Yet another white meat
The following recipe comes from my culinary colleague Kellie R. Morris, who found it in The New Hood Cook Book: A Modern Cook Book of Practical Recipes from 1939, and dang if this doesn’t sound like some tasty vittles for today’s table. As my momma always said, You can’t go wrong with a dish that calls for disjointing your main ingredient. Behold Pigeon Pie:
Clean, wash and disjoint four pigeons, sprinkle with pepper and salt. Saute 1 diced onion in 1/4 cup fat; remove onion and brown birds. Dredge with flour. Butter a deep dish and fill with alternate layers of fat chopped salt pork, pigeons, fine hard-cooked eggs and the giblets boiled and minced. Pour in 1 cup water in which the giblets were cooked, seasoned with pepper and salt. Cover the pie with a good crust, slash and bake 1 hour in a moderate oven.

A lousy buck
If wishes and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a wonderful Christmas. But more importantly, if every one of you cheapskates would donate one measly dollar to this year’s Liberty Fest, we might not have to spend the remainder of the summer moaning about how awful the fireworks were this year. You know who you are. The entire sky over the Androscoggin River could blow up with all the drama of a scene from “Independence Day” and you’d still get that smug, dissatisfied look on your puss and say: “Eh. I’ve seen better,” as though you personally witnessed the awesome light show 60 million years ago when a massive asteroid struck the Yucatan Peninsula.
Time to put up or shut up. You want your big, loud bang, don’t you? You want your barbecue and bouncy tent, do you not? Here’s an excerpt from the official plea for help from Liberty Festival organizer Cathy McDonald.
With the high cost of putting on this event, we are trying not to burden any one organization, business or person. It is important that everyone who supports and enjoys our “Celebration of Independence” helps us in any way they can. This event draws more than 50,000 people from Lewiston/Auburn and the surrounding communities. It is a premier event with very good visibility and attendance. Even a small donation will help us with this event. This is an important event and I want to thank you for your time and consideration. Please make all checks payable to “Liberty Festival” and they can be mailed to PO Box 97, Lewiston ME 04243.

The buzz
I’m OK, everybody. Please settle down. Yes, it’s true that I got the Suzuki temporarily stuck in the mud out in the woods of Minot. Or possibly Hebron or Buckfield. And yes, it’s true that the site of my vexation was also the home of a massive hive of bees. Or possibly hornets or wasps. Whatever they were, there were thousands of them flying around my head, landing on my back where I couldn’t see them and — I would swear this is true — laughing at me. But amid all that, I suffered not a single sting, and so my string of stingless summers enters its second decade. And with this in mind, I would like to invite you to send along your stories of Stinging Creature Horror for my own scientific study and, let’s face it, amusement. 

Summer solstice
Today, my friends is the longest and most glorious day of the year. Since man first developed the power of observation, he has marvelled over this magical time, alternately worshipping and fearing it. And now you, like the earliest humans to celebrate the wonder of midsummer, can turn your face to the sky at any hour of the day, and with all the descriptive emotion at your command proclaim: Son of a b—-! It’s raining again.
Go back inside, fool. You’re getting soaked.


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