Reviews and News:
The bewitching charms of Patience Gray: “As a food writer Patience Gray (1917–2005) merits shelf-space with M.F.K. Fisher, Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson. Fleeing from the dreary predictability of her Home Counties upbringing, Gray became, among other things, the first women’s page editor of the Observer; co-author of a bestselling cookery book (the 1957 Plats du Jour with Primrose Boyd); and, nearly 30 years later, sole author of a classic, the 1986 Honey from a Weed. She was also a jewellery maker; textile designer; student at the LSE, where one of her tutors was Hugh Gaitskell; an intrepid traveller; research assistant to H.F.K. Henrion, one of the designers of the Festival of Britain; something or other in the Foreign Office; a struggling single mother; and the partner (from 1963 until she finally married him in 1994) of the Belgian sculptor Norman Mommens (1922–2000), who worked in marble.”
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James V. Schall on the art of the kitchen: “Another thing about kitchens and cooking is the smells—of coffee, of cookies baking, of chicken frying. In Belloc’s The Four Men, he says that the one thing that babies hear in their cradles and old men hear as they die is the boiling of water in the kitchen. With modern plumbing, we do not have this experience so much, but the smells are still there.”
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There have been 45 fires in San Francisco over two years. “Are the city’s landlords using arson to drive out low-income tenants?”
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A life of Margaret Wise Brown: “One night, she had a detailed dream about saying good night to the things in her childhood room while a giant moon loomed outside her window. Goodnight Moon would be her biggest success, but the postwar years were altogether a highpoint in her career. For the publishing world, the baby boom launched a golden age of picture books for children, and Brown began to think more broadly about what was possible in book design. She created pop-ups, shaped books, and luminous dyes that glowed in the dark—novelties that publishers were eager to market.”
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Why does Joshua Mehigan break his iambic pentameter lines in half?
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Do markets civilize?
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Essay of the Day:
In The Washington Post, Geoff Edgers writes about the slow death of the electric guitar:
“The convention couldn’t sound less rock-and-roll — the National Association of Music Merchants Show. But when the doors open at the Anaheim Convention Center, people stream in to scour rows of Fenders, Les Pauls and the oddball, custom-built creations such as the 5-foot-4-inch mermaid guitar crafted of 15 kinds of wood.
“Standing in the center of the biggest, six-string candy store in the United States, you can almost believe all is well within the guitar world.
“Except if, like George Gruhn, you know better. The 71-year-old Nashville dealer has sold guitars to Eric Clapton, Neil Young, Paul McCartney and Taylor Swift. Walking through NAMM with Gruhn is like shadowing Bill Belichick at the NFL Scouting Combine. There is great love for the product and great skepticism. What others might see as a boom — the seemingly endless line of manufacturers showcasing instruments — Gruhn sees as two trains on a collision course.
“‘There are more makers now than ever before in the history of the instrument, but the market is not growing,’ Gruhn says in a voice that flutters between a groan and a grumble. ‘I’m not all doomsday, but this — this is not sustainable.’”
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Photo: Floating solar panels
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Poem: A.E. Stallings, “Dyeing the Easter Eggs”
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