Five Things

1. A fantastic paragraph from this story by Joni Tevis in the current issue of Orion:

"Traditionally, it took forty days and forty nights to cure tobacco in the barns. In early spring, you weighted seeds with ash to sow; come midsummer, cut green leaves, working slowly down the line. Bundled stems together in hands and set a slow fire. The leaves cured to brown, supple as skin on a wrist. Smoke wriggled out through gaps in the walls. You'd see it wafting over the fields, smell it on a still night, dusty and sweet, like grass in August but darker. Most people have forgotten all this by now, or never knew. One day won't anyone remember."

2. Elephant seals are colonizing the Strait.

3. In Fan Tan Alley on Saturday afternoon. The walls and windows of the opium dens, and an old man singing Bowie as he turned in from the street: "put on your red shoes and dance the blues."

4. How to make a Sobo tofu pocket.

5. Good advice from Garrison Keillor.

Tonight's music is "Prehensile Dream" by The Bad Plus.