Blindspot

Last night I finished the novel, Blindspot, which was a real treat, with a great plot, a murder, good guys, bad guys and a setting in colonial Boston in the year of the Stamp Act.  It was a big meaty book, written in the style of the age in which it was set.  Maybe only an English major or an historian can appreciate the lush vocabulary and the felicitous descriptions, but I liked it ever so much and hated to see it end.

Not my usual reading matter.  I heard Kamensky and Lepore discuss how the novel came into being at a PEN meeting in Cambridge, and naturally we bought the book and have been devouring it.  Both authors are historians of the colonial period, a fact that greatly informs their writing, and the details certainly make the story special. A fabulous collaboration and the writing was not terribly "academic" as one might expect of such illustrious scholars.

I don't recommend a lot of books, but this I do unreservedly.  I had the misfortune/good fortune to be laid up with a bad cold this week, and was able to read more than usual.   I have taken to reading during the Red Sox commercials, and it's amazing how much one can do.  And on the deck in the nice weather.

Now I  must hie myself (gee, was the olde language catching?) up the stairs to my garret to don Japanese gardening pants and set forth into the garden, well-doused with mosquito spray and sunscreen, to plant yesterday's purchases.  We'll have 6 tomatoes and 12 garlics.  2 green beans and only 1 musk melon, as my grandma called them.  Lots of flowers.  The wild iris are blooming for the first time.  I love summer and my garden.  The chipmunks are playing tag, and the hummingbird comes often.  The male goldfinches constantly have dogfights in the air.   Lovely.

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Saturday NIght in Foxborough before The BIG GAME

We thought it might be instructive to go pub crawling in the stadium area on a Saturday night before the playoff game between the Pats and the Chargers. Set forth in the bracing but not ungodly cold around 10:00. Debate between the two places are know--Outlaw Barbeque and the Lafayette House.

We love to eat at Outlaw Barbeque but are usually two of five people in the place at 7:00 p.m. It seems to be a sports bar, but who knows? Maybe the crowd doesn't show until midnight? We don't actually know who the crowd is. I do know the place is NOT mentioned in the paper as home to drugs and fights and carnality, so the crowd is gentlemen bikers? Wannabe jocks? ??? No clue.

We ended up at Lafayette House and indeed the joint was jumping with lots of groups, a guitarist singing about Margaritaville, a few bar flies of various ages and general hilarity. No place to sit down and we stand at the bar. I am dressed like Nanook of the North because of the forecasted cold. Too warm. Handbag feels like a millstone.

Nice crackling gas fireplace. Cozy at hell. Hard to tell if this is a crowd of tomorrow's football fans. I can't even tell if they're from out of town. We look around, have a drink and leave. In the parking lot, we determine that except for two Rhode Island cars, the license plates are all local. Of course if you fly into town you rent a car and you are prohably downtown in an Irish bar or at the Fanieul Hall Marketplace or a hotel or the Prudential Center. Where indeed are you? I never get deep enough into the sports pages to read interviews with out of town fans or maybe there are no interviews.

Home again, home again, jiggety-jig, as ignorant as when I left.

I wrote a new paragraph to begin Festival Madness, which apparently started off like lead shoes. My assessment, not the instructors. Falling asleep I had an idea for a short story with the heroine a middle-aged clerk at J.C. Penny. Must be losing it. I can see what develops, which is usually nada.

Ham and eggs and grape tomatoes provencal this morning with the almost rest of the challah bread toasted. White Chili a la South Beach Diet tonight with chips and bean dip, the Yin and Yang of it all, and of course the big game for which I usually make meatloaf, but that will happen on Super Bowl Sunday, and here's hoping the Patriots will have a 100% undefeated season. Must admit the suspense is quite palpable.

Anyhow, onward.

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