Overlap

Reading Thoreau when he's reading Darwin, 1851, is like being in a time-machine. The Galapagos section of Darwin when the concept of species variation was just becoming clear. I get caught in a now/then loop, reading Thoreau reading Darwin, then reading Wallace, then reading Quammen reading Wallace reading Darwin. Late dawn because of overcast, rained most of the night and it's dead quiet. I'm wandering around, with my headlamp on, looking for a book on coral atolls. On a pure coral atoll there are no rocks, but some drift ashore, trapped in the roots of trees. These were special and belonged to the chief, used for sharpening implements. Darwin (I think it was) recounts that natives of some of these islands, taken elsewhere, would collect rocks to take home with them. I was telling JC last night, that I never found a surface rock on the 120 acres in Mississippi. This was after living on the terminal moraine on the Vineyard, where everything was rocks. Even when I dug deep, in Mississippi, like for the corner post of a hog pen, I never hit a rock; here, you go down a couple of feet and you're going to hit a sandstone shelf. Which brings up a nagging question. The Ohio River is a significant drainage, though it mostly exists now as a dredged barge canal, but something happens there. South of the Ohio it's limestone, north, it's sandstone. Why is that? I had a nice eggplant I needed to cook, so I salted the slices for an hour or so, then wiped them and fried them in olive oil. Served with the meatball marinara would be an excellent dish for the restaurant. I've been thinking about the tasting menu: marble sized meatballs served in Brussels sprout cups, a single larger meatball on a perfect volcano of mashed potatoes, fiery meatballs in bitter greens. A ten or twelve course menu, with dessert and wine. I spend a long time running the numbers on this. Pure speculation, a mind game, another house I'll never build, but it entertains me. I could do this with two other people, a helper in the kitchen and a server PR person out front, feeding ten or twelve people, it would have to cost $200 minimum, and we'd have to add a cut for the house, to maintain the infra-structure. I've already designed an extrusion machine that produces small meatballs. My compatriot in the kitchen would need to be very handy with a knife, and the hostess would run the operation. I would never do this, of course, but I enjoy it as a construct. What it would cost, who I'd want to hire, what the dishes might actually be. The alternative is listening to fabricated crap. I've been with people who bought the party line, but like Thoreau, from his high horse, I'd have to say, it's rare that anyone who actually walks in the world, could make such a mistake.