Pages

Net Galley Challenge

Challenge Participant

Monday, May 30, 2011

Economy

A walk in the Mill Avenue. An at gallery is replaced with Mushroom Pizzeria. The Harley D store is gone. So is the bath & body works. Corner Uno Pizzeria is now a Sushi & Bar.

An empty store showcasing historical photos of 1888's Tempe.

Travel

Patagonia lake has a wooden bridge over it. The postcard with such a picture has 'Patagonia lake state park' on the upper right hand side is how I learn of state parks other than national parks. That postcards have postcard stamps different from the normal stamps, this I learn at Chiricahua Mountains national monument visitor center. How we ended up there is a result of natural conditions. We were going to go to Coronado national forest but that had a fire alert of type II. I just translated it to an avoid. Later I learn that it does not mean that the park is closed but just that cigs and fires are not allowed. I magie my surprise when driving into the Chiricahua, I find the coronado entrance on the right. Close neighbors. While driving towards the Chiricahua, when we saw the mountains in Coronado forest, lost in the fog, I was disappointed to not be there. Few hours later, I realise that from the direction of the fog, abundant smoke is flowing with the wind. A day later news confirm the fire.

Driving into Bisbee is driving into a mountainous area of red and a llayered pit called Lavender Pit. A tunnel counts as surprise.

At the hotel we saw an elder lady dressed in a traditional saree and pperforming her evening puja.

At Chiricahua, we learn of
CCC Loop road in honor of - Civilian Conservation Corps and Cochise of the Cochise County was a person.

Counties have state fair grounds.

Trees line San pedro river.

I a missing Going back to Bisbee book. The book where I learnt about the local plants.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life



Dont kill the birthday girl
Mickey mouse pancakes
Sabina Law
Dr Moreau
Rail Vodka
Midori
Mustum
Stingray cocktail

I know of pollen allergies, over heard of rashes caused by eggplants, read of matrix tests done to identify allergy sources, JLo's allergic reaction in MIL movie but did not know that vaccines are cultured in eggs and hence cannot be used by those with egg allergies.

When I look at the list of things the author Sandra Beasley is allergic to, it can be a nightmare for anyone to think of a non-allergic edible menu. Even if you do, thats all good on paper but what of all the contaminations that you have to take care as to not let even traces of allergens into the food. Such is the tough life that Beasley calls her own but that has turned her into an expert scrutiniser of contents of a prepared food and a foodie.

This book has a timeline of breakthroughs in allergy studies, extra paperwork that parents have to go through for the special care allergic children need, changes in laws and health plans for the allergic, peanutpedia, media perception of those who suffer with allergies, the rise of soy, current research towards solution and the extent to which parents go while taking care of kids with food allergies.

I liked the chapter on ritual of eating, how allergies much like 'to follow' diets wont let you mix well with people. The author's disapproval of a 'allergen-centric' mentality chef inspite of the limited food field available to her, brings out her passion for food even if Sandra-friendly without having to make substitutions. For someone with no 'Achilles heel' in food, the book shows you how having a food allergy dictates a person's life as part of society, more so in teenage life. Beasley's participation in various social gatherings is like Cindrella's clock ticking to 12 anytime.

Declaring ingredients for safety Vs secret recipes.

The book is a good balance of statistics, research studies, food trends, vital role of food in culture and personal experience.


Ferris Bueller's Day off
sunflower margarine
Youth allergies
Red Rover game
Biphasic reaction and Anaphylaxis
Stramonium
Leukotriene
Mast cell
504 plan
IHP
EAP
asthma in school
Nut free mom
Wheat in play doh
Soy Doh
Pyrazine
Allergy service dogs
Flint napping

In every family, at some point you must face your ability to disappoint one another
- Sandra Beasley
National peanut board
Skink
American vegeterian society
The road to Wellville
OAS
peapod
Shout
Allerglobal
Selectwisely

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Books

Planting Dandelions

Made for you and me



Drop city

Drop art

Droppers: America's first hippie comune, Drop city
When wanderers case to roam

Alexander von Humboldt
Not sunny Donegal Bay
pony glass
hosta plants

A mosaic of routine and ordinary feelings, things, exotic hike aways, facts about travellers who 'stay put'.
The illustrations of different mud land, different rains with the drops gathering in puddles, sliding down the window or sticking slantly have a momentary quality.
Colorful mittens, shoes, tea cups all urge you to get snug in a comforter with loads of tea.
The illustrations are not all in colour and on paper - Taking a blind cat to a garden so it can sniff the flowers - imagining this leaves the reader with an image of a making of their own.

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

The financial expert by R K Narayan

The craft and soul of writing

Table Talk

After Derek Walcott's, Horoscopes for the dead by Billy Collins was a welcome.



The Flaneur reminded me of his consolation poem about a missed vacation. Making the ordinary as preferred as the other.



My favourite poem in this book is Table talk

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Pillow for four elbows

I catch sight
of the sud in your ear

your blind spot mirror
Harvest poems
Vachel Lindsay
Villon

coin of the realm in Now they bury her again

When the coin reaches the stem of the funnel, it increases in size.
Slouching towards Bethlehem
A long line of cells

No prairie up to the stirrups

A Sand County Almanac begins with a strong wake up call like Rachel Carson's of there being no spring and birds.

I was told there'd be cake

I was told there'd be cake by Sloane Crosley

The pony problem starts as a simple cleaning papers after the final breath. The author ties that lose end by getting rid of it and this would be the time where a revelation would have occured to her about the importance of the collection she was going to sever had she not known about her obsession with the collection. People always wonder about how to dispose or to hang to the ancient heirloom things but is that just a case of the gone to face up to their hoardism with meaning only to themselves. Atleast her progeny wont go through that dilemma.

Christmas in July begins with her pyrophylic parents.

Wild Mind

When you take care of something, it lives a long time - Roshi

Its a simple fact but needs to be put in words.


My colleague gave me a pot with money plant in it. It seemed like it reached its height of growth. Another coleague thought it needs some soil.
Few days of watering, all the leaves started sprouting new leaves at the stem.Some long weekends, I forget to water it and there goes the growing spree flat. It does amaze me that nutrition any time makes them grow unlike us you have lost the chance after 18.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Aerotropolis

Zappos
Ram Charan
Reloville
Vegas hotels for coventioneering
Kasarda's law of connectivity
Triumph of the city

Its a well heard complaint from home owners that new homes should not be built in this economy, but according to the author Edward Glaeserwhen the demand for a city rises, prices will rise unless more homes are built. When cities restrict new construction, they become more expensive.


Hausmann
John snow's cholera map

why clean water?

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Monday, May 9, 2011

Sex and the river Styx
Gooseneck lighting
nattering
cambium juice

Polliwog
Windthrow
Margay cats
Aoudad
uncosseted elk or mule deer
rassling a steer
Green up
sibilation
Tessitura
Fatback
Abyssinian chronicles
Wole Soyinka
Elechi Amadi
Ngugi wa Thiong'o
Okot p'Bitek
Peter Abrahams
nostrums
Shadbush
Grim Reaper
The method of nature
The Broken balance poem
The Broken balance article
Thoreau


When I confused Edward Hoagland with Edward Hirsch as a poet, 'Sex and the River Styx' became my to-read book. I am glad about the mix-up.

A look at the contents, 'Small Silences', 'Last Call', 'A Last look around', 'Endgame', 'The Glue is Gone' - this cant be good.

"Rising land of course will lift our spirits too".

"the immensity of winds, stars and trees, the infinity of unlobotomized animal species, the intricacy of landscapes, the galaxy of scents and shapes in natural creation, that we are losing, or just no longer sense or see". The author's lament on the status of man-nature relationship, the loss of adventure and mystery in the exploration, is the common thread through most of the chapters. His life and aging experiences have shaped his views on this part where "We do our turn, hang upside down or somersault or walk a wire, then bow out of the limelight."

Ascribing pinnae, whiskers, antenae to humans, the author maintains the continuity he feels between the woods and the house. The book is full of striking metaphors like planetary Lou Gehrig's disease, a cross-stitch of mercenary and sexual greed.

A proud Earthian who wishes to become a limestone if he can remain affixed forever to earth, in this age when we are planning for a dream vacation to other planets. The authors views do make us sit up and ask ourselves if there is anything we can do. If corn for fuel is obscenity to the author, what might he think of the test tube meat?

Thinking about this book, I wondered what the man who fell the first tree felt.

I have my hands on Hoagland's earlier book, 'Notes from the century before' - A journal from British Columbia.