(from) The Center of Advanced Excellence
It was the day after National Bolognese Day, which I noted in the special notebook I keep for day-after-events, and there was still a lot of chopping to do. I’d learned to love sharp knives in much the same way I love algorithms, and so the onions, carrots, and celery went down without a fight; the garlic however resisted arrest.
No matter. Down in Florida they were announcing the winners of The Ernest Hemingway Look-a-Like Contest. I’d withdrawn a day or two before, knowing the judges were all against me and that I didn’t stand a chance; besides, I’d shaved my beard last week in protest of writers and of writing in general.
I’d taken a stand, I had to take a stand, after all Hemingway had beaten the crap out of poor Wallace Stevens in Key West. It wasn’t a fair fight! Stevens was drunk and almost twenty years older than Hemingway, though he outweighed the prose stylist by a good thirty pounds. Poetry may be the art of compression and Stevens one of our major poets, but one can’t lose sight either of the fact that Hemingway once wrote a novel using only 6-words.
Prose v. poetry? A draw. Tie goes to the runner.
A fellow board member of The Center of Advanced Excellence called this morning to remind me of the upcoming board member retreat, to be held this year at Lake Mead, located in the fine states of Nevada and Arizona. I’m honored to be on the board, I really am, it’s great honor to serve and to be thanked for my service! I don’t know which is better? To serve or to be thanked? Both are equally good, of equal value, I suppose. But I don’t know that I can sit in any more all-day meetings, especially in a room with windows. When it’s nice outside I want to be outside, not in a room with fellow board members, no matter how much we like one another; no matter how much we accomplish, it seems the agenda items keep expanding exponentially until they reach the ‘inflection point’ referred to by Republican and Democratic leadership.
Time to stir the pot, add the pancetta and the ground bison, the bison being an otherwise ‘secret ingredient’.
A group of carrots properly sliced for inclusion in Bolognese sauce. Notice the mandala pattern at the center of each carrot, the product of intelligent design. (Photo by author).