Article Archive

"Shakespeare & Company” by Sylvia Beach:  “My father, the Reverend Sylvester Woodbridge Beach, D.D., was a Presbyterian minister who for seventeen years was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in Princeton, New Jersey.”

“Hadley” by Gioia Diliberto:  "Elizabeth Hadley Richardson grew up in the bosom of upper-class St. Louis, a society whose stiff Victorian manners were starting to creak under turn-of-the-century industrialism.”

“The March” by E. L. Doctorow begins “At five in the morning someone banging on the door and shouting, her husband, John, leaping out of bed, grabbing his rifle, and Roscoe at the same time roused from the backhouse, his bare feet pounding Mattie hurriedly pulled on her robe, her mind prepared for the alarm of war, but the heart stricken that it would finally have come, and down the stairs she flew to see through the open door in the lamplight, at the steps of the portico, the two horses, steam rising from their flanks, their heads lifting, their eyes wild, the driver a young darkie with rounded shoulders, showing stolid patience even I this, and the woman standing in her carriage no one but her aunt Letitia Petttibone of McDonough, her elderly face drawn in anguish, her hair a straggled mess, this woman of such fine grooming, this dowager who practically ruled the season in Atlanta standing up in the equipage like some hag of doom, which indeed she would prove to be.”

“First the colors.  Then the humans.  That’s usually how I see things.  Or at least, how I try.”  These are the first lines of “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak.

From “My Life in France” by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme

“At five-forty-five in the morning, Paul and I rousted ourselves from our warm bunk and peered out of the small porthole in our cabin aboard the SS America……….It was Wednesday, November 3, 1948, and we had finally arrived at Le Havre, France”

From “Last Days of Summer” by Steve Kluger

“It’s funny how the years have changed everything about Brooklyn geography”.

“According to his mother; Jack Burns was an actor before he was an actor; but Jack’s most vivid memories of childhood were those moments when he felt compelled to hold his mother’s hand.  He wasn’t acting then.”

“Whatever falls from the sky above, thou shall not curse it.  That includes the rain.”

“The Monsters, Mary Shelley & the Curse of Frankenstein” by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler
“It actually was a dark and stormy night.”

“An Invisible Spectator, A Biography of Paul Bowles” by Christopher Sawyer-Laucanno
“It was unseasonably warm in New York City on the morning of December 30, 1910.”

Eleanor Ostman’s book: “Always on Sunday, Eleanor Ostman’s Best Tested Recipes” begins “During the past three decades, when a Tested Recipes reader urged, “You ought to write a cookbook,” I’d demure.  “Maybe, someday, when I retire…”

“The story of our adventure, our move to Rue Tatin, began some thirteen years earlier, when I first went to live in Paris.”  So writes author Susan Herrmann Loomis in her book “On Rue Tatin”.

“All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths.  Briefly visible above the vapor, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out of ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the winds at its summit.”

“The evening his master died he worked again well after he ended the day for the other adults, his own wife among them, and sent them back with hunger and tiredness to their cabins.”

“When Henry VIII died in January 1547, the most remarkable beings left in the realm were three pale and close-lipped children.  One was his daughter Elizabeth by his second wife Ann Boleyn, another was his son Edward by his third wife Jane Seymour, the third was his great-niece Jane, granddaughter of his sister Mary and eldest child of Lord Henry Grey, Marquess of Dorset.  Elizabeth was fourteen, Edward nine and Jane eleven.”

“It’s been said that sometime between the ages of six and puberty, a boy comes up against an urgent and unavoidable conflict.  His father is the most powerful being on the earth:  bigger, stronger, and smarter than he is in every way.  One day the little boy understands that he’s going to have to defeat this giant, bring him down to human size, so that he can have his own life as a man.  This battle is a normal passage for fathers and sons, but for sons of men who are larger than life, the battle is harder fought and not always won.”

  The First Line...by Suzanne Buchert.  The Painted Drum and One Thousand White Women.

“Leaving the child cemetery with its plain hand-lettered sign and stones carved into the weathered shapes of lambs and angels, I am lost in my thoughts and pause too long where the cemetery road meets the two-lane highway.”  From “The Painted Drum” by Louise Erdrich.

“23 March, 1875.  Today is my birthday, and I have received the sweetest gift of all—freedom!”  From “One Thousand White Women, The Journals of May Dodd” by Jim Fergus

  The First Line...by Suzanne Buchert.  Harvest Moon: A Wisconsin Outdoor Anthology.
 

It is a time, this harvest moon, when those who love the land

Come together and celebrate the gifts Earth has bequeathed them.

And to remember their lives are ephemeral, as the fruits of the field.

Anonymous

  The First Line...by Suzanne Buchert.  The Art of Eating...and Reading!

“To Begin:  There are two kinds of books about eating:  Those that try to imitate Brillat-Savarin’s, and those that try not to.” 

  The First Line...by Suzanne Buchert.  Clinker or not...that is the question this month.

“Everyone in Venice is Acting”, Count Girolamo Marcello told me.  “Everyone plays a role, and the role changes.” From “The City of Falling Angels” by John Berend. 

 “The idea for this book began with a bolt of lightning and a clap of thunder.”  From “Saving Fish From Drowning” by Amy Tan.

 “Fleur took the small roads, the rutted paths through the woods traversing slough edge and heavy underbrush, trackless, unmapped, unknown and always bearing east.”  From “Four Souls” by Louise Erdrich.  

  The First Line...by Suzanne Buchert.  Check out these first lines and then read the reviews...

“When they write my obituary.  Tomorrow.  Or the next day.  It will say, LEO GURSKY IS SURVIVED BY AN APARTMENT FULL OF SHIT.” 

“When I was seventeen I went to live with my great-uncle and great-aunt in England.” 

  Safe Home Farm. CSA Farmer, Robin Timm, explores New Natives for the Perennial Gardens...and shares some Springtime recipes. 

** Congrats to Robin for receiving the BEST Conference award for "Best Ag Innovation" sponsored by Awards for Excellence in Regional Collaboration.**