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You may have gotten one in your mailbox or inbox, too. It’s a flier from the United States Postal Service announcing that June 5th through June 11th is National Dog Bite Awareness Week. I had no idea. I assumed every week was National Dog Bite Awareness Week. I was taught early on that you don’t pet a dog without the owner’s permission and then only after letting the pooch smell your hand.
My wife and I agreed that the salmon we bought from Zabar’s in Manhattan and had for dinner Wednesday night was tastier than the salmon we buy locally. There’s not a huge difference between one piece of farm-raised salmon and another – part of that flaky fish’s allure is that it’s predictable, rarely rising far above or falling far below your expectations. But the Zabar’s fish tasted fresher, subtly more flavorful.
I like to think of my first redwood encounters as an amuse bouche. After a few days in Napa we’re heading several hours north to two famous stands of coastal redwoods – The Avenue of the Giants at Redwood State Park and the Grove of the Titans at Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park. As boastful as their names sound, I suspect the trees will more than live up to their billing.
I don’t typically read the labels on products, especially those I’m not planning to digest. But the label splashed across a newly purchased spray bottle of Windex was impossible to miss. “Bottle made of 100% OCEAN BOUND PLASTIC” it read.
Hugh Howard’s new book, “Architects of an American Landscape,” sounds like it would be a work of serious scholarship. Published by Grove Atlantic, it is a work of serious scholarship. But it also felt like a paid vacation, traveling back to the horse and buggy days of the 19th century through the nation’s transformation into a fledgling world power. That was due, in no small part, to the development of the railroad.