Nearly Tuesday afternoon....

Hello:

The picture is from Santiam Marketplace last Saturday at the Stayton Middle School. It was in two buildings but this year the number of booths seemed to be down.

I am reading two books now. One is Pulitzer: A Life in Politics, Print and Power by James Morris. This is the biography of Joseph Pulitzer from the Civil War, where he signed up as a substitute soldier for the Union, into the early 20th century when he was the biggest publisher in the United States.

The other book is Control of Nature by John McPhee. The three stories in this book are three he wrote for The New Yorker. I read all three of these stories in The New Yorker when they appeared at least 10 years ago. He is such an excellent writer I really enjoy what he writes.

I read the latter book when I get up in the morning. For example today I got up at 5:30 am so I read for about an hour and a half of that book. It is too early to download stories from Morning Edition to my computer so I spend the time reading and drinking coffee.

I still make my coffee in my French Press. It is so much better this way than any other way I have tried in the past few years.

I even got a French Press in China after I found whole coffee there (for $14.00 per half pound of coffee!!!!!). In the grocery stores in China there is Nestle's Instant Coffee and Lipton Tea. Nothing more than that in the grocery stores. I drank instant coffee for about two months before I found my whole coffee beans in China.

Steve