Hi Kids,
Please help me with this: I am vexed/perplexed/bored by people’s fascination with Kim Kardashian, O.J. Simpson, and Jon-Benét Ramsey too. Although I am sorry Jon-Benét was killed, sorry O.J. Simpson was not punished for obviously killing his wife, and sort of sorry that Kim Kardashian was robbed of her jewelry in Paris where she was for Fashion Week, I think I feel even sorrier for her kids North and Saint. My question: Who cares?
What about the Hurricane?
Recommended Reading. The Nobel prize in Literature is about to be announced (2015, All the Light We Cannot See; 2014: Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch; full list here). Meantime we can feast on the Man Booker short list, which previously identified, to name merely a few, On Beauty, Never Let Me Go, The Inheritance of Loss, and five Ian McEwan books.
Prize Prediction: McEwan’s new book Nutshell:
“And the narrator of this saga? Listen carefully now: He is Trudy’s son, still in her womb, who hears his mother and uncle plan and connive over lukewarm coffee in their Hamilton Terrace kitchen, and who must countenance the life-threatening ignominy of his uncle’s lovemaking every night. “I grit my gums, I brace myself against the uterine walls,” the fetus tells us grimly.” From the NYTimes review by 2011 Pulitzer (The Emperor of All Maladies) winner Siddhartha Mukherjee. Yikes!
Please let me know what you think about any of this. I’m not being nosy (am I?): you and your reading has always been a personal obsession of mine.
Cooking tip: by now we all know what a floater is. It’s something extra-special added to a quantity of liquid. Did you know you can use floaters in soups and stews? Float a pool of balsamic on chili or cioppino; a globule of honey, cinnamon, minced ginger, and dash of salt on hot cereal. When you feel a bad cold coming on, float dark rum in your tea. (Years ago I was invited by Nick and his college friends to a bar in Manhattan in the form of a log-cabin—improbable as this sounds, I think I have it right—near Grand Central station—where they plied ever-accommodating Mom with a cocktail floater or two and then challenged me to several rounds of darts.)
Gratitude. Thanks for texting me a photo of your minor injuries asking if they’re infected, I love that.
Word of the day, hippocampus: area of your brain responsible for memory. Also the center of emotion and the autonomic nervous system. Got its name because it’s shaped like a seahorse. Take care of yours.
Use case: New study proves if you stop exercising for ten days, blood flow to the hippocampus drops significantly.
Why come home on Sundays? Because that is when I make cioppino.
More soon.
Xoxo Mom