I may have spoken too soon when (earlier post) I noted how limited is our diet.

Actually, we've recently added a new dish to our repertoire: tacos.

Each taco consists of 1 Mexican corn tortilla, red kidney beans (made from the dry beans, not canned), avocado pieces, hacked white meat chicken, salsa and yogurt.

The salsa is probabaly the magic ingredient. It's Bonnie's own recipe mixing tomato, onion, spices, cucumber...

These tacos are incredibly good. Eating them is perfect for either forgetting one's woes or celebrating something positive.

The other night I watched a movie called "Cadillac Records." It's the story of Chess Records, the famous independent label that introduced Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Etta James, etc.

One of the early scenes depicts Alan Lomax appearing in the fields to record Muddy Waters, then a Mississippi sharecropper.

It was kind of disconcerting to me because the actor playing Lomax didn't look much like him and hadn't his presence. Alan was a big man, with a vestigial Texas drawl. This actor looked and talked like, I don't know, maybe a less than brilliant New Jersey car salesman.

Of course it's not a flaw in the movie, unless you happened to have known Alan.

I had just recovered from that when there was a scene with, of all people, Eric Bogosian playing Alan Freed the disc jockey!

Is the world such a small place that I can't even be left in peace to watch a movie anymore?

Yesterday I began re-reading Jerry's magnum opus autobiography: Cold Eye, Warm heart.

I was grateful that Jerry could see it through to publication before he died. I think this may be the book he most wanted and needed to write.

To read it is to have him here again speaking in his familiar voice.

I wish I could drop him an e-mail to tell him how much I appreciate it.

On Sunday I received a note from his wife, Marijke. that my old friend Jerry Rosen had died on Friday, August 13.

He succumbed following a long battle with leukemia and had been in seclusion for a while now.

I will miss Jerry. Life without him will feel measurably more hollow.

It is some comfort that I can reread his books if I wish to hear his voice again. I will always be guided by him, the thought of how he would have reacted to the various things that happen in life. But no more pleasure in telling him about these eventualities in person!

A great friend.

In writing my post on our eating habits I completely forgot to mention that on Sunday we take a break from our weekday routine and have an omelet for breakfast--which I make in our non-stick silicon-coated frying pan.

We're having a serious heat wave here in NYC. I'm sitting in my office (I should say our office) staying cool, restoring a drawing and eating occasional chunks of watermelon.

Bonnie's in the other room preparing our set lunch: steamed fish, steamed broccoli and steamed fresh corn.

We are definitely creatures of habit when it comes to eating, totally unadventurous. Except on Saturday when we may go totally wild. The last couple of Saturdays I've been panbroiling a salmon steak. It's still fish! And Bonnie has been really pushing her boat out by pan broiling a small piece of steak.

We only have two or three other set meals. Oatmeal and banana for breakfast. Larger tossed salad with chicken pieces for dinner. Or noodles with peanut sauce and chicken pieces + small tossed salad. We generally avoid eating red meat.

We've made creating these few meals a fine art. I think Bonnie deserves the lion's share of the credit. She has an impeccable sense of proportion in mixing ingredients. Her dressings for both chicken and salad, based upon Balsamic vinegar, olive oil, mustard, honey are something worth eating. One feels satisfied without being heavy--and spiritually uplifted.

We rarely alter our diet because these meals taste so good. And we have candlelight and music every night.

I am fully dependent and can no longer imagine an evening without some of this Bonnie-made food.

It's strange that we do so little experimenting because we're actually quite interested in dining. Bonnie gets cookbooks out of the library. We read and discuss the recipes. For what larger purpose I can't say.

I just finished re-reading "Main Street" this July 4 weekend. I had first read it as a high school student.

But in the intervening years I was fortunate to meet and become friends with Rex and Carole Wiederanders, whose life together bore some resemblance to that of Will and Carol Kennicott.

Rex was one of the main physicians in Williston, North Dakota; Will occupied the same position in fictional Gopher Prairie.

I once visited them in Williston for an extended stay and had the opportunity meet their friends and absorb the town's atmosphere. It was a genuine "Gopher Prairie" experience. I had dinner at the Kiwanis Club, went duck hunting, got a full dose of midwestern theology from the local clergy. Rex even allowed me to observe when he performed a hip replacement on an obese middle-aged farmer's wife. I'll never forget him slicing through the thick layer of fat and peeling it back so he could work.

Rex and Carole were conservative politically and, while not Bible pounders, made clear where their religious sympathies lay. They disliked long haired folk and rock music. Not to mention Indians (whom they thought shiftless). Possibly they hated Swedes as well. They were quite adamantly opposed to anyone who transgressed against their sense of the proprieties. Rex more so than Carole. Like many people who hold starched traditional views, they were generous in tolerating in their personal friends considerable freedom of action and thought.

They greatly admired art and artists--and here we found much common ground.

Carole developed cancer and required a mastectomy. Rex performed it.

Rex's young son, Carole's stepson, was murdered while away at college.

Carole died before Rex. Rex was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease and retired to Arizona where he died around 2005.

Rex wrote some books, which will live after him in a manner of speaking until they disappear from the market place. Although, given the internet, that could take a good long while!

"Main Street" has forever changed for me--due to having known Rex and Carole.