Lettuce Prayer
Beware the green monster lurking on your plate
“Oh wait,” I said to the server. “What about the lettuce?” I’d just ordered a cheeseburger classic, the one with, you know, lettuce and tomato. “It’s safe,” she declared. The unspoken reference, of course, was to the cyclosporiasis that had left thousands ill—across the midwest, I’d heard, so I accepted her assurance at face value.
Mistake. Sometime after midnight the first rumblings propelled me from my bed to the bathroom. Then again, and again into the next day and beyond.
Now, I’m not blaming the restaurant, one of my favorite haunts, a place just across the D.C. line in Chevy Chase, Md. that I’d been going to for years, since I have a chronic medical issue that can spark similar bouts. But I’d had a prior episode after eating out days before that I’d discounted because only a few chopped lettuce flakes garnished the dish served up at another favorite establishment, this one just inside the D.C.-Maryland line. Had I been paying closer attention, though, I would have noticed that cases of cyclosporiasis infections had arrived in Maryland in recent weeks.
All this is by way of explaining why I’ve been missing from these pages for several days. I’m on the mend now, and you’ll soon see SpyWeek showing up in your email box per usual. But let this be a warning to you, my friends around D.C. especially: Beware the green monster lurking on your plate.
Oh, damn, Jeff! Feel better. I'm so sorry. Gee, if only we still had federal agencies fully staffed to fight such invasions.
So sorry to hear it. I am glad you lived to tell the tale. I can imagine that there will be deaths.
I was introduced to it by Dean Blundell's piece telling us about a woman who had explosive diarrhea 40 times a day. I don't know for how long, but it sounds deadly.
https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/trumparrhea-the-explosive-diarrhea
I think my own child would die from that, so before she went to the US for a few weeks I said do not to eat any fresh produce while there. This is the opposite of what I have been saying prior to this. I said, eat plenty of it before going and then to eat vitamins while there.
It is exactly what I predicted would happen after reading Project 2025 with my bookclub the summer and fall before Trump was reelected. I envisioned a "The Jungle" sort of scenario with food and water and everything else that we need protection to consume.