Always exciting, Charlie found a Tenants Harbor connection to the mosquitoes-must-die works of artist Dennis Asbraugh who, after suffering through dawn’s mosquito welts while watching local lobsterman head out, went back to his TH cottage and built wonderful mosquito killing machines from the beach detritus nearby. Though I can no longer find on his website the tie to dawn’s departing local lobstermen (which I don’t think I made up), I hereby offer Roseledge Books’ front porch as an ongoing local test site for any of his mosquito death traps, especially if he is testing impact of late afternoon, off-shore breezes or relative numbers and nastiness of dawn vs. dusk devils. RB has both breezes and dusk devils. Here’s to more porch time with lots of dead mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes lurking everywhere, sometimes more with food. Yikes. Begone bugs.
The somewhat remote tie to RB comes with the artist’s mention of “idea books,” or books that spurred new thoughts. In Dennis Ashbraugh’s case, these were the books of William Gibson which RB always — well, usually — has at least one of (e.g. Neuromancer). Idea books are hard to identify in advance, especially for someone else, but it is fun to try.
The idea of idea books came to mind when a friend compiling a “rule book” emailed RB looking for models. If RB were the answering email type, the response might have been as follows:
Great “rule book” model is Michael Pollan’s Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, especially the edition with illustrations by Maira Kalman. I love Maira Kalman. She is the reason I ordered the book in hard copy, but I hope it will be out in paperback soon. (Her book, Principles of Uncertainty, was the idea book that spurred this blog.)
The tone or voice of the Pollan book is perfect, as is the length. Both are tricky when dealing with rules for everyone. The Introduction to the illustrated edition of 2011 describes a great way to keep new rules and new editions (and new royalties) coming.
Food Rules organizes sub-rules around the three biggies from the first edition and for which the author is moderately well known:�
Eat food.�
Mostly plants.�
Not too much.
The breezes blow and the water ruffs. The bugs give up. Hooray I say.
In liking the book so much, I am probably projecting, as this would have been a great model for my “50 rules for choosing a source” book which has been a lifetime frame for thinking about things and was going to be my continuously updated device for solving many problems among world’s thinkers or arguers or people who talk to other people. Think about it. Is Wikipedia ever okay to use as a source? When? With Whom? Regarding what?
This verifying an idea is a constant problem for those of us who speculate. As my brother-in-law warily asked when I was proposing that the Irish were here before the Vikings, “?Is that in a book somewhere or did you make it up?” The answer, of course is sort of and sort of. My family keeps me grounded. Well, sort of.
Only some of you have emailed to say you are coming to RB this summer. Too many of you did not come last summer. So keep those possibilities churning. To another emailer, may I say that I have already received my paperback copy of Julia Spencer-Fleming’s One Was A Soldier, and I will enjoy it as soon as I finish another adventure with Reacher (in Lee Child’s The Affair). Both books have more white space and are, therefore, bigger which is not a plus for a one-handed reader with good eyes,
But I digress. And to address your grammatical quibble, both Charlie and the TH connection are exciting. More sooner. I may be on a roll.