[contextly_auto_sidebar] We have so many ways nowadays to discover how boeuf en daube is pronounced without having to tap a French shoulder, human or beef. Raise your hands, readers, if you know what novel lists this dish as an ingredient. I read that book, probably unwillingly, more than 50,000 meals ago -- I counted -- and fastened on the scene at the end of the first part that gathers characters to look at and smell their spotlit dinner without any obvious hunger or lust of appetite. That was in the early '70s, when … [Read more...]
Archives for December 2017
Bug, Trapped
[contextly_auto_sidebar] A hapless grasshopper found itself in the news not too long ago because it was trapped, a permanent visitor to a one-painting museum called Olive Trees. You may have wondered, as I did, why notice of this common, elegant insect surfaced. But Vincent van Gogh, a painter many people know, drags any report concerning him, no matter how paltry, into the light. "What could this be"? Paintings conservator Mary Schafer may have said this aloud to herself -- it's a lonely job -- when she saw that a crust of French … [Read more...]