Yesterday I went over to a friend's house for Thanksgiving dinner, where one of his sisters, the daughter of the late Mrs. _______ski, a woman of Swedish descent who mastered the cuisine of her husband's ancestors, prepared, as she periodically does in honor of her mother, Czarnina. Czarnina is an acquired taste, one that I am still working on. Good guest that I am, I dug in and asked for seconds.
I have dusted off my set of W.S. Kuniczak' translation of Henryk Sienkiewicz' trilogy. Over 3,600 pages, 1,850,000 words. Quite appropriately, the forward for the first volume was written by James Michener. They have been sitting on a shelf untouched for 13 years, waiting for a cataclysmic event, house arrest perhaps, that requires me to remain shuttered for a month. |
