One of our radio show callers told me once that she likes Tom’s rambling show open, because it gives her time to load her car for her commute back to Mississippi each day. I use it too, to gather my stuff to sit in the studio to do the show. Lately though, there has been a caller on when I arrive in the studio. This is new, but I certainly can’t complain. We started with a conversation about Beef Wellington, Panzanella salad, and whether or not a coffee house was indeed a hatchery for subversive ideas. In Vienna last year I visited the Cafe Central, where Lev Bronshtein, who later became Leon Trotsky and Sigmund Freud hung out to discuss their radical ideas. This coffee house conversation started with a reference from the almanac about an 18th century British king who closed all coffee houses in England for a while, because of the conversations in them. People hanging in coffeehouses. It has always been thus, huh? And we talked of Ben Franklin and his almanacs, but only after a brief chat about St. Stephen and his feast day and King Wenceslaus. Like I always say, a long and winding road...
And there was some talk of what you might be cooking for Christmas, but only Tom and I talked about this. It was our Vanilla Wafer dish of the day’s buffet.
