our monkeys
Make the news! Heading north to Lauderdale. This guy is in our backyard.
precious metal detector
A new short-short from Merle Drown.
eggs a la nabocoque
Vladimir Nabokov's recipe for eggs (via biblioklept and thanks to Tom in Fort Myers):
Boil water in a saucepan (bubbles mean it is boiling!). Take two eggs (for one person) out of the refrigerator. Hold them under the hot tap water to make them ready for what awaits them.
Place each in a pan, one after the other, and let them slip soundlessly into the (boiling) water. Consult your wristwatch. Stand over them with a spoon preventing them (they are apt to roll) from knocking against the damned side of the pan.
If, however, an egg cracks in the water (now bubbling like mad) and starts to disgorge a cloud of white stuff like a medium in an oldfashioned seance, fish it out and throw it away. Take another and be more careful.
After 200 seconds have passed, or, say, 240 (taking interruptions into account), start scooping the eggs out. Place them, round end up, in two egg cups. With a small spoon tap-tap in a circle and hen pry open the lid of the shell. Have some salt and buttered bread (white) ready. Eat.
V.N.
November 18, 1972
At breakfast in the depressingly bright kitchen, with its chrome glitter and Hardware and Co. calendar and cute breakfast nook (simulating that Coffee Shoppe where in their college days Charlotte and Humbert used to coo together), she would sit, robed in red, her elbow on the plastic-topped table, her cheek propped on her fist, and stare at me with intolerable tenderness as I consumed my ham and eggs. --Lolita
candlepins
A patch I won in a candlepin bowling tournament as a kid. What's candlepin bowling? From The Lie That Tells a Truth:
"In 1880, Justin White devised the game of candlepin bowling at his billiard and bowling establishment on Pearl Street. The ball is 4 inches round and weighs 2 pounds. The pins are 15 3/4 inches high, about 3 inches wide in the center and tapered at the top and bottom. The pins are spaced 12 inches apart. Pins knocked over are not removed. Candlepins are so difficult that despite the fact you get three balls per frame, no one has ever bowled a perfect game. The highest ever score: 240. A 300-triple is considered a good score. The game is played in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and the Canadian Maritimes. It’s worth the trip, just to bowl a string. As long as you’re there, head down to Southeastern Mass. or to Rhode Island and try duck pins."
what do you do?
Dariel Suarez has a new story in Smokelong Weekly.
rejection
Corey Ginsburg on rejection letters.
the chicago
Bookforum has a fine piece by Ed Park on my favorite reference book, The Chicago Manual of Style.
Only connect: As I clocked—over months, years—the recurrence of certain names, hints of plot tantalized. There was the elliptical story of the powerful Porkola clan, with their Toronto roots (5.65), diplomatic legacy (5.96), and interest in Finnish design (15.151). Meanwhile, I learned that "Babs had gone to Naples with Guido, and when Baxter found out about it he flew into a rage" in 5.35; in 5.41, the free-spirited Babs "was seen entering the Villa Sorrento, where Tom was staying."
memoirs of a psychonaut
FIU MFA and Friday Night Writer Cory Ginsburg has a wonderful piece in the new Front Porch.
is life like this?
A nod to the book from Writers Digest.
you say refrigerator, i say . . .
Signs of life in Dania Beach. On our wonderful Publix bulletin board. Before the word refrigerator, there was the word refrigeratory, "an appliance used for cooling or freezing," as in: "The refrigeratory is working and no damage to the cargo is anticipated." Times, Sept. 10, 1906.
money and votes
My friend Beth Wellington has an op-ed piece in The Guardian.
signs of life in dania beach
We can't spell here. From a sign on the Publix bulletin board.
evan wondolowski
My nephew Evan has another NYT illustration today!
mary bonina
My friend Mary is interviewed abut her new book of poetry.
talk talk talk
B&N has an interview with Oliver Sacks. VQR talks to Alice Munro.
signs of life in hollywood, fl
Seen in an alley off Federal south of the Circle. Sure he can't spell, but you know what he's talking about.
clear eye tea
My friend of long-standing--not "my old friend," which could be taken the wrong way, Mary Bonina, has a new book of poems out from Cevena Barva Press, Clear Eye Tea. Mary and I go so far back in Worcester we remember all the embarrassing moments, but we don't talk about them.