Great blessings department: my son came over yesterday with a bag of groceries, to cook for me and Mary-Fay my boarder. This was the menu: marinated grilled tilapia on a bed of couscous with asparagus and cherry tomatoes poached in garlic water, topped with an apple/avocado chutney. It was sublime, piled beautifully on the plate, like a gourmet restaurant. In all my years of cooking, I have never made anything so elegant that also tasted wonderful. He makes it look effortless.

Here’s a great story that was in the “NYT Book Review” last year, about how awkward writers can be socially, even famous ones:

“When the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt told a friend, a Parisian doctor, that he wanted to meet a certifiable lunatic, he was invited to the doctor’s home for supper. A few days later, Humboldt found himself placed at the dinner table between two men. One was polite, somewhat reserved, and didn’t go in for small talk. The other, dressed in ill-matched clothes, chattered away on every subject under the sun, gesticulating wildly, while making horrible faces. When the meal was over, Humboldt turned to his host. ‘I like your lunatic,’ he whispered, indicating the talkative man. The host frowned.

‘But it’s the other one who’s the lunatic. The man you’re pointing to is Monsieur Honoré de Balzac.’