Stars and Moon Watermelon

New Books

I picked up a Wed NYTimes at lunch and am glad I did.In arts is a writeup on a new Tony Horwitz book "A Voyage Long and Strange" about offbeat American History you never heard of.I fell in love with Horwitz's style when I read his wonderful"Confederates in the Attic" about the present day South and his hanging out with very hardcore re-enactors.But it was the front page of The Dining Out section that really caught my eye.There is a review on one of those strange offbeat books I just have to buy.What caught my eye was a picture of a Northern Flying Squirrel with the headline"An Unlikely Way To Save a Species:Serve It for Dinner".Well that got me going and the book is"Renewing America's Food Traditions:Saving and Savoring the Continent's Most Endangered Foods" by Gary Paul Nabhan,editor.Nabhan spent over four years compiling a list of endangered vegetables and animals.The flying squirrel it turns out was popular in stews but one look at it and I think moonshine played a part in someone thinking that looked like good eatin.There is a Stars and Moon Watermelon pic that shows a purple watermelon with what look like stars spread across the skin with a yellow splotchy moon in one spot.Grapes,taters,grasses etc are all in the book and I think my fave is The Tennessee fainting goat, which keels over when startled.It goes on to say the goat was popular for grilling on a fire.If the goat keels over when startled I'd sure as hell like to see what is does when someone lights a fire nearby.So I stopped at B&N with the article and the dude helping me was from Tennessee but he'd never heard of the goat.It looks like the book won't be out for another two weeks though so I'll bide my time.I can't wait to read it on my patio reading the squirrel parts out loud so my nut hiding plant wrecking local squirrels can here me reading off the main ingredient.P.S. when I looked at pics online for the melon they all showed dark green melons for Stars and Moon but the NYTimes was purple so when I googled purple watermelon I came up with it right away.So there must be two shades of skin.

Book Notes

"The Discovery of France"A book I finally started about two weeks ago and then got sidetracked onto other books namely the last two unread Alan Furst books along with James"Portrait of a Lady" has won the 2008 Ondaatje Prize.Thanks for the heads up Mary.I must really pick it up and read through after loving the first 50 pages but it's a hardcover and I've been so sore of late from moving our office a paperback is much easier to hold in bed of late.On another note a nice little essay on Flann O'Brien in the May 2008 Atlantic Monthly in cahoots with the release of all five of his novels in an everyman library edition.I still have not read "The Poor Mouth".Today I brought home my copy of"World Light" by Halldor Laxness which has lain on my desk there for a few months.It was supposed to be lunch reading but all these mags I got at work for unused airline miles have taken my lunch reading over of late.I counted 30 plus books in a box today that had been lying in various drawers and under piles of other things in my office.All but four were read so I have a few more to add to the to read pile.When I think of how many boxes of just things I had kept for no reason were taken from my office the thought of my Apt. scares me.I have cooking mags and more going back to 1983 saved I do not know why as the ones with recipes I use are stacked elsewhere.Clothes going back to college that I will never wear or fit in again litter the closets.I've become a packrat without realising it!

Pet Shop Angst

Several years later during my sophomore to junior high school summer I worked for about six weeks in the pet shop of my cousins husband.There was a walkway behind the many fish tanks and one afternoon I was told to clean the tanks from the customer side.I was just starting on the Electric Eel tank and I was really afraid of the eel.There was a group of girl scouts in the store standing nearby while I carefully ran the brush against the glass.Unknown to me one of the older guys who worked there had wandered down the back alley of the tanks and as I was cleaning reached out and grabbed my hand.I dropped the brush and the string of curse words at what I thought was the eel grabbing my arm was heard loud and clear by all the girl scouts and as it happened my father who had entered the store at that moment to pick me up.I think I went in for about a week after that and then just quit showing up.I still feel so guilty about it my nieces and friends daughters in fact just random girl scouts have made a windfall off me buying cookies over the years to make up for that eel.

Pet Stories

I was flipping the channels on my non-cable TV the other night when I came on an "Everybody Loves Raymond' rerun.In it his daughters pet hamster had gotten out of the cage and crawled into a box of fudgesicles which Raymond then put in the freezer.I know the whole plot line is a bit hard to buy but bottom line the hamster was frozen and a trip to the vet could not bring it back.In real life When I was around 11 my grandmother and I were in one of those 60's discount stores.I think it was a Two Guys in Rochester and somehow that night I talked her into buying me a black mouse and a white mouse complete with cage and running wheel.We lived next to my Mom's parents then and when we got home I brought my mice next door and my father made noises about it.I can't recall if it was early spring or late fall but the mice loved to run on the wheel in the wee hours and one night my dad had enough of the noise and put them out in the garage.Next morning I found my two mice stiff as a board in the cage.So my brothers and I decided to bury them in the backyard.As we were digging a hole in the way back I looked down in the box and the black mouse gave a slight kick to a back leg.Excited we put both mice in front of a heater and in minutes the black mouse was back to full mouse life.The white mouse was gone.Maybe fur color played a part in coming back from the dead.So a few days later I give the mouse to my cousins husband who owned a pet shop and found out a week later he fed the mouse to a snake in the store.I'm still not sure all these years later what the moral of the story is but that mouse if he/she were around today would get at least a book deal out of it if not a guest spot on Oprah or it's own show on the Animal Channel or whatever that cable station I don't get is called.

Digital Age

I just applied for my digital converter box coupon from the govt.It gets you 40.00 off the box when you buy and that should just about cover the price.I waited awhile but hear the list is growing and once you do get the coupon it's good for 90 days.I got rid of cable so I'll need the box when TV signals go digital next Feb.I asked for two to send one to my parents but knowing the govt it will be good in my name only.I typed in all the info and it had an apt box with the# in the line so I typed in #4 only to have my request kicked back to me saying# wasn't allowed.At least it wasn't one of those forms where you have to enter everything again when you add an#.At the end you had to enter the code words in the last box.Mine was there Roswell which I thought was a bit funny seeing as it's the govt but when I clicked off the# and my entry went through I started clicking back to my homepage and the first click netted me Bahama Man as my would be code words if I was doing it.I want to be Bahama Man not there Roswell.

More This and That

In cleaning out my smaller desk today I found two tux cards where they get your measurements for a wedding tux.One was a 1984 wedding in Rochester for one of my best Cape friends who wound up marrying a Rochester girl and living there after growing up in Carlisle and Wellfleet,Ma. and the other a frat brother from NU and Ma. who was married and lives in Fla..It's funny because of all my friends from high school,the Cape and college I was in only three wedding parties including these two and all three ended in divorce.I'm sort of the Ben Cartwright of wedding parties.