Dusty Tea Tin Containing Small Kerosene Lamp and Police Whistle

(photographic evidence)

It Disturbs Me Greatly--Dear Abby Poem #6

Tweeter @iamchrisscott has been writing poems composed from fragments of Dear Abby letters. All his poems use lines from all the questions and replies in a single day's column, in chunks of no fewer than three words. I couldn't resist trying this process myself. Here is my sixth Dear Abby poem (please compare to today's column using the link at the end): 

It disturbs me greatly

It disturbs me greatly
that you are not the only one
to learn their cellphone,
handbag or briefcase
is overtly sexual,
cheating with multiple men.

http://news.yahoo.com/attentive-parents-prevent-kids-being-left-alone-cars-050113238.html

Scream at Us, Good People--Dear Abby Poem #5

Tweeter @iamchrisscott has been writing poems composed from fragments of Dear Abby letters. All his poems use lines from all the questions and replies in a single day's column, in chunks of no fewer than three words. I couldn't resist trying this process myself. Here is my fifth Dear Abby poem (please compare to today's column using the link at the end): 

Scream at us, good people

Scream at us,
good people, but
be glad you
have always been
out of the line of fire.

Lack of control
is damaging, it is
never welcome.

I would appreciate
respect--that if
you're looking for
help, tired of
suggestions dismissed
in anger and frustration--
ask instead about
what to do.

http://news.yahoo.com/teen-begins-recognize-parents-emotional-abuse-050113204.html

Sex and His Determination--Dear Abby Poem #4

Tweeter @iamchrisscott has been writing poems composed from fragments of Dear Abby letters. All his poems use lines from all the questions and replies in a single day's column, in chunks of no fewer than three words. I couldn't resist trying this process myself. Here is my fourth Dear Abby poem (please compare to today's column using the link at the end): 

Sex and his determination

Sex and his determination
to have sex 100 times.
Sex five times a week!
Sex that also included
sex but that he also had.

Narcissist: Surprise! Surprise!

Loved by having sex.
Venus aptly applies
sex although more likely
bad sex is pretty.
Good sex, we guys!

A running tab of our sexual
sex--we only do it!
We have sex all the time!

Whether they're emotional,
sexual, or MEN, sex
is just. Extramarital sexual
pursuits IN KENTUCKY, DEAR!!

I had to chuckle
260 times a year.
Needless to say:
smile every day.

http://news.yahoo.com/battle-sexes-over-sex-ignites-feedback-readers-050625533.html

People Can Be Cruel--Dear Abby Poem #3

Tweeter @iamchrisscott has been writing poems composed from fragments of Dear Abby letters. All his poems use lines from all the questions and replies in a single day's column, in chunks of no fewer than three words. I couldn't resist trying this process myself. Here is my third Dear Abby poem (please compare to today's column using the link at the end): 

People can be cruel

People can be cruel,

but I also hate

for this to happen.

The idea of deserting

the Academy of Hate

(that my small town and

everyone in my generation

loves and accepts)

feels like home.

But I'm worried that 

the unsavory things I did

can be used to imply that

the chances are, 

when you go--wherever you go--

you can be cruel, too.

http://news.yahoo.com/expectant-mom-past-must-consider-babys-future-050121546.html

I Hope You Are Still Afraid--Dear Abby Poem #2

Tweeter @iamchrisscott has been writing poems composed from fragments of Dear Abby letters. All his poems use lines from all the questions and replies in a single day's column, in chunks of no fewer than three words. I couldn't resist trying this process myself. Here is my second Dear Abby poem (please compare to today's column using the link at the end): 

I hope you are still afraid

I hope you are still afraid

of what your mother will say.

Obviously, some people

tread carefully when

under the care of

a master manipulator.

Do we say nothing?

I don't know--

I can see how

the appropriate thing

is nothing to be ashamed of.

But I'm wondering,

reluctant to reveal

someone's name when

I may be forced to

open fresh wounds.

Not all parents are good.

http://news.yahoo.com/tread-carefully-naming-baby-deceased-relative-050117780.html

Uncertain, I Understand--Dear Abby Poem #1

Tweeter @iamchrisscott has been writing poems composed from fragments of Dear Abby letters. All his poems use lines from all the questions and replies in a single day's column, in chunks of no fewer than three words. I couldn't resist trying this process myself. Here is my first Dear Abby poem (please compare to today's column using the link at the end): 

Uncertain, I understand

Uncertain, I understand:
the problem is
life is a gamble.

Making this decision,
everything was great at first.
But when I moved
in the blazing heat,
it was tough.

I thought I'd be
ready by now
to discuss your concerns
(because you feel stuck).

Dear Mama, if
there are no guarantees,
what would you do in my shoes?

Very sick for the
past few years,
I have always wanted
an investment in the future.

Start looking for
a red flag, an act of faith,
enough money to have a child.

I am a 30-year-old,
able to scrape by,
watching TV and
stuck in the blazing heat.

http://news.yahoo.com/fear-future-paralyzes-woman-wants-children-050118155.html

No, Gross, and How Dare You!

1. No

2. Gross...

3. HOW DARE YOU!

(I might not be the best candidate for self-help.)

A Sartorial Mystery

This is a photograph of actor Shaun Evans. Note the S peaking around his neck inside the shirt collar. Do you think the shirt is embroidered with his name? Is there a clothing brand that starts with S that puts logos inside the collar? Is the shirt labeled with a day of the week(end)? Is there a Secret Society of S[___]? Who is the person whose ear and hair are barely visible at the edge of the frame? Who took the photograph? What color/colors/colour/colours ARE Shaun Evans' eyes EXACTLY?

I won't rest [very much] until I've solved these mysteries [I probably won't really try, and I think I've got the eye thing figured out now anyway].

A Handful of Old Puppy Pictures from My Computer Desktop

In case you didn't know, about a year and a half ago, I found a pregnant stray dog and kept all three puppies (the mother dog lives nearby with my parents).

I've long been meaning to go through all the photos and narrow them down to an official Ten Cutest Pictures, but there are just too many. Here are some random ones that I like a lot, in random order:

Helpful Book Reviews on the Barnes & Noble Website

Still not really sure whether or not to buy this book...

The Ten Most Memorable Books I've Read in the Past Ten Years

I was thinking the other day about how I remember some books as being good without really remembering them, whereas other books have stayed with me more or less in their entirety for a long, long time. I decided to make a list of ten books like this. It really should be called "The Ten Most Memorable Good Books I Read in the Six Years Leading Up to 2010" because I left a little buffer zone for time to do it's work (appropriately, the most recent book on my list is A Visit From the Goon Squad (2010), which is about that sort of thing). I also left off books that were memorable in a bad way (e.g. certain D.H. Lawrence novels, some exceptionally bad self-help), and, like I said, a lot of good or even great books of which I can only recall little chunks (e.g. Winter's Bone, Portrait of a Lady, certain non-fiction texts).

This is not by any means a list of The Best and Most Impressive Books I've Ever Read, but all of these are worth at least a good read and at most a years-long obsession. (They are listed in no particular order.)

The Assassin's Cloak: An Anthology of the World's Greatest Diarists, ed. Irene and Alan Taylor

I found this book by chance at Half Price Books. I only picked it up because it was so big and had such an interesting title (from the William Soutar line "a diary is an assassin's cloak which we wear when we stab a comrade in the back with a pen"--a metaphor for the keeping and betraying of secrets that writing in a diary entails). 

Like I said, it's a large book (600+ pages), so I obviously don't recall everything, but that still leaves dozens and dozens of incredible--and funny and mundane and even horrifying--stories that have stuck with me for years. Some of the diarists lived centuries ago, and others are still alive today. They run the gamut from housewives to aristocrats, soldiers to writers, and even several soldier/writers, like Stendhal, who wrote, chillingly, on February 25, 1808: "Since the last entry I've killed three hares, the first quadrupeds in my life." (Did he mean he'd only killed birds before, or men?)

My favorite diarist in the book is John Evelyn, who brings to life a seventeenth-century carnival on the shores of the Thames (reviling the bear-baiting) and in other entries, recounts the loss of a beloved child to illness, and the loss of a treasured signet ring to highwaymen. The entries are arranged by date (regardless of the year), with several disparate, contrasting, or hauntingly similar entries from a variety of people for each day. (You could read the book as I did, starting on New Year's Day, in "real time" so to speak.) This is a brilliant book, and just holding it makes me want to read it again.

The Places In Between, by Rory Stewart

In college, I used to walk through the library with my eyes shut and pick up whichever book I--literally--bumped into. I usually did this in the stacks upstairs, but I found The Places in Between in the new books section near the door. (It was so new in fact, that it was the British edition, and I was the first person to check it out!) Rory Stewart is a Scottish man who, having gotten a bit too comfortable strolling around Scotland, decided in the year 2000 that he wanted to traverse Asia on foot. He had to skip Afghanistan at first, though, because scary, right? Well that changed slightly in 2001, when the Americans charged in. Stewart jumped at the chance to cross the border, and that's where the journey described in this book begins. The title refers to the Afghani practice of reciting the order of villages in a journey rather than carrying maps. You want to go from here to there? These are the places in between. 

Other than buying himself a sturdy walking staff and asking a smith to weld a giant lump of iron onto the end (with which to fend off feral dogs) Stewart makes very few preparations and carries very little with him, relying instead on the deeply ingrained prescripts of Islamic hospitality. He gets into quite a few scrapes, as can be expected in a harsh and varied environment dotted with warlike tribes of uncertain loyalties, but his persistence, his shalwar kameez, and his ability to guilt-trip even the most hostile of xenophobes get him surprisingly far. He is also quite the scholar (and egotist), and never passes up an opportunity to share his extensive knowledge of near east geography, history, and customs with the reader. I could not fucking shut up about this book for months.

Tracks, by Robyn Davidson

When I wouldn't shut up about The Places in Between, my sister said, "Well, if you like that one so much, you should read Tracks." There are a lot of similarities between the books, but this one takes place in Western Australia, and it's written by a woman, who completed her journey a quarter of a century before Rory Stewart began his. It's hard to say who has a tougher time of it. Davidson at least has camels to carry her stuff, but they require extensive care (you will learn so much about camels if you read this book). But aside from the occasional wandering Aboriginie, Davidson encounters very few friendly "villagers", and certainly none who wash her socks and warm them in front of the fire for her, as they do for Stewart. In fact, Davidson gives up on clothes entirely for much of her journey. 

This is something of a feminist book, but I remember being mystified by her submission to various men throughout the story when she's obviously such a tough lady. I suppose, in 1977, she was part of that great transition from men being almost completely in control to everyone taking it for granted that women have choices in life. This book, too, was part of that transition, but worth a read for everything else it is as well. And refreshing, since a big takeaway for me from Rory Stewart's book was that crossing Afghanistan alone on foot is one of the few things that you could absolutely never ever ever do as a woman--at least not yet.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston

While we're on the subject of tough ladies, let me mention one of my favorite novels. I first read Their Eyes Were Watching God in high school, but it came up again in my American Novel class in college. Having been read twice may give the book an edge in being memorable, but how could I ever forget this book? I'm not even going to say a word about it. If you've read it, you know, and if you haven't you should. (By the way, I can't believe they made a TV movie of it with Halle Berry. Only physically is she right for the part. It got 6/10 on IMDB, anyway. Don't watch it. Read the book.)

The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri

I took a Dante class the semester before I went to Italy. We read all three books of The Divine Comedy in facing-page translation. I read the English side and then the Florentine side, page by page, so you could say I've read this one twice, too. A lot of people lump it in with Milton's Paradise Lost, but this book is vastly more interesting and much more strange, Milton's panorganic, sex-having angels excepted. (And what's with Adam and Eve having to do yard work in Eden? Leave it to a Protestant.) 

I don't know if I necessarily recommend that you run out and read all 100 cantos, but I do know that if you do, they will linger for years in the shadows of your mind (assuming you have una selva oscura of your own). Worst case scenario, you can brag that you've read The Divine Comedy, which seems to really impress people, especially Italians.

POPiSM: The Warhol Sixties, by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett

When I first read this book (which I bought in the gift shop of The Sixth Floor Museum, of all places) I assumed Pat Hackett was a quasi-incarnate ghost writer, but I later learned from the aforementioned book The Assassin's Cloak that Andy Warhol used to call Pat Hackett and tell her about his days, and she would write everything down. This book, rather than being in diary form, is written out like a long monologue. It is broken down by year, and in it, the disembodied voice of Andy Warhol tells us how he became a famous artist and social magician. I'm pausing here for a moment, because I don't know if I can do this book justice in a couple of paragraphs. If you have any interest in Pop Art, Bob Dylan, the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol's factory, the time Andy Warhol got shot, any of it... just read the book. There are pictures of naked people in the middle. There's a story in which a 23-year-old Bob Dylan is drunk and lying across a threshold so he can look up girls' miniskirts as they go in and out of a party. Andy goes on a road trip with Dennis Hopper. A guy jumps out of a window. It's all there. Read it.

A Visit From the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan 

I read an excerpt from this in The New Yorker, and when the author's name looked familiar, I realized she had written The Keep, which I'd read a couple of years earlier. The Keep was one of those uneasy books where some parts are amazing and completely blow you away but other parts make you ask how this crap got published (both books have the same number of stars on Amazon--maybe I should give The Keep another try). I didn't realize the excerpt was an excerpt until I saw Goon Squad on the new books shelf at my public library and immediately knew what it would be (another book I was the first to check out--a germophobe's delight!). 

Enough about how I found it. This book is so crazy. You can see hints of Jennifer Egan's craziness in The Keep, but that's more your conventionally gothic, Mark Z. Danielewski-y/Chuck Palahniuk-y/Neil Gaiman-y crazy. This is crazy like she conceived the book at once in four dimensions and then spent most of her time wrangling it into the covers. The characters are a bit stereotypical, but well thought through, and part of the point of the book is that despite our often painful efforts, we tend to stick to what we are until fate intervenes (the "goon squad" of the title could mean fate or time). The book is memorable not only for it's bizarre, disjointed, out-of-order, mixed-perspective format, but for indelible scenes of weirdness that could also be completely real (shit happens, you know?). I felt a smug satisfaction when it went on to win a Pulitzer (the "u" in "Pulitzer" is pronounced like the o's in "good", by the way, according to Wikipedia).

The Red Leather Diary: Reclaiming a Life Through the Pages of a Lost Journal, by Lily Koppel

Another book from the new books section of my public library. Even more serendipitous than my finding this book is the fact that this book exists at all. Lily Koppel, a society page writer in her early twenties, happened to walk past an old New York City apartment building one day as some workmen were clearing out old storage lockers in the basement, mostly steamer trunks full of personal items from the 1920's and -30's. Passers-by swarmed the dumpters, stealing/rescuing anything of value. Koppel is delighted to score a vintage boucle coat, but also rescues a red leather diary that turns out to have belonged to a girl who was in her teens in the early thirties. It covers five years of the girl's life in a format where each year's entries for the same date are recorded on the same page.

Koppel finds the woman, Florence Wolfson Howitt, now 90 years old, and much like in the movie Titanic (but so, so, so much better and real) Florence fills in the gaps surrounding those brief diary entries with vividly-remembered details of her youth. Okay, I'm starting to cry a little bit just thinking about it.

Jonathan Strange & Mister Norrell, by Susanna Clarke

I mentioned somewhere else in my blog that one awesome birthday in my 20's when my dad gave me a gigantic box of new books. This was one of those books. (I actually ended up getting the unabridged audiobook for this 800+-page book from the library so I could sew while I "read", which was worthwhile (the audiobook, not the sewing--the dress I made (from a pattern) came out looking like a hospital gown).)

I don't know much about this Susanna Clarke lady, but I can tell you for damn sure that she's read every British novel written between 1750 and 1850. I have never read historical fiction that could so closely mimic the fiction of history. This is the most faithfully un-modern postmodern novel you will ever read. Plus, there's magic.

Pianoforte: A Social History of the Piano, by Dieter Hildebrandt

From Half Price Books. (I try not to buy new books from there anymore, ever since I found out it means that the author most likely didn't get a cut. But I digress.)

This book is Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought) for grownups. (If I had made this list 20 years ago, that book would be on it.) Even though this book is called "Pianoforte", I kind of forgot until just now that it was about pianos. I knew there were pianos in it, but really it's like if you called a book "The Internet" it wouldn't necessarily be about where servers are housed and how they work--although now that I think about it, the book offers some description of various technical advancements in the building of pianos, and what made the pianoforte different from anything that had come before it.

This is where I got that story about Schubert writing to his friends as he was dying of syphilis, begging them to find him more James Fenimore Cooper novels. Enough said. Good stuff.

Things I Did in March 2014

Somehow this was a very busy month that seemed to go by in five-and-a-half days. My family required my help with several (relatively) minor emergencies, plus I ended up spending some fun time with them. Also, I've been building a drainage system/raised vegetable garden in the side-yard that would probably take a sane person a couple of afternoons but has cost me several days with no end in sight, so there's that. Here's the little bit I did accomplish goal-wise:

BOOK REVIEW:

I didn't finish any books this month, but I did finally open the nook I got for Christmas. It encourages you to click on topics you're interested in, then suggests books to "sample" (not really much more of a sample than what you can see on Amazon, but okay). I ended up buying and digging into two of my samples, American Terroir, by Rowan Jacobsen, and Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, by Cheryl Strayed. I plan to review both in April.

HEALTH AND FITNESS GOALS:

Dropped the ball completely on exercise. Didn't even do my fitness test. As far as food goes, I tried guava for the first time! It was pretty good. I read in Eating on the Wild Side that wild guavas are small, sour and full of seeds. This guava was small, sour and full of seeds. If it wasn't wild, I shudder to think. Anyway, I think it would be great in any kind of fruit salad, but I ate about a pound of them plain, just cutting the ends off. Got my first strawberries of the season, too. A bit early, but at least they were organic and tasted more like strawberries than water.

GO TO 50 NEW PLACES GOAL:

Not so ambitious this month. You'd think this was all about trying new restaurants, not about being braver and getting out more. Lazy.

Place Nine: A Thai Restaurant

I was hanging out with my parents one evening (I'd been to my grandmother's with my sister that afternoon to deliver a birthday present, then I went back later with my parents when they delivered theirs) when they started to argue over whether my mom should cook dinner or not. My dad's argument was that she had not cooked in a few days; my mom's that she was tired from doing other chores. I piped up with a vote to go out, and my dad relented. He suggested a particular Thai restaurant; I said I'd never been there; he said I'd been there long ago when it was a Long John Silvers. I decided that it counts as "Going to a New Place" since they really have made it new. There are potted plants and paintings of coconuts and dust-catching decorations made of sticks, and the only thing that suggests the building's former life is the little wall between the seating area and what used to be the ordering counter but is now a stainless steel staging area where the waitresses pick up food from the kitchen. I ordered Pad Thai with tofu and egg at "two-and-a-half stars spicy." "We'll round up to three," the waitress said. My dad insisted that they were lying to me and that it was probably only a one or a zero (he didn't taste it--he was just teasing me) but whatever it was it was just right. The bean sprouts were a few days past their prime, which tainted the dish somewhat, but other than that it was good. The best part was that I got to chat with my mom and dad. And even though I waved around some cash, they paid for my meal (about $12). Hooray!

Place Ten: A Panera

Because they're everywhere and it's something the entire family can usually agree on without too much of a fight, I tend to associate Paneras with things like a relative being in the hospital or the disappointing return leg of a family vacation. This time I ended up at one after suggesting to my mother and sister (after a morning spent at my mom's horticultural club's biannual show) that we "go out to lunch for fun." It ended up being okay. I got a You Pick Two with the Tomato & Mozzarella Panini (it was only one (half) sandwich, so can I please say panino?) and my usual Mediterranean Veggie Sandwich. Both were very good, and I especially liked the red sauce in the panino. I realized after my meal that getting a whole sandwich of either version would have cost substantially less than getting halves of both, but I liked the variety, so I guess it was okay. I paid for my own meal since I had been the one to suggest going out, but I didn't pay for anyone else because cheap.

Things I Did in February 2014

I accidentally posted this entry mid-month before I was done with it, so as many as six people may experience some deja vu.

Still no new camera. The lack of pretty photos here is bumming me out, but I went way over budget last year (mainly due to my 100 recipes goal), so I'm feeling kind of poor right now. Maybe next month!

This entry is just a bunch of housekeeping stuff for my ongoing goals. The book review is kind of a rant, my fitness progress is less than inspiring, and I wrote way too much about going to some ordinary places around town (but I hope those bits are at least a little funny, maybe even interesting). Here 'tis:

BOOK REVIEW: 

You Had Me at Woof: How Dogs Taught Me the Secrets of Happiness, by Julie Klam

A few years ago, I was at an Antropologie store (I'll occasionally go into one to be absolutely sure that yes, this store, which is purposefully designed to look like a crappy garage sale, has absolutely no clothes in it that I can afford), and after perusing price tags and scoffing, I saw this book on a table--it has an eye-catchingly cute black-and-white photo of a Boston Terrier with googly eyes and mismatched ears on the cover. I opened the book and read the following paragraph: 

I think because their dogs were so much bigger than Beatrice, my parents and their dogs didn't begrudge her lying on the couch with the people at cocktail hour. I remember the first time I went to their house with Otto. They had recently put down wall-to-wall sea-foam carpeting in the upstairs. Definitely no dogs allowed. That didn't apply to Otto. "He doesn't see color," I'd tell my father. Dad wasn't amused. I watched him stand at the foot of the stairs, Otto at the top, head cocked, with my dad yelling, "Get down here, fatty!" Otto looked at him, considered the offer, and went back to my mother's dressing room to lie in the sun. Sea foam wasn't his choice, and it wasn't his problem either.

I remember I snapped the book shut, put it back, and muttered, "What kind of books do they sell at the store for annoying, self-indulgent rich people? Books written by annoying, self-indulgent rich people." I walked out.

The next time I saw the book was when my mom unwrapped a copy on Christmas Day, 2013. She laughed at the funny title and cover photo and smiled at my dad, who had given it to her. He smiled back. It was a relevant gift since my mother had taken in the small stray dog I'd found a year earlier who had given birth to puppies in my room just before Christmas 2012. (The puppies still live with me, but their mom lives with my parents.) My mother read the book and then handed it off to me, not saying much about it. I decided I had been ignorantly presumptuous in the Antropologie store that time, and made up my mind to put aside my previous judgments and see if I had anything in common with the author, both of us being "dog people". 

It turns out the author and I did have a few common experiences. When she adopts her first dog of her own as a single 30-year-old, she wonders if this will mark her as a person who cares more about dogs than people and render her unmarriageable. (When I found myself suddenly spending 18 hours a day taking care of puppies that I hadn't planned on adopting, I worried I would never be able to leave the the house and gaze upon a male human again.) We both get embarrassed when our dogs bark at strangers during walks, and we both agree that potty training a human is easier than house training a dog in that it doesn't involve going outside on freezing nights. We even both like to let a small dog cling to our shoulder while we hum romantic jazz standards and dance in the kitchen. But the similarities end there. It turns out my initial judgments were far more accurate than I could have known.

The author (even as a 30-year-old entry-level employee) lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she regularly bumps into celebrities at the dog park. She complains about Upper West Side veterinarians not giving discounts to her Boston Terrier rescue group (I can just imagine what the vets think when they get hit up for money by the well-coiffed and well-heeled.) She spends thousands of dollars on a New Age retreat so she can learn to communicate telepathically with her dog. She only tells her whiny daughter "no" once, and even then she has to quote an incredibly shitty thing her daughter's teacher said to do so, and, in the end, gives in after all. She quotes emails from the other ladies in her rescue group at length because she thinks they're hilariously witty (they are not), and bitches about a guy from a poodle rescue group who tells her that she doesn't know what she's doing (she almost never does) and tells us it's appropriate that his name is Dick (her name is Klam). She writes a lengthy, guilt-trippy, oversold, lie-ridden sob story for a dog she's fostering that she wants someone to adopt, then can't believe her own daughter wants the dog because the dog is, and I quote, "kind of a nothing". I put the book down in disgust at several points, and it was all I could do to continue giving the author the benefit of the doubt until the end. So much for trying to set aside my judgments and find something to like about someone anyway--I find myself relieved not to know or have to interact with this person.

The book does have some high points. Klam is good for a few dozen laughs (she's a comedy writer, so she'd better be), though the best ones come from people she interacts with, especially her husband and other family members (her brother came up with the title for the book). The last page is beautifully written, almost to the point that I'd forgive the book its other failings. If you have never had a dog and plan to get one, this book could prove useful as a cautionary tale since the author screws up so many things in such a great variety of ways, despite having grown up with dogs. There are plenty of cute dog stories (but some distressing ones too--watch out), though not a single photograph besides the one on the cover, which does not seem to be of one of the author's dogs but rather just a staged photo (I could be wrong, but the caption only gives the copyright of a professional photographer). All in all, it is an okay book with good and bad points that mostly balance out. I would recommend it only conditionally, to certain people, like rescue group enthusiasts, airheads, and wealthy jerks.

HEALTH AND FITNESS GOALS:

This month I'm just listing my stats for the Physical Fitness Test... next month maybe I'll do little graphs in Excel to show my progress in a glance.

I slacked off fitness-wise in February (bad weather + laziness + surprisingly busy for an unemployed person) so I didn't show much improvement, and I was feeling lousy when I did the "running" test, but I made myself walk the route just to keep my commitment to doing this test every month.

1.5 mile "run": 28-1/2 minutes
Sit and reach: 2-1/4" past heels (a 1/4" improvement! Woo-hoo!)
Half Sit-ups: 20 in one minute
Push ups: 11 without stopping (one more than last time!)

I've also been making a conscious effort to eat more seasonal produce. This month it was lots of grapefruit, oranges, asparagus, beets (with greens), and spinach. I recommend seasonal produce because it is usually cheaper and tastes better (which means adding less sugar and oil to make it palatable).

GO TO 50 NEW PLACES GOAL:

This is my big goal for 2014. It's meant to counteract my agoraphobic tendencies. It's also an excuse to practice writing essays about places I've been.

Places Three and Four: Chinese New Year at the Crow Collection and Nasher Sculpture Center

Early in the month, my sister's friend invited both of us to meet her at a Chinese New Year celebration downtown at the Crow Collection of Asian Art. I wasn't sure if I could count this as a "new place" since my sister and I had been to the Crow Collection building one night a couple of years ago after a performance of Don Giovanni at the Winspear Opera House (quite an impressive place itself), but we toured much more of the museum this time, as well as crossing the street to see a bit of dance and music on "the main stage" and to pet some ponies and miniature horses that were standing in a little petting zoo nearby in honor of the Year of the Horse.

The festival wasn't a heck of a lot (the performer Betty Soo and her band were surprisingly good, and the food trucks smelled wonderful--the rest was kitsch), but the museum was awesome. In the ground floor exhibit space was an Ai Weiwei piece called "Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: Gold" (that's a link). I was excited to see something by Ai Weiwei since I had read so much about him but never seen his work. This particular piece was a reproduction of just the heads of some statues that used to adorn a fountain/water clock at an 18th-century European-style imperial palace that was looted in the 19th century by the French and the British (the original bronze heads were recently auctioned, sparking protest over their ownership and inspiring the artwork). I think the heads at the Crow Collection were smaller, but they were made of GOLD(-plated bronze). Often when I walk into a museum, I'm struck with the feeling that what I'm looking at is very valuable or even priceless, but that's always in an artistic/humanistic/spiritual sense. With this, I felt that I had walked into a bank vault and suddenly found myself in the presence of SO MUCH MONEY. Artistically, it could be a statement about value--what makes something worth something? But it was also just very eye-catching and electrifying. It was even difficult to really see the detail on some of the heads because they were so darn shiny. Upstairs in the museum were a variety of Asian art objects spanning a couple of millennia (mostly bowls). My favorites were a little gold Japanese short sword and scabbard, decorated with enamel flowers and birds, and an entire upper-story facade from a Mogul palace, made of intricately carved rose-colored sandstone, with three-hundred-year-old ironwood shutters still intact.

My sister's friend still hadn't shown up by the time we exited the museum, and it was too cold to stand around outside, so we went across the street to the Nasher Sculpture Center, which opened to much hoopla a couple of years ago. I'd been longing to see it because I had admired the work of Renzo Piano back when I was an architecture student but had never been to one of his buildings. I almost cried going in. My initial impression was of a grand simplicity that felt both futuristic and ancient, the high, smooth stone walls contrasting with a multi-layered roof/ceiling structure that seemed to float above and let in natural light through sheets of punctured metal. But as I walked through the museum, it began to feel like a much less poetic copy of Louis Kahn's nearly perfect Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, and the arrangement of the sculptures lacked any sense of awe or magic--it was kind of like when you go to visit someone who has just moved and nothing's been put in its proper place yet. I was, however, pleased to discover a new favorite sculptor, Alberto Giacometti, and to find out that Gauguin did some very good "primitive"-looking sculptures in addition to all those colorful paintings of naked ladies (both sculptures in the museum were also of naked ladies).

After we toured the sculpture garden, my sister's friend and several of her friends finally appeared. We walked down to see the ponies again (technically two Shetlands, half a dozen miniature horses, and a donkey, all very shaggy for winter). We decided, based on their glazed-over eyes and perfect stillness, that they must have been given a moderate dose of tranquilizers with their morning oats. As we stood by the corral, I looked up and saw a gigantic (42-story?) glass skyscraper which my sister's friend confirmed was the infamous Museum Tower, which has been accused of destroying some installations in the Nasher Sculpture Garden with an excess of harsh reflected light. (My sister and I didn't notice it in the garden because the sky was so overcast.) My sister's friend said an artist whose installation had been destroyed was working on a new installation that would make the building seem to disappear from the skyline!

I had forgotten how much I love seeing Dallas proper, especially the now somewhat dated I.M. Pei building called Fountain Place (I always cry when it appears on the horizon, especially if I'm returning to the city by air). The trip downtown was a bit of a leap into the future for me since I hadn't been there in a while. I hadn't yet seen the new Calatrava bridge (so much taller than it looks on the news!), I hadn't yet seen the new LED billboards that have sprung up here and there in the city (just like Time Square, only less so!), nor had I yet seen jeggings on men (at least not in real life!). I had been anxious about the long drive (which turned out to be mostly pleasant) and about being stuck standing around making small talk with a bunch of strangers (which only lasted about 20 minutes, and they were all very nice) and about leaving the puppies for so long (no one wet the bed!). I was exhausted afterward, both physically and emotionally, but all in all, it was a pleasant day, and I'm glad I dragged myself out the door.

Places Five and Six: A Wendy's and a Gelato Place

For a couple of weeks I found myself unable to get to the post office, even though I've been there millions of times and it's not very far away. I needed to go, though, because I had an exchange order for a clothing company in England and I didn't want it to get canceled because my return parcel was late. So finally I managed to get myself to the post office (I actually had to postpone mailing some bills that I was going to take in on the same trip because somehow adding three letters to a parcel made everything too stressful--I know it doesn't seem like much, but until I took them off the table, I couldn't get out the door). There was almost no line, and I actually let a couple of people pass me while I filled out my customs form. Waiting in line is the thing that triggers panic in me the most, and there was one guy openly ogling me and another guy who I thought might be making fun of me behind my back but turned out to be laughing over some inside joke with the postal worker at the counter, who was apparently a good friend. The person at the counter always has to type up the address that I've already written on the package and the form, and it's a seven-line address, so I apologized. "Oh, this one ain't too bad," he said. "Some of 'em don't even have numbers, they just say, 'Turn left at the tree!'" This got a big laugh from everybody.

Once the package was on its way, I felt so happy and relieved that I decided to try to visit a new place while I was out. I had to go a long way before I found a business that I could reasonably go into for at least five minutes: a Wendy's in a part of town that I hadn't been to in a while. I hadn't been in a Wendy's in a long time either, since I am both a health nut and too cheap to eat out unless someone else is paying. I ordered "whatever the medium size of fries is?" and paid with a five that I had gotten out of my wallet ahead of time to expedite things. My change was only two filthy dollars (one seemed to have roofing tar on it?) and a tiny pile of rust, which means either I was cheated, or the price of fries has more than doubled since I was in college. I went out to the car with my dirty money in my fist and realized that I could have just refused the change and been able to eat with relatively clean hands. Then a dime slipped through my fingers, and I went ahead and picked it up from the asphalt. If there's anything more profoundly ingrained in my personality than germaphobia, it's an egregious cheapassery. I ate half the fries right there in my car by picking them up between my knuckles. (Now I remember fries! Now I understand why we have an obesity epidemic!) Then I powered up my CR-V (Echo & the Bunnymen's "Lips Like Sugar" was just starting--I think that song is beautiful despite the goofy chorus), drove to a favorite scenic sitting/thinking/contemplating the universe spot, and sat down on a concrete embankment right by the water's edge. There were no ducks or geese about, so I figured I wouldn't have to share my fries until suddenly, silently and seemingly out of nowhere, a gigantic swan appeared before me. I've seen these birds attack people (including babies), so I gathered up my stuff immediately and tossed a fry to the ground in the hope that the swan would stop to eat it, buying me time to run to my car. Instead, he was visibly insulted by my meagre offering and turned his beak down and sideways, then opened it in a loud hiss as he rose from the water. This was not the hiss of a bicycle tire leaking air, or even the hiss of a snake, but the hiss of some primordial dragon awakening from centuries of slumber beneath a dark, secluded mountain tarn (like the one that swallowed the House of Usher). From the safety of my car, I could see that the swan had not followed me, but I don't take chances with those freaks.

Later in the same day, still feeling free and hopeful, I was out for a walk when my mother called and said my dad wanted to take the whole family out to dinner for her birthday. Hooray! (See above about only eating out when someone else is paying.) We went to our current favorite restaurant, a Mediterranean-food place owned and staffed by a small family from the Middle East. Afterward, my dad (who is supposed to be on a diet) took us to a gelato place I'd never even seen before. It was very busy and smelled faintly of ivory soap inside. I was delighted that many of the flavors were dairy-free, and you could get four of them in a single cup, so I did! My mom, my dad, my sister, and I sat around a tiny table eating our gelato with tiny plastic spoons and sharing funny stories about the puppies and their mom. It was probably one of the most pleasant little outings of my life, so I'm very, very, very glad I went.

Place Seven: Another Assisted Living Facility

My mom and I had all but decided on moving her mother to a bright, clean, airy place not too far from where she already is (it was our second choice back when she first moved out of my parents house), but thought we had better check out more of the competition. This place was so cold, so dark, so eerie, so labyrinthine that it might as well have been a carpeted version of the winding catacombs beneath the Castel Sant'Angelo. Also, the sales-pitch lady ended her every utterance with such a dramatic descent into vocal fry that I would have run out of there screaming if I'd had any hope of finding the exit on my own. A least it counted as going to another new place!

Place Eight: A Chipotle

My sister wanted me to bring her some food at work. The traffic was scary, so I made a detour to make the drive easier, then missed my turn and ended up having to come back at it from the first direction. I hope her burrito wasn't too cold. I wasn't going to get one for myself (cheapskate, health nut), but holy COW hers looked good when they were making it. I got a vegan one (unless there's butter in the brown rice? close enough) to eat at home and removed the cold parts and reheated the rest and then dumped the cold parts back on. It went so well with the Izze grapefruit soda that I also bought on impulse. Heavens it was good!

Things I Did in January 2014

Just when you thought it was safe to log on to Twitter... it's... another "Things I Did!"

I'm sorry I don't have any photos this time (I assume that's the one reason I get any hits on these entries)--my camera died early in the year and I have yet to replace it. But don't worry! There are plenty of boring words to glance over before you close the window with a huff and get back to reading jokes!

My motto/slogan/mantra for this year is "Better Things!" as in: I can fill my time with better things! I can expect to achieve better things! I can help other people have/do better things! I know--I can hear how that sounds, too! Even I want to tell me to shut up! But I'm just much more positive and hopeful this January than I was last January, and I think that's due in great part to all the things I did for last year's "Things I Did" write-ups.

For this month, I have an "essay," a book review, a new health/fitness goal (so sore right now!), and a new BIG goal for 2014: "Go to 50 New Places!"

ESSAY: I wrote this weird little thing about my family history (which I barely know) and how it loosely relates to a TV show called "Justified" (which I've barely seen). Not 100% sure why I wrote it or if it's the least bit interesting. Enjoy!

An Autobiographical Note Relating to the FX Series "Justified"

BOOK REVIEW:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens, by Sean Covey

My aunt gave me this book for Christmas or a birthday roughly 15 years ago, and at the time I was quite offended. I hadn't gotten into self-help yet and thought she was trying to say that I was a loser, so I stuffed it in the back of the closet. I found it recently when I was searching for my algebra book, and decided to read it. I can see how I wouldn't have been in the right frame of mind for this kind of advice back then, and I laughed at myself for all the lessons it covers that I've since had to learn the hard way. I've also found the book to be full of practical advice concerning "Habits" I'm currently working to develop.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens is a teen version of the bestselling Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, "written" by the son of the author of that book (I had my doubts about Covey's sole-authorship, and toward the end, in the "synergy" chapter he admits that over a hundred people helped him create the book). Despite a moderate amount of cheesiness (it is a self-help book after all), Seven Habits is actually pretty useful, full of concepts that you can apply to your life right away whether you are a teen still or not--in fact, I would recommend it for anyone old enough to read it (assuming you're okay with your five-year-old reading the four pages about whether or not you're ready for sex), and even for retirees who are starting life over on their own terms (though maybe the adult version would be more helpful for them, I don't know). 

Basically, it is a book of practical advice for dealing with life in general. There were two concepts in particular which, when put together, I found extremely helpful. One was the idea of having a "Personal Bank Account" and a "Relationship Bank Account"--if you keep promises to yourself or others (or do any number of other positive things), you are putting "deposits" into these bank accounts. The other was the idea of "Time Quadrants"--classifying the things you do as urgent and important (The Procrastinator spends a lot of time here), urgent but unimportant (The Yes-Man), non-urgent and unimportant (The Slacker), or non-urgent but important (The Prioritizer), with the goal of moving as much of your time as possible to The Prioritizer Quadrant. Putting the "Bank Account" concept together with the "Time Quadrant" concept helped me to see that I'd grown up believing that if something wasn't urgent, it couldn't be important, and thus, again and again, I had failed to make deposits in my Personal Bank Account (i.e. by making time to do the things that were important to me, but not urgent--even when I had the time and resources to do them), resulting in low self-esteem, and leading me to believe that the only way I could be right in other people's eyes was by being a Yes-Man all the time. I rarely fell victim to peer pressure as a teen, so I wouldn't have believed then that I was a Yes-Man, but I did often fall into the habit of Lose-Win ("Think Win-Win" is Habit 4), making myself a doormat to my family and to the kids I wanted to be my friends, eventually coming to believe that relationships were nothing but black holes, where you can give and give and give and never get anything back but guilt-trips and rejection. Now I see that when I assert myself and value my own time, other people come to value it too (funny how the therapist I went to for a couple of months two years ago kept trying to tell me this, but I never quite understood). When I give myself or other people my valuable time and energy (rather than time and energy that I have devalued, like inflated currency), it counts as a "deposit" and, in turn, promotes self-esteem and healthier relationships.

Other Habits (intentionally capitalized) include "Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood" and "Sharpen the Saw" (which is about renewing oneself through productive relaxation in order to be more effective, like a sharpened saw). I appreciate that the book starts by suggesting you center your life on principles, rather than on material or social gain, or even on God, which would have been easy for the author, whom I think might be Mormon (The signs are there! Maybe it says on Wikipedia! That's a very short entry for a best-selling author! Never mind! Doesn't matter anyway!). Many of the examples of personal mission statements submitted to the book by teenagers mentioned God, but the book itself is kindly accepting of non-believers and steers pretty clear of politics. My only objection is the author's recurrent use of the term "person of the opposite sex" which could be completely innocent, or could imply some homophobia (there are hotline numbers listed in the back of the book for eating disorders, abuse, substance abuse, gang prevention, pregnancy, and mental health, but nothing about help for bullied or abandoned LGBT youth). 

All in all though, a good book. I may even pick up the original grown-up version sometime in order to review the Habits and see if it has any extra adult-specific advice.

HEALTH AND FITNESS:

I recently found a page torn from the October 2008 issue of Reader's Digest tucked into one of my books (why was it in my copy of Middle English Verse Romances?). The page concerned the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports' recently launched "Adult Fitness Test" (that's a link). The magazine offered some goals for 40-year-old men and women, and while these goals don't appear to be on the website, I entered them into the system there and found that they are in the 95th percentile (i.e. ambitious) goals. Since I'm "only" 30, I decided this would be a reasonable challenge. I hope to meet the women's goals by the end of June 2014 (after that, it will be too hot to do jack squat, much less run around the neighborhood as fast as I can) and the men's goals by the end of the year (once it's cooled off again). (I've switched the two goals for sit-and-reach since women are expected to be more flexible.)

I took the test at the end of December 2013 and scored abysmally (think 5th percentile). I later discovered that the running route I'd chosen was actually 1.75 miles, so you can shave a minute or two off my time, but still, abysmal. I took it again today, and despite having performed only marginally better, I feel like I've been beaten with a 30-pound sack of russet potatoes.

Here are all my stats so far ("Starting" means my December 2013 test results):

Push-ups:

Starting: 7 (on knees, without stopping)

January: 9 (on knees, without stopping)

Women's Goal: 33 (on knees, without stopping)

Men's Goal: 40 (without stopping)

1.5-mile run:

Starting: 23 1/2 minutes (turned out to be 1.75 miles)

January: 18 1/2 minutes

Women's Goal: under 12 minutes

Men's Goal: under 10 minutes

Half sit-ups:

Starting: 20 in a minute

January: 22 in a minute

Women's Goal: 60 in a minute

Men's Goal: 65 in a minute

Sit and reach: 

Starting: 1 inch beyond heels

January: 2 inches beyond heels

Men's Goal: 8 inches beyond heels

Women's Goal: 9 inches beyond heels

As you can see, I improved ever so slightly in every area. Hooray!

P.S. I had considered keeping track of my weight, body fat percentage, and waist measurement as I (hopefully) make progress on these goals, but decided instead to keep the focus on what I can DO (i.e., the whole point of these "Things I Did" blog entries) rather than my physicality/appearance. Go self-esteem!!

GO TO 50 NEW PLACES GOAL:

This is my big 2014 goal (like last year's 100 recipes goal). I'm really anxious about even setting it because I've become so entrenched in my agoraphobic behavior again--especially since the puppies came along, requiring that so much of my time be spent at home. My plan is to go to about one new place a week, meaning a shop or restaurant (etc.) that I've never visited before or one that I've been afraid to drive to myself and visit alone. The idea is that a lot of the other things I'm working on don't get me out into the world, and I start to despair that my life won't get any better in the long run if I'm never able to apply the knowledge and skills I acquire at home "out there," thus hindering my progress (because why bother?). In the past, I've done big, scary things to break out (e.g. trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras with six strangers and one sort-of friend; study abroad in Italy; the time I actually had a job), and those were rewarding but also very difficult and thus discouraging to future progress, so this year I'd like to try taking several (i.e. fifty) smaller steps outward instead!

I don't know if I'll do write-ups for all fifty, but I went ahead and did the first two:

Place One: Rockfish Seafood Grill

My dad and I did a small chore for his mother for which she was grateful enough to buy us lunch. I thought this place would be fancy (I like the name--sounds fancy to me), but it was kind of like a lunchy Outback. I accidentally read the happy hour menu and thought the beer was cheap, so I got a 12 oz. draft of Sam Adam's Winter Lager, which was very mellow and delicious (2013 taught me that I love trying new things, especially new foods and drinks). I liked that they had a la carte brunch options--I got a single sweet potato pancake with pecans and "bourbon maple syrup" (very good) and a berry parfait (too sweet, but otherwise good). The conversation was fine until Grandma got onto politics at the end and called me a Communist twice on the ride home. Also, the women's toilet was broken (only one stall for a big restaurant?), and I'd drunk a whole beer and a whole ice water, but luckily Dad and Grandma were kind enough to take me straight home afterward (I needed to take the puppies out anyway). On the whole it was fun, and I'm glad I went.

Place Two: New Assisted Living Center

My mother and I went to check out a new assisted living center in the area in case we need to move her mom. The place was pretty badly designed, with a lot of money put into fancy finish materials and interior decorating and very little thought put into the practical needs of elderly residents--it was too open and unsafe for dementia patients while not having enough privacy or amenities for active seniors. At least I got a complimentary red velvet mini cupcake!

You're still here? Why? Well, thanks, I guess....

An Autobiographical Note Relating to the FX Series "Justified"

Last week my sister came down with a nasty cold, so over the weekend she relaxed a bit and watched the entire first season of "Justified" on DVD. I watched the first episode with her and liked it okay, but decided I would get on with some things I was working on instead of spending all day in front of the TV with a sick person. I'd assumed the series would be more dark than comedy, but every time I walked through the room, there seemed to be something fun and quirky happening, or some odd character would be dishing out a smart one-liner. (I sat and watched the last episode with her too, and it was kind of awesome.)

The show is set in rural eastern Kentucky. I'm not sure how careful the producers were in getting all the actors on the same page accent-wise--like I said, I only saw two episodes in their entirety--but they seemed to do a pretty good job. It turned out that having the DVD running all day got that accent stuck in my head, and I found that it felt weirdly familiar, like I'd had it tucked away inside my head already. I've lived in Texas all my life, so I thought to myself, "A Texas accent is different from a Kentucky accent, and anyway, I don't have much of a Texas accent either." Then I remembered that my mother's father grew up on a farm in southern Indiana, not fifty miles from Louisville, Kentucky. (I never saw the farm--it was sold in 1929, and my grandfather grew up to be a dentist and later a college professor, and raised my mom in Indianapolis. I've passed through Kentucky about a dozen times over the years for visits--go see Mammoth Cave if you're ever there.) I got out a map to see where Harlan, the small town where "Justified" is set, might be, and discovered that, being in far southeastern Kentucky, it's a lot further from the old farm than Louisville is, but also just over the mountains from where my father's mother grew up, in western North Carolina.

A poster advertising the sale of livestock and farming implements from the estate of my mother's father's father, who was killed by a bad bologna sandwich when my grandfather was five.

My father's mother has what I consider to be a "fancy" southern accent, and I'd never thought of it as having any similarities to my mother's father's farm-boy way of speaking. My mother's father died nearly ten years ago, and I can just barely remember his voice. He was a thin man--he smoked all his life, and it killed him--with a slow, rumbly baritone, and was prone to folksy turns-of-phrase, like, "Now do you mean funny ha-ha, or funny peculiar?" I hear him echoed in my mother's voice and sayings, too (she loves to quote him), although I've always thought of my mother as being from the one part of the country where Americans have "no accent." (I wonder how many people in the world think of their mother as having "no accent"!) The only person who has ever commented on my accent was the father of a high school friend, who asked if one of my parents grew up in Virginia. I confirmed that my father had, and asked how he could tell. He said, "You have a Virginia "O"." (If I could go back in time, I'd pick that man's brain for everything he knew.)

So somehow, somewhere, amid the swirl of accents I get from my family, not to mention movies and TV, there is something like a Kentucky accent. For curiosity's sake, I've broken down how close each of my grandparents' hometowns are to Harlan, Kentucky (with thanks to Google maps, which, in the show at least, hasn't gotten around to mapping some places yet, "like North Korea... and Raylan's hometown"):

Mother's mother's hometown (NJ): 665 miles NE of Harlan

Father's father's hometown (VA): 284 miles E of Harlan

Mother's father's hometown (IN): 259 miles NW of Harlan

Father's mother's hometown (NC): 179 miles SSE of Harlan (over the mountains)

My hometown (TX): 953 miles WSW of Harlan

Things I Did in December

PHOTOS: My 11-year-old Canon point-and-shoot served me well this year, documenting the wonders of nature (well, mostly the backyard), the growth (and shenanigans) of the puppies, and the development of my cooking skills. It died a few days into the new year. While I will miss the good times we shared, my camera's death was probably the only way to get a cheapskate like me to buy a new one (even though I've been wanting one for a while) and to get an obsessive like me to break the habit of taking photos of my food (I've tried half a dozen new recipes in the past five days, and only one was documented!).

Here is my camera's swan song, culminating in some lovely photos I took after an ice storm:

(there's a squirrel on that tree limb--you may have to zoom in to see her)

(not Instagrammed--I simply shot the scene through the naturally frosted beveled glass in the front door)

(the backs of these leaves were coated in 3/8" of glossy ice--I staged this photo since the icy leaves that came down on their own shattered on impact with the slick compacted sleet on the ground)

(see my blog entry about the ice storm here)

(that's the sun, just above the roof there)

BOOK REVIEWS: I read two books this month!

Eating on the Wild Side, by Jo Robinson

This was a book originally purchased by my dad of all people (i.e. not a health nut), who got bored with it and handed it off to my mom who got bored with it and handed it off to me. I had it around for a week or so, thinking, "This looks like a four hundred-page list of facts about fruits and vegetables." Then I actually started reading it and found myself wishing it could be an eight hundred-page list of facts about fruits and vegetables--and nuts and grains and mushrooms, too. 

The author, Jo Robinson, whose qualifications appear to lie solely in the vast quantity and high quality of research she has done, is a veritable Malcolm Gladwell of food and health information (I did not know I would also be reading a Malcolm Gladwell book this month when I wrote this review). The book consists of an introduction outlining her idea that, in most cases, the ancient wild ancestors of our modern food crops were a great deal more nutritious than what is presently available in most supermarkets, followed by seventeen chapters (example title: "From Wild Greens to Iceberg Lettuce: Breeding Out the Medicine") which explain how different categories of fruits and vegetables came to be seen as food, how they were modified by selective breeding (or more drastic measures) to become more palatable and easier to harvest, how modern produce compares to its ancestors in terms of nutrition and flavor, and a breakdown of how to choose, store, and prepare these foods to get the most nutrition out of them as possible.

The thing that makes this book worth reading, though, is how Robinson goes beyond and frequently contradicts the rules of thumb that generally guide what we think of as healthy eating--i.e. more colorful food is more healthful, fresh is better than canned, heirlooms are always better than more-recently developed crops--and delves into the actual science of nutrition, supported by thousands of scientific studies (with references in the back!). It makes the "wild" thing on the cover seem almost like a gimmick meant only to get you to pick up what is in fact a very practical book with practical advice for choosing the best cultivated foods (although a few wild foods, like wild blueberries, are recommended).

Here is some advice from the book that I've already put into practice:

- Buy canned tomatoes, which have more bioavailable lycopene than fresh raw tomatoes. Canning and cooking tomatoes increases the amount of lycopene your body can absorb from them. If you buy fresh tomatoes, the smaller the better (I'm on the lookout for new "currant" tomatoes, which are actually modern tomatoes crossed with tiny wild tomatoes).

- Mince or crush your garlic ten minutes before you heat it up. This gives heat-sensitive enzymes in different parts of the clove time to produce the most possible allicin, a compound which, since prehistory, has been used to cure just about everything.

- Black beans and lentils are so much more nutritious than green peas and chickpeas that you may as well never eat green peas and chickpeas again (well, she didn't say that exactly, and I'll probably still eat them, but I'll definitely go for the black beans and lentils when I can).

- Iceberg lettuce is pretty much worthless. I haven't bought it in a while anyway, but red leaf lettuce is a much better choice. Spinach is even better, and kale is one of the healthiest greens you can buy in the store.

- Wild blueberries! Berries of all kinds are extraordinarily healthy, and I'm glad I've "indulged" in them for so many summers. Organic is better. Wild is best. If you buy frozen blueberries, thaw them in the microwave--apparently, if they thaw too slowly, the antioxidants break down.

- Roast your root vegetables whole to preserve the most nutrients.

I could go on and on. I wish I'd taken notes while I read! Other joys of the book include recipes (I ATE BEETS AND I LIKED THEM!), charts detailing the best varieties of plants to choose at farmer's markets or from seed catalogs, and absolutely delightful (and occasionally scary) stories about how wild plants came to be our modern foods (Alexander the Great and Thomas Jefferson play big roles; modern carrots are only orange because someone in Holland wanted to honor William and Mary of Orange; modern super-sweet corn was created by leaving bags of seed on a ship moored in the vicinity of an atomic bomb test, then sifting through all the weird progeny over a couple of decades; etc.).

My only real complaint about this book (aside from the fact that I want MORE of it) is that it doesn't have a lot of information about how the valuable antioxidants and other phytonutrients Robinson lauds actually affect the body. She mentions that this vegetable has a compound that lowers LDL cholesterol, and that fruit has a compound that destroys 90% of cancer cells in test tube studies, but never gives a good layman's-terms description of how these miracles actually occur. It's possible that science itself doesn't really know, though, so I'll cut her some slack and take her--and the scientists'--word for it for now. UPDATE: I have since learned that shortly before the publication of this book, the USDA withdrew its ORAC tables, which were referred to often in this book, citing lack of evidence that the beneficial effects shown in the lab will actually occur in the human body. Much of the book's information can still be believed since several of the studies referenced were actual in vivo experiments, but you should keep in mind that the compound that produced results in test tubes may not necessarily be the same compounds producing results in the human studies.

So although this book is, in truth, four hundred pages of facts about fruits and vegetables, they are four hundred pages that will not only delight your mind, but potentially heal your body and change your life. I highly recommend it, and I hope enough people buy the book that Jo Robinson can afford a few research assistants to help her come out with a sequel as soon as possible.

* * *

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants, by Malcolm Gladwell

This was the third Malcolm Gladwell book I've read, and it was similar in structure to the other two--a diverse collection of facts, anecdotes and statistics slowly and quietly explicated, then shoehorned into an overarching theme. I like Malcolm Gladwell books. They are quick, easy reads that still manage to make you think a bit. But this one seemed like little more than an addendum and partial qualification of his (far better) book Outliers (for example, Gladwell admits in the midst of the substantial notes and references in the back of the book that he has learned new things about the effects of affirmative action since writing Outliers and now has a more nuanced understanding of such policies).

Supposedly, the book is about how underdogs are sometimes more powerful than they seem, and the seemingly powerful can be vanquished more easily than we may think. Gladwell starts out by retelling the story of David and Goliath, fleshed out with details that are less understood now than they were in ancient times (i.e. that slingers were highly specialized killers who could do as much damage with a rock as modern folk can do with a handgun, and probably with more accuracy) and modern knowledge that may have been unknown to the ancients (i.e. that Goliath almost certainly suffered from a pituitary gland condition that not only rendered him nearly blind and uncomfortably tall, but also thinned the bone in his forehead, rendering him more vulnerable to David's sling). 

It's an interesting telling of the story, but it makes you feel extremely sorry for the "giant" when David breaks the rules and basically runs out and shoots him (the only thing that makes it okay is that his homeland was threatened with ruin and his people with slavery--a situation in which all bets are off, in my book). But this moral uneasiness stays with us throughout the book. When we learn that certain entrepreneurs' childhood struggles with dyslexia forced them to learn to cheat and deal with work and people in the kinds of unconventional ways that give one an edge in business, it's not a pleasing revelation because the businessmen listed are for the most part nasty people--who cares that they are "successful" if they have used and hurt others? Likewise, the story of a doctor inured to suffering by a childhood of deprivation and neglect experimenting on and torturing dying children in order to find a cure for leukemia is similarly unsatisfying. And don't even get me started on how disillusioned I was to discover that the American civil rights movement knowingly and purposefully exposed children to danger and abuse in order to increase the shock value of news reports.

David and Goliath is worth reading for the information it presents, but don't expect to be uplifted or inspired or see the world in a helpful new light. If that's what you're looking for, (re)read Outliers.

100 RECIPES GOAL: I did it! I did it I did it I did it!!! Now it's no big deal for me to try a new recipe--in fact, I've done two or three in a single day. I've discovered I have a passion for cooking, though probably not enough to make a career out of it. I also have a new-found interest in cooking shows, even though I only used to like the fat Cajun guy who said "ON-YON", Yan of "Yan Can Cook" fame, and the French pastry chef who would say "cookie shit" whenever he tried to say "cookie sheet" (the audience would burst into giggles every time--it was PBS, after all).

On the downside, now, whenever I watch non-chefs cook, they seem like mentally handi-capable three year olds with missing fingers. They're like, "Why is it burnt? Why does it taste funny?" so I tell them what they did wrong, and yet they persist in making the same mistakes again and again. I'm starting to understand why big-time chefs are so arrogant, even though, obviously, I'm still a novice with loads to learn. I didn't even get around to all the recipes I wanted to try this year! Beer bread! Springerle! Pumpkin pancakes!

Here are the final twenty-nine recipes of the hundred (again, I've left the full recipes out because I didn't want to waste time writing them out. If you would like the recipe, just ask):

#72: Steamed Beets and Sauteed Greens with Balsamic Vinegar

From Eating on the Wild Side, by Jo Robinson. This is the beet dish mentioned in my review of the book. It's supposed to have blue cheese too, but I made it without and it was still so good that I ate the whole plate in one sitting, which is amazing because I've always hated beetroot (the greens are good when fresh, though).

A-

#73. Apple Crisp with Apple Skins

Also from Eating on the Wild Side, by Jo Robinson. I made it once with Granny Smith apples (and not the full amount of sugar), which I thought was perfect, and later with a variety of red apples plus one Granny Smith and more sugar, which my sister thought was better.

A+ (delicious and not very hard to make)

#74. Sauerkraut Mushroom Pierogi

From my 75th Anniversary edition of Joy of Cooking. I made this three times. The egg noodle dough is very hard to make from scratch (literally hard, nearly impossible to mix and knead) but tastes a million times better than store-bought egg noodles. The filling is best the next day and/or if you leave it sitting out for a few hours at room temperature. Surprisingly, it was best when I used some old and barely edible-looking cremini mushrooms and medium-fresh German sauerkraut (the real stuff (no vinegar), imported) so it's a good way to use up both of these ingredients. My pierogi dough was thick and tough, so it was best topped with extra filling, black beans, or spinach--anything to soften it.

A

#75. Egg Noodles with Sugar-and-Spice Blueberries

Joy of Cooking says pierogi are sometimes made with blueberries, but didn't give a recipe. I topped the leftover bits of pierogi dough with microwaved frozen wild blueberries and sprinkled sugar, cinnamon, and a little nutmeg on top. I thought it would be even better with store-bought noodles, but instead it was almost inedibly bland.

A (with homemade whole wheat dough)

#76. Anna Silver's Carrot Cake (with raisins and without icing)

This recipe was a contest winner that was printed on the Bob's Red Mill White Whole Wheat Pastry Flour bag (that made it easy to consult while mixing, since it stands up tall on the counter). I made this cake for several family members to share, and they all wanted raisins in it even though the recipe doesn't call for them. Also, I didn't have the ingredients for the icing and didn't want to add any more sugar to the recipe anyway (in fact, I used slightly less than was called for for the cake, too) so I served it without icing. It was so good that not only were seconds requested, but it was requested that I make the cake again a couple of times. If you use a pan larger than 8"X8", don't cook it the full forty minutes.

I like the cake very much with roasted beets and/or carrots, so I recommend it as a way of dressing up plain root vegetables.

A+

#77. Ginger Ale

I think I saw in a previous edition of Joy of Cooking that the by-products of ginger candy-making can be added to fizzy water to make ginger ale, but it wasn't in my new addition. I tried it anyway, and it came out as a very mellow yet flavorful, slightly burnt-tasting ginger ale (I got the syrup a bit hot a few times, impatient to get it boiled down). I was sad when it was gone. 

A (could have added a couple other spices maybe?)

#78. Candied Ginger

Joy of Cooking recommended using very young, fresh pink ginger. I found a relatively pink one at the store, but accidentally forgot about it for a week. The candy still came out okay. I don't know how they make those big soft golden chunks you can buy in the bulk foods section of groceries--maybe they use younger, fresher ginger after all. Certainly a lot easier just to buy it, although boiling ginger in sugar for hours does make the house smell nice.

B+

#79. Cauliflower Pilaff

From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. I had to buy a cheap brand of brown rice because I was unexpectedly out of my cache of the good stuff. As a result, I cooked it all wrong and it got to be more of a mush than a pilaff (that double F may be a British thing). On the plus side, I kept forgetting, because of the mushiness and the golden turmeric and the presence of cauliflower, that I wasn't eating cauliflower with cheese. If you're a committed vegan who misses cheese and hates cheese substitutes, I highly recommend this. Otherwise, it's a bit too much work for the outcome.

B+

#80. Roasted Beetroot with Horseradish Cream

From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. This one was almost cheating since I used a prepared sauce (the store had no plain horseradish, and this seafood dip had everything called for in the recipe), but there was some work in cooking the beets and dressing them with parsley. I liked the method of brushing them with olive oil and honey and roasting them in foil (I cut them in halves instead of quarters and peeled them after roasting, which was more in accordance with what I learned in Eating on the Wild Side, and worked well). I liked this a little more than #72 above, and it was certainly easier, though maybe not as healthy because of the sugar and sour cream.

A

#81. Oatmeal and Raspberry Muffins

From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. I think I substituted almond milk for regular milk, and I've noticed that doesn't always work well in baking. They came out a bit grainy and dry, like a scone, but the raspberry/oatmeal flavor was nice, and cooked raspberry in dough looks like bubblegum, which was fun.

B-

#82. Capiscum Rolled with Goat's Cheese, Basil and Capers

From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. The filling alone was very good. Eating the rolls freshly made, they were good. After sealing some in a bowl filled with olive oil (as instructed) and refrigerating them overnight, the rolls were so good that I said some very colorful and naughty words when I tasted them. Highly recommended as an appetizer or snack that can be made the night before.

A++

#83. Blue Cornbread

I was excited to try blue corn after reading in Eating on the Wild Side about how much healthier it is than yellow or white corn, especially the super-sweet varieties. I bought some blue corn grits (very good) and also some blue corn meal. I used the cornbread recipe on the package and it was a bit dull and dense. I made it my own way and got it lighter and loftier, but the flavor suffered. Will keep trying.

B- (for the package recipe)

#84. Eggplant, Tomato, and Goat's Cheese Stack

From Vegetarian Cooking: A Commonsense Guide. These were so much fun to make, and lots of work (as demonstrated by my many process photos) but the payoff was only so-so. I think in the summertime, with in-season ingredients, it might be much better.

B+ (perhaps better in summer)

#85. Tunisian Eggplant Salad

Same book as above, a bit easier, so-so flavor.

B+ (perhaps better in summer)

#86. Banana and Cardamom Bread

From Vegan Recipes, ed. Nicola Graimes. I screwed this up the first time, getting the yeast so hot that it didn't rise. I salvaged the loaf by slicing it and re-baking the slices into "biscotti," but I only managed to eat about 2/3 of it (I hate throwing food away!). I tried again, again making a double recipe (maybe that's where I went wrong), accidentally dusting the puppies with flour as I tried to knead more dough than I could easily handle, and did a bit better, but I should have made two loaves instead of one megaloaf that couldn't cook through all the way without burning. 

I was hoping this would be a good, non-sugary alternative to my family's favorite old banana bread recipe (more of a banana cake, from my mom's college home economics textbook). I may yet get it right, because the flavor is okay--it's just the crumb that needs work, and that may well be my fault.

B (probably my fault)

#87. Mediterranean Style Eat Your Greens

I was looking for good frozen veggies and found a bag of Seapoint Farms mixed green stuff (edamame (which I'd never tried), broccoli, green beans, spinach, and asparagus) that said "EAT YOUR GREENS" across the bottom. Whoever put that there knew what they were doing because I laughed my head off and threw it into the cart (I mean the bag of veggies, not my head). This recipe was on the back and I followed it, I think, to the letter, unless there was supposed to be cheese or something. Anyway, it was very good, especially with the fresh oregano all over it. Crisp, relatively nutritious, and flavorful.

A

#88. Dutch Baby!

I have been wanting to make this recipe for years, basically for as long as I've known it's existed. It's in Joy of Cooking, near the pancakes and waffles and such. It's described as a "puff pancake," when in reality, it's more of a crusty custard (I think if I'd whisked the flour into the egg and milk better, it would have been more evenly distributed rather than making so much of a crust over an eggy portion. I kept putting this recipe off because I thought it would be difficult, but it wasn't bad (although I did burn myself--don't forget that heat-resistant pot handles will get hot in the oven--I remembered until I was ready to cut into the Dutch Baby and grabbed the pot absentmindedly to steady it).

A+ (good with strawberry jam and powdered sugar--try to share it with someone, because I don't think it would keep too well, and it's way too much butter and sugar to eat alone in one sitting)

#89. Bitter Orange Soda

Similar to #77, but with the by-product from candied orange slices. The pith of oranges is bitter, so even though the syrup is full of sugar, it has a kind of elegant, grown-up tasting bitterness. I drank some of the soda right away, but keep meaning to get some liquor to add to the rest, to see if it makes an interesting cocktail (though it may have gone bad by now).

A

#90. Candied Orange Slices

I followed the Joy of Cooking recipe as well as I could, using (organic oranges and organic sugar) but the slices never hardened. I kept them in the refrigerator and used them over the next two weeks for Christmas Star Lebkuchen, panettone, and a phyllo pastry I made in the new year (by then, they were a bit overpowering). Having them soft may have made them easier to cut (I only used the outer rind), but I ended up throwing away the mushy, bitter centers.

B (probably my fault, somehow)

#91. Christmas Star Lebkuchen

I made lebkuchen before, but those were very plain, without the orange peel or icing. I intended this round as a Christmas treat. I was careful not to leave it in the oven too long, but it still got very hard, so I thought I had screwed it up. Then I made the icing too wet, and thought I had screwed it up worse. But then I cut it into stars and bars and sealed them in tins (the stars) and a glass container with a plastic lid (the odd pieces), and, amazingly, the humidity evened out, making the consistency perfect. The orange peel was still a bit chewy, so I could have chopped it smaller or soaked it in lemon juice first, but otherwise these were very good, especially with a mug of green tea to balance the sweetness.

In fact, I set the plate shown above (last picture) out on a table Christmas Day, and my grandma happened to sit next to it. I ate two of the pieces and then busied about. Several hours later, when I came back to call everyone to dinner, my grandmother held up the second-to-last piece and said, "Did you make these? They're really good!" I grabbed the last one for myself, to save her from a sugar coma. 

A++

#92. Rosemary and Orange Blue Cornmeal Cookies

This recipe came from the back of the Wholesome Sweeteners Organic Sugar bag. Apparently, they were invented by a child in Chicago who owns her own restaurant or bakery or something (seriously, she looks 23, and she has her own f'ing restaurant). My sister said they taste like a cross between a cornbread muffin and a sugar cookie (obviously, being on the back of a bag of sugar, the recipe would call for a lot of sugar). I used blue cornmeal just because I still have some left over. I loved the orange zest and rosemary flavors together with the buttery, sugary corn. It made the cookies taste vaguely Christmas-ey, so I'd recommend them for holiday cooking, gifts to neighbors, etc. The second photo shows the first batch, made according the recipe, with its rough appearance, and the second batch, with water added to smooth the cookies. I don't know which I liked better. The flavor was a bit stronger in the rough ones, while the texture was better in the watered down ones.

A+ (except for too much sugar)

#93. Baked Pasta with Pumpkin and Spinach

I'd seen a couple of grocery ads that alluded to this kind of dish, but didn't have an exact recipe, so I got online and found this one (that's a link). I didn't have ricotta or garlic, but it still came out highly edible (I topped it with toasted almonds, which was a suggestion from one of the ads). It's one of those things that you start eating and you think, "Yeah, this is okay for something healthy," but then you want seconds and thirds, and then you have to stop yourself before your stomach explodes.

A (probably A+ with ricotta)

#94. Cocoa Macaroons

This recipe is from the side of a tin of E. Guittard Red Dutch Process Cocoa. I used the optional ground almonds (Bob's Red Mill) and some very fine, dry, unsweetened Bob's Red Mill coconut. My only complaints are 1) the tin of cocoa wasn't very well sealed (two tiny stickers? come on) and the contents settled so much (or the tin was made so overlarge) that I thought at first (until I weighed it) that someone had taken out half in the store, and 2) the recipe only makes fifteen bon-bon-sized cookies that disappear almost immediately, especially if you set aside five for your mother.

A+

#95. Diamond-Cut Roast Sweet Potato and Slivered Garlic

Not worth writing home about, except to say that I'm still not forgiven for stinking up the kitchen. The tops were scraped off, and the potatoes repurposed in another recipe.

C-

#96. Pumpkin Soup

From Joy of Cooking, to use up the 29 oz. can of pumpkin opened for #93. I omitted the celery and didn't puree anything, but it was still very good.

A

#97. Panettone

From Joy of Cooking. I soaked the orange rind in lemon juice and the raisins in tart cherry juice, and I think that worked well. The cakes didn't puff up as much as I thought they would, considering the size of the tins I was supposed to use and the fact that the dough puffed so high at the rising stage that it almost came out of the bowl (two packets of yeast for this!). I shared it with my mom, dad, and sister, who are used to store-bought panettone, and everyone commented on the shortness of the cakes and the scarcity of "stuff" (orange rind and raisins). In fact, I used twice the amount of "stuff" recommended in the recipe, so go for four or five times as much "stuff". I used a whole wheat pastry flour (like always) and the recipe only calls for one stick of butter (which comes out to a teaspoon for each wedge like the one shown above) and 1/2 cup sugar total (not counting the "stuff"), so this is actually a relatively healthy dessert!

A+, with extra "stuff"

#98. Potato Salad with Kalamata Olives

From Eating on the Wild Side. I'd been looking for blue potatoes ever since reading the book, and suddenly, there they were. Surprisingly good recipe (I omitted the sun-dried tomatoes since they are gross and expensive).

A

#99. Red Cabbage with Green Apples

From How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, by Mark Bittman, a book my grandma got me for Christmas. I decided to call this recipe "surprisingly non-disgusting". Red cabbage and Granny Smith apples are very healthy. The dish was mostly flavored by three (yes, three) cloves. That was plenty of cloves. It took me a few days to finish this off, but by the end, it was still fairly edible.

B

#100. Cinnamon Texases

The Cinnamon Stars recipe from Joy of Cooking, but cut into Texas shapes instead. They're just egg whites, almond flour, cinnamon, and powdered sugar (maybe a couple other things). I didn't get the eggs warm enough before I tried to whip the whites into "medium-firm peaks," so it took well over 1,000 strokes, and I nearly died (this was getting close to midnight on New Year's Eve, and the cookies weren't out of the oven before my deadline, but I think they still count). I cooked them 3 minutes extra, and I'm still not sure they were done. They were more like damp meringues than cookies, but very, very, very delicious. 

They didn't keep very well because the cinnamon/egg white topping sticks to plastic and everything else (I puffed up the bag they were in, but in retrospect, they should have gone in a tin in a single layer).

A+ (a good way to end my challenge)