One If By Land, Two If By Sea...

The world is too much with us.

How's that? Two poetry citations before the blogging begins? Wait. I'll come back to them.

I haven't posted for several days.

Why?

Simple.

I have nothing much to say.

How is that possible? So much information. The Brits have let the Lockerbie bomber go. The Taliban have picked new leaders. Dick Cheney says that we're not safe. The Eagles signed Michael Vick. H1N1. K-Fed took the kids to the zoo. There's just so much going on.

And of course, that's the problem. There's SO much stuff going on, so much to know. But how much do we REALLY know? Nothing, really. We are AWARE of so very much, but we haven't digested any of it. We haven't reflected on any of it. The stuff just lies there on the tops of our brains until it's swept away by new stuff. I mean, really. If we had two seconds to think about it, would anyone outside of an Alzheimer's unit spend more than two minutes with Jon and Kate?

My response has not been to cut myself off from the world. Au contraire. I read the Wall Street Journal and cruise Huffington Post daily. I watch cable news and listen to NPR. But I don't feel the need to react immediately. Because that's what I would be doing. Reacting. And when you react, the other guy has set the agenda.

I let things simmer, sink in.

If the world was too much with William Wordsworth in 1802, what would he think about the world today?

And would Longfellow have been inspired to write anything at all if Paul Revere had a Twitter page?

Comments

RESTAURANT TEN, UZES: RESTAURANT REVIEW

Ten sits just off the market square in Uzes, one of the prettiest villages in southern France. The newly renovated space is airy and comfortable with tables of sufficient size and sufficiently spaced to provide for a pleasant dining experience. Service was cheerful, fully bilingual, and attentive without being overbearing. The food presented well to both eye and tongue. And the rate of approximately 30 € per person for a party of five included starters, mains, a dessert or two, two bottles of local wine, and coffees at the finish. Reasonable if not cheap eats. So why am I hesitant to give an unqualified thumbs up? It took me a while to figure it out. Uzes is a quintessentially French village in a quintessentially French region of southern France. There are those who will say that the Languedoc is just as beautiful but less crowded and less expensive than its eastern neighbors. I know. I'm one of those people. But the fact remains that for many people, villages like Uzes are t

Kreuz Market vs. Smitty’s Market: Texas Barbecue in Lockhart

I was born and raised in New Jersey. I didn’t taste Texas barbecue until I was twenty-two years old. What the hell do I know about barbecue? And what could I add to the millions of words that have been written on the subject? Well, I know a bit about food. I’ve managed to check out a few of the finer joints in Texas – Sonny Bryan’s Smokehouse in Dallas, Joe Cotton’s in Robstown before the fire, the dear departed Williams Smokehouse in Houston, and the incomparable New Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Huntsville . So I can speak from a reasonably wide experience. This will not be a comprehensive discussion of the relative merits of Texas barbecue as opposed to the fare available in places like Memphis or the Carolinas. It’s simply a take on our recent visits to Lockhart and the relative merits of Smitty’s versus Kreuz from our point of view. I’ll get all over academic in a later post. On our way out to the ranch in Crystal City, we stopped at Smitty’s. You have to look

CHÉ OLIVE / LE ZINC, CREISSAN: RESTAURANT REVIEW

No, it's not Chez Olive. It is indeed Ché complete with red star and black beret. I have no idea why and I wasn't about to ask. The French are the French and not to be analyzed too closely when it comes to politics, especially these days. Creissan is the next town over from our village of Quarante. We pass through it often and Ché Olive is right there on the main road at the entrance to town. (One of the signs still says Le Zinc. Olive says he prefers Ché Olive though.) Olive opened it a couple of years ago after leaving the Bar 40, Quarante's basic local watering hole that's undergone a bit of a renaissance lately. We hadn't heard much about Ché Olive from our usual sources for dining recommendations. So we just kept passing by. For reasons not central to this review, we decided to stop in for lunch on a mid-week in late December. The bar is cozy, the restaurant open and bright and modern. Newly renovated and perhaps a bit sterile. We were the f

France, Food, Scooters and More

Search This Blog