Sorrow in The Big Hard, So Hard
Mood:  blue
Topic: food writing biz
The last bit of summer has flown by breathlessly, August like the blink of an eye. Now summer is leaving and leaves are falling and fall is sooner than soon.

I am horrified by the situation in New Orleans and Mississippi, too much suffering and misery, too much of Bush's concentration on the wrong Gulf.

I visited New Orleans only once, for a week a few years ago, and I fell madly in love, such that the wild city has haunted me ever since, becoming a setting for a novel in progress, inspiring my cooking and eating, drawing me to want very badly to return some day. Now the suffering of its citizens, the destruction of its unique cosmopolitan and exotic charms, the beauty of its architecture, people, music, food....it is all immensely tragic, and I am reminded not so much of the recent Asian tsunami but also of 9-11: another irrevocable, unpreventable, uncontrollable horror. I have to have faith that the area will heal and rebuild, that all the homeless ones will find new homes, new lives for themselves.



On a more personal note, last week I did my cooking demo at the local county fair. Although I was surely nervous and my show did have its flaws, I was quite pleased with the way things turned out. The Goddess of Garlic couldn't make her afternoon show, so I filled in and was much less nervous. It was wonderful experience, overall, and I was glad that I could do it and I can't wait to do it again.



Words of inspiration came from the recently deceased 115-year-old Henny van Andel-Schipperof of the Netherlands, whose advice for longevity was to keep breathing and eat pickled herring. Good advice!