Cynthia D. Bertelsen's Gherkins & Tomatoes
A Writer's Musings on Nature and Culture, Since 2008
I used to read Ernest "Papa" Hemingway's novels. Clean, spare prose, mixed up with some keen observations about human nature, his writing - and his adventurous life - took me places I yearned to go. But, later on, even more enticing to me was his nonfiction. I can't tell you how many times I read…
Continue reading ➞ Being Ernest: On ” Writing One True Sentence”
There comes a day, sometimes, when it seems all that there remains to do is to sit and weep, staring out at the world through tears of salt, gazing through windows of murky glass. Seeing leaves, earth, sky, rain, even the path of the wind in tall grass. But not seeing. No, not really. Where…
Continue reading ➞ Surviving the Whiplashes of History and American Gun-Culture Violence
Florida is a state where nearly everybody hails from another place. (1) And that idiosyncrasy makes the state an exciting social laboratory for curious (nosy?) people like me. One of the most intriguing questions right now, out there in the wide expanse of the world, is how people deal with "other people's food." (2) The…
Continue reading ➞ Just a Few Pictures, and a Few Words
Plagiarism - the worst sin there is, at least in the eyes of writers and other artists. Technically, "plagiarism" refers to "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing it off as one's own," according to Google. But I prefer the hidden and truer meaning of the word - "kidnapper."** Recently, I discovered…
Continue reading ➞ Kidnapped!* A Case of Plagiarism
Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures. ~Elliott Erwitt Truth be told, I love photography for many reasons, one being the sense of peace that comes with observing the world around me. Photography forces a photographer to be centered. To photograph means slowing down and…
Continue reading ➞ Food, Photography of
I dedicate this post to the children and the parents, everywhere, especially Newtown, Connecticut. Every year, in December, a marvelous thing happens. At least I think it's wonderful. And not for the reasons you might think. Christmas comes around, bringing with it a sense of magic in the air, some thing that I felt as…
Continue reading ➞ Remembering the Magic and Wishing for Peace on Earth
We need strategies that do not drag us back to the dispositional focus of the Inquisition's witch-hunts, that propelled the notion of the "Satan Within," when much good and evil is the product of situational and systemic forces acting on the same ordinary, often good people. ~~ Philip Zimbardo It’s been with a great deal…
Continue reading ➞ The Ancient Sin of Gluttony: What’s Really Behind the Shunning of Paula Deen
I’ll be blunt: I like my food with a heaping handful of nostalgic romanticism. Yes, there are those who claim that the present food landscape sparkles with the dreamy hue reminiscent of rose-colored glasses, that the perfume of nostalgia permeates too much of present-day “discourse” on food. And then there’s the flip side of that…
Continue reading ➞ Pass the Nostalgia, and Nix the Organics
To all the wonderful readers of "Gherkins & Tomatoes": I would like to let you know that starting this week (11/16/2009), I will be temporarily posting two times a week --- likely on Mondays and Thursdays, with a picture or a new food book announcement on the weekends when pertinent. Due to a very large…
Continue reading ➞ Scaling Back, Nothing Fishy About It!
Like a pot of water heating on the fire, the “meaning of foodie” conversations percolating out there come to boil at times. And at times the heat gets turned off and things simmer down.* Until the next finger-pointing pundit comes flying out of the air. Frankly, it gets tiresome when people exercise their index fingers…
Continue reading ➞ Slapdown Corner: For the Love of Food!
