Today was my last day at the Tahoe City farmers market. Peaches the size of melons, arugula you can smell from 100 feet away, plus all those varieties of plums I've never heard of. I tried to take a picture with everything showing--near the handle, there's a huge heirloom tomato with a bunch of little Black Cherry tomatoes (they look like they're dipped in milk chocolate)--but sadly, you can't see them. You also can't see the picture I took of Lulu sniffing the arugula, lured by a piece of grass-fed beef jerkey tucked inside the leaves. I forgot to put the memory stick in the camera.

What I'd like to write an article about: how farmers markets are helping farmers stay in business. One of them had a bumper sticker that said, "Support your local farmer or watch the houses grow." Exactly.

Gack, this thing has no spell check?   ¶ 10:14 AM 2 comments

  When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Richard Halliburton's Book of Marvels. It had a section for Wonders of the New World (which included the Golden Gate bridge, something I'd been driven over many times) and Wonders of the Old World, which included (I think) The Hanging Gardens of Babylon and Queen Zenobia's desert city. The old wonders made me mad with desire and probably changed forever what I thought I'd be and see in the world.

So it just made sense to pick this as the title for my blog. In my writing life--which is a big part of my life, since I pick away at writing so slowly and allow for so many maddening diversions--I often feel I'm compiling my own Book of Marvels, both fiction and nonfiction. I thought I'd write here about the things that fascinate me-- and these are almost always the things I might want to write about or am writing about.

So there. The first post.  ¶ 9:21 PM 4 comments