I Found A Peanut: 95-Year-Old Blogger an International Hit

Saturday, September 1, 2007

95-Year-Old Blogger an International Hit

She may be the Grandma Moses of the internet. Just eight months ago, 95-year-old Maria Amelia Lopez was given a blog of her own.

Since then, this Spanish great-grandmother has gained an international following, gaining more than a third of a million hits on her blog. Think Granny's not net-capable? She'll cure you of that notion.

Lopez is against nursing homes and just sitting around waiting to die. She wonders why nursing homes don't provide internet access. And, she's not happy about companies that are slow to offer broadband access to the internet.

She puts a personal face on the Spanish Civil War, telling the story of how her 16-year-old brother went off to war and came back without one leg. A socialist, she's tough about politics and has political leaders among her fans.

Lopez is available via internet broadcasts, and her website contains translations into many languages. You can keep up with her travel experiences, too.

Es muy bien, Senora, es muy bien.

She is billed as the world's oldest blogger. At 95 years old and with a worldwide following that has seen more than 340,000 hits on her blog, Spaniard María Amelia López has achieved the kind of status that millions of younger internet chroniclers can only dream of.

López, who was introduced to the world of blogging by one of her grandchildren just eight months ago, has become such a global hit that she receives posts in languages as strange and impossible for her to understand as Russian, Japanese and Arabic.

"My name is Amelia and I was born in Muxía (A Coruña - Spain) on December the 23rd of 1911," she wrote as her first post on amis95.blogspot.com. "Today it's my birthday and my grandson, who is very stingy, gave me a blog."

With a mix of humour, warmth, optimism, nostalgia and feisty outbursts of leftwing polemic, she has won a regular readership of people keen to find out just what this Spanish great-grandmother is going to say or do next.

Source: guardian.co.uk

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The Peanut Man

The morning is cool, a mist rising off the land. Just past dawn, still sleepy. But you're moving on down the road anyway.

There, under the trees, steam rising from the boiling pot, blending into the wisps of fog. The peanut man.

With the sun still barely tipping over the rounded earth, and the early morning cries of birds, the crossroads up ahead, you think: what did Robert Johnson first see when he met up with the devil? The fire glows hot as the peanut man smiles, chanting "hot boiled peanuts, fresh, sack 'em up. Hot boiled peanuts."

He hands you the sack, wet, hot, tempting with the fullness of hot boiled peanuts. You both smile, changing your money, fragile slip of paper, for what he has to offer: heat, a crunch, a taste like no other, the peanut, extraordinary food.

You hop back in your car. If you're smart, you find plenty of towels, paper or otherwise. Peanut bag goes in your lap, warming you.

Scoop out a hot boiled peanut. Here's where the juice begins, for real. If you know hot boiled peanuts, you don't crack open the peanut and transfer the meat to your mouth.

No, put the peanut in your mouth. Bite down. The warm, salty water, rich with the taste of peanut rushes across your tongue.

Lap your tongue around the peanut and shell. Suck. This is what life tastes like, meaty, salty, and warm, rich.

Remove peanut and shell, extract peanut. Toss shell somewhere. Return peanut, bare, naked, to your mouth. Taste it fully as you chew, the earthy taste of the simple peanut. Packed with protein, served with panache in that cradling shell, the peanut is about as good as it gets in the simple goodness of life.

If you've found a peanut, a whole bag of hot boiled peanuts, you've found food, warmth, sustenance, an entire culture, and something to muse about as you journey on.

Not to mention peanut shells to throw at your brother or buddy. Doesn't matter. The essence is the peanut, rich, rolling in the currents of history, from the Delta to the dawn of a new techno-millenium.

Brother Peanut is going along for the ride. And the peanut man, he'll always be out there, somewhere. No matter how long or hard the trip, suddenly, you round a curve, and there he is, smiling over his pot.

I Found A Peanut

Saturday, September 1, 2007

95-Year-Old Blogger an International Hit

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The Peanut Man

Think I'm doing a good job? I'd love some fresh tea, thanks!

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