It never gets old

The book sale ends today, though it's long since been picked clean by the final half-price Sunday. This year, Cassie and JC came for the FotL member pre-sale on the Friday evening before the book sale's official start on Saturday morning at 10:00 AM. Everyone did pretty well, though Mom took the prize as usual with not one but two big bags of books. Mom didn't want to take the time to line her purchases up nice and neat, so you won't see her piles below. But here are photos of the stacks of books that Cassie, JC, and I picked up. Can you match the stack with the book buyer?

A perfect Friday evening

This is very geeky but yesterday we had the perfect Friday evening. Driving over to the semiannual Friends of the Library book sale, Mom, Brad, and I listened to a hilarious new episode ("Georgetown Massacre Part 1") of the Revisionist History podcast dealing with the "Varsity Blues" college admissions scandal. Then we lined up for the book sale, all the way by Aldi's there were so many people. It was a banner year at the book sale, from my perspective: 

This is the stack of books that $32 buys you at the book sale.

I found all that in an hour, after which Mom and Brad were ready to go, because it was a pretty warm and humid day yesterday, and it was hot, crowded, and stinky in the book sale. There are always professional book sellers in there using b.o. to clear a wide berth around themselves while they take all the best books to resell at marked-up prices in their bookstores. Brad deployed countermeasures by farting near a particularly malodorous offender.

After the book sale, we made our traditional beeline for takeout dinner from Bodo's. It's getting harder to argue with Brad that Bodo's is the best thing going: we picked up two Cleo salads, three sandwiches, and six more bagels to get us through the weekend, all for only $32! No wonder we were customer # 1367 for the day.

 

We ate dinner while watching an episode of Abbott Elementary, then we all did the big reveal of what treasures we picked up at the book sale. (One of my big divvies was a hardback copy, in pristine condition, of maybe the greatest running book ever: Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.) It doesn't get any better than that.

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The big day

As you all know, we recently had a very big day here in Central Virginia. Yes, it was time again for the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library spring book sale. Wait, did something else important happen recently? 🤯 We'll cover that too, but I need some more time to process everything. In the meantime, here are the 22 books that $31 bought me at the book sale the week before last. "The Vulture" (aka Brad) has really turned the corner, as he ended up being the big winner this year, with lots of recent books that he put off buying new and ended up finding for $3 and $4 at the book sale. Go Brad!

 

From the Friday night members' pre-sale

Saturday afternoon's tally

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That time of year

 

The fall version of the biannual JMRL Friends of the Library Book Sale came and went last week. My stack of books purchased gets smaller every time, but I still found some books I'd had on my list of things to look for, as well as some things that weren't on my list but seemed interesting. The former category included a pair of books by New Yorker staff writers—The Wager by David Grann and The Real Work by Adam Gopnik, both of whom I'd heard recently on podcasts discussing their books. Also, Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller, who notes in her bio that her favorite place in the world is Humpback Rocks (the site of the legendary "Offing the flatlanders" episode of UaKS), so who can resist that? Despite the author's C-ville connection (mentioned elsewhere in the book), I'd actually first heard about Why Fish Don't Exist from one of those employee recommendation cards attached to some of the books at Third Place Books, that awesome little independent book shop near Dylan and Moriah's house. Of course, I couldn't resist a couple of social psychology books like Happier and How Pleasure Works.

 

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Spring book sale report, day one

Time again for one of our favorite events of the year, the first Friday evening of the biannual Friends of the Library book sale. This time around I found hardly anything that was actually on my list, but I still came away with some interesting finds that I wasn't looking for, or previously aware of in most cases, which is one of the best things about the book sale: being able to take some flyers on books you've never heard of for only $1 or $2. Here's my haul from day one:

This is what $21 buys you at the book sale

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My 2022 reading

We just passed the time of year when lots of folks trumpet their best or favorite books published during that year, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Barack Obama (who admitted some bias in including Michelle's latest book on his list). That seems pointless in my case as I only read two books actually published in 2022 during 2022: Bittersweet by Susan Cain ($2 at the book sale) and Plays Well with Others by Eric Barker, both of which I recommend, especially the latter.

 

Even if they weren't all the latest books, I did manage to read a book a week, on average, in 2022. I specify "on average" because one of them was Vikram Seth's 1,349-page tome A Suitable Boy (1993), which took me about six weeks to get through. That was one of only 11 novels I read in 2022, of which my highest recommendation would be Still Life (2021), Sarah Winman's "exquisite testament to life, love and art," which is not only set partly in Florence but also has an early scene there describing "the erotic sight of [a fig's] vivid flesh." My kind of book.

 

Vulture rehab

The fall Friends of the Library book sale is being held this week, and it is one to remember! Not because it was a particularly good selection—I did much better in the spring—but because Brad finally came with Mom and me, voluntarily! And not only did he not stare over my shoulder like a vulture trying to get me to leave as quickly as possible, as in the past, but this time he actually picked out some good books for himself. In fact, whereas I only spent $10 on myself (the first Friday night), Brad spent $25.* Progress!

 

Here are my buys from several visits to the book sale (as you probably could have guessed from the Successful Aging title):

This is what $30 buys you at the book sale

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*Brad would insist that I tell you here that $12 of that was for just one book: a signed, first-edition copy of The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehishi Coates, which was the only copy he could find. Cassie told him not to read it, but to instead encase it in glass because someday it will be worth "millions." I'm not so sure about that, though it already appears to be worth more than $12.

 

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Book sale, day 2

After a successful first evening at the book sale, Mom and I went back the very next day, though we waited until the late afternoon for all of the book sellers and their annoying scanners to clear out. Once you find some of the books on your list during your first visit, the second day can be even more fun, because that's when I linger over things looking for interesting finds that I might never have heard of otherwise. For $1 or $2 a book, it's a great way to try something out that I wouldn't bother with if I had to pay full price. Here's my haul from day 2:

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Book sale, day 1

You all know how much Mom and I love going to the book sale. Did you know that the three years we lived in Connecticut while Mom was getting her school psych degree and I was working at the Dark Tower, we used to drive nine hours to C'ville for the book sale and head home with boxes full of books? Thankfully, we only have to drive across town now, at least since they moved the sale from the cramped basement of the Gordon Avenue library branch to the big open space where the Northside branch used to be in Albemarle Square.

 

I've had a harder time finding stuff in recent years, but Friday evening at the book sale (day 1: the presale for JMRL members; I figured out that scam a few years ago) was full of solid finds, with lots of recent nonfiction books that I've had my eye on and picked up for between $1 and $3. Cassie and Grandma Judy were smart enough to give us lists of books, so Mom hooked them up with lots of divvies, too. Here's my haul from day 1 (Mom got about three times as much stuff: books, games, puzzles, movies; she was on a roll):

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The utility of the poop knife

One of the funniest things I've ever read is the personal essay "Big Boy" by David Sedaris (Esquire, Nov. 1999; later included in his collection Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), $1 at the book sale). (It's only 715 words; stop reading this episode and go check it out right now.) The gist is that Sedaris is at a dinner party with friends and excuses himself to use the john. But there he finds "the absolute biggest turd I have ever seen in my life—no toilet paper or anything, just this long and coiled specimen, as thick as a burrito." Sedaris flushes the toilet twice, but the big boy refuses to budge. Then someone knocks on the door to take their turn and Sedaris panics, afraid that they'll think he laid the enormous loaf. So Sedaris finds a plunger and uses the handle to "break the turd into manageable pieces," which he finally gets to go down the toilet with one last flush.

If only Sedaris had had access to the Original Poop Knife (motto: "it's a real thing"), there would have been nothing to fear. What is a poop knife? I'm glad you asked because I only just heard about it at Uncle Clint's birthday party. The Original Poop Knife* is a thin instrument, shaped kinda like a jar scraper, and made out of "hygienic silicone," which you'll be relieved to know is "easy to clean" and "dishwasher safe," just in case you wanted to take this thing straight from cutting poops in your john to your sink or dishwasher for a cleaning. The silicone surrounds a "strong metal core" for "ultimate poop cutting power." And best of all, it's 9.8 inches long so you can cut those hard-to-reach poops in the bottom of the bowl while keeping your hands "clear of the Danger Zone." All that design excellence can be yours for a mere $19.99 (makes a great stocking stuffer!).

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*The story of the original poop knife first appeared in a Reddit post by "Learned Butt," in whose family "everyone births giant logs of crap" that were so often unflushable his family started using a rusty old kitchen knife to cut their turds up to stop the overflowing toilets.

 

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Food bloggers, am I right?

I recently stumbled across a blog post by someone who writes about food and some other things about how the person made her first $500 blogging. The key was that she got on with a successful ad network company once she met its minimum requirement of 30,000 page views a month. (To put that into perspective, I've had less than 25,000 page views total since I started this here blog 60 months ago.) Thanks to the increased ad revenue, her blog is now, she says, a "six figure business" netting enough to support her family, including her six children and her husband who quit his job so that they could do the "blogging gig" together full time.

After that, I took note of another post by a different food blogger who says that she also makes a "full time income" from her blog, which "feeds [her] family" that includes her husband and four kids. She mentioned that people complain about the annoying ads, but opined that putting up with the ads is a small price to pay for free access to the recipes she works hard on. Fair enough, but I have to say some of the ads are a wee bit counterproductive to the purpose of a food blog. For example, this is a portion of an actual screen grab from right at the start of one of the second blogger's recipes:

 

Yum-o! I don't know about you, but nothing makes me want to try a recipe more than a picture of an open toilet and an IBS quiz. [1] It could be a good thing for the blogger, I guess, in that if you get the shits from eating her cake that's made with 3 cups of sugar (not including the 2½ to 4 additional cups of sugar for the cream cheese frosting), she can say it's IBS or sucrose intolerance rather than the cake. Plus, you have to hand it to the ad firm for knowing enough to use a picture of a shiny new john instead of one that somebody crapped in after eating the sugar bomb.

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[1] Yes, I know the ads are supposed to be targeted to the user so that, presumably, not everyone would see this particular ad. But trust me, if someone thinks I need to take the IBS quiz, either their algorithm needs some serious work or there is a major dose of randomness involved in the ad-generation process.

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The uses of fart spray

I've been having trouble finding a book that will grab my attention, so I finally picked up something I knew I'd like—The Righteous Mind (2012) by Jonathan Haidt.

$1 at the Friends of the Library Book Sale

Also $1 at the book sale

Haidt's first book, The Happiness Hypothesis (2006), is one of my favorites, and The Righteous Mind literally picks up exactly where The Happiness Hypothesis left off. In the first part of The Righteous Mind, Haidt canvasses various experiments that support his first principle of moral psychology, which is that "[i]ntuitions come first, strategic reasoning second." The idea is that people stake out a position first, usually for intuitive reasons, before finding evidence to support that position, in a process known as confirmation bias.

One example of social intuitionism is found in a study showing that people's moral judgments are impacted by their sense of smell, which is obviously intuitive and not rational. The experimental design involved a Stanford grad student surreptitiously spraying a trash can with fart spray half of the time before stopping subjects in the vicinity of the can to have them fill out a survey. The participants who were surveyed next to the malodorous trash can made harsher judgments about the controversial issues they were asked about. My favorite part was tracking down the actual article that was published in the august Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin ("Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment") and reading this analytical description of the fart spray, including where the scientists procured it:

The fart spray (purchased at www.forumnovelties.com) consisted of ammonium sulfide in a water solution. When the solution is sprayed, hydrogen sulfide, a component of flatulence, is released alongside ammonia. The resultant odor is unpleasant but harmless at low levels.

I'm glad they cleared that up.

As cool as it is to use fart spray in serious scientific research, nothing beats incorporating it into a killer strategy for taking revenge on filthy porch pirates. If you haven't seen Mark Rober on YouTube (he has over 12 million subscribers), he's a mechanical engineer who quit his job at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (where he spent seven years working on the Mars Curiosity Rover) and is now making highly entertaining videos. After a freebooter made the mistake of swiping a package off Rober's porch, he channeled his inner Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin's character in Home Alone) and built the ne plus ultra of anti-porch piracy devices.

When the buccaneers open the fake packages, they get showered with a pound of the "world's finest glitter" and multiple doses of fart spray. The use of fart spray is doubly ingenious because it douses the pirates and the area where they open their faux booty with a hideous smell, which is not only funny but also encourages them to toss the high-tech packages, thereby increasing Rober's chances of recovering them through the GPS-tracking phones he employs for that purpose and to film the entire episodes for his, and our, entertainment.

Rober's first escapade using his "glitter bomb trap" was so popular that he made some upgrades in a second iteration, including adding a second bottle of even fouler smelling fart spray, which he tested with the help of Macaulay Culkin himself. When you're done with these videos, check out the squirrel ninja obstacle course that Rober built in his backyard.

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Sparking joy, episode II

[E]xercise is the single most powerful tool you have to optimize your brain function.

                John J. Ratey, Spark (2008)

It's a little depressing thinking about the human condition after reading Sapiens and other books dealing with evolution, what with all the problems we have living in a modern world with brains and bodies that evolved to deal with being hunter-gatherers. It was refreshing, then, to read Spark ($2 at the book sale for a hardback in mint condition), in which Dr. Ratey, a psychiatry professor at Harvard Medical School, synthesized hundreds of research papers into his meditation on "the revolutionary new science of exercise and the brain." As it turns out, exercise is one solid way that we have to turn evolution in our favor. Dr. Ratey explains that

[t]he body was designed to be pushed, and in pushing our bodies we push our brains too. Learning and memory evolved in concert with the motor functions that allowed our ancestors to track down food, so as far as our brains our concerned, if we’re not moving, there’s no real need to learn anything.

You can thus use the hard-wired connection between moving and learning to your advantage by exercising more, especially right before you study for a college or graduate exam. While this generally refers to aerobic exercise, you'll be happy to know that there is some added benefit to physical activities that also require you to think about what you're doing, such as martial arts, gymnastics, and—wait for it—ROCK CLIMBING! So go to the gym or for a run before you do your homework or study and you should absorb whatever you're learning much more effectively.

The benefits of exercise don't end with improved learning and memory. Dr. Ratey shows that exercise also decreases stress, anxiety, depression, symptoms of PMS and menopause, and the negative effects of aging. I like that he ties the dosing into our evolutionary history. Although there's no longer any need for us to hunt and forage to survive,

our genes are coded for this activity, and our brains are meant to direct it. Take that activity away, and you're disrupting a delicate balance that has been fine-tuned over half a million years. Quite simply, we need to engage our endurance metabolism to keep our bodies and brains in optimum condition. The ancient rhythms of activity ingrained in our DNA translate roughly to the varied intensity of walking, jogging, running, and sprinting. In broad strokes, then, I think the best advice is to follow our ancestors' routine: walk or jog every day, run a couple of times a week, and then go for the kill every now and then by sprinting.

While Dr. Ratey talks about walking, jogging, running, and sprinting, that is shorthand for the recommended intensity level: walking = low intensity (55 to 65% of your maximum heart rate ["HRmax"]),* jogging = moderate intensity (65 to 75% of your HRmax), running = high intensity (75 to 90% of your HRmax), and sprinting = the highest intensity, or roughly equivalent to HIIT (high intensity interval training). You can substitute any form of aerobic activity you like, but it's especially useful if it's something you can do outside to combine the benefits of exercise with the nature cure. 

In sum, "[b]y motivating the body to move, you’re encouraging the mind to embrace life." So get out there and embrace your life!

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*The standard rule of thumb for figuring out your maximum heart rate is 220 minus your age. A more accurate formula is: 205.8 — (0.685 × age). For example, for me that would be 205.8 — (0.685 x 55) = ~168.

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Fast food, episode VII

It's that time of the year again—the fall version of the biannual Friends of the Library Book Sale. Mom ran rampant again this time, starting last Friday, with the Friends pre-sale, then going back the next Saturday and Sunday, too. Here are two of the stacks we collected from the first night (Mom had two more of her own just from that first Friday). Can you tell which stack is mine and which is Mom's? (Sorry, no prize; it's not that difficult.)

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I feel good about my murse

It was the reading glasses and the EpiPens that put me over the edge. For years, I thought about getting some kind of a man purse, or murse. Guys have carried them in Italy for years, and stylishly too, and I always envied my buddy Ed for having more room to carry his stuff around comfortably. But I never could find one I liked, so I stuck with the usual guy system of filling my pockets with stuff, sciatic nerve be damned. In his piece "I Feel Good About My Murse" (collected in Manhood for Amateurs [2009]),[1] Michael Chabon describes the ethic like this:

One of the fundamental axioms of masculine self-regard is that the tools and appurtenances of a man's life must be containable within the pockets of his jacket and pants. Wallet, keys, gum, show or ball game tickets, Kleenex, condoms, cell phone, maybe a lighter and a pack of cigarettes: Just cram it all in there motherfucker. . . .  Take away everything, cigarettes, phone, even keys, a man remains a man so long as he keeps his wallet pressed up against his body. A wallet is a man's totem, his distillation. It pockets his soul as he pockets it. The necessary corollary to this inviolate principle is that no man, ever, ought to carry a purse. Purses are for women; a purse is basically a vagina with a strap.

Chabon's aha moment came when he started carrying around a diaper bag along with his first child. He needed the diaper bag to tote the amazing amount of paraphernalia ("the full armamentarium") that goes with having a child nowadays, and realized that he could just chuck his own stuff in there, too, including his wallet and cell phone, rather than shoving it all down into his pants. Having finally escaped the tyranny of the wallet, Chabon decided it was time to face the scorn of others head on and become "[k]ind of like the Jackie Robinson of purse-wearing men." And so he ordered himself a brown suede murse, which is "soft and rugged at the same time the way only suede can seem." The murse holds just his essential stuff, including a book (he is an author after all), "but no more, and so I can wear it, and my masculinity, and my contempt for those who might mock or misunderstand me, very lightly indeed."

And Chabon is not alone these days, at least among celebrities, including Seal ("11 Men Who Totally Rock the Murse"), and other fashionistas ("Forget man bags: ‘Murses’ are the hot new accessory for men"). Still, I might not have starting rocking my own murse except that Brad finally found the perfect one for me in Seattle: navy blue canvas (which is even manlier than Chabon's "fawn-colored suede") and just the right size to hold all the stuff pictured below (plus EpiPens and then some):

So now I, too, can be like Mike (Chabon, not Jordan, who is the epitome of cool), [2] and feel pretty damn good about my murse.

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[1] I picked up a copy for exactly $1 at the Friends of the Library book sale. I do love that book sale.

[2] If you've never seen it, this is inarguably the greatest sports commercial ever made. It's so good, you have to watch the extended version, with the "be like Mike" rap.

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Treading in things

I've been reading Nigel Slater's 2003 memoir Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger (50 cents at the Friends of the Library book sale!). Nigel Slater is an English food writer, a "cook who writes" by his own description. He has written a number of cookbooks in addition to his food column for the Observer. Slater writes serious recipes, but let me digress for a moment and say that one of his "recipes" was chosen last summer as a "genius recipe" by the feature of the same name on Food52. Here is the essence of that recipe: Make whipped cream; crush raspberries and fold them into the whipped cream; make toast; heap the whipped cream on the warm toast; eat. This is genius like Wile E. Coyote is genius.

Toast is a memoir of Slater's childhood growing up in England, told through a series of short reminiscences centered around a particular food item ("Milk," which makes him puke, "Peas," etc.). His mother had the typically polite English way of putting things,[1] such as calling a rude person "rather coarse," instead of an asshole. Mom and I especially liked her euphemism for asking if someone had farted, "Have you trodden in something?"—whereas we coarse Americans would just come straight out and ask, "Who farted?" (Of course, that's never an issue with Mom around, since she farts volcanically, then immediately dissolves into peals of laughter like a two-year old, leaving no mystery as to whodunnit.)

Detail from the Japanese He-Gassen ("fart battle") scroll [2] at Waseda University Library

Slater used to go home from school for lunch (like Italian schoolchildren do), until his mother got sick. His mother was a bad cook, though not as bad as the school cafeteria. Slater refused to eat most of what the school served and gave it instead to a classmate who smelled like digestive biscuits and "hoovered up" everything Slater turned away, including chocolate semolina that even the vacuum cleaner boy said "looked like something that had come out of a baby's arse." (Which also brings your mother to mind, since "arse" is her favorite word, as Brad can attest.)

Reading about English food reminds me how thankful I am (and you should be too) that Grandma Pina was Italian and not English or, worse yet, German. Grandma Pina's Italian sensibilities did not, however, prevent her from allowing me to eat Cap'n Crunch,[3] which was one of the only two breakfast cereals that Slater says he would eat as a child ("You can swallow pretty much anything if it comes with a dose of sugar."). Which leads me to digression #2: America's Test Kitchen, of all things, published in Cook's Country Magazine a recipe for French toast that uses Cap'n Crunch to make a crunchy topping, which is beyond the pale even for a guy like me who grew up worshipping the good Cap'n. What's even funnier is that ATK insists that you use beautiful challah bread to make the French toast, even though you're going to coat it with the cloyingly sweet Cap'n Crunch before "frying" it in the oven.

The BBC made Toast into a film in 2010 (trailer here). I made Mom watch it last night. I found it pretty dire, but Mom liked it better than me, thankfully, so it doesn't have to go on my list with The Big Lebowski, This Is Spinal Tap, Koyaanisqatsi, et al. 

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[1] The U.S. edition of Toast includes a glossary for translating British terms for certain things into American English (e.g., "Hoovers" = vacuums), which is pretty humorous.

[2] Yes, it really is called the He-Gassen scroll, though in Mom's case She-Gas 'em would be more fitting. Also, check out the woman on the left blasting away in a downward facing dog yoga pose. How perfect is that?

[3] Ingredients: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Zinc Oxide, Yellow 6, Thiamin Mononitrate, BHT (a preservative), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Folic Acid.

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Simple sides, part III: Reading poetry

Having recently seen, and loved, Mary Chapin Carpenter in concert at the Paramount, I decided to heed her advice and "read a poem a day" (at least). But what poems to read? On the first evening of the book sale, I picked up Blue Horses (2014), one of Mary Oliver's most recent books, and liked about half the poems in it, which is a very high batting average for poetry in my experience. (The book includes a poem each on yoga ["I lay on the floor exhausted"], meditation ["Some days I fall asleep"], and getting confused by TV remotes and other technology ["I won't even mention cell phones"], all of which I gleefully read to Mom, of course.) But even though Oliver is, "far and away, this country’s best-selling poet," she divides critics. Maybe it was the units spent dissecting poetry in middle and high school English classes that make me feel like I should be working harder to understand a poem.

But fortunately I also found a copy of Good Poems, an anthology of poems selected by Garrison Keillor, at the book sale.[1] In his introduction, Keillor says that he read a "truckload" of poems to find the few thousand he's read on air for The Writer's Almanac, his daily five-minute radio broadcast. Keillor's research was an education, finding that most of the poems he read made "no impression at all" and were sorta "like condoms on the beach, evidence that somebody was here once and had an experience but not of great interest to the passersby." Keillor's conclusion is reflected in one of the poems included in the book, "The Iceberg Theory," in which Gerald Locklin bemoaned that "literary critics / purport to find interesting / so much contemporary poetry / that just bores the shit out of me."

For Keillor, good poems "offer a truer account than what we're used to getting. They surprise us with clear pictures of the familiar. The soft arc of an afternoon in a few lines." But good poems also have a narrative line, incorporating a story or at least "some cadence or shadow of a story." There is no reason the poem's overall effect has to be a puzzle; Keillor quotes Charles Bukowski, a writer Keillor formerly "cocked a snoot at" but later came to appreciate, as saying "There is nothing wrong with poetry that is entertaining and easy to understand. Genius could be the ability to say a profound thing in a simple way." [2] That is why Keillor extols Kenneth Rexroth—whom one critic derided as a "bearshit-on-the-trail nature poet"—over T.S. Eliot—"the great stuffed owl whose glossy eyes mesmerized the English profs of" Keillor's day—and Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin—"writers you can take anywhere ... and your attention would not drift"—to Marianne Moore—"a nice lady, but definitely a plodder."

Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate from 2004 to 2006, shared some similar thoughts in his Poetry Home Repair Manual, writing that "[p]oetry is communication," the purpose of which is "to reach other people and to touch their hearts. If a poem doesn’t make sense to anybody but its author, nobody but its author will care one whit about it." For that reason, he favors poems that keep the obstacles between poet and reader to a minimum. [3] In short, as Locklin concluded in "The Iceberg Theory," I don't have to feel guilty that "the poems I enjoy are those I don't have / to pretend that I'm enjoying."

All of which makes me feel better about reading and appreciating Mary Oliver, because I can follow her narrative line and understand the message I think she is trying to convey, without breaking out my thesaurus or doing any internet research. And the same goes for Grandma Judy. One of my favorite poems is "What Is Not Right in Your Life," which I can read to revel in the simple story of weeding a garden, while still getting the message that some pruning in the rest of one's life is a good idea too ("Deadhead the didn’t-get-to dos."). Besides, how can I not appreciate poetry written about you and your cousins?

If you want to go a little deeper, How to Read a Poem (1999) by Edward Hirsch is a great place to start. (I picked that up at the book sale, too.) The first chapter includes a lucid introduction to Hirsch's idea that poetry involves a relationship between the poet, who "enlists the reader's intellectual and emotional involvement," and the reader, who "actively participates in making meaning in poetry." The first chapter has been reprinted online by the Poetry Foundation, with links to examples of poems to illustrate the points. I especially like the section on "Metaphor: A Poet is a Nightingale."

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[1] For wildly divergent takes on the value of Keillor's anthology, compare "No Antonin Artaud with the Flapjacks, Please" by August Klenzahler, and "Title Tells All" by Dana Gioia, two reviews of Good Poems that appeared on successive days in Poetry magazine.

[2] According to Adam Kirsch, Bukowski also "rejected on principle the notion of poetry as a craft, a matter of labor and revision." Instead, "it has to come out like hot turds the morning after a good beer drunk."

[3] On the other hand, Kooser doesn't think there are "good" and "bad" poems, just poems that people like and don't like, for personal reasons.

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More mushrooms, why? Because this is the simplest mushroom recipe yet—just slice, roast, and feast on the mushrooms in their simple, earthy goodness. Also, you can make a lot of mushrooms (up to 2½ pounds) this way, whether you're feeding a crowd or just really like mushrooms and want to have leftovers.

A plate full of roasted veggies

Roasted Mushrooms

Adapted from Vegetables Every Day (2001) by Jack Bishop

Time from start to finish: 30 minutes

You can double the recipe and still make it in the same baking sheet, so this is an easy way to make a lot of mushrooms at once.

1¼ pounds/20 ounces cremini or white button mushrooms
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
kosher salt
freshly ground black pepper

    1. Place a rack in the center of the oven, and heat to 400 degrees. Line an 18-by-13-inch baking sheet with aluminum foil, dull side up. Spray the foil lightly with nonstick cooking spray.
    2. Wash the mushrooms. Trim a small slice off the end of each stem. Slice the mushrooms in half, if small, or in quarters, if large. Transfer the mushrooms to the baking sheet. Drizzle with the oil and toss to coat with your hands. Season with salt and pepper to taste.
    3. Roast until the mushrooms are golden brown and delicious, about 20 to 25 minutes, stirring once after 10 minutes. Taste for seasoning. Serve promptly. Serves 4.

Simple sides, part II: The book sale

This is the year Mom finally overtook my enthusiasm for the biannual Friends of the Library book sale. All it took was Cassie sending us her list of books she was interested in, and Mom was all over it; she must have found 75% of what Cassie was looking for. Mom usually can't even make it through the whole two hours of the Friday evening pre-sale (though she's not as bad as the "Vulture"), but this time she went each of the first three days, outspending me by at least four-to-one each time. She even went once without me, which used to be unheard of. Here is part of the take from just the first evening of the sale (don't look too closely if you don't want any surprises spoiled):

It's a good thing that used books fall under an express exemption from Dylan's new holiday book gifting policy (though I don't know that we found anything  intended especially for Dylan, given the catholicity of his tastes).

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If you have a ripe avocado in your fridge and you're tired of making Avocado Toast, give this salad a try. It's ridiculously easy to throw together, but delivers a high ratio of flavor to prep time expended. The contrasting textures of the creamy avocado and crispy cucumber are especially intriguing. Mom and I have had it a few times already, and enjoyed it more each time. 

Cucumber and cilantro fresh from this morning's City Market

Avocado and Cucumber Salad with Iceberg Lettuce

Avocado and Cucumber Salad

Adapted from Julia Turshen via Deb Perelman and Smitten Kitchen

Time from start to finish: 12 minutes

You can add some thinly sliced iceberg lettuce or romaine hearts to bulk this up into more of a light main dish if you like.

One ¾ to 1 pound English cucumber (the long, thin kind pictured above; you can substitute regular cucumber(s))
1 large avocado
2 tablespoons (28 grams) good mayonnaise (I like Trader Joe's Organic, but most people swear by Hellmann's or Duke's)
juice of half a lime
kosher salt
hot sauce (such as Sriracha), to taste
minced cilantro (preferably) or Italian flat-leaf parsley

    1. Wash the cucumber, then trim the ends and peel it. Cut the cucumber in half crosswise. Cut each half in half again lengthwise, then scrape out the seeds with a spoon. Cut each quarter in half again lengthwise, then cut the quarters crosswise into ½-inch chunks. Place in a serving bowl.
    2. Wash the avocado, then remove the pit, and cut each half into ½-inch chunks still in the skin. Scoop the pieces into the bowl with the cucumber.
    3. In a small bowl, whisk together the mayo, lime juice, and salt and hot sauce to taste. Pour over the cucumber and avocado chunks and stir gently to combine. Garnish with the cilantro or parsley. Serves 4 as a side.

Putting our empty nest time to good use

You all think we sit around doing nothing other than watching Madam Secretary since our house emptied out. Well, we do do plenty of that, but we do lots of other stuff too. Last Saturday morning I finally got Mom to go to the City Market with me, and we loaded up on good veggies (more on that soon) and eggs and sausage from Free Union Grass Farm, among other things. On the way home, we stopped at Krispy Kreme to watch the doughnut machine like the old days. On Sunday night, we capped off a great weekend by going to the Downtown Mall for some gelato before seeing Mary Chapin Carpenter at the Paramount. Her concert was so good even Mom is a fan of MCC now! And next weekend, we have the book sale starting on Friday night, then on Saturday afternoon we're seeing "Free Solo" as part of the Virginia Film Festival, and who knows what else?

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More home cooking

A person cooking is a person giving: Even the simplest food is a gift.

          From More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin

Last year at the Friends of the Library fall book sale, I picked up a hardback copy of Home Cooking, Laurie Colwin's much-loved collection of essays, for $1. Last month at the spring book sale, I found the companion volume, More Home Cooking, also for $1. The books are full of inspirational thoughts about the value and meaning of cooking for your family. They also have some great recipes, including an adaptation of Elizabeth David's amazing, flourless Chocolate and Almond Cake, which is a personal favorite.

I love shortbread, too, and this one did not disappoint. We all loved it, though everyone was sad they only got two pieces each. But two pieces are plenty, given that the cookies are just a delivery mechanism for pure butter flavor. Because the butter is the star ingredient here, you want to use good butter, not the store-brand crap from Food Lion or some such. You can even experiment with the fancy European butters like Plugra or Kerrygold, which have a higher fat content than American butter.

Buttery Shortbread

Adapted from More Home Cooking (1993) by Laurie Colwin

Colwin said classic Scottish recipes use rice flour to give the shortbread a "slightly grainy crispness that is very delicious," but that you can eliminate the rice flour and use 1 cup (120 grams) of all-purpose flour instead. I have rice flour around, so I used it. 

¾ cup (90 grams) all-purpose flour
¼ cup white rice flour (35 grams) or Thai white rice flour (25 grams) (see note)
⅛ teaspoon baking powder
⅛ teaspoon salt
113 grams (4 ounces; 1 stick) unsalted butter
¼ cup (30 grams) confectioners’ sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla

    1. Place a rack in the center of the oven and heat to 375 degrees.
    2. In a small bowl, whisk together the flours, baking powder, and salt.
    3. In a large bowl, or the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Work in the dry ingredients.
    4. Dump the dough onto an ungreased cookie or baking sheet, and pat it into 8-inch circle. It’s a very soft, delicate dough, so be patient with it. Score the dough with a sharp knife, making 8 equal wedges (see the first picture above). Press the tines of a fork into the edge of the dough all the way around.
    5. Bake until the edge is golden brown, about 15 minutes. While the shortbread is still warm, cut it into 8 wedges along the scores with a sharp knife, pressing down gently so as not to mar the cookie or baking sheet. Cool completely to firm up before serving. Makes 8 cookies.