The next day, I woke up and went to Woody's Laundromat with heavy load. As I was folding, a few dozen teenagers marched by carrying signs protesting Israel's actions in the Gaza. Some kids were wearing those scarves Rachel Ray got in trouble for.

Police cars crawl the neighborhood at night. The helicopters stayed for a few days, though I don't think much was happening after that first night with the garbage fires and the car stompings. But Oakland, like the rest of the world seems close to a brink of some kind

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Katherine spit-roasted rabbit legs to order tonight, putting potatoes in the wire basket as counter-weights. At the end of the night she split them open and doused them with butter, and served them for the staff on the back table. Ally came to me excitedly, "They taste like vanilla!" True enough, the crunchy skins tasted strongly of vanilla. I expected them to taste smokey in that yucky, medicinal nitrate way, but instead of smoke, the potatoes were perfumed with vanilla.

But why? Turns out, vanilin, the synthetic version of vanilla, comes from wood pulp. Oaky wines have buttery vanilla flavors from the wood. So, the potatoes might have picked up the vaporized vanilin from the wood fire. Maybe the starchy potato is more inclined to absorb those vanilla flavors rather than the harsher smoke flavors. Is paper mostly starch?