Sumac Gall

I'd never noticed a gall on a sumac before, so I stopped and looked at it. Interesting fruit of nature, irregular, slightly smaller than a golf ball, pale green with highlights of yellow. Of course I had to take the damned thing home and dissect it. Sumac leaves are bi-laterally symmetrical but where the gall occurred it filled the space where a leaf might have been, and the opposing leaf was dying. I didn't know what that was about, and I've been interested in galls generally, as they have been, for centuries, used in making ink, and the history of printing, in all its elements, has been an interest of mine for decades. Gall ink is beginning to fail, simply lifting off the page, and I'd been reading about that, the conservation nightmare it has become. As I suspected, the missing leaf had become a tightly wrapped covering for some insect pupae. I don't know what bug. Where does the skin or shell come from? The oozy liquid, as is usual with galls, was sweet (of course I tasted it, a teeny taste of anything will seldom kill you), and it actually looked like something I might cook: sumac galls with cream sauce. It would be kind of like Brussels sprouts, speaking of which, I got a package the other day, in the remaindered produce bin, cleaned them, halved them, nuked them for a couple of minutes, then broke the clustered leaves apart as I finished them in butter. They were very good. They hold pan drippings very well. Any conveyance when it comes to drippings. I like cabbage, call me a radical. The grandmother of a CIA agent I once knew (and published, he translated Gaelic) made a great pasta sauce with Brussels sprouts. She was so Italian, she refused to speak English, thought that hamburgers presaged the heat-death of the universe. She might well be correct. The noise level outside escalates. The mewling indicates a cat. I finally open the back door and sling-shot a couple of marbles, a satisfying yelp, and whatever they are, they scamper off into the woods. I don't feel particularly good about running them off, but it's nice to get back to the bug chorus, even though it reminds of Philip Glass. The Cello Suites are playing, Edgar Meyer, my favorite version of my favorite music, I have to turn off the lights and weep. This music, I think, teeters into the sublime. An exercise indeed. When Pablo found Mary's copy of Bach's masterpiece, he was just looking for something to play. Mary has a beautiful hand. His copy is probably the secular holy grail. The bidding starts at 150 million. Listen, Cory bought me a beer, I didn't know she was you sister-in-law.