Lucy cooks beans and finds Mycroft

turkeys crossing the road with Thanksgiving right on their tails...it's a sign!
i'll blog about food!
let us (heehee) begin with one of my favorite food groups, a favorite around the world -

BEANS AND RICE !!
it makes a complete protein (says Diet For a Small Planet) and
like buddhism, takes on the local flavor wherever it finds itself.

oh sure, there are many kinds of rice in the world,

but that's nothing - NOTHING I TELL YOU - compared to the beauty and variety of BEANS!
which reminds me, speaking of cooking, and also of beans,
i have found THURSDAY NEXT's UNCLE MYCROFT!! (inventor of the entropy detector)!
he has changed his name and is living in Seattle!
read it for yourself...who else could it be??

a few quotes:
...an eclectic array of speculative and potentially world-changing ideas — inventing a new battery, taming hurricanes, defeating disease. And here, along with the laser designed to shoot mosquitoes out of the air (a high-speed camera counts the rate of wing-flapping to ensure that innocent insects are not vaporized), is the best-equipped restaurant kitchen anywhere that never serves any customers...
...They also demonstrated cryoseared duck breast, a technique that calls for implements not typically found in a kitchen: a small satchel of loose metal, dry ice, dog hair brush...

shhh don't give him away!

meandering flock

i stop my car for
ten fat turkeys unhurried
in the frosty dawn
                     ~mudpie

Sparkle sparkle!

I'll tell you, it's no secret, November around here in't supposed to be bright and sparkly!
Most years we get that creepy fella EDGAR ALLEN POE to do November up.
Last night, tho, he took sick or somethin.
Had to call in his understudy, one Mr JACK FROST. AND, he called back the star of the summer season for an encore, good ol MISTER SUNSHINE!
Mr Sunshine wan't able to do much about it bein wicked cold, but that's how Mr Frost likes it.
He does his work in black and white with potloads of sequins.
None of that ice cream smooth sparkle of snow, mind you, with cute little caps on the fence posts and apples.
The EN-TIRE apple, the COM-PLETE fencepost, EVERY DANG SURFACE of each TWIG, BRANCH and GRASSBLADE -- sparkly sparkly white.
And that there riot of grace and texture...you know, the WEEDS...pure poetry. pure poetry and dance, froze inna place.
Sweet jesus it's cold. I blieve i can hear the woods tinkling and chiming.

in which the lost is found and someone learns more about the meaning of 'real'

hooray hooray oh frabjous day the lost owner is found!

two weeks ago i found a kitty doll by the road as i walked through a road cut, no houses nearby at all, just woods and rocks.

something about it told me it was loved and missed. i made some handbills, added my phone number and took one to the village store. they kept it right on the counter...this was important!

and on sunday, the phone rang...yes! "my daughter was visiting from Connecticut and this is my grandchild's favorite toy! they got home and called me..'is it there? do you have it? where is it?'... but we had no idea where it had gone."

yesterday i took it to the store to be mailed back to it's own christopher robin.

the happy grandmother said "i've never thought much about it if i found a toy, but believe me, i will now!"

more murder mysteries

continuing yesterday's post on murder mysteries...i am currently reading another strange one, The City and The City by China Mieville.
the setting is so very strange, 2 cities that exist simultaneously in the same spot, the citizens forced to ignore everything concerning the city they are not currently part of, under dire penalty for even 'seeing' the buildings, cars, people who are part of the other city.
and the mythical 3rd city, or is it just a myth?
it took me 100 pages of deciding not to bother reading this 'police procedural', but continuing to read anyway, before i really got into it.
now by page 220 i can't put it down!
the main character is a police detective from one city who must travel back and forth to investigate a murder (a young archeology student) and the mystery that becomes something even more sinister. Publishers Weekly says "Through this exaggerated metaphor of segregation, Miéville skillfully examines the illusions people embrace to preserve their preferred social realities."
but phooey on them, it's an exciting read once you wrap your mind around the bizarre concept.

murder mysteries!

our local weekly newspaper had halloween photos, and one was of a group of people dressed up as the characters in CLUE! colonel mustard, miss scarlet, the whole gang was there with a rope, a candlestick, so funny!
yesterday i was involved up close in a new kind of mystery. for years i've read mystery novels, working through all the classics, then on to the ones with great characters, the ones in interesting settings, then i stopped for awhile. lately i've read a couple of unusual ones.
one is the first of a series from Cuba, translated from Spanish, Havana Red, by Leonardo Padura. the story is told by a Cuban cop working on a case in contemporary Cuba involving the murder of a gay man dressed in drag. the writing is great, and it has a literariness unusual in mysteries.
the policeman's interactions with suspects and friends illuminate some of the mysteries of Cuba itself and what life there has been like in the past few decades. the internal reactions of the main character, confronted with gays and female impersonators, are especially fascinating.
oh, and the new kind of mystery i was involved in is one that is taking place in Second Life even as it is being written as a serial on a blog! the doctor in Second Life who is investigating the murder took me to see the crime scene, the bloodstains, the body on the table in the lab awaiting the post mortem, and a few of the suspects!
reading a serial on a blog is tricky, you have to sort of rewind it to the first post to begin. but the pictures are beautiful! there are other amazing tales on this blog, too, if you like swashbuckling adventure and explosions!

Gina Dances

monday night at the end of middle-eastern dance class, when we 15 women formed our closing circle, hands in angeli mudra, gina asked us to meditate for a moment on gratitude for those things that make it possible for us to come here and dance -- physical, emotional, financial, and...political.
i love this class, it's one of the most fun things i do, ranking up there with The Show Must Go On in Second Life.
every female size and shape you can imagine is here shimmying in jingly hipscarf (sometimes worn over corduroys and turtleneck), and occasionally a man, and every level of trained or natural ability, or lack of... it's all fun!
i have never been a sinuous dancer, my people being more the jumping up and down type (highland fling, polka, morris dances, irish clogging) and yet i enjoy moving to middle eastern music in my own way.
it seems so simple -- to come to belly dance class and dance each week. but once i turned my mind to all the reasons women here and round the world may be unable to do this simple thing, i realized how incredibly lucky i am!
one important thing gina didn't mention in her list of things to be thankful for, that make it possible for us to come and dance together....is GINA!


THANK YOU GINA!