Aoibheann Sweeney’s debut novel, Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking, is quite simply the story of a girl’s journey from one island to another. Miranda Donnal is a young woman caught between her father’s world as he doggedly translates Ovid in the mythic fog of Crab Island, Maine, where she has grown up motherless, well-educated and utterly lonely, and the draw of New York City, where she is sent by her father after forgoing her college admissions test to work at the Institute for Classical Studies that he founded there decades ago.
The story that unfolds in Miranda’s voice is marked by the geographic and generational ambivalence of an emigration narrative, despite the fact that both Sweeney and her heroine were born in New England. “I grew up with an unspellable Gaelic name in Boston,” says Sweeney, “and I got a lot of credit for just being Irish because we were supposed to be the underdogs. I always thought my grandfather came straight from the old sod to her
NorthJersey.com
A poor display of manners is encouraged when eating a seafood boil, which are typically served in Louisana (and across the Gulf coast, where all that succulent seafood is caught) at big backyard parties during the summer.
The Cajun dish is made by boiling buckets-full of seafood in flavored broth, then dousing them with butter and spices like Old Bay. A cob of corn and a few potatoes are usually thrown in for good measure. Then you dump your seafood boils onto a table covered in plastic. Diners eat with their hands and lick buttery sauce off their fingers. Bibs are worn. Hand wipes are required for cleanup.
A 63-year-old DeFuniak Springs man has died following a motorcycle crash on Sunday.
The man was driving a 2016 Harley-Davidson three-wheeled motorcycle and was traveling west on Juniper Lake Road about midnight at the Bob McCaskill Road intersection, according to a press release from the Florida Highway Patrol.
The U.S. Coast Guard, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Okaloosa County Sheriff s Office and others have been searching local waters and beaches for 61-year-old David Schink.