The Dust in My Shoes and Brain

My God, the beauty of those vast spaces just blows my mind. More photos anon. I might as well have been on the Silk Road or in Outer Mongolia for all the similiarities to New England. Tiny Gerlach is still full of Burners, those cleaning up the playa and putting the desert back to rights, picking up the MOOP. Matter Out of Place.
Reno was hot when I got there, and my driver told me that the old Reno Hilton, now operating under another name is a place for lots of "after Burn" parties, which was a huge plot point in my book, except I didn't know then they had the parties there. Cool, huh? We hit the burger joint, Raley's and Albertson's for provisions, and headed out to Gerlach with $190.00 worth of groceries. Yeah, I know.
Gerlach is a small oasis of green in those limitless tracks. Words cannot convey how different this funky little town in the middle of nowhere (everywhere is somewhere) is. Let's just say that there aren't any McMansions and a "double-wide" is living in high style.
I read The Poisonwood Bible. What a wonderful book. Big fat tome and I didn't want it to end.
Then I read Linda Fairstein's Bad Blood and that was good, too. Re-read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is the right kind of book for Nevada. Picked up a best seller police procedural yesterday at the Reno airport.
We are all standing in line at the Southwest gate when ear-splitting screams are head down the corridor. Finally dawns on everyone that this woman must have won a LOT of money on one of the slots in the terminal. She screams and screams. Bloody murder. Screams some more, banshee-like. I am envisioning half a mil, at least. Would you believe $200?
Two rejections while I was gone. Poor old Promiscuous Mode. A nice personal letter from one agents, and an asshole form letter (AHFL) from another. As the plane was taking off yesterday, I got a new beginning paragraph for Festival Madness.
That's all the news I'm going to print. It's always good to get home, even if your flight arrives at 11:00 and you have to leave the house at 9:00 the next morning and you oversleep and the cat keeps biting your ankle to get some attention and well, it's still good to be home.
Grapeshot

African Violets

Dunno what it is, but I am the kiss of death to African violets. Most anything else grows and even thrives in my care. The garden is luxuious, the tomatoes awesome, the basil toothsome, everything lush and abloom. Except the African violets. I swear to you I didn't water them from the top or plop them down in direct light. I used the proper fertilizer, didn't over water. What then? The only blame I can lay out is the diligent waterer who took care of things when we were in Alaska. He may have over-watered, but plant #2 wasn't exactly thriving then. Hadn't bloomed for a while. Looked, shall we say, dispirited. Plant #1 had succumbed months ago. Sigh.

Now I am finally getting back to serious agent querying. Read a blog today from someone newly published who mentioned querying 125 agents. Ambition has to be made of very stern stuff. Yikes. I'm trying to personalize the queries, even if it's just where I found the agent. Finally relented and subscribed to an online service that lets you research the agents in a scientific way, not thru other blogs that may be all right, but who knows how current.

Yesterday we stopped at a Farmer's Market and they had Italian Prune Plums! Yippee! These small plums used to be in every grocery and then a few years ago they became scarcer than hen's teeth, and you know how scare those are. I had a German recipe for an open face plum tart that is to die for, but you really need prune plums. Of course the market wasn't giving them away, and my two pounds cost $5.00. That was significant enough that I decided I better make the crust from scratch, which I did, and it wanted to crumble, so I pressed it into the tart pan, which I providentially found and now the whole beautiful business sit on the kitchen counter waiting to be eaten. Thought about sharing with the neighbors, then thought again.

I am feeling deserving because we had a meatless peasant dish, pasta and cauliflower the past two nights. It's actually very tasty, due to olive oil, red pepper, lots of garlic, parsley and seasonings. Easy to make . We like peasant food a lot and it is usually cheap and filling and not too full of BAD THINGS. Not dietetic, however, as peasants need calories to work hard, not sit on their puts at the keyboard all day. Tomorrow I am making mostly Mexican, due to the nice avocado and cilantro still in the fridge. A jalapeno or two. Yum!

My new reading is The Poisonwood Bible. I've loved everything I read by Kingsolver, and this promises to be a good, if long, book.

The Fifth Draft of Festival Madness is ready for editing. Wonder how many there will be. More Burning Man stuff in the Globe today. Signed on to Southwest and tried to decide if I could go. Lots of stuff on the calendar. Lots of money. No costumes or presents or even good desert duds. Would have to be crazy, but the idea is still in my head. www.burningman.com. The playa calls. Alas.

Onward,

Grapeshot