat blog day. Of course we've had to dispense extra affection after being away almost a week. Thisbe and Annie have settled down to the business of being spoiled companions of the feline persuasion again. Catnip has been offered generously, the old "smoking the peace pipe" routine.

Off to write.

A "How To" for Memoir Writers or Lying for a Living

Love Slate's Culture Box.

http://www.slate.com/id/2185918?wpisrc=newsletter

See my two prior posts

Narrative Trope or Narrative Tripe?

This morning Steve Almond has an instructive article in The Boston Globe about the faked memoir business.

If agents and publishers and the reading public want "true" stories, then writers are up against the wall and wanting to be published, they cave and pen fake memoirs as Margaret Seltzer did in Love and Consequences. "Truth and Consequences" might have been an apter title.

The Wall Street Journal weighed in with "would you rat out a relative?" and most people would indeed, if said relative lied about the family. (Sara Schaefer Munoz) Denying your life is ugly, the opposite of memoir.

Everyone has an opinion, and as someone who has been trying for years and years with only small (very small) success to publish my novels, I can sympathize with these authors, although their comuppance is deserved.

Reality TV rules, but I never watch that, either. Right now I'm mesmerized by "In Treatment" which seems so real one feels like a fly on the wall of the psychiatrist's office. But it's a story. Story. What a good word!

What is real? Spring approaches! I heard a peewee calling in the woods today and spied two robins by the cemetery. The squirrels were playing tag, and I got so inspired I cleaned off the leaves over the storm drain. The chives are up an inch, and I could get thyme,oregano and sage if I wanted to.

Write something good. Write something true and write the best way you know. Truthfully.

Grapeshot

Memento Memoir

No really, I was raised by a family of woodrats at Sweetwater Lake in Colorado, and we spent the winter in a vacant cabin. They taught me to gnaw a million pieces of paper and to subsist on the seeds from pinecones all winter.

No, that wasn't it. A dysfunctional family of old fur traders raised me in the Maine woods and clothed me in the hides of moose, deer and fox. We called the oldest trader Big Moose.

My father was a miner in the upper Malamute.
My mother was a hostess in a house of ill repute.

Oops, no, that's an old drinking song, but hey, it would make a good story, no, I mean it would make a good memoir.

I was born in a meth house deep in the Nevada desert, on an old deserted ranch populated by. . . no, that won't work.

Hell, I was raised by the Baader-Meinhof gang who hid me in their jail cells and fed me smuggled saurbraten and clothed me in striped corderoy and denim. No, that sounds too much like . . . oh hell.

My father was a miner in the upper Malamute.
My mother was a hostess in a house of ill repute.
At the tender age of nine, they kicked me out without a tear.
Said "get out of here, you son of a bitch and be an engineer."

This is my story. . . it is a true story, as true as a story can be and still be a story.

The Miner's Daughter

Being there

It is so hard to put myself in the feet and heart and mind of a 21 year old woman on a train to California in 1928. I've got 900 hard fought words. Seems like each word took an hour.

We're planning a California trip this summer and I have high hopes that the trip will be the cattle prod that ignites this novel.

When I wrote about Burning Man, I had been there--tasted the dust, heard the techno beat, experienced the craziness, and when I wanted to write, I could conjure it up from my brain and memories to the keyboard. When I wrote about the sailboat in the fog on the Baltic I recalled the sailing trips in Long Island Sound, and the fog going into Cuttyhunk, and it all came back and became the Baltic. BEING THERE.

When I wrote about the funky Berlin neighborhoods, I had been there, sitting on the bar stool, roaming the streets, seeing, smelling, listening, feeling.

I haven't been to Southern California for years, and the books about it keep piling up, but nothing will substituting for BEING THERE.

I wrote about a float plane trip in the Adironacks, but not until I had flown on one. Same for the Molotov Cocktail in the Charles boatyard. I took endless photos, and stared down into the water, and observed the coromant, saw the floating upside down coke bottle, got the details and the explosion and fire just came. BEING THERE.

When I set scenes in Singapore and Hong Kong, I had been there. So, California, here I come. In the meantime, write the scene and leave a note to fill in the details. And keep reading.

Being There.

The Race is to the Swift

Flying home from Florida, I read the March Delta SKY magazine. Oh cool, a short story contest. Theme must be something GREEN. I remember a very cute story about an old turtle and a baby hippo--one could turn that into something green.

Found the clipping today. Looked promising. Did a big of Googling. Oops! Someone already wrote a children's book and a movie script and I am left sucking hind teat, so to speak. Wonder what else in my clipping file has been used.

I daresay you know the moral. Don't sit on good material forever. Can I think up another "Green" story? Maybe. Maybe not. Something, like a fable with my sweet Scottish Highland cattle? Maybe. Should they talk? Just mooo, I think.

So, remember that someone else may be making soup from a nail and you better get the rust off your own nail and start simmering that pot.


Grapeshot

Soup From a Nail

So we get home around 6:00 last night, tired from standing all the way home on the subway, too late for my writing group, too late to pick up the mail, too late, too late to cook. Off to try the Longhorn Steak House which sprouted up over by Home Depot.

Big crowd for a Monday. Order the smallish rib eye and a side, Caesar salad, too. Pretty good. Not too expensive.

This morning after a session at the gym I picked up the mail and that took all day to sort and deal with. Starts to rain; no one feels like going to the store.

I found a really old half of cabbage, two halves of onions (yellow and red), garlic, bacon, both slab and slices, a carrot, and hey, we're off and running. Old parsley that has a lot of life left. Some grape tomatoes, shriveled but not like, bad. Out comes the soup pot. Vegetable broth! Yay! Herbs and seasonings, including some smoked paprika and red pepper flakes for, shall we say, reasonance? A carrot. Fridge has no more to offer, but this is enough. I open a can of white beans, rinse and add after the cabbage is cooked. Better and better.

We ration ourselves so that it will last two nights. No bread in the house so I made biscuits out of low-cal Bisquick. Pretty tasty.

What ho! The low fat ricotta hasn't spoiled. I do a quick South Beach Diet dessert with the ricotta, espresso coffee powder (can't keep house without it), cocoa, and a dab of vanilla. A few spoons full of that heavy cream before it goes bad, and 1 1/2 packets of Equal. Tasty and not too caloric. Enough left for the morrow. Double yay!

This cost practically nothing and was it ever tasty! Of course, bacon makes everything taste good, although I was a mite stingy.

Soup is good, nourishing, and cheap. What more do you want? It tastes best made from a nail. I do hope you have heard this old tale. If not, Google. With the price of gas, we need more soup from a nail recipes.

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Back to the Ice and Snow

Back from Florida. My reading went very well, and the agent conference as well as the manuscript critique all seemed very positive. I finished reading Pasadena, a dynamite novel, and am itching to make a huge foray into Such Stuff As Dreams.

We all know that rivers run to the sea, but did you realize that the sea contains a huge river? We flew over the Gulf Stream, and you could see it so clearly, it's robin egg blue plunging thru the cold Atlantic. Wow! The stuff of poetry.

I have to unpack, do laundry and catch up with In Treatment. And there's no food in the house, and the cats need lots of attention. It's sad and lonesome to be a kitty when the master and mistress are gone for a week. Pathetic, really, so needy and wanting.

More anon.

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