Missive #204

18. NASRUDDIN VISITS THE PRISONERS

As an act of charity, Nasruddin went to the prison to talk with all the prisoners and console them.

When they spoke, each inmate told Nasruddin that they were imprisoned unjustly. “I’m innocent,” they told him, one after another.

One inmate, however, did not protest. “I’m guilty of my crimes,” he said, “and that’s why I’m here in prison.”

As soon as Nasruddin heard that, he went to see the warden.

“You have to free this prisoner immediately!” Nasruddin told the warden. “Otherwise, he’s going to be a terrible influence on all the innocent men you have locked up here.”

This Tale is from “Tiny Tales of Nasruddin” by Laura Gibbs. The book is licensed under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. © 2019-2022 Laura Gibbs.

“Winner of the John Burroughs Association’s John Burroughs Medal for natural history writing and a Southwest Book Award from the Border Regional Library Association

To the untrained eye, a desert is a wasteland that defies civilization; yet the desert has been home to native cultures for centuries and offers sustenance in its surprisingly wide range of plant life.I liked this book because it discusses desert plants in that part of Arizona where I grew up. A lot of area covered is also in Sonora, MX which I have some familiarity. The information about the desert foods is also very interesting. The author has written a lot more books that I want to try to read. Gary Paul Nabhan has combed the desert in search of plants forgotten by all but a handful of American Indians and Mexican Americans. In Gathering the Desert readers will discover that the bounty of the desert is much more than meets the eye—whether found in the luscious fruit of the stately organpipe cactus or in the lowly tepary bean.

Nabhan has chosen a dozen of the more than 425 edible wild species found in the Sonoran Desert to demonstrate just how bountiful the land can be. From the red-hot chiltepines of Mexico to the palms of Palm Springs, each plant exemplifies a symbolic or ecological relationship which people of this region have had with plants through history. Each chapter focuses on a particular plant and is accompanied by an original drawing by artist Paul Mirocha. Word and picture together create a total impression of plants and people as the book traces the turn of seasons in the desert.” — Book promo @ goodreads.com

I have had a VERY slow Verizon connection for the past 36-48 hours and today I could not do a Post Edit of my Draft for posting today. I was able see the Draft as a preview so I copied the text and created another draft. By the time that I got this done all of a sudden I was able to edit the posting for today. Perhaps my rants on the host Chat and emails to their Support did something?