523. Plants That Kill

BROWDERBOOKS

Recently my e-mails were hacked; people received requests that they buy me a gift card.  Fortunately, those who know me weren't fooled.  When several friends phoned to inform me of the hacking, I immediately changed my e-mail password and informed scores of people on my e-mail list of the scam.  The scammer was clumsy, knew nothing about me, was vague and unconvincing in his approach.  (Scammers can be very convincing, but not this one.)

As if that weren't enough, changing my password somehow blocked all incoming e-mails and most spams as well.   A long session by phone with an AOL rep finally resolved the issue by discovering and deleting two filters that were blocking the incoming e-mails.  How those filters were activated I will never grasp.

Meanwhile Hurricane Henri hit and sent water dripping through the roof into my bedroom.  I caught the water as best I could in pans, but damage was done.  The dripping ended only when the rain did, and so  far as I know, the leaks have yet to be patched.  And heavy rain is predicted at intervals over the weekend.

Did all this fuss affect the e-book sale of New Yorkers: A Feisty People? at $0.99?  I hope not.  The sale still ends this Sunday night, when the price goes back to $3.99.  

Well, it hasn't been dull.  But now I'm ready for some dullness.  Quite a lot of it, in fact.

                    PLANTS  THAT  KILL

Plants that kill have always fascinated me.  I’ll cite three that I have known.

Poison hemlock

 

 

 

Here in the city, up in Van Cortlandt Park, near a huge sycamore tree at least three-feet thick that towers high above it, hemlock grows, its cluster of little white flowers above the fernlike leaves.  This is Poison hemlock, Conium maculatum, whose juice did Socrates in. As Plato tells it, Socrates, condemned to death for “corrupting the youth” of Athens, drank the juice, felt a numbness overcoming him, and died peacefully.  

But anyone contemplating suicide and hoping for just such a death should reconsider.  Those who confuse the plant with wild parsley and eat it die a horrible death with convulsions.  How does one tell it from similar nonpoisonous species?  The Latin word maculatum, “spotted,” is a clue.  The purple-spotted, grooved green stems identify it as poison hemlock.  A further warning: if bruised, it emits an unpleasant smell.  So for God’s sake, keep away.  This quiet little plant of the parsley family means trouble.

Common milkweed

 

 

 

A stout, downy plant that loves dry, sun-bathed fields, where I have seen it in batches.  In July it blooms: domed clusters of little flowers, their fragrance intoxicating, their color ranging from dusty rose to dull brownish purple.  If bruised, the stem bleeds a milky juice, hence the name “milkweed.”  

The cloyingly sweet aroma of the flowers lures insects to deep pools of nectar past sticky pollen that is a death trap for bees.  I have seen bees squirming, tugging, writhing, doomed to be eaten by spiders or yellow jacket wasps unless, with deft strokes of a twig, I free them and send them on their pollinating way.  I always do this, having a soft spot in my heart for honey bees.

In autumn milkweed's warty brown seedpods appear.  Splitting open, they reveal tight-packed rows of seeds, hundreds of them, like a medieval painting's angelic chorus glorifying God.  I love to pluck them out, silken and fluffy, and toss them in the breeze, where they drift like legions of tiny parachutes whitening the sky.

Fragrant, delicately hued, with a charming display of drifting seeds:  such is milkweed.  But a death trap for bees.  And all parts of the plant are poisonous, if eaten.  They can cause nausea and diarrhea, and if heartily consumed, even death.  Luckily, milkweed resembles no similar plant that is edible, so few foragers are tempted to gather it.

Destroying angel

Amanita virosa, one of the deadliest mushrooms known.  I have seen it in the woods on Monhegan Island, Maine, where I often vacationed: a mushroom with a classic mushroom shape, quite lovely in its simplicity, white against the forest floor or dark trunks of trees.  It is often confused with edible mushrooms by those who don’t know the characteristics of the Amanita family: fragments of a universal veil on the cap (sometimes missing); a ring or annulus on the stem (remains of a partial veil); and an enlarged base.  If, when hunting for mushrooms, you encounter something with these characteristics, if you value your life, keep away.  And when the mushrooms first come out of the ground, completely enclosed in their universal veil, they could be confused with edible puffballs, another error that could cost you your life.

Amanita poisoning is insidious.  At first one experiences no symptoms.  Then, after six hours or more, there is nausea, cramps, and diarrhea.  Next, these symptoms disappear and for two or three days the victims think themselves healed.  But since the liver and kidneys have been severely damaged, rapid deterioration follows, and after three to seven days, death.  Death is rare if the victim seeks treatment promptly, but a delay can be fatal.

Nature charms, nature inspires, nature kills.  Beauty and danger cohabit.  Beauty is bonded with death.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

522. Weird: Weird People, Weird Facts.

                

               BROWDERBOOKS

I have vowed to keep my posts short.  So let’s have a quick look at my nonfiction title New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You, the third work in my #Wild New York series of books about New York and New Yorkers, then and now.  It combines memoir, history, and travel lore, so what can a reader expect?  Just about anything, and much of it weird.

• A look at the great blizzard of 1888, when the snowfall was so deep that, on the following day, people who went out were walking over the tops of trees.
• An imaginary walk along the docks, circa 1870, with glimpses of sugar refineries twelve stories high, and under the docks, a shadowy forest of pilings where harbor thieves stashed their stolen goods.
• Taxi drivers who may be gypsies, Basques, Tibetans, or Sherpas from Nepal.
• Gentle fun, hot fun, and weird fun (and I do mean weird).
• How people die in New York (that can be really weird).
• Booze, and why Prohibition has never worked in New York, and never will.
• How Fifth Avenue went from goats to grandeur.
• And oh yes, my affair with a Broadway chorus boy, to show that if the Cardinal Archbishop of New York could do it, so could I.

A fun book, but with serious moments.  Weird, fascinating facts to surprise visitors and residents alike.  

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

521. Whoopee Time in America

                      BROWDERBOOKS

Big news!  Amazon now ranks my nonfiction title New Yorkers: A Feisty People Who Will Unsettle, Madden, Amuse and Astonish You as 

• no. 1 in Emigrants & Immigrants Biographies
• no, 7 in New York City Travel Books
• no. 74 in History of U.S. Immigration.

I am amazed, surprised, confounded, and delighted.  Anything under 100 impresses me.  These ratings can change from week to week, but anyway...  And maybe this helps explain why its sales have picked up, though my Amazon ads could well be the main reason.  (They are another story.)

New Yorkers is the third title in my #Wild New York series of nonfiction works about New York and New Yorkers.  It combines memoir, history, and travel lore, a mix that annoys some readers and delights others.  A fun book -- Basques, hustlers, Broadway, booze, the Beatles, graffiti, chorus boys -- but with serious moments: cholera, fires, dying. #historical #history #nonfiction #travel #newyorkbook

Available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

               Whoopee Time in America

It’s Whoopee time in America, it’s gaga, it’s carnival, it’s South Sea Bubble time, it’s tulip time, it’s the party to end all parties, and everyone is invited.  But consider this:

If your barber tells you he has invested heavily in Tesla, the maker of electrical cars, whose stock has already risen eightfold,

or Aunt Sally, who has never invested, asks you if Bitcoin would be  good investment,

or Cousin Willy boasts of making a killing in the market, but when you ask him if he put his winnings in the bank, he says no, of course not, he reinvested them in another highly speculative enterprise,

if such things happen, it is safe to assume that a lot of your fellow citizens are plunged neck-deep in a bubble, and that bubbles have a way of bursting.

I have been aware for months of the stock market flirting with its all-time highs, but only recently, thanks to an article in The New York Review of Books, did I grasp how bad it is:

• Margin debt is at an all-time high, just like in 1929, the year of the Great Crash, which means that a lot of people are buying stocks with borrowed money;
• A record amount of money has gone into initial public offerings (IPOs) — the stock of new companies untested by time;
• Special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) have proliferated and raked in billions from investors, buying unlisted companies that escape regulation, and such imaginative ventures as flying-taxi start-ups;
• The cryptocurrency Bitcoin, priced at $7,000 in January 2020, has risen above $63,000;
• Young investors calling themselves “retards,” “apes,” and “degens” are scornful of traditional investors, and embrace the rallying cry YOYO (you're only young once).

All of which recalls the collective madnesses of the past: the tulip bulb craze of 1636-1637 in Holland; the South Sea Bubble of 1720 in London; the Mississippi Scheme of 1720 in Paris; and in the US, the promotion of Western railroads (anything with “& Pacific” in the name) in the late 1860s and early 1870s, projecting railroads into a wilderness whose native peoples, antelope, and bison felt no need of a railroad.  All these bubbles burst, and thousands lost millions.  

I’m no investment adviser and have no credentials to justify my opinions.  But I’ve been in the market many years and have been through many cycles of boom and bust.  I don’t know when the bubble will burst or what will trigger it.  I’m simply of the strong personal opinion that we are in a colossal bubble, and sooner or later bubbles are sure to burst.  So I don’t urge anyone to join the party — it’s much too late for that.  Keep out, or if you have a sound long-term investment plan, just stick to it and ignore the brouhaha.  Whatever you do or don’t do, good luck!    

Source note: This post was inspired  in part by Edward Chancellor’s article “Waiting to Deflate,” in the August 19, 2021, issue of The New York Review of Books.  Many of the facts cited come from that excellent article.

©  2021 Clifford Browder

• 
  

520. Nine Weird Things New Yorkers Are Doing

                    BROWDERBOOKS

Amazon's "Look inside" feature for my nonfiction title New Yorkers: A Feisty People shows the front cover large enough that you can take in all the details.  If you don't know the book, take a look.  It is the third title in my #Wild New York series of nonfiction works about New York and NewYorkers, past and present.

NINE  WEIRD  THINGS  NEW  YORKERS         ARE  DOING

So what are New Yorkers doing, as the pandemic hangs on?  Lots of things, many of them weird.

• An elderly Orthodox Jew in Chelsea, a onetime professional clown, playwright, and sidewalk juggler and mime, is making custom leather masks for actors  (Harlequin and the commedia dell’arte) and occasional wrestlers and rappers;
• Shakespeare in the Park is doing Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor set on 116th Street today, with a cast representing African immigrants from Ghana, Sierre Leon, Senegal, and Nigeria;
• The Metropolitan Museum’s first indigenous curator is reshaping the American Wing by including Native American art, past and present;
• At age 72, a woman born in India and fearful of drowning in deep water is learning to swim;
• New Yorkers are flocking to tattoo artists to get tattoos that commemorate the pandemic, which other New Yorkers want to forget;
• New Yorkers looking for rare spices are going to Kalustyan's, a specialty food shop on Lexington Avenue, to buy fresh turmeric from Fiji, holy basil from Ethiopia, black peppercorns from Ecuador, white peppercorns from Cameroon, and organic ghee from Turkey -- proof that, in New York, you can find anything, if you know where to look;
• People desperate for sleep, or just bored and curious, are putting lettuce leaves in boiling water and then drinking the result, a new sleep-inducing fad that doctors and sleep experts insist is unsubstantiated;
• Invited guests took buses provided by the African-American designer host to a historic mansion in Irvington, N.Y., where steady rain made him postpone the couture show, whereupon he invited the guests — African-American and Latino models, career coaches, prison activists, agents, and rappers — to booze and feast anyway and dance like crazy;
• A couple got married, having met years ago and anticipated a one night-stand that turned into a four-day hookup, followed by ten years of togetherness a belated engagement, and now, finally, a wedding.

New Yorkers are a busy crowd.  No pandemic can stop them.

Coming soon:  It's whoopee time in New York!  There's a wild party going on, and everyone is invited.

©  2021  Clifford Browder

519. Sensual

                 

                      BROWDERBOOKS

Two days ago I declined a contract with a small press to publish my collection of short stories, Wicked City: Stories of Old New York.  I did this because

• The contract ran for five years --  too long!  Other publishing contracts I have signed ran for one year, or two at the most.
• If, for a given sales period, my paperback or e-book sales were under $100, they could terminate me.  I would love to have $70 or $80 or $90 in sales for a given period, yet I might be terminated.

I have learned to keep control.  To do this, I either self-publish, or publish with a small press under a hybrid contract,  A hybrid contract gives the author access to the services of a small press, but lets the author keep control; only the author can terminate the book's publication and sales.  I was terminated once by a small press, which chose not to renew my contract when it expired.  That isn't going to happen again.

Moral of the story: When you sign a contract, read all that fine print and ponder it.  Weigh carefully what's in it for the other party vs. what's in it for you.  Don't be hasty; think! #Browderbooks

Okay, now let's get sensual.

                                     Sensual

First of all, what does this word mean?  "Relating to or involving gratification of the senses and physical, especially sexual, pleasure," the online dictionary states.  Aha, sex!  And because it implies sexual pleasure, the Christian tradition of the West gets nervous.  The thundering God of the Old Testament was not a God to mess around with, unlike the pagan gods of the Greeks and Romans.  Those pagan gods were always diddling one another, plus assorted nymphs and mortals.  And the gentler God of the New Testament, embodied in Jesus, was likewise leery of the sensual, though not given to tantrums and volcanic fulminations in discussing it.  But is sensual really such a big deal?  Let's see who and what are sensual.

Cats are sensual.  Just watch them stretch and strut.

Sharks are sensual.   See them in an aquarium, as I have done.  They twist, dart, plunge: streamlined killing machines, sleek and supple, with savage teeth and an evil grin.

Snakes are sensual.  Their skinny bodies slither in sexy curves, as they flee through the grass at our approach.  Few of them are harmful, and they have the good sense to get out of our way and avoid us.  We are bigger than they are, and in nature that's what counts.  I find them both sensual and beautiful.  

Art is sensual.  Think of all those roly-poly Venuses painted by Rubens and Titian.  And if plump doesn't turn you on, how about Botticelli's Birth of Venus, showing a young girl slender, naked, but almost modest in appearance -- for me, a subtly sensual work.  And if it's young guys you crave, there are loads of martyred Saint Sebastians bristling with arrows in their flesh.  

Is music sensual?  Ravel's Bolero, repeating the same theme with slight variations endlessly, is overwhelmingly sensual.  Bizet's Carmen is the super vamp of all time. And plenty in Wagner is sensual, though usually balanced by a Christian theme.  And for me, all violin music is exquisitely sensual.

Is dancing sensual?  If you feel the music go through you, as I often have, you surrender and do the waltz or lindy or boogie.  So good-bye reason and common sense and whatever else holds us back.  Jive, gang, jive.  Wahooo!

Flowers are sensual.  Those pretty little dainty things, smelling so nice, are really whores flaunting their private parts.  No human could get away with it, not without consequences.  Naughty lilies, wanton roses.

But not everything is sensual.  For instance:

• Willows are sensual, oaks are not.
• Wine is sensual, beer is not.
• Eve was sensual, Adam was not.  

Adam was a good hunk of muscle, but not too bright; Eve was sensual to the core.  Of course she listened to the slick spiel of that evil Satanic snake, grabbed the forbidden apple, and got Adam to chomp.  Result: they were both kicked out of Eden.  So good-bye paradise.  We've all been sweating and straining ever since.  

Thanks Big Mama Eve.  If what they say is true, sweetie, you bamboozled Adam and axed us all.  But maybe we shouldn't blame you.  Maybe we should blame that cunning snake, or the Higher Authority who set the whole thing up.  Anybody but ourselves.  Maybe.

So is sensual really a big deal in the world?  Yep.  And are we humans sensual?  Utterly, totally, flat-out, gung-ho sensual?  You bet your sweet ass.  Like Eve, we're sensual to the core.

©  2021  Clifford Browder