When our local market becomes news

Berkeley's a small town. When one of the grocery stores management gets shaken up, especially if that grocery store has its own foodie fan base, word gets around. I had heard that people were gathering at Monterey Market to say farewell to the couple that ran it. I didn't know the back story. Today, locavore blog The Ethicurean gave it to me: Fujimotos’ departure from Monterey Market a tough blow to local food chain

In other local news: the new Berkeley Bowl in West Berkeley has opened, and Black Oak Books in North Berkeley has closed its doors.

All of these stories, though hyperlocal, are getting more Twitter buzz than Shahrukh Khan in San Francisco. Apparently the intersection of those who Twitter in San Francisco and those who obsess over the Badishah of Bollywood have a very tiny insection. (Sigh)

Request library books from Amazon pages

Via MerlinMann/43Folders, a smart fusion of the newfangled and the oldfangled.

If you can figure out (or ask your librarian) what kind of online database/interface your local library uses, you can configure this bookmarklet for your web browser.

Then from the Amazon page, instead of buying a book unseen for $25 or $30 (plus shipping), you can click the bookmarklet to search your library's database. (And depending on your system, you can have the book sent to your local branch for checkout.)

I need to try this out.

a gripping read

From a review by Ralph Shorto in the New York Times Book Review:

Not long after the Pilgrims set anchor in the harbor they called Plymouth in 1620, the Wampanoag leader Massasoit paid them a visit near their makeshift settlement and made a wary offer of friendship. It took several months for two of the Pilgrims to venture into the wilderness and return the gesture. When they
did, they noticed circular pits alongside the trails, which, the natives told them, were storytelling devices. Each of these "memory holes" was dug at a place where a remarkable act had occurred; every time Indians passed by these spots, they recounted the deeds. The Pilgrims, Nathaniel Philbrick says in his vivid and remarkably fresh retelling of the story of the earnest band of English men and women who became saddled with the sobriquet of America's founders, "began to see that they were traversing a mythic land, where a sense of community extended far into the distant past."