Towse: views from the hill

Au gratin potatoes are delicious. Friday night, I discovered how dangerously easy they are to make at home. Last night I made them again, just to make sure that the night before hadn’t been a fluke.

1. Scrub and bake (microwave – 5 min or so) one large potato until cooked through. Let cool a bit. Slice as thinly as possible. Crumbly bits aren’t a problem.

2. Shred sharp cheddar cheese into a large dish. A pile. 1/2-1C. Add about the same again of parmesan cheese. Throw on some herb mix — Mrs. Dash or the equivalent. Mix it up. The cheeses &c. won’t mix evenly, you’ll need to stir them up as you layer them into the casserole.

More potatoes? More cheese. The volume of cheese should == the volume of potato.

3. In a small casserole dish, place a layer (one slice deep) of potatoes. Toss on a handful of the cheese-herb mix. Add another layer of potato. Cheese. And so forth, ending with a layer of cheese. The broken, crumbly bits of potato can be tossed in the intermediary layers between the slices.

4. Add cream/half-and-half/milk … to casserole until the top layer of potatoes is just barely covered.

5. Microwave until dairy liquid has been pretty much absorbed.

Michael Allen (the Grumpy Old Bookman) reviews Dara Horn: The World To Come, and makes some interesting comments about fiction writing in general.

… the novel which eschews all attempt at Deeper Significance, and just tells a story, is at least as valuable (actually rather more so) than one which seeks to weave in some message or other. At one point in the book, Der Nister is told that a painting doesn’t have to mean anything, but a story does. And we are left in little doubt that Dara Horn believes in that principle. But personally I don’t. A story, in my opinion, doesn’t have to mean anything. But it does have to have an effect; otherwise both writer and reader are lost. And the story also has to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Apart from that, just leave the damn thing alone. Let it speak for itself, and let the reader draw from it whatever conclusions she wishes; if she wishes. And if she chooses to value the book just for its emotional effect, rather than for its insights into the Meaning of Life, so much the better.

Grumpy Old Bookman blog

Chameleon scarf coordinates with your outfit
* 14:05 09 December 2005
* NewScientist.com news service
* Will Knight

People lacking any sense of fashion no longer need worry about their scarf clashing with their clothes this winter – researchers have created one that automatically changes colour to suit an outfit.

The miracles of modern science!

I’ve dreamt of such an app. This invention is worthy of a Nobel prize!

Next up, someone please create a wall paint so I can, early one Monday morning, say, “Um. No. I’m so tired of that blood red Chinese glossy lacquer finish. Today I’d like the walls to be pale sea foam, except the north facing wall, which needs to be buttercup yellow.”

The Lion, the Witch, and the Really Foul Candy
In pursuit of Turkish Delight.

By Liesl Schillinger
Posted Friday, Dec. 9, 2005, at 12:22 PM ET

At Christmas nearly a decade ago, an aged Englishman gave me a choice gift, one that I’d fantasized about since the age of 7 after reading C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. It was a box of Turkish Delight — rose-flavored candy dusted with powdered sugar, nestled in a blush-pink package that glinted with the gilded minarets of Topkapi. The fragrant mystery of the East bulged within, in 20 plump little squares.

[...]

(Good article. Read it.)

Ah, yes. Someone finally breaks silence.

I too imagined how exquisitely tasty Turkish Delight must be, after first reading TLTW&TW.

Ten years or so back (fifteen?) I finally tasted Turkish Delight while I was in Turkey .. Kusadasi? Bodrum maybe? … and …

I can’t imagine what Edmund Pevensie was thinking, to toss his siblings over to the White Witch in exchange for even more pounds of that awful gooey stuff.

… but then I don’t like gummy worms or jelly beans either.

Snitched from Keith’s blog
Rules: Post the first sentence of your first journal entry for each month in 2005.

January 2005: This is a test post from flickr, a fancy photo sharing thing.

February 2005: The City awakes … and traffic is moving east to west across the upper deck of the bridge.

March 2005: Photo Tuesday theme: Down [31 Jul 2004, San Francisco] A look down the Filbert Steps through the Grace Marchant public gardens.

April 2005: I’ve been playing with Google Maps today.

May 2005: Yesterday the same mover guys who moved six hundred boxes of books last month showed up again, at 8A.

June 2005: [otherwise occupied - out of the country, out of town, out of my mind]

July 2005: Come Monday 10-2, the Comcast Guy will be here.

August 2005: Madhukar Shukla’s Creative Muse is an entertaining collection of descriptions of the mind spasms that resulted in rubber heels, the Band-Aid, the sewing machine and more.

September 2005: You know you’ve done something right when (1) you get a note from the younger younger one saying, “I am trying to find ways I can help out the hurricane victims and since you told me once not to donate money cause you would do that and really its kind of your money anyways, I was wondering if you know of places I might be able to help out in boston, i already asked the red cross but they have a lot of people helping already.

October 2005: “Home again, home again, riggety jig” … as my DOD used to say.

November 2005: A major tree was down by the end of yesterday.

December 2005: Keeping up my lists of blogs and interesting sites was tedious with the design I’d set for the blog.

Wooo. Exciting posts ‘r’ us!

My dad and his twin’s bdays were yesterday. Dave Brubeck’s 85th bday is today. Dad and my uncle aren’t as old as Brubeck, but they’re in the same decade these days.

My dad has plans to celebrate his 100th bday. He keeps doing things to make his life interesting, like taking a creative writing class last year, getting published in the junior college’s literary magazine, and jumping (tandem) out of a plane at 10K feet to celebrate his 80th bday, despite his fear of heights.

100? I’m encouraging that ambition.

When I wished my dad a happy bday yesterday, I told him about the article I’d read in the Chron yesterday about Dave Brubeck.

At eighty-five (as of today), Brubeck is still playing eighty (THAT’S EIGHTY!) gigs a year. Today, in honor of his bday, Brubeck was scheduled to play with the London Symphony Orchestra at Barbican Hall. How cool is that?

The Chron had another article today, reminiscing about Brubeck and all the things he’s done, including his stands against segregation. In the summer of 1958, Brubeck refused to fire his black bassist Eugene Wright despite that refusal meaning 23 out of 25 colleges cancelled concerts scheduled for the summer. In 1976, Brubeck turned down a $17K concert gig in South Africa, because the concert promoters required him to have an all-white band.

Brubeck walked the walk and we’re lucky to have had him in our lives.

Live long. Prosper.

Michael Allen over at Grumpy Old Bookman put me on to this one.

I popped the names he mentioned into Google and found this article in The Globe and Mail

The Great Fiction Crash of 2005
By MICHAEL POSNER
Saturday, December 3, 2005

[...]

Whatever the causes, it’s clear that international publishers are giving every new novel greater scrutiny.

With that sort of track record, selling the second novel should have been a breeze. Not so, says Nichol’s Toronto agent, Bev Slopen. His Canadian publisher, Knopf, took a pass, as did his British publisher, Canongate.

Call me gobsmacked.

If selling hundreds of thousands of books doesn’t mean a shoo-in for your second spin …

What’s the story? Was the asking price too high and too immutable?

Was the new book being shopped something completely different?

Enquiring minds. …

A.C. Crispin and Victoria Strauss of Writer Beware have (At Last!) started up a blog to give updates and warnings about scammers and others who would take advantage of writers seeking publication.

Ann dropped me a note Monday, after I’d posted about the new blog on the Usenet newsgroup misc.writing, because (at long last!) one of their long-time scammers hit the wall, pleaded guilty, and awaits sentencing.

As mentioned on the blog Monday,

Kelly O’Donnell/Martha Ivery/6 other aliases has just pleaded guilty in Federal Court to ALL 15 COUNTS OF FRAUD (INCLUDING BANKRUPTCY FRAUD) SHE WAS CHARGED WITH!

Folks, this means JAIL TIME. Several years of it. We’re hoping for about five.

For those who don’t know about the work these two anti-scamming wunderkinds have done for years, they have been out in the forefront, maintaining the Writer Beware site, exposing questionable practices, naming names and providing hundreds and hundreds of hours in pursuit of scammers and crooks who prey on writers. They’d made Martha Ivery a pet project seven years ago and have doggedly pursued her.

According to Crispin, quoted in the Times Union, “This case, unlike the other ones we followed, really got personal. She made death threats to us, and stalked us online. I plan to go to the sentencing.”

Our Pier 19 visitor weighed anchor this sunny Monday morning.
 
 

Fun watching two BIG tugs push -and -tug! the ship away from its berth. One of the new micro Coast Guard boats buzzed around making sure nothing untoward happened.

I took something like 40 pictures as the ship weighed anchor and left, then came back to my computer to track down which ship it was, having spotted the “83″ on its side.

USS Howard DDG 83

I feel a bit sorry for the guy in layers of warmth who’s been on deck of the tiny security boat that’s been keeping folks away from the Pier 19 visitor. I’d thought the duty must be cushy, until I realized he’s just standing there, freezing his butt off on the bay.

Hope he gets a glass of single malt Islay when he gets off duty.