Retraction

Gonna hafta eat my words there, because there was just no way to get back on a treadmill; it has been back to the park no matter how god-awful the weather. Still on my holding-the-line training program. 5k even if it's crawling--sometimes it is. But I've ditched my glasses in case I crash again. I can't affort to crush my glasses or put my eye out with the damned things. My black eye is unbelievably fashionable: A delicate purple tending to red from eyebrow to eyelid, and the eyelid itself is a slate gray with purple undertones. It actually looks like a rock-star makeup job, and a darned good one.

And speaking of crashing, not another single bird has gone into the windows. In my freezer sits the quite puny little dove breast ready for cooking, all alone.

Meanwhile, if anyone out there has ever hungered after a peanut butter pie, there is one in this month's edition of Bon Appetit that will satisfy your deepest craving while blocking every artery and vein in your body. I made it yesterday for our family lunch--the kids and grandkids. The crust is a graham cracker one, the filling is a peanut butter custard (eight, count 'em, eight egg yolks), then a tower of homemade honeycomb candy, peanuts, and bittersweet chocolate on that. It just seemed like a bit much, so I modified it considerably except for that stupendous peanut butter custard, and there were rave reviews. Next time I plan to alter the recipe even more and come up with something that tastes as good a Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.

On a sadder note, if anyone is interested in reading something that makes the horror of the Norway massacre at least understandable, try "Hatred: The Pychological Descent into Violence", by Willard Gaylin, M.D. An excellent book. Another good read along that line is "The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil" by Philip Zimbrado, the famous Stanford researcher who did the Stanford Prison Experiment with such unfortunate and fascinating results. This is the first book to detail that experiment and what came of it. And, to top off a list of disturbing but enlightening reading, try "Terror in the Mind of God" by Mark Juergensmeyer. When I first read this book, I was on a plane going from Seattle to Monterrey. It was September 10, 2001. The first botched attempt at blowing up the WTC was described in the book. At that time I was still an editorialist for our newspaper, and next day after the terrorist attacks, the editorial director frantically contacted everyone to ask for a pertinent article on the attacks. I guess I was the only one armed with real information on the causes. It was one of those coincidences one wishes had never happened.

Cary, that book we talked about is "The Arab Mind" by Raphael Patai. You'll enjoy it and it might clear up some misconceptions. It surely did for me.