Zzzzzucchini!

Looking out from the kitchen today, my mind on zucchini and a new way of preparing it. Still a ‘new’ recipe for me, despite my having made it on one former occasion. But when something is new, I always find it better the second or third time around. Some might say practice makes perfect, but I would be more comfortable saying that practice will make it at least better if not perfect.

Not sure what the origin of the recipe is, but the combination of zucchini and mint leads me to think it might be Middle Eastern. Whatever the case may be, it is not an entrée, but can be served as either an appetizer, or as a side dish.

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED:

3 or 4 zucchini

1 bunch of scallions, or green onions

1 bunch of fresh mint

1 bunch of fresh basil

about 2 tablespoons of olive oil

lemon or lime juice

crumbled feta cheese

bread for toast

a sprinkle of salt

HERE’S WHAT YOU DO:

Wash the zucchini well with a vegetable brush, then trim and cut it into 2 inch lengths.

With potato peeler or paring knife, peel the zucchini pieces zebra-style, leaving some peel.

Next, dice the zucchini into what are fairly small bits.

Heat the olive oil in a frying pan or wok on a medium-low stovetop.

Toss in the chopped zucchini and sauté.

In the meantime slice three or four scallions, top to bottom.

About 2 minutes before the zucchini is completely tender, toss in the chopped scallions.

Stir, stir stir the mix for 1 minute, then add a good handful of roughly shredded mint,

and a good handful of roughly torn basil.

In no time at all the zucchini will be tender. Turn off the heat, and stir in the juice from maybe half a lemon, or lime if you prefer.

Now the unexpected: Put the cooked zucchini into a large bowl and mash it with a potato masher.

You’re aiming for a consistency that will lay snugly on toast without all falling off.

Add salt to taste.

Serve the zucchini on pieces of toast, and topped with crumbled feta cheese.

The rare flavor of this unusual recipe will remind you of faraway lands.

The Essayist

One of my favorite essays has for many years been one written by E.B. White in 1941 titled, “Once More to the Lake.” The writer’s name is familiar to many as the author of Charlotte’s Web and Stuart Little, the children’s stories that have captivated young readers for years. Others may recall a slim volume they read in college called, The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White. But for many years White’s name was associated with The New Yorker magazine, where his essays were a regular feature, and where his wife was a senior editor.

One of the books I brought home from the final sale at Mandala Books in Daytona, is a 1976 first edition of Letters of E.B. White, collected and edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth. I didn’t realize until later how rewarding this purchase would become. Pages I have so far read are generous in unveiling a man, a personality I was only vaguely familiar with. Because of my fondness for his essay, “Once More to the Lake,” I was quick to look up those letters written around the time of the essay’s first publication in 1941. What I discovered was a wealth of facts surrounding the essay’s background, and even an insight into White’s thesis, or intent with the piece. It shouldn’t really surprise me, since I’ve made similar discoveries about other writers through their letters, most prominent among them probably the poet Charles Bukowski. But it’s alway an eye opening process.

According to notes in the Letters of E.B. White, the writer was on many occasions desirous of revisiting places he had known at an earlier time. Thus it was, in 1941 he returned to the Belgrade Lakes in Maine, site of August vacations during his childhood. This return to a childhood ‘cathedral’ is the basis for “Once More to the Lake,” written for his column in Harper’s, the October 1941 issue.

I had often wondered about the final lines of the essay, which always read like a presentiment of death. I discovered the excerpt below in a letter White wrote ten years after the essay’s initial publication:

‘The essay [“Once More to the Lake”] is about a man who feels a sense of identity with his son—a fairly common feeling. But the sense of identity is all mixed up with a feeling of being separated by the years. A child by his very existence, makes a parent feel older, nearer death. So when the little boy in the essay puts on a cold, wet bathing suit, the man feels the chill, as though he were experiencing it. Only for him it is a truly chilling experience, because it suddenly seems to foreshadow death.’

Letters of E.B. White is a weighty book, and “Once More to the Lake” a somewhat lengthy essay, both of which require longer discussion, at least more than is allowed here. For those interested in the essay, this link will take you to an online version. At Amazon look for Essays of E.B. White and a revised edition of the letters. If you haven’t already, I urge you to become acquainted with the writing of Elwyn Brooks White.

Bits & Pieces

With no specific thought in mind, nothing that has commanded my thoughts today, I decided to post some bits and pieces together on the same sheet of paper and call them scriblets.

THE GAZEBO

There’s a new form of litter in town. I can’t say when exactly it was that beach gazebo-cabanas became so popular, so ubiquitous at the beach, but these days they’re more popular than iPods. On weekends at this time of summer, the beach in both directions is a long ribbon of flapping canvas, a wavering line of beach gazebos. It’s easy to see the attraction for many people on holiday, spending tourist dollars, but there’s one thing they don’t print on the box. It’s almost guaranteed to be good for just one vacation. Poorly made of cheap materials, and subject to a heavy lashing of wind and salt air—That’s the average $50 gazebo most vacationers are buying today. And right here is born that new form of litter. With the daily stress of wind and salt, the joints and hinges get 'mechanical arthritis’ and won’t cooperate in being folded and put away. So people just abandon the naked skeleton of a wind-bent gazebo on the beach and return home to Pleasantville. There it stays for a week or two until the beach maintenance team hauls it away.

THE BOOKSTORE

In December of 1979 Mandala Books in Daytona opened, a huge rambling space crammed with used books, in all categories, including signed first editions. I have enjoyed many hours of quiet browsing at Mandala, so am hugely disappointed that today was their final day of business. Mandala Books closed its doors for the last time today. It will be missed.

THE BAYOU

Bayou Teche is a long and culturally important waterway curling through a part of southern Louisiana. The name ‘teche’ is an Indian word meaning ‘snake.’ Naturally, the Indians long ago looked at the bayou’s twists and curls and thought of a snake. An ancient story tells of a big snake that attacked their villages. It required many years and the lives of many warriors to finally kill the snake. They left the huge carcass where it died, and there is decomposed. Rain eventually filled the snaked-shaped depression left behind and became Bayou Teche.

Of Ghosts & Spirits

In 1894, Houghton Mifflin & Co published Lafcadio Hearn’s two volume work, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Hearn had arrived in Japan four years earlier, at the age of 40, commissioned as a newspaper correspondent. This commission was very soon broken off, but that was of little concern to a man who had found both a home and his greatest inspiration. He lived the remainder of his years in Japan, marrying a Japanese, taking the name Koizumi Yagumo and becoming a naturalized citizen of the country.

It is through Lafcadio Hearn’s writings that most Westerners of earlier years were introduced to things Japanese. Easy now to accuse Hearn of romanticizing Japan, exaggerating the exotic, but his descriptions were among the first impressions of pre-industrial Japan offered to the outside world. Another writer-adventurer, Pierre Loti did much the same sort of thing a few years earlier, only with an even greater degree of exoticism.

Hearn’s years in Japan make and interesting study, especially for the gradual evolution of feeling for his adopted country. At the time of his death things were perhaps not as rosy as they once were. But to this day he remains an almost-hero to Japanese of an older generation, and signs of his influence linger in many, many places.

Among my books here in Florida—most shipped from Japan—is a two-volume first edition set of Hearn’s Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. Some of the books in my shelves were obtained for their value as first editions, signed or otherwise. In relation to that I looked up something on the web this morning about Hearn’s books. That got me thinking about the man and his experience in late 19th, early 20th century Japan.

My own first experience in Japan, though ninety years after Hearn, is perfectly described on page one of Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan… ‘The first charm of Japan is intangible and volatile as a perfume.’ Short and dead on target. From my own first days in Japan I understand how accurate the writer is in that description.

Hearn completed Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan while a teacher at a middle school in Kyushu. He later taught English literature at famed Tokyo University, but left under a cloud when administrators calculated his salary based upon his Japanese citizenship. This bothered Hearn as he knew other ‘visiting’ Western teachers on the faculty were receiving much more. His final post was as a professor at Waseda University, where he remained until his death.

During his years in Japan Hearn published fourteen books, most of them dealing with topics best described by the title of a 1902 book, Kottô: Being Japanese Curios, with Sundry Cobwebs. From early age Hearn was fascinated by the unconventional and the outlandish. Following this line, his writings tend to hover around such things as ghosts, spirits and fairy tales. From this world of the supernatural the writer set a tone that colored many of his pages. Perhaps the reason he has been accused of exaggeration, of romanticizing Japan.

Hard for me to recommend that someone run out and buy a book by Lafcadio Hearn, but should you stumble upon an old soy sauce stained copy of something by him in a yard sale or thrift shop, it would be worth taking home for that occasional afternoon or evening when exotic calls your name.

Coloring Outside the Lines

Lines for his most recent exhibition began forming days before the opening. Only minutes after the gallery doors opened, all thirty-three paintings on exhibit were sold. That brought his earnings to $285,400. There is currently a waiting list of 2000 people interested in buying his work. The painter, Kieron Williamson celebrated his 8th birthday on August 4.

It all started in 2008 on a family vacation to Cornwall, southwest of London, when Kieron asked his parents for a piece of paper so he could draw the pretty scenery. According to his mother, the boy’s first pictures were typically child-like, but he showed concentration and a devotion to practice, which surprised her. It was this that encouraged mother and father to enroll the boy in art classes. Obviously, there’s been no looking back.

Instructors quickly noticed Kieron’s rare ability for seeing and mixing color. He began with watercolors, but didn’t shy from different media and moved on to acrylics and then oil. A short look at two or three of the young painter’s landscapes show that his sense of perspective, and of shading are both that of a much more mature painter. But then we recall that Mozart and Picasso were child geniuses.

People often compare Kieron’s work to greats like Monet and Picasso, but ask master Williamson and he’ll tell you that he likens his painting to that of British impressionist Edward Seago. Compare the two and you might see a similarity in style.

2G2BT

Don Winslow has written thirteen novels, is the winner of one Shamus Award, nominee for an Edgar Award, and still remains unrecognized by too many readers. His absence from that superstar circle of writers like Lee Child, Michael Connelly and Robert Crais is something of a mystery. Possible that his refusal to ease up on the visceral reality of life in and around the drug cartels has prevented his rise to the top. Let us hope that Janet Maslin was right in her New York Times review of Winslow’s last book, Savages when she called the book, ‘…one that will jolt Mr Winslow into a different league.’

To my way of thinking, Don Winslow has always been in a different league, and one not an inch removed from perennial bestsellers like Connelly and Crais, both like Winslow, chroniclers of the southern California crime scene.

Published only three weeks ago, Winslow’s new book, Savages, is a hip-hop cool story of bad boys in southern California and hard to put down. The writer has a strong grip on the political and cultural history of the drug trade along the California-Mexico border, and you never for a moment doubt he knows of what he writes. The amazing thing about a new Winslow book is that you never know what style is going to color his story, frame his characters. From book to book his style changes. The Dawn Patrol (2009) is not like the earlier 2006 novel, The Power of the Dog, and neither is like the new book, Savages. His style, if nothing else is mercurial. At the same time you can be certain that some things won’t change: storytelling, diamond sharp characterizations, and the use of plot twists to keep the reader on edge.

But the style, language and dialogue of Savages deserves most of the praise. This time he has given us a southern California idiom that crackles with character and the stamp of now, today. While it is ultra-cool, it is also remarkable for its economy. Why use a sentence full of words when three capital letters and a number tell it all—2G2BT. And this is but a convenient example of the writer’s economy of expression. His short haiku-like paragraphs are a lesson in spare, lean prose rich enough to eat with a spoon.

Anti-heroes Ben and Chon are young so-cal dudes, developer-suppliers of high quality hydroponic weed, running their business out of Laguna Beach, CA. Their customer base is rock solid, and along with their girlfriend O (Ophelia) they live a good life. Ben, a Berkeley grad spends most of his time funding philanthropic projects in Africa and Southeast Asia. Chon is a school dropout, Navy Seal, ex-mercenary with two tours in Afghanistan. Ben handles the business, Chon handles the bad guys who put their fingers where they shouldn’t. But the bad guys—a Mexican drug cartel— want in, and to make sure Ben and Chon understand the options, they kidnap the girlfriend, O. Heads roll, bullets fly and blood spatters on the way to a solution, and you don’t want to miss a word of it.

Not Quite Pinocchio

Today’s feature is another little curio that has followed me from place to place, always there, always peeping out from a nook, a sort of household hanger-on and watchdog for that around him. A ghoulish looking fellow, with his white body, red fingernails and shortage of top hair. But puppets don’t always get to look like Johnny Depp.

I suppose at one time the puppet master had a wardrobe for his little man on strings, and dressed him up for whatever the repertory of shows called for. Perhaps he traveled around to different villages presenting his shows to the children. Or perhaps he performed at festivals and on holidays. It’s next to impossible for me to say with any veracity what the particulars are regarding the puppet’s history. I bought it from an old man sitting beside a cart piled with bits of this and that on a back alley somewhere in Bangkok. An odd, battered wooden puppet, white and ugly with body paint musculature and red red lips. No conversation between us; a gesture or two, a spread of fingers telling the price, and for the equivalent of a dollar or two the puppet was mine. There is not a mark, a sign or any hint on the puppet to suggest a history. It’s all in my head, and colored with the ribbon and fluff of imagination.

From the time I first brought it home, the puppet has lounged in one of its several poses somewhere around the house, moving about as I imagine it would were those wooden arms and legs real. I like to imagine it has conversations with its household brothers and sisters, chatting with the toaster about the smell of eggplant, and scolding the heavy book for slipping and knocking over a bottle of ink.

The photos here show the not quite Pinocchio doing his duty and guarding the fruit, hanging out with a bottle of Herbin 1670 and enjoying some downtime in a quiet corner.

An interesting fellow.