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Art Director Bob Lentz: Always ready to spread his love of food.

The thrill of it all!

1. “Thursday” derives its name from “Thor’s Day,” after the mighty Norse god of thunder. Besides their penchant for violence and pillaging, Vikings were known to partake in some merry feasting. One can imagine Thor himself tearing into an enormous hambone like it was a meat popsicle. Mmm...meat popsicle.
2. Thursday night television introduced viewers to some of the great foodies
   1 Comments on , last added: 6/15/2012
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   D.L. Green said, on 6/15/2012 10:53:00 AM
   

   I love the idea of Thursday lunches out! And I totally want the burgers in the pictures.
   
   Can't say I'm on board with Taco Bell though. Living in Southern CA, with our zillions of great Mexican restaurants, I last ate at Taco Bell about 15 years ago.

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Last year, I encountered the blog of Mrs. Q, a teacher who ate school lunch every day for a year and blogged about it (and worried about being fired.)


Then I read this truly horrifying post about a Happy Meal that has sat in woman's office untouched, for a year. It never rotted or got moldy or smelled, the way you would expect to. In fact, it basically looks the same, one year later.

Something is very wrong with the way many children eat in America.

And now Mrs. Q (who is really Mrs. Wu) has a book out called Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches --And How We Can Change Them!. Here's a radio interview and excerpt about the book

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Got any stories about going to lunch with a stranger?

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Two quick sketches from a lunch/picnic break in the park on Tuesday. I’m chomping on one of my faves, there: Chinese Chicken Salad. Cabbage, lettuce, broccoli, green onions, chicken, cashews… I can eat a huuuge bowl of it. And I did. Yum.

Below: a sketch of Lake St. Louie. The water and sky were both a pale blue-gray.

So today is “Fete National”–A Quebec holiday. Retail and grocery stores are closed and all the towns and villages are having festivals and parties, and in the late evening, fireworks. Woo hoo.

Just for the heck of it, I took pics of one of today’s snacks and lunch. Snack: Crunchy home-made cashew butter on a slice of honey, raisin & hazelnut bread next to a fruit medley consisting of apple, orange and banana segments, topped with blackberries and wild blueberries. Lunch: Lasagna with a side of seasoned and steamed [...]

...and the Cyborg Substitute...and the League of Librarianswritten and illustrated by Jarret J. KrosoczkaAlfred A. Knopf 2009There's evil afoot, and Lunch Lady is there with her trusty hair-netted sidekick Betty to thwart it. Whether its a league of librarians who plan to intercept all the new video game consoles coming in fresh off he boat, or the mild-mannered teacher who created a robot

Sorry about the handwritten notes being tough to read. I was writing while in a moving car. Also, I’ m surprised I left off the word “KETCHUP”. That’s odd as it’s rather dominate. And now I’m hungry.

What are you doing during lunch tomorrow?  If it involves sitting at your desk eating a sandwich consider joining us in Bryant Park.  Oxford University Press has teamed up with the Bryant Park Reading Room to host a FREE discussion of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer led by John R. MacArthur, publisher of Harper’s Magazine and author, most recently, of You Can’t be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America. In the blog post after the break MacArthur introduces us to the relationship between Harper’s and Mark Twain.

So be sure to come to the Bryant Park Reading Room (northern edge of the park), Tuesday, July 21st from 12:30 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. The rain venue (don’t worry we are doing our best no-rain dances) is The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen Building, 20 West 44th Street. Sign up in advance and receive a FREE copy of the Oxford World’s Classic, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (offer is limited while supply lasts).

The histories of Mark Twain, William Dean Howells and Harper’s Magazine are so intimately linked, so important to the fabric of the magazine, that I talk about Twain and Howells around the office as if they were still alive. The other day I told a staff meeting that as long as I was running Harper’s, it would remain a literary magazine that also publishes journalism — not the other way around — because of Howells’s and Twain’s ever-present legacy.

Howells met Twain in 1869, three years after Twain had published his first long narrative in Harper’s, “43 Days in an Open Boat.” As the future literary editor of Harper’s recalled, “At the time of our first meeting…Clemens (as I must call him instead of Mark Twain, which seemed always somehow to mask him from my personal sense) was wearing a sealskin coat, with the fur out, in the satisfaction of a caprice, or the love of strong effect which he was apt to indulge through life.” It’s no coincidence that for our special 150th anniversary issue in 2000, we constructed a cover photo of Twain in his dandy suit facing Tom Wolfe in his dandy suit.

Clemens and Howells became good friends and in 1875 the genius from Hannibal asked Howells to read the manuscript of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. “I am glad to remember that I thoroughly liked The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Howells wrote, “and said so with every possible amplification. Very likely, I also made my suggestions for its improvement; I could not have been a real critic without that; and I have no doubt they were gratefully accepted and, I hope, never acted upon.” Howells was underrating his influence on Twain, who penned over 80 pieces for Harper’s. As a critic and a fine novelist in his own right, Howells was correct — Tom Sawyer is a great American novel. Indeed, not everyone agrees that it’s any less of an achievement than the more widely acclaimed (at least in serious literary circles) Huckleberry Finn. I’m looking forward to talking about the book next week and finding out the answer to a number of questions: for example, precisely how old is Tom Sawyer? I assume the Twain scholars in the audience will enlighten me on this and other matters.

While working on client work, I did a few quick and easy sketches of things/people around me on my computer (using my Wacom tablet and Painter X). This was one of them. Oh, huh. I see a typo in the copy above. Everybody was eating “lunch”, not “luch”. Sheesh.

Lunch a la Boys

During today’s Writing Circle Luncheon, I had two of my students share a piece of writing they did this week that they were pleased with and on which they wanted feedback.  I wanted to see how they were with providing each other feedback (e.g., peer conferring) by paying each other a compliment and by giving [...]

Another common thread amongst many of the artists I know is that not only are they creative in their approach to their environments, but also in their approach to food!

Can I tell you how charming and generous the Richard Jesse Watsons' are?

Not only did they allow us to come meet them and see their home and studio -

-but fed us a luscious lunch with all the gourmet fixings.

(That's one thing our POBL group does well - we sure do enjoy eating well!)

And our leisurely and conversation filled lunch was no exception.

Ro asked: I have a student in my class who is on the spectrum and is extremely reluctant to writing. He doesn’t think anything is important or worth writing about. It’s extremely difficult even getting him to write a few sentences because he is so defiant. My next step is getting him to try writing on [...]

I know it's early, but I want to let everyone know about the Burlington Book Festival coming up next month.  Burlington, VT hosts an incredible book festival each fall, just as the leaves are changing color in New England.  If you live in the Northeast (or even if you don't but you really, really like autumn leaves and books), it's worth the trip.  Most of the events are being held at Waterfront Theater on the shores of Lake Champlain.



I'll be presenting  on Sunday, September 16th at the Children's Literature Festival.  Here's my blurb from the festival website:

11:00 AM-12:00 PM

KATE MESSNER

Join Kate Messner for a trip back in time to the American Revolution on Lake Champlain. Kate will read from her middle grade historical novel Spitfire, set during the Battle of Valcour Island in 1776, sign books and present an interactive multimedia slide show about the real 12-year-old who fought in the battle. Kids will be invited to taste the food and try on the clothes of an 18th century sailor, handle artifact replicas and design their own powder horns to take home.

Waterfront Theatre Black Box, 3rd Floor

Right after my presentation, Linda Urban (lurban) will read from A CROOKED KIND OF PERFECT and talk about the journey of writing and publishing a children's book.  (Even though Linda says it will make her nervous, my kids and I are definitely going to be in the audience!)

Also on tap for the Sunday kids' day... Tracey Campbell Pearson, James Kochalka, Anna Dewdney, Harry Bliss, Jim Arnosky, Barbara Seuling, Marie-Louise Gay, Barbara Lehman, and Warren Kimble.

And the rest of the Book Festival is nothing to scoff at either, with writers like Chris Bohjalian, Howard Frank Mosher, Russell Banks, and Joyce Carol Oates speaking on Saturday, September 15th.  The full schedule is posted at the festival website now. If you're in the area that weekend, please stop by the Children's Literature Festival and say hello!