End of A California Day

California's Almond Buzz

My father had a sweet tooth, and sometimes he’d bring home a bag of candy bars from our neighborhood's corner store. Mounds and Almond Joys were our favorites, those luscious chocolate-covered masses of creamy coconut, one topped with two crunchy almonds. At the time, they were still in the hands of the original company, Peter Paul, a name I used to think sounded like it had been lifted from a book of nursery rhymes. Unless they were covered with chocolate or sprinkled on a piece of French pastry, I never gave almonds much thought until Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer and the Healthy Eating pages of newspapers and magazines began to warn me that I should. And so, I learned that the almonds are a virtual nutrition powerhouse, rich with protein and other good things, packed with healthy benefits such as lowering cholesterol and reducing the risk of heart attacks. Yes, I know I should eat more almonds, but when unadorned, they taste rather bland, and a bag of almonds, bought to put on salads, sits forlorn and unforgotten on my kitchen shelf. I fear the salted, flavored variety due to my demonstrated inability to stop at “just a few.” Although I may not be a noticeable consumer of almonds, the rest of the world is. According to last Sunday’s Los Angeles Times, 80 percent of the world’s almond supply comes from California, amounting to a nearly $3-billion-a-year almond industry. Projections for this year call for a record crop expected to yield 1.9 billion pounds of nuts, seventy percent of which will go overseas.

The top five consumers of California almonds are China, Spain, Germany, India and United Arab Emirates. There is one hitch, however—due to “a mysterious malady known as colony collapse disorder,” there are not enough honeybees in California to pollinate the almond blossoms during February’s vital four-week bloom period. The LA Times explains: “So each year...hundreds of beekeepers from around the country converge on California’s almond farms with their hives in tow . . . it’s the largest such pollination effort on Earth: 1.6 million hives buzzing with 48 million bees across a cultivation area the size of Rhode Island.” Shown here is the almond vendor at the Leukadia Farmer’s Market; the next time I’m at the market, I will take more than her picture; I’ll sample a few of her wares and go home with a package of roasted almonds. Lime and Sea Salt, Chipotle “spicy,” Mexican Chocolate, Honey Cinnamon. They all sound delicious and hard to stop at a few. For more ways than you can imagine, or, perhaps, ever want, to add almonds to your snacks and meals, click here.

Books for a Rainy Afternoon

I am happy to see that the Sunday Book Review in the Los Angeles Times—unlike its big sister in New York—provides readers of its print edition an old-school version of a Bestsellers list. Clear. Uncluttered. One column. User-friendly link to the paper’s book review. Pithy summaries. Not an e-book readership mentioned. Rankings are based on chain results and a weekly poll of 150 Southland (LA-speak for its metro area) bookstores. Of the seven books below, five were on the February 12, 2012 list. The Times’s no-frills plot summaries are shown in quotes.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes “A middle-aged retiree reevaluates his mediocre existence.” Winner of the 2011 Mann Booker prize, this short novel is best absorbed in one sitting; its meaning and power to lead one to self-appraisal, best discussed, chewed over and debated in a book group comprised of fellow septuagenarians. A stunning book that has been Number 2 on the LA Times Fictions bestseller list for the past 15 weeks. As soon as it appears in paperback, I plan to buy a copy. It’s a book that demands to be re-read.

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides “A love triangle among Ivy League graduates.” This old English major loved this book—how can its title not evoke Austen or Eliot and the courtships and marital missteps of their leading ladies—and that is precisely Eugenides’s point in this, his first novel since Middlesex, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner. Of the two works, I found Middlesex to be the more complicated and ambitious, an opinion that appears to be shared by a sizable number of Amazon reader-reviewers.

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson “A portrait of the late visionary as revealed by those in his inner circle.” A terrific, fast-paced, entertaining biography I’d recommend to anyone. I was particularly moved by the role Jobs’s father, Paul, played in setting high standards and a strong sense of enterprise for his adopted son.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach “The nature of relationships that revolve around a gifted college baseball player.” An article in Vanity Fair that described this debut novel’s arduous journey from first draft to publication, and later, rave reviews in the New York Times lured me. I read about 80 pages, and stopped; my interest unsustainable for 448 more pages. If I ever see it at a used book sale, I’ll give it another try, or wait for his second novel to come out.

In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson “Complex ties between the U.S. ambassador’s family and the Nazi elite in 1930s Berlin.” I tired to resist this book when I saw it on the new bookshelf at Smith, but couldn’t. Larson, author of mega-hit The Devil in the White City may be, in my opinion, a dreary prose stylist, but, he certainly has a knack for finding topics that both illuminate little-noticed chapters of history and seduce us with his novelistic approach.


The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell A long, sad farewell to our old friend, Swedish detective Kurt Wallander; a book I truly did not want to see end. A must read for all the Wallander mystery fans out there.

Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga When a shifty Mumbai real estate developer waves fat buyouts to a long-time community of apartment dwellers, a retired teacher refuses to budge, pitting him against the furor of neighbors eager to move on and the ruthless crowbars of gentrification. It’s a wonderful novel, a vivid portrait of old and new Mumbai, thick with the most interesting cast of characters I’ve met in a long time between two book covers. Also recommend: Adiga’s two earlier works: The White Tiger, winner of the 2008 Mann Booker Prize, and Between Assassinations, a collection of short stories.

Mr. and Mrs. Kinney, Updated

The other day, as part of my neighborhood history project, I was online studying the 1880 and 1900 U.S.Census records of households on North Street. Charles W. Kinney, a prominent marble dealer, moved to North in 1888, from 17 Summer Street, the house which was the subject of my chapbook, and my family home for twenty-seven years. Kinney and his wife, Harriet, bought the modest 1872 cottage on Summer in 1880, from the subdivision developers Lewis Warner and Lucien Dawson. I titled the chapter chronicling the Kinneys’ years on Summer:”Starter House,” a nod to the couple’s decision to “move up” and build a far grander house on North.

After the book was published, I experienced lingering pangs of remorse that I had not investigated the couple more thoroughly in census and town records. After looking at marriage records and the 1880 U.S. Census, I know now “Starter House” was indeed an appropriate title. Charles Kinney, age 34, and Harriet “Hattie” Anable Lambert, age 28, were married in 1880, the year they bought the house,. It was the second marriage for both. Charles’s first wife, Eva Collins—a name I have a vague recollection of coming across in my original research—was from Springfield; the couple married in 1873 when she 20. By the spring of 1879, young Eva Kinney was dead, having wasted away from tuberculosis. The 1880 U.S. Census for Charles W. Kinney reveals previously unknown, and surprising, details about the composition of the Kinney household on Summer Street. There were two children living in the house—Hattie’s seven-year olds sons, Lewis and Harold, from her first marriage—and an Irish servant, 14-year-old Kate A. Meagher. Kate surely was the first and last live-in servant to reside at 17 Summer. For a picture of the Kinney house on North Street, click here, to the post: “Me and Mr. Kinney.”

Farmer's Market, California Style

At a Candidates’ Forum last fall, I filled out a lengthy survey that a Northampton committee was circulating to learn the food-shopping practices of local residents and their allegiance to buying local and eating organic. Where did we shop? Why this particular store? How often? Do we cook dinners from scratch? How many a week? How important was buying local? Organic? When asked how often I shop at one of the farmer’s markets in Northampton, I wrote: “Got out of the habit.”

For years, I attended the Saturday market on Gothic Street, and, when I remembered, the Wednesday one in Florence. Bumping into friends and neighbors, greeting the same vendors week after week, carrying home the season’s first crop of spinach or strawberries or field greens—when I lived on Summer, a short walk from Gothic, this was my early Saturday morning habit. And then, one day, routines shift: You retire, money gets tighter and schedules looser; you sell your house, lose your garden (and need to buy plants) and move, to a street not much farther from Gothic, but lugging produce home on foot seems a burden and driving to buy a single bag of spinach, silly. Shopping at farm stands—Golonka’s in West Whatley, the place on Bridge Road opposite St. Mary’s Cemetery, Atkins for apples—becomes the retiree’s preferred, and spontaneous, diversion.

My husband and I are spending our third winter in Solana Beach, a small beach community of 12,000 in San Diego County. There are some fifty neighborhood farmer’s markets in the county, and, they can be found nearly every day of the week year-round. Across the street from our apartment is a regional store called Sprouts (formerly named Henry’s), known for the abundance, variety—and low cost—of its fresh fruit and vegetables. We’re in there nearly every day. Nevertheless, California has re-fired my farmer’s market habit. On Sundays, Mike and I often drive north to Leukadia Farmer’s Market, a big, hugely popular market sprawled on the grounds of an elementary school. Founded by a group of English Spiritualists in the 1870s, Leukadia is the funky section of Encinitas, and a throwback to the California of old when the 101 was new, the big ranches and farms and flower fields unbroken, and trailer parks squatted along the highway. The market captures the laid-back vibe of North County. It has food stands selling a smorgasbord of tasty freshly prepared fare, coffee and smoothies and bread and buns for sale, an ethnic and social mix of buyers and vendors, a playground for the kids, and the school’s lunch tables and big grassy lawn for plopping down, hanging out, and eating al fresco. Northampton can't top that.

Super Sunday, 3:30 pm PST

Temperature around 70 degrees. Cloudless blue sky. Cardiff-by-the-Sea beach, emptied out.

“How often do we tell our life story? How often do we adjust, embellish, make sly cuts? And the longer life goes on, the fewer are those around to challenge our account, to remind us that our life is not our life, merely the story we have told about our life. Told to others, but—mainly—to ourselves.”  

— Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

Not Quite Like Home

Thirty years ago, when I was living in Newport Beach, I stepped into my first Trader Joe’s. At the time, Trader Joe’s was a small upstart regional chain, and shopping at its no-frills store in nearby Costa Mesa soon became a cheap form of recreation for my family.

Clerks in Hawaiian shirts. Cans and packages with odd names, shelves stocked with groovy food, some of which I had never heard of. Cases of wine in wooden boxes. A flyer called Insider’s Report filled with chatty anecdotes on global economic trends affecting the price of brown rice or cocoa beans and tales of savvy buyers tirelessly combing world markets, farms and wineries for bargains to bring home for their hip customers. This was not my Stop and Shop in Northampton or remotely like the old Food Coop on Market Street. This place had personality. This place was California. Yesterday, I was in Encinitas on what I dub my ”Route Nine in Hadley” shopping run—Target and Trader Joe’s. But, in my California TJ’s, you’ll find Two Buck Chuck, plants and flowers for sale outside, doors wide open, and my little Toyota wedged in between a Lexus and a Mercedes.

Minutes Away, Until April

High Tide at San Elijo

Amtrak Surfliner along Cardiff-by-the-Sea beach

Saturday morning at Encinitas

Painting the Town . . .

Long Time, No Word

When I arrived in San Diego two weeks ago, for another three-month respite from winter, I vowed that I would pay more attention to Three Houses Up. I abandoned the blog on a gorgeous October day in the hill towns of western Mass, to take up a more seductive literary relationship, this time with a cast of eighteenth and nineteenth characters at Forbes Library and Historic Northampton.

  I started Three Houses Up nearly four years ago, to provide a postscript to my chapbook A House. A Street. A City. The Story of 17 Summer Street, and a place to park my writing and pictures. After a career as the nameless writer of ads and publications, Lu Stone was attached to words. California has taken me away from the research I’ve been doing in Northampton on the development of two of the city’s oldest streets, North and Market.  I plan, however, to post articles related to the research, a warm up, in a way, to the book which I hope will take shape and become a sequel to 17 Summer Street. Shown here, 1853 map of my neighborhood.

October Saturday—Ashfield and Shelburne Falls