How's Your Eye? Ask the Munsell Hue Test

How's your eye for color? Is it as good as you think it is? I found this test on ye olde Internet today and while my eye is pretty good, its not as good as I thought it would be. I got a 12. Being a bit of a color snob, while I didn't expect perfect, I would have liked to have been single digit.

Of course, I'd like to blame it on my computer screen. But honestly-blue/green colors have always been a weird point for me. My exhusband constantly swore that my piece-of-crap car was green and it was as blue as could be to my eyes.

What is this thing? This is an online version of the Farnsworth-Munsell 100Hue Test which is used to separate persons with normal color vision into classes of superior, average and low color discrimination and to measure the zones of color confusion of color defective people. This test has been used in one form or another for over 40 years.

So-take a swing at it and let me know how you do.

Food From a Younger Land- Before the National Highways

I was born in the 70s. The world was already changing like crazy, we went from transistor radios and record players to Walkmen and CD's in a matter of years. From there it was bye-bye glass soda bottles and hello Evian water (which I drank until I realized Evian was "naive" spelled backwards). Diet Coke didn't exist when I was born- which is frankly unthinkable to me.

I remember the days in Jacksonville Beach, FL. when we thought going out for pizza was pretty exotic, and believe it or not I never experienced the wonder that is cilantro until the mid-nineties when I moved to the teeming cultural metropolis that is Atlanta.

So, what am I babbling about? I've been doing a lot of thinking in the last 24 hours. All this brain activity has been started by a book reading I went to last night. Mark Kurlansky, the author of "Salt" and "Cod", has written a fantastic new book called "Food From a Younger Land" that has me thinking about the past, the present and the future of how this country eats.

Kurlansky has uncovered a pot of gold in the form of a long shelved WPA, Federal Writers Project called "America Eats". Originally intended to be a treatise on the traditions and ingredients of American food, the project was abandoned shortly after the beginning of WWII. A number of writers, including Zora Neale Hurston, Eudora Welty, and Nelson Algren, were dispatched all across America to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local people. Once the war broke out, all of their efforts were collected into boxes and stashed at the Library of Congress where they were destined to be forgotten.

Enter Mark Kurlansky. Years of sorting through boxes of writing has brought together a picture of our country when things were simpler. He doesn't make it look like never-never land-he completely acknowledges that it wasn't always easy. Yes-there were good things, but bad as well- racisim, ingredients like possum, and serious issues with poverty and fear.

One of the questions posed after his reading was what he thought about the "local food" movement surging through America. I was really impressed by his response-yes-its great that we're thinking locally. But, if I can get cherries from Mt. Ranier and cranberries from New England completely out of season why should I turn away from them? So True.

I will say this-get this book. It will get you thinking. It will get you cooking. It may even change the way you live.

Quimby the Mouse & The Talented Andrew Bird

Quimby The Mouse from This American Life on Vimeo.

Quimby the Mouse is not very nice, but the magical Andrew Bird is playing his violin in the background, so what's not to like.

Check out the "This American Life" with Ira Glass that this clip was excerpted from last week.

Magical Feat of Engineering - The Millau Bridge

Amazing how in this time when the world seems to get smaller every day that something so phenominal could have slipped past me. I know the Sears Tower has been bought by the British and its name will soon change. I know that Somalian pirates are ravaging the seas like days of olde, and I suspect that I can even find out what Oprah had for dinner last night if I put my mind to it. So imagine my surprise when I discovered today that for nearly four years people have been literaly driving through the clouds in their cars.

Connecting Paris to Barcelona, the Millau Viaduct is part of the new E11 expressway and an absolutely magical feat of modern engineering. At its tallest point it is 787 feet high. It is taller than the Eifel Tower, and spans an impressive 1102 feet, making it the highest bridge in the world. I can only wonder what John A. Roebling would have thought if he was still alive.

One of my favorite trivia factoids about the bridge is that it is not, and could not be straight. It has a slight 20 km curve which apparently remedies the sensation of floating that would be induced if the road was straight. Absolutely fascinating. It also has a light incline of 3% to improve visability and reassure drivers.

This is officially going on the "must experience before death" list which includes things like learning to fly a helicopter, visiting every state in the United States (which I've nearly completed) and to publish a book. Hmm. Maybe someday I'll have to do a blog entry on that interesting little list.

Meanwhile, I'll be dreaming of flying through the clouds from the safety of my own little car. What will man think up next?

A Well-Worn April Story

Not particularly perky Parker prose, but then again, sometimes its just the ticket for a rainy morning. Hands down, this has some of my favorite quotable verse from my favorite writer.

A Well-Worn Story

In April, in April,
My one love came along,
And I ran the slope of my high hill
To follow a thread of song.

His eyes were hard as porphyry
With looking on cruel lands;
His voice went slipping over me
Like terrible silver hands.

Together we trod the secret lane
And walked the muttering town.
I wore my heart like a wet, red stain
On the breast of a velvet gown.

In April, in April,
My love went whistling by,
And I stumbled here to my high hill
Along the way of a lie.

Now what should I do in this place
But sit and count the chimes,
And splash cold water on my face
And spoil a page with rhymes?