August 2010
Honeymaker Commits Grand Larceny
There is honey that says in a squeaky little mousey voice, "I'm syrupy sweet, therefore I'm honey." Then there is honey that says, in the sultry deep sonorous tones of a Luther Vandross, "Listen, brother. Lemme show you what real honey tastes like." Marshall's Farm Honey, in a little out of the way spot on the road to Napa Valley, is the second kind of honey.
Their natural style—they have other kinds—is raw and unfiltered. When it crystalizes you can spoon it out of the jar and it's almost like soft honey candy. You warm it up and it spreads on, gracing whatever it's on.
We discovered Marshall's earlier this summer when, on a birthday splurge, we treated ourselves to a dinner for two at Ad Hoc, the latest outpost in Thomas Keller's culinary empire. After the spare ribs came the cheese course, with candied walnuts and Marshall's, which is made not that far from our home. Actually no, they don't "make" honey there. When we stopped by their farm one of their people told us, "No, we don't make it. We steal it from the bees." Such grand wondrous larceny!
World's Best Magazine for Boys
Boys' Life: the best magazine for boys, bar none. Their target audience is boys, not just Boy Scouts or Cub Scouts, and they hit it out of the park. It's got jokes, it's got adventure (all done by boys, teenage and younger), it's got fiction, it's got gear, it's got machines, it's got science, it's got animals and the outdoors, and a boy doesn't even have to look at a screen to read it. My sons read it and enjoy it and get a lot from it (as do I), and they're not scouts, they're just fightin', rasslin', burpin', arm-fartin', won't-make-their-bed-no-matter-how-many-times-we-tell-'em, whinin', complainin', rambunctious, sometimes-miss-the-pot-when-they're-peein' boys. And hurrah for that!
Express Your Inner Road Warrior at Oceano Dunes
When people think about driving on the beach, they usually think of someplace like Daytona Beach, but not California. No, never in environmentally polite California. Actually there is a spot in the Golden State, Oceano Dunes, where you can bring your beast right down to the surf. And here's the kicker: It's a state park. Well, actually in bureaucrat-speak it's a "state vehicular recreational area," just south of Pismo Beach east of 101. It's wild. These big firebreathing trucks pulling these monster mobile homes large enough to give shelter to three or four super-sized families are coming down the beach towards you as your tires are spinning in the soft sand and you're thinking maybe you're going to get stuck or spin out right in front of the other vehicles, and the waves are breaking and the water is licking your tires and the wind is whipping. Go there to express your inner road warrior.
As Good as Sex—Well, Almost
As I write this I am drinking a Lagunitas IPA, and reading the label on the front of the bottle. In small print around the edge it says,"Thanks for choosing to spend the next few minutes with this special homicidally hoppy ale. Savor the moment as the raging hop character engages the qualities of the malt foundation in mortal combat on the battlefield of your palette!" And here I thought I was just having a beer.
On the bottom of the six-pack carton-on the bottom!-there is still more writing. It reads, "In this life, there are only a couple of things better than opening up a fresh box of hops. One is drinking the beer it later becomes and the other one isn't. You know what the other one is..." I do. At least I think I do. Lagunitas IPA. As good as sex. Well, that might be pushing it a little. Still, it's a tasty brew that can muscle up with the big-boy regional and national brands and more than hold its own. And it just might be at a neighborhood cold case near you.
A Writer With the Right Stuff
Deep into airplane literature these days, I am now reading The Right Stuff, a book that has—dare I say it?—the right stuff. Reading it makes me appreciate, anew, its author. I'm not as keen about Wolfe's later, fictional phase—Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full—but I worship his earlier, groundbreaking, positively transcendant nonfiction phase: The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline, Baby, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, From Bauhaus to Our House, and the remarkable people, places and things of The Right Stuff:
"Somehow Yeager [left] was like the big daddy of the skies over the dome of the world. There were even other pilots with enough Pilot Ego to believe that they were actually better than this drawliin' hot dog. But no one would contest the fact that as of that time, the 1950s, Chuck Yeager was at the top of the pyramind, number one among all the True Brothers."
"His wife was a brunette named Glennis, whom he had met in California while he was in training, and she was such a number, so striking, he had the inscription 'Glamorous Glennis' written on the nose of his P-51 in Europe and, just a few weeks back, on the X-1 itself."
"The X-1 had gone through 'the sonic wall' without so much as a bump. As the speed topped out at Mach 1.05, Yeager had the sensation of shooting straight through the top of the sky. The sky turned a deep purple and all at once the stars and the moon came out—and the sun shone at the same time. He was going faster than any man in history, and it was almost silent up here, and he was so high in such a vast space that there was no sensation of motion. It would take him seven minutes to glide back down and land at Muroc. He spent the time doing victory rolls and wing over wing acrobatics while Rogers Lake and the High Sierras spun around below."
Note to subscribers: In the next week or two I will be trying out a new concept for this blog, so you may get more postings from me than usual. Let me know what you think.
No Fear of Flying
August 8, 2010. Faithful readers of this column may have noticed that it has been missing of late. I have no excuses except to say that I will try to do better in the future. In any case, "Na furrie sana ku wanana na wewe." That is Swahili for "I am very happy to see you again."
No, I have not been studying Swahili while I have been away (from this blog); I lifted this translation from a beautiful book I'm reading, West with the Night. The writer, Beryl Markham (whom you see here, on the cover), grew up in Kenya and became in the 1930s an African bush pilot. Also, an extraordinary writer. Thoroughly recommended for those who wish to read a memoir and real-life adventure story from an earlier time
I am reading lots about pilots and airplanes because I just pitched a proposal for a book about California aviation and flying. God knows if it will sell or not. Early signs are promising; I remain hopeful despite a shipwrecked economy and being in a business—writing or, as it is known today, "content'—that is being completely transformed by the Internet. It is the greatest time in the history of the world to be involved in publishing—that is, unless you're looking to make money. Oh well. No complaints. When I became a writer I took a voluntary oath of poverty, and I remain true to this vow.
On the subject of flying, I took a field trip the other day to Hiller Aviation Museum at the San Carlos Airport, and it is also thoroughly recommended for a glimpse into aviation past and present. They have a Boeing 747 on display where you can go into the cockpit and see the incredible array of switches, dials and gauges that the pilot, co-pilot and navigator had to monitor in order to fly the plane. By the way, the people you see here are of no relation to me; my boys, being large sticks in the mud that day, stayed home.
Next is a prototype of what is called "a flying platform," which was devised by an engineer at one of the helicopter companies owned by the late Stanley Hiller, Jr., the founder and namesake of the museum. Hiller was the first person to fly a helicopter in the West, in the early 1940s, and is considered a modern genius of vertical flight. The flying platform (its original concept was called "Flying Shoes") is one of his company's wilder ideas; only six were ever made. But, powered by technology that if I lived another lifetime I would never understand, it did actually get airborne.
Finally, there is this—part of a tribute to the Nelson Aircraft Company of Livermore, whose contributions to modern aviation were, in the museum's words, "enormous." Nelson Aircraft made lightweight, dependable engines that were especially important for experimental aircraft, such as the Flying Platform which used a Nelson two-cycle engine for its power plant. And so why do I, ahem, call attention to Nelson? Did you know that a Nelson—Thomas Nelson, Jr., of Virginia—was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence? Aren't you glad this blog is back?
