The best book I've read in years

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll get hungry.
I read a lot of books, usually more that 20 a year, but this year has been slow, as I've changed along with this blog. I usually post about the books I've read as the year goes along, but not this year.

 There's only been about six or seven so far, and the most recent one...well, you read the headline.
When I saw that Rick Bragg had a new book out, I ordered it immediately. (From Best of Books in Edmond) You should too...but don't get a digital version, and don't buy from the big boys. This book deserves to be purchased from an independent bookstore, any independent bookstore. Why? Read the book and you'll know.
Just as the book is about real people and real food and real storytelling, it deserves a real bookstore and real ink and paper.
Bragg, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, is a master storyteller and writer.
His writing and storytelling are as delicious as his Momma's recipes.
His mother Margaret Bragg, now in her 90s, learned to cook  from stories and watching...no cookbook-still; no measuring cups or thermometers, no recipes. More than 70,000 meals in 80 years.

"Good stuff always has a story," she says. 

Each of the 35 chapters of the book, and don't dare skip the prologue, come with stories of generations of the  poor Alabama family, beginning in the 1920s or before and coming up through last year. Also seasoned with black and white photos of family members.
The stories all come with recipes of real Southern cooking, as he gets his mother to estimate ingredients and portions, not just the ingredients-"What you will need"--but directions on cooking.
Fried chicken--one that recently had its neck wrung. . Biscuits and gravy.  Cobbler. Ham and beans. Pies. Cornbread. Crappie. Fresh vegetables.
The list and stories go on and on. And most of them have to do with iron skillets and lots of lard or bacon grease. 
Me, this weekend, I'm going to try the recipe for stewed summer squash and sweet onions from near the end of the book. We have the vegetables from the farmer's market--and yes, you need a slice of bacon.
Opening line: "Since she was eleven years old, even if all she had to work with was neck bones, peppergrass, or poke salad, she put good food on a plate."
Buy the book. Bragg will make you laugh, cry, get hungry, and enjoy great storytelling and writing.
I'll let you know how my squash and onions turn out. And yes, all in all, it is the best book I've read in years.

December moon

"December Moon," 5 by 7 watercolor card

Super moon this week. But isn't every moon super in some way?
   December--The last full moon of the year, marking  time for humans since there have been humans. A time to reflect at year's end about the passing of time, of lives and journeys past and present.

   Tide maker--both in the oceans and in our moods, ebbing and flowing as it swings across the sky. 

   Memory maker--turning night into day as it awakens thoughts and imagination. The opening verses of the song "Memory" from Cats captures that haunting effect so well.

   The moon and I go way back.

 (Following is a snippet from a long-ago unfinished novel.)  

    “Time for the moon.” He rose, poured a last cup of coffee, grabbed his binoculars off the kitchen cabinet, and opened the back door.

    The swollen moon inched above the silhouetted house-tops and cap rock, as he walked out on the wooden deck.

   “The first time I remember seeing Aunt Sissie was when she showed me the moon,” he thought, putting the coffee down on a table, and lifting the 7 x 50 binoculars to his eyes.

   At least, he thought he remembered the dark shadows of summer-thick bushes and trees rising above him on the sidewalk,  the black bulk of nearby buildings framing a few yellow-lit apartment windows, the huge round silver-white face in the dark Dallas sky reflecting its light off her equally round, kind face.

   “Maybe it’s just that I heard Mom and Dad tell me about it; how Sissie would take me for a night-time walk and show me the moon; how I’d reach my little hands and stubby fingers for it; and how she’d tell Mom, ‘Well, Faye, get it for him.’”

   The full moon always made him talk to himself, he thought.     “I know they told me Aunt Sissie would take me out in a baby carriage, but seeing the moon seems fresher somehow. Mom and Dad might have told me about it, but they wouldn’t add the details about the shawls and lights.

   “But when someone pays you a lot of attention at that age, and in later years you hear your folks talk about it, and then, decades later, when you go back to view the old black and white snapshots crowding family albums, what you remember and what you’ve heard sort of melt together, like the moonlight reflecting on her face that night in Dallas.”

   Aunt Sissie was his favorite aunt, and even now, years after she died of cancer, when the moon jogged his memory, his throat thickened, and his eyes would water.

   “Let him reach for it, Miss Vera,” was his mother’s reply to the quip about getting the moon for him. That’s what Sissie told him years later.

   “Seems like you’ve been reaching every since,” she chuckled. He didn’t know if it was a blessing or a curse, or both. Maybe that was the key. Always reaching, challenged by some remote destination; yet, once attained, never satisfied. Easily bored when the newness wore off and routine set in. A journalist’s life was at once a sop and a sentence.

   He treasured the full moon and moonlight, especially shining through the edges of swiftly moving clouds, or circled through the haze of thin high ice-clouds. The Apollo missions  years ago  captivated him. Now he rarely let a month go by without viewing the acne-scarred face through his binoculars. The full moon provoked his imagination, his memories, his fantasies, helping him write.

   The moon seemed to transform everything with a magic glow--landscapes, buildings, plants, mountains, a  woman's smooth skin--things he could never quite get enough of--things he couldn’t seem to quite reach and possess, any more than he could reach the moon. But he kept reaching like the little boy who had vainly reached to touch the strange light in the sky.

   "It pulls me like the tide.” His tight spinal muscles relaxed as he lowered the binoculars and sipped the coffee. 

   He heard the phone ringing inside the house, interrupting his thoughts. Resentfully, turning to go in, he glanced at the sky once more. “C’mon, babe, I want you.”

Coffee with Clark "blogstone," by the numbers

Screen shot of blog page views per month from beginning in May 2009 til today when it surpassed 5,000 monthly views for first time.--Note: Blogspot is wrong, not May 2007, but 2009.

Coffee with Clark reached a "blogstone" today--more than 5,000 views in a calendar month. That's a long way from May 2009 when it started.

Here are the numbers:

•  5,012--December page views at 9:45 am today
• 4,459--Previous high month, July, 2013

105,000+ --page views total

Page views by country

United States	66350
Russia	4423
Germany	4282
United Kingdom	2533
Ukraine	2277
France	1878
China	926
Canada	687
Poland	670
India	607

• 128--number of countries with readers
• 33--new countries this year

Blog posts per year

• 2009--339
• 2010--292
• 2011--135
• 2012--203
• 2013--252--by December 31

Months with most posts

• August, 2009--76
• July, 2009--70
• January, 2010--57
• April, 2010--47
• December, 2013!--39--by the end of the year

Day with most page views

• Dec, 23, 2013--532! A watercolor "Christmas eve journey"

Most popular posts of all time

• 2492--All aboard for Bartlesville , October, 2010 (I have no idea why)
• 1646--All aboard, August, 2010
• Actually top six posts of all time include the words "All aboard." Lots of train buffs?

Most popular posts in last month

• 129--Flags of historic friends--Canada, Feb. 2012 (This is now the 10th most popular posting of all time) I wondered about posting articles and maps about the countries of my readers, but apparently, it's interesting.
• 114--Black Friday blues, November, 2013
• 75--A Friday night 44 years ago, Nov. 2013
• 71--Raining ice as the sun comes out, December, 2013

My favorite and most creative posts--helping earn the Okie Blog Best Writing in the State Award in 2009

•  "The booth is a verb"--More than 10,000 words in multiple chapters telling the story of the booth and my friend, the late Bob Illidge, from 2009.

This blog is typical of many, starting out with a flurry of postings, bottled up inside, or from something that triggers a passion. That's why the first year had so many postings and then tapered off. I wondered when I started it if it'd continue, and it did slump, but has picked back up.
That's due in part because I teach a class in blogging at UCO and have to be active to have integrity. It's also due to the fact that the blog has grown and changed since the beginning and I've learned a lot and changed too. 
It now includes more photographs and paintings, and more story telling I think. The design has changed with the times too. What hasn't changed in the past four months is the title photo at the top, from my back road solo trip to New Mexico. That photo tells you so much about me and my interests. But it will eventually change too.
 What's next? I have no idea, although I've said for some time I want to take the blog to the "next level," whatever that means. I hope it means switching formats and hosts, adding advertising for some income, and emphasizing travel more. But I don't really know.
Why do I do this? I guess because I'm a first-born Capricorn  and deep down, a journalist.
When I owned the Waurika News-Democrat, my weekly column was titled "Trail Talk," because we were on the old Chisholm Trail. As a friend once said to me about this blog, "Hey, you've got your column back."