Monday, June 12, 2006

Weekly march

Into the breach. Out for the chicken viewing, which is down to two birds these days. Freckles died last week, after appearing to improve. She laid an egg, then lay down and died. Her demise has caused a shuffling of the trio's pecking order, but the biggest bird doesn't seem to have done any harm to the smaller one. Chickens don't last forever, but she is missed.
It's getting dark early, threatening to rain.
Been reading the collected stories of Katherine Mansfield, who as I've mentioned before, completed 88 stories before she died of TB at age 34, in 1922. Her family, the Beauchamps, had been in Australia and New Zealand for three generations when Katherine was born in Wellington, NZ, in 1888. Despite a kind of old-timey feel to many of the stories, she had a fine acuity for landscape and human behavior coming along. It would have been interesting to see her later work, had she lived and written more. She moved to England and was friends with Elizabeth Bowen, with whom she shares a kind of strange flavor of writing. I was reading a travel piece in the New York times online which was about Alice Munro, a Canadian writer who lived in Vancouver, BC, in the 1950's. She has some of her non-traditional characters reading Katherine Mansfield in one short story, which made me think perhaps Munro herself had done so as well. Munro's short stories have some of the kind of off kilterness to them that Mansfield and Bowen do in their work, idiosyncratic voices, female characters who are often on the outside of regular social activity.
Tonight I tossed some cauliflowerets with potato chunks, olive oil, freshly dried oregano, salt and pepper, and baked it; quite delicious!

5 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

One of my, yes I know odd, favorite things to do is to visit old cemetaries. I think they convey a sense of history that is lost to the books...and is only viewable on the headstones. They are also very quiet places. There is an old stone in my home town of a young girl who died of Small Pos at the age of 9 in about 1799...a very interesting bit of folk lore follows that headstone around today. I won't convey the story as my memory of it is rather fuzzy, but your book re: the young woman dying of TB reminded me of it.

Oh, and last night, we had a wonderful seared tuna with wasabi glaze salad...delectible if I do say so myself...oh, I am the chef in our house, I might add.

Blog on sister, blog on all

8:03 PM  
Blogger isabelita said...

Ah, your dinner menu sounds delicious. I fear I am becoming a rather uninspired cook these days. More trips to markets may help. We need big flavors, low fat, and few calories.

8:51 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Isa,

I think you would love my wasabi glaze seared tuna for all of those reasons. I can't think about what the caloric count for the meal was, but over a bed of fresh, local greens....can't go wrong. Seared in a light canola oil..with some garlic, shallots, and a squeeze of fresh lemon.

The sauce: Wasabi, Soysauce, mustard...and whatever else you think might go well...some white wine also works in there too.

Blog on sister. Eat well, it's the best revenge

3:08 PM  
Blogger isabelita said...

kathyr, I have several collections of Munro's stories. One of them is called Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Marriage. It might be the most recent. I really like her writing. It's been ages since I read a couple of Proust books, amybe this would be a good time to continue with his work.

'spike, thanks for the culinary suggestion. My beloved spouse is on a weight loss thing these days. He also just developed a nasty case of shingles, and will need much loving distraction, if he'll permit it...

3:14 PM  
Blogger Phil said...

Isn't it "starve a cold, feed a fever"? I hope it doesn't extrapolate to "shit on a shingle".

'spike, I really like the sound of the wasabi sauce - wow. I think I'd even like it on cornflakes.

9:22 PM  

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