turkey and lamb

I'm not much of a cook, but somehow I do manage to do well at roasting a turkey. So that will be my job tomorrow, the turkey and the stuffing. Jerry will be doing everything else. I think. Cooking, eating, maybe watching a little football on TV: that's Thanksgiving, I guess. When I was still living back in my hometown, Thanksgiving always also meant going to the Millville/Vineland high-school football game, a major South Jersey tradition. If I were there, I'd go again. Oh well. Hope you all have a nice Thanksgiving... and go, Millville!

I'm still on a kick reading Wally Lamb novels, currently his new one, The Hour I First Believed. It's an accomplishment getting through these long books, but at least I also get some good weight-lifting carrying these things around. Joan and I enjoyed seeing and meeting Wally Lamb last week as part of the "Talking Volumes" series sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio. This was held at the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul, a sell-out crowd of about 800-people, 90% of them women (Remember -- Wally Lamb is sort of an Oprah discovery). He turned out to be fun to listen to, a crowd-pleaser, has a great personality (With novelists, you never know what to expect, personality-wise). His novels take place in New England, mostly Connecticut, generally flashing back to multiple generations of dysfunction. If you have a lot of time on your hands or are a fast reader, I recommend them very much.

crossing paths with oprah

Ever since May, at my first appointment, my naturopath has wanted me to do a 28-day detoxification/cleanse to get all the "toxins" out of my body. He has been good so far, has kept me away from surgery or medication, so I trust him, but the program he recommends is pretty harsh -- no gluten, no dairy, no beef or pork, no eggs, no sugar, no preservatives -- (you get the idea) -- plus taking some powder stuff and capsules every day. So, being the Master Procrastinator that I am, I put it off. I mean, this has to be done during a 28-day period when you're able to have minimal social life. Certainly not during the summer.

Then sometime a couple months ago Oprah Winfrey announced that her newest "diet" was going to be a 21-day detoxification (Why only 21 days, I wonder?). Oprah has her followers, but I tend to be a little leary of the latest Oprah fads. After all, this is the woman who discovered "Dr. Phil". So I wasn't about to start a detox program while she was doing it.

But then Jerry made an appointment with my naturopath, who recommended the detox program for him too. Jerry is not the procrastinator that I am (unfortunately), so we decided to time the 28 days between our birthdays and before Thanksgiving and just do it. We are on Day Four, and all is well. I even set up a new blog covering the pain and cravings of the 28 days -- http://hellish28.blogspot.com. Check it out.

By the way, I'm not sure if this diet is supposed to cause weight loss, but, judging by the picture of Oprah Winfrey in the latest National Enquirer, that didn't happen for her.

(Your next question is, what was a copy of the National Enquirer doing in my house?)

And, reflecting back to my posting on October 8th, I did decide to read a Wally Lamb book, I Know This Much is True, and am enjoying it, 110 pages into it out of 897. 897 pages! A good book to read during 28 days of no social life, even if it is a former selection of the Oprah Book Club!

richard russo

I can't handle watching any more of these so-called debates, "my friends", so I skipped the one last night and went over to the Fitzgerald Theater in downtown St. Paul to see and hear the novelist Richard Russo. As it happens, I have read four of his books this year, and here he was making an interview appearance at the Talking Volumes series sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio. His novels generally take place in small-town upstate New York, with quirky small-town characters and meandering, detailed plots. His best-known book is Empire Falls, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in 2001. The interview last night was interesting: he has a great personality, is very articulate and funny, gave good insights on how his books came to be.

But what was best was being an audience of several hundred people where most of them had read some Russo and were generally well-read. Reading a book is mostly sort of a solitary, intimate experience between reader and writer, and it was fun talking "book chat" to people sitting near me in the audience or standing in the line to get our books signed. Other authors that I've seen and met as part of this series have included Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood. Next month, Wally Lamb, author of She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True, will be there, so I need to decide whether to try to read one of those books before then (The latter has 928 pages -- ouch!)... Have any of you "friends" read either of these?