(i) C. S. Lewis Tea
So, I recently learned, from a post by Joe Christopher on the MythSoc list, that a online mail-order Tea retailer based in Austin Texas, The Tea Embassy, offers a "C. S. Lewis Tea Blend" (see below for the link). Intrigued, I decided to give it a try, and a few short days later it arrived. In honor of Lewis's well-known statement that 'You can't get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me", I used my biggest (triple-sized) mug. It turns out to basically just be the well-known blend usually known as 'Irish Breakfast', in this case described on its label as a mix of "bold black tea[s] from India's Assam region". I tend to prefer strong China teas (Keemun, Yunnan) over the weaker India teas (Assam, Darjeeling), but this is a pleasant enough cup; I'll definitely offer it up the next time book group gets together here (i.e., Sunday).
That one should have to go to Texas to buy a tea associated with Lewis is somewhat odd, but I take it as another sign that he's far more popular over here than in his own country. They do have the part about him being Ulster-Irish, rather than 'English', right; a point most Americans tend to ignore but which the surviving recordings of his voice make abundantly clear. Here's the text describing this tea on their website:
"Our special black tea blend of estate Assam teas honors the writer C.S. Lewis, since he was born in Belfast, Ireland and an avid tea drinker, we decided to make an Irish Breakfast tea blend in his memory. Enjoy this bold breakfast blend of excellent and tasty Indian black tea every morning or even in the afternoon. Goes well with a book."
and here's the link:
http://teatreasures.com/page/Tea-Supplies/PROD/India-Tea/T135777
(ii) Vital Tea Leaf (Tea Bar)
Meanwhile, on Friday we went down to the Market as part of our three-day celebration of Janice's Birthday. We'd planned to go on Christmas Eve but the foul weather and uncertain transportation options led us to defer it till things improved and we could be certain of getting both there and back again.
We took a slightly different route walking to the Market from where we parked the car, and came across a tea shop I hadn't seen before: VITAL TEA LEAF, at a spot a few blocks north and a block or two east of Pike Place.* We decided to investigate, and I'm glad we did, since it turns out to be not just a place that sells bulk tea as well as delicate little tea pots and all sorts of tea paraphernalia (rather like Perennial Tea Room in Post Alley) but a tea bar. Unfortunately, their main focus seems to be on green teas, which I don't enjoy drinking. Nevertheless over the next half-hour or so we sampled a vast array of teas of all types, including some fine aged Keemun, and greatly enjoyed our tea-host's hospitality. We eventually left, two new types of tea in hand. During our stay I learned two things I didn't know before.
First, in response to my question of what he'd recommend as the must-see if we shd ever get to China (since the country's so vast that there's no way to see all the highlights), he said The Great Wall.
Second, it had always been my understanding that tea got stale, esp. when exposed to air and light (hence the good folks at The Tea Cup, my favorite source of tea, urge their customers to keep bulk teas in air-tight (opaque) cannisters. By contrast, our tea-expert here instructed me to crumble up some of the aged Keemun and expose it to air a few days before steeping. Interesting. I've now tried some the regular way; next will be to try some following his advice.
Here's the link:
http://www.vitaltleaf.com/
*turns out they have another shop at the extreme southern end fo Pike Place Market, as well as three in San Francisco's Chinatown, two in Seattle's Pike Place Market)
--JDR
today's teas:
Northwest Breakfast (from MarketSpice)
Keemun Hao Ya A (from The Tea Cup)
Monday, January 12, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Hilary Tolkien's book
So, while it's not as big a bit of news as word that Tolkien's SIGURD poem(s) are being published at last, there's none the less another welcome announcement about a forthcoming book by a Tolkien within the last few days.
This time, it's not JRRT but his brother Hilary who's the author. Even though Hilary died just a few years after his older brother, in 1976, the family has decided to publish some reminiscences he'd jotted down about his early years, including their growing up together in Birmingham. Titled BLACK & WHITE OGRE COUNTRY: THE LOST TALES OF HILARY TOLKIEN (after the Tolkien Brothers' nickname for the two Father-and-Son millers who ran Sarehole Mill in their day), it's to be a slim volume of some eighty pages, edited by Angela Gardner and illustrated by Jef Murray, and due to be released the end of this month.
What's more, this is the first of two planned books by H.T., the other, which should follow in a few months' time, being a collection of letters and photographs. This shd go v. well with the recent TOLKIEN'S GEDLING 1914, which focuses on the Tolkiens' Aunt Jane but has a few photographs and reminisces about a young Hilary T., and the promised forthcoming book by the same authors on Aunt Jane's farm known as 'Bag End'. We're getting more and more of these pieces about people who were important to Tolkien, and they're helpful in giving us bits and pieces that help fill in the picture.
BLACK & WHITE OGRE COUNTRY doesn't seem to be available (?yet) from amazon, but I was able to order a copy through ACD Books (http://www.adcbooks.co.uk/); for more information about the Hilary Tolkien books, see Jef Murray's 'Mystical Realms' newsletter for January
(http://groups.google.com/group/Mystical_Realms/browse_thread/thread/6bb6011b0f9c0c10)
as well as the write-up on TolkienBooks.net (http://www.tolkienbooks.net/?p=121)
There are also at least two new works of Tolkien scholarship on the way that sound interesting; more on these later. But in general it looks like 2009 will see some interesting new Tolkien releases.
--JDR
This time, it's not JRRT but his brother Hilary who's the author. Even though Hilary died just a few years after his older brother, in 1976, the family has decided to publish some reminiscences he'd jotted down about his early years, including their growing up together in Birmingham. Titled BLACK & WHITE OGRE COUNTRY: THE LOST TALES OF HILARY TOLKIEN (after the Tolkien Brothers' nickname for the two Father-and-Son millers who ran Sarehole Mill in their day), it's to be a slim volume of some eighty pages, edited by Angela Gardner and illustrated by Jef Murray, and due to be released the end of this month.
What's more, this is the first of two planned books by H.T., the other, which should follow in a few months' time, being a collection of letters and photographs. This shd go v. well with the recent TOLKIEN'S GEDLING 1914, which focuses on the Tolkiens' Aunt Jane but has a few photographs and reminisces about a young Hilary T., and the promised forthcoming book by the same authors on Aunt Jane's farm known as 'Bag End'. We're getting more and more of these pieces about people who were important to Tolkien, and they're helpful in giving us bits and pieces that help fill in the picture.
BLACK & WHITE OGRE COUNTRY doesn't seem to be available (?yet) from amazon, but I was able to order a copy through ACD Books (http://www.adcbooks.co.uk/); for more information about the Hilary Tolkien books, see Jef Murray's 'Mystical Realms' newsletter for January
(http://groups.google.com/group/Mystical_Realms/browse_thread/thread/6bb6011b0f9c0c10)
as well as the write-up on TolkienBooks.net (http://www.tolkienbooks.net/?p=121)
There are also at least two new works of Tolkien scholarship on the way that sound interesting; more on these later. But in general it looks like 2009 will see some interesting new Tolkien releases.
--JDR
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Yes, We Will Have No Bananas
So, I hadn't heard about the coming Great Banana Crisis until I saw the article linked to below. Turns out this has been in the air for a while: Janice (who provided the title to this post) already knew about it. It's strange to read that the kind of bananas you see in every market today will be gone within a generation, and even stranger to find out that this has already happened once in my lifetime, without me ever noticing.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/why-bananas-are-a-parable_b_156102.html
Basically, the story is that plantation farming of a single banana variety (the Gros Michel, or 'Big Mike') laid banana farmers vulnerable to a banana blight ('Panama Disease'), resulting in the disappearance of the most popular type of banana in the world back in the 1960s, when the Chiquita people switched over to the second-best variety, a Vietnamese banana known as the Cavendish. Apparently a Cavendish is quite different from the old Gros Michel ("smaller and less creamy"). Now today the process is repeating itself: Cavendish plantations are succumbing to the banana blight and they're working on a new "Banana 3.0": the Goldfinger. Which is resistant to Panama Disease (for now) but, unfortunately, tastes like an apple.
The thing that really gets me about this story is not the cautionary tale about how stupid it is to grow one homogeneous crop -- I can't help but think most cities in the US are ripe for a maple tree disease -- but that this is the first time I've known about what happened, even though I was around at the time. Maybe it has something to do with my having given up eating bananas around 1965 -- certainly by the time I entered first grade. But even though it's practically the only kind of fruit I dislike, I've still inadvertently eaten bits of banana from time to time since -- for example, when taking a big bite out of what I thought was coconut or lemon pie, only to discover it was (ugh) banana cream pie, or similar mishaps involving banana bread. And I never noticed that the newer banana was any different from the older ones. Unless the shift was already well underway by the mid-sixties, and my 'before' and 'after' are both of modern-day (Cavendish) bananas?
While, as someone who won't eat bananas, I'm v. much on the sidelines on this one, it's striking how similar this is to what happened with apples, which I definitely did notice at the time, though I didn't know the why of what was going on. There used to be three varieties of apples in grocery stores: Delicious (or Red Delicious), Golden Delicious, and Winesap. Sometimes there'd also be green apples, which I assume were Granny Smith, though I cdn't swear to it. But at some point the Winesaps disappeared -- I haven't seen one in years -- and Red Delicious and Golden Delicious both got bland and mealy, so that I stopped eating as much of them.
Turns out that a lot of other people did too: the apple-growers had shifted to growing apples that looked good over those that tasted good, and once folks started importing new varieties of apple from New Zealand in the nineties (Cox, Gala, Braeburn) it pretty much drove the Red Delicious growers out of business. Now not only have better, more old-fashioned Red Delicious returned but there's a huge variety in the mega-marts, including new varieties like the Jazz, Pink Lady, and Honeycrisp. These are good times for apple-lovers. Pity they're all so high-carb that I can't eat them v. often.
Tomatoes are another case where I saw what was going on -- the disappearance of locally-grown tomatoes for bland hybrids bred for shipping and appearance, not for taste. Here the tomato growers saved themselves by introducing the 'hydroponic' and 'on-the-vine' tomatoes, which at least were better than the new (low) standard fare. Even better was the recent introduction of 'heirloom' tomatoes -- all of which turn out to be funny-looking types I never heard of. The basic tomatoes of my youth are still missing, along with some more specialized older varieties like the Bradley Pink Tomato, but at least we got some good (if too-expensive) heritage tomatoes out of it.
Now I'm hoping they do the same to watermelons. The Dixie and Dixie Queen seem to have vanished, replaced by those pallid, bland, 'seedless' mini-melons that have gained so much favor in recent years. I'm hoping someone sees a market in heirloom watermelons like the Black Diamond. But I'm not holding my breath.
--JDR
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/why-bananas-are-a-parable_b_156102.html
Basically, the story is that plantation farming of a single banana variety (the Gros Michel, or 'Big Mike') laid banana farmers vulnerable to a banana blight ('Panama Disease'), resulting in the disappearance of the most popular type of banana in the world back in the 1960s, when the Chiquita people switched over to the second-best variety, a Vietnamese banana known as the Cavendish. Apparently a Cavendish is quite different from the old Gros Michel ("smaller and less creamy"). Now today the process is repeating itself: Cavendish plantations are succumbing to the banana blight and they're working on a new "Banana 3.0": the Goldfinger. Which is resistant to Panama Disease (for now) but, unfortunately, tastes like an apple.
The thing that really gets me about this story is not the cautionary tale about how stupid it is to grow one homogeneous crop -- I can't help but think most cities in the US are ripe for a maple tree disease -- but that this is the first time I've known about what happened, even though I was around at the time. Maybe it has something to do with my having given up eating bananas around 1965 -- certainly by the time I entered first grade. But even though it's practically the only kind of fruit I dislike, I've still inadvertently eaten bits of banana from time to time since -- for example, when taking a big bite out of what I thought was coconut or lemon pie, only to discover it was (ugh) banana cream pie, or similar mishaps involving banana bread. And I never noticed that the newer banana was any different from the older ones. Unless the shift was already well underway by the mid-sixties, and my 'before' and 'after' are both of modern-day (Cavendish) bananas?
While, as someone who won't eat bananas, I'm v. much on the sidelines on this one, it's striking how similar this is to what happened with apples, which I definitely did notice at the time, though I didn't know the why of what was going on. There used to be three varieties of apples in grocery stores: Delicious (or Red Delicious), Golden Delicious, and Winesap. Sometimes there'd also be green apples, which I assume were Granny Smith, though I cdn't swear to it. But at some point the Winesaps disappeared -- I haven't seen one in years -- and Red Delicious and Golden Delicious both got bland and mealy, so that I stopped eating as much of them.
Turns out that a lot of other people did too: the apple-growers had shifted to growing apples that looked good over those that tasted good, and once folks started importing new varieties of apple from New Zealand in the nineties (Cox, Gala, Braeburn) it pretty much drove the Red Delicious growers out of business. Now not only have better, more old-fashioned Red Delicious returned but there's a huge variety in the mega-marts, including new varieties like the Jazz, Pink Lady, and Honeycrisp. These are good times for apple-lovers. Pity they're all so high-carb that I can't eat them v. often.
Tomatoes are another case where I saw what was going on -- the disappearance of locally-grown tomatoes for bland hybrids bred for shipping and appearance, not for taste. Here the tomato growers saved themselves by introducing the 'hydroponic' and 'on-the-vine' tomatoes, which at least were better than the new (low) standard fare. Even better was the recent introduction of 'heirloom' tomatoes -- all of which turn out to be funny-looking types I never heard of. The basic tomatoes of my youth are still missing, along with some more specialized older varieties like the Bradley Pink Tomato, but at least we got some good (if too-expensive) heritage tomatoes out of it.
Now I'm hoping they do the same to watermelons. The Dixie and Dixie Queen seem to have vanished, replaced by those pallid, bland, 'seedless' mini-melons that have gained so much favor in recent years. I'm hoping someone sees a market in heirloom watermelons like the Black Diamond. But I'm not holding my breath.
--JDR
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
NEW TOLKIEN: The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun
The Legend of Sigurd & Gudrun
So, today came the welcome news that a new Tolkien book has been announced for publication by HarperCollins. Edited with an Introduction by Christopher Tolkien, it's slated for a release date of May 2009. Here's the news item; my thanks to Joan Marie Verba of the MythSoc list for posting the link:
http://www.the bookseller.com/news/73781-new-tolkien-for-harpercollins.html
The relevant paragraph runs as follows:
"The previously unpublished work was written while Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University during the 1920s and '30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The publication will make available for the first time Tolkien's extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niflungs."
This is a work we've known about for a long time -- at least since October 1981's publication of Letters of J. R. R. T., in which Tolkien discusses it in a letter to W. H. Auden (himself a translator of the Old Norse Poetic Edda). But very little about Tolkien's take on the story -- the most famous of all Old Norse legends -- is known. I've always assumed that Tolkien would follow the original Sigurd lays* in The Elder Edda for the most part, but there's a great gap in the manuscript which means that we have to go instead to the prose Volsunga Saga for those parts of the story. My guess is that Tolkien not only merged the individual lays into a continuous narrative poem but probably re-created the lost stanzas from the prose synopsis, making this yet another of his asterisk-texts. In any case, we'll soon see -- which is a wholly good thing.
No listing of it so far on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or the HarperCollins site, that I could find. More details later.
--John R.
*as opposed to Wm Morris, who both translated the saga (Volsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs) and created his own narrative-poem version of the story (The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs).
current reading: David Cannadine's MELLON: AN AMERICAN LIFE [2006], Edgar Poe's POLITIAN [1835]
current audiobook: Woodward's THE WAR WITHIN [2008]
So, today came the welcome news that a new Tolkien book has been announced for publication by HarperCollins. Edited with an Introduction by Christopher Tolkien, it's slated for a release date of May 2009. Here's the news item; my thanks to Joan Marie Verba of the MythSoc list for posting the link:
http://www.the bookseller.com/news/73781-new-tolkien-for-harpercollins.html
The relevant paragraph runs as follows:
"The previously unpublished work was written while Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University during the 1920s and '30s, before he wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The publication will make available for the first time Tolkien's extensive retelling in English narrative verse of the epic Norse tales of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niflungs."
This is a work we've known about for a long time -- at least since October 1981's publication of Letters of J. R. R. T., in which Tolkien discusses it in a letter to W. H. Auden (himself a translator of the Old Norse Poetic Edda). But very little about Tolkien's take on the story -- the most famous of all Old Norse legends -- is known. I've always assumed that Tolkien would follow the original Sigurd lays* in The Elder Edda for the most part, but there's a great gap in the manuscript which means that we have to go instead to the prose Volsunga Saga for those parts of the story. My guess is that Tolkien not only merged the individual lays into a continuous narrative poem but probably re-created the lost stanzas from the prose synopsis, making this yet another of his asterisk-texts. In any case, we'll soon see -- which is a wholly good thing.
No listing of it so far on amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, or the HarperCollins site, that I could find. More details later.
--John R.
*as opposed to Wm Morris, who both translated the saga (Volsunga Saga: The Story of the Volsungs) and created his own narrative-poem version of the story (The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs).
current reading: David Cannadine's MELLON: AN AMERICAN LIFE [2006], Edgar Poe's POLITIAN [1835]
current audiobook: Woodward's THE WAR WITHIN [2008]
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Tolkien in Kanji
So, here's a fun little factoid (or possibly faux-fact).
Douglas Kane recently pointed out on the MythSoc list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/20267)
that Tolkien's distinctive monogram -- which has now been trademarked by the Tolkien Estate -- bears a strong resemblance to a Chinese/Japanese character. It seems unlikely that Tolkien was aware of this,* and highly unlikely that he modeled his mark upon the oriental model, and as such offers a good example of the perils of using similarity as a basis for source-studies. But nonetheless the similarity is real, and striking.
Here's the link D.Kane provided: http://www.mahou.org/Kanji/422B/
--John R.
*although he may have become so long after the fact -- Oxford attracted a lot of foreign students, and he is known to have given away the original of one of his pieces of art for THE HOBBIT to a Chinese student.
Douglas Kane recently pointed out on the MythSoc list (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mythsoc/message/20267)
that Tolkien's distinctive monogram -- which has now been trademarked by the Tolkien Estate -- bears a strong resemblance to a Chinese/Japanese character. It seems unlikely that Tolkien was aware of this,* and highly unlikely that he modeled his mark upon the oriental model, and as such offers a good example of the perils of using similarity as a basis for source-studies. But nonetheless the similarity is real, and striking.
Here's the link D.Kane provided: http://www.mahou.org/Kanji/422B/
--John R.
*although he may have become so long after the fact -- Oxford attracted a lot of foreign students, and he is known to have given away the original of one of his pieces of art for THE HOBBIT to a Chinese student.
Monday, January 5, 2009
"Yonder's Henry"
So, last night Janice's co-worker returned from the Midwest (Appleton), having survived a trip to and from Wisconsin over the holidays. Rather than letting her face ten days of airport parking, we suggested she leave her car here and made sure she got to and from the airport. This seemed all the better an idea since she was travelling with Henry, her six-month-old dachshund, and it's always tricky flying with a pet (as Janice knew from having successfuly done so when she flew out here with Parker). It seemed cruel not to let Henry run around outside his carrier, given how many hours he'd have to stay in it once he left here, so we used a screen to block off the stairs, keeping all the cats on one side and giving Henry free run of the downstairs. Hastur, predictably, hid till it was all over, but Rigby and especially Feanor came and stared unblinkingly at him pretty much the whole time from the other side of the screen.
Anyway, both Henry and his master got off safely, and came back safely. But then came a hitch. It started snowing just before Janice and I left for the airport to pick them up, and by the time we left the airport for the ride home it was snowing heavily. We unburied her car from the rapidly accumulating snow and saw them off, telling her to come back if the roads were too bad. An hour later she called that she'd still not gotten as far as the interstate (only about two-three miles from our place) and asked if we could put her up for the night after all. We were glad to do so, though we got really anxious during the two hours it took her to make it back. In the meantime we made up the guest room and set up the cats' things where they and Henry could keep their distance (no sense asking for trouble).
The next day she and Janice went off to work, leaving me in charge of three cats and a dog. I didn't get nearly as much done on Monday as I'd planned, but it was interesting, after being so used to the cats' rhythms (and they to mine), to having our routine shaken up by a very lively little dog. I've never been near a dachshund before, so I don't know how typical Henry is or how anomalous. Ignoring the fact that he was smaller than any of the cats, he kept going right up to them, which utterly unnerved them -- even Feanor, who's almost three times his size and flattened himself into an enormous furry puddle at Henry's approach. Luckily all three quickly concluded that Henry was some sort of innocent or savant, and they never tried to scratch him (most cats are similarly insistent around toddlers and infants), although they concluded they most definitely didn't want to be anywhere in his vicinity. Sporadic chasing ensued, in which they put their superior speed and knowledge of the terrain to decisive advantage, eventually finding refuges from which they were reluctant to venture forth.
As for Henry, though he showed deep suspicion about me early on, as the day went on he got to following me around, wanting to spend time in the same room with me, and generally staying close. Eventually I put him under my desk, where he fell sound asleep. So that Feanor did not suspect his presence when he came to join me while I worked, as is his usual routine. His expression when, some time later, Henry jingled his collar and Feanor realized he'd been sleeping on top of a desk that had a DOG sleeping under it was, shall we say, complex.
A mid-day report I sent to Janice included this summary:
Hastur says the closet is, or shd be, a fine and private place.
Rigby says she's not coming out from under that bed, no way.
Feanor says what HAVE we done, and what do we intend to do about it?
Henry says -zzzz-
Eventually, after a few walks and a few errands (with Henry behaving himself in the cat-carrier), the work-day ended: he was reunited with his master, they rode off home together, and we set about restoring the status quo with our threesome.
Oh, and the header for this post is an inside joke, being the name of Thorne Smith's only short story. Not a v. good story (one of Smith's few mis-fires), but it seemed apropos, esp. since I'd just read about Smith a day or two before in Thurber's memoir of The New Yorker, YEARS WITH ROSS.
Anyway, both Henry and his master got off safely, and came back safely. But then came a hitch. It started snowing just before Janice and I left for the airport to pick them up, and by the time we left the airport for the ride home it was snowing heavily. We unburied her car from the rapidly accumulating snow and saw them off, telling her to come back if the roads were too bad. An hour later she called that she'd still not gotten as far as the interstate (only about two-three miles from our place) and asked if we could put her up for the night after all. We were glad to do so, though we got really anxious during the two hours it took her to make it back. In the meantime we made up the guest room and set up the cats' things where they and Henry could keep their distance (no sense asking for trouble).
The next day she and Janice went off to work, leaving me in charge of three cats and a dog. I didn't get nearly as much done on Monday as I'd planned, but it was interesting, after being so used to the cats' rhythms (and they to mine), to having our routine shaken up by a very lively little dog. I've never been near a dachshund before, so I don't know how typical Henry is or how anomalous. Ignoring the fact that he was smaller than any of the cats, he kept going right up to them, which utterly unnerved them -- even Feanor, who's almost three times his size and flattened himself into an enormous furry puddle at Henry's approach. Luckily all three quickly concluded that Henry was some sort of innocent or savant, and they never tried to scratch him (most cats are similarly insistent around toddlers and infants), although they concluded they most definitely didn't want to be anywhere in his vicinity. Sporadic chasing ensued, in which they put their superior speed and knowledge of the terrain to decisive advantage, eventually finding refuges from which they were reluctant to venture forth.
As for Henry, though he showed deep suspicion about me early on, as the day went on he got to following me around, wanting to spend time in the same room with me, and generally staying close. Eventually I put him under my desk, where he fell sound asleep. So that Feanor did not suspect his presence when he came to join me while I worked, as is his usual routine. His expression when, some time later, Henry jingled his collar and Feanor realized he'd been sleeping on top of a desk that had a DOG sleeping under it was, shall we say, complex.
A mid-day report I sent to Janice included this summary:
Hastur says the closet is, or shd be, a fine and private place.
Rigby says she's not coming out from under that bed, no way.
Feanor says what HAVE we done, and what do we intend to do about it?
Henry says -zzzz-
Eventually, after a few walks and a few errands (with Henry behaving himself in the cat-carrier), the work-day ended: he was reunited with his master, they rode off home together, and we set about restoring the status quo with our threesome.
Oh, and the header for this post is an inside joke, being the name of Thorne Smith's only short story. Not a v. good story (one of Smith's few mis-fires), but it seemed apropos, esp. since I'd just read about Smith a day or two before in Thurber's memoir of The New Yorker, YEARS WITH ROSS.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
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