Notes From A Bear's Journey

   So you might be wondering why I would begin to talk about wine tasting and then choose to write about smells (as I did in the last post).  Good question, because being diverted from what started out as writing about our sense of taste and watching it turn into that of writing about our sense of smell caught even me off guard.  Perhaps it was because smell was the underdog and taste, well, who doesn't know taste.  This tastes good or that taste bad, we say; yet our tastes can also travel quite far away from our tongues and onto our views of fashion or music, or countries and cultures.  But underneath all of that lurked this fascination with watching someone be able to do something so different when it came to tasting something.  Once I was with a friend of mine, a person I'd laugh with and consider just an ordinary run-of-the-mill guy on the street, that is until I went to tour a few wineries with him (this when I lived in the Bay area and jumping off to the Napa or Sonoma va

   Some studies are showing that people generally rate smell as the least important of the five senses as compared to the other four of touch, taste, hearing and sight (the latter are rated the two most important).  Yet Bianca Bosker would disagree; her book on sommeliers titled Cork Dork , takes a look at the world of wine tasters but goes much deeper, her journalistic side wondering what exactly is it about our olfactory senses that can make us at times seem quite primitive (the size of our olfactory bulb in our brain is about the same as that of a rat) and yet so advanced (some researchers say that our brains use much more of its abilities for that sense alone).  True or false, it would appear that anyone's sense of smell can be trained and sharpened to improve, although perhaps not quite as finely as those who work in certain industries such as those searching for new fragrances for perfumeries ?  As a piece on smell in the New Yorker some years ago wrote: The tongue can detec

   Said Terry Gross, "I don't usually gasp while preparing my interviews, but I gasped several times while looking at the illustrations in the books by my guest Richard Barnett."  Terry Gross is the host of the show Fresh Air and she was talking about the new book by her guest, Richard Barnett, a book on the history of dentistry titled The Smile Stealers .  There are perhaps few sounds that are so faint and yet can make each of us cringe almost in fear...a creaking door late at night perhaps, or a mosquito in a darkened room.  And then there's the drill of a dentist, that whirring hum followed by what one hopes will be little more than a bit of bone dust and the suction of water and saliva by the dentist's assistant...but we cringe with anticipation that somewhere along the way we just might feel that zing, that zap of pain when a nerve or something deep in our mouth will be touched; it's universal, the acceptance of possible further pain in order to reduce

   There was one of those great father-son stories on the Moth Radio Hour , a free podcast* that gives people a few minutes to tell their story, no script, and in front of a crowd; the stories are varied and range from tearful tales to tales of childhood that can leave you laughing.  Some of the tellers are rather famous in their respective fields, but the majority of the brave souls standing in front of that microphone are ordinary folk who have pitched their one personal story to tell and have been selected from among many to broadcast it across the waves...think karaoke for life histories.  Anyway, this particular broadcast was about a devoted father who was also a devoted fan of the Boston Red Sox, not season-ticket devoted but devoted enough to yell at the television or pound his feet in triumph when the Red Sox would score a run or heaven forbid, actually win.  And now, in his story, his team had a chance to secure the division pennant and possibly go from there to the World Seri

   My wife and I enjoy watching many of the overseas crime thrillers and mysteries, series such as the BBC's Shetland and the Icelandic Case , as well as France's No Second Chance and the Finnish Bordertown (apparently becoming the most highly watched series in Finland).  Seeing how detectives' minds work might not be quite as exciting in real life but summed up over eight hours or so, the writers of such mysteries keep you guessing.  And yes, we know that the majority of these tales are fictionalized and a case going to trial on television is likely no more real than a court appearance in Silk .  So imagine my education when I plopped myself down in the seats of my first preliminary hearing (I was not required to be there but one of the suspects from my robbery was making her appearance before the judge) and got to watch the minutiae of cases being processed almost as quickly as those items flying by a checkout line at Costco.  This was real...real lives, and real time

   There are few things odder than the looks you get when you tell someone that you are reading a cookbook.  Reading, they ask, not just looking through for recipes?  Many cookbooks, particularly those from popular or celebrity chefs ,attempt to inject a bit of their homespun background as they write about those flavors of childhood when coming home or being out on the beach and the memories of those simple foods that started them on the path to working and experimenting with food.  Some of these cookbook authors (and ghost writers) are quite talented and write with such flair and poise that you're tempted to see if their recipes are really as spectacular as their words (some of this appeared in an earlier post on menu writing).  But in general, cookbooks are just that, a collection of recipes that we browse through for ideas and inspiration, or perhaps guidance when wanting to cook a roast or puff pastry and not quite knowing all the specifics.  Those poor authors, their words of