People come up to me on the subway and say, hey Mister Anchovy, you post this Daily Dose business all the time but I never hear any Hip Hop. What gives? I’d just like to say that I like all kinds of folk music. Here’s the Ukulele Girls performing Gangsta’s Paradise….
In the last few days, an alarming number internet surfers have landed on my blog after searching for information on edible mushrooms in Southern Ontario. I would like to ease the troubled minds of these individuals right now. There are no edible mushrooms outside of grocery stores in Southern Ontario. None. Zero. Nada. Zip. Don’t even bother going out for a look. You won’t find any. Let me spell it out. Southern Ontario is a terrible place to go mushroom hunting. Ever since the edible mushroom blight of 2006, all edible mushrooms in Southern Ontario have either disappeared entirely or have been seen hitch-hiking to Quebec. As I mentioned in an earlier post back in the spring, Eastern Ontario and Quebec are both excellent places. I’ve heard North-West Ontario and Manitoba have their moments too. Here in Southern Ontario, though, I wouldn’t bother even trying if I were you.
I should also take a moment to remind you, gentle readers, that there are many species of deadly poisonous mushrooms in Southern Ontario. Many of those can be confused for the tasty edible kind. I don’t recommend you eat any mushrooms you pick from a Southern Ontario forest. The best thing to do if you pick some and you are not 100% certain what you have, is to give them to me. I’m willing to take one for the team and eat the ones I think are edible.
Finally, a special note to the guy who keeps doing searches for “King Bolete Map Southern Ontario” and “Porcini map Southern Ontario” and “edible mushroom hotspots Southern Ontario”, I love your faith in your fellow humans, your confidence that if there were king boletes in Southern Ontario (there are NO EDIBLE MUSHROOMS IN SOUTHERN ONTARIO outside of grocery stores), someone would draw you a map to them.
For years I avoided reading Mordecai Richler’s books. I can’t tell you why because there is no reason. I wish I understood it. I simply failed to read them. I knew he was a significant author. I knew I was missing out. I knew I knew I knew but still I ignored them. And then a few months ago, I read Solomon Gursky was Here. Wow, what a great book. I should have gulped that one down years ago. Now I’m starting Barney’s Version. I missed the film and now I’m glad I did because I want to read the book first.
Are there books you’ve simply avoided reading, or books you intend to read but just haven’t got around to tackling? I’m a reasonably well-read guy I suppose, although compared to a few of my friends, not so much. There are many books in my intend to read pile and maybe eventually I’ll get to them. I’d like to see your lists of books you’ve been meaning to get to.
I finished reading this book last night and posted the following review this morning on goodreads.
The Accident is one of those plot-driven mystery-thriller type books, a variation on the whodunnit. I should make a note on ratings here as I’m fairly new to goodreads. I notice that some readers have applied ratings of 4 and 5 stars to this book but in my little brain, there are likely only a small number of books in this genre that would compel me to click past the 3 star rating. I enjoyed reading The Accident well enough, but I don’t think it’s the top of the genre, so I rated it as two stars, or “OK”.
Prior to reading this book, I read The Fool’s Progress by Edward Abbey and that gives me a little perspective on ratings. Like it or hate it, The Fool’s Progress is a book with a lot of scope. It’s a big book, and don’t mean thick. It tackles the big themes and it gives the reader a lot to chew on. From there I plowed right into The Accident and was happy enough to spend a little time indulging in some lighter stuff, and I knew what I was getting into.
The Accident is all about the story, the plot. Mr. Barclay has given most of the characters in the book some secrets, all key to the final unraveling of the storyline. It’s clever that way, if unlikely. Central to the book is the idea that when nice suburban Americans get involved with selling knock-off purses, it leads to all kinds of other bad things because they spiral into the world of organized crime. Faced with owing a pile of money to a nasty-assed gangster, one character, the wife of a policeman, even dabbles in S&M prostitution for a little cash. The author is pretty good at building plot structure and has created a page-turner, no doubt about that. I stayed up late last night to finish it and I had to see how it all came out. To his credit, I failed to guess many of the carefully crafted and layered plot twists.
I found myself confused though, by the narrative structure of this book. Part of it was in the voice of the main character, who is trying to figure out what really happened to cause the death of his wife. Other chapters are in some other third person voice that fills in gaps and describes events the main narrator can’t see (but only select events). The first three chapters, for instance, are in the first person. Then comes chapter four, which takes place in the absence of the first narrator. Is this the first person voice telling the story after the fact based on information gathered later? Not quite. There is dialogue and this voice seems to know what other characters are thinking. I think I would be more satisfied if the author chose a single narrative approach and stuck to it.
One of the problems with books that are all about plot is that they seem to forget to develop both the depth and the voices of the characters. I finished the book last night but can only tell you enough details of the characters to understand what happened. I’m particularly disappointed with the voice of the eight year old daughter Kelly, who just doesn’t sound like an eight year old. I felt I didn’t have a chance to get to know the characters and to understand their motivations beyond the obvious and what was needed to piece together the storyline. It was hard to care what happened to any of them.
If you want to enjoy a quick read with some enjoyable and clever plot twists, maybe this is the book for you. Sometimes a little page-turning plot-driven distraction is just what the doctor ordered. Next time I’m looking for a little of that, I might pick up another book by this popular author. For my next book though, I think I’ll look for something with a little more meat and potatoes.
Today’s Daily Dose comes from Louisiana. Interesting intro by Johnny. I couldn’t even name 28 instruments (much less play them)….but here’s Doug Kershaw..
Since we’re in Louisiana, let’s listen to the most awesome Aldus Roger and the Lafayette Playboys performing the Hick’s Wagon Wheel Special
Finally, here’s Clifton Chenier and the Louisiana Ramblers – Put your dancin shoes on ’cause it’s pretty fast…Tighten up Zydeco
I know you’ve been waiting for it….a uke version of The Girl from Ipanema….yes, it’s that bossa nova uke head-cold groove.
Regular programming will resume when I once again feel like a human being.
OK OK, a bonus cut…..here’s Anarchy in the UK for uke….
I’ve got a cold. Don’t worry though, gentle readers. I’ll try not to be grumpy about it.
After all the rain, I expected to collect buckets of tasty edible wild mushrooms today. Arriving at my first spot, I discovered to my dismay that the local bureaucrats had declared the only reasonable access to the forest to be NO PARKING. On the other side of the forest, a housing development has sprouted up and the only way in from that side appears to be through some guy’s backyard. Damn.
Off to spot number 2. Spot number 2 is an “on the way” spot. I almost always find some good edible mushrooms in this forest, but I rarely find a lot of them. Today I quickly collected over a dozen fresh, clean beautiful Hypomyces lactifluorum (lobster mushrooms) then walked deeper into the woods to a place that often offers up a few chanterelles. Nature hasn’t coughed up many chanterelles this season, or last season either for that matter. Here it is the middle of August already and I hadn’t collected a single chanterelle. Today, finally I found one…..but just one. Usually when you find a chanterelle, there are others close by but not this time. This spot is also my most reliable spot for hedgehogs, but I didn’t find even one of those.
At spot 3 I was disappointed to discover that some other mushroom hound had been in picking before me, perhaps yesterday. I know this because I found some boletes sitting on a stump, picked then rejected. I would have rejected them too. They were quite bug-eaten and for sure past their expiry date. This spot is often very generous, but today, nada. I tried two other spots that are normally really good for lobsters and again, nada. The conditions were good. The forest were nicely wet, but no mushrooms. It’s a good thing I stopped by the “on the way” spot. Thanks to that, I have enough mushrooms for several meals.
Cotula potentillina is a perennial alpine groundcover. I added one plant to the garden, tucked in beside the new path. We’ll see how it does next year.
We have two varieties of Rudbeckias in the canoe garden. One is the Little Goldstar, which is supposed to be an improved perennial Black-Eyed Susans variety and looks like your basic Black-Eyed Susan. The other is the Prairie-Glow Brown-Eyed Susan. It is touted as a plant that freely self-seeds but at the same time is a “short-lived perennial. We like them because they’re tall with loads of small flowers. We’ll see if they’re around next season or not.
27th Street 