David K. Leff, Essayist, Poet, Lecturer

Falafel, Architecture, and a Fifteen Minute World Tour

There are few things as insistent as cravings for particular foods.  Whether it’s as rarefied as the desire for a madelein pastry in Marcel Proust’s epic multivolume novel Remembrance of Things Past or as down home as a hankering for grandma’s chicken soup or dad’s barbecue, the hunger for particular foods at odd moments is often hard to resist.  So when I yearn for falafel, one of my favorite delicacies, I have no choice but to head for Tangiers International, a tiny, informal place that trumpets having “specialty foods for all people.”

In Praise of Dandelions

I like dandelions.  I willingly let them grow in my lawn.  These days, when the sprightly yellow floral buttons are popping up in nearly every yard, it’s not a popular position to take.  It may even be considered radical and dangerous.  But perhaps there’s a bit of subversive iconoclast in me.

Even if you frown at their presence, it’s hard not to admire dandelions.  Though they prefer moist soil and full sun, dandelions persist in inhospitable places such as roadsides, dry rock outcrops, and pavement cracks.  Unlike many plant species, this Eurasian immigrant seems to meet the challenge of human development and suburbanization with every success.  Perhaps the spacious lawns of our suburbs best imitate the sunlit meadows that are their favored habitat.  In fact, the further distant you are from the handiwork of man, the less likely you are to see dandelions.

Discovering Roadside Litter

Trash along our highways is a kind of free-form, multi-media graffiti.  Such displays follow wherever travel leads: along commuter routes, vacation byways, and in the gutters of streets around town.   Items made for distinct, useful purposes have either escaped or been tossed away.  They’re distributed by the wind and transformed by rain and sun.  Paper, plastic, glass, wood and metal objects form a constantly changing collage as they degrade or conditions on the road’s median or shoulders change with time and the season.