In appreciation of a New Year's Eve blue moon...

...and anticipation of a stellar 2010...

...we'll enjoy traditional Hoppin' Johns + Bloody Marys + collards + corn bread (with bacon) (and Irish butter) with a houseful of friends.

Once in a blue moon it all goes away. The clouds clear.... [You can make up the rest for yourself and just hum; it's a good song]

—Randy Prentice

From the Miami Herald, my old hometown newspaper...

Posted on Thursday, 12.31.09

NEW YEAR'S EVE

Rare blue moon will illuminate skies on New Year's Eve

BY SUSANNAH BRYAN

Sun Sentinel

When the clock strikes midnight on New Year's Eve, remember to do one thing: Look up. A full moon will be shining down from its highest point, illuminating the landscape.
``It will be so clear it will take your breath away,'' said Jack Horkheimer, host of the PBS show Star Gazer. ``It will be super bright and super high for us.''
It will be the second full moon of the month -- a phenomenon known as a ``blue moon.'' A full moon on New Year's Eve last occurred on Dec. 31, 1990; it won't happen again until 2028.
Horkheimer, 71, held a ``Howl at the Full Moon'' party 19 years ago for families with kids in his Miami neighborhood.
``They came in their bath robes and pajamas,'' he said.
``It was the most fun New Year's Eve I ever had in my life. Those children are now adults, and they still remember it.''
Horkheimer encourages families to ring in 2010 in similar fashion.

Those who do can send photos or videos toStarGazerHowlIn@gmail.com. Twelve winners will receive a new telescope. 

 I remember Jack Horkheimer from Miami Space Transit Planetarium. Whoa.

Best wishes for a Brand New Year, y'all!

How it tasted | Santa Rosa Beach c. 1957

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself
in the sunset.
- Crowfoot, 1890


And what is sweetest in the mid-1950s? The same ... plus a long drive with pillows in the back of a two-tone station wagon, Dramamine knocking us silly, relentless winter sun, reflections in the water, skinny legs, treasures from the sea, bathing suits all one color, sisters with hair blunt cut at home, mother drinking in the saline days, pimento cheese sandwiches, Dad's prescience with the movin' picture camera.

The Conch Shell in the Room

I forgot to post this grainy photo. Coconut Grove c. 1969. It was a very good year.

Fewer than 70°

And the sheets are flannel. Everyone is pulling on sweaters at the beach.

People are eating filet mignon in lieu of shrimp...

....and reading.

The Cinnamon Peeler

...by Michael Ondaatje. You really might want to read it.

We all have a renewed and substantial hunger.


You could eat 15 bean soup. Acorn squash + olive oil + butter + garlic + salt/pepper. Cranberry scones. Feisty Rooibos chai from Pekoe Sip House (order by phone). Walnut halves in a cast iron skillet + butter + kosher salt. Cauliflower gratin. Roasted beet salad. Risotto with winter squash. Roasted asparagus + parmigiano reggiano with scrambled eggs. Pan seared scallops. Sweet potatoes + sour cream + caramelized onions. Rustic fruit tarts. Toasted marshmallows. The ultimate: David Eyre's Pancake. Look at the photos. You'll need to make this. And then you'll need to make it again.

Into the night

Welcome to the neighborhood. It was an old ragtop flying through this October night.

Vroom.

.

.

.

I've missed you! | Intersections

 

Click, scroll down, look on the right and listen (Listen for free) to :30 clips of The Beatles: Rock Band remastered. What a wonderful thing to have been born at the perfect intersection of the ultimate rock band and Bob Dylan.

Feed your head. — Jefferson Airplane

Time is the longest distance between two places. — Tennessee Williams 

May you stay forever young. —Robert Zimmerman

Meet Colette | The Blue Lantern

Friday, Oct. 18, 1963

Books: Regarde

THE BLUE LANTERN by Colette. 161 pages. Farrar, Straus. $3.95.

The last word uttered by Sidonie Gabrielle Colette on her deathbed in Paris in 1954 was "regarde." To her, it meant to look, feel, wonder, accept, live. For all her 81 years she obeyed that injunction with an immense, daylight sense of reality and a pagan delight in the sensuous experiences that delivered the world to her mind and to the blue note paper on which she recorded it. The Blue Lantern, written between 1946 and 1948 and now translated into English for the first time, is Colette's last major work—a moving but unsentimental record of how it was with a poet of the senses whose senses were failing...

So many eggs to crack

.



.

Sweltering on the Florida Panhandle....

Photo: Fred Sawyer

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it.

—John Berger

Bowl, hairline fracture

I photographed the gardenia for a week as it swam and shrunk and migrated to the far side of the bowl. And then I saw the crack that said I now had only 3 usable, intact iterations of this favorite white vessel. I must have an odd number of everything now. Stemware, silver, linen napkins become gossamer... It's that we keep what we love as it matures and eventually comes undone. We're all bruised and fractured and cracked. It's how we stay interesting.

When the Japanese mend broken objects they aggrandize the

damage by filling the cracks with gold, because they believe

that when something's suffered damage and has a history it

becomes more beautiful.

— Barbara Bloom

On my dentist's advice, I once had a porcelain crown replaced with gold. My dentist told me the gold crown was softer and would last longer. It did. Bend. Don't break.



This flower, not better. Just earlier. Younger. Lying over the crack.

If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.
— Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Too serious?


In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner.
If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's
on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak
with an accent.
— Roman Polanski

True.

-30-

Lace

Origami Bird Takes Flight

Go, little bird!

The simplified form of Bernoulli's equation can be summarized in the following memorable word equation:

static pressure + dynamic pressure = total pressure

Basically, to get a good Cuban cigar—swim or fly. Visit Hemingway's Finca Vigia just outside Havana / Habana. Quickly.