brick cold

Our apartment is on the top of an old building–a former storage area and a layer that I’m sure wasn’t meant for human habitation. Sure, it has skylights and south, west and east views, but it’s brick cold in the winter and too hot in the summer. When its really windy outside, I’m quaking in my boots . The rest of the building is a proper collection of apartments with thick walls, molding, high ceilings, and a linear bedroom, living-room set-up. Ours is not. It’s labyrinthian, crooked, and chipped–like an old cabin on top of a mountain. This weekend, with below zero temperatures, I realize how acclimated I’ve become to the cold. Our visiting son who was raised on this chill remarked at least 5 times how cold he was. I feel pretty good. Hormones are good heaters. Saturday morning I actually had to make soup so the heat off the stove would throw a little warmth into the air before everyone woke up.

Adapting to the limited ingredients available in the fridge, the chicken broth elixir simmered on the stove.  Leftover aged Chinese-carton-brown-rice hid in the back of the middle shelf, and an old head of escarole (which got chopped and washed) was found in the crisper. Once the broth was done and strained of all bone-veg matter, all available chicken meat was shredded and put aside. The cleaned escarole simmered in the broth for 4 minutes, before the rice and chicken was dumped in to heat though. A bunch of basil on the brink of gone was a last minute addition. This soup was really good, and accompanied me on yet another leg of my bookmaking journey (draft 3 of MH3) which I’ve been scratching away at for at least two years– every available weekend, or afterwork time-chunk, and vacations too. Someday it’ll be over, and I’ll forget how I feel right now. Like childbirth, I swear I’ll never do it again, yet at least two more babies made their way out of me after the first one.

There are a few other non-book related things on my mind. For those of you spurtle-lovers, there is a new style in town (pictured here) coming in May/June. Each is made from a single piece of awesome acacia wood, and will have color-dipped handles. I am totally thrilled about this–been working with them for weeks, and they are passing the audition with flying colors.

Lastly, this week the world lost one of our great journalists David Carr whose Monday media column in the New York Times, was a must-read. Today I turned to the Business section, and found this profound article in the place of his Media Equation column detailing Mr. Carr’s syllabus for his recent Boston University class. He was new to professoring, yet his ideas stand as tall as any I’ve heard. He’s inspired me to strive every day to be a better, more honest and unique writer.

Best, LSQ