Blithe Tomato-888 Reading Challenge Review

Love, love, love this book!  This is a collection of essays on farm and farmers’ market life in the Sacramento Valley.  Written by Mike Madison, the brother of Deborah Madison of the Greens Restaurant fame (a fabulous vegetarian restaurant in SF), this book is an easy, feel good, think a little bit collection.  Madison reflects on everything from what it means to be an organic farmer, to the savvy farmers’ market seller, to the unending struggle with gophers, to the ladies’ man who frequents the market and the joys of old tractors.  His easy writing style and wide coverage of  so many different areas of farming life draw you into the simple life and leave you wishing you too were living off the land.  At times a bit of Zen and some political liberalism pops up, but it is simple to overlook that and just enjoy the rural life.  All of the essays are short, so you can read just a bit here and there, but I couldn’t put it down.

From Two Economies: (an essay on having a new tractor part designed and built)

Every time I walk past my roller I admire it.  It is an unselfconscious piece of industrial art, simple and functional and well built.  It works exactly as intended, and every fall and spring when I plant bulbs I roll the beds, making the bulbs comfortable and the gophers uncomfortable.  As much as anything, I like that the roller was made for me by someone who appreciated what I was up to, and who had the craft’s-man pride to do beautiful work when something less would had sufficed. 

From Ulf:

Ulf’s farm was a study in green.  There was the lime green of Bibb lettuce and the arctic green of collards and the blackish green of Tuscan kale and the bronze green of mustards and the variegated green of cilantro, and many other shades of green, all set out in long, straight rows.  The glowing pointillist dots of chiles and tomatoes and oranges were missing, for ulf did not grow these things.  He was a leaf man.  He just grew greens.

The Horse Show

Liz, Matt and Jacob have been taking horseback riding lessons and we recently went to their show.  The Lutz clan cleaned up with first place ribbons all around!  Check out these riders:

Jacob:

  

Elizabeth:

 

Matthew:

 

Breathing a Sigh of Relief in the 888

I read a lot, but I admit that I had a certain level of anxiety over the number of books I committed to in the 888 book challenge.  But I just updated my list and have already knocked off 6 books…ahhh, I can relax now and maybe focus on just one or two of the books instead of the 4-5 that I am currently reading in bits and pieces.  I will need to keep a pace of 5 books per month, so I feel ok about this pace now!

See folks, it’s not that hard.  Quick, make a list and join me.  Now to decide if I will actually bother writing about every book…

One of the things I really dislike…

the horrible nasty cough that really makes you feel like you have just about coughed your throat into little bitty shreds and then it still doesn’t stop. 

  I dislike bad colds…I have nothing more profound or interesting to say today!

Cloned Meat=Heebie-Jeebies

Hearing that the FDA has approved the sale of cloned meat and the offspring of cloned animals leaves me thinking that I might just be eating less meat in the future…I just can’t stomach the idea of eating cloned beings when we have no idea what the long term effects are, we know cloning causes multiple problems for the animals, and I can’t see the wisdom in narrowing our animal gene pool…Are we going to end up with one cloned cow someday that gives us the perfect ground-beef for all of our hamburgers?  What happens when they get a disease?  Why in the world do we feel the need to clone animals?  Is there a severe, life-threatening shortage of meat?  Ugh…

Interesting reading…

Organic Valley’s Press Release

 Cloned Meat

The Iliad of Homer: Name that Character Game

Name that Character

In our study of the Iliad we are having a fun time with review and discussion.  One of the games we came up with is Name That Character, and we all contributed important or favorite phrases that can be matched with a particular character.

Mummy Making

In our studies of Ancient Egypt, we of course spend some time on the mummification practices of the Egyptians.  Reading, writing and talking about a subject are all integral parts of a lesson, but some lessons just cry out for something more…

        Meet Little Pharaoh Chicken Tender!

I like fun projects, and having a bunch of germ conscious city dwellers mummify chicken tenders is definitely fun.  I’ll open up right now and admit that my bravery does not include the mummification of an entire chicken-way too much risk for smell and rot.  Chicken tenders are perfect-pack them in salt, sprinkle on some embalming spices…you have mummified chicken in just a couple of weeks.

  Many kids wanted to wear gloves for the wrapping ceremony, but a few trusted the process enough to tough it out.  In the far left of this shot you can just see a bit of the mummy sticking out, all shriveled and leathery.

At the end of the lesson, we had a whole group a happy embalmers! 

888 Reading Challenge Review-The Great Bridge

The Great Bridge-by David McCullough 

I have owned this audiobook for a year or two and finally listened to it, thanks to the 888 motivation.  Without reservation, I enjoyed and appreciated this book.  I previously read several of David McCullough’s books (Truman, John Adams, Brave Companions and 1776), and this book joins their rank as well-written, engaging books of American history.  There is no trudging through this book, just easy reading of a monumental American landmark and the dedicated people who saw it through its 14 years of building.

In reflecting on the book, the portrayal of the father and son Roebling engineering team is foremost in my mind.  Both men were highly skilled and educated, extremely dedicated to their calling and careful to complete their work with the utmost integrity.  One of the interesting ideas in the book is the contrast between these virtuous men and their counterparts, a corrupt political ring in New York, eager to funnel city funds into their own pockets.  The building of the Brooklyn Bridge took place in the late 1800’s, so this was a time of great innovation and progress as well as tainted politics, especially during the terms of President U.S. Grant. 

So many of the men and women involved in the bridge project gave much of their lives to see it come to completion and this focus on great character carried me through the book.  It even made the few chapters that detailed the mechanics of securing the foundation for such a bridge, to the point of engineering overload in my mind, fade back as I was left with such a deep appreciation for these men and women who where so committed to an amazing project with such honor and dedication. 

Now all that is left is to take a trip to the bridge myself, joining the millions of pedestrians who have crossed the bridge from Manhattan to Brooklyn!

The deep inner reason I wear black

Every now and then (like every couple of months) one of my wonderful relatives or very close friends will graciously chide me on my propensity to wear black often, quite often.  They think I need more color, more variation, more pop!  I tell them that I am boring; I am classic black; I carry a red purse for color; I don’t pop.

And then last night I discovered what must be some unconscious reason for wearing black…

Speaking of clothing in the time of Shakespeare, Bryson quotes a 16th century expert,

It takes a lot of dye to make a fabric really black.  It was much cheaper to produce clothes that were fawn or beige or some other color.  So black clothes in the sixteenth century were nearly always a sign of prosperity. 

888 Reading Challenge Review-The Game

Working my way through my 888 reading challenge, I have a goal of writing at least a quick review of each book so I have a remembrance of each book as I fly through them.  I started easy! 

The Game by Laurie R. King

I owe huge thanks to Kami for the wonderful recommendation of The Game in my Mystery category.  I am a Mary Russell mystery fan now and look forward to the next one.  The Mary Russell character is the wife and very capable partner of Sherlock Holmes, and she is a rather fun, light change from Dr. Watson (although I still love Watson.)  This book is set in the time of the British Empire, in Colonial India.

In The Game Holmes and Russell are sent off to find none other than Kim, the young boy of literary renown in Rudyard Kipling’s book.  Fun, fun!  Right from the start I loved the historical and literary nods.  I thoroughly enjoy this type of book for purely fun reading.  The book is of course not of the literary level of the real Holmes books, but it has enough mystery and plot twist  to keep you hooked.   It is just the book to read during a rain storm while you’re all bundled up in front of the fire-like a mini vacation. J