Report from the Real Amerca

My long-lost friend Ivan did not say I could not print this, so I will give it a try.

I first met Ivan back in the Plesitocene when he was a canny young political reporter for the (long since defunct) Louisville Times. He went on to work for many years tweendecks in the Washington political substructure. Now he's back on the farm in Alabama. Evidently he has been reading Underbelly:

couple of nights ago, exhausted after a rough day slaving on the plantation, i watched the nationals (my new favorite baseball team) play the Braves, always on the tube in the lower south, or at least in alabama via direct TV (No cable on farm roads and if it were it would cost a fortune to run wire to my house about 1,300 feet from the road.) I was shelling just picked by me pinto beans, purple hull peas, yellow eye peas, green beans, xmas limas, henderson limas -- filled a hugw bowl full. fresh out of the garden -- no e coli. reading the restaurant comments i thought about them field peas and beans. i like them with chunks of raw onion -- got some real sweet onions at costco but had a fairly good bunch out of the garden earlier this year.

i only drink wine on sunday or holidays (sometimes i declare a holiday)-- always concha y toro, except when i treat myself to a jug of yellowtail sirah. aint et meat in years but do eat sallmon (in alabama they pronounce the l) -- got some wild caught filets also at costco.

still getting from the garden lots of okra and turnip greens. picked a few dozen green tomatoes sunday to ripen in the house so i wouldnt have to spray bug killer on them. got a few broccoli, brussel sprouts and cauliflower plants coming along as a fall crop, plus a row of lettuce and radish. got onions planted just to see what i get.

cant remember the last time i et in a restaurant.

No meat? Yo Ivan, I thought it was a cattle ranch? Aren't you supposed to consume a bit of the corpse?

And it looks like when he left Washington, they confiscated his shift key.