Food 4 the Soul and Food 4 Your Body

The theme for the Kids’ Summer Reading Game this year is Be Creative; for Adults, it is Books Around the Bay.  While reading books set in the San Francisco Bay Area, or written by a Bay Area author, we adults can be creative too.

Want to try some new recipes this summer?   Try these:

Cooking Fresh From the Bay Area: the Bay Area’s Best Receipts for Eating Local, Organic Produce At Its Seasonal Best

 

 

The San Francisco Chronicle Cookbook.  375 All New Receipts From America’s Most Innovative Food Section.

 

 

 

San Francisco Seafood Savory Receipts From Everybody’s Favorite Seafood City by Michele Anna Jordan

 

 

 

Tired of cooking?  No problem.  Try these:

Patricia Unterman’s San Francisco Food Lover’s Guide by Patricia Unterman

  

 

 

The Chowhound’s Guide to San Francisco and the Bay Area

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are just a few books for you.  Go to your local library to find more.  And don’t forget while we are indulging in reading for our souls, we also need good food for our bodies.  Let’s read, cook, and eat, and read, cook, and eat …   Tell us what receipts you tried and how they turned out by putting your comments down on this blog; or simply come to the library to let us know what books you read and enter the Adult Summer Reading Game.  Maybe you will be the next lucky weekly winner.  Have fun!

Eugene O’Neill & Tao House

America’s only Nobel Prize winning playwright, Eugene O’Neill, chose to live in Northern California at the climax of his writing career. Isolated from the world and within the walls of his home, O’Neill wrote his final and most memorable plays; The Iceman Cometh, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, and A Moon for the Misbegotten. While he was at Tao House, O’Neill refused requests to produce the plays he wrote there. He wanted to complete five of the cycle lays first, and he did not want the others staged until the war was over. During his years there he turned his back on the “show shop,” his jaundiced term for the theatre world, giving himself to “soul-grinding” work on the cycle and transforming his past into the autobiographical plays that made him one of America’s most important playwrights.

Saved from destruction, today visitors can tour the house and grounds of Eugene O’Neill State Historic Park by making reservations for the free docent led tour. On the day of your visit, a van shuttles you into the hills above Danville. Although it’s an urban area now, the Las Trampas Regional Wilderness west of Tao House and Mt. Diablo to the east allow visitors to easily imagine the landscape of the late 1930s and early 1940s. The restored house also reflects those years.

The Eugene O’Neill Foundation and National Park Service has a unique partnership aimed at preserving and promoting O’Neill’s home and his works. Eugene O’Neill’s Tao House is operated by the National Park Service. Public visitation by advance reservation, Wednesdays through Sundays, with guided tours at 10:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. (allow 2 hours).Office hours are Wednesday-Sunday 9 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Closed Mondays, Tuesdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day.

Starting June 6 through August 29, 2009, NO RESERVATION SATURDAYS  are offered to the site. A park van will be waiting at the Museum of the San Ramon Valley (205 Railroad Ave.) at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to bring visitors up and down from the O’Neill home. No reservations are needed on these Saturdays this summer. If you are planning to bring a large group, please contact the park at (925) 838-0249.

A visit to Tao House stays with you. You leave with a sense of how Eugene O’Neill’s life struggles inspired plays that changed the history of American theatre and touch the souls of playgoers.

“We have a beautiful site in the hills of the San Ramon Valley with one of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen. This is the final home and harbor for me. I love California. Moreover, the climate is one I know I can work and keep healthy in.” — Eugene O’Neill (from a letter written to Barrett H. Clark on September 14, 1937)

Eugene O’Neill and his third wife, Carlotta, moved into Tao House (from the Taoist philosophy meaning “the right way of life”) in 1937. The design of Tao House, constructed of white adobe-like bricks with a black glazed tile roof, was left to Carlotta. Her choice of a Chinese motif reflected her interest in Chinese art and Eugene’s interest in Eastern philosophy. The house Eugene called his “final harbor” was at once a home, a working place and a fortress, built high on the hill, where few visitors were welcomed. Carlotta protected Eugene from the outside world, and he was able to write his most famous plays isolated behind three doors that closed off his study from the rest of the house.

In 1944, with Eugene’s failing health and having lost most of their help, including Herbert Freeman, to the war effort, the O’Neills were forced to sell Tao House. They stayed in San Francisco for awhile, but eventually returned east, settling in Boston. Eugene O’Neill never wrote another play after leaving Tao House. He died in Boston on November 27, 1953.

“We stayed at Tao House for six whole years, longer than we lived anywhere else. Of course, there were many hardships, but it was a beautiful place and I hated to leave.” — Carlotta O’Neill

“What I am after is to get an audience to leave the theater with an exultant feeling from seeing somebody on the stage facing life, fighting against the eternal odds, not conquering, but perhaps inevitably being conquered. The individual life is made significant just by the struggle.” — Eugene O’Neill

Be sure to include O’Neill’s plays as part of your reading for Books Around the Bay game. You will find his plays in the call number 812.54 O’NEILL or on the adult summer reading game display at your local branch.

Join the Summer game @ the library

It is a celebration of Bay Area authors , experiences, and life .These works make Bay Area a unique place where authors with the power of pen bring beauty, joy, and liberation. The choices are infinite…

“I Loved You So Much

I loved you

So much

That when

You left

It took

A lot

To keep me

Alive.”

ABSOLUTE TRUST in the GOODNESS of the EARTH     

The new poems by ALICE WALKER

From Alice Walker’s poetry to memoir of Frances Mayes are all works: that are considered as literally works around the Bay.

In UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN, France Mayes in a poetic language describes her decision leaving San Francisco and finding a different world in Tuscan, Italy. “I’ve learned here that simplicity is liberating. Simca’s philosophy applies totally to this kitchen, where we no longer measure, but just cook. As all cooks know, ingredients of the moment are the best guides. Much of what we do is too simple to be called a recipe-it’s just the way to do it.”

Books around the Bay seems to be a simple theme for the summer reading game at the library .The theme is wide open to all different titles that were created here or the writers lived here part or all of her career , or the story starts ,ends, or take place in San Francisco. Two above titles are sample of the list. Both are non fiction …however if you like to read fiction, just search the catalog for San Francisco (calif.) fiction! Or stop by the information desk so we can share the other Bay Area authors that wrote fiction about other places in the world. The example for that would Isabel Allende, and Khaled Hosseini. Just join the game!