turnip town

Quiz:

My roommate, Alex, has been invited to two root vegetable parties. The only problem is, he doesn’t remember which invitation is which. In which hand is Alex holding his ticket to turnip town?

Extra Credit:

To which party should Alex take the ticket in his other hand?

Blog:

So, I bought a turnip the other day because I had never, to my knowledge, eaten a turnip and I wanted to know what they tasted like. Well, tonight I found out. They taste pretty much like potatoes. Maybe a little bit more flavorful, a little harder, but still basically a potato. My friend Carolyn told me that turnips are best for roasting, but I chose to disregard that advice and saute instead. I’m not sure how roasting would have turned out, but sauteing was delicious. I added an onion, some mushrooms, a bit of garlic, a can of beans, and I was on my way to a flavor explosion!

I don’t pity turnips. They aren’t the prettiest, or the most lovable. They certainly aren’t famous or exotic, but they have their place. They are the waste-management employees of the vegetable world. Or maybe the ranchers.

I think that potatoes would be the construction workers. Tomatoes would have to be the business men (this designation would be mainly due to the fact that, although I acknowledge their utility, I don’t personally prefer them). Onions would be the teachers.

Of course these vegetables shouldn’t be limited to the professions that I chose for them. No, each should individually be able to choose its own profession. Naturally, the pretty vegetables, the capsicum and eggplant, would probably be more likely to get jobs as actors or models, but it wouldn’t be based solely on their species. I do not, for a second, think that any vegetable should be denied a job a priori as a result of their race. But perhaps I have spent too much time on this.

http://links.zigzo.com/2007/12/10/the-worlds-two-most-beautiful-vegetables/

Here is something I always think about. This excerpt is from Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything:

“In 1907 when a well-known collector named Alanson Bryan realized that he had shot the last three specimens of black mamos, a species of forest bird that had only been discovered the previous decade, he noted that the news filled him with ‘joy.’”

Firstly, I have long since believed that my parents named me after old Alanson. They have never admitted it outwardly, but sometimes they make strange references to it. For example, I remember once, when I was 9 or 10, my next door neighbors asked me to watch their fish while they were going out of town. I was all for it, but when I asked my parents, they thought about it for a while and said, “I guess that’s ok. What’s the worst that could happen? It’s not like these fish are the last of their kind.” It was the peculiar emphasis that they put on the word “these” that made the incident stick in my mind. The second reference occurred a lot more recently. When I was in Bolivia, working with a puma, my mother wrote me an email that said something like, “ok, son, just try not to kill them all and rejoice in their distinction, just as the man after whom you were named did in 1907.” At the time, I just thought she was in one of her moods. After reading this book, I have begun to think that their maybe more to it.

The second thing is, is it really so wrong to feel joy after eliminating the last known members of a given species? I mean, if there are only a few of them left, it’s not like the species is going to survive anyway, so why not be the last one to get some joy out its members? Also, it’s a distinction that not many people have: Species Eliminator. I could continue in this vein, but I think I’ll end it here.

667