Today on Gothamist, there was a post about the “Honey Bee” cocktail - and I must admit, I’d never heard of it before. It does sound pretty good, though - and simple to make, since the only ingredients are rum, honey, and lemon. I will definitely be giving this drink recipe a try!
So after I got back from my trip to California and Oregon, I was dissapointed at not finding “Supermarket Poet” Zach Houston. Not being content to merely feel dissappointed, I googled “berkeley supermarket poet” and then “Zach Houston” which somehow lead me to find an e-mail address for him. Not even knowing if the e-mail was still valid, I fired off a note to Zach telling him that I had looked for him at the Berkeley Bowl supermarket and was disappointed that he wasn’t there. He was kind enough to respond with a poem for me about bees! I love it, and he gave me permission to post it here - it’s after the jump.
Unfortunately, the art vendors outside of the Berkeley Bowl who don’t represent non-profit organizations got the axe from management there - they were having problems with some sellers sleeping in front of the supermarket. But Zach says he is at other places these days, so all is well.
Thank you Zach for your poem, and for contributing poetry to the world and proving that people still need, and want, poems.
Back from the West Coast. The picture of a bee on a flower was taken by the lovely and talented Rashmi at the San Francisco Flower Mart.
A good time was had, but alas, we didn’t find the Berkeley Supermarket Poet (aka Zach Houston) as I had hoped - So I wrote my own poem to summarize the experience. Here it is:
Berkeley
We came to California
for a wedding and a poet
but the poet wasn’t there
Three cheers for weddings
and air travel and Ativan
and hippie-yuppie supermarkets
filled with produce
pollinated by the bees.
Yes yes, I refer to myself as Queen Bee - and I am indeed the Queen Bee of Temple of Sting. While in my fantasy life I am a beekeeper and TOS pays all my bills, in reality I put in the ol’ 40 hours a week as a worker bee. And now it’s time for some much needed vacationing, so expect posts to be slow for a week or two.
If you live in New York City, perhaps you feel slightly off today. Maybe you can’t breathe very well. Perhaps your stomach hurts. Or you could have a headache that just won’t go away. Why do you feel this way?
The answer, my friend, is Sting.
The reunited Police are playing tonight at Madison Square Garden. This effects the economy (thousands of people shelling out hundreds of dollars for tickets!), the environment (Sting’s full of hot air, as previously discussed on this very blog!), traffic (all those people coming in from New Jersey and Long Island in their giant SUVs!) - heck, it affects everything. So my advice to you is, if you can, AVOID THE MADISON SQUARE GARDEN AREA TONIGHT AT ALL COSTS.
There’s a terrific piece in this week’s New Yorker about bees and colony collapse disorder: “Stung - Where have all the bees gone?” by Elizabeth Kolbert. Not only does Elizabeth Kolbert discuss the current state of colony collapse disorder, she delves a bit into the history of bees and beekeeping in the U.S., and goes so far as to keep a hive of her own honeybees, despite several setbacks with bears. It’s so true, as she says, that “the literature of apiculture is vast and seductive; I learned one amazing thing after another.”
Not available online, but you can listen to an audio snippet on Newyorker.com of Elizabeth Kolbert being interviewed about the article.