While I was furtively ordering from Fresh Direct–I mean I do live a block or so from Zabars, Citarella and Fairway, but it was raining–I went to look for recipes and there, lo and behold were several recipes from cookbooks by…Crescent Dragonwagon, who is, as was recently mentioned in this very blog, Charlotte Zolotow’s daughter! And there is a Charlotte Zolotow website, set up by Crescent Dragonwagon. click here. That photo is of Charlotte Zolotow, her daughter, Ellen (now Crescent Dragonwagon–I really do love that name and just want an excuse to keep writing it) and her son Stephen. Then I discovered that Crescent Dragonwagon started a writers colony with her late husband, Ned Shank. It’s called the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow and it’s in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. And there is a Dairy Hollow Soup and Bread Cookbook. By Crescent Dragonwagon. All of this because I was too lazy to go to the market on my two feet. Thank you, Crescent Dragonwagon.

Oh well. It doesn’t seem to matter how many things come out about Sarah P-p-p…you know. BUT here is a little linguistic treat to devour as we all try to calm down and keep on keepin’ on:
“Wipe the dew off your spectacles…”
Sigh.
I discovered this exquisite locution after I got my millionth email about she whose name must not be spoken and dutifully forwarded it to every woman I know– please forgive me, every woman I know–and then went to the website that sent it: womenagainstpalin.blogspot.com which you should go to too, and they had a quote from Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
“Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving.”
WIPE THE DEW OFF YOUR SPECTACLES!
A quaint and poetic call to arms. If only…

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. That’s French for “Sarah Palin.” Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
There is a dumpster outside our door that is full of asbestos. Oh dear.
But, across the street, in front of what is an SRO that is being converted into a hotel for poor saps who find it on the internet and then once they see it have no place else to go, there is one scraggly tree and in this one scraggly tree there sings a cricket. It sings loud and clear and solo. It’s beautiful. Poor cricket. I don’t have the heart to tell it that the world is going to hell in a hand basket. Still, the cricket in Times Square came into town in a basket, I believe, and things didn’t turn out so bad for him. Garth Williams is one of my favorite illustrators. My brother has a cat name Chester. Are you following this? If Sarah Palin existed only in a book as drawn by Garth Williams, even if she were the villain, she would be a nicer person than she is. Where is Garth Williams when you need him? He illustrated one of my most precious childhood books. It was called Over and Over by Charlotte Zolotow. I just looked Charlotte Zolotow up on wikipedia, and it seems she has a daughter named Crescent Dragonwagon. I’m starting to feel better. I still have a copy of Over and Over. It’s about a little girl who is so little she doesn’t know anything about the holidays and her mother wakes her up and there’s a Christmas tree, and then an easter basket, and then the seashore, and her birthday and halloween and thanksgiving, and then…it will all happen again. So, see, the end is not nigh. Right? Charlotte Zolotow and Garth Williams and the cricket across the street say so. Now to convince all those scary republicans…

AND HOW DARE SARAH PALIN COMPARE HERSELF TO THE LOYAL PIT BULL, ANYWAY? Yet another way these poor dogs have been maligned.

It is a terrible thing for the world at large that 3quarksdaily is taking a vacation, even if there are all those amazing pictures of hay posted. BUT as if the compensate me for this tragedy, the blog gods led me for the first time to check out 3quarksdaily’s links and then led my eyes to the most wonderful heaven sent site ever: Language Hat! This sublime site had been around for six years. It is having its sixth birthday this month, just like Hector the Cairn Terrier. There is a post on why people in LA refer to their freeways with the article “the,” as in “the 405,” and another about a russian word, and, and…I have to go back to it now and read six years of archives. Bliss.

What I heard:
I heard the first cicadas in Riverside Park
I heard a taxi meter rattling on West End Avenue; it sounded like a cicada
I heard leaves hissing as a rain storm blew down the Hudson
I heard an irate taxi driver honk his horn for three blocks; he had right of way, it’s true, but still…

What I want:
I want a Danish bicycle
I want a Danish cargo bicycle
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I want ‘em bad

What I saw this week:
I saw, and read, Joseph Roth’s brilliant collection of journalism (as it should be written) about pre world war II Berlin, called What I Saw. The Radeztky March by Joseph Roth is on of the great novels of the 20th century. I had never read his journalism, though. This book reminds you that journalism can be about something, can be beautiful, can be short and still full of integrity, can be restrained and still powerful, can be true.

Here, in a way that in no way reflects the dark, careful beauty of Roth’s book, is what else I saw this week:

I saw a blue jay mobbing a preening red tailed hawk
I saw a lipstick orange smartcar
I saw red when my mother said she just didn’t know if she trusted Obama
I saw three lavender jelly-fish in the hudson river
I saw a couple sitting on their stoop with their shiny calico cat
I saw a fallen green apple in the park
I saw the world from a bicycle for the first time in 20 years

I do miss independent bookstores. But I’m also lucky because I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and the Barnes and Nobles up here are awfully good ones. Still, a person misses a person’s local little bookstore. And a person often ends up ordering books on line. Especially old out-of-print books. And a person sometimes guiltily orders used books that are still in print, thereby cheating the publisher and, much worse, the author!!! of royalties. SO! Now I have discovered a site at which you can order on line to your heart’s content, assuage your royalty guilt, and actually do some good in the world. It is called betterworld.com. They give part of their profits to literacy programs, they rescue books before they end up as landfill, they have free shipping and they also offer carbon-offset shipping. For example, I just ordered Author, Author by David Lodge and it cost me $3.75, free shipping, another 4 cents for the carbon offset shipping. I recently gave away about 100 books to make room for new ones, which is good because I foresee a lot of them appearing on my doorstep in the near future. Go to betterworld.com!

Midnight’s Children won the 2008 Booker of Bookers Prize.(click here) I was thinking of Midnight’s Children, on eof my most beloved novels, yesterday as I watched Ghandi on TV. Reading it, all those many years ago, was a revelation, not just about India, but about novels. Reading Rushdie for the first time was like reading Dickens for the first time: Look what you can do! I was also happy to see that Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda was on the list, although I think his other Booker winner, The True Adventures of the Kelly Gang, is perhaps even better. Carey was a recent discovery for me, and a thrilling one. The others on the short list were JM Coetzee’s Disgrace, Pat Barker’s The Ghost Road, Nadine Gordimer’s The Conservationist and J G Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur. None of which have I read. The shame of it. And the delight. Four new books! Four writers to experience for the first time!

Here is my friend the wonderful writer Ariel Levy on her brand new GREEN ROOF! Don’t you want a GREEN ROOF? I do. It provides excellent insulation and thereby saves energy and money; it helps with storm runoff and so keeps our oceans clean; you now get a tax credit in NYC that covers about 25% of the installation cost. And it’s BEAUTIFUL. This GREEN ROOF was designed and installed by Greensulate(click). I want it!
Warning: Ari not included.

We rented a mini-van and drove up to Hamilton, NY to pick up a Plycraft chair we bought on ebay and we took the lovely scenic Taconic Parkway. Unfortunately, part of the scenery, in among the wildflowers, was a surprising number of state policemen, one of whom surprised us indeed and gave us a ticket for going 82 in a 55mph zone. Hmmph. Here is a picture a disgusted Hector looking back at the absurdly garish flashing lights on this gentleman’s car.

And here is a similar chair. Ours is camel color.

We spent the night at a dog-friendly b&b in Morris, NY. I had never heard of Morris, NY. Why would I have, really? And I never would have gone there if we hadn’t needed a dog-friendly b&b. Buy I’m awfully glad we did. The Butternut Lodge is great. Here is a picture:

We got there after the one restaurant in town was closed, so we went to the ice cream place which also serves hot dogs. And Janet bravely went into the scary tavern and got two beers, so we had hot dogs, beer and delicious soft serve ice cream for dinner. A truly perfect cuisine. They also serve a dollop of vanilla with a milkbone in it for dogs. In the morning we had breakfast at the diner and ate delicious pancakes while men in caps and suspenders discussed feed for cows. I wish every furniture purchase were like this one.

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