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A disturbing event…

06 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in Crime, Customs, Uncategorized

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Still from the 1948 De Sica film “The Bicycle Thief,” courtesy of filmnight.org

You know how sometimes something happens in the wink of an eye, and you’re left with your mouth hanging open and an endless loop of ‘I should haves’ playing in your brain? That’s what happened to us last evening.

We parked at the train station on the way to a friend’s house for dinner. As we approached the section reserved for parked motor scooters I saw a large man who  looked… well, he just looked suspicious. So I stopped and watched him. He was bent over a very expensive bicycle that was chained to the metal railing of the parking lot, next to some old junky old bikes. As I watched he went snick, snick, the chain, which was very thin, fell away from the bike, and he began to turn. Then he saw me watching.

The man I saw was using a much smaller tool. Photo courtesy superstock.com

“E il mio bici! E il mio!” he said, brandishing his chain cutter. This pegged him immediately as a non-Italian. ‘Bici’ (pronounced bee-chee) is feminine because it’s short for ‘bicicleta,’ a feminine noun.

‘ I bet. E la tua adesso,’ I thought to myself as he hopped on and pedaled off. Speedy hadn’t noticed what was going on and had walked ahead a little, but turned back when he sensed my absence. By now the thief, because surely he was a thief, was pedaling out of the parking lot.

I felt so stupidly helpless. There I was with a camera in my purse, but my hands full of umbrealla and a focaccia in tinfoil. If only I had gotten a photo of the ladro! But I didn’t, and it’s been driving me nuts ever since.

When we arrived at the dinner party we told our hostess and the other guests what had happened. “What should we do?” I asked, “Should we call the police?”

“Eh, beh!” said one friend. “What are the police going to do? When the thieves broke through my wall and stole my safe the police didn’t come for three days, even though I called immediately.” So last night, on advice of all present, we did nothing. Besides, I had an ace up my sleeve.

I knew our friend the policeman would be coming by for a visit this afternoon, so I decided to wait and ask him, which I did. He just shrugged. “It happens every day,” he said. “There’s nothing to do.” So there’s an end to it. I’m not sure I could identify the thief if I saw him; everyone says it’s good I didn’t take his photo as he might have become violent (I disagree, but…). It just doesn’t sit right with me, though.

Putting this together with two other incidents that have occurred since we returned has taken a bit of the shine off our joy at being reunited with Rapallo. The first thing we saw when we got home was that someone had destroyed the facing around the sewer pozetta (box) that Speedy had worked hard at making attractive.

Evidently a very large, heavy something was brought down on the heavy, solid metal cover over the box; it has a big rusty dent in the top. All the facing stones popped out of their cement base from the force of the blow. Well, maybe it was an accident (though honestly, it didn’t look like one).

Then we realized that none of our outdoor lights were functioning. Why not? Probably water got into the lines, we surmised, because it has been exceptionally rainy of late. But no. On further examination today I realized that the light bulbs have been stolen. Three lightbulbs.  How lame is that??!  And note that in order to take them someone had to go to the trouble of unscrewing and removing the glass globes.  We were lucky, I think, that they replaced them – yet more work!

It all got me thinking about how different some things are in the States.  What I sometimes don’t feel so much here is a sense of all of us in a community looking out for each other’s welfare. The police evidently have so much to do that something like a stolen bicycle just doesn’t register on their crime-meters. (I’m not being sarcastic, there’s an enormous amount of crime here it seems, and the police have to jump through hoops to follow correct procedure. Read about it here.) If we don’t look out for our fellow citizens, who will? I was guilty last night for not doing something, anything; the police are guilty for not caring about petty crime; the thieves are guilty for breaking the social contract, and we’re all guilty for looking the other way when we see something wrong.  It’s all  disturbing, and I hate that I’m part of the problem. I’m not in favor of armed vigilantes prowling neighborhoods (ahem), but I certainly think we should all take an interest in looking out for each other.*

Am I crazy?

*Disclaimer.  Having had a good rant, I have to say that our neighbors are very kind about keeping an eye on our house when we’re not at home, and even when we are.  I’m sure they’ve saved us no end of problems with their watchfulness.  Are they the exception that proves the rule?

My Visit to Jamaica!

01 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by in Restaurants, Travel, Uncategorized

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No, not the gorgeous Caribbean island, alas.  Speedy and I made our way to Italy via JFK.  We hadn’t been to that airport in years.  And what did we see when we exited the American Airlines terminal?

What a pleasure it was to see the famous terminal designed by Eero Saarinen and completed in 1962 (it’s been closed since 2001).   Readers who know Speedy personally will know that this was his ‘office’ for many years.  It was rather emotional to see the old sign lit up (TWA ceased operations on Dec. 1, 2001, and its assets were acquired by American Airlines which, in an odd twist of fate, is now in reorganization/ bankruptcy.)

After taking a night flight from Arizona and the bus that deposited us at Federal Circle (JFK’s public transportation hub) at 5 a.m. we wanted to sleep for a few hours, but we wanted to stay close to the airport.  Do you know what you can’t do on any of the automated travel services?  You can’t book a day room!  We were so surprised, and not in a good way, because we wanted to check in at about 6 a.m. and check out again at about 3 p.m.  The only way to do it was to call hotels one by one and request a very late check-in from the night before as well as a late check-out.  Many were not willing to accommodate us – the latest check-out they would allow was 2 p.m. – too early for us, as we needed rest before our evening flight to Europe.

The Sleep Inn in Jamaica came to the rescue.

I’ll be honest with you. Jamaica is not exactly the garden capital of greater New  York City.  In fact, it could be described as rather gritty.  But we had a marvelous time there.

First off, the staff at the Sleep Inn were incredibly helpful and friendly.  They sent a carry-van for us as soon as we arrived at Federal Circle, and the same van carried us to the airport on our own schedule that afternoon.  We awoke from our morning nap starving, so we inquired about nearby restaurants.  There’s nothing 4-star in the vicinity, or probably even 1-star, but we ate a delicious breakfast at the Jamao Restaurant, a joint with true island influence. The proprietress is from Domenica, and in addition to normal American breakfasts, she cooks up and serves a large selection of hearty Latin dishes.  Speedy couldn’t resist- after his breakfast sandwich he had a nice helping of lechon.  He didn’t think it was an appropriate breakfast, but it looked so fantastic he had to have a bit of early lunch.  It didn’t disappoint; it was as flavorful and succulent as it looked.

We took our stroll on streets that are mostly commercial, but there are large residential areas.  Jamaica (which has nothing to do with the Caribbean isle of the same name, other than the fact that lots of people from the island live there) was settled by the Dutch in 1656.  Today it is home to some 200,000 people of widely diverse backgrounds.  The ‘white flight’ that took place in the 1970’s is in the process of reversal as some neighborhoods become ‘gentrified.’ Where did the name come from?  The Lenape tribe gave the area their name for ‘beaver,’ which sounded like ‘Jameco’ to the English colonists who took over in 1664, according to Wikipedia.

Our visit centered on Liberty Avenue, which runs parallel to Jamaica Avenue, the main artery of the city.  Here are some ‘postcards’ from our visit to Jamaica:

The walls of the cement plant are the canvas for a block-long painting of what goes on at a cement plant – very colorful and engaging.

If you need anything at all for your car you can buy it on Liberty Avenue.  We must have seen six different auto parts stores.

And if your car is beyond repair, perhaps it will end up at this patriotic establishment.  Nearby there was a large plant for processing ordinary household recyclables.

If you want to learn to be an automobile mechanic you might want to attend the New York Automotive and Diesel Institute, as this group of young men are doing.  To tell you the truth, they gave us quite a start when we walked by.  One of them said, in what seemed to be an aggressive voice, “Where are you going?!”

Gulp.  “Nowhere,” we replied, “we’re just going back to our hotel.”

“Oh, okay,” he said. “I thought maybe you were lost and needed help.”  Well, isn’t that just like Jamaica?  A class act in work clothes.

As we continued we had the pleasure of meeting Shaheem “The Dream” and one of his pals who were getting ready for a spirited handball practice in Detective Keith L. Williams Park (also known as Liberty Park), home of handball courts, tennis courts, basketball courts and, we suspect, a baseball diamond, though we didn’t see that.

They had organized and were preparing for the Park’s first ever Opposites Tournament, designed for men and women to play together (but the men must use their non-dominant hands).  We spent a pleasant ten minutes learning about Shaheem’s prowess on the handball court, and continued on towards the Sleep Inn to prepare for the next leg of our journey. (That’s Shaheem in back wearing gray sweats, a cross and a huge smile.)

The Sleep Inn’s service did not end with our departure.  One of us left our toiletries kit hanging on the back of the bathroom door.  They are mailing it back to us.

In conclusion, while some might look at Jamaica and think this:

we would have to disagree.  Our visit was short, but it was packed with interest and with people who were kind and helpful.  Anytime people offer unsolicited help and conversation in the space of three blocks, you know you have found a real community.  And where else will you find an existential auto?

So if you find yourself needing a quick night’s sleep near JFK and you don’t want to spend a king’s ransom, we recommend the newly built (2010) Sleep Inn.  The rooms are well-appointed, the staff is superb, and the beds are very comfortable.  No, it’s not a five-star hotel, but the service rivals that which you will find at any other hotel.

Sinagua

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in Arizona, Desert, Hiking in Arizona, Uncategorized

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It means ‘without water’ and if you’ve spent time in the Arizona desert, you know it’s appropriate.  The Sinagua were a group  of Indians who lived in the Verde Valley from about 1000 to 1400 AD or so.  What became of them is a mystery, though one theory is that they left their own pueblos and were absorbed into other tribes, perhaps after a long period of drought.

Photo of National Park Services informational sign.

Tuzigoot,  a fascinating restored Sinagua pueblo, is a National Monument near Sedona, overseen by the National Parks Service . (It’s also a wonderful word and fun to shout at unsuspecting strangers.)  At nearby Sacred Mountain you can see what the remains of Tuzigoot probably looked like before the Civil Works Administration put people to work on the site in the 1930’s.

It takes a lot of work and study to get from that to this:

During the Great Depression there were plenty of people looking for work in the region after the copper mines shut down.  From a work group of eight, the excavation party grew to forty-eight men who learned to be archologists by working this site without previous experience.

Photo of National Park Services informational sign.

Fussy work is women’s work.  The ladies got to take the zillions of pieces of pottery and so forth that were found at the site and piece them together.

Photo of National Park Services informational sign.

The appeal of the Verde Valley to the Indians is obvious – water!

It’s not hard to figure out where the river is.  The Indians lived on hilltops – I assume for security – but irrigated and gardened in the flats below.  More fussy women’s work – carrying water from the river to the pueblos above.  Here’s the path they may have taken at Sacred Mountain.

Not steep-steep, but give me a faucet with running hot and cold any day!

While the Sinagua didn’t read and write by our definitions of those acts, they certainly had a sophisticated method of communication: petroglyphs.  Found all over the southwest they presumably gave information about people, places, hunting, planting – all the important aspects of the Indians’ lives.

V Bar V petroglyphs

The guide at the  V Bar V petroglyph site, adjacent to  Sacred Mountain,  told us that one interpretation of this design is that the ladder shape traced the seasons of the year, culminating in the summer monsoons, depicted as a swirling circle. The sun hits different parts of the ladder at different seasons, so it may have served as a calendar. Maybe. The guide reminded us constantly that we have no way of knowing for sure what any of the petroglyphs mean.

V Bar V petroglyphs

The one above, the guide told us, may represent a woman, with the big circle under her left hand representing the new baby.  The oddly-shaped head may be showing hair coils, a feminine rather than masculine style.  On the other hand, our host returned to the site a couple of weeks later and filed this report: ” A week or so ago I went back tot he V Bar V with a friend from A. High School who was here on vacation with her family.  The fellow who was explaining the petroglyphs told a different story about he figure you included in your blog.  In his version, the figure is a shaman. The circle figure is a demon.  Just to the right of the shaman is a crack in the rock which the guide explained as being the entrance to the underworld.  He explained the story as the shaman sending the demon down into the underworld.  As he said, “Ask me any question.  If I don’t’ know the answer, I’ve gotten pretty good at making something up.””

 

Photo courtesy of JBH

This rock is fascinating.  Each afternoon the sun strikes the forward carved piece, placing a shadow on the rock behind; the shadow has the exact configuration of the nearby San Francesco Peaks – it’s a map! This photo was taken by our friend and host JBH.

About fifty Sinagua pueblo sites have been identified in the Verde Valley region, an area that encompasses the National Park sites of Montezuma Castle and Montezuma Well. (By the way, Montezuma wasn’t born until a century after the Sinagua left, and as far as anyone knows he never lived in the eponymous castle or drank from the well.)  One wonders how many other sites there may be awaiting discovery. I’m already looking forward to exploring again next year!

All’s Well That Ends Well… We Hope (Guest Post by Speedy)

15 Sunday Apr 2012

Posted by in Birds in the U.S., Uncategorized

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An apprehension had been growing in us since last weekend.  We went north, close to Sedona,  for a very pleasant visit with old Connecticut friends.  We had left eleven Gambel’s Quail eggs behind in the flower pot on our deck, four more than what we had initially discovered.  But!  We returned to discover that a twelfth egg had arrived. 

Our relief was short-lived.  Not only did no more eggs arrive in the following days, but we didn’t see anyone who might qualify as Mother Quail anywhere near the nest.  We would check each day; that was about the only activity we had on the deck.  Both of us seemed naturally to avoid that area, leaving it as a quiet spot that might induce the start of the incubation process.  But, alas!, nary a favorable sign appeared. 

By last Friday, our edginess was growing.  Again, seeking the counsel of the East Valley Wildlife Center, I learned of the Arizona Covey Project.  I left a message with them and they called back in the afternoon.  Ms Jeannie’s advice was to wait another day and see if mom appeared.  She didn’t . . . . 

But, this weekend, the eighth of this winter’s Pacific cold fronts came through, making for a very chilly (for here) and windy Saturday.  Ms. Jeannie opined that if the mother were going to appear, she would do so under these harsh conditions.  In the alternative, should she not arrive and if it got hot enough for some consecutive days (we’ve already had temperatures in the low 90’s), the eggs could self-incubate, leaving the tiny chicks with no parental guidance.  Bad thought, disturbing thought. 

So, yesterday afternoon we delicately placed the lovely eggs in a small plastic tissue-filled flower pot and took ourselves to the Arizona Covey Project in North Phoenix. 

Quite the place!  There were caged birds of many kinds everywhere.  There was also a wall of incubators that looked disturbingly like small ovens to me.  

But, having trust in someone who clearly devotes her life to the rescue of birds (while we were there a call came in concerning a possible pelican rescue!  Someone see a sea around here?), we left our eggs to her care. 

Now when I say there were many kinds of birds there I ain’t whistling Dixie–they ran the gamut from  sparrows to ducklings.

Finches and others

Curve Billed Thrasher

An albino quail!

To give an idea of the scope of what goes on, their brochure states that they receive between 500 and 1,000 Gambel’s Quail chicks a year! 

This is the educator quail. He goes to schools with Ms. Jeannie to teach the children about his species.

That is only one of the species that reside there.  I was particularly gratified to examine a cage that contained 4 mature Peach-faced Love Birds, the same colorful, exotic creatures that flit around our Painted Mountain golf course in East Mesa. 

What’s next?  We asked Ms Jeannie if we could check in via email from Italy, to which spot we are now free to return, for progress reports.  That was fine with her.

Bird rehabilitator Ms. Jeannie

We Bought a Basil Plant, We Got Birds – Guest Post by Speedy

05 Thursday Apr 2012

Posted by in Animals in the U.S., Birds in the U.S., Uncategorized

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Along about mid-December, during a relatively warm spell, we got optimistic and bought a basil plant to keep outdoors.  It was all downhill from there.  The weather not only slowly changed but this winter, most unusually, we had  six Pacific cold fronts come through.  We’ve had weather, including temperatures below freezing, thunderstorms with hail, and high winds.  There were very warm spells in between but it was all too much for our little basil plant.

We planted it  in a large, deep terra cotta pot, along with some mixed flowers–which did very well indeed.  This pot is about three feet from the sliding glass door that gives entry to the kitchen from our deck.  The basil withered and slowly disappeared.  But, lo!, it disappeared not only from the dwindles but because in its spot arose a number of huge Swiss Chard leaves which took over the whole back half of the pot.  Well, cool, we love Swiss Chard.  In fact, your regular author bought a nice bundle of same yesterday and then went out to harvest the enormous leaves (that had clearly come from seeds in the basil cup) to make up a nice mess of greens to go with our fried cod.

She found she could not bring herself to do so.  Under the shade of the chard, in an ingeniously arranged bowl in the earth, she found seven Gambel’s quail eggs.  Now, why in the world would a quail select a flower pot, just a few feet from our kitchen, as her nesting spot?  Hummmmmmm. It might make sense.  The coyotes use the field next to us as their primary market of delicacies, among which have to be the scores of quail that live there.  We hear their howls during the middle of the night. Smart mother Quail!  Her nest is in a fenced courtyard!

From that moment until now, there has been no sighting of mother quail, even at 3 AM when I got up to check.  But, wait!   Fern told me that there were seven eggs.  I found nine this morning.  There were ten at midday and a check just now showed eleven eggs.  Something very fishy is in the works.

Seeking knowledge, that I did not readily find on the Internet, I telephoned the East Valley Wildlife Center, to which I was referred by the Arizona Humane Society.

All OK!  The rig is that a Gambel’s hen does not sit and incubate her eggs until they are all laid–usually about fifteen of them.  Only then is it time to get to the sedentary part–with help yet.  Dad does his duty and sits as well.  The incubation period is 21-23 days.  And when they hatch, the chicks, after drying off for a short while, are ready to march off, under the watchful eyes of the proud parents.

We may have to delay our return to Italy.  The suspense of not knowing the results of this extraordinary act of creation would be more than we could handle.


Yes, you counted correctly.  We’re up to twelve.  Stay tuned…

Not Your Nana’s Quilt

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Arizona, Arts and crafts, Photographs, Uncategorized

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Rooster Blues by Deobrah Osborne

I don’t know about you, but when I think of a quilt I think of a very cozy bedcover, perhaps blocks of colored fabric stitched together and then attached to a bottom with some fluffy  filling between.  I think of cups of hot chocolate and snuggling on cold nights. I think of a bed.  I think wrong.

Havasu Stitchers Truck Quilt, 2003

A couple of weeks ago my friend Mrs. S, about whom you’ve read in these pages, and her friend M invited me to accompany them to a quilt show.  Not just any show, this was the annual exhibit of the Arizona Quilters Guild, this year titled “Our Heritage 2012: Copper, Cotton and Culture.”  I learned more about quilting and quilters in one day than I had in my entire previous life; and I learned that what I learned  is but a drop in the bucket of what there is to know.

My notion that quilting was a crafty sometimes occupation, something to while away a snowy afternoon, for instance, was laid to rest in the parking lot, before we ever went into the show itself.


These ladies are serious; and yes, they are mostly ladies.  I did see one gentleman at the exhibit:

My gut instinct is that he was not a quilter himself.

Anyway, the exhibit took up several very large rooms of the Mesa Convention Center.  Three hundred and twenty quilts were exhibited in seventeen different categories and thirty-five vendors were eager to sell  us  items from  $  .10 to $10,000.  Actually I didn’t see anything for $.10, but there must have been something.  A short length of thread, perhaps.

In my innocent universe, quilts are made by people with some leftover fabric, batting for the filling, and a needle and thread.  In essence this is still true, but of the quilts we saw, only thirty-seven were hand-quilted.  Most quilting is done by machine these days, either by an item that looks like a home sewing machine and will sit comfortably on your home work-table , or by what’s called a long-arm machine, which will set you back a minimum of $7,000 and requires  about fifteen feet of arm room:

These computer-driven machines can take a particular quilting stitch design and scale it up or down to fit the specific quilt’s spacing, and they can do quilting that would give the hand-quilter nightmares.

Look at the density of stitches in this close-up:

Jerome I by Margot McDonnell

The hand-quilted pieces look different; to my eye they are gentler and softer, a bit plumper.  But the quilting is every bit as complex and dense as some of the machine work.  The difference is how long it takes to do it by hand – several years compared to several days or weeks.  Here are two quilts that are hand-stitched:

Opus Tulipa: Consummatum est, Deo Gratia! (Tulip Opus: It's Finished, Thank God!) by Maggie Keller

The World is More than Just Black and White, by Julianne Dodds

This one took Julianne Dodds more than four years to make.  I’m surprised it took less than forty.

So much more than mere stitchery goes into making a quilt.  Each begins with the design or concept which will dictate the fabric chosen.  Nowadays quilts are not cloth alone; buttons, sequins and all manner of things are added.

Cedar Forest by Trudy Cowan

Trudy Cowan used applique, thread painting, free-motion lacework, fabric-wrapped wire, heat-melted felt and fusibles to create her Cedar Forest. (I can’t even tell you what some of those things are!)

There were two ‘challenges’ that really illustrated for me the amount of creativity that goes into modern quilt-making.  One challenge was called Quilting  Makes the Quilt; entrants had to make the same quilt from the same fabric. The creativity came only through how they quilted it.

American Eagle, by Amy Monahan

Can you see the eagle in the center of the quilt above?

Quilting Makes the Quilt - Susie, by Susie Seckel

They look quite different, considering they’re made from the same cloth and are pieced into the same design.

In another challenge, which I particularly liked, the quilters were given the same fabric and could make whatever they wished.  Here are a few of the results:

Venus Fly Traps by Janet Grant

Life is a Beach, by Fran Pritzl

O, Peacock Brilliant, by Lynnita Knoch

Hard to imagine curling up with a cup of tea and a good mystery with this last one, but isn’t it fun??!

There were so many quilts I fell in love with, I can’t possibly show them all to you.  There were four that especially caught my imagination, though.    The first I liked because the sentiment is so dear.  Danielle Mariani transferred photographs and hand-written messages from paper to fabric (the magic of technology!) and pieced a memory quilt for her father’s 60th birthday.

Linda Marley used a bunch of her son’s old tee-shirts to make him an amusing  quilt:

His Early Years by Linda Marley

I loved the tranquility of the egret, and the way the colors moved from one to another. There are also some other fun pond animals to be found in the details here.

Sanctuary by Dennie Sullivan

Arizona celebrated her centennial this year, and this did not go unnoticed by the state’s quilters, many of whom paid tribute to the youngest continental state in the union.

Arizona Valentine by Vicki Bohnhoff

This amusing quilt features Betty Boop driving across the Arizona map.  There are quilted flaps that lift up with information about the location underneath.

All Roads Lead to a Quilt Show, by Alicia French

There are some more photos of quilts in this web-album (but I promise, all three hundred and twenty are not there).

The exhibit opened my eyes to modern quilt-making – it is definitely not what it used to be.  It also made me realize that I will never, ever, in a million years have the patience to be any kind of quilter. My non-quilted hat is off to the ladies who are.

My Big Fat Diet

19 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Eating out in Arizona, Food, Shopping, Uncategorized

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Sculpture by Fernando Botero

Any of you out there NOT go on a diet every now and then?  What is your ‘tipping point,’ that moment when needing to lose a few pounds outweighs the substantial joys of eating and drinking?

For me it’s my undies.  When they’re too tight, I know something must be done.  I turn a deaf ear when my outer clothes complain.  I hear them saying, “Help us!  We can’t stand the pressure!  We’re going to explode!” and it affects me not one whit.  But when my undies don’t fit, it just flat out makes me sad.  And I know that the moment has arrived to log in to MyPlate and start counting calories.  Bah.

That moment arrived last week, but I had to postpone the inevitable thanks to a houseguest who likes to eat and drink as much as we do; to  be honest, I didn’t mind a bit.  There was much tippling, much merriment, and way, way too much to eat.

Then a shocking thing happened:  my car died, the car that has carried me faithfully wherever I wished to go for 17+ years.  It was very upsetting.  The repair bill would have been sizable, and the mechanic opined there would be more big repairs in the not-too-distant future, so… time for a new car.

Not my car, but the same color as mine and almost as much dust as mine usually wears. Photo courtesy of it.wikipedia.org.

Except, of course, we don’t buy new cars; we buy used cars,  which, let me tell you, is a lot more work than strolling into a dealership and ordering up a brand new vehicle.  No!  This isn’t a digression – not this time.  It has bearing on the subject at hand.

Wednesday, which was the day I meant to start my big fat diet, was our first day of car-hunting, and it involved eating out here:

Root beer stand in a previous life?

Speedy thought his burrito was just as good as the ones he gets at our favorite Mexican Food haunt, Los Favoritos.  I had my usual as well, chiles rellenos – but they (there were two instead of my usual one) came with a huge side order of rice and an even huger side of refried beans, and lots and lots of soupy tomato sauce. I scarfed down both chiles and most of the beans.  Speedy finished the beans and we brought home the rice for later use.  If you find yourself on  East Main Street in Mesa give this appealing dive a try; the food was good and the service prompt and charming.  That was Day One of MBFD, right out the window.

I fared no better on Day Two, which was the day we narrowed our search down to two iterations of the same car.  One was way up in north Phoenix, more than an hour’s drive away.  The second was closer by in Mesa.  We had lunch that day at a newish Thai place   that we’ve been eyeing, not far from where we play golf.  It goes by the entrancing name of 5 R Cha which, it turns out, means 5 horses in Thai. ( Have you noticed that there’s a definite Horsey theme to this non-diet so far?)  Here’s my plate – another diet day down the tubes.

Reader, I ate it all.

Day Three of MBFD was hectic as we had to drive all the way back up to north Phoenix to buy the car we liked, a four-year-old Nissan Versa.  While purchasing a car goes pretty smoothly and quickly here, it still takes several hours what with all the paper work that must be done.  We had an important high-stakes golf game at 2 p.m., and didn’t have time for a sit-down lunch.  Instead we got sandwiches at Sclotzsky’s.  There are several of this chain around the Valley, and if you have never had one of their sandwiches, I recommend that you try one.  Delicious!  Perfectly toasted seedy bun holding turkey and perfectly ripe avocados: yum.  But, washed down with a coke, hardly a dieter’s delight.

Day Four of MBFD was recovery from all the driving and stress of the past few days (yes, buying a used car is stressful, even if you have the good fortune to fall into the hands of an honest salesman at an honest dealership – thank you, Scott).  What better way to get over battle fatigue than by eating an enormous Arizona steak, thick and juicy?  And what better accompaniment for that steak than a 2-pound baked potato swimming in melted butter?  I believe a small salad made an appearance as well.

So, today when I got on the scales for the first time in a couple of weeks I discovered why my undies were complaining.  Between the bon vivant guest and car-shopping I managed to put on 5 pounds.  Really.  5 R Bad.  So today, in spite of baking both cookies and bread, I stuck to the MyPlate regimen.  I’m hoping I lost all 5 pounds today so I can go back to my wicked ways tomorrow. But my undies say it isn’t so.

Two of My Favorite Things: Bookstores and Food

12 Monday Mar 2012

Posted by in Arizona, Books, Food, Restaurants, Uncategorized

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Our friend Mrs. H. recently found a terrific website about restaurants near the stops of the Phoenix Light Rail system.  David Bickford writes generously, entertainingly and cogently about the various eateries, reviewing both food and general ambiance.

While Mam was still here Mrs. H. had the brilliant idea of reading up on some of the stops of the rail and then making a lunchtime field trip. I liked this idea a lot as it combined two activities I really like: riding the light rail, and eating.  Bickford indexes his reviews by restaurant type and by location, so Mam and I spent considerable time poring over the restaurants from the Sycamore Street station to Mill and the ASU campus.

Logo courtesy of Yelp.com

It was our considered opinion that we should visit the MedFresh Grill on Mill Street, because it is the only Turkish restaurant in the Valley, according to both Bickford and the proprietors of the eatery.  Three falafal and chicken kabab plates later we knew we had made the right choice.  It was delicious food, freshly prepared and humbly served.  The falafals were crispy-crisp on the outside, tender on the inside and hot. What I remember most vividly is the very creamy garlic sauce on the side of my plate – it was mostly smushed garlic, but somehow it was made creamy, perhaps by the addition of… cream?  some kind of light, fresh cheese?

Before settling in to overeat we strolled down and then back up Mill Street, the commercial street at the heart of the ASU campus.  There you can find the usual assortment of collegy stores – headshops, music shops, outfitters, and so forth. But you also find what is becoming rarer and rarer these days: a bookstore!

Old Town Books (the proprietors of which can be seen in the top photo above) has been in this location for about twenty years, and outlived Borders, the mega-bookstore that used to be down the street (now Urban Outfitters).  Mrs. H. noticed a copy of a very important book on golf that Speedy didn’t have yet; I was able to pick it up for $4, and he swears it has added 20 yards to his drive!  Mrs. H. found a lovely book of photographs of houses along the James River.  Oddly enough, Mam had grown up along that very river, and was able to tell Mrs. H. odd scraps of news about some of the homes pictured.

So.  Independent Booksellers.  What are the odds they’ll survive?  My guess is the odds are good, at least for the foreseeable future.  Many of them sell both new and used books, sometimes side by side, as in this bookstore that we visited on our way home.

Some serve niche subjects, religion or mysteries, for example.   All are owned and/or operated by people who are passionate about books and who seem always to have the time to interrupt whatever they’re doing and talk about them.

Amazon and Googlebooks are challenging the big box bookstores such as Borders (now in bankruptcy) and Barnes and Noble (rumored to be for sale).  But the smaller indies have stock that is not always readily available online, and have devoted patrons who want to keep their neighborhood bookstores afloat.  The Book-Buyer’s Guide to New, Used and Antiquarian Bookstores in the Phoenix Valley lists no fewer than 36 stores.  Some are open by chance or by appointment (Machine Age); some have large staffs and come close to looking like a big box store (Changing Hands).

Then there are the hybrids, the stores we access online but which seem to be independents.  You can find them at thriftbooks.com (free shipping!) or abebooks.com.  Both sites list the book I bought Speedy for pretty much what I paid for it.  The thriftbooks site is more forgiving of bad spelling (is it Pinnick or Penick??) than abebooks.  And of course all the local indies have web-sites, though they don’t list all their book stock.

The bottom line?  There’s nothing more pleasurable then setting out to find some good food and coming across a good bookstore at the same time.  And if you go to your local bookstore rather than sitting at home with your computer  you may well have an adventure.  We did (we always do when we ride the Light Rail).  We met a well-groomed and neatly turned out woman carrying a cat in a handsome carrier.  I engaged her in conversation about her pet, a gleaming black puss with yellow eyes.

“He’s a leopard,” she told me.

“Really?!” I replied, thinking surely she meant ‘panther.’

We bantered back and forth, me asking questions and she answering them. By  the time we parted I had learned that she had found her kitty in the desert, the runt of a litter, and that scientists had dumped the kittens out in the desert after creating them by hybridizing a leopard with a schnauser, a pig and some other animal none of us can remember!   To say we were amazed to learn about this scientific accomplishment is an understatement.  We will never have such an animal because they cost $10,000 if you buy them, if you can find them.  Our new friend counted herself extremely lucky to have found hers in the wild.

But I digress, as usual.  Bookstores and restaurants – you’re almost sure to be entertained and satisfied if you visit ones you’ve never been to before.  Just watch out for the panthers.

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia