My birthday was a couple weeks back. Kevin and I usually limit birthday celebrations to a good dinner out, since the things we want – a warm-weather condo, a bigger boat, a gut renovation – tend to be beyond the scope of the ordinary birthday gift. This year, though, I had a request.
Me and Freddy Krueger's clam rake
I’ve done a lot of clamming over the last few months, and one of the things I’ve learned is that a clammer with a good rake gets way more clams than a clammer with a lousy rake. And so, this year, I asked Kevin for a clam rake. Actually, I asked for two clam rakes, since it would be silly for me to have a good one and him to have a lousy one.
We wanted to get rakes from the RA Ribb Company, a local manufacturer of high-quality shellfishing gear, and Kevin ordered two of their “Snappin’ Turtle” model, a particularly mean-looking rake with long, curved tines. They came last week, and this past Sunday we set the clam-speed record for a peck.
Dinners come and dinners go, but a clam rake is forever.
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If your major categories are Fishing, Gathering, Growing, and Hunting, then surely your catch-all should be Nothing — you know, like the Henry Green novels.
“Nothing” is certainly better than “Uncategorized.” Maybe I’ll change it.
I’ll ‘fess up to not having read my Henry Green. Is “Nothing” worth it?
I haven’t read them either. They are reputed to be very arty-modernist. Green was quite the rage a few decades ago. The best one is supposed to be Loving.
Over the decades Aaron mentions I’ve begun several Henry Green novels and never got past the first hundred pages. Not only that, I can’t remember one blasted thing about the parts I did read. I think there’s a reason he’s gone out of fashion.
As an author, you must know that not being read is the null hypothesis. It is being read that requires explanation.