My little blog is six months (plus change) old, so to celebrate, I am having my first ever guest poster!
I met Tony Alicea through Twitter, and he has since become a dear friend – he is probably the nicest guy in my Twitter sphere. He lives in Florida, where he performs tech wizardry (he has rescued me from my ignorance, several times), listens to lots and lots of music, writes, and loves God; not at all in that order. Continue reading
I used to think Planet Earth was a pretty big place. That was before I gained a little perspective.
A few months ago, my husband and I were driving to a friend’s house. While looking up at a streaky afternoon sky, I was jabbering on about how far away the moon was, since it was already visible. (I had only recently started reading up on the subject, and the whole thing was freaking me out, quite frankly.)
When I mentioned how big our galaxy is, my husband paused for a moment, then proclaimed, “We are Who-ville!”
And that’s a very good way to wrap your mind around it. Remember the book Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss? Our Earth (which seems so very, very huge to us), is equivalent to a speck on a clover being carried around by an elephant on top of something else that is the size of our Earth.
Except, actually, we’re much, much smaller than that. Continue reading
My cashier at the grocery store was a young guy with a freckled complexion and tousled hair, maybe 20 years old, and he was talkative. The minute I reciprocated his greeting, I learned the following: he was fine; he was almost done with work; that fact was sort of good, but sort of not, because he’d only worked 4 hours that day, because he was only part-time. I asked if he was in school. He said he wasn’t, because he couldn’t afford it yet, but he was saving up for cooking school. He scanned and bagged quickly as he talked.
In answer to my question, he told me there were a few good cooking schools around: the Culinary Institute of America, in Portland, and the Cordon Bleu, although that one was too expensive. “Over-priced,” he reiterated. He told me about the cooking shows he watches, on TV.
“See what I do,” he said, “is take regular ingredients and make something of them. We’ve never had a lot of money but…well, the other night…” and then he eagerly rattled off a list of ingredients he’d used to make an ordinary pasta dish sing.
“Well, maybe you’ve got a good palate,” I encouraged. “They say that’s the most important thing.”
He was so hopeful, so sweet. I wanted to speak with him longer, but the next customer was pressing in behind me. The boy continued to talk even as I reluctantly inched away. I wish I could offer to sponsor him, I thought.
I loved the eager light in his eyes, his unusual dreams. I loved that he wasn’t just listlessly jamming groceries in a bag. Of course, I have no idea if he has any real talent; no idea how far he can really go. Maybe he’ll end up cooking dinners for his family, or frying bacon and eggs at the local IHOP.
Or just maybe, he’s the next Thomas Keller. Continue reading
Classification: Non-fiction
I can’t afford to buy brand-new books these days, and certainly not hardcovers (unless Alice Munro publishes a new book, in which case I am at the bookstore the day it is released.) But I made an exception for the new Laura Hillenbrand book, Unbroken. It was my early Christmas gift.
By just a few pages in, I was itching to tell you about it – yeah, it’s that fantastic. This true story is a sports story, and a war story, and an adventure story, all rolled into one. And it’s the most incredible survival story I ever expect to read, as long as I live.
All the usual adjectives fall short: unbelievable, harrowing, devastating, triumphant. If there is one book I’ve read this year that makes me want to grab you by the collar and insist, “Get your hands on this book,” this is it.
You can find an excerpt of Unbroken in Vanity Fair. But here’s a re-cap of the whole thing, because I want you to know this story even if you don’t read the book. (If you already plan to read the book, and you don’t want to know the ending, stop reading now!)
In the 1920’s, a small boy named Louis Zamperini was growing up in California and giving his Italian-American parents a run for their money. From the beginning, their son showed no fear and no restraint. He pulled pranks, he stole, he sabotaged, he set fires, he made messes, he got in trouble with the law. Fueling his mischief was his huge optimism; he always believed he could squirm out of any sticky situation. Continue reading
It may not surprise you to learn that natural disasters greatly intrigue me.
I own books about the Krakatoa volcanic explosion of 1883, the Johnstown Flood of 1889, and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. My “purchased but un-read” shelf holds a book about the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Give me a disaster, and enough time, and I’ll research it.
(I also have books about the sinkings of the Titanic, the Lusitania, and the USS Indianapolis. And the Mount Everest disaster of 1996. And a variety of famous crimes. But I’m not macabre, honestly.)
As it happens, I started writing this post last week, a few days before I (ironically) came down with the nastiest case of stomach flu I’ve ever had, from which I’m still recovering. I am assuming that I did not give myself bad flu juju with all the researching.
Anyway, I recently read a novel that incorporated the events of the real-life 1918 influenza pandemic. (The novel wasn’t that great, so I’ll spare you the title.) In a note about the book, the author wrote that, for some reason, many people know very little about the 1918 flu. Either it isn’t taught in school, or it’s glossed over. I certainly don’t remember learning about it.
Which is strange, because that flu has been called “the worst medical holocaust in history.” Its only possible rival is the European Black Death of the mid-14th-century. I’ll get to the statistics in a moment. Continue reading
Cathy LaGrow 