| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
 Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 2:12 pm Post subject: |
 |
|
The Door
Poems
Hardcover
By
* Margaret Atwood
| Quote: | where do we both get off?
Is this small talent we have prized
so much, and rubbed like silver
spoons, until it shone
at least as brightly as neon, really
so much better than the ability
to win the sausage-eating contest,
or juggle six plates at once?
What's the use anyway
of calling the dead back, moving stones,
or making animals cry? I
think of you, loping along at night
to the convenience store, to buy your pint
of milk, your six medium eggs,
your head stuffed full of consonants
like lovely pebbles
you picked up on some lustrous beach
you can't remember - my feather-
headed fool, what have you got
in your almost-empty pockets
that would lure even the lowliest mugger?
Who needs your handful
of glimmering air, your foxfire, you few
underwater cyrstal tricks
that work only in moonlight?
Noon hits them and they fall apart,
old bones and earth, old teeth, a bundleful
of shadow. Sometimes, I know, the almost-holy
whiteness rooted in our skulls spreads out
like thistles in a vacant lot, a hot powdery
flare-up, which is not a halo
and will return at intervals
if we're grateful or else lucky, and
will end by fusing our neurons ...
(From Owl and Pussycat, Some Years Later, pgs. 30-31) |
| Quote: | | Note: ... and despite countless well-deserved awards, who nevertheless made time on a holiday in the Loire Valley to send a quick note to a desperate housewife fan alone and palely loitering in a foggy California bedroom community - a note we include with pride and gratitude among our own collection of 'glimmering air and foxfire.' |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=3886#3886 |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 3:40 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Down and Out in Paris and London
Hardcover
By George Orwell
| Quote: | | Life in the quarter. Our bistro, for instance, at the foot of the Hotel des Trois Moineaux. A tiny brick-floored room, half underground, with wine-sodden tables, and a photograph of a funeral inscribed "Credit est mort"; and red-sashed workmen carving sausage with big jack-knives; and Madame F., a splendid Auvergnat peasant woman with the face of a strong-minded cow, drinking Malaga all "for her stomach"; and games of dice for aperitifs; and songs about "Les Fraises et Les Framboises," and about Madelon, who said, "Comment epouser un soldat, moi qui aime tout le regiment?"; and extraordinarily public love-making. Half the hotel used to meet in the bistro in the evenings. I wish one could find a pub in London a quarter as cheery. (From II at pgs. 9-10) |
Essential tonic by the master essayist for anyone still clinging to the sick notion that abject poverty is somehow romantic - pah!
The Bistros, Brasseries, and Wine Bars of Paris
Everyday Recipes from the Real Paris
Hardcover
By Daniel Young
If this one is as good the New York restaurant critic's Made in Marseille, the pizza lover's bible, the recipes will be fairly simple and uniformly delightful.
Made in Marseille
Hardcover
By Daniel Young
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4078#4078
Last edited by editor on Fri Jul 31, 2009 3:11 pm; edited 2 times in total |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Mon Feb 09, 2009 4:08 pm Post subject: |
|
|
From Famous Four-Flushers:
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Review Books
Be careful what you eat
Food manufacturers have been poisoning the public for thousands of years, but, as Leslie Geddes-Brown finds in this new book, there is hope for us yet.
Feb. 21/08
| Quote: | ... Since the first bread was baked, corn was mixed with chaff, bakers took shortcuts and retailers put their fingers on the scales. In 12,000 years, nothing has changed.
The systematic poisong of the public wasn't always deliberate or villainous. In Roman times, lead was added to wine just because it tasted better - when its poisonous nature wasn't understood. Likewise, children's sweets were colored with copper because they looked better (and sold better). Then and now, manufacturers were happy to deceive us with adulterations if it improved their profits. Romans added gypsum, lime and seawater to wine: Victorians put flour in mustard and alum in white bread; manufacturers today use false colors and hydrogenated fats, although they know them to be dangerous. ...
Several heroes emerge: the German Frederick Accum, who used chemistry to identify the food cheats; Arthur Hill Hassell, who found evidence of adulteration under the microscope; and Thomas Wakeley, founder of The Lancet, who named and shamed the cheats. More recently, Caroline Walker publicised counterfeit British food before dying of cancer of the colon (brought on, she thought, by bad food at her public school). (-- p. 99) |
| Quote: | Swindled
From Poison Sweets to Counterfeit Coffee - The Dark History of the Food Cheats
Hardcover
By Bee Wilson
|
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4154#4154 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Tue Feb 17, 2009 2:22 pm Post subject: |
|
|
COUNTRY LIFE
Magazine Subscription
Licence to Thrill
This is the year of James Bond. Michael Murray-Fennell visits two new exhibitions showing the reality, fantasy and imagery of 007's world
April 17/08
| Quote: | Ian Fleming grew up in the shadow of his older brother. After a scandal with a prostitute at Sandhurst, he flitted from journalism to banking. The Second World War saved him from a life indulging in the typical Bond pursuits of philandering and gambling.
Unlike his fictional alter ego, Fleming saw out the war from behind a desk, as assistant to Admiral John Godfrey - director of naval intellligence, a surrogate father figure, and prototype for Bond's boss, M. Deep within the Admiralty's nerve centre, Fleming planned raids and operations with the same meticulous detail that he would bring to his thrillers.
But the world was a different place in 1952 when he sat down in his Jamaican retreat to write the 'spy story to end all spy stories.' Gone were the 'Red Indian days' of the Second World War. Instead, the cloak-and-dagger world of the Cold War looms large over the series.
Actual accounts of defections and assassinations inspired several Bond plots. Sometimes Fleming even appeared to forecast events: Thunderball's threat of nuclear attack of Miami anticipated the Cuban missile crisis of two year later.
However, the politics wasn't the real appeal of Fleming's novels. 'We're the only two writers,' he confided to Somerset Maugham, 'who write about what people are really interested in: cards, money, gold and things like that.'
He was being kind to Maugham - nobody does it better than Fleming. His connoisseur's account of Bond's drink of choice puts the cinematic 'shaken not stirred' version to shame: 'A dry martini. In a deep Champagne goblet. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it well until it's ice cold, then add a thin slice of lemon peel."
Fleming was clear about his target audience - 'warmblooded heterosexuals in railways, airplanes or beds.' For a 1950s Britain, in the grip of rationing, aware of its diminishing role on the world stage, and with the sexual licence of the 1960s not yet on the horizon, the Bond books were escapist fantasies of exotic food, locations, thrills and women. (-- p. 119) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4165#4165 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 2:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
From Omens and Lucky Charms:
Frida's Fiestas
Recipes and Reminscences of Life with FRIDA KAHLO
Hardcover
By Guadalupe Rivera and Marie-Pierre Colle
Photographs by Ingnacio Ruquiza
Recipes adapted by Laura B. de Caraza Campos
Text translated by Kenneth Krabbenhoft
Recipes Translated by Olga Rigsby
Book design by Julio Vega
| Quote: | The hot winds of March had begun to blow when Ash Wednesday arrived and with it the meatless meals of Lent.
When we sat down to eat one Thursday, I noticed that Frida was very upset. She had just read a newspaper article that linked my father romantically with an attractive Hungarian painter (Irene De Bohus). The reporter, who was a woman, declared that Rivera was going to marry the Hungarian as soon as he divorced his current wife, the painter Frida Kahlo. ...
In the library she took out her hidden treasures to show me. There, in two wood-and-glass cases, was the splendid pre-Columbian jewelry that my father had given her over the years. There also were her collection of folk toys and her retablos on votive themes. She showed me marbles made of old glass, in all sizes. The many-colored cat's eyes in the center made them seem like magical objects, whose shifting hues could predict the future. ...
Later Cristina drove us over a rough road to the edge of the holy city. Here was don Tomás's house, surrounded by magueys and organ cactus, agaves and prickly-pear plants. Don Tomás was tanding in his doorway, and when he saw us, he cried, "Doña Frida! We've been waiting for you since yesterday afternoon! I felt the sadness that brings you to us. I'm very happy to see you have arrived safely. Please come in, come in to my home."
He gave us something to drink, then asked Frida to go with him through the hallway to the garden. When he had finished speaking and the talk turned to other things, that simple, quiet man was suddenly transformed into a menacing creature like Quetzalcoatl, the Teotihuacán deity. A strange light shone in his eyes, and he spoke prophetic words.
"Niña Fridita," he said, "you have more suffering before you, but you will die sheltered and protected by the one who causes your present pain. You and don Diego will not be able to live apart. Sometimes you are united in love and affection, other times hatred keeps you apart. But you will die together and after your death be a single shining star, sun and moon in conjunction. Have no doubt, my dear girl; you are destined to live forever in this universe, each one merged with the other in eternal eclipse."
With these words, his prohecy was finished, and he was once again the humble, mild-mannnered peasant who had waited for us amid the agaves and magueys, in the doorway to his house, with the peace of time reflected in his face. (From March, Teotihuacán, Where Live the Sun and Moon, pgs. 145-147) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4199#4199 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sat Mar 07, 2009 6:28 pm Post subject: |
|
|
Big Money
Paperback
By P.G. Wodehouse
| Quote: | "Bollinger, one bot.," said Toddy Malling, appearing suddenly at her side. "I snaffled it off another table. Stick to it like glue and guard it with your life."
The supper-room was looking now like apopular store during a bargain-sale. The idea of taking refreshment before dancing had not occurred to Toddy alone. On every side, thrustful cavaliers like knights jousting for their ladies, were hurling themselves into the dense throng that masked the table where food and drink were being doled out. Supper at a Bassinger ball was always a test of manhood, and the lucky ones were those who had played Rugby football at school.
"Somewhere in the heart of that mob," said Toddy, laying his precious burden on the table, "there is provender of sorts. I'll try to get you something. I can't guarantee what it will be, but are you more or less prepared for whatever I can snitch?"
"Anything," said Ann. She came out of her thoughts with a little jump. "I'm not hungry."
"You're not?" said her escort incredulously. "Gosh! I could eat old Bassinger in person, if a spot of chutney went with him. I'll try to hook a chicken. Amuse yourself somehow while I'm gone. And if I don't come back, you'll know I died game. (-- pgs. 96-97) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4201#4201 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Wed May 27, 2009 9:37 am Post subject: |
|
|
From Losing Streak:
Steppin' Out
New York Nightlife and the Transformation of American Culture, 1890-1930
Hardcover
By Loyala University history prof Lewis A. Erenberg
| Quote: | Prohibition threatened to disrupt the operation of nightlife. Drink fueled the cabaret by blotting out the routine world and loosening constraints. When drink was threatened, so were the profits of the old-style restaurants. Many old-style lobster palaces had to choose between breaking the law or going broke. Thomas Shanley of Shanley's explained that "eating places pay, of course," but they were "not what I call a restaurant, where a man or a woman can get the best of food and the best of wines, a cocktail and a liqueur." In sum, he observed, "We can't go on at a profit on soft drinks. We obey the law and lose money, and we can't afford that." Some places tried to make a profit on soft drinks and other soda fountain delights, and others became cheap dance halls to fill empty coffers in the troublesome years of 1920 through 1922. It was clear that alcohol was necessary for profits and the style of the cabarets. Those who continued selling liquor were brought low by the padlock, a costly matter because the fine and loss of income added to the amount of fixed rent that had to be paid.
...
The danger of raids made expensive decorations and elaborate surroundings unwise, and it also drove down the cost of opening nightclubs. With the exit of old cabaret operators, many with roots in restaurants rather than entertainment, many small businessmen entered the field, and nightlife became competitive. While the early 1920s was a period of relative slump because of the aid local New York City police gave federal Volstead agents, the period after 1924 witnessed a new blossoming, and New York voted to abandon local enforcement; only a small federal force was left to monitor Manhattan. Because of the fear of raids, however, these clubs often sought the relative anonymity of cellars, basements, and backrooms of brownstones in the sidestreets of the forties and fifties. There, with membership cards to elude curfew and speakeasy mannerisms to elude officials, the nightclub emerged as a cheaper place, with a few drapes, some silk splashed on the walls, and a tentlike effect over the dance floor. Everything was portable after a raid. The reduced costs necessary to compete opened the door to marginal businessmen, who with a few partners concentrated on the relative profit-making aspects of nightclubs: entertainment for the draw and liquor for the bank. In this highly competitive atmosphere, redolent of all small business, operators who could find the right atmosphere, could appeal to the customers' wants directly, and could supply the best entertainment and atmosphere, could perhaps out-survive their competitors for a season or two. (From Into the Jazz Age, pgs. 238-239) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4316#4316 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
editor
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Nov 2003
Posts: 2940
|
| Posted: Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:03 am Post subject: |
|
|
From the Will to Win:
Gourmet
Magazine Subscription
No such thing as a free lunch
For generations, the students at Red Cloud Indian School raised their own food - then the federal government got into the act. Ever hear of a road paved with good intentions?
By Sam Hurst
| Quote: | In the 1880s, the Lakota chief Red Cloud turned away from the buffalo hunt. He turned his back on the militant resistance of Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull that would lead both warrior chiefs to violent deaths. He settled on the arid, harsh Pine Ridge Reservation in the Badlands of western South Dakota and began the painful process of assimilation.
One of the first decisions Red Cloud made was to invite Jesuit “Black Robes” to set up a boarding school to teach Lakota children and their families how to farm. The school would be a bridge to a new way of life, a refuge from the radical change that was destroying traditional Lakota culture and diet.
The idea that the gumbo-soil grasslands that sustained small migratory herds of elk, deer, and buffalo could be transformed into prosperous family farms now seems absurd. But on the narrow floodplain of little White Clay Creek, in the shadow of native corn patches and thickets of chokecherries and wild plums, the Jesuits built a school and, for more than a century, nurtured a self-sustaining community. As the decades rolled by and the reservation sank into the nation’s worst poverty, Red Cloud Indian School survived as a sanctuary for the best and brightest college-bound Lakota students. At the center of its identity was its ability to feed its people.
Cecelia Fire Thunder is the former president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She enrolled at Red Cloud in 1952 and stayed there until 1963. “We would go back to school in September,” she says, “and the boys would immediately start with the harvest of potatoes and cabbage. They made enough sauerkraut to last for years. The girls would can and cook. I became a good cook at Red Cloud. Some of the priests were dairy farmers, and the boys milked the cows every day. We always had fresh milk, and we would skim the cream right off the top. I remember wringing the necks of chickens and dipping them in boiling water to make it easier to pick the feathers. The main thing was three square meals a day. No junk food. And nobody went hungry.”
Henrietta Cross Dog started at Red Cloud in 1953. I ask her what she remembers most about the school farm. She thinks for a while, and then laughs quietly to herself. “Nobody ever got sick.”
The history of American Indian boarding schools is extremely conflicted, and horror stories about the abuse of the children are legendary. Schools like Red Cloud that have survived into the 21st century have been forced to undergo painful soul-searching and reconciliation. But as today’s students and faculty struggle with the related epidemics of obesity and diabetes, there are aspects of the troubled past that hold positive lessons for the future.
Brother Mike Zimmerman stands on a concrete landing outside the cafeteria and points. “All that land where the football field is now used to be the garden.” “Ten acres, twenty?” I ask. He chuckles. “Oh, no. Much bigger.” He turns, indicating an area behind the machine shop. “Over there was a huge potato field and a chicken coop. We kept hundreds of chickens. We also had a cattle ranch.”
Students took classes in home economics, farming, carpentry, and outdoor survival. They also worked hard in the fields, the bakery, and the kitchen. The ovens and dough mixers, bread slicers, ten-gallon milk cans, even coffee grinders gather cobwebs in the basement of the 19th-century brick building. Grappling hooks still hang from the iron rails of the meat locker. Brother Mike crabwalks under the new heating ducts suspended from the low ceiling and gestures to the wide, cool floors where apples were stored. Fifty years ago, this basement was a busy place.
There was never a final decision to dispense with Red Cloud’s commitment to self-sufficiency. It just fell victim to a hundred small decisions and a cascade of unintended consequences. In 1910, for example, when the Great Sioux Nation was broken up and the best fields were sold to white farmers, parts of the Red Cloud farm were dispersed. When the worst stories of abuse at boarding schools surfaced, many liberal supporters of the school found the idea of children working to grow food an offensive echo of forced child labor. In the 1960s, when the school stopped boarding students, there was a natural expectation that they would eat at home. As farm bill after farm bill promoted formalized school lunch programs, regulatory standards became stricter and the rhythms of the school’s food system broke down. As sanitary regulations were tightened, students could no longer wash the dishes. Perhaps most importantly, knowledge slipped away. The Jesuit farmer-priests retired and died. No one replaced them. Idealistic young teachers arrived, but they taught history and chemistry, English composition and physics. No one was a farmer.
Then, in the 1990s, the Lakota Nation woke up to the fact that diabetes was sweeping through every family. (Today, the Indian Health Service reports that nearly a quarter of the adults on the reservation are diabetic.) Great numbers of children were obese and suffering from symptoms of diabetes. Red Cloud students were eating meals at the Pizza Hut in Pine Ridge or at Big Bat’s gas station and convenience store, which features deep-fried fast food and 44-ounce soda pop “specials.” (-- pgs. 46-48) |
Link to this entry
http://pokerpulse.com/news/viewtopic.php?p=4496#4496 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
FAQ 
Search 
Memberlist 
Usergroups
Profile 
Log in to check your private messages 
Log in 
