Kal had had me read the introduction and tulip chapter of Michael Pollan's book before going to Amsterdam, and on their strength I was certainly looking forward to the other parts.
I knew that apples don't grow true to their parents from seeds, but hadn't made the connection that Johnny Appleseed's trees were therefore not yummy eating apples but for cider. Pollan makes a good argument for John Chapman's therefore being America's Dionysus. Another connection I hadn't made was that since apples are all so closely related, being grafted specimens, they have not evolved as have their bacteria and insects, so apple growers apply a lot of poisons to combat these vermin. Excellent. Apples came from Kazakhstan (and still do): it is their center of genetic diversity and might save American trees (all of which come from a wee narrow slice of the apple's possible genetic diversity).
The tulip: the streaking of color that cultivators tried to replicate came from a virus. Cannabis: it's become so potent over the past few decades as a direct result of the drug war (just as Prohibition turned the U.S. from a cider- and beer-drinking country to a gin-swilling one). That much I knew from Eric Schlosser's Reefer Madness.
The last chapter, on potatoes, interested me second only to apples (maybe because I am American first and Irish second). Pollan planted Monsanto's patented, genetically modified NewLeaf potatoes and contemplates the Inca's surviving on a host of different types of potato to suit their array of microclimates versus Ireland's population boom reliant on, and doomed by, exactly one, also cloned, variety.
Tulipomania is interesting but not vital, and cannabis took the author to flights of historical fancy (and fact): the apple and the potato gave me the most food for thought. They were good follow-ups to Bill Bryson's Short History of Nearly Everything, whose last chapters dealt with Earth's genetic diversity and balance.
I biked today for the first time since mid-April. Across an intersection I saw a car with its hazards on. When I got alongside, I asked the driver if she was okay, needed a phone. She was fine, thank you. That's something I wouldn't've done in a car.
At work, Intern had me look up when HBO would show a boxing match (I have to look it up so he doesn't see anything about the bout ahead of time). Somehow this eventually led to his saying about my not watching Oprah, "I thought she had a lock on you guys." Apparently he didn't know that not "all women" watch her show "religiously." I told him I ought to smack him for that. But then I admitted that--had he heard of the time she gave everyone a car? yes?--I did watch that footage online, because that was happifying. And that I had once watched, if not Oprah, a soap opera; but I had an excuse: it was Luke and Laura's perihelion. He hadn't heard of them, but I told him that if in 1978 I could know about Leon Spinks, he would have known about Luke and Laura.
From behind us, Ernie said wonderingly, "Did you just say Leon Spinks?" He was amazed that I knew a boxer. (Hey, "Evander Holyfield" is one of my favorite names!) After we pulled him onto the boxcar of our conversation, the three of us talked about the movie "Ali" and Intern offered that he just saw "Cinderella Man" and current movies led to my other confession, which is that I am going to see "Revenge of the Sith" on Thursday.
So then we all got to complain about the second trilogy, which Ernie hasn't seen any of. I told him that of the two, only the second offers only about 45 seconds near its end that is worth watching, of Yoda getting medieval on Christopher Lee. Ernie of course recognized the "Pulp Fiction" allusion and gratifyingly thought that was pretty funny.
Late last week as I didn't clean the house as much as I had planned to for RDC's return but instead reread trashy novels, I hated myself and the world and was in a really pissy mood. Mid-cycle or because I wasn't regular with my medication while traveling? I wish I knew. Since Friday, though, I have been happy, happy to have RDC home, happy to garden, happy to sit under the cherry tree and read, happy to alphabetize the CDs* onto the shelves of the television shrine while watching a few episodes from Buffy's second season, happy to have inane conversations about boxing and Oprah with my coworkers, happy that someone might mock me knowing Leon Spinks's name but then laugh at my suggestion of Yoda with a pair of pliers and a blowtorch.
Ha! Except later, Kal was debating what to get her parents for their wedding anniversary. What, anything besides a card? I asked, "Is it a big number?" meaning 25 or a number ending in 0. She calculated, "2005, 1968..." and I grinned, because that is an obvious calculation for me, and she continued, "Yeah, 37 is a pretty big number." I chuckled through my grimace, and she tried to dig herself out by saying it's a long time to be married, not a long time to be alive. That's a new downside to a friend so significantly younger than myself, whereas my making myself incomprehensible through dated pop cultural referents is my own fault.
* finishing with the classical, RDC has now stored electronically all our music.