Short Takes

-- I came across two news articles within the last few days with attention-grabbing headlines. One I'm sure you've seen as it made national news: "Officer held in plot to cook women and eat them." The other appeared in my hometown newspaper in Florida: "Before fatal shooting in Spring Hill, men confronted by naked woman carrying a cross." In the latter story, it eventually emerged that the shooters (off-duty police officers at a party) believed the woman was carrying a gun. Whether that's true or not remains to be seen. Being naked, she would have had trouble carrying both a gun and a cross, wouldn't she? Anyway, tragic and bizarre as the stories may be, you gotta love the headlines.

-- I harvested the rest of our sad tomatoes, even the hard little gumball-sized ones. I decided to try them in a stir-fry as one of my commenters suggested, and by golly it worked. I still have more to eat, but at least now I won't feel like I have to throw them out. The weather is supposed to get down to 35 degrees tonight, so that will probably be the end of our tomato plants, more or less.

-- The other day I discovered a little caterpillar on our kitchen windowsill. I think he came in on some cavolo nero that Dave brought home from the store. I brought our horseradish plant inside, put it on the kitchen windowsill, and put him on that. He's been living (and growing) there ever since, although he doesn't seem thrilled with the horseradish, which had begun to yellow with the approach of fall. Now I have to think about how to feed this freakin' caterpillar. I think it's yet another Cabbage White. (The caterpillar we previously hosted on that same plant mysteriously vanished. I think he got eaten by something while the horseradish was out on our balcony.)

-- Every year I compile and publish a book of my favorite photography using the Web site Blurb. I finished this year's book yesterday. Whew! What a task! It's about twice as long as last year's, but much better, I think. I ordered a copy to check it out firsthand, and if all the typography and photo placement looks good, I'll offer the books for sale, as usual. Here is last year's, in case you're interested in checking it out. I can't say enough about how good these Blurb books look when they're completed. They come in a variety of styles -- hardcover with a dust jacket, hardcover "image-wrap," softcover or even e-books -- and the quality is great. You'd think you've been published by Simon & Schuster.

-- Speaking of which, someone commented on yesterday's post that I should do a book of storefronts. That's one of my plans, though I'm still working on how to make it happen!

(Photo: Deptford, on Wednesday.)