ROASTED BRUSSELS SPROUTS
Roasted Brussels Sprouts, with truffle oil, duck fat, and bacon.
“One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.”-Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
PRETZEL BEIGNETS
Pretzel Beignets, with cream.
Walt Whitman by G. Frank E. Pearsall, 1872
“May your blessings outnumber/The shamrocks that grow,/And may trouble avoid you/Wherever you go.” Irish Blessing
My husband is a Scotsman and I am an English-German lass, but today we donned the green and got our Irish on.
My kilted hottie honey.
Getting my green on.
St. Patrick’s Day
…and walked out with only 3 books!
Silent Movies
I’ve wanted this book since it first hit shelves 5 years ago. Continue reading
Reading break.
“We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.”-Henry Miller
Morning view.
That is snow on the roof of the low building above the truck. It was 70 degrees just 3 days ago.
An inadequate but satisfying breakfast.
When it is cold I could stay in bed all day. This morning, the siren’s call of the electric kettle was too strong.
“You will be successful in your career.”
The universe is obviously trying to tell me something, in the form of this dark chocolate orange fortune cookie. The message? “Get to work, you lazy woman.”
“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”-Confucius
“I like work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”-Jerome K. Jerome
“Out of clutter, find simplicity.”-Albert Einstein
“Hide not your talents, they for use were made,
What’s a sundial in the shade?”-Benjamin Franklin
Only very special books live on the shelf above the desk in my studio. I am about to start reading Hung in the Middle, a memoir by my dear friend Alana Nicole Sholar. Methinks she is in good company.
Hung in the Middle
Welcome to CAMPy WASHINGTON, where humor is a matter of civic pride.
Here’s George Washington, all dolled up to keep watch over the fine citizens of this urban neighborhood. He’s attended by Cincinnati’s famous flying pigs and a docile cow.
The purple gorilla and old-timey robot aren’t just mural stars: they have real life counterparts, statues that are an integral part of our local identity.
George is ready for his close-up.
The mural sits right off the highway, and is visible to random people filling their tanks at two gas stations. Although it doubtless makes them smile, its real importance is in brightening the lives of local residents who spend their days looking at manufacturing warehouses and crumbling 19th century brick buildings. In a neighborhood so far off the radar as to lack even the condescending appellation “up and coming”, public art really does make a difference.
This mesmerizing gent is writer and publisher Robert McAlmon, who was born on 9 March 1895.
Robert McAlmon, one of my great inspirations, looking spiffy.
QUOTE: “He (Owen Johnson) didn’t have to argue with me about the beginning of the jazz and the flapper age. It began actively for me when I was fourteen. As a child I had noted it without curiosity in my elders. That means the jazz age proper and the flappers were going strong before 1910, some years before Scott Fitzgerald was beyond his own childhood. It was in its heyday when Irene and Vernon Castle were famous as ballroom dancers, and none of us as children considered ourselves grown up unless we could bonton, pigeon-trot, barn-dance, Spanish tango, or turkey-walk our two hundred miles a week of so-called dancing. In those days the hobble skirt and the sheath gown were creating a sensation, and I remember seeing the smart young ladies from the university doing a step or two on the street corners as they waited for the streetcar to come along.”
SOME WORKS: Village: As it Happened Through a Fifteen Year Period; A Companion Volume; The Portrait of a Generation; North America, Continent of Conjecture; Being Geniuses Together: An Autobiography.
FUN FACT: In 1923, Robert McAlmon started the Contact Publishing Company. It is in this capacity, more than any other, that he ranks as one of my great professional inspirations.
I have reached the frenzied, delectable stage of writing my current short story. All of you writers know what I am talking about: that blissful point where everything-plot, characterization, language, action-clicks into place. When it all begins to make cohesive, beautiful sense. That is where I am at today, dear readers. It feels good, but it is also time-consuming. I will be back tomorrow with several posts. Until then, feel free to let your gaze wander over, and your mind reflect on, the charms of this little gallery. I’ve had a tasty and sociable few weeks, wouldn’t you agree?
“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”-Henry David Thoreau
A Small Press Life: Books. Art. Writing. Life. Tea. 