Imagine Me Gone
So like a cripple I long for what others don’t notice they have: ordinary meaning.
Imagine Me Gone is the very emotional story of a family living with mental illness during the later half of the 20th century (1960’s, 70’s. 80’s, and 90’s). The story begins in 1962 in London. A young American woman named Margaret is working at a library in the suburbs when she meets John – “a showman when he’s on, capable of great largesse” – at a a party. Eighteen months later, Margaret and John become engaged but after Margaret returns from visiting her family in Massachusetts over the holidays, she wonders whether they will marry after she learns that John is in a psychiatric hospital with what is described as an “imbalance.” Unsure of what this really means, Margaret remains committed to John and helps him return to his former self although in retrospect years later she realizes “we live among the dead until we join them.” Read more 
The Third Plate
The Third Plate is one of those books that fall into the category of “if I read only one book this year, I need to read this.” Written by Dan Barber, the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill, a restaurant in Manhattan’s West Village and Blue Hill at Stone Barns, also a restaurant located within the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture (a four season farm and education center) in Pocantico Hills, New York, The Third Plate is one of the most comprehensive and interesting books linking chefs to suppliers to farmers and producers to seed breeders. Sounds dry? It isn’t. In fact, the book is a page turner. Think Anthony Boudain:Parts Unknown meets Michael Pollan for a four course meal after absorbing the Farmer’s Almanac and telling everyone else in the restaurant about all the magnificent places they’ve visited, the food they’ve tasted, and how that food was grown. Read more
The Homemade Vegan Pantry
Join the homemade revolution.
One of the most fantastic aspects of adopting a plant-based diet is being part of a rapidly growing community that introduces new products nearly every day along with cookbooks on how to make delicious plant-based food. Years ago, just a few vegan cookbooks lined a shelf at the local bookstore but today the shelves are filled with vegan cookbooks – a testament to the growing popularity of this wholesome, nutritious diet. Read more
Through the Door of Life
When Sam Harel Price, 21 and a junior at Oberlin College died on March 24th following a suicide attempt on her 21st birthday, I struggled to help my daughter cope with the death of a friend she loved. Loss leads to grief but asking why a smart, compassionate, and beautiful person would take her life when she had so much to look forward to, help us understand the importance of compassion and acceptance in this world. Read more
Plant-Strong
We’ve been so hoodwinked and bamboozled by the meat, milk, and egg industries that the majority of people, including well-meaning but misinformed doctors and nutritionists, haven’t a clue that the best and most healthful sources of protein come from whole plants.
Plant-Strong is the new title of a book that was originally called My Beef with Meat (2013), a New York Times Bestseller. The original title was clever and catchy (the brainchild of a marketing executive in the publishing house) but the words never quite reflected the author’s style (positive) or his approach to living a plant-strong life, which is inclusive. Read more
“The Emerald Light In The Air”
I’m not of this world.
The Emerald Light In The Air is a collection of short stories written by Donald Antrim that were originally published in the New Yorker Magazine. If you’ve never read Antrim’s work before (and, even if you have), it’s helpful to know a few things about him because his stories often mirror parts of his life.
Born in 1958, Antrim was raised in the south by an alcoholic seamstress mother and a father (a scholar of TS Eliot) who married and divorced twice. Moved from place to place, Antrim’s childhood was anything but idealic although boarding school and college (he graduated from Brown) paved the way to a writing career. Read more
“Orphan #8”
Did anyone know what was going on there? Of course they did. They must have.
Kim van Alkemade, a writing professor at the University of Pennsylvania at Shippensburg spent about five years researching and writing her first novel – Orphan #8, the story of Rachel Rabinowitz, a 4-year old orphan sent to live in the Hebrew Infant Home in New York City in 1919. While there, Rachel becomes part of a medical research study in which healthy children (who were dehumanized by being assigned numbers) are x-rayed to see if radiation could provide an alternative to the surgical removal of tonsils. The doctor conducting the study – Dr. Mildred Solomon – is a recent graduate of the male dominated medical school system and an ambitious young doctor who did not adequately weigh the risks or consider the rights of children without a voice. Read more
“The Afterlife”
People are fond of saying that the truth will make you free. But what happens when the truth is not one simple, brutal thing?
Personal memoirs about growing up with less than suitable parents, and particularly mothers – provide readers a glimpse into a world that managed to produce some of the most talented contemporary writers in this country while supporting the argument that nature wins over nurture but not without the long-lasting effects of childhood. Read more
Thug Kitchen Party Grub
Gotta bake bread to break it.
There are four aspects essential to a good cookbook (meaning a cookbook that spends more time on the countertop than on a book shelf).
- First, the cookbook must contain colorful pictures of the finished product. Pictures inspire cooks to take the leap and make the dish and although my finished dish may not look as polished as the one in the cookbook, there is usually a close resemblance (note: all of the pictures below of the finished dishes were made by me).
- Second, the recipes have to call for mostly fresh and easily recognizable ingredients. No strange ingredients that require a special trip to search the aisles of specialty markets are allowed.
- Third, the recipes can’t be too complicated because who wants to spend hours making dishes that everyone devours in 15 minutes?
- And, finally the food has to taste really good as in “delicious, can I have seconds; this recipe is a repeat.” Read more
“A Personal Matter”
Every time you stand at a crossroads of life and death, you have two universes in front of you, one loses all relation to you because you die, the other maintains its relation for you to survive in it.
Kenzaburō Ōe is a Japanese writer of essays, short stories, and novels that primarily deal with social, cultural, political, and philosophical issues. Born in 1935, Ōe has had many of his works translated into English and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. Influenced by Kafka, Twain, Lagerlöf, and a host of French writers, Ōe often writes of the desire for adventure, the mundane parts of life, and the truly horrific parts of our existence in a nuclear age. But, the biggest influence on Ōe’s literary career seems to be his firstborn son, Hikari. Read more
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