You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.
(Sarah Ban Breathnach)
image: Old woman eating a mango. Dhaka (Bangladesh), Steve Evans from India and USA
(Albert Schweitzer)
image: Christie B. Cochrell, Uncle Les Leong, Hawai'i
Native American - Navajo Song
It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed. I, I am the spirit within the earth ... The feet of the earth are my feet ... The legs of the earth are my legs ... The bodily strength of the earth is my strength ... The thoughts of the earth are my thoughts ... The voice of the earth is my voice ... The feather of the earth is my feather ... All that belongs to the earth belongs to me ... All that surrounds the earth surrounds me ... I, I am the sacred words of the earth ... It is lovely indeed, it is lovely indeed.
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Not originally on my list:
Good morning from Boston.
My 30th-floor room in the Back Bay looks out on a bit of the Charles River; the overgrowth of the fens; a lot of red brick and flaming fall leaves; six or seven typical New England church steeples and the big clunky Christian Science mother church; one of the colleges; and in it all, two tiny walkers along Huntington Avenue, passing in opposite directions.
The Peet’s French Roast is brewing in the bathroom, and all in all it’s a lovely November morning—except that I will have to spend the day indoors, setting up books for an exhibit and then selling them (or not).
Coming in last night: a blood red line of sunset between two vast darks; a little crescent moon observing from the upper, somewhat below us on the plane.
image: Acorn Street, Beacon Hill, Boston, Massachusetts. These houses were built in the late 1820s by Cornelius Coolidge. July 2005.
Chinese and Korean traditional medicine believe the fruit alleviates stress. An Australian jujube drink is recommended "when you feel yourself becoming distressed." The fruit is also used to treat sore throats.
The jujube's sweet smell is said to make teenagers fall in love, and as a result, in the Himalaya and Karakoram regions, men take a stem of sweet-smelling jujube flowers with them or put it on their hats to attract women.
In the traditional Chinese wedding ceremony, jujube and walnut were often placed in the newlyweds' bedroom as a sign of fertility.
In Bhutan, the leaves are used as a potpourri to help keep the houses of the inhabitants smelling fresh and clean. It is also said to keep bugs and other insects out of the house and free of infestation.
In Japan, it's given its name to a style of tea caddy used in the Japanese tea ceremony.
In Korea, the wood is used to make the body of the taepyeongso, a double-reed wind instrument.
In Vietnam, the jujube fruit is eaten freshly picked from the tree as a snack. It is also dried and used in desserts, such as sâm bổ lượng, a cold beverage that includes the dried jujube, longan, fresh seaweed, barley, and lotus seeds.
Many scholars also identify the jujube as the biblical atad, mentioned in the "Parable of the trees" in the book of Judges.
After valuable trees such as the olive, fig and vine have all declined to be king, the trees turn to the atad and ask if he will rule over them. He responds thus: "If you truly annoint me as your king, come and shelter un my shade and if not may fire come forth from the atad and consume the cedars of Lebanon!" (Judges 9:15)
The jujube tree is common in Samaria, where the story takes place. While its fruits are edible, they are not exceptionally tasty and it is very much the poor relative of the other native fruit trees mentioned in the parable. It can grow very large, easily providing shade for these small trees.
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!And sure enough, others are too—
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
"Since sound is such a significant feature of this poem, it seems justified to take the sound of 'jubjub' as being close to the word 'jujube,' a candy named for a fruit tree, and to assume an association with the sticky sweetness of the fruit the bird eats."
How can you weigh a large elephant? Load it on a boat and draw a line to mark how deep the boat sinks into the water. Then take out the elephant and load the boat with stones until it sinks to the same depth, and weigh the stones.
Thesaurus
It could be the name of a prehistoric beast
that roamed the Paleozoic earth, rising up
on its hind legs to show off its large vocabulary,
or some lover in a myth who is metamorphosed into a book.
It means treasury, but it is just a place
where words congregate with their relatives,
a big park where hundreds of family reunions
are always being held,
house, home, abode, dwelling, lodgings, and digs,
all sharing the same picnic basket and thermos;
hairy, hirsute, woolly, furry, fleecy, and shaggy
all running a sack race or throwing horseshoes,
inert, static, motionless, fixed and immobile
standing and kneeling in rows for a group photograph.
Here father is next to sire and brother close
to sibling, separated only by fine shades of meaning.
And every group has its odd cousin, the one
who traveled the farthest to be here:
astereognosis, polydipsia, or some eleven
syllable, unpronounceable substitute for the word tool.
Even their own relatives have to squint at their name tags.
I can see my own copy up on a high shelf.
I rarely open it, because I know there is no
such thing as a synonym and because I get nervous
around people who always assemble with their own kind,
forming clubs and nailing signs to closed front doors
while others huddle alone in the dark streets.
I would rather see words out on their own, away
from their families and the warehouse of Roget,
wandering the world where they sometimes fall
in love with a completely different word.
Surely, you have seen pairs of them standing forever
next to each other on the same line inside a poem,
a small chapel where weddings like these,
between perfect strangers, can take place.
Billy Collins
(from PoemHunter.com)
Baked Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic(slightly modified from Mediterranean Light by Martha Rose Shulman)
3 or 4 pounds skinless chicken pieces
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt and freshly ground pepper
40 large, meaty garlic cloves, unpeeled
1 ¾ cups dry white wine
4 thyme sprigs or ¼ teaspoon dried
1 rosemary sprig or ¼ teaspoon dried
2 tablespoons Cognac
chopped fresh parsley for garnish
toasted slices of baguette or Italian bread
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Heat oil over medium heat in a heavy-bottomed flameproof casserole wide enough to accommodate the chicken in a single layer. Add the chicken and salt and pepper lightly. Saute for 5 minutes, then turn over and saute another 5 minutes. If the bottom of the pan scorches a little, don’t worry, it won’t affect the flavor of the dish. Remove the chicken pieces from the pan.
Add the garlic and saute, stirring, for 3 to 5 minutes, until beginning to brown. Again, don’t worry about scorching. Spread the cloves in a single layer and return the chicken pieces to the pot. Add the wine, thyme, and rosemary and cover tightly.
Place the casserole in the oven and bake 45 minutes. Check the chicken after that time. It should be tender and fragrant. If it isn’t quite cooked through or very tender, bake another 15 minutes.
Remove the casserole from the oven. Heat the Cognac in a small saucepan and light with a match. Pour over the chicken and shake the casserole until the flames die down. Taste the sauce in the pan, adjust seasonings, and sprinkle with parsley.
To serve, place a couple of pieces of toasted bread on each plate, a piece of chicken or two, topped with some of the sauce in the pan, and several garlic cloves, which your guests should squeeze out onto the bread.
Enjoy!
image: Christie B. Cochrell, Fall Leaves
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