Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Wasted Talent

Their success has become their detriment - she a talented illustrator stopped producing once she married a rich man and walked away from her pallet. He a potentially creative writer, fell by accident into a wildly popular romance novel scene, made a lot of money and stopped writing, rendering him fallow by success.  They both chose to turn off their creative talents. What a shame what a loss. 


She supported herself with her art, working street fairs and sometimes commissions.  It was the only way she could support her daughter on her own. Occasionally she would find a Sugar Daddy to augment her income the price she had to pay to survive.  It helped that she was a beautiful blond with lots of personality. Given the limited financial resources she would scrimp to pay for life drawing classes.  Her skills were remarkable and I think of her every time I look at a drawing I bought from her. But once she married a very wealthy man and didn’t have to work, she never picked up a drawing pencil again.  Never.  Like the creative faucet was completely turned off.

He was a startling handsome young man with a desperate longing to write about his experiences, some of them quite difficult.   On the self publication of his first book middle aged female readers fell madly in love with him, reacting to him like a rock star wherever he went.  At book signings throngs of giggling girls would surround him desperate to have a photo taken with him.  Realizing now his effect on the female buying public he began to crank out a short series of romantic novels.  He was a marketing whiz and knew all the social media tricks to gain a sizable following.  If I saw him on Face Book there were photographs of him always with a v necked t-shirt on to expose his well-developed upper torso while holding one of his books.  He encouraged every reader to write positive review on all his books and even offered prizes.

He made enough money to buy his ideal house on the shores of the Sound, a wood house, outfitted by a professional interior decorator.  He was set.  He then stopped writing. Period. No more books.  Why should he need to write? The sales of the novels in other languages are keeping him financially set.  No need to create.

I checked his Face Book recently.  He is has lost his youthful looks.  He looks like a spent man.  No more stories will come from him, what wasted talent.

Wednesday, July 4, 2018

Eat Your Veggies

“To get in shape!  Eat what you hate”.  Pretty good quote for somebody who doesn’t eat a lot of vegetables. If I were offered only beets, Brussels spouts, kale, fava beans, lima beans, okra, zucchini and black beans, broccoli and cauliflower I would probably lose a lot of weight because I hate all of them and would never consider eating them.  

Well-meaning neighbors used to give me huge zucchini thinking I liked them. I would thank them for their thoughtfulness then dump the obscene things in the compost pile. Actually I do love just the squash blossoms, stuffed with fresh mozzarella, basil and dipped in an egg batter topped with lemon juice but don’t put grown zucchini on my forty-dollar entry plate in a restaurant.  That would tad amount to serving me a worn out shoe sole as a side dish. And don’t come anywhere near me with that slimy okra, bitter tasting southern veggie which might as well be dirt.

My mother used to serve lima beans out of the can, those slightly greenish odd shaped beans, which tasted like newsprint.   Beets are so tannic for my pallet that they taste like left over tea bags, but I have to say that the color of the water they boil in is beautiful. On the other hand I love beet greens one of my favorite vegetables but is hard to find even in farmers’ markets. I don’t like pinto beans or black beans but like refried beans and hummus.  I ate garbanzo beans cooked in the ground once on a hiking trip.  I wouldn’t have eaten them but it was the only thing for dinner supplied by my friend, who was the cook of the day.

What vegetables do I like?  Well I like carrots – raw not cooked, spinach, onions,  avocados, tomatoes, English cucumbers, pea pods, arugula, some lettuces, corn (white only), acorn squash, miners lettuce, cabbage – prefer red, turnip, rutabaga, bell peppers, artichoke, asparagus, horseradish and potatoes.

And there are some vegetables I will tolerate if hidden cleverly by a good cook who adds other flavors to a dish.  My friend Sandra once made a side dish I found delicious and I asked for seconds.  She told me later it had zucchini in it!

I do believe that when I was in India that I must have eaten lots of vegetables that I was unfamiliar with.  And shopping in Uwajimaya’s produce section is always a cultural experience.  There are so many different kinds of unfamiliar options with exotic names like niga-uri, sato-imo, tama-negi and karela.  What an adventure to browse through Uwajimaya’s and try to figure out if something in the aisles are either fruits or vegetables.

Looking over this prompt for today I seem to like more vegetables than I thought I did. Maybe I should take up Asian cooking to provide more things which are “good” for me that might solve my problem.