Ironic Plane Crash Kills 20

In 2003, by a vote of 314 to 152, the residents of Bolinas, California, passed Resolution G which read "Vote for Bolinas to be a socially acknowledged nature-loving town because to like to drink the water out of the lakes to like to eat the blueberries to like the bears is not hatred to hotels and motor boats. Dakar. Temporary and way to save life, skunks and foxes (airplanes to go over the ocean) and to make it beautiful."

(The United States of Arugula uses this fun fact as a foot note to explain what Bolinas is in the most concise way possible. Notice on that wikipedia link that, Bolinas, a town of 1200 people, has at least 35 notable current or former residents with their own wikipedia articles, most of them poets or other artists.)

Wouldn't we all?

At the end of the event, a man yelled out to Obama that he will be a better president than George Bush. Obama responded, “So would you!”

Toklas Brownies
A helpful footnote in the badly named but well written United States of Arugula points out that the original edition of the best selling Alice B. Toklas cookbook was padded out with recipes contributed by her counter-culture friends including one for "Haschich Fudge" contributed by surrealist painter and William S. Burroughs collaborator Brion Gysin. Toklas, unfamilar with the drug, published Gysin's Dadaist prank-recipe and writeup unaltered, mentioning it "might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies Bridge Club"

Pardon my French

"(Julia Child) lights up the scene briefly, as (she) did the day before yesterday when with her bare fingers, she snatched a set of cannellini beans out of the pot of boiling water with the cry, ‘Wow! These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock.’”

-from letter written by Child's husband, as quoted by David Kamp in his excellent but stupidly named history of food in America "The United States of Arugula" (pg 52)