St. Izzy by the River

Strawberry Fudge Cheesecakey Pie

2012-01-04T12:24:00.004-05:00

This recipe written by SWMBO.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Modified from a Pillsbury Recipe found here.)

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Prepare a crust for a 10” pie (1)

Sift together:

1½ cups biscuit or other light flour
¾ tsp salt (I used kosher salt, which I powdered using a mortar and pestle)

Cut in ½ cup Crisco. I add half at a time. The first half is cut in to make a fine crumb texture; the second half is added in to make larger pea-sized pieces. It enhances the flakiness.

Mix in a cup

2 Tbsp very cold water and
2 Tbsp unflavored vodka (2) ( I used Sobieski.)

Toss the liquid 1 Tbsp at a time over the flour/salt/Crisco mixture. Stir until the dough just holds together in a ball.

Turn dough ball out onto a tea towel lightly sprinkled with flour and powdered sugar. Flatten, then roll out gently into a circle 1” wider than the top diameter of your pie plate.

Use the tea towel and rolling pin to gently maneuver the crust into place inside a 10” glass pie plate. Form the edges of the crust however looks nice to you. Handle the crust minimally—pretend your hands are on fire and the crust is made of snow.

Create a foil shield for the crust: Roll out two sheets, ~18 inches each, of aluminum foil. Place the sheets at right angles to each other on a counter, and set the pie plate into the center of the foil sheets. Starting from the outside, bring the edges of the foil together, joining/rolling the edges as the pieces come closer together, making a circle of foil that rests above the top edges of the crust. This allows the shield to stay in place as the pie is filled, baked, moved, etc., and keeps the crust from overcooking later on. You can skip this step if you have a pie crust shield that fits your 10” pie plate.

Set the crust aside. If there is room, hold it in the fridge while you make the Chocolate Layer.

Chocolate Layer

In a large bowl, combine

A 10.25-oz. package of fudge brownie mix (these are usually in packets/pouches, not boxes—keep looking on the shelf—you’ll find one!),
¼ cup cooking oil,
2 Tbsp water, and
1 egg.

Beat 50 strokes with spoon (not mixer). It will be a bit grainy.

Spread over the bottom of the pie crust.

Put into your preheated oven. Bake at 350° for 30 to 35 minutes or until top is shiny and center is set.

Cheesecake Layer

Combine in a medium bowl:

1 (8-oz.) package cream cheese, softened (3)
¼ cup sugar,
1 teaspoon vanilla, and
1 egg.

Beat until smooth.

When the chocolate layer is done, spoon the cream cheese mixture over the top of the pie, carefully spreading to cover.

Pull the foil shield back away from the crust edges—this will now allow them to brown.

Return pie to oven, bake 18-20 minutes until cream cheese layer is smooth.

Cool (I placed in fridge) at least 1 hour.

Strawberry Layer (4)

While the pie is cooling, slice 3 cups of fresh strawberries. Set aside 2 cups for topping and 1 cup for glaze.

Strawberry Glaze

Take one cup of the sliced strawberries, chop coarsely, and set into a small pan on the stove—set burner on low side of medium heat.

As strawberries start to sizzle, add slowly a mixture of

1 cup water, and
1 Tbsp cornstarch—shaken together to eliminate lumps.

Stir until liquid thickens and just comes to a boil. Add red food coloring if you want intense red color (I didn’t).

Set a fine strainer over a bowl and transfer the thickened, lumpy glaze into it. Push the liquids into the bowl (assuming they don’t just drip in).

Stir the strained glaze into remaining two cups of strawberries. This keeps them fresher on the top of the pie. (5)

Assemble & Serve Pie

Spread glazed strawberries over the top of the cheesecake layer.

Top (as desired) with

• Heated hot fudge ice cream topping, (6) or

• Chocolate syrup, or

• Whipped cream, or

• Some combination (7)

Serve to guests who will be astonished when you cut into the pie and they see the chocolate layer.

Store any leftovers in refrigerator.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Not going to serve it right away? Here’s what Pillsbury recommends:

Prepare the pie and let it cool. Do not garnish it with the fudge or strawberries. Wrap it tightly and refrigerate it for up to three days, or freeze for up to two weeks. To thaw the frozen pie unwrap it and refrigerate it for two to three hours. Bring the pie to room temperature, decorate it with the fudge and strawberries, and serve.

Notes:

(1) The recipe calls for a nine-inch pie—I don’t have any pie plates in that size. I’ve learned to go larger, to assure that the filling is cooked all the way through in the center.

(2) The vodka adds the moisture needed to form and roll out the dough. It also evaporates more quickly during cooking, which results in a flakier crust. Trust me on this one!

(3) The package instructions for softening state to microwave it for 10 seconds. I found it blended better after 20 seconds. Don’t use whipped or spreadable cream cheese.

(4) The Pillsbury website shows a lovely pie topped with strawberry halves. Make the pie this way if you are entering it into a contest. However, the reviewers on the website were pretty consistent in saying that the halved strawberries made the pie difficult to slice and serve and the pieces fell off of the pie during eating. I took the advice given to create the pie with sliced strawberries.

(5) Hold the remaining bits of cooked strawberries to add, a teaspoon or so at a time, to glasses of Prosecco or champagne.

(6) I tried piping melted mini Hershey’s kisses over the top. They came out too thick, and didn’t work well the next day after the pie had been refrigerated.

(7) I’d recommend the whipped cream. The pie isn’t as sweet as you might expect, and whipped cream, brownies, cheesecake and strawberries are a great combination.

Mama Stamberg’s Cranberry Relish Recipe

2011-11-23T11:09:00.002-05:00

Actually from a 1959 NYT recipe by Craig Clairborne (cf. comments at the article linked to the title of this post), this is a perennial favorite among the O’Cayce family, the (hyper-)extended in-laws, and friends & acquaintances near, dear, lost, and forgotten. The first time SWMBO heard it, she knew she would make it. She loves her some big, bold flavors. So, at long last, I’m stealing it for here.

N.b. that you have to make this at least a day ahead of time to allow for freezing thawing, which are crucial to the texture and the flavor blend.

2 cups whole raw cranberries, washed
1 small onion
¾ cup sour cream
½ cup sugar
2 tablespoons horseradish from a jar (“red is a bit milder than white”)

Grind the raw berries and onion together. (“I use an old-fashioned meat grinder,” says Stamberg. “I’m sure there's a setting on the food processor that will give you a chunky grind — not a puree.”)

Add everything else and mix.

Put in a plastic container and freeze.

Early Thanksgiving morning, move it from freezer to refrigerator compartment to thaw. (“It should still have some little icy slivers left.”)

The relish will be thick, creamy, and shocking pink. (“OK, Pepto Bismol pink. It has a tangy taste that cuts through and perks up the turkey and gravy. Its also good on next-day turkey sandwiches, and with roast beef.”)

Makes 1 ½ pints.

Basic Marinara

2011-11-08T18:38:00.002-05:00

I admit that I am using the term incorrectly. Actual marinara is usually heavily seasoned, but this is just the basic tomato sauce to use as your palette. Also, you’ll note the non-Italian mixture of fresh basil and garlic (at least, I assume that it’s non-Italian since I never see these two wondrous flavors together over there).

For each person, have:

½ onion (I prefer red onion in the sauce)
(optional) 2 stalks of celery
¼ head of garlic
1 medium large tomato
¼ c. packed of fresh basil leaves
(optional) 1 T. fresh oregano
(optional) 1 T. fresh thyme (my usual rule of thumb when using all three spices is 3 parts basil, 1 part oregano, 1 part thyme)

Choose a good, thick-bottomed sauce pan, pour in some EVOO, and turn up to medium heat.

(Option: for an earthier flavor, heat the oil up a bit higher and sear the oregano and thyme before adding the onions. Be careful that these spices don’t burn before the tomatoes are added.)

Roughly chop the onion (and optional celery, cross cut so that the strings are short) & add to the pan. While performing other tasks, stir occasionally to keep any onion from sticking or burning.

Roughly chop the garlic. When the onions have almost clarified, add to the pan. Continue stirring occasionally until the onions have clarified and are on the verge of starting to brown.

Roughly cut the tomatoes. When the onion/garlic mixture is ready, add the tomatoes. Stir occasionally. Cover the pan between stirrings.

Roughly chop & add the basil (& oregano & thyme if you want them and haven’t already seared them). Guess what you should do from time to time.

That’s right. Stir occasionally until the tomatoes are completely tender. (N.b. that I use the whole tomato, including peel & seeds. Some people prefer to seed and or peel the tomatoes, but I have no problem with either.)

When the tomatoes are limp & tender, use an immersion blender to purée the sauce. Simmer down to desired consistency, with the lid askew.

When you start to simmer, this is the time to add anything you want in the sauce. Try to vary the textures for interest’s sake. A decent meal should include tactile pleasures as well as those of taste, smell, and sight.

A few recent variations:

The best sauce I have done recently (and I’ve done it a few times) has been a puttanesca arabiata (minus the anchovies, which SWMBO can not digest). Add pitted & halved kalamata olives, rinsed capers, and a healthy dose of red pepper flakes. Yummers.

Just last night, on a whim, I did the sauce with sundried tomatoes (julienne cut) and capers. It was a hit. I may go warm up the leftovers now.

I frequently use baby portabellas. When I do, I like to pull ut the stems and add them to the marinara with the garlic before I purée it, and then cut the caps into half-bite-sized pieces to add afterwards.

A lovely and simple sauce I had in Rome not long back was an arabiata with bacon. In fact, over Winterim 2011, I ran into this sauce twice. Tasty!

The point is, use the basic sauce as a starting point and play. It takes no time at all and is SO much tastier than anything from a jar.

Basic Salmon filet

2011-11-08T18:13:00.002-05:00

I cook salmon with many different seasoning combinations. My favorite is plain served over low-country grits with some ginger, blueberry chutney on top. I’ve also done it with basil & mint (inspired by the Thai flavor palette and the need to clean out the fridge) and, for large groups, broil whole sides with Alton Brown’s citrus glaze. But for plain & simple, this is the ticket.

Preheat your convection (toaster) oven to 350°F.
Wash & pat dry the salmon filet(s). Set aside for a moment.
Put some EVOO into a shallow ceramic (glass, glazed Terra Cotta, porcelain) baking dish. Sprinkle liberally with dill & paprika. Feel free to add crushed garlic if the mood takes you.
Smear the fillet(s) around in the oil & spice to thoroughly coat the top(s), flip, and coat the bottom(s) as well.
Pop the dish into the middle of the oven.
Pull it out in 12 minutes. Let it stand for a few moments while you pour a glass of decent wine. It will flake all the way through but still be very moist. (I have no idea how many minutes to add if your oven is not convection.)
Enjoy with whatever sides you care for this evening.

Augustine on Learning a Foreign Language

2011-11-08T16:59:00.005-05:00

Usually, when I quote Augustine, it is the simplified epistemological statement “credo ut intellegam” (I believe in order to understand; yes, while confessing that both faith and reason are necessary, I am, at heart, more of a mystic than a rationalist.) But in honor of the birth late last evening of Blaise’s younger brother Augustine Peter John Broadbent, the language teacher in me wants to post this.

What is the proper pædagogical model for second language acquisition?

“Nulla enim verba illa noveram, et saevis terroribus ac poenis, ut nossem, instabatur mihi vehementer.”

(For I understood not a single word [of Greek], and was vehemently threatened with cruel terrors and punishments so that I would learn.) Confessions 1.14/23

An Exercise in Proper Punctuation and Intonation

2011-10-11T22:42:00.002-04:00

every lady in the land
has twenty nails on each hand
five and ten upon her feet
all this is true without deceit

Swedish Apple Pancake

2011-09-18T19:49:00.003-04:00

We had a similar recipe but lost it right when a gaggle of nieces & nephews were coming for a sleepover. SWMBO did a quick web search and liked the looks of this recipe. We made two on Saturday morning (for two adults and five kids from teens down to grade school) and two more on Sunday for brunch (for seven adults and one toddler). On Sunday, a couple of people asked if the recipe was on my blog, so I suppose that means it’s a success. It will doubtless get some tweaking in the future; the apples & brown sugar tend to go past caramelizing and into hard crack stage where they touch the the cast iron pans we use, and the whole pancake wants to stick to the bottom of the pan; these things need fixing. But for future reference, here’s the base recipe (linked to the title of this post).

Swedish Apple Pancake

3 Tablespoons (2 + 1) unsalted butter
2 large apples, peeled, cored, and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1/4 cup light brown sugar, packed
3 eggs
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1 lemon wedge, for squeezing

1. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

2. In a large ovenproof skillet (preferably with curved sides)

2.a. melt 2 Tablespoons of the butter over medium heat.
2.b. Add the apple slices and cook, stirring, until tender, about 10 minutes.
2.c. Add 2 Tablespoons of the brown sugar and stir to combine.

3. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, salt, milk, and flour.

4. Pour this batter over the apples in the skillet, transfer to the oven, and bake until puffy, about 10 minutes.

5. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix the cinnamon and remaining 2 Tablespoons brown sugar.

6. Cut the remaining Tablespoon of butter into pieces.

7. When the pancake puffs, remove from the oven, dot with the pieces of butter (from 6), sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (from 5), and return to the oven to bake until browned, about 10 minutes more.

8. As the pancake comes out of the oven, squeeze the lemon juice over the top.

9. Serve in wedges right out of the pan with maple syrup.

I had mine without syrup and it was great.Those who had it with the syrup seemed to like it as well.

SWMBO's dietary restrictions

2011-07-16T12:04:00.002-04:00

Here is a little note SWMBO once put together about her non-Levitical Dietary Restrictions. It is, I hope you'll note, modeled on a piece by Ian Frazier that once ran in Atlantic Monthly and became somewhat infamous. The original here is available from a link to the title of this post.

And here is herself’s solipsistic version, dated 20 June 2001:

~~~Begin Quote~~~

“Comments” concerning food and drink

Of the fish of the sea and the fowl of the air and the beasts of the field, of those clean and unclean, I may not eat.

Of the milk of the cattle and the sheep and the goat, whilst in the form fore-ordained by the Creator for the young of each species, I may not drink.

Of the milk hardened into cakes for only a moment's time, and of the especially smelly young milk-cakes I may not eat.

Of the lumpy cheesy concoctions, high in fat and masquerading as food for penitents and mendicants, I may not eat.

Yet, of the skim and one percent milk, or the regular milk BAKED into dishes, I may eat. And of the low-fat or non-fat cottage cheese or yogurt, I may eat, but not too much. I may eat of the low-fat or non-fat ice cream, although these are vile and loathsome in Michael's sight.

And of the hard and aged cheeses, yea even those sharp, pungent and gratable cheeses, I may eat, especially when cooked onto a pizza.

Of the radishes and bell peppers and cucumbers, and other offerings of Cain which cause the belching in one's innermost being, I may not eat.

Of the lettuce, Bibbed or iceberg, and of similar textureless and tasteless fillers, I may eat only a small portion, lest I return the abomination that is iceberg lettuce to the depths of the earth.

Yet of the spinach, cooked or raw, or nicely seasoned with lemon and olive oil, I may eat and give hearty thanks.

And although I may not partake of the raw cucumber or the barely pickled deli-cukes, I may enjoy the produce of the cucumber vine when fully briny or fully sweet (I may even “relish” the dish.)

Of the cooked vegetables I may eat, although it is of a truth that it is said that squash is an offense in my sight. I will endure it as Job endured boils, though, when it is the only non-meat item on a menu and is served as part of a “vegetable melody.”

What more shall I say? Shall I sing the praises of grilled eggplant or of the asparagus quesadilla? Shall I tell of chutneys and of spinach enchiladas and “Not Dogs” and of broccoli fried rice? Of tomatoes, cooked into garlicky sauces and served over pasta, or sliced and served with basil and mozzarella, or cooked into creamy soups, or even sliced fresh and red-ripe and served with salt and pepper? There is not time to tell the worth of lemon meringue pies or crescent roll pandowdy or ice milk or Diet Dr. Pepper or iced tea, yet I glory in these even as they remain constantly with my hips, withersoever I shall go.

Should I prepare meals, I may, like Peter with Cornelius, set aside these laws to prepare sustenance; although, like Moses on Mt. Nebo, I may not partake of that which is reserved for others.

(Apologies to Ian Frazier)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Michelle L. Myer, AKA: Nursing Goddess
House of Chez Casa
Durham, NC

There’s nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.

2011-06-05T21:19:00.003-04:00

What people remember isn’t the book itself, so much as the furor: ministers in church denounced it as obscene, not only here; the public library was forced to remove it from the shelves, the one bookstore in town refused to stock it. There was word of censoring it. People snuck off to Stratford or London or Toronto even, and obtained their copies on the sly, as was the custom then with condoms. Back at home they drew the curtains and read, with disapproval, with relish, with avidity and glee—even the ones who’d never thought of opening a novel before. There’s nothing like a shovelful of dirt to encourage literacy.

Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, ch 3, "The Presentation," p. 39 of the 1st Anchor Books edition, Sept. '01.

Toni’s Easy Spinach Casserole

2011-05-17T18:52:00.003-04:00

We got this recipe from our friends the O’Briens (of VooDoo Prayer fame) back in the 80s. They got it from a vegetarian Seventh Day Adventist friend from their hippie days. Her name was Toni. We have passed the recipe along countless times over the years, and one of the people to whom we gave it was another Toni (Graham née Booker), who submitted it to the Mesquite’s Eats cookbook from which I copy it now. Toni to Sally to us to Toni to MBC cookbook back to us to the web.

This is fast, easy, and always a big hit. We normally end up making a double recipe, as we did tonight for our Small Group.

Preheat oven to 350F.

2 Tbsp butter (¼ stick), cut into small squares
¼ lb. sharp cheese, cut into small squares
1 10 oz. pkg. frozen, cut into small squares
2 eggs, cut into small squares (just kidding)
3 Tbsp. flour
12 oz. carton cottage cheese

1. Mix all ingredients in a large bowl.
2. Put in a buttered baking dish (I prefer a 9 x 9 glass pan for one recipe, a 10 x 13 glass pan for a double; a single recipe works well in a large pie pan, too.)
3. Bake at 350 degree oven for 1 hour or until well-browned.

Serves 4-6, who will love the way it smells.

Robertson Davies

2011-05-14T19:58:00.002-04:00

In the header to this blog I quote Robertson Davies (from whom I have stolen... adopted the phrase “ornamental knowledge”), but I am shocked to find that I have not quoted him here to any degree. So here I make a poor attempt to remedy that oversight.

It used to be that we did our e-mail using hard-drive resident programs known collectiviely as “e-mail clients” and that it was common to set up a standard signature to go out at the bottom of all our e-mails. Very quaint, I know. I have just opened my old e-mail client and pulled up all of my Robertson Davies sigs. These run from 1994 to about 2005. There are far more quotations marked in the hard copies of Davies that I own, but search/copy/paste is so much easier than opening all those books and typing.

N.b. that in plain text e-mails, sent in lower ASCII, the convention was that text surrounded by underscores indicated italics, and asterisks (stars) indicated bold text.

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“...the most strenuous efforts of the most committed educationalists in the years since my boyhood have been quite unable to make a school into anything but a school, which is to say a jail with educational opportunities.”
-- Jonathan Hullah, M.D., F.R.C.P., narrator of
Robertson Davies’ _The Cunning Man_, I [4]
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“It is so easy to plan lives of humanitarian self-sacrifice for other people.”
-- Jonathan Hullah, M.D., F.R.C.P., narrator of
Robertson Davies’ _The Cunning Man_, II [13]
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Welsh rhetoric is part of me, and my curse is that the world is full of literal-minded morlocks who don’t understand, and think I’m a crook because their tongues are wrapped in burlap and mine is hinged with gold.
-- Robertson Davies, _The Lyre of Orpheus_
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Canadian National Prayer according to the omniscient narrator of Robertson Davies’ _The_Lyre_of_Orpheus_:

O God, grant me mediocrity and comfort; protect me from the radiance of Thy light.
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“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that we *do* anything,” said Maria. “I was just suggesting that we *talk* a little more compassionately.”

Robertson Davies, _The Lyre of Orpheus_

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There is a point in a man’s undressing when he looks stupid, and nothing in the world can make him into a romantic figure. It is at the moment when he stands in his underwear and socks.
-- Robertson Davies, _The Manticore_
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And in the Middle Ages, how concerned people who lived close to the world of nature were with the faeces of animals. And what a variety of names they had for them: the Crotels of a Hare, the Friants of a Boar, the Spraints of an Otter, the Werderobe of a Badger, the Waggying of a Fox, the Fumets of a Deer. Surely there might be some words for the material so near to the heart of Ozy Froats better than shit? What about the Problems of a President, the Backward Passes of a Footballer, the Deferrals of a Dean, the Odd Volumes of a Librarian, the Footnotes of a Ph.D., the Low Grades of a Freshman, the Anxieties of an Untenured Professor? As for myself, might it not be appropriately called the Collect for the Day?

Professor the Reverend Simon Darcourt, musing in _The Rebel Angels_
- by Robertson Davies
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It was in dealing with stupid pupils that his wit was shown. A dunce, who had done nothing right, would not receive a mark of Zero from him, for Hector would geld the unhappy wretch of marks not only for arriving at a wrong solution, but for arriving at it by a wrong method. It was thus possible to announce to the class that the dunce had been awarded _minus_ thirty-seven out of a possible hundred marks; such announcements could not be made more than two or three times a year, but they always brought a good laugh. And that laugh, it must be said, was not vaingloriously desired by Hector as a tribute to himself, but only in order that it might spur the dunce on to greater mathematical effort. That it never did so was one of the puzzles which life brought to Hector, for he was convinced of the effectiveness of ridicule in making stupid boys and girls intelligent.
Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
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“Oho, now I know what you are. You are an advocate of Useful Knowledge.”
“Certainly”
“You say that a man’s first job is to earn a living, and that the first task of education is to equip him for that job?”
“Of course.”
“Well allow me to introduce myself to you as an advocate of Ornamental Knowledge. You like the mind to be a neat machine, equipped to work efficiently, if narrowly, and with no extra bits or useless parts. I like the mind to be a dustbin of scraps of brilliant fabric, odd gems, worthless but fascinating curiosities, tinsel, quaint bits of carving, and a reasonable amount of healthy dirt. Shake the machine and it goes out of order; shake the dustbin and it adjusts itself beautifully to its new position.”
-- “Cobbler” Humphrey challenging Mackilwraith in chapter five of _Tempest-Tost_, book one of Robertson Davies’ Salterton Trilogy
---------------------------------------
“Curiosity killed the cat,” said Hector....
“I deny that,” said Cobbler, “the cat probably died a happy martyr to research.”
Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
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“She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose.”
-Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“...nothing is more fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech than the run of a good library.”
-Robertson Davies, _Tempest-Tost_
---------------------------------------
The third book of the Salterton Trilogy (_A Mixture of Frailties_) centers on a young girl from a very conservative protestant sect who earns the opportunity to go to England & Europe to study music. There’s quite a bit of good grist over the clash between her upbringing, her own moral standards, and the shockingly loose morals of musicians. There comes a great moment where she is given advice that includes the lines “If you’re living in what is pompously called sin with Revelstoke, you’d better be sure you are enjoying it, or you will soon find that you have neither your cake nor your penny.... the biggest mug in the world is the sinner who isn’t getting any pleasure from it”. And the first book (_Tempest-Tost_) has one of the world’s most pompous teachers as a main character, so you KNOW I enjoyed that.
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“[Coincidence is a] useful, dismissive word for people who cannot bear the idea of pattern shaping their own lives. [It] is what they call pattern in which they cannot discern something they are prepared to accept as meaning.”
-Robertson Davies, _What’s_Bred_in_the_Bone_
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Much may be learned about any society by studying the behavior and accepted ideas of its children, for children...are shadows of their parents, and what they believe and what they do are often what their parents believe in their hearts and would do if society would put up with it.
-Robertson Davies, _What’s_Bred_in_the_Bone_

Blender Hollandaise

2011-05-13T13:21:00.002-04:00

A good hollandaise can be very fussy to make right. (Wait! My egg yolks are scrambling! (or curdling with the lemon.)) So when a colleague dropped the May 2011 edition of bon appétit (the Italy issue) on my desk, this little gem from Eric Ripert caught my eye. I think I’m going to pick up some asparagus on the way home this afternoon.

1 ¼ cups (2 ½ sticks) unsalted butter, cubed
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice, plus more
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper

Fill a blender with hot water; set aside. Melt butter in a small saucepan over medium heat until foaming. Remove pan from heat. Drain blender and dry well. Put egg yolks and 2 Tbsp. lemon juice in blender; cover and blend to combine. Working quickly and with blender running, remove lid insert and slowly pour hot butter into blender in a thin stream of droplets, discarding the milk solids in bottom of the saucepan. Blend until creamy sauce forms. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and with more lemon juice. Serve immediately.

If you go to the original recipe at the magazine’s page (linked to the title of this post), you can watch a video of the procedure.

Green Beans with Balsamic Red Onion

2011-05-07T14:57:00.002-04:00

The original of this recipe is from the June 2010 issue of Diabetes Forecast. That article is linked to the title of this post. Over the last year, I have greatly simplified the procedure for quicker cooking and fewer dishes to clean. The trade off is a slight reduction in texture differences. I normally cook this for two people and so merely eyeball the amounts. You will need:

Green beans
red onion
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
almond slivers
salt & pepper

SWMBO prefers her green beans softer than I do. I can eat them raw; she hates when they squeak on her teeth. If you prefer crisper beans, you can skip steps 2 & 3 and just add the beans after the onion has been cooked.

Procedure:

Choose a good, heavy skillet with a lid. Warm it on the stove.
Put a shallow layer of water in the skillet, add the green beans, and simmer/steam them until they are almost cooked to your preferred level of crisp/soft.
Remove and set aside the beans, dump the water, and let the pan dry / rewarm on the stove.
Make sure the pan isn’t too hot, as olive oil smokes at a low temperature and is nasty when it does.
Put a bit of olive oil in the skillet.
Add one thick, quartered slice of red onion for each person.
Sauté the onion to desired level, stirring frequently. I like it when it just clarifies, SWMBO prefers it caramelized, so I usually cook it until it has clarified and the edges and thinner bits are browning.
Splash in some balsamic vinegar, add the green beans, stir, and cover for a couple minutes.
Check, stir, recover as needed.
Salt and pepper to taste, toss on some almond slivers, stir, and remove from heat.
Serve it up.

Enjoy!

A Limerick

2011-01-01T16:00:00.002-05:00

The bustard's an exquisite fowl
With minimal reason to growl:
He escapes what would be
Illegitimacy
By the grace of a fortunate vowel.

--George Vaill

(I am forever forgetting the first adjective, mistaking a tense, and forgetting who wrote this, so here it is.)

Grilled Caprese Sandwich

2010-11-27T17:45:00.003-05:00

Here’s the way I’m making these at the House of Chez Casa.

(If you don’t want garlic on the outside of your sandwich, and thus on your fingers, read the first note for an alternative.)

Blend together:

½ c. olive oil
4-5 cloves of garlic

Set aside. [1]

Choose some good, flavorful bread. [2] Use two slices per sandwich.
Cover each slice of bread with fresh basil leaves.
Thickly cut fresh tomato slices (~¼" thick). Blot dry and then salt the tomato. Place on half the bread slices.
Thickly cut bufala mozzarella slices. [3] Place on the other half of the bread slices.
Close the sandwich(es) up and brush both sides with the garlicked oil.
Toast, grill, or, as I do, press. [4] In a press, put the sandwich tomato side down.

When the cheese is starting to leak out of the sandwich, it’s done. In our press, the bread is also nicely toasted at this point.

Enjoy!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[1] This was tonight’s refinement; it is a keeper, and is the reason I’m posting the recipe now, even though a recipe isn’t really needed. In the past I’ve crushed garlic and brushed it onto the bread with the EVOO. The flavor of the garlic just didn’t come through. But doing it this way, blending the garlic into the oil and letting it sit? Now we can taste the garlic!

An alternative that has also been very good is to very thinly slice the garlic (like Paul Cicero / Paul Sorvino in Goodfellas) and layer it between the tomato and mozzarella.

[2] Our normal bread in this market is Heather’s 50% Whole Wheat Sourdough. We pick it up either at the Rosewood Market (deliveries T, Th, Sat) or at the local market on Saturday mornings. But if we lived in a different market, I swear I could live on LaMadeleine’s seven grain bread. It’s one of the things we miss about living in Dallas, and we brought a loaf home from our Atlanta Thanksgiving trip. I used the seven grain bread tonight. Yummers!

[3] You really, really, really want the sort of bufala mozzarella that comes packed in water. It gets marvelously stretchy and has a flavor that the hard blocks of mozzarella do not have. I slice it with a kitchen tool that looks very much like this one.

[4] I suppose some day I’d like a sandwich press / vegetable grill with plates that remove for easier cleaning, but this one does me fine for now. Without the press, I would grill this open face to start with and then close it up partway through, finishing with the tomato side down.

Ginger/Nut Sauce for Asparagus

2010-11-24T16:29:00.005-05:00

I don’t know why I’m keeping the original recipe (below). I usually just edit and move on, but this time I feel compelled to retain the history. Perhaps I’ll discuss this with a therapist some day, but that would mean starting therapy, and heaven knows that’s a road with no end. So here’s the latest incarnation, which seems to be enough for ~10 servings or so.

Put into a blending cup:

1 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp red wine vinegar
1 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp EVOO
1 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp soy sauce
3 large garlic cloves, chopped roughly
¼ tsp (heaping) red pepper flakes
1 medium bulb of ginger root (~1 ½" diameter, looks like 2 Tbsp or so), roughly chopped

Blend until completely smooth. Add:

1 Tbsp tahini
1 Tbsp chunky peanut butter
1 Tbsp (heaping) dry roasted peanuts

Blend until completely smooth again.

Toast 1 Tbsp sesame seeds (~3:40 did the trick for me) and put into the juice of ½ a lemon. Whisk into the mixture above.

Enjoy! (and consider adding more red pepper)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some time back, when we were expecting a small crowd here at the House of Chez Casa, SWMBO opened a cookbook and found a sauce she wanted me to try for some asparagus. We didn’t have all the ingredients, and I was cooking about a dozen different things that day, so I adapted a bit for what we had around the old homestead. It was a hit, and now that I’ve been asked to replicate it for Thanksgiving, I figured I should try to remember what I did.

Toss all of these things together and puree them.

¼ c. tahini
¼ c. chunky peanut butter
¼ c. crushed peanuts
¼ c. olive oil
¼ c. rice vinegar
¼ c. water
¼ c. soy sauce
¼ c. sugar (I use the unbleached stuff; I might try honey next time)
2 Tbsp. chopped ginger root
1 ½ Tbsp. crushed garlic
¼ tsp.crushed red pepper flakes

Taste the stuff & adjust flavors and consistency by tossing in extra little bits of the ingredients.

Refrigerate.

Our friend BoomBoom Cannon keeps an old mustard bottle on hand for drizzling pretty lines of sauces like this over the food. I’m lowbrow enough to just ladle it on with a spoon.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Edit, post-Thanksgiving notes:

On amount:
We had five bundles of asparagus to steam, and had nearly half the sauce and a quarter of the asparagus left over. Make less sauce.

On flavor:
I should have at least doubled the red pepper (proportionally). Even Gary, who admits to being afraid of Thai-level spice, thought it could have done with more pepper.

Mark brought broccoli steamed & tossed with lemon (juice & zest) and garlic — just the way Vincent taught us. The very sharp garlic there blended with the ginger/peanut sauce in a great way. Think about adding more garlic and substituting lemon for some of the vinegar.

Before he stumbled onto the combination of sauces, Gary suggested boosting the sesame flavor with some toasted sesame oil. I had considered adding some sesame seeds to the finished product to some texture interest. Perhaps some toasted sesame seed added at the end would do the trick.

Caramelized Sweet Onion Chutney

2010-11-14T15:08:00.005-05:00

Some weeks back, SWMBO complained noted that she had quite a bit of trouble making my onion chutney. I can’t imagine why! Just because I never turned the thing into a proper recipe and she had to open (and juggle) no less than three posts to figure out what to do, that’s no reason to go and get all admonitory. (The originals are here: post 1, with red onion confit; post B, the first caramelized chutney; post III, caramelizing in the crock pot)

Still, her point was well-taken, and so dorky boy will now try to rectify the situation.

As soon as you get home from work one evening, put

2 lbs. of sweet onions, thinly sliced, and
¼ lb. of butter, cut into pats

into a crock pot on low. Stir occasionally throughout the evening, but otherwise keep tightly covered. Before you go to bed, make very certain that the cover is completely in place (our old Rival with a glass lid will let steam escape if the lid is not precisely centered; the new Hamilton Beach is more forgiving).

When you get up the next morning (some eighteen hours after you started cooking the onions), give them a stir and add:

½ c. honey
½ c. tawny port
⅝ c. white balsamic vinegar
1 c. golden raisins, and
1 medium ginger root, grated (yes, this is new to the recipe, and optional; adding ginger to the blueberry chutney was a wonderful step and should be here as well).

Stir, recover tightly, and go back to work.

When you get home that evening (some twenty-four hours after you started), check for consistency. I find that I usually need to turn the temperature up to high and stir every now and again (while cooking dinner and annoying the cat with music turned up way too loudly) to let it simmer down and thicken up a bit. Seldom have I added salt & pepper at this point, although I’d be willing to bet that SWMBO would appreciate a bit of pepper. We’ll see next time.

Pesto

2010-11-14T14:41:00.007-05:00

Pesto is easy enough to make. Grind up some basil, pine nuts, sharp grated cheese, garlic, and olive oil. Adjust proportions to taste. Keep it on hand for spreading on crackers, for putting on fish, for tossing onto a quick pasta, for... Well, let’s just say that we go through a lot of the stuff here at the House of Chez Casa. So I’ve been playing with the proportions quite a bit. Here’s what works for us at the moment.

Grind together:

1 loosely pressed qt. (1 tightly pressed pt.) basil, washed
½ lb. (8 oz.) Locatellis Romano, grated
1 ½ medium heads of garlic, crushed
4 oz. (~1 c.) walnut pieces, toasted (in our toaster oven, about 4 min. 20 sec. gets them really dark & nutty without being burnt)
4 oz. pignoli (~1 c. pine nuts), opened
~1 c. EVOO, drizzled into the food processor slowly

Yield: approximately 3 c. of pesto.

I prefer doing this in a food processor, but have had nearly as good a result using a regular old blender.

You can adjust the amount of nuts and oil to change the texture. This version comes out thick enough that it doesn’t fall off a spoon when it comes out of the fridge. Too much oil, and it will flow off whatever you put it on. Too much nut and it won’t be sticky enough to stay on your cracker.

Enjoy!

Roman Cheese

2010-10-16T23:27:00.002-04:00

This is my version of a recipe for spiced cheese that goes back a couple of millenia. I used to buy a similar product from the Antiqua Culinaria Romana / Castra-Rota at our local market on Saturday mornings, but they stopped showing up (for reasons I haven’t heard). Anyway, I missed their cheese balls, went to the Latin sources, and tried my own adaptation. Here’s where we are now:

Put into a food processor

10.5 oz Ile de France spiced goat cheese buchette (plain will do, but it’s not quite as good)
6 large cloves garlic (~1/2 medium head), mashed
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp ground coriander
1 stalk celery (with leaves if possible)

Process until smooth.

Add:

~2 Tbsp EVOO to texture & taste

It’s quite tasty.

Random notes on Christmas Music

2010-07-14T14:52:00.003-04:00

A friend from high school posted a link to Shonen Knife's "It's a New Find" at nearly the same time that a niece posted a status saying "Tired of the same ole thing!!! Ready for a change!" This odd juxtaposition in the Facebook Continuum provoked me into replying to both status. (Yes, the Latin plural of the noun /status/ is, in fact, /status/. It's 4th declension. Deal with it.) And THAT lead to a conversation with another friend from high school (who is also sister of the first friend and wife of another friend -- that's the way it goes when you grow up in a small town, no matter how big that town subsequently becomes; friends are multi-connected in lots of vaguely incestuous ways).

Be all that as it may, the conversation produced some links I know I'm going to want to find again in a few months. So, I'm pasting is some stuff here so that I'll be able to find it later. It's useful, but not normally so at this time of year. And it mainly has to do with two of my favorite (but very different) Christmas songs.

~~~Enter ComBox~~~

**Comment 1, MMe: Space Christmas is one of my seasonal favorites. I've inflicted it on students nearly every year.

**Comment 2, Multi-Connected Friend: @ Michael -- Is Space Christmas on a particular album? I am guessing the band name is Shonen Knife...

** Comment 3, MMe:
Shonen Knife *is* the band:
They've been turning out songs for 30 years with a "Ramones do Japanese girl pop" sound.

“Space Christmas” is a song from their earlier days; it was a single, then got picked up on a mid-90s sampler (that I suspect you would like).

You can hear the song (with a vid of them doing some other song(s) live) on YouTube.

**Comment 4, MCF:
Thanks, Michael! I am looking for Christmas songs to make a compilation CD for a friend. The biggest chore will be to go through the CDs I already own, to see what I want to include. But I have my eyes open for other stuff, too. In fact, I noticed (on fb, sometime, somewhere) that you liked a song titled something like: "Won't be Home for Christmas This Year" or something like that. I've been meaning to look for that one, too.

Sigh. I may or may not get this done for my friend. I've been wanting to do it for a couple of years now.

By the way, do you have the Christmas album, "We Three Kings" by the Roches? Their version of the title song is really nice.

** Comment 5, MMe:
I have a collection that I call HHHMA: A Depressive's Christmas. I use it as an antidote to all the enforced cheerfulness. This is just long enough to fit on a CD (66 minutes, 19 songs). If you like, I can burn you a copy and send it your way.

My full Christmas mix is 16.4 hours and 293 songs long and includes a lot more chipper stuff (mariachi, polka, swing, folk, standards, jazz)....

But the song you are remembering is by Phil Madeira from his 3 Horseshoes album. It's official title is “Christmas This Year.”
If you have an e-dress that accepts large attachments, I can send you an iTunes readable AAC file.

If you do last.fm or pandora, you might also be able to listen there.

**Comment 6, MMe (again):
Oh, and I completely missed answering your question about the Roches. No, that is a collection I don't have.

I couldn't find lyrics to Madeira's song anywhere online, so I've just transcribed them. I keep wanting to quote them anyway, so this will make it easier.

“Christmas This Year”
by Phil Madeira

Every December like moths to a flame
we used to drive north every year just the same,
but we’re sick of the traffic so we’re staying right here,
and we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Packages, sweaters, ski boots, and gloves --
packed to the gills ’til the car door won’t shut.
By the time we’ve gassed up we’ve got no yuletide cheer.
So we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

OK I admit it, it ain’t just the drive;
by the time we get back here we’re barely alive.
’Cause sometimes vacations can summon old tears,
and we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Don’t worry, we’ll call ya, we’ll put the kids on;
whatever it takes to strengthen our bond.
And in that sweet moment we’ll wish we were there.
Still we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Tell Santa to forward the gifts to our house.
And maybe once in a decade you ought to drive south.
Just give us some notice, God knows we’ll be here.
’Cause we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year.

Now don’t don’t be offended, and don’t be upset;
I never intended to make you regret
those wonderful moments so special and dear.
Still we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas,
Christmas this year.

No we ain’t comin’ home.
Yeah we ain’t comin’ home for Christmas this year
&c

Peanut Butter Bars

2010-06-26T19:31:00.004-04:00

This one comes from a steak buffet place in Weston, WV via my step-mother. I adapted the proportions to fit a single 12 x 17 pan.

1. In a large mixing bowl, cream together:

1/2 lb. of butter
2/3 of a 16 oz. jar of smooth peanut butter (~10-11 oz.)
1 c. sugar
1 & 1/2 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla

2. Slowly sift in 2 c. self-rising flour and continue creaming together.

3. Switch your stand mixer from regular beaters to small dough hooks and add 2 c. oatmeal (this will get very stiff, so I end up switching to a very stout wooden spoon).

4. Press the mixture into a buttered or non-stick 12 x 17 / 13 x 18 jelly roll pan.

5. Bake at 350°F for 10-12 minutes. The consistency will be like a chocolate chip cookie bar.

6. For the icing, mix until smooth & consistent:

1 & 1/2 c. powdered sugar
the rest of the jar of peanut butter (~5-6 oz.)
1/2 tsp. vanilla
1/3 c. milk

5. Pour over the partially-cooled bars and spread evenly.

6. Cut into squares & enjoy!

Salmon with Citrus Glaze (Alton Brown)

2010-06-26T18:49:00.004-04:00

I can’t take credit for this one. We saw it on one of Alton Brown’s shows, Good Eats. I used it last summer when the St. Tommy’s alumni crowd gathered in the mountains of north Georgia. I used it again last night when we had a small mob over to have our house blessed. I did it from memory, but then on a whim searched the interwebs and scared up a link for the top of this post. Both times I’ve made it, I was feeding about a dozen people, so my procedure is for two sides of salmon. The other major difference is that I use less salt that most people, Alton included.

1. Into a small food processor, put

2/3 c. dark brown sugar
the zest from 5 lemons
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. black pepper

2. Blend until smooth.

3. Cover a large jelly roll pan with foil (it needs to be a pan with a decent lip, not a flat cookie sheet; there will be a lot of liquid).

4. Put 2 whole sides of salmon onto the foil and spread the glaze over them.

5. Leave the salmon to marinate at room temperature for an hour or so. It will throw off quite a bit of liquid. Don’t sweat it (fortuitous pun not intended).

6. Position a rack in the oven so that the salmon will be about 3" from the flame / element and let the broiler preheat for a couple of minutes.

7. Broil the salmon for approximately 6 minutes.

8. Turn off the heat and let the salmon sit for another ~7 minutes.

Serve and eat now. I like to serve it on a bed of low-country grits (slow cooked in milk all day long).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Addendum:

Tonight (27 June 2011) I modified the glaze slightly. I added fresh, grated ginger to it. Yummers! The proportions were probably also much different. I glazed three salmon fillets and one portobello cap (for SWMBO). For this, I started with the zest of three lemons, approximately 1/3 c. of brown sugar, nearly a Tablespoon of black pepper, only a bit of salt, and a chunk of ginger about 3" x 1". It was very tasty.

Bloody Mary mix

2010-06-26T17:54:00.011-04:00

A little while back, SWMBO discovered that she actually likes a well-made Bloody Mary. She discovered this over Sunday Brunch at one of the best eateries in town, Motor Supply Company Bistro. Motor Supply has great chefs who are members of the slow food movement, buy local ingredients, craft new menus every day, and make some of the tastiest fare you will ever want to spend time on your tongue. They also have some of the best wait staff around, including one server who knows SWMBO’s dietary restrictions and palate and has never made a bad recommendation. It was this server who ran down the list of ingredients (but not the proportions) in a Motor Supply Bloody Mary.

I chased those flavors around a few times and made a few changes of my own. For instance, the best Bloody Mary SWMBO has had at Motor Supply was made with a tamarind-infused vodka. Since we go through alcohol rather slowly here at the House of Chez Casa, I didn’t want to flavor a whole bottle that was likely to be asked to serve in a variety of drinks. So I added tamarind to the mix. Other changes I made just because the results were good.

So here it is, the current incarnation of my Bloody Mary mix:

1. Put into a blender:

1 Tbsp. Tobasco
1 tsp. bitters
1/2 c. Worcestershire
1/2 c. A1
2 Tbsp. pickle juice
the juice from 2 lemons
the juice from 1 lime
32 olives (I like Kalamatas)
1/2 tsp. celery seed
1 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. salt
2 tsp. horseradish
3 oz. tamarind patty (I get this at an Indian grocery. Watch for seeds; I chop the patty coarsely in order to find & remove the seeds before putting the tamarind into the blender.)

2. Open a 46 oz. bottle of tomato juice and pour enough into the blender to make it 2/3 - 3/4 full.

3. Run the blender until you have a smooth (if somewhat viscous) concoction.

4. In a large pitcher, mix the contents of the blender with the rest of the tomato juice. You should have a scant half gallon.

5. Pour 46 oz. of the mix back into the tomato juice bottle (this is why I buy a bottle rather than a can -- resealability).

6. Split the remaining 16 oz. or so between two rocks glasses.

7. Put the bottle of mix in the fridge and do something about those two rocks glasses.

Enjoy!

THE MMR/Autism article withdrawn from the Lancet

2010-02-03T13:08:00.002-05:00

The announcement is terse:

Retraction—Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children

Following the judgment of the UK General Medical Council's Fitness to Practise Panel on Jan 28, 2010, it has become clear that several elements of the 1998 paper by Wakefield et al[1] are incorrect, contrary to the findings of an earlier investigation.[2] In particular, the claims in the original paper that children were "consecutively referred" and that investigations were "approved" by the local ethics committee have been proven to be false. Therefore we fully retract this paper from the published record.

References

[1] Wakefield AJ, Murch SH, Anthony A, et al. Ileal-lymphoid-nodular hyperplasia, non-specific colitis, and pervasive developmental disorder in children. Lancet 1998; 351: 637-641. [with live links]

[2] Hodgson H. A statement by The Royal Free and University College Medical School and The Royal Free Hampstead NHS Trust. Lancet 2004; 363: 824. [with live links]

What it means has been unpacked a bit by many news outlets. I’m archiving here those of the WSJ and the NYT.

First, the New York Times article (live links have been stripped; sign up for the NYT to follow their links).

February 3, 2010
Journal Retracts 1998 Paper Linking Autism to Vaccines
By GARDINER HARRIS

A prominent British medical journal on Tuesday retracted a 1998 research paper that set off a sharp decline in vaccinations in Britain after the paper’s lead author suggested that vaccines could cause autism.

The retraction by The Lancet is part of a reassessment that has lasted for years of the scientific methods and financial conflicts of Dr. Andrew Wakefield, who contended that his research showed that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine may be unsafe.

But the retraction may do little to tarnish Dr. Wakefield’s reputation among parents’ groups in the United States. Despite a wealth of scientific studies that have failed to find any link between vaccines and autism, the parents fervently believe that their children’s mental problems resulted from vaccinations.

Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the retraction of Dr. Wakefield’s study “significant.”

“It builds on the overwhelming body of research by the world’s leading scientists that concludes there is no link between M.M.R. vaccine and autism,” Mr. Skinner wrote in an e-mail message.

A British medical panel concluded last week that Dr. Wakefield had been dishonest, violated basic research ethics rules and showed a “callous disregard” for the suffering of children involved in his research. Dr. Richard Horton, editor in chief of The Lancet, said that until that decision, he had no proof that Dr. Wakefield’s 1998 paper was deceptive.

“That was a damning indictment of Andrew Wakefield and his research,” Dr. Horton said.

With that decision, Dr. Horton said he could retract the 1998 paper. Dr. Wakefield could not be reached for comment.

Jim Moody, a director of SafeMinds, a parents’ group that advances the notion the vaccines cause autism, said the retraction would strengthen Dr. Wakefield’s credibility with many parents.

“Attacking scientists and attacking doctors is dangerous,” he said. “This is about suppressing research, and it will fuel the controversy by bringing it all up again.”

Dr. Wakefield is part of a small but fervent group of doctors who discourage vaccinations because of a seeming link with autism.

Dr. Wakefield’s paper reported on his examinations of 12 children with chronic intestinal disorders who had a history of normal development followed by severe mental regressions. He speculated that the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine may have caused some sort of chronic intestinal measles infection that in turn damaged the children’s brains. He suggested that the combined vaccine should be split into three separate shots and given over a longer period of time.

But an investigation by a British journalist found financial and scientific conflicts that Dr. Wakefield did not reveal in his paper. For instance, part of the costs of Dr. Wakefield’s research were paid by lawyers for parents seeking to sue vaccine makers for damages. Dr. Wakefield was also found to have patented in 1997 a measles vaccine that would succeed if the combined vaccine were withdrawn or discredited.

After years of investigation, the General Medical Council in Britain concluded that Dr. Wakefield had subjected 11 children to invasive tests like lumbar punctures and colonoscopies that they did not need and for which he did not receive ethical approval.

After Dr. Wakefield’s study, vaccination rates plunged in Britain and the number of measles cases soared.

In the United States, anti-vaccine groups have advanced other theories since then to explain why they think vaccines cause autism. For years, they blamed thimerosal, a vaccine preservative containing mercury. Because of concerns over the preservative, vaccine makers in 2001 largely eliminated thimerosal from routinely administered childhood vaccines.

But this change has had no apparent impact on childhood autism rates. Anti-vaccine groups now suggest that a significant number of children have a cellular disorder whose effects are set off by vaccinations.

With each new theory, parents’ groups have called for research to explore possible links between vaccination and autism. Study after study has failed to show any link, and prominent scientific agencies have concluded that scarce research dollars should be spent investigating other possible causes of autism.

Now, the Wall Street Journal article (live links have been stripped; sign up for the WSJ to follow their links).

FEBRUARY 3, 2010
The Lancet's Vaccine Retraction
A medical journal's role in the autism scare.

The British medical journal The Lancet yesterday offered a mea culpa of sorts for its role in launching a global vaccine scare. Its regrets come about 12 years too late.

The journal finally issued a full retraction of a study it ran in 1998 linking measles-mumps-rubella vaccines to autism. The paper, with Dr. Andrew Wakefield as lead author, sent British parents fleeing from inoculations and fed U.S. alarm over preservatives in vaccines.

Even in 1998, overwhelming scientific evidence showed vaccines to be safe. Yet the press-savvy Dr. Wakefield had been getting headlines for his research, and the Lancet's publication fed the controversy by giving him an aura of respectability.

Evidence of vaccine safety continued to build, but the Lancet stuck to its story through 2004, when it was revealed that Dr. Wakefield had been paid to conduct his study on children who were clients of a lawyer ginning up a lawsuit. Even then the journal offered only a partial retraction, saying it had been correct to "raise new ideas."

Meanwhile, Britain's child vaccination rates had plummeted to below 70% in some areas, down from more than 90% in the mid-1990s. The country has since suffered waves of measles outbreaks. In 1998 England and Wales had 56 cases; by 2008 the number was 1,370. In 2006, the first British child died of measles in more than a decade.

The Lancet decision came after the General Medical Council—Britain's medical regulator—ruled last week that Dr. Wakefield had acted "dishonestly and irresponsibly." The panel confirmed years of allegations that he had been untruthful about his patients and funding and had shown a "callous disregard" for the children—subjecting them to invasive and unnecessary procedures. Only with the GMC now considering whether to strip Dr. Wakefield of his license has the Lancet finally said it "fully retract[s] this paper from the published record."

The Lancet episode shows how even reputable publications can become conduits for junk science when political causes run hot. Especially amid the scandal over politically motivated climate science, the public needs professional journals to be scrupulous about their standards and honest about the science.

Marinated Cheese

2009-12-18T22:47:00.003-05:00

For years we’ve been after my first boss in SC (Jeffita) to share her recipe for a marinated cheese recipe. Tonight, as Christmas presents, she handed out copies to people as we left the departmental^[1] Christmas gathering. Along with a double-sided color copy of the original Southern Living recipe (linked to the title of this post, but with a 1990 date and a Recipe-Pak^TM number 5305B-11, Appetizers & Beverages 7) were her hand-written changes. I'm going to attempt to make a single recipe out of the original and her notes together.

Combine in a jar, shake vigorously, and set aside:

1 c. olive oil
1 c. white wine vinegar
1/2 c. minced green onions or chives
6-8 cloves garlic
1/2 c. chopped fresh parsley
1/4 c. minced fresh basil
8 oz. pimento from jar(s), drained
1 T. sugar
1 1/2 t. salt
1 t. ground fresh pepper

Chill for slicing:

2 8 oz. pkgs. cheddar cheese (5.5 x 2 x 1")
3 8 oz. pkgs. cream cheese

When the cheese is well-chilled, cut the cheddar blocks in half lengthwise, then cut crosswise into 1/4" thick slices. Set aside. Slice the cream cheese similarly (& into similarly-sized pieces). Arrange the cheese in alternating slices of cheddar and cream cheese standing on edge in a shallow baking dish. Pour marinade over cheese slices, cover, and let stand in refrigerator for at least eight hours.

Transfer cheese slices to a serving platter in the same alternating fashion, reserving marinade. Spoon marinade over cheese slices. Garnish with fresh parsley sprigs. Serve with crackers.

^[1] I should mention that Jeffita is/was the head of my old department, the public school job I had when I first came to SC. They still ask me to join them for gatherings (surely a good sign, although I think they’re definitely disappointed when SWMBO can’t make it). How fortunate am I to have had two sets of co-workers whose company I enjoy and who aren’t completely put off by my anti-social tendencies?

Eco on the Loss of a Parent

2009-11-11T22:31:00.001-05:00

“He thought he would become accustomed to [being orphaned], not yet understanding that it is useless to become accustomed to the loss of a father, for it will never happen a second time: might as well leave the wound open.”
--Umberto Eco, The Island of the Day Before, end of chapter 7

Best Confession ever!

2009-09-29T22:47:00.003-04:00

I have mentioned this classic SF tale before, saying there:

One way to discover whether a person has understood what they’ve read is via a diagnostic question. I was delighted to discover that Walker Percy held this same view, and that he had a diagnostic question for the readers of Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Liebowitz, a book for which I, too, have a question. If you’ve read CfL, then perhaps you’ll recognize the value of these two questions.

Percy’s: Who or what is Rachel? (the second head on the woman at the end of the book)

Mine: Is this book fundamentally optimistic or fundamentally pessimistic?

Here, I just want to put down one of my favorite scenes. This is from the fifth chapter in the first section, Fiat Homo.

. . . on Palm Sunday, with only six days of starvation remaining until the end of Lent, Prior Cheroki heard from Francis (or from the shriveled and sun-scorched residuum of Francis, wherein the soul remained somehow encysted) a few brief croaks which constituted what was probably the most succinct confession that Francis ever made or Cheroki ever heard:

“Bless me, Father; I ate a lizard.”

Prior Cheroki, having for many years been confessor to fasting penitents, found that. . . he replied with perfect equanimity and not even a blink:

“Was it an abstinence day, and was it artificially prepared?”

6 oz Filet at the House of Chez Casa

2009-09-10T20:58:00.002-04:00

We have not one, but two actual butcher shops in our new hood. This makes it a real shame that I can only eat red meat once or twice a week. But the good news there is that when the budget won’t be eaten up (har!) by quantity, you can go for quality. And in this neighborhood, quality comes cheap.

I am, even as I type, eating the most tender, juicy, melty, mouth watering 6 oz filet I have had anywhere in years. It’s even better than the filet I had some months back at Ruth’s Criss. And unlike the extremely good piece of cow flesh I had at Ruth’s, this one only cost me $6.

For the record, our two shops are:

Steak Mart (~4/10ths of a mile from home)
Ole Timey Meat Market (~6/10ths of a mile from home)

and tonight’s filet is from the second shop.

So that I don’t forget my cooking times in all the insanity of unpacking and trying to start living in the new house, I want to record here what I did.

I tend to do a combination of broiling and roasting, and my tool of choice is a Cuisinart convection toaster oven. Consumer Reports rated the temperature accuracy very high on this unit, so when our old one was ruined by a little bit of an overcooking incident (a-hem), this is the one we got to replace it. We use it a lot, especially at times when heating up the whole kitchen seems like a bad idea.

So anyway, here’s the procedure:

Go to the front yard and cut a little bit of rosemary, then strip the leaves.
Select a small baking dish (I use a ceramic tart pan; it’s just the righ size for a small filet).
Slice a few veggies, spritz with EVOO and coat with a dry rub. Put the veggies in the bottom of the small dish. (This is SO much better than using a broiler pan. The veggies soak up some of the tasty juices that would otherwise be lost. I had thought that I still had some baby carrots or string beans on hand, but alas! So tonight it was just some onion; not even any potato for absorbancy, and I realize now that what I really wanted tonight was some ’shrooms.)
Do a dry-rub spicing of the filet. I normally favor something Italian, but tonight went with salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary.
Put the filet on top of the veggies and broil for six minutes.
Flip the filet and broil for six more minutes.
Top with some blue cheese crumbles and convection bake at 350 for six more minutes.
Cut the heat and let stand for a couple of minutes.
Enjoy a perfectly medium filet.

I realize that with the cooking times, I run the risk of this being the cooking method of the antichrist, but I’m having a hard time bringing myself to care right now.

Heavens, this is good!

Sewanee Mountain by Drew Bunting

2009-07-14T10:34:00.003-04:00

I went down Sewanee Mountain just before the dawn
There I met a Methodist, the name of Baptist John
Carving his last testament into the gates of stone
It said, “The Lord is my sniper, son. You leave me alone!”

I turned back to ask him if he knew what he had said
Hoping it was something from a book he’d never read
And as he turned to look at me and didn’t make a sound
The first of many drops of rain was falling to the ground

John
Wind comes high
And it comes low
John
Speak to me in stone

Then the sky grew darker, and the animals grew still
And this is what he told me as the rain fell down the hills
“You are in the Garden at the moment of the Fall
Don’t go climbing over just because you see the wall.”

And in the pouring rain I told him I was goin’ home
And he spat in my face and said that I would go alone
Then without another word he walked into the woods
And disappeared as lightning struck the place where he had stood

John
There in the rain
Finally I knew
John
You were falling, too

I went down Sewanee Mountain in the morning rain
And I don’t say I’m different; I don’t worship any change
John may be happy man when he is on his knees
And I have walked away from things that he will never see

John
John

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This odd little bit of apocalyptic acoustic folk was passed along to me in a mix CD by a friend who used to go to a summer camp where Drew was one of the counselors. So feel free to imagine this song being sung around a campfire.

There must be more of Drew’s music floating around in the wide world. Anyone know where to nab some other tracks?

Lentil Hummus, revised

2009-05-31T21:30:00.004-04:00

So here’s the revised recipe (cf. comboxes to the original post for back story).

1. Bring:

1/2 lb. of lentils (~ 1 1/4 cups)
2 qts of water and
2 Tablespoons of kosher salt

to a boil.

2. Turn down heat and simmer about 15 minutes (until the lentils are al dente).

3. Drain & rinse the lentils in cold water. Drain them well and chill for 20 minutes. (I hang them in a sieve over a small saucepan in the fridge.)

4. Make a garlic paste by mincing & mashing 1/3 - 1/2 head of garlic with 1/4 tsp. kosher salt.

5. Put the garlic paste into a food processor.

6. Add

1/2 c. tahini,
1/2 c. fresh lemon juice (about 3 medium lemons’ worth)
the cooked lentils

7. Purée until consistent.

8. If the mixture is too thick, add up to 1/2 c. olive oil.

9. Season with salt & pepper. Be free with the pepper.

10. Serve at room temperature.

Addendum:

We have taken a liking to making this recipe with other legumes as well. Our current stand-by is black bean hummus. For the same amount of other ingredients, I start with 1/2 lb. of black beans. Presoak the dried beans, rinse a couple of times, cook, rinse, drain, & carry on with the recipe.

The Quintessence of Gentlemanly Beverages. . .

2009-04-17T09:32:00.003-04:00

My own guide to making mint juleps is Walker Percy’s 1975 essay on bourbon, with the addition of a more modern way of powdering the ice. The Better Half of the O’Cayce household has alerted me to another recipe / essay, this one up at the Kentucky Derby website (and linked to the title of this post). I’m going to copy it here as worthy of later reference, but I’m going to continue putting all my sugar in the bottom of my glasses. (I had briefly considered freezing sugar-infused pucks of ice for shaving, but abandoned the idea for two very good reasons. First, I don’t want to deal with cleaning up the sticky snow as it melts all over the kitchen counter. But second, and more importantly, I like pulling up grains of sugar in varying amounts as I sip my julep through a straw. Each sip has a slightly different flavor.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Quintessence of Gentlemanly Beverages. . .

-Lt. Gen. S.B. Buckner, Jr.

Major General Wm. D. Connor
West Point, N.Y.

My Dear General Connor:

Your letter requesting my formula for mixing mint juleps leaves me in the same position in which Capt. Barber found himself when asked how he was able to carve the image of an elephant from a block of wood. He replied that it was a simple process consisting merely of whittling off the part that didn't look like an elephant.

The preparation of the quintessence of gentlemanly beverages can only be described in like terms. A mint julep is not the product of a formula. It is a ceremony and must be performed by a gentleman possessing a true sense of the artistic, a deep reverence for the ingredients and a proper appreciation of the occasion. It is a rite that must not be entrusted to a novice, a statistician nor a Yankee. It is a heritage of the old South, an emblem of hospitality and a vehicle in which noble minds can travel together upon the flower-strewn paths of a happy and congenial thought.

So far as the mere mechanics of the operation are concerned, the procedure, stripped of its ceremonial embellishments, can be described as follows:

Go to a spring where cool, crystal-clear water bubbles from under a bank of dew-washed ferns. In a consecrated vessel, dip up a little water at the source. Follow the stream through its banks of green moss and wildflowers until it broadens and trickles through beds of a mint growing in aromatic profusion and waving softly in the summer breeze.

Gather the sweetest and tenderest shoots and gently carry them home.

Go to the sideboard and select a decanter of Kentucky Bourbon, distilled by a master hand, mellowed with age yet still vigorous and inspiring. An ancestral sugar bowl, a row of silver goblets, some spoons and some ice and you are ready to start. In a canvas bag, pound twice as much ice as you think you will need. Make it fine as snow, keep it dry and do not allow to degenerate into slush.

In each goblet, put a slightly heaping teaspoonful of granulated sugar, barely cover this with spring water and slightly bruise one mint leaf into this, leaving the spoon in the goblet. Then pour elixir from decanter until the goblets are about one-fourth full. Fill the goblets with snowy ice, sprinkling in a small amount of sugar as you fill. Wipe the outside of the goblets dry and embellish copiously with mint.

Then comes the important and delicate operation of frosting. By proper manipulation of the spoon, the ingredients are circulated and blended until Nature, wishing to take a further hand and add another of its beautiful phenomena, encrusts the whole in a glistening coat of white frost. Thus harmoniously blended by the deft touches of a skilled hand, you have a beverage eminently appropriate for honorable men and beautiful women.

When all is ready, assemble your guests on the porch or in the garden where the aroma of the juleps will rise Heavenward and make the birds sing. Propose a worthy toast, raise the goblet to your lips, bury your nose in the mint, inhale a deep breath of its fragrance and sip the nectar of the gods.

Being overcome by thirst, I can write no further.

Sincerely,
Lt. Gen. S.B. Buckner, Jr. *
V.M.I. Class of 1906

*Killed in Okinawa, 1945
Promoted Posthumously to full General, July 1954

Lentil Hummus oddity & free offer

2009-03-24T23:04:00.000-04:00

Cf. the combox to this post.

Baba Ghanouj (or Baba Ghanoush -- either way, it’s Daddy Spoiled Rotten)

2009-02-26T17:58:00.004-05:00

I, personally, dislike eggplant. I haven’t had it in any form that I could stand. This is a shame; I know lots of people who love the stuff, and it makes me feel like an avenue of licit pleasure is cut off to me. One of the people I know who really has a thing for eggplant is SWMBO. The most excited I saw her get about a meal while we were in Rome was when we walked past a pizza-by-the-slice place near the Trevi Fountain. They had pizza with incredibly thinly shaved eggplant on it. That's where we ate that night, and she was happy.

Liking eggplant as she does, SWMBO is naturally a big fan of Baba Ghanouj, a Mediterranean dish that is to roasted eggplant what hummus is to chick peas. The ingredients are simple enough: eggplant roasted until soft, tahini (sesame butter), olive oil, garlic, lemon, salt, and whatever other spices you want to add. Some people include parsley, too. The problem I have in making the stuff is that I can’t taste it to see if I have the proportions right. The times I have accidentally gotten some into my mouth, it has taken a couple of hours to get the flavor of the eggplant out.

So I cook and have SWMBO taste and tell me when I should add more of something. Last time, I apparently got the mix pretty close to perfect. So this time, I’m going to record the recipe so that I have a base line to work from. If you’re thinking of trying this, I should warn you that SWMBO likes it zingy -- lots of garlic & lots of lemon. She also likes an earthy, smoky taste, which I enhance by roasting the eggplant nearly to the point of burning and then adding some cumin at the end.

So here’s my procedure:

Roast one medium eggplant at 400° for about an hour. (During the winter, it’s best to thoroughly prick the skin of the eggplant before roasting; the skin is thicker in the winter, and I’ve had an eggplant explode on me when the steam couldn’t escape. It made quite a mess of the toaster oven.)
Let the eggplant stand until cool enough to handle; about two hours in the oven or one outside the oven. If you leave it in the oven, you’ll have time to take a nap, and how nifty is it to have a recipe that includes a nap?
Make a paste of seven cloves of garlic and 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt or kosher salt. Sometimes the food processor will leave some garlic chunks, so a little pre-mashing will get it mixed in better. Not that SWMBO minds the occasional chunk of garlic. Come to that, neither do I; I just don’t want to have to fish it out of eggplant.
Put the garlic paste you just made into a food processor along with:

1/3 cup of tahini,
1/3 cup olive oil,
the juice from three lemons

Cut open the eggplant and scoop out the innards (they should come out very easily; sometimes you can just dump the innards out of the skin). Add those innards to the contents of the food processor.
Process until smooth.
Dust the top of the paste with cumin & process a bit more. Repeat. (That's right, two dustings.)
Transfer to a serving dish for a party or a storage container for the fridge so you can enjoy a bit at a time over the next several days.

So that’s it. If anything needs adjusting, I’m sure it will appear in the combox so I can adjust the recipe next time I make it.

Kahlúa, pt 2.

2009-01-30T20:39:00.003-05:00

The original Kahlúa post is linked to the title. This is just to simplify my actual working recipe.

This recipe makes approximately 2250 ml. of beverage. That’s 3 of those 750 ml. bottles, and if you do point-of-use recycling on that vodka bottle, you only need two more bottles. I prefer these bottles. Or these. (If you use these, you also get the pleasure of emptying the bottles first. ;^) )

In a large saucepan, combine 32 oz. dark brown sugar (4 c.) and 3 c. water.
Stirring, bring to a boil (Warning! this will boil up into a messy foam in no time flat. DO not turn your back on it!), then turn down the heat and
let simmer for 20 minutes.
Set it aside covered to cool (the cover is to keep things off the syrup you’ve just made).
In a 1 or 1 & 1/2 qt. pan, bring 1 c. water to a boil.
Turn off the heat and add 2 oz. of instant espresso (1 small jar) and stir briskly. (Warning! this will boil up into a messy foam in no time flat. Keep stirring until it quits trying to foam up.)
Add the condensed espresso to the syrup & stir. Recover & let stand & cool.
When cool, add 2 Tbsp. vanilla and 1 750 ml. bottle of vodka. Stir and transfer to bottles.
Let stand for three weeks before enjoying.

Plan your transfer well. This is very sugary, sticky stuff. You’re going to drip & dribble. Be sure the area you choose is very easy to wipe up. And be sure to wash the outside of the bottles before setting them aside for a sesquifortnight.

I have to say that I like this version more than the regular stuff. It’s a darker, richer flavor.

Lentil Hummus

2008-11-15T00:39:00.002-05:00

Among our tiny social circle and beyond, it is universally recognized that no one makes hummus as well or as tasty as does Waldie. I recently got her to pass along her recipe, and immediately saw why. The rest of us poor saps start with chickpeas (ceci, garbanzo beans). Waldie starts with lentils. That’s where the extra flavor comes from!

So here’s her recipe:

1. Bring:

2 qts of water and
2 Tablespoons of kosher salt

to a boil.

2. Add

1/2 lb. of lentils (~ 1 1/4 cups)

and simmer about 15 minutes (until the lentils are al dente).

3. Drain & rinse the lentils in cold water. Drain them well and chill for 20 minutes.

4. Make a garlic paste by mincing & mashing 5 cloves of garlic with 1/4 tsp. kosher salt.

5. Purée lentils in a food processor.

6. Add

1/2 c. tahini,
garlic paste (see above),
1/2 c. fresh lemon juice, and
1/2 c. water

7. Add 1/2 c. olive oil in a stream.

8. If the mixture is too thick, add up to 1/4 c. more water.

9. Season with salt & pepper.

10. Serve at room temperature.

In my experience, this stuff is best if made the day before you want to eat it, and the texture is best if it’s not too smooth. But that could just be me. Also, the denizens of The House of Chez Casa will be using more garlic.

Creole Garlic Soup

2008-11-14T23:42:00.005-05:00

While I’m talking about garlic...

I saw this recipe a couple of years ago on another blog and not a week later made a batch. I can’t say for sure whether this soup speeds healing, but it certainly comforts. I am here shamelessly re-posting from ATD’s blog; the original post is linked to the title as well as to this sentence. From here, I am quoting wholesale.

~~~Begin stolen post~~~

My Gift to all who suffer or will suffer from colds

It has been brought to my attention that every year, people get sick with...colds. It’s an epidemic. Teachers, priests, co-workers, children, parents...the list just goes on and on. Something must be done!

So I have decided it’s time to share the cure. Yes, I’m quite serious.

A few years ago, I attended a party in which the soup served as the second course was “Creole Garlic Soup”. It was so good, most of us thought we could likely live on this soup for the rest of our lives, and I believe all of us wrote down the recipe before we left.

It was several months before I made the soup, but as summer turned into fall, the heat came on indoors, and the days grew shorter, I realized it was time to think about making soup. So during the week I gathered my ingredients, dug out the recipe and went to sleep Friday night with dreams of garlic cloves, rosemary, and thyme.

I woke up Saturday morning with one of the worst and most acute head colds I have ever had. But I still ventured out into the raw, cold, rainy November day to purchase the final ingredients for my soup.

Loaded up on decongestants, washing my hands until they were chapped, I joked with my roommate that I was going to cook up the cure for the common cold. So for a couple of hours, the warm cozy apartment took on the strong aroma of garlic, which even wafted into the hallway.

I do believe one of my neighbors was cured of something just by walking past our door.

I ate two bowls of the soup that evening, amazed I could even taste it. And the next day, my cold was quite literally 90% better. I had gone from misery to a small case of the sniffles.

So without further ado, here is the recipe for this wonderful soup.

DISCLAIMER: The ingredients are on the conservative end; adjust to your own taste, and don’t be afraid to add more garlic! But I would advise using the old adage “less is more” the first time you make it, but once you have an idea as to what it is like, you can better adjust according to your own taste.

1/3 C. whole garlic cloves
1 Tbsp minced garlic
1 Tbsp. roasted garlic
1 tsp fresh thyme, or 1/4 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp fresh basil or 1/4 tsp dried basil
4 cans of vegetable broth (or 2 32 oz boxes of Swanson’s vegetable broth) (( I recommend low sodium))
1 medium onion
1 bay leaf
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/3 C. Half-and-Half (I use fat-free)
1/3 C. parmesan cheese - shredded (Stizzy sez: try Locatelli instead!)
Creole seasoning
Day-Old French or Italian bread

1. Add onions and some of the garlic cloves to a large soup pan with the T. of olive oil. When the onions begin to turn clear or brownish (don’t over cook!), add the broth, basil, thyme, bay leaf, and garlic. Bring this to a boil.

2. When the soup begins to boil, reduce the heat and simmer for approximately 40 minutes.

3. In the meantime, make your croutons: Cube the bread, approximately 2-3 cups, and toast in the oven at 300 degrees. Remove from heat, place in a paper sack, coat with apx. 1 - 2 Tbsp. of olive oil and season with the Creole seasoning. (This is spicy— be conservative at first!). Set the croutons aside.

NOTE: THE CROUTONS CAN BE MADE IN ADVANCE

4. When the soup has simmered for the 40 minutes, add approximately 1 1/2 C. of the croutons and stir in with a wire whisk until they have mostly dissolved. At this point, the whole garlic cloves should be “mushy”.

5. Remove the bay leaf

6. Add the half-and-half and parmesan cheese and immediately remove the soup from heat.

7. If you have a hand-mixer, use this to blend the soup to a smooth consistency. You may also pour the soup into a blender.

8. Serve immediately and garnish with the remaining croutons, parmesan, and creole seasoning.

***the half-and-half and parmesan can be omitted (Stizzy sez: use the 1/2 & 1/2 but substitute Locatelli for the parmesan.)

Chaplainʻs Triple Chocolate Brownies

2008-09-14T00:09:00.007-04:00

One of the science teachers at work has us doing a new thing this year, the upshot of which is that we end up eating a lot of cakes & snacks. A lot. Really. I expect the faculty to collectively gain a couple of tons. In the midst of all this snacking, the biggest hit by far has been this very yummy batch of brownies brought in by our chaplain. When we asked about the recipe, we were told that it was found one Christmas when chaplain and spouse made some fifty or sixty different recipes of brownies to give as gifts, and that this was the version they liked best. So this recipe was the best of fifty or sixty brownie recipes, and has now proven to be my co-workers’ favorite snack of the year. It arrived in my inbox today.

TRIPLE CHOCOLATE BROWNIES

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Butter and flour an eight inch square metal pan.
In heavy saucepan, melt

3 ounces semi-sweet chocolate,

1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, and

6 tablespoons of butter over VERY low heat.

Cool.
Add 3/4 cup sugar and 1 teaspoon vanilla.
Add 2 large eggs, one at a time.
Stir in

1/2 teaspoon salt,

1/2 cup flour and then

1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips.

Bake 25-30 minutes. A toothpick stuck in the middle will show wet crumbs. (N.b.: After first attempts were too dry, I made a couple of adjustments. I made a double recipe, but used only 2/3 the flour. It was just about perfect after 20 minutes in the convection toaster oven.)
Cool completely in the pan.
Cut into squares.

These freeze beautifully and the recipe may be doubled, tripled or even quadrupled. If you like, you may add any kind of chopped nuts.

Kahlúa

2008-08-30T16:34:00.003-04:00

A retired friend and active riding buddy from the upstate passed along to us a bottle of his homemade Kahlúa. Tied to the neck of the bottle was this recipe:

[Jim’s] Kahlúa

4 c. sugar
4 c. water
1 Tbls vanilla extract
2 oz. Columbian dark roast instant coffee
1/5 vodka (~750 ml. or 26 oz.)

1. Combine sugar and 3 c. water in a saucepan. Bring mixture to a boil; turn down heat and simmer for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool to room temperature.

2. Mix coffee with 1 c. boiling water. Let cool to room temperature.

3. Thoroughly mix sugar/water, coffee/water, vanilla, and vodka. Pour into bottles and let stand 2-3 weeks.

4. Drink and enjoy.

The only step I’ve followed so far is step 4., but I’m thinking it may be time to try the other steps. Not having instant coffee, I’ll have to sort out how much 2 oz. of instant usually makes so I can do the equivalent with whole-bean dark roast. Oh, and I’ll have to come up with some vodka. I’m more of a scotch man myself (Oban, if you must know).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update: I’m giving the thing a try today, and decided that I wanted a more molassesque flavor and so would use brown sugar instead of white/granulated. So I went down to the store to pick up another bag of dark brown sugar and to try to sort out how many servings of coffee 2 oz. of instant makes.

It’s been a long time since I’ve looked at instant coffee. I don’t drink the stuff. Practically the only bit of modern Greek I know is a phrase that will get me Greek/Turkish style coffee at a café instead of the instant that American tourists are usually served in such places. So I was unprepared for the bewildering array of instant coffees on the shelves of my local grocer.

But I did learn two things. First, 2 oz. of instant makes 15-20 servings of coffee. Second, two purveyors of my daily-duty, pre-ground espresso (Medaglia d'Oro and Café Bustelo; nothing from illy on these shelves) sell instant espresso. Hmm. “Recipe calls for instant, I’ll use instant,” says I, grabbing a 2 oz. bottle of espresso crystals.

(As I typed the words above, my sugar & water mixture boiled over. I have to do some wiping up now.

Ah. All done. I guess I should work that interlude into my recipe.)

And when I got home, I discovered that a 32 oz. / 2 lb. bag of brown sugar presses down to four cups.

Having said all of that, here’s the procedure I followed today. I’m recording here because I’m willing to bet that I won’t remember in three weeks when the stuff is ready to try, and I know beyond certainty that I won’t remember when it’s time to make another batch.

In a large saucepan, combine 32 oz. dark brown sugar (4 c.) and 3 c. boiling water.
Stir until smooth and leave to simmer.
Start updating a blog entry.
Hear wife holler that something is boiling over on the stove.
Take pan off burner and place it on a trivet.
Clean up that sticky, syrupy mess.
All of it.
You missed a spot right over there.
And under there.
That’s better.
Put the kettle on the newly cleaned & re-installed eye of the stovetop.
Pour the syrup into a half-gallon container.
In the saucepan, combine 1 c. boiling water and 2 oz. instant espresso.
Stir until coffee is dissolved and a lot of that syrup mixture is off the sides of the pan.
Add to the 1/2 gallon jug.
Let the contents of the jug cool a bit, and then add 750 ml. vodka. and 2 Tbsp vanilla.
Let stand three weeks.

I’ll know more later on.

Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage

2008-08-27T22:50:00.004-04:00

I’m repurposing an e-mail that I sent to a discussion list stuffed full of acerbic academics several years back. I was directly challenged to put my oar in by the man who was (at that time) the dean of the college in which I was teaching. And so I did. I look back on this post as an unpaid ad for a lively and useful grammar.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At 11:25 AM -0500 27/10/98, [Dean, The] wrote:
> It seems that no one will stand up for tradition anymore; it has
> become more important to avoid awkward sentences than to
> adhere to that which is time-honored and rooted in the Latin.
>
> Have you nothing to say, [Izzy]?

Ask and ye shall receive. But be warned, I am writing during a brief moment of lucidity between illness-induced naps. Any stains on the page are cheese/potato soup.

The sad fact is that most of our English sentence structure derives not from our learned Greek and Latin forbears, but from the hairy, smelly Saxons. Apparently, the winners get not only to write the history, but also to choose the language in which it will appear. Many of the tricks of clear expression that I hold dear have been artificially imposed on our beloved, syncretic language. And many of those tricks seem doomed to eventual rejection. Away they go, carried off with the bodies of native sons of a language once inflected. Alas, woe, and so be it. I may cringe a little every time I hear George Thorogood growl “who do you love?”, but there is little I can do to stop whom from being expunged from the language, or being relegated to use as a shibboleth among pedants.

My guide in such matters has for many years now been Henry Ward Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1st Edition 1926, 1st American printing 1944; Second Edition 1965; 3rd Edition... we'll come to that in a minute).

For those unfamiliar with Fowler’s, it is (was... we’ll come to that in a minute) a highly idiosyncratic, extremely funny, commonsensical analysis of the foibles of the English language as it is found on a small island across the big waters. In the first edition, the article on the split infinitive goes on for several pages, beginning thus:

Split Infinitive. The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know & condemn; (4) those who know & approve; & (5) those who know & distinguish.

1. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority & are a happy folk, to be envied by most of the minority classes....

So run the first one and a half inches of about 33 column inches of informative, opinionated, and entertaining text on the split infinitive.

The second edition of Fowler’s was edited by Ernest Gowers and published the year before Sir Gowers died. He wisely left the tone of the original Fowler’s intact and restrained his work to making a number of additions to the information contained in the first edition, and a very few changes where necessary. One such addition may be found at the end of the article “Whence, whither.” The original article ended:

If whither was too antiquated, the alternative was ‘to which place’, but occasions arise now & then, as in this sentence, to which whence & whither are, even for the practical purposes of plain speech, more appropriate than any equivalent.

Aside from the mechanical changes and the deletion of the word “place,” Gowers changed this article by the addition of a sentence that gets a hearty “amen” from me. Add to the above:

They [whence & whither] should be allowed to stand on their own feet: not even the examples that can be found in the Psalms and the Apostles’ Creed justify the use today of the tautology from whence.

It was from the pen of Fowler that I finally learned the difference between Which and That when used as English relative pronouns. I read Fowler’s for fun.

Copies of the first two editions turn up with alarming regularity at second-hand book shops. (Sorry about that, my diction seems to have been influence by Fowler. I meant, of course, used book stores.) In addition, the second edition remains in print as a paperback from Oxford for ~$10. Get a copy while the getting is good.

Toward the end of 1996, Oxford brought out a third edition of Fowler’s. No longer is it A Dictionary of Modern English Usage, by H.W. Fowler. It is now, rather misleadingly, called The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage, edited by R.W. Burchfield. The tone and idiosyncratic charm of the old Fowler’s has been entirely erased. But what Burchfield has brought should not be overlooked.

Fowler (and Gowers after him) drew his examples from the pages of the local papers. Burchfield, as a long-time editor of the OED, draws his examples from literature, citing sources as he goes. He is also far more careful to set out not only the state of the language, but also a history of how the language got to be in its present state. So while the article on the split infinitive is still long (and even lively in its own academic, un-curmudgeonly way) it has been completely reshaped from the five sections into which Fowler organized his own discussion. I will quote here the first and the last paragraphs:

split infinitive. No other grammatical issue has so divided the nation since the split infinitive was declared to be a solecism in the course of the 19c. First, it is essential to clarify what is and what is not a split infinitive. A brief history of the construction then follows. Finally, a description of the present state of the split infinitive is given with numerous illustrative examples showing various types of split and unsplit infinitives.

[several columns of type snipped, including examples of split infinitives from the pens of such luminaries as Wyclif in the 14c, Byron, and Hardy in the 19c., and Amis and Keillor in the 20c.]

4 Preference. No absolute taboo should be placed on the use of simple adverbs between the particle to and the verbal part of the infinitive. ‘Avoid splitting infinitives whenever possible, but do not suffer undue remorse if a split infinitive is unavoidable for the natural and unambiguous completion of a sentence already begun.’ (Burchfield, The Spoken Word, 1981).

My advice, then? Go find an old Fowler’s and read it for illumination and entertainment. And when you need a more in-depth treatment and can stand the dryness, pick up a New Fowler’s. I understand that Modern American Usage is now out in a new edition as well (I think this year, but it may have been last), but I've never had a compelling reason to pick up a copy and see what it may be like.

Pax,
[Izzy]
to boldly go where no .... wait
boldly to go where .... hmmm, maybe
to go boldly where no ....

forget it, I'm just going back to bed.

Beef and Stout Pie

2008-08-23T17:59:00.005-04:00

What Williams-Sonoma calls their “Beef and Stout Pie” is actually a Beef and Stout Stew with a Stilton Pastry top. I can’t think of anything made in a 5 1/2 qt. dutch oven that should be called a “pie.” But “Beef and Stout Cobbler” just sounds gross.

Anyway, I’m copying the recipes here onto a single entry for my own convenience. The links above will take you to the various Williams-Sonoma pages. At least, they will until the next time W-S revamps their cryptic syntax. And today, their internal search engine is down, so I had to hunt this recipe up using a generic web search engine.

Why I want a copy of this is a mystery, even to myself. It looks very tasty, but I can think of no occasion when I could try it out. I have very few carnivorous friends, and this makes a whole lot of stew. I suppose that some cold day this winter, I’ll probably take my first whack at it, but will cut the proportions down. We’ll see.

Anyway, here’s the cut-n-paste (or is that, cut-n-pastry?).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beef and Stout Pie

This hearty beef stew is slowly simmered on the stovetop, then topped with Stilton pastry and finished in a hot oven.

Ingredients:

7 Tbs. olive oil
1 lb. white button mushrooms, quartered
2 cups frozen pearl onions, thawed
Salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste
3 1/2 lb. beef chuck roast, cut into 1-inch cubes
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 Tbs. tomato paste
2 1/2 cups Irish stout
1 cup beef broth
1 lb. carrots, cut into chunks
1 lb. red potatoes, cut into chunks
1 Tbs. finely chopped fresh thyme
One 16-inch round Stilton pastry (see related recipe at left)
1 egg, beaten with 1 tsp. water

Directions:

In a 5 1/2-quart Dutch oven over medium-high heat, warm 1 Tbs. of the olive oil. Add the mushrooms, onions, salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, about 12 minutes. Transfer to a bowl.

Season the beef with salt and pepper. Dredge the beef in the flour, shaking off the excess. In the Dutch oven over medium-high heat, warm 2 Tbs. of the olive oil. Add one-third of the beef and brown on all sides, about 7 minutes total. Transfer to a separate bowl. Add 1/2 cup water to the pot, stirring to scrape up the browned bits. Pour the liquid into a separate bowl. Repeat the process 2 more times, using 2 Tbs. oil to brown each batch of beef and deglazing the pot with 1/2 cup water after each batch.

Return the pot to medium-high heat. Add the garlic and tomato paste and cook, stirring constantly, for 30 seconds. Add the beef, stout, broth and reserved liquid, stirring to scrape up the browned bits. Add the mushrooms, onions, carrots, potatoes and thyme and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low, cover and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the beef and vegetables are tender, about 3 hours.

While that’s simmering, make the:

Stilton Pastry

A sprinkling of creamy Stilton cheese sets this pastry dough apart....

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tsp. salt
1 Tbs. sugar
16 Tbs. (2 sticks/250g) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/3 to 1/2 cup ice water
4 oz. Stilton cheese, crumbled

Directions:

In a food processor, combine the flour, salt and sugar and pulse until blended, about 5 pulses. Add the butter and process until the mixture resembles coarse meal, about 10 pulses. Add 1/3 cup of the ice water and pulse 2 or 3 times. The dough should hold together when squeezed with your fingers but should not be sticky. If it is crumbly, add more water 1 Tbs. at a time, pulsing twice after each addition. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and shape into a disk. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and let stand for 5 minutes. Sprinkle the top of the dough lightly with flour, place on a lightly floured sheet of parchment paper and roll out into a 12-by-16-inch rectangle. Sprinkle the cheese over half of the dough, then fold the other half over the cheese. Roll out the dough into a 16 1/2-inch square. Using a paring knife, trim the dough into a 16-inch round.

Refrigerate the dough until firm, about 10 minutes, then lay the dough on top of the beef and stout pie and bake as directed in that recipe. Makes enough dough for a 16-inch round.

Preheat an oven to 400°F.

Brush the rim of the pot with water. Lay the pastry round on top, allowing it to droop onto the filling. Trim the dough, leaving a 1-inch overhang, and crimp to seal. Brush the pastry with the egg mixture, then cut 4 slits in the top of the dough. Bake for 30 minutes. Let the potpie rest for 15 minutes before serving. Serves 8 to 10.

Creation & Art

2008-08-19T21:24:00.002-04:00

“True art is made as if God were a lot of little cottage industries. Artists take up shapeless raw material -- paint or clay, or a blank sheet of paper -- and transform it into something wonderful that never existed before. This is such a joyous activity that I am at a loss to understand how an artist could ever be unhappy, and yet so many are. Perhaps, like God, they grieve when man ignores their handiwork.”

-- Roger Ebert, in his review of Robert Altman’s Vincent & Theo

Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father

2008-08-17T23:13:00.004-04:00

Of the beasts of the field, and of the fishes of the sea, and of all foods that are acceptable in my sight you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the hoofed animals, broiled or ground into burgers, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cloven-hoofed animal, plain or with cheese, you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the cereal grains, of the corn and of the wheat and of the oats, and of all the cereals that are of bright color and unknown provenance you may eat, but not in the living room. Of the quiescently frozen dessert and of all frozen after-meal treats you may eat, but absolutely not in the living room. Of the juices and other beverages, yes, even of those in sippy-cups, you may drink, but not in the living room, neither may you carry such therein. Indeed, when you reach the place where the living room carpet begins, of any food or beverage there you may not eat, neither may you drink.

But if you are sick, and are lying down and watching something, then may you eat in the living room.

And if you are seated in your high chair, or in a chair such as a greater person might use, keep your legs and feet below you as they were. Neither raise up your knees, nor place your feet upon the table, for that is an abomination to me. Yes, even when you have an interesting bandage to show, your feet upon the table are an abomination, and worthy of rebuke. Drink your milk as it is given you, neither use on it any utensils, nor fork, nor knife, nor spoon, for that is not what they are for; if you will dip your blocks in the milk, and lick it off, you will be sent away. When you have drunk, let the empty cup then remain upon the table, and do not bite it upon its edge and by your teeth hold it to your face in order to make noises in it sounding like a duck; for you will be sent away.

When you chew your food, keep your mouth closed until you have swallowed, and do not open it to show your brother or your sister what is within; I say to you, do not so, even if your brother or your sister has done the same to you. Eat your food only; do not eat that which is not food; neither seize the table between your jaws, nor use the raiment of the table to wipe your lips. I say again to you, do not touch it, but leave it as it is. And though your stick of carrot does indeed resemble a marker, draw not with it upon the table, even in pretend, for we do not do that, that is why. And though the pieces of broccoli are very like small trees, do not stand them upright to make a forest, because we do not do that, that is why. Sit just as I have told you, and do not lean to one side or the other, nor slide down until you are nearly slid away. Heed me; for if you sit like that, your hair will go into the syrup. And now behold, even as I have said, it has come to pass.

Laws Pertaining to Dessert

For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert. But of the unclean plate, the laws are these: If you have eaten most of your meat, and two bites of your peas with each bite consisting of not less than three peas each, or in total six peas, eaten where I can see, and you have also eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert. But if you eat a lesser number of peas, and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert; and if you eat the peas, yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert, no, not even a small portion thereof. And if you try to deceive by moving the potatoes or peas around with a fork, that it may appear you have eaten what you have not, you will fall into iniquity. And I will know, and you shall have no dessert.

On Screaming

Do not scream; for it is as if you scream all the time. If you are given a plate on which two foods you do not wish to touch each other are touching each other, your voice rises up even to the ceiling, while you point to the offense with the finger of your right hand; but I say to you, scream not, only remonstrate gently with the server, that the server may correct the fault. Likewise if you receive a portion of fish from which every piece of herbal seasoning has not been scraped off, and the herbal seasoning is loathsome to you, and steeped in vileness, again I say, refrain from screaming. Though the vileness overwhelm you, and cause you a faint unto death, make not that sound from within your throat, neither cover your face, nor press your fingers to your nose. For even now I have made the fish as it should be; behold, I eat of it myself, yet do not die.

Concerning Face and Hands

Cast your countenance upward to the light, and lift your eyes to the hills, that I may more easily wash you off. For the stains are upon you; even to the very back of your head, there is rice thereon. And in the breast pocket of your garment, and upon the tie of your shoe, rice and other fragments are distributed in a manner wonderful to see. Only hold yourself still; hold still, I say. Give each finger in its turn for my examination thereof, and also each thumb. Lo, how iniquitous they appear. What I do is as it must be; and you shall not go hence until I have done.

Various Other Laws, Statutes, and Ordinances

Bite not, lest you be cast into quiet time. Neither drink of your own bath water, nor of bath water of any kind; nor rub your feet on bread, even if it be in the package; nor rub yourself against cars, nor against any building; nor eat sand.

Leave the cat alone, for what has the cat done, that you should so afflict it with tape? And hum not that humming in your nose as I read, nor stand between the light and the book. Indeed, you will drive me to madness. Nor forget what I said about the tape.

Complaints and Lamentations

O my children, you are disobedient. For when I tell you what you must do, you argue and dispute hotly even to the littlest detail; and when I do not accede, you cry out, and hit and kick. Yes, and even sometimes do you spit, and shout "stupid-head" and other blasphemies, and hit and kick the wall and the molding thereof when you are sent to the corner. And though the law teaches that no one shall be sent to the corner for more minutes than he has years of age, yet I would leave you there all day, so mighty am I in anger. But upon being sent to the corner you ask straightaway, "Can I come out?" and I reply, "No, you may not come out." And again you ask, and again I give the same reply. But when you ask again a third time, then you may come out.

Hear me, O my children, for the bills they kill me. I pay and pay again, even to the twelfth time in a year, and yet again they mount higher than before. For our health, that we may be covered, I give six hundred and twenty talents twelve times in a year; but even this covers not the fifteen hundred deductible for each member of the family within a calendar year. And yet for ordinary visits we still are not covered, nor for many medicines, nor for the teeth within our mouths. Guess not at what rage is in my mind, for surely you cannot know.

For I will come to you at the first of the month and at the fifteenth of the month with the bills and a great whining and moan. And when the month of taxes comes, I will decry the wrong and unfairness of it, and mourn with wine and ashtrays, and rend my receipts. And you shall remember that I am that I am: before, after, and until you are twenty-one. Hear me then, and avoid me in my wrath, O children of me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This lovely little essay is copywritten:
Copyright © 1997 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.
The Atlantic Monthly; February 1997; Laws Concerning Food and Drink; Household Principles; Lamentations of the Father; Volume 279, No. 2; pages 89 - 90.

The link in the title will take you to a page at The Atlantic Monthly where you can also hear sound files of Frazier reading sections. (I also once heard him read it on a Prairie Home Companion. RA file linked at that page.) There is also another format for the essay at The Atlantic Monthly that I find easier on my eyes, but with no sound file links. The essay is also available in a collection by that name. And don’t miss Frazier’s brilliant Coyote -v- Acme.

So with so much available, why am I copying the thing here? Because several times I have wanted to trot out this marvelous pastiche and it has been unavailable. For a while, The Atlantic even wanted one to pay to get access to their archives. Who knows when they’ll decide to do that again, and then I won’t have ready access when I want to trot this out for a class.

But do go to The Atlantic’s page and listen to Frazier reading this. And think what else you could be missing by not reading The Atlantic. And go read some more Ian Frazier, too; he’s a hoot.

Whose Blood is on the Altar in the Appearance of Wine

2008-05-26T08:45:00.005-04:00

I’ve gotten a couple of questions about the inscription from St. Lawrence Outside the Walls. I’ll try to explain here what’s going on, and I’ll try to do that with my non-epigraphist friends in mind.

Let’s start with what I could actually see when I looked up at the slab. Here are a couple of snapshots I took while Professor Bianchi’s crew were setting up to take far better quality pictures. (For those keeping score at home, I’ll remind you that the date was Skylab Day, 11 July 2007.)

The slab of stone that has been set overhead has also been cut and inset with colored stone in a style and method known as Cosmatesque. There are several little floral decorations on this and the neighboring slabs, and this slab has also been inset with a large circle around an equilateral cross (like the cruciform halos seen in Christian art). The inset patterns have damaged an inscription. There are eight lines of Latin in the inscription, the last of which is partially covered by the horizontal bar of the cross. Whoever decorated the stone and set it in it’s current position (assuming that these actions were done at about the same time) apparently did not care about the earlier inscription.

In the inscription, the letters that I can actually read (in whole or in part) on the stone in our snapshots are these:

1 - ]VITRANSIS•QVAMSITBREVISAC[
2 - ]AVISITERADLITVSPARAD[
3 - ]OVVLTVMDN̅I̅FACIASTIBIPO[
4 - ]QVISQVISHÆCSACRAPERH[
5 - ]MMAD̅S̅LVMEN[ ]APIENTIAVIR[
6 - ]ALTARICRVORESTVINV̅Q[
7 - ]ILATERISPE[ ]OPVSMIRÆ[
8 - ]ENTERAQVAM[ ]RIBVISBAPTI[

The square brackets that I’m using are a standard notation. They indicate that the text I’m giving you does not end naturally, that there are other letters in the original that I can’t physically see. In papyrology, the square brackets normally signal damage to the papyrus itself (e.g., a torn edge or a hole in the middle). Here, they indicate two things: the first, places where none of a letter can be seen at all because of the mosaic pattern inset into the slab; the second, the edges of the stone, where letters are hidden by the walls upon which our slab is now resting.

The right edge of the slab with our inscription is sitting right down on top of supporting stone, and nothing more could be read without damaging stonework. The left edge of the stone is also resting on supporting stonework except where the eight lines of text are; here, a relief has been cut out of the supporting stone, and had I a ladder, a flashlight, and a different angle, I might have been able to read more of the letters. I believe that this must be how the extra letters along the left edge have been read before.

Looking through the stuff Professor Bianchi sent me, I see that his is not the first publication of this inscription. It was originally published more than eighty years ago by a Jesuit scholar.

Original publication:
Felice Grossi-Gondi, “L’iscrizione eucaristica del secolo V nella basilica di S. Lorenzo al Verano,” Nuovo Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana, 1921, pp. 106-11.

And since that was so long ago, you can now nab a copy of that publication (one page at a time) for free off the interwebs. The six jpegs will cost you about 2.5 Mb of disc space, and the article is in Italian, and if your Italian was any better than mine (which is functionally non-existent), you wouldn’t have complained to me, but here it is anyway:
Original publication.

By the way, while looking for this article, I found it referenced here:

Another publication (which I have not yet seen):
Antonio Ferrua, Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae, vol. VII, 1980, n. 18324, pp. 164-165.

Fr. Grossi-Gondi recognized that the six lines of Latin start with a standard sentiment for an ancient epitaph. On headstones one will often read things like, “You who pass by and read this, have a kind thought for the poor sod beneath this sod. What you are, I once was; what I am, you will be.” We have something similar here. He also recognized that the Latin is in meter, and not in the usual (for headstones) elegiac couplets, but in the grander epic meter, dactylic hexameter (the form used by Homer and Vergil). So it’s not just an inscription, but a poem, and a poem that evokes epic rather than little ditties.

On p. 106, the first page of his article, he supplements the text that he can actually read with letters that he thinks are likely to be the correct ones. He has the advantage of knowing that whatever he puts at the beginning and end of each line has to fit the poetry; that is, his supplements have to scan properly. Here’s his solution:

1 - adsp]ICE QVI TRANSIS • QVAM SIT BREVIS AC[ipe vita
2 - atqu]E TVÆ NAVIS ITER AD LITVS PARAD[isi
3 - rell]EGE • QVO VVLTVM DN̅I̅ FACIAS TIBI PO[rtum
4 - percipias gra]T IAM QVIS QVIS HÆC SACRA PERH[aurias
5 - glor]IA SVMMA D̅S̅ LVMEN SAPIENTIA VIR[tus
6 - ver]VS IN ALTARI CRVOR EST VINV̅Q [videtur
7 - is]Q TVI LATERIS PER OPVS MIRAE [pietatis
8 - unde]POTENTER AQVAM tRIBVIS BAPTI[smate lotis

(For those who can scan Latin poetry, yes there are some minor irregularities. For instance, the second syllable of navis in line two has been lengthened.

If you go to the link for his article, you’ll see, too, that he’s managed to get the page typeset so that the letters on the page line up more or less the way they are on the stone. You’ll also see that his supplement at the beginning of line four sticks way out in front, that it starts farther to the left than his other lines do. This seems a bit unreasonable.

And it’s one of the places that Professor Bianchi has printed a different solution. (Since I haven’t seen Ferrua’s 1980 publication (no JSTOR access in my life right now), I don’t know how much of this is his work and how much Bianchi’s; I’ll refer to the later variants as Bianchi’s for the sake of simplicity, but in any sort of scholarly discussion, one would want to be more precise.) For line four Grossi-Gondi has:

Percipias gratiam quisquis haec sacra perhaurias.
May you obtain grace, whoever would drink down these sacred things.

For line four, Bianchi has:

Dicat iam quisquis haec sacra perhauriat ore
Whoever would drink down these sacred things, let him now say aloud,

To my mind, this makes a better transition between the first three lines, which are clearly addressed to the reader, and the fifth line, which names the One addressed in the subsequent lines, even if it makes the theology of the inscription less blatant.

Another change printed by Bianchi that improves the reading while muting the theology comes at the beginning of the sixth line. Grossi-Gondi has verus in altari cruor est / true blood is on the altar. Bianchi has cuius in altari cruor est / whose blood is on the altar. Either way, the line is still transubstantiationist. ___ blood is on the altar and seems to be wine.

Allowing that line six could go either way, Bianchi takes a couple of other minor improvements and prints his Latin text (with abbreviations expanded and spelling for the most part regularized)

1 - (Adsp)ICE QUI TRANSIS QUAM SIT BREVIS AC(cipe vita)
2 - (Atqu)E TUAE NAVIS ITER AD LITUS PARAD(isi)
3 - (Der)EGE QUO VULTUM DOMINI FACIAS TIBI PO(rtum)
4 - (Dica)T IAM QUISQUIS HAEC SACRA PERH(auriat ore)
5 - (Glor)IA SUMMA DOMINUS LUMEN SAPIENTIA VIR(tus)
6 - (Cui)US [o: (Ver)US] IN ALTARI CRUOR EST VINUMQUE (videtur)
7 - (Qui)QUE TUI LATERIS PER OPUS MIRAE (pietatis)
8 - (Omni)POTENTER AQUAM TRIBUIS BAPTI(smate lotis)

I’m not sure about the beginning of the third line. Bianchi is accepting a misspelling for dirige, and has supplied an altered vowel to match the one on the stone. He could just as easily have printed (Dir)ege, and I wouldn’t be surprised if an even better solution comes along later. But taking it as Bianchi prints it, I will supply the following pony (a “pony” in this context is a translation meant to explain the literal meaning of a foreign text; it is not meant to be a beautiful exemplar of clear, lucid English, but is meant to convey the sense and the ambiguities of the original):

1. Consider, you who pass by. Accept how brief life is
2. and
3. direct
2. your ship’s journey toward the shore of Paradise
3. to the place where you might make the face of the Lord your harbor.
4. Whoever would drink down these sacred things, let him now say aloud,
5. “Highest Glory, Lord, Light, Wisdom, Virtue,
6. Whose blood is on the altar and appears as wine
7. and You Who,
8. omnipotent, grant to those washed with baptism the water
7. of your side through a work of extraordinary mercy.”

One odd thing about ll. 5-8 is that they are all, grammatically, a direct address. All they are doing is saying good things about the person to whom the words are directed. They are an adoration:

O, Great Glory! (a bit stronger than merely saying, “o, Glorious One.” He is not merely characterized by glory, He is glory).
O, Lord!
O, Light!
O, Wisdom!
O, Virtue!
O, One Whose blood is on the altar in the guise of wine!
and, O, Omnipotent One who (through an act of wondrous mercy) grants the water of Your side to those washed by baptism.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask for more if you need it.

Izzy
Feast of Corpus Christi, 2008

E-Church

2008-05-24T16:35:00.005-04:00

I don't know why this tickles me, but it does. I haven’t had time to read my funnies, so I’m not sure what day this appeared. I found it in my inbox while using wifi before Mass in Floyd, VA. It was sent by my youngest brother.

Izzy,
who used to live a couple of blocks down the street from Dan Piraro in west Dallas

Salmon with basil & mint

2008-05-20T00:49:00.002-04:00

It’s almost time for our annual retreat to Rocky Knob, so SWMBO is at her annual conference at the beach and I’m cleaning out the fridge. We’ve had some basil on the verge of going off and I thought I’d combine it with a nice piece of salmon. Poking around to see what others have done with this pairing, I found a recipe (I forget where) for salmon with basil & mint. And we just so happen to have some mint left over from the juleps we had during the Preakness (go Big Brown!). Here's what I did.

No... better... Here’s what I'll do next time.

chiffonade about 1/6 c. basil leaves and 1/8 c. mint leaves for each salmon steak or fillet
wilt the herbs in a bit of olive oil over a medium heat & set aside
oil the baking pan & lay in the salmon
cover with wilted herbs
top with thin lemon slices
bake in convection toaster oven for 13 minutes at 350

Fast, easy, and surprisingly tasty. I also had some vegetables, but everyone knows how to...

Wait a tick.

Easy corn on the cob:

Shuck the corn & remove all the silk
wrap tightly in plastic wrap
roll into a tea towel
nuke on high for a scant 2 minutes
let sit for a few minutes (I put the fish in the oven, did the corn, and then unwrapped it right before the fish was ready).

Perfect.

Camembert & Caramelized Onion Quesadilla with Apple Chutney

2008-05-12T00:07:00.003-04:00

The basic recipe is from the Food Network, with slight modifications for what we could get in town.

We had a tub of apple chutney, and I was wondering what to do with it all. So I did a web search for the phrase “with apple chutney,” and while most of the recipes called for pork of some sort (which SWMBO can not digest), there was one that looked pretty interesting.

Here’s what I used and how it came out:

2 Tblsp olive oil
4 Tblsp unsalted butter
4 sweet onions, peeled, halved and thinly sliced
2 Tblsp balsamic vinegar
4 tsp fresh thyme leaves, crushed in mortar & pestle
9 (6-inch) low carb flour tortillas
salt and freshly ground pepper
3 4.5 oz. Camembert rounds, thinly sliced
apple chutney

Modifying the original recipe, I made twice the recipe of caramelized onions. Sliced ’em up, tossed ’em into a large pot with the EVOO & butter on medium heat, and settled in for almost an hour’s worth of stirring, cooking down, and talking to moms on Mothers’ Day. When they had cooked way down and were a nice light brown color, I cut off the heat and stirred in the thyme and the balsamic.

The local stores don’t really sell Camembert by the pound, so I ended up buying several rounds of Ile-de-France brand creamy Camembert at 4.5 oz per round. Each round made one double-decker quesadilla.

As the recipe asks, I laid out six flour tortillas. I split the onions into six little mounds and spread one mound on each of the tortillas. I cut up the Camembert and put half a round’s worth on each of the tortillas, then stacked them up in pairs and covered each pair with another tortilla. I then had three little ungrilled stacks that went (from the cutting board up) tortilla, onion, cheese, tortilla, onion, cheese, tortilla.

We grilled them on a panini press (locking the upper grill in place just touching the top tortilla so it wouldn’t squish all the cheese out). On our first attempt, I put too much chutney on top; I’ll use less tomorrow. But other than that, not bad at all. I’ll bet it would be even better with brie.

The True Blood is on the altar and appears as Wine

2008-05-07T22:23:00.003-04:00

Last Skylab Day, SWMBO and I were treated to an impromptu tour of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls by Prof. Lorenzo Bianchi. We were there on pilgrimage; he, to photograph an inscription that may be the earliest known epigraphical evidence of the doctrine of transubstantiation.

Last Saturday, a package arrived in the mail from Italy. Prof. Bianchi had mailed me a couple of his books and a few articles, including an off-print of the preliminary article (March 2006) to the scholarly publication for which he and his crew were shooting pictures (forthcoming).

The earlier article (March 2006) is available online.

The slab in question is directly over these men’s heads as you head into the lower crypt:

One of our pictures of the thing (to give you an idea of position and scale) is here:

Prof. Bianchi’s text and Italian translation are here:

1. (Adsp)ICE QUI TRANSIS QUAM SIT BREVIS AC(cipe vita)
2. (Atqu)E TUAE NAVIS ITER AD LITUS PARAD(isi)
3. (Der)EGE QUO VULTUM DOMINI FACIAS TIBI PO(rtum)
4. (Dica)T IAM QUISQUIS HAEC SACRA PERH(auriat ore)
5. (Glor)IA SUMMA DOMINUS LUMEN SAPIENTIA VIR(tus)
6. (Cui)US [o: (Ver)US] IN ALTARI CRUOR EST VINUMQUE (videtur)
7. (Qui)QUE TUI LATERIS PER OPUS MIRAE (pietatis)
8. (Omni)POTENTER AQUAM TRIBUIS BAPTI(smate lotis)

1. Guarda, tu che passi, intendi quanto sia breve la vita,
2. e raddrizza il viaggio della tua nave all’approdo del Paradiso,
3. là dove il tuo porto sarà vedere il Signore.
4. Dica ormai chiunque beve queste specie consacrate:
5. “Tu sei la somma gloria, il Signore, il lume, la sapienza, la virtù,
6. il cui [o: vero] sangue è sull’altare e sembra vino;
7. tu, che nella tua onnipotenza concedi con un’opera di mirabile misericordia
8. l’acqua scaturita dal tuo fianco a coloro che sono stati purificati nel battesimo”.

I eagerly await the full publication.

An obvious refinement

2008-05-03T20:33:00.004-04:00

Two posts below I blathered on about LTLT and a caramelized white onion change in the onion confit (and, with the addition of raisins, a recipe heading out of the confit domain and into that of chutney). If LHLT is the method, what better tool than a crock pot? It seems obvious in retrospect, and so I had to try it.

This time, I made a full recipe -- 2 lbs. of onions to start with. We were out of chutney-esqe stuff for garnishing [1] and Vidalia onions (sweet yellow onions from a particular region of Georgia) are in season. And so I thought I’d try caramelizing the onions in the crock pot overnight. Slice & chop, into the pot, stir in some EVOO, cover, and turn on the pot. I let them go about ten hours on low. The limiting factor was that I had to leave for work the next morning, and so I went ahead and added the other ingredients before I left. Notes for future use:

next time, start this right when I get home from work so that they have about four more hours to caramelize;
use butter instead of EVOO; and
if the onions are just going to be used as caramelized onions per se, just do them in a large cast iron pot and keep stirring. (Music and a decent single malt will enhance the experience.)

Anyway, after about ten hours of cooking down, I added the tawny, white balsamic, honey, and raisins. I stirred it up, put the cover back on, and went to work. When I got home, I gave it a taste to see what I needed to add (nothing, this time), left the cover off, and turned the pot to high to start reducing the mixture. After 8 hours, it was almost thick enough. I think ten would have done the trick.

So the upshot is this: if I don't have the time to supervise, or if (like yesterday) there is a lot of other cooking that needs to happen and a chunk of the stove can’t be spared, the crock pot is a good solution. But it needs much more time than I originally thought. And the flavor of the caramelized onions is more intense if done more quickly over the stove.

BTW, the recipe cooked down to three pints (one quart jar, one pint jar). This would obviously be less if I let it reduce further.

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[1] Or so I had thought. While I was simmering down the confit (or whatever it is), I asked SWMBO about a couple of plastic containers in the fridge. Turns out, one is an apple chutney. The other is also definitely in the chutney family, and much more sub-continent by the taste o it, but neither of us can remember what went into the making of it. So we're apparently set for chutneys at the moment, having a sweet apple chutney, and earthy onion confit, and some sort of curried chutney. Now we just have to cook things to put them on.

Ut Unum Sint

2008-04-20T11:40:00.003-04:00

One of the things that drew me to the Catholic Church was reading and rereading Christ’s prayer in the Garden (John 17). While I was mulling over His prayer that all Christians be one and that our unity be a sign to unbelievers, Pope John Paul II promulgated his wonderful encyclical Ut Unum Sint.

This morning I listened to and read along with Benedict XVI’s Address at the Ecumenical Prayer Service at St. Joseph’s Parish (Manhatten) from two evenings ago. Wow. It is clearly pastoral, and clearly heartfelt, but he minces no words. He does not outright call our divisions a scandal to the name of Christ, but he firmly finds fault with variance from what is truly Catholic, what has been believed everywhere, everywhen. Here is the paragraph that caught my ear:

Too often those who are not Christians, as they observe the splintering of Christian communities, are understandably confused about the Gospel message itself. Fundamental Christian beliefs and practices are sometimes changed within communities by so-called "prophetic actions" that are based on a hermeneutic not always consonant with the datum of Scripture and Tradition. Communities consequently give up the attempt to act as a unified body, choosing instead to function according to the idea of "local options". Somewhere in this process the need for diachronic koinonia - communion with the Church in every age - is lost, just at the time when the world is losing its bearings and needs a persuasive common witness to the saving power of the Gospel (cf. Rom 1:18-23).

Go read the rest. And feel free to watch & listen (wmv) as well (link from this site; I'd happily post better streams).

Caramelized Onion Chutney

2008-04-15T22:36:00.002-04:00

Two things here; first texture, then flavor.

Texture: LTLT (low temperature, long time)

I understand that the way to get really tender caramelized onions is to pile some thinly-sliced onions in a crock pot, put some butter pats on top, and let it go on low all night long. I didn't have that long, and I wasn’t preparing more than a single onion’s worth, so I used a cast-iron skillet over very low heat. I used a mandolin to do the initial slicing and then, because I was heading for a chutney, chopped the slices. Heated the skillet, melted a bit of butter, and tossed in the onion bits. Occasional stirring for about 75 minutes before the onion began to brown (the heat was that low), then another twenty minutes before the pieces were almost uniformly brown.

When I transferred the onion into a saucepan with the remaining ingredients, I again used a very low heat. It took over a half an hour for the sauce to start bubbling. It bubbled for over an hour before I had to add water (so it could keep bubbling and softening).

Low temperature. Long time.

Flavor:

I used the basic proportions of the red onion confit, but eyeballed it all instead of measuring (it was just one onion, after all). But the ingredients were modified to these:

caramelized yellow onion
honey
tawny port wine
white balsamic vinegar
raisins

I think this one’s a keeper.

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

2008-03-27T12:31:00.002-04:00

The Second Coming
by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I stuck a copy of this oft-quoted gem up here. Has anyone done a count of the number of other works that have been entitled from these lines (or from allusions to them)? At least two administration-authored reports on Iraq have taken their titles from this poem. (And just over a year ago there was a NYT op-ed piece pointing out the irony.) But no matter how you read it, its images and language stick.

“Do You Love Me?”

2008-02-14T00:01:00.000-05:00

(I think that this duet from Fiddler on the Roof is my favorite love song. I’m posting it in honor of the day and because our 25th anniversary is looming. I hope that the color-coding will be obvious; it’s not quite blue and pink, but you’ll get the idea.)

Tevye: Golde, I have decided to give Perchik permission to become engaged to our daughter, Hodel.

Golde: What‽ He’s poor! He has nothing, absolutely nothing!

Tevye: He's a good man, Golde. I like him. And what's more important, Hodel likes him. Hodel loves him. So what can we do? It’s a new world... A new world.

Love.

Golde...

[Song starts.]

Do you love me?

Golde: Do I what?

Tevye: Do you love me?

Golde: Do I love you?
With our daughters getting married
And this trouble in the town
You’re upset, you’re worn out;
Go inside, go lie down!
Maybe it's indigestion.
Golde, I’m asking you a question:

Do you love me?

You're a fool.

I know.

But do you love me?

Do I love you?
For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes,
Cooked your meals, cleaned your house,
Given you children, milked the cow;
After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?

Golde, the first time I met you

Was on our wedding day.
I was scared. I was shy.
I was nervous. So was I.

But my father and my mother
Said we’d learn to love each other
And now I’m asking, Golde,
Do you love me?

I’m your wife.

I know.
But do you love me?

Do I love him?
For twenty-five years I’ve lived with him,
Fought him, starved with him.
Twenty-five years my bed is his.
If that’s not love, what is?

Then you love me?

I suppose I do.

And I suppose I love you, too.

Both:
It doesn't change a thing,
But even so
After twenty-five years
It’s nice to know.

Glaring Across the Chasm of Flames

2008-01-15T20:32:00.000-05:00

The Frick Collection is in the converted Manhattan town house of Henry Clay Frick. Much of the permanent collection is still arranged in living spaces, as if the family were going to move back in tomorrow. There are quiet spots for sitting and contemplating, tucked serenely between the walls of a house set down amidst the constant drone of New York’s Upper East Side. I was slowly sauntering from room to room when I entered the Living Hall and saw what is still my favorite group of paintings. The wit of the arrangement stopped me dead in my tracks and made me cackle so loudly that I was almost tossed out of the museum.

Inset into one wall is one of those large walk-in fireplaces. The mantle is just about head hight. To the left of the fireplace is the famous Holbein portrait of St. Thomas More, the Man for All Seasons; he looks to his left, across the great expanse of the fireplace. On the other side of the fireplace, looking to his right across the chasm, is a portrait of Thomas Cromwell also by Holbein the Younger.

Now, Cromwell was Henry VIII’s chief minister; it was he who was instrumental in organizing More’s martyrdom, questioning the Saint endlessly and trying fruitlessly to find or force a political justification for More’s execution. He was unsuccessful, but More was beheaded anyway, and now the pair of them, transported from their own island to this room in Manhattan, stare at one another across the flames, inviting us to guess which of the Thomases is on which side of the great chasm.

But that’s not all, for above the mantle, looking out at us from a height, is the famous El Greco of St. Jerome. He is elongated, dressed in red cape, and has his thumb plonked down into Scripture. His stern presence has been set as a judge between the two Tommys, but by his gaze and gesture he commands us to make our own judgement, and to base it on Holy Writ. Only the angle of his body within this grouping betrays his own choice, or (at any rate) the choice made by the person who had these three paintings hung together in this place.

The large fireplace, which would dominate most rooms, is subsumed by a fantastic and deliberate arrangement of portraits; the grouping uses it and gives it new meaning. It becomes a gateway to hell in an arrangement that reminds us of a notorious moment in history and tells us what the arranger thinks of the characters in the story.

And I suspect that there are similar stories to be read throughout the house, if only I had the wit and intelligence to discern them.

Get thee to the Frick.

Why, my beloved....

2007-12-16T23:35:00.000-05:00

I was reminded this evening that even in the very early days of our marriage, way back when the earth was cooling and dinosaurs were just starting to check out the new digs, I was a fan and practitioner of the postmodern sensibility. (Cf. this old post and search down the page for postmodernism & the first long quotation.)

What SWMBO reminded me of was the stock answer I used to give anytime her insecure self asked me whether some aspect of her physical person was in order or not. You know the questions: “Does this (article of clothing / haircut / shade of makeup / live badger) make (me / my (body part(s)) / my artificial kidney) look (too big / too small / too hideous / indictable)?”

These questions are always minefields, and, having already lost a limb or two in such places, I refused to crawl in for another go. Instead, I would put on my best dim-witted-son face (and since I was raised in Texas by West Virginians, you know I come by such expressions naturally) and proclaim in a slow, deliberate monotone:

“Why, my beloved, I am so blinded by your feminine pulchritude that I am completely unable to perceive any minor flaws which you may feel that you possess.”

It has worked for me; feel free to try it for your own self.

Constitutional Commas

2007-12-16T18:50:00.000-05:00

Yet another developing story about the importance of correct (and correctly understood) punctuation. This one an editorial by Adam Freedman in the Sunday, 16 December 2007 New York Times. N.b. that it also touches on matters particularly dear to the Latin teacher’s heart (**cough** ablative absolute **cough**).

Myself, I want to know about my right to keep and arm bears.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

December 16, 2007

Op-Ed Contributor

Clause and Effect

By ADAM FREEDMAN

LAST month, the Supreme Court agreed to consider District of Columbia v. Heller, which struck down Washington’s strict gun ordinance as a violation of the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms.”

This will be the first time in nearly 70 years that the court has considered the Second Amendment. The outcome of the case is difficult to handicap, mainly because so little is known about the justices’ views on the lethal device at the center of the controversy: the comma. That’s right, the “small crooked point,” as Richard Mulcaster described this punctuation upstart in 1582. The official version of the Second Amendment has three of the little blighters:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

The decision invalidating the district’s gun ban, written by Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, cites the second comma (the one after “state”) as proof that the Second Amendment does not merely protect the “collective” right of states to maintain their militias, but endows each citizen with an “individual” right to carry a gun, regardless of membership in the local militia.

How does a mere comma do that? According to the court, the second comma divides the amendment into two clauses: one “prefatory” and the other “operative.” On this reading, the bit about a well-regulated militia is just preliminary throat clearing; the framers don’t really get down to business until they start talking about “the right of the people ... shall not be infringed.”

The circuit court’s opinion is only the latest volley in a long-simmering comma war. In a 2001 Fifth Circuit case, a group of anti-gun academics submitted an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief arguing that the “unusual” commas of the Second Amendment support the collective rights interpretation. According to these amici, the founders’ use of commas reveals that what they really meant to say was “a well-regulated militia ... shall not be infringed.”

Now that the issue is heading to the Supreme Court, the pro-gun American Civil Rights Union is firing back with its own punctuation-packing brief. Nelson Lund, a professor of law at George Mason University, argues that everything before the second comma is an “absolute phrase” and, therefore, does not modify anything in the main clause. Professor Lund states that the Second Amendment “has exactly the same meaning that it would have if the preamble had been omitted.”

Refreshing though it is to see punctuation at the center of a national debate, there could scarcely be a worse place to search for the framers’ original intent than their use of commas. In the 18th century, punctuation marks were as common as medicinal leeches and just about as scientific. Commas and other marks evolved from a variety of symbols meant to denote pauses in speaking. For centuries, punctuation was as chaotic as individual speech patterns.

The situation was even worse in the law, where a long English tradition held that punctuation marks were not actually part of statutes (and, therefore, courts could not consider punctuation when interpreting them). Not surprisingly, lawmakers took a devil-may-care approach to punctuation. Often, the whole business of punctuation was left to the discretion of scriveners, who liked to show their chops by inserting as many varied marks as possible.

Another problem with trying to find meaning in the Second Amendment’s commas is that nobody is certain how many commas it is supposed to have. The version that ended up in the National Archives has three, but that may be a fluke. Legal historians note that some states ratified a two-comma version. At least one recent law journal article refers to a four-comma version.

The best way to make sense of the Second Amendment is to take away all the commas (which, I know, means that only outlaws will have commas). Without the distracting commas, one can focus on the grammar of the sentence. Professor Lund is correct that the clause about a well-regulated militia is “absolute,” but only in the sense that it is grammatically independent of the main clause, not that it is logically unrelated. To the contrary, absolute clauses typically provide a causal or temporal context for the main clause.

The founders — most of whom were classically educated — would have recognized this rhetorical device as the “ablative absolute” of Latin prose. To take an example from Horace likely to have been familiar to them: “Caesar, being in command of the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence” (ego nec tumultum nec mori per vim metuam, tenente Caesare terras). The main clause flows logically from the absolute clause: “Because Caesar commands the earth, I fear neither civil war nor death by violence.”

Likewise, when the justices finish diagramming the Second Amendment, they should end up with something that expresses a causal link, like: “Because a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.” In other words, the amendment is really about protecting militias, notwithstanding the originalist arguments to the contrary.

Advocates of both gun rights and gun control are making a tactical mistake by focusing on the commas of the Second Amendment. After all, couldn’t one just as easily obsess about the founders’ odd use of capitalization? Perhaps the next amicus brief will find the true intent of the amendment by pointing out that “militia” and “state” are capitalized in the original, whereas “people” is not.

Adam Freedman, the author of “The Party of the First Part: The Curious World of Legalese,” writes the Legal Lingo column for New York Law Journal Magazine.

BTW, if you haven’t already signed up for free access to the NYTimes online, you really should do so. It’s free, and very informative. And for a nominal fee, you can do the Times crossword online. Beats the heck out of all that time you’re wasting playing solitaire.

It’s all in the Synopsis, pt. 2

2007-11-03T01:23:00.000-04:00

This from SWMBO, who heard it on the radio:

On December 2, 1859, Mr. John Brown died during an important civic event being held in his honor, when the platform upon which he was standing gave way suddenly.

Now that’s spin.

Pasta e Fagioli

2007-10-30T23:15:00.000-04:00

Fall is here, good soup weather, and only a month late.

Some students are coming over this weekend, and I’m thinking that it’s time for some pasta e fagioli.

A recipe that I’ve used before is one from the Food Network’s Everyday Italian. This is the one that looked most like what Vincent Bruno used to make, although he added ceci (chickpeas) and tended to use rotini or fusilli. He also used a LOT more garlic. So I tried it out, to good effect, and then thought I’d see what the show was like.

I like the recipe. I really do. But I have real trouble watching the show. She is just so wide-eyed, so effusive, so isn’t-this-marvelous. I can’t take it. But the recipes (yes, I’ve tried a couple of other things from the show’s archive) are pretty good.

And here’s the soup:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pasta e Fagioli

Recipe courtesy Giada De Laurentiis
Show: Everyday Italian
Episode: Italian Ladies

4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 large sprig fresh rosemary
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup chopped onion
3 ounces pancetta, chopped
2 teaspoons minced garlic
5 3/4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 (14.5-ounce) cans red kidney beans, drained and rinsed
3/4 cup elbow macaroni
Freshly ground black pepper
Pinch red pepper flakes, optional
1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

Wrap the thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf in a piece of cheesecloth and secure closed with kitchen twine. Heat 1 tablespoon olive oil and butter in a heavy large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion, pancetta, and garlic and sauté until the onion is tender, about 3 minutes. Add the broth, beans, and sachet of herbs. Cover and bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat to medium and simmer until the vegetables are very tender, about 10 minutes. Discard the sachet. Puree 1 cup of the bean mixture in a blender until smooth*. Before putting the puree back into the soup, add the macaroni and boil with the lid on until it is tender but still firm to the bite, about 8 minutes. Return the puree to the remaining soup in the saucepan and stir well. Season the soup with ground black pepper and red pepper flakes.

Ladle the soup into bowls. Sprinkle with some Parmesan and drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil just before serving.

*When blending hot liquids: Remove liquid from the heat and allow to cool for at least 5 minutes. Transfer liquid to a blender or food processor and fill it no more than halfway. If using a blender, release one corner of the lid. This prevents the vacuum effect that creates heat explosions. Place a towel over the top of the machine, pulse a few times then process on high speed until smooth.

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When I made this for a lunch at work, I pre-cooked the pasta about 3/4 of the way to al dente and put it in a big ziplock. The soup I put in a big crock pot at work, and about 20 minutes before serving time, I put the pasta into the crock pot. It warmed up, finished cooking, and was the right texture without me having to do any of the cooking at the office.

“The Dead”

2007-10-24T22:33:00.002-04:00

A while back a friend was headed on a trip with an older relative. I encouraged my friend to ask questions, probe family history, and steal some stories. The inevitable reply, and my response to it, are here:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“How do you steal a story?”

By taking it from its owner and making it your own. Whether it lay in a dusty old box, forgotten until some quirk of fate and time cause them to stumble across it, lift the lid, and remember; or whether it be worn down from innumerable gentle handlings over the years; their stories will have a meaning for them, will have a use for them. And often, when that story finds receptive ears, its meaning changes and the story finds a new owner.

I think here, especially, of Gabriel stealing Gretta’s story, the story of Michael Furey’s mortal love for her, at the end of Joyce’s “The Dead” (last story in Dubiners). “He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.” And now that story of hers becomes for him, perhaps too late, the story that opens his heart, unlocks his own capacity for love at the very moment he becomes acutely aware of mortality — the mortality of the universe, the mortality of his country, the mortality of himself.

“The air of the room chilled his shoulders. He stretched himself cautiously along under the sheets and lay down beside his wife. One by one, they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. He thought of how she who lay beside him had locked in her heart for so many years that image of her lover’s eyes when he had told her that he did not wish to live.

“Generous tears filled Gabriel’s eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

“A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.”

The best form of fabulous theft is like that. The stolen story becomes a sort of grace in the life of the thief. There are other, more mundane, sorts of theft -- a grandmother’s story that becomes grist for cocktail chatter -- but even then, which stories we choose to lift will tell us something about ourselves. And, as we claim them, they claim us and change us. The stolen story becomes ours to tell, to shape, and to change, but to a degree, we also become the story’s, to be changed by it.

Pax,
Izzy

P.S. “The Dead” was lovingly crafted into a movie by a dying John Huston, and stars his daughter Angelica. We have a nearly worn-out VHS of the thing, and I eagerly await a Region 1 DVD (so far, there has only been a release in Spain -- region 2).

P.P.S.S. A Region 1 DVD finally hit the market in November of 2009. I snapped it up (at less that $10) and am delighted to find it a wide-screen edition. No scan & pan here.

For comparison sake, here is the final voice-over from the film:

One by one, we’re all becoming shades. Better to pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age. How long you locked away in your heart the image of your lover’s eyes when he told you that he did not wish to live. I’ve never felt that way myself towards any woman, but I know that such a feeling must be love. Think of all those who ever were, back to the start of time. And me, transient as they, flickering out as well into their grey world. Like everything around me, this solid world itself which they reared and lived in, is dwindling and dissolving. Snow is falling. Falling in that lonely churchyard where Michael Furey lies buried. Falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living, and the dead.

Graham Greene & The Heart of the Matter

2007-09-04T00:09:00.001-04:00

Three conversations (one in person and two via e-mail) in the last month have convinced me to search the old hard drive and some thoughts from days gone by. I’m here repurposing something sent to a discussion list back before the millenial shift. Actually, it was originally two somethings and has here been slapped together as if it were originally a single thing. I hope it’s still useful.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

...with regard to Greene’s faith. I know he was a Catholic (obviously), but not having read a great deal of his work (only P&G and ”Heart of the Matter”), his seems a rather dark, bleak outlook. Any comments?
Jim B

and the B doesn’t stand for Beam....

P&G was, according to Greene, the only one of his novels written to a thesis; he set out to demonstrate that the sacrament is valid despite the state of the one administering that sacrament. My own take was that it was much more a demonstration of just how worthy one could be despite all one’s flaws and self-doubt; the overwhelming impression the novel left me was just how heroic this degraded little whiskey priest really was when it came down to it. Beyond doubt one of Greene’s best. And as a polemic, it covers the same ground as the Donatist controversy. Which makes Greene seem rather more orthodox than I think he actually was.

For instance, the other book you mention is my personal favorite (primarily because I recognize Scobie’s besetting sin as a variant of my own and I read the thing just after I had given up on suicide (because I could think of no way to do it that would be fairly considerate and wouldn’t just seem ridiculous to the uninvolved observer)). I have a couple of times posted to this list sections from the dialog between Scobie’s priest and his widow at the end of the book (I’ll quote it again at the end of this post). In this dialog, Greene’s take on God’s mercy, while attractive, is clearly heterodox.

And in some of the interviews collected in Conversations with Graham Greene, Greene speaks quite frankly about his continued and illegal use of opium. E.g., this from V.S. Naipaul, originally The Daily Telegraph Magazine, 8 March 1968, 28-32:

….I [Naipaul] said I enjoyed tobacco less and less but didn’t know what to replace it with. Mr. Greene said, “I think you are ready for opium.” He added: “The fuss about opium and marijuana is absurd. The Battle of Britain was won on benzedrine.” He goes on to talk about how restful an opium nap is and to recommend that opium be made “available to everyone over fifty; there need be no bureaucratic complications; there can be properly supervised fumeries.”

You’re more or less right about Greene’s bleak outlook. I think it comes from doing so much political work in the times and places he did. On the other hand, he developed a fine sense of the absurd, on display in his comic novels like Travels With My Aunt and Our Man in Havana (Once while in a motel I saw the end of a movie version of the latter; B&W with Alec Guinness; I easily recognized the plot within two minutes and enjoyed watching it while we packed up).

His pessimism is usually directed at bureaucracies and the overly innocent (check out The Quiet American for a prophetic look at how American can-do optimism would go seriously awry Vietnam). The Comedians is as good a look into the black heart of Haiti as ever you’ll want to see, and was on my mind a few years back as I watched news footage of people normally shown happily beaming in friendly fashion butcher each other in the same carefree, offhand manner. If you want to see just how far his pessimism would go on an individual level, in the very short novel Brighton Rock, Greene tried to create a character absolutely beyond the reach of redemption. The denouement of this novel also includes an interview with a priest. It is interesting to note that his pessimism is not quite complete.

And while I’m at it, The End of the Affair is told from the point of view of a man whose lover has left him. He never really understands what she tells him plainly, that she has broken off their relationship because it was sinful and she has found God. It’s an interesting study in religion, superstition, and what might count as real faith.

Well, I don’t think I’ve answered your questions, but I’ve enjoyed rambling on here. Greene is one of my favorites, and I intend to read HotM again before too much more time goes by. Here are some quotations to show you why. I’ve tried to cull from my marked passages only the ones that will make a bit of sense without their larger contexts. If it doesn’t give a fair representation of the thought of the book, it will probably reveal more than I would like about my own reactions to the book.

Pax,
Izzy

---------------------------------------
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of good will carries always within his heart this capacity for damnation.

---------------------------------------
“We’d forgive most things if we knew the facts.... A policeman should be the most forgiving person in the world if he gets his facts right.”
--Asst. Police Commissioner Scobie

---------------------------------------
...for the first time he realized the pain inevitable in any human relationship--pain suffered and pain inflicted. How foolish one was to be afraid of loneliness.

---------------------------------------
...in the confusing night he forgot for the while what experience had taught him--that no human being can really understand another, and no one can arrange another’s happiness.

---------------------------------------
He said the Our father, the Hail Mary, and then, as sleep began to clog his lids, he added an act of contrition. It was a formality, not because he felt himself free from serious sin but because it had never occurred to him that his life was important enough one way or another. He didn’t drink, he didn’t fornicate, he didn’t even lie, but he never regarded this absence of sin as virtue.

---------------------------------------
What an absurd it was thing to expect happiness in a world so full of misery. ... Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either extreme egotism, evil--or else an absolute ignorance.
Outside the rest-house he stopped again. The lights inside would have given an extraordinary impression of peace if one hadn’t known [of the shipwreck victims who lay dying inside], just as the stars on this clear night gave also an impression of remoteness, security, freedom. If one knew, he wondered, the facts, would one have to feel pity even for the planets? if one reached what they called the heart of the matter?
--the musings of Major Scobie

---------------------------------------
It seemed to Scobie later that this was the ultimate border he had reached in happiness: being in darkness, alone, with rain falling, without love or pity.

---------------------------------------
[The young widow] thought that she wanted to be alone, but what she was afraid of was the awful responsibility of receiving sympathy.

---------------------------------------
“I’ve always envied people who were happy [at school].... To start off happy,” Harris said, “It must make an awful difference afterwards. Why, it might become a habit, mightn’t it?”

---------------------------------------
It seemed to him for a moment that God was too accessible. There was no difficulty in approaching Him. Like a popular demagogue He was open to the least of His followers at any hour. Looking up at the cross he thought, He even suffers in public.
--Scobie, musing after confession

---------------------------------------
The word “pity” is used as loosely as the word “love”: the terrible promiscuous passion which so few experience.

---------------------------------------
...it wasn’t madness: he had long since become incapable of anything so honest as madness: he was one of those condemned in childhood to complexity.
--a description of Wilson

---------------------------------------
He thought: I’ll go back and go to bed. In the morning I’ll write to Louise and in the evening go to confession: the day after that God will return to me in a priest’s hands: life will be simple again. Virtue, the good life, tempted him in the dark like a sin. The rain blurred his eyes, the ground sucked at his feet as they trod reluctantly towards the Nissen hut.
--Scobie, on his way to see his mistress

---------------------------------------
Leaning back against the dressing-table, he tried to pray. The Lord’s Prayer lay as dead on his tongue as a legal document: it wasn’t his daily bread that he wanted but so much more. He wanted happiness for others and solitude and peace for himself. “I don’t want to plan anymore,” he said suddenly aloud. “They wouldn’t need me if I were dead. The dead can be forgotten. Oh God, give me death before I give them unhappiness.” But the words sounded melodramatically in his own ears. He told himself he mustn’t get hysterical: there was far too much planning to do for an hysterical man, and going downstairs again he thought three aspirins or perhaps four were what he required in this situation--this banal situation. He took a bottle of filtered water out of the ice-box and dissolved the aspirin. He wondered how it would feel to drain death as simply as these aspirins which now stuck sourly in his throat. The priests told one it was the unforgivable sin, the final expression of an unrepentant despair, and of course one accepted the Church’s teaching. But they also taught that God had sometimes broken his own laws, and was it less possible for him to put out hand of forgiveness into the suicidal darkness than to have woken himself in the tomb, behind the stone? Christ had not been murdered--you couldn’t murder God. Christ had killed himself: he had hung himself on the cross as surely as Pemberton from the picture-rail.

---------------------------------------
“Why do we go on like this--being unhappy?”
“It’s a mistake to mix up the ideas of happiness and love,” Scobie said with desperate pedantry....
--Scobie and his mistress making chitchat

---------------------------------------
Wilson felt sick; he wanted to sit down. Why, he wondered, does one ever begin this humiliating process: why does one imagine that one is in love? He had read somewhere that love had been invented in the eleventh century by the troubadours. Why had they not left us with lust?

---------------------------------------
“...you must have a real purpose of amendment. We are told to forgive our brother seventy times seven and we needn’t fear that God will be any less forgiving than we are, but nobody can begin to forgive the uncontrite. It’s better to sin seventy times and repent each time than sin once and never repent.”
--Father Rank

---------------------------------------
She said drearily, “Father, haven’t you any comfort to give me?”
Oh, the conversations, he thought, that go on in a house after a death, the turnings over, the discussions, the questions, the demands--so much noise round the edge of silence.
“You’ve been given an awful lot of comfort in your life, Mrs. Scobie. If what Wilson thinks is true, it’s he who needs our comfort.”
“Do you know all that I know about him?”
“Of course I don’t, Mrs. Scobie. You’ve been his wife, haven’t you, for fifteen years. A priest only knows the unimportant things.”
“Unimportant?”
“Oh, I mean the sins,” he said impatiently. “A man doesn’t come to us and confess his virtues.”
“I expect you know about [his affair with] Mrs. Rolt. Most people did.”
“Poor woman.”
“I don’t see why.”
“I’m sorry for anyone happy and ignorant who gets mixed up in that way with one of us.”
“He was a bad Catholic.”
“That’s the silliest phrase in common use,” Father Rank said.
“And at the end this--horror. He must have known he was damning himself.”
“Yes, he knew that alright. He never had any trust in mercy--except for other people.”
“It’s no good even praying...”
Father Rank clapped the cover of the diary to and said furiously, “For goodness’ sake, Mrs. Scobie, don’t imagine you--or I--know a thing about God’s mercy.”
“The Church says...”
“I know what the Church says. The Church knows all the rules. But it doesn’t know what goes on in a single human heart.”
“You think there’s some hope then?” she asked wearily.
“Are you so bitter against him?”
“I haven’t any bitterness left.”
“And do you think God’s likely to be more bitter than a woman?” he asked with harsh insistence, but she winced away from the arguments of hope.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mercy is not consistent; it’s like the wind; it blows where it will.
Mercy is comic, and it’s the only thing worth taking seriously.
T-Bone Burnett, “The Wild Truth”

Benedictio Cerevisae

2007-08-21T23:50:00.001-04:00

MN: Beer Blessing in Latin
By Michael Novak
Tuesday, August 1, 2006, 3:46 PM

Beer Blessing
From the Rituale Romanum (no 58)

Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi: et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti, ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corporis, et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen

Bless, O Lord, this creature beer, that Thou hast been pleased to bring forth from the sweetness of the grain: that it might be a salutary remedy for the human race: and grant by the invocation of Thy holy name, that, whosoever drinks of it may obtain health of body and a sure safeguard for the soul. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Translation by Fr. Ephraem Chifley, O.P.)

(Access contributors’ biographies by clicking here.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

added 28 January 2012, full entry

V. Adiutorium nostrum in nomine Domini.
R. Qui fecit caelum et terram.
V. Dominus vobiscum.
R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

Oremus.

Bene+dic, Domine, creaturam istam cerevisiae, quam ex adipe frumenti producere dignatus es: ut sit remedium salutare humano generi, et praesta per invocationem nominis tui sancti; ut, quicumque ex ea biberint, sanitatem corpus et animae tutelam percipiant. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

Translation from XI.9.5 of Weller’s translation:

P: Our help is in the name of the Lord.
All: Who made heaven and earth.
P: The Lord be with you.
All: May He also be with you.

Let us pray.

Lord, bless + this creature, beer, which by your kindness and power has been produced from kernels of grain, and let it be a healthful drink for mankind. Grant that whoever drinks it with thanksgiving to your holy name may find it a help in body and in soul; through Christ our Lord. All: Amen.

It is sprinkled with holy water.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cf. also this BBC article.

Footnotes

2007-08-14T22:19:00.000-04:00

I used to have the following as a sig:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
* “If the reader does not understand this word, it is too bad.”

Best Footnote Ever, from p. 59 of Rats, Lice and History
(and brought to my attention by SWMBO)
http://steliz.blogspot.com/2005/12/rats-lice-and-history.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I suppose I should qualify that epithet to “Best Academic Footnote Ever,” since the footnote to which I most often refer people is not only in a different book altogether, it is in a different sort of book altogether.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is the funniest novel about the coming of the Antichrist that you will ever read. The premise is that the Spawn of Satan was, through bureaucratically designed accident, switched with a normal child. The effect is that those responsible for seeing to the Dark Child’s preparation and training are wasting their efforts with a thoroughly unsuited pupil, while the child with Hell’s powers is being reared in a bland British suburban setting. The book is populated with comic characters both mortal and immortal and peppered with a most entertaining set of footnotes. My favorite of those is informative and dry with just the right amount of snark; it comes upon the revelation that a particular member of the Witchfinder Army, name of Newt, is paid one old shilling per annum (p. 178 in my edition):

NOTE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE AND AMERICANS: One shilling = Five Pee. It helps to understand the antique finances of the Witchfinder Army if you know the original British monetary system:

Two farthings = One Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and One Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.

The British resisted decimalized currency for a long time because they thought it was too complicated.

So there it is. I think Chesterton would happily accept the book’s dedication to himself. Read the reviews & descriptions at Amazon (linked in the title of this post) and then waste a few hours wiping tears from your eyes. It beats doing actual work.

New Appliance for the Heat

2007-08-12T17:36:00.001-04:00

Long abouts Derby Day, we tend to make some mint juleps and have a little Derby Pie (Lizzy less of the pie in these diabetic days). The time-consuming part of making a decent julep has been the powdered ice. Using the mallet tired the arm and ruins a tea towel. So I've had half an eye out for a decent ice shaver. Most of the machines make crushed ice, and the smallest chips seem to be what you'd find in a snow cone. But then, while poking around at Amazon, I found a complaint that read in part:

I have tried shaving just plain ice first and then adding liquids, but because this machine generates snow, the snow tends to melt before you get a chance to enjoy it.

"...generates snow..." That sounded like my machine, and at $20, what's to lose?

So we've had it for a little while now and I have to say that this looks to be our julep machine. I'll have to hand-pack the shavings a little harder next time, because they really do want to melt away when a beverage is poured on top. They are that light and fluffy.

We've also played around with freezing other things to shave. Best so far: coffee. It comes out much softer than granita, and goes a treat with Bailey's. Shave some coffee, add some Irish cream. Yum!

Although it will have limited use, it could turn out to be our best kitchen appliance since the convection toaster oven, which is even now about to be loaded with some cookies.

~~~~~

BTW: click the title of this blog to arrive at the Amazon page. It's the Hamilton Beach Snowman Ice Shaver.

Tagged

2007-08-12T16:07:00.000-04:00

Gashwin tagged me. If anything comes of it, it will be at livejournal.

Pronoun / Antecedent

2007-08-02T17:58:00.000-04:00

One morning a fifth-grader saw me hand an empty egg carton over to another student. He asked why, and I told him that the other student’s family was going to fill the carton with a dozen freshly laid brown eggs.

His reply was, “we get brown eggs from our neighbors. They raise chickens. They’re rednecks.”

“Nicholas,” I said, “you do realize that that’s a derogatory term, don’t you? That it’s not a nice thing to call someone?”

In a completely guileless voice he said, “I don’t think they mind.”

“But you should mind, ” I told him. “They’re your friends. They give you eggs.”

He looked at me, his favorite teacher, as if I were an idiot and said, “they’re just chickens.”

I paused, tiny little cogitative wheels spinning furiously.

“Do you mean Rhode Island Reds?”

“Yeah!” he said brightly, “That’s it! Rhode Island Reds!”

“Ah... Well... I’ll see you in class, then.”

It’s all in the synopsis

2007-08-02T16:24:00.000-04:00

Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.

Rick Polito, summarizing The Wizard of Oz
for the Marin (CA) Independent-Journal’s television highlights column.

Unintentional? Papal Snark

2007-07-13T05:59:00.001-04:00

This on p. 52 of the first American edition (Doubleday 2007), in a quick review of just what "the Kingdom of Heaven / God" has meant and what it should mean:

Here, obviously, theory predominated over listening to the text.

cf. Lodge’s MLA scene.

Jesus of Nazareth

2007-07-13T05:51:00.000-04:00

I'm reading the Pope's newest book, and am very much enjoying it. I've mentioned to a few people already that the forward should be published separately as a tract on how to do Biblical hermeneutics now that we've reached the limits of and seen the problems with the historical/critical method.

After I've finished it, I'm going to have to let it sit for a month or so and then go through it again. But for now I'll say: after so many years of fighting over the "historical Jesus," it's refreshing to read such a competent (and learned) search for the Lord Jesus in the gospels.

But for now, just one quotation, appearing above this post.

Unfortunate Collocation

2007-06-22T22:53:00.000-04:00

Out on the web tonight, I catch out of the corner of my eye a line of icons for social networks. They were, in order, Facebook, YouTube, and Flickr. Unfortunately, the icons all ran together into something I think I may have shouted at TV sets that were going dead in past decades.

I've clipped a screenshot. See for yourself.

Cicero on Blogging

2007-06-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

...mandare quemquam litteris cogitationes suas, qui eas nec disponere nec inlustrare possit nec delectatione aliqua allicere lectorem, hominis est intemperanter abutentis et otio et litteris.

...for someone to entrust their thoughts to writing, someone who can neither order nor clarify their thoughts nor win over a reader with some kind of pleasure, this is the mark of a person who flagrantly abuses both leisure and writing.

Tusculanae Disputationes 1 III 6

Classics and Anthropology

2007-06-22T15:59:00.002-04:00

The journal Arion might better be entitled Phoenix. It has risen from the ashes twice. But the name Phoenix is already taken by a different journal of classics. So now Arion carries on more than a decade into its third incarnation under the name of a poet who miraculously evaded death, rather than under a name of resurrection. So be it.

Arion’s first piece of Advice to Prospective Contributors includes the lines, “If you propose submitting a paper that has been rejected by one of the professional journals, we urge you to rewrite it. The fact that it wasn’t quite dull enough to be accepted there doesn’t mean that it is lively enough for Arion.” If you’re interested in Classical Antiquities and prefer a livelier read, Arion might be the journal for you.

Back when it had arisen the second time and just started the Third Series, there was a very nice article by James Redfield. No, not the therapist-turned-novelist James Redfield, but the Professor James M. Redfield who does ancient Greek studies at Chicago. Redfield’s article is a brief of what anthropologists and classicists can and should learn from each other. It also includes a good bit of compare/contrast of the disciplines, including their initiation rituals. It’s a delightful read to nearly anyone who has spent time with the linguists and archaeologists, the literary theorists and the crypto-psychiatrists who inhabit the world of Ancient Studies.

Here, I give you only the second paragraph of the article. Feel free to go dig up the rest. It’s well worth it.

Redfield, James, “Classics and Anthropology,” Arion, Third Series, vol. 1, no. 2, Spring / May 1991, pp. 5-6.

I have spent most of my academic career hanging about the edges of departments, particularly (at Chicago) the departments of Anthropology and of Classics. It often seems to me that these two are structural opposites. Take, for example, the question of the consumption of alcohol. Both professions include heavy drinkers—indeed the profession of Classics seems to me to have more than its share of helpless drunks (not at Chicago, needless to say). But Classicists tend to be solitary drinkers; when they meet together socially it tends to be in the afternoon, over tea. The anthropologists, on the other hand, gather at midnight, and drink grain alcohol and grapefruit juice out of plastic waste baskets. To this difference correspond others—for example, on the rhetorical level. Anthropologists like to conduct their controversies in open meetings, where they ride and make flamboyant, unforgivable speeches. Classicists are almost always polite—with the result that it is frequently impossible to find out what they think. Anthropologists seem to enjoy conflict, whereas classicists prefer to pretend that it does not exist. Anthropologists tend toward exuberance, classicists toward irony. To give them the most gross kind of physical characterization: the classicist is typically dusty, the anthropologist, sweaty.

Cicero on Political Flip-Flopping

2007-06-22T15:10:00.000-04:00

Some AP-related poking around in Cicero has intersected with overblown political rhetoric about “primary conversions” (candidates whose views seem to change as soon as they enter the season of primary elections) and “flip-floppers.” While one hopes that a change of heart and mind is not cynically intended to garner more votes, I see nothing wrong with politicians changing their minds. In fact, I think it’s a very good thing for a politician to be able to be swayed by good argument or new evidence. Apparently, I’m not alone.

...numquam enim in praestantibus in re publica gubernanda viris laudata est in una sententia perpetua permansio....

...for persistence in a single permanent opinion among men [sic] active in the governance of the republic has never been praised....

ad Familiares 1.9.21

and

nemo doctus umquam ... mutationem consili inconstantiam dixit esse.

No educated person has ever said that a change of mind was inconsistency.

ad Atticum 16.7.3

Of course, Cicero ended up with his head and hands mounted on the Rostra, so caveat lector.

Serious Sin

2007-06-03T22:58:00.000-04:00

What is it in us that wants to rank sin? Any sin of any degree separates us from God, be it lust, murder, or pride—even pride that my sins aren’t nearly as bad as yours (Lk. 18.9ff.). Usually when I’m thinking about what a horrible sinner someone else is, it’s a way of distracting myself from my own sin—not to mention an example of active sin in my own life. And I’m not saying that there aren’t degrees of sin, only that our rankings are not usually those of God.

One of the things that let me know that my theology of the Lord’s Supper / Communion / the Eucharist needed some work was when I realized that the God of the New Testament is still a “smiting” God, and seeing what he smote people over. I think that most people remember the story of Ananias and Sapphira (not the same disciple Ananias from chapter 9). I’ll let you refresh your memory on that one and say no more about it here.

But it was the example from 1 Cor. 11 that caught my attention. With all the junque going on at Corinth, including possible incest (cf. 5.1), why is it that some are dying? Because they take Communion in an unworthy manner (vv. 29-30). All the immorality and strife in Corinth, and this is why God smites some of them. Hmmm... Sounds like God takes the Eucharist a whole lot more seriously that I did back in my Fightin’ Fundy days. (And I suppose that some day I might have to post a rumination on John 6, but not tonight.)

But what provokes me into posting my own thoughts for once instead of just quoting someone else is a statement in the inventory I posted below this one. When I took the “quiz” the statement showed up at #24; revisiting now it’s at #53. So the order apparently changes when you visit quizfarm. Be that as it may, this was the prompt:

Homosexuality is one of the worst sins

Even as a Bible-thumping Reagan Republican (I was precinct party chairman at age 18), I knew that this was simply not true. Stick with me for a moment, and I’ll show you how I know that there are far worse sins.

Way back in the day, my co-religionists typically referred to homosexuality as “Sodomy,” named obviously for that horrid city of wickedness that had fire and brimstone rained down upon it for its sins. And like my co-religionists, I assumed that the sin that broke the camel’s back was the attempted homosexual rape of God’s messengers. But then God told me otherwise.

Oh, don’t worry. I didn’t hear His voice in my ear while meditating with recreational chemicals. No, I just read the prophets. And among them, I read Ezekiel. Ezekiel 16 in particular, where God is sternly warning His people about what they deserve. Verses 48-50 run like this:

As I live, says the Lord GOD, I swear that your sister Sodom, with her daughters, has not done as you and your daughters have done! And look at the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters were proud, sated with food, complacent in their prosperity, and they gave no help to the poor and needy. Rather, they became haughty and committed abominable crimes in my presence; then, as you have seen, I removed them.

So what sins were most important in the mind of God? Which did He feel the need to specify? Sins very similar to those by which He separates the sheep from the goats (Mt. 25.31ff.).

So next time you find your knickers in a twist over something as boring and unoriginal as sexual sins and “perversions” born of simple attraction and loneliness, take that energy and turn it positive. Go to a hospital, a prison, a shut-in. Take a homeless person to lunch. God apparently takes our own lack of active compassion much more seriously than he takes acts of homosexuality.

Theological Worldview

2007-06-03T22:52:00.000-04:00

I’m putting this up mainly because question 24/63 is prompting a post I’ve been thinking about for a while (see above). But notice that the creator of this quiz would probably say that, based on my worldview, swimming the Tiber almost four years ago was the right decision for me. Does this make it any more official?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You scored as Roman Catholic, You are Roman Catholic. Church tradition and ecclesial authority are hugely important, and the most important part of worship for you is mass. As the Mother of God, Mary is important in your theology, and as the communion of saints includes the living and the dead, you can also ask the saints to intercede for you.

Roman Catholic

96%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

79%

Emergent/Postmodern

68%

Neo orthodox

64%

Fundamentalist

54%

Charismatic/Pentecostal

43%

Classical Liberal

36%

Reformed Evangelical

29%

Modern Liberal

18%

What's your theological worldview?
created with QuizFarm.com

Conferences

2007-05-24T15:54:00.000-04:00

The pastiche and commentary below opens one of the funniest novels about life in the academy that you’ll ever read. It is a must-read for anyone living their life on campus. For those who are giving thought to leaping from the ivory tower to the safety of less rarified air below, I would recommend a different comic novel, Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim. But for those entrenched, especially in the Liberal Arts, this is the one. David Lodge’s Small World.

OK, I’ll get to the quotation in a moment, but not before I tell you about the scene that made me love this novel. It had already given my enough belly laughs and quiet smirks that I was in love with it, but what changed the crush into a lasting affair is a subversive scene set at an annual conference of the MLA. At this conference, the big names in competing schools of literary criticism all participate in a panel discussion. Our hero stands up during the Q&A and asks them to suppose that everyone agreed with them. Then what? If everyone stopped fighting about how to interpret a text, the question implies, would we discover that no one actually reads anymore? Would we discover that the study of literature is no longer about the literature itself? In a room full of academics whose lives and livelihoods depend on talking about how you talk about literature, Persse asks what they would all do if everyone agreed with them (Part V, Chapter I, p. 319 in my old Penguin mass-market edition). And then the denouement is like a scene out of Plautus. I was and am smitten.

But that’s not what I wanted to quote here. Instead, I give you my favorite description of conferences: David Lodge, Small World, beginning of the Prologue. Enjoy.

When April with its sweet showers has pierced the drought of March to the root, and bathed every vein of earth with that liquid by whose powers the flowers are engendered; when the zephyr, too, with its dulcet breath, has breathed life into the tender new shoots in every copse and on every heath, and the young sun has run half his course in the sign of the Ram, ... then, as the poet Geoffrey Chaucer observed many years ago, folk long to go on pilgrimages. Only, these days, professional people call them conferences.

The modern conference resembles the pilgrimage of medieval Christendom in that it allows the participants to indulge themselves in all the pleasures and diversions of travel while appearing to be austerely bent on self-improvement. To be sure, there are certain penitential exercises to be performed—the presentation of a paper, perhaps, and certainly listening to the papers of others. But with this excuse you journey to new and interesting places, meet new and interesting people, and form new and interesting relationships with them; exchange gossip and confidences (for your well-worn stories are fresh to them, and vice versa); eat, drink and make merry in their company every evening; and yet, at the end of it all, return home with an enhanced reputation for seriousness of mind.

On being an Ex-Suicide

2007-05-20T16:29:00.001-04:00

1983 was a good year. It saw the release of both Mark Heard’s Eye of the Storm and the Talking Heads’ Speaking in Tongues. It was the year that the O’Cayce household (House of Chez Casa) was established, with an exchange of vows at the Pilot Grove Church in Old City Park, Dallas. And it was the year that Walker Percy published a piece of non-fiction entitled Lost in the Cosmos. (Be sure to read the customer reviews.)

The first edition hardback of LitC runs to 262 pages. Its full title is Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. The opening pages are a preliminary multiple-choice quiz about the Self, designed to see whether or not you need to read the rest of the book, thereby ensuring that the rest of the book will not be skipped. The rest of the book comprises a 40 page excursus on the semiotics of the Self (which the Author all but advises the Reader to skip, thereby ensuring that it will not be skipped) in the middle of just over 200 pages of a:

Twenty-Question Multiple-Choice Self-Help Quiz
to test your knowledge of the peculiar status of the self, your self and other selves, in the Cosmos, and your knowledge of what to do with your self in these, the last years of the twentieth century.

It is an odd and oddly delightful format. Quite a bit of the book is extremely funny, although the section I am going to quote is not.

Question 11 is about:

THE DEPRESSED SELF: Whether the Self is Depressed because there is something wrong with it or whether Depression is a Normal Response to a Deranged World.

Suicidal depression is something about which Percy knew a thing or two. Both his father and his paternal grandfather had used shotguns to end their own lives. Percy’s mother died when, a couple of years after her husband’s suicide, her car went off a bridge and into a bayou, which death Percy also took took to be a suicide. Percy managed to avoid carrying on the family tradition, and the Thought Experiment at the end of Question 11 is what taught me how to be not a non-suicide, but rather a former-suicide, an ex-suicide.

It worked for me, and it was necessary despite the fact that during the 80s I was still a Fundamentalist Christian and, according to Percy, should have been one of those blessed elect who are never depressed. I was certainly surrounded by Fundamentalist Christians who never seemed depressed. And let me tell you, being given to periods of depression while surrounded by those who are nearly clinically chipper and who consider happiness a divine sign of right living, that will only make one’s hole deeper and darker.

Perhaps you are not given to bouts of depression, have never heard the black wings beating about your head. Perhaps your own depression is of a different etiology and requires a different treatment. Perhaps, like me, you have at some point gotten so deep into the self-talk, thought-driven sort of depression that you needed chemical help to find your way far enough back to even be able to retrain your thought life. All I can say is, this has worked for me most of the time. I am still an ex-suicide.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book
by Walker Percy
pp. 75-9 (1983 HB edition by Farrar, Straus, & Giroux)

Thought Experiment: A new cure for depression.

The only cure for depression is suicide.

This is not meant as a bad joke but as the serious proposal of suicide as a valid option. Unless the option is entertained seriously, its therapeutic value is lost. No threat is credible unless the threatener means it.

The treatment of depression requires a reversal of the usual therapeutic rationale. The therapeutic rationale, which has never been questioned, is that depression is a symptom. A symptom implies an illness; there is something wrong with you. An illness should be treated.

Suppose you are depressed. You may be mildly or seriously depressed, clinically depressed, or suicidal. What do you usually do? Or what does one do with you? Do nothing or something. If something, what is done is always based on the premise that something is wrong with you and therefore it should be remedied. You are treated. You apply to friend, counselor, physician, minister, group. You take a trip, take anti-depressant drugs, change jobs, change wife or husband or “sexual partner.”

Now, call into question the unspoken assumption: something is wrong with you. Like Copernicus and Einstein, turn the universe upside down and begin with a new assumption.

Assume that you are quite right. You are depressed because you have every reason to be depressed. No member of the other two million species which inhabit the earth—and who are luckily exempt from depression—would fail to be depressed if it lived the life you lead. You live in a deranged age—more deranged than usual, because despite great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Begin with the reverse hypothesis, like Copernicus and Einstein. You are depressed because you should be. You are entitled to your depression. In fact, you’d be deranged if you were not depressed. Consider the only adults who are never depressed: chuckleheads, California surfers, and fundamentalist Christians who believe they have had a personal encounter with Jesus and are saved for once and all. Would you trade your depression to become any of these?

Now consider, not the usual therapeutic approach, but a more ancient and honorable alternative, the Roman option. I do not care for life in this deranged world, it is not an honorable way to live; therefore, like Cato, I take my leave. Or, as Ivan said to God in The Brothers Karamazov: If you exist, I respectfully return my ticket.

Now notice that as soon as suicide is taken as a serious alternative, a curious thing happens. To be or not to be becomes a true choice, where before you were stuck with to be. Your only choice was how to be less painfully, either by counseling, narcotizing, boozing, groupizing, womanizing, man-hopping, or changing your sexual preference.

If you are serious about the choice, certain consequences follow. Consider the alternatives. Suppose you elect suicide. Very well. You exit. Then what? What happens after you exit? Nothing much. Very little, indeed. After a ripple or two, the water closes over your head as if you had never existed. You are not indispensable, after all. You are not even a black hole in the Cosmos. All that stress and anxiety was for nothing. Your fellow townsmen will have something to talk about for a few days. Your neighbors will profess shock and enjoy it. One or two might miss you, perhaps your family, who will also resent the disgrace. Your creditors will resent the inconvenience. Your lawyers will be pleased. Your psychiatrist will be displeased. The priest or minister or rabbi will say a few words over you and down you go on the green tapes and that’s the end of you. In a surprisingly short time, everyone is back in the rut of his own self as if you had never existed.

Now, in the light of this alternative, consider the other alternative. You can elect suicide, but you decide not to. What happens? All at once, you are dispensed. Why not live, instead of dying? You are free to do so. You are like a prisoner released from the cell of his life. You notice that the cell door is ajar and that the sun is shining outside. Why not take a walk down the street? Where you might have been dead, you are alive. The sun is shining.

Suddenly you feel like a castaway on an island. You can’t believe your good fortune. You feel for broken bones. You are in one piece, sole survivor of a foundered ship whose captain and crew had worried themselves into a fatal funk. And here you are, cast up on a beach and taken in by islanders who, it turns out, are themselves worried sick—over what? Over status, saving face, self-esteem, national rivalries, boredom, anxiety, depression from which they seek relief mainly in wars and the natural catastrophes which regularly overtake their neighbors.

And you, an ex-suicide, lying on the beach? In what way have you been freed by the serious entertainment of your hypothetical suicide? Are you not free for the first time in your life to consider the folly of man, the most absurd of all the species, and to contemplate the cosmic mystery of your own existence? And even to consider which is the more absurd state of affairs, the manifest absurdity of your predicament: lost in the Cosmos and no news of how you got into such a fix or how to get out—or the even more preposterous eventuality that news did come from the God of the Cosmos, who took pity on your ridiculous plight and entered the space and time of your insignificant planet to tell you something.

The consequences of entertaining suicide? Lying on the beach, you are free for the first time to pick up a coquina and look at it. You are even free to go home and, like the man from Chicago, dance with your wife.

The difference between a non-suicide and an ex-suicide leaving the house for work, at eight o’clock on an ordinary morning:

The non-suicide is a little traveling suck of care, sucking care with him from the past and being sucked toward care in the future. His breath is high in his chest.

The ex-suicide opens his front door, sits down on the steps, and laughs. Since he has the option of being dead, he has nothing to lose by being alive. It is good to be alive. He goes to work because he doesn’t have to.

For married friends

2007-05-17T23:23:00.000-04:00

I bumped into an old e-mail sig, one I had lifted from Margaret Atwood’s Power Politics. This is the third stanza of a poem entitled Their attitudes differ:

You held out your hand
I took your fingerprints

You asked for love
I gave you only descriptions

Please die I said
so I can write about it

But the better poem from that collection has no title. I’m quoting all four stanzas here. When everyone else was raving about Mary Oliver, this is what grabbed me. Especially the third stanza.

i

We are hard on each other
and call it honesty,
choosing our jagged truths
with care and aiming them across
the neutral table.

The things we say are
true; it is our crooked
aims, our choices
turn them criminal.

ii

Of course your lies
are more amusing:
you make them new each time.

Your truths, painful and boring
repeat themselves over & over
perhaps because you own
so few of them

iii

A truth should exist,
it should not be used
like this. If I love you

is that a fact or a weapon?

iv

Does the body lie
moving like this, are these
touches, hairs, wet
soft marble my tongue runs over
lies you are telling me?

Your body is not a word,
it does not lie or
speak truth either.

It is only
here or not here.

Pax omnibus.

Not the First Tribute

2007-05-12T14:40:00.000-04:00

We’ve been waiting for Mira Nair’s The Namesake to come to Cola, and this is the weekend. It has the standard half-week run for an indy flick in this market, so see it now or get the DVD. But that’s not all that happens this weekend. It’s also Mothers’ Day.

Since all the b’s-i-l and s’s-i-l are doing their own Mothers’ Day celebrations in honor of all the mothers in our generation, m-i-l was in danger of being overlooked. But wait! The cat isn’t doing anything for Lizzie, so we can host Bobbie, and do so far from the madding crowd. So we’re taking SWBSWMBO (She Who Bore She Who Must Be Obeyed) to a movie tomorrow afternoon.

If you haven’t heard of The Namesake, scope out the overwhelmingly good reviews at MetaCritic (82% overall, 8.5/10 by viewers), Rotten Tomatoes (85%), or even Google’s movie review search (4.3/5). And if you haven’t heard of Mira Nair (the director), think Mississippi Masala (not bad) and Monsoon Wedding (very good).

The screenplay is based on a novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, and this is not the first time that Mira Nair has brought one of Lahiri’s works off the page. Back in April of 2006, This American Life aired an episode entitled “Fake I.D.,” in which half of the program consisted of Nair reading aloud a short story by Nahiri. The story, taken from Nahiri’s Pulizer-winning collection The Interpreter of Maladies, is a touching and lovely snapshot of the early days in the married life of a mis-matchmade marriage between two NRIs -- Sanjiv, a staid, conservative engineer, and Twinkle, an ebullient MFA candidate who is delighted at all the Cheesus (tacky Christian knickknacks) that they keep finding in and around their new house. Hit the link to the episode and listen to the show. The story starts just before 23 minutes into the show and finishes just after 50 minutes in. (Sorry, since TAL changed their coding a while back, you can no longer fast-forward or rewind the free, archived version of the show. But you can pay $0.95; or you can rip the stream for free if you have the software.)

I hope the movie’s as good as I think it will be. Especially since we’re taking SWBSWMBO.

Blueberry Chutney

2007-05-12T12:19:00.002-04:00

My mother-in-law is a big fan of blueberries; she says it’s for the anti-oxidant properties. She also likes salmon. So for Mothers’ Day (is that apostrophe placed properly?) I’m going to try broiled salmon over grits with a blueberry chutney (which will probably destroy whatever anti-oxidants there are; perhaps I should save out some berries for the spinach salad).

Anyway, I guess I’m going to try to make some blueberry chutney this afternoon. I have everything but the blueberries and the ginger root. Here's the recipe I’ll try. I will doubtless have to change this post later:

Blueberry Chutney

1 c. blueberries
1/4 c. golden raisins
2 Tbsp. chopped onions
1/4 c. packed brown sugar
2 Tbsp. cider vinegar
1 stick cinnamon
S&P to taste

Place all ingredients in a large sauce pan.
Bring to a slow boil over medium heat for 1 minute.
Remove cinnamon stick.
Add 1 medium ginger root, finely grated (added Summer 2010)
Reduce heat & reduce sauce to proper texture.
Remove from heat & refrigerate.

We’ll see how it goes. I think we’ll try some of it on brie tonight before experimenting on our guest of honor tomorrow.

Why I Ride

2007-05-09T15:48:00.000-04:00

I once wrote a little essay trying to explain why I enjoy riding motorcycles so much. The sad truth is that if you need an explanation, none will suffice. But occasionally, someone does a very nice job of almost capturing the ineffable. Dave Karlotski got pretty close back at the end of the last millenium. I'll paste that essay below, and by all means hit the link in the title of this post to hear him read another version of the same essay.

In fact, this little essay circulates fairly frequently, usually with no author ascribed. And there are several versions out there. I first read an anonymous version of it in an e-mail in 1999. You can find different versions (mostly without authors) by web-searching [motorcyle joy machine] or [motorcycles are joy machines] or [a motorcycle is a joy machine]. But better just to read and enjoy.

To read Karlotski's largest collection of stories, point your browser to The751, but don’t do it during work hours; you won’t get anything done for a while.

MPR’s The Savvy Traveler has several of Karlotski’s essays available for reading and listening, but their internal search engine doesn’t seem to work at all. So here's a partial list:
on the Badlands
on Labrador
on Mammoth Cave
on Lonely Roads
and, of course, Season of the Bike

Enjoy.

Season of the Bike
by Dave Karlotski

There is cold, and there is cold on a motorcycle. Cold on a motorcycle is like being beaten with cold hammers while being kicked with cold boots, a bone bruising cold. The wind’s big hands squeeze the heat out of my body and whisk it away; caught in a cold October rain, the drops don’t even feel like water. They feel like shards of bone fallen from the skies of Hell to pock my face. I expect to arrive with my cheeks and forehead streaked with blood, but that’s just an illusion, just the misery of nerves not designed for highway speeds.

Despite this, it’s hard to give up my motorcycle in the fall and I rush to get it on the road again in the spring; lapses of sanity like this are common among motorcyclists. When you let a motorcycle into your life you’re changed forever. The letters “MC” are stamped on your driver’s license right next to your sex and height as if “motorcycle” was just another of your physical characteristics, or maybe a mental condition.

But when warm weather finally does come around all those cold snaps and rainstorms are paid in full because a motorcycle summer is worth any price. A motorcycle is not just a two-wheeled car; the difference between driving a car and climbing onto a motorcycle is the difference between watching TV and actually living your life. We spend all our time sealed in boxes and cars are just the rolling boxes that shuffle us languidly from home-box to work-box to store-box and back, the whole time entombed in stale air, temperature regulated, sound insulated, and smelling of carpets.

On a motorcycle I know I’m alive. When I ride, even the familiar seems strange and glorious. The air has weight and substance as I push through it and its touch is as intimate as water to a swimmer. I feel the cool wells of air that pool under trees and the warm spokes of sunlight that fall through them. I can see everything in a sweeping 360 degrees, up, down and around, wider than PanaVision and higher than IMAX and unrestricted by ceiling or dashboard.

Sometimes I even hear music. It’s like hearing phantom telephones in the shower or false doorbells when vacuuming; the pattern-loving brain, seeking signals in the noise, raises acoustic ghosts out of the wind’s roar. But on a motorcycle I hear whole songs: rock ‘n roll, dark orchestras, women’s voices, all hidden in the air and released by speed.

At 30 miles an hour and up, smells become uncannily vivid. All the individual tree-smells and flower-smells and grass-smells flit by like chemical notes in a great plant symphony. Sometimes the smells evoke memories so strongly that it’s as though the past hangs invisible in the air around me, wanting only the most casual of rumbling time machines to unlock it.

A ride on a summer afternoon can border on the rapturous. The sheer volume and variety of stimuli is like a bath for my nervous system, an electrical massage for my brain, a systems check for my soul. It tears smiles out of me: a minute ago I was dour, depressed, apathetic, numb, but now, on two wheels, big, ragged, windy smiles flap against the side of my face, billowing out of me like air from a decompressing plane. Transportation is only a secondary function. A motorcycle is a joy machine. It’s a machine of wonders, a metal bird, a motorized prosthetic. It’s light and dark and shiny and dirty and warm and cold lapping over each other; it’s a conduit of grace, it’s a catalyst for bonding the gritty and the holy.

I still think of myself as a motorcycle amateur, but by now I’ve had a handful of bikes over a half dozen years and slept under my share of bridges. I wouldn’t trade one second of either the good times or the misery. Learning to ride was one of the best things I’ve done.

Cars lie to us and tell us we’re safe, powerful, and in control. The air-conditioning fans murmur empty assurances and whisper, “Sleep, sleep.” Motorcycles tell us a more useful truth: we are small and exposed, and probably moving too fast for our own good, but that’s no reason not to enjoy every minute of the ride.

Old Fashioned

2007-05-09T15:24:00.000-04:00

As long as there’s bourbon in the house...

Many moons ago I ate something at a conference that did not agree with me. I went to the hotel bar and asked the barman what he recommended to stop a tummy from going flippy floppy. He fixed me soda & bitters with a twist and charged me not a single dime. I tipped him and wobbled back upstairs with my beverage. It did the trick.

I remembered this recently while attending a friend’s natal day celebration and needing something that looked convivial while keeping me sober (I had arrived and was leaving again on two wheels, and while I enjoy both bikes and adult beverages, they don’t mix well.) After I got home, I was wondering what in the world bitters are, and so Lizzie & I ended up reading the relevant entry in the wikipedia. Woo hoo! Patent medicines!

A small bottle of the stuff runs ~$3 at the local purveyor of adult beverages, so I picked one up. And then I remembered where else I’d seen bitters referenced recently: in a blog pointed out to me by a colleague.

I teach Latin at one of the larger private schools in town. There’s a guy doing a similar job over at our arch-rivals. He has a friend who writes mysteries, and that friend has a blog to which my fellow Latinist directed me one day. And what should I see on that blog but a picture of a bookstore a scant half mile down the street from where the O’Cayces used to live. It’s a good bookstore, the Regulator is. So I kept poking around the site and ran into this post, which contains the wondrous sentiment, “a couple of Old Fashioneds, taken around noon on Thanksgiving, will help the rest of the day unfold in a splendid manner.”

If I ever take a turn for the autobiographical, I’ll have to post a few Thanksgiving Day memories and explain why that sentence resonates so. For now, I will restrict myself to shamelessly stealing the recipe.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

OLD FASHIONED
(makes one)

2 teaspoons sugar
2 dashes of bitters
2 oz bourbon
2 oz club soda
slice of orange

Put sugar in bottom of a short cocktail glass and douse it with bitters. Pour in bourbon and muddle. Add club soda. Fill glass with crushed ice and joogle it around some to make sure the sugar is fully dissolved. Garnish with orange. This will help you tolerate relatives who are otherwise intolerable.

Derby Pie

2007-05-08T07:51:00.001-04:00

OK, it's not the official, trademarked, name-protected Derby Pie (which appears to use walnuts rather than pecans). But what most people mean by Derby Pie is a chocolate-chip, bourbon pecan pie. I could find no one in Columbia making any such thing for the 133rd Run for the Roses. (And wasn’t it a thrilling run! Calvin Borel and Street Sense ride the rail from 19th place and eating dirt to a commanding 1st place win. That was a race!) So I put out a request on the school’s intra-net for anyone who knew where I could go pick up a decent pie. Nothing. But we did get a couple of good recipes.

Here’s the recipe Lizzie used, sent to me by our school nurse, who has heard Lizzie give a keynote and do a Q&A. Small world.

Derby Pie

4 eggs, beaten
6 tablespoons butter, melted
1 cup light corn syrup
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons bourbon
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate morsels
1 cup pecans, coarsely chopped
1 unbaked deep dish pie crust (or two 8" crusts)

Combine all ingredients except nuts and chocolate. Mix well and then add the nuts and chocolate. Pour into pie shell and bake at 350 degrees until set. (35 to 40 minutes)

Notes:

Lizzie has made quite a few pies over the years, and we have quite a few pie pans (metal, glass, stone) in several sizes, but we have no idea what is meant by a “deep dish pie.” They all seem to be about the same depth, despite variances in diameter. Perhaps we’re too literal here.

For deep-dish pie: cook at 375 and use double the crust recipe per pie.

The co-worker who sent me this recipe notes, “I just use the roll out Pillsbury pie crust in refrigerated section of the grocery store.” It turns out that this is also what Rhudine, one of the best-known bakers on campus, uses when she makes pie (her specialties are cakes). Lizzie made her crust from scratch. I would reduce the amount of salt in the crust to ~3/4 or even 2/3 tsp; it was a very good crust, but a bit salty on first taste. You couldn’t tell at all when the crust hit your tongue with filling, but nibbling on that top edge all by itself was another story.

Lizzie made a double recipe and produced three pies, two 8" and one 10". The 10" pie filling rose more slowly and ended up with more of the fluffed-jelly consistency I’m used to in a Derby Pie or a pecan pie. It also required more time in the oven to set, although the crust was done. So Lizzie's suggestion is:

Make one recipe in a 10" pie crust. Shield the crust and bake for 20 minutes, then remove the shield and bake for another 30-35 (total 50-55 minutes).

All I can say is that the 10" pie was about as good as a pie could be. The 8" pies were tasty as well, but the texture was better with the 10" pie.

I think that next year, we may need to try this with walnuts instead of pecans. Or maybe half each.

Pie Crust

2 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt (but see untested suggestion, above)
2/3 cups Crisco plus 2 tablespoons
1/8 cup water
1/8 cup vodka (Lizzie added this one Christmas 2011; too little water and you can’t work the dough properly; too much and the crust gets soggy on the bottom; she heard this trick on the radio and it worked well.)

Measure flour into mixing bowl and blend in salt. Cut in shortening until particles are the size of giant peas. Sprinkle with water, a tablespoon at a time, mixing lightly with a fork until all flour is moist. Gather dough together with fingers so it cleans the bowl. Press firmly into a ball. Roll out or keep in waxed paper in refrigerator until ready to bake.

One last note:

The 10" pie and one of the 8" pies were made in glass pie pans. The other 8" pie was made in a stone pie pan. Lizzie likes the stone pan for things like cornbread, but pie crust always wants to adhere to it. A number of the pieces of pie were damaged coming out of the stone pan. Stick to glass. Or use glass and don’t stick. Or something.

Derby Day already?

2007-05-01T08:06:00.000-04:00

Let the hunt begin for fresh mint and a decent supplier of chocolate chip bourbon pecan pie (Derby Pie). We already have the main ingredient for the day's traditional beverage.

Speaking of which, since I pull down my copy of Walker Percy's Signposts in a Strange Land every year to check the recipe and to inflict the essay upon unsuspecting guests, I figure it must be time to store it here on the cyber-vault.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Bourbon”
by Walker Percy
taken from the posthumous collection Signposts in a Strange Land, Farrar Straus & Giroux 1991, pp. 102-7.

This is not written by a connoisseur of Bourbon. Ninety-nine percent of Bourbon drinkers know more about Bourbon than I do. It is about the aesthetic of Bourbon drinking in general and in particular of knocking it back neat.

I can hardly tell one Bourbon from another, unless the other is very bad. Some bad Bourbons are even more memorable than good ones. For example, I can recall being broke with some friends in Tennessee and deciding to have a party and being able to afford only two-fifths of a $1.75 Bourbon called Two Natural, whose label showed dice coming up 5 and 2. Its taste was memorable. The psychological effect was also notable. After knocking back two or three shots over a period of half an hour, the three male drinkers looked at each other and said in a single voice: “Where are the women?”

I have not been able to locate this remarkable Bourbon since.

Not only should connoisseurs of Bourbon not read this article, neither should persons preoccupied with the perils of alcoholism, cirrhosis, esophageal hemorrhage, cancer of the palate, and so forth—all real dangers. I, too, deplore these afflictions. But, as between these evils and the aesthetic of Bourbon drinking, that is, the use of Bourbon to warm the heart, to reduce the anomie of the late twentieth century, to cut the cold phlegm of Wednesday afternoons, I choose the aesthetic. What, after all, is the use of not having cancer, cirrhosis, and such, if a man comes home from work every day at five-thirty to the exurbs of Montclair or Memphis and there is the grass growing and the little family looking not quite at him but just past the side of his head, and there’s Cronkite on the tube and the smell of pot roast in the living room, and inside the house and outside in the pretty exurb has settled the noxious particles and the sadness of the old dying Western world, and him thinking: “Jesus, is this it? Listening to Cronkite and the grass growing?”

If I should appear to be suggesting that such a man proceed as quickly as possible to anesthetize his cerebral cortex by ingesting ethyl alcohol, the point is being missed. Or part of the point. The joy of Bourbon drinking is not the pharmacological effect of C2H5OH on the cortex but rather the instant of the whiskey being knocked back and the little explosion of Kentucky U.S.A. sunshine in the cavity of the nasopharynx and the hot bosky bite of Tennessee summertime—aesthetic considerations to which the effect of the alcohol is, if not dispensable, at least secondary.

By contrast, Scotch: for me (not, I presume, for a Scot), drinking Scotch is like looking at a picture of Noel Coward. The whiskey assaults the nasopharynx with all the excitement of paregoric. Scotch drinkers (not all, of course) I think of as upward-mobile Americans, Houston and New Orleans businessmen who graduate from Bourbon about the same time they shed seersuckers for Lilly slacks. Of course, by now these same folk may have gone back to Bourbon and seersucker for the same reason, because too many Houston oilmen drink Scotch.

Nothing, therefore, will be said about the fine points of sour mash, straights, blends, bonded, except a general preference for the lower proofs. It is a matter of the arithmetic of aesthetics. If one derives the same pleasure from knocking back 80-proof Bourbon as 100-proof, the formula is both as simple as 2 + 2 = 4 and as incredible as non-Euclidean geometry. Consider. One knocks back five one-ounce shots of 80-proof Early Times or four shots of 100-proof Old Fitzgerald. The alcohol ingestion is the same:
5 x 40% = 2
4 x 50% = 2
Yet, in the case of the Early Times, one has obtained an extra quantum of joy without cost to liver, brain, or gastric mucosa. A bonus, pure and simple, an aesthetic gain as incredible as two parallel lines meeting at infinity.

An apology to the reader is in order, nevertheless, for it has just occurred to me that this is the most unedifying and even maleficent piece I ever wrote—if it should encourage potential alcoholics to start knocking back Bourbon neat. It is also the unfairest. Because I am, happily and unhappily, endowed with a bad GI tract, diverticulosis, neurotic colon, and a mild recurring nausea, which make it less likely for me to become an alcoholic than my healthier fellow Americans. I can hear the reader now: Who is he kidding? If this joker has to knock back five shots of Bourbon every afternoon just to stand the twentieth century, he’s already an alcoholic. Very well. I submit to this or any semantic. All I am saying is that if I drink much more than this I will get sick as a dog for two days and the very sight and smell of whiskey will bring on the heaves. Readers beware, therefore, save only those who have stronger wills or as bad a gut as I.

The pleasure of knocking back Bourbon lies in the plane of the aesthetic but at an opposite pole from connoisseurship. My preference for the former is or is not deplorable depending on one’s value system—that is to say, how one balances out the Epicurean virtues of cultivating one’s sensory end organs with the greatest discrimination and at least cost to one’s health, against the virtue of evocation of time and memory and of the recovery of self and the past from the fogged-in disoriented Western world. In Kierkegaardian terms, the use of Bourbon to such an end is a kind of aestheticized religious mode of existence, whereas connoisseurship, the discriminating but single-minded stimulation of sensory end organs, is the aesthetic of damnation.

Two exemplars of the two aesthetics come to mind:

Imagine Clifton Webb, scarf at throat, sitting at Cap d’Antibes on a perfect day, the little wavelets of the Mediterranean sparkling in the sunlight, and he is savoring a 1959 Mouton Rothschild.

Then imagine William Faulkner, having finished Absalom, Absalom!, drained, written out, pissed-off, feeling himself over the edge and out of it, nowhere, but he goes somewhere, his favorite hunting place in the Delta wilderness of the Big Sunflower River and, still feeling bad with his hunting cronies and maybe even a little phony, which he was, what with him trying to pretend he was one of them, a farmer, hunkered down in the cold and rain after the hunt, after honorably passing up the does and seeing no bucks, shivering and snot-nosed, takes out a flat pint of any Bourbon at all and flatfoots about a third of it. He shivers again but not from the cold.

Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust.

1926: As a child watching my father in Birmingham, in the exurbs, living next to a number-6 fairway of the New Country Club, him disdaining both the bathtub gin and white lightning of the time, aging his own Bourbon in a charcoal keg, on his hands and knees in the basement sucking on the siphon, a matter of gravity requiring cheek pressed against the concrete floor, the siphon getting going, the decanter ready, the first hot spurt into his mouth not spat out.

1933: My uncle’s sun parlor in the Mississippi Delta and toddies on a Sunday afternoon, the prolonged and meditative tinkle of silver spoon against crystal to dissolve the sugar; talk, tinkle, talk; the talk mostly political: “Roosevelt is doing a good job; no, the son of a bitch is betraying his class.”

1934: Drinking at a Delta dance, the boys in bi-swing jackets and tab collars, tough-talking and profane and also scared of the girls and therefore safe in the men’s room. Somebody passes around bootleg Bourbon in a Coke bottle. It’s awful. Tears start from eyes, faces turn red. “Hot damn, that’s good!”

1935: Drinking at a football game in college. UNC versus Duke. One has a blind date. One is lucky. She is beautiful. Her clothes are the color of the fall leaves and her face turns up like a flower. But what to say to her, let alone what to do, and whether she is “nice” or “hot”—a distinction made in those days. But what to say? Take a drink, by now from a proper concave hip flask (a long way from the Delta Coke bottle) with a hinged top. Will she have a drink? No. But that’s all right. The taste of the Bourbon (Cream of Kentucky) and the smell of her fuse with the brilliant Carolina fall and the sounds of the crowd and the hit of the linesmen in a single synesthesia.

1941: Drinking mint juleps, famed Southern Bourbon drink, though in the Deep South not really drunk much. In fact, they are drunk so seldom that when, say, on Derby Day somebody gives a julep party, people drink them like cocktails, forgetting that a good julep holds at least five ounces of Bourbon. Men fall face-down unconscious, women wander in the woods disconsolate and amnesiac, full of thoughts of Kahil Gibran and the limberlost.

Would you believe the first mind julep I had I was sitting not on a columned porch but in the Boo Snooker bar of the New Yorker Hotel with a Bellevue nurse in 1941? The nurse, a nice upstate girl, head floor nurse, brisk, swift, good-looking; Bellevue nurses, the best in the world and this one the best of Bellevue, at least the best-looking. The julep, an atrocity, a heavy syrupy Bourbon and water in a small glass clotted with ice. But good!

How could two women be more different than the beautiful languid Carolina girl and this swift handsome girl from Utica, best Dutch stock? One thing was sure. Each has to be courted, loved, drunk with, with Bourbon. I should have stuck with the Bourbon. We changed to gin fizzes because the bartender said he came from New Orleans and could make good ones. He could and did. They were delicious. What I didn’t know was that they were made with raw egg albumen and I was allergic to it. Driving her home to Brooklyn and being in love! What a lovely fine strapping smart girl! And thinking of being invited into her apartment where she lived alone and of her offering to cook a little supper and of the many kisses and the sweet love that already existed between us and was bound to grow apace, when on the Brooklyn Bridge itself my upper lip began to swell and little sparks of light flew past the corner of my eye like St. Elmo’s fire. In the space of thirty seconds my lip stuck out a full three-quarter inch, like a shelf, like Mortimer Snerd. Not only was kissing out of the question but my eyes swelled shut. I made it across the bridge, pulled over to the curb, and fainted. Whereupon this noble nurse drove me back to Bellevue, game me a shot, and put me to bed.

Anybody who monkeys around with gin and egg white deserves what he gets. I should have stuck with Bourbon and have from that day to this.

POSTSCRIPT: Reader, just in case you don’t want to knock it back straight and would rather monkey around with perfectly good Bourbon, here’s my favorite recipe, “Cud’n Walker’s Uncle Will’s Favorite Mint Julep Receipt.”

You need excellent Bourbon whiskey; rye or Scotch will not do. Put half an inch of sugar in the bottom of the glass and merely dampen it with water. Next, very quickly—and here is the trick in the procedure—crush your ice, actually powder it, preferably with a wooden mallet, so quickly that it remains dry, and, slipping two sprigs of fresh mint against the inside of the glass, cram the ice in right to the brim, packing it with your hand. Finally, fill the glass, which apparently has no room left for anything else, with Bourbon, the older the better, and grate a bit of nutmeg on the top. The glass will frost immediately. Then settle back in your chair for half an hour of cumulative bliss.

1975

SC-1000

2007-05-01T08:01:00.000-04:00

The more autobiographical O'Cayce posted the report over on her blog.

Be sure to also read about what was going on with the rest of the family while I was out converting erstwhile dinosaur chow into harmful pollutants.

MSF Acronymns

2007-03-24T23:47:00.000-04:00

Speaking of motorcycle safety and useful mnemonics...

These are from the MSF, which (despite their current Borgish behavior) will teach you skills that (if practiced) will save your life.

T-CLOCK stands for:

Tires
Controls
Lights
Oil level
Chassis
(Kick)stand(s)

FINE-CC (start-up checklist; things to check when starting the bike)

Fuel valve (irrelevant on fuel-injected bikes)
Ignition switch (the key)
Neutral (where to put your gear shift)
Engine kill switch (what your buddies are always fooling with at gas stops)
Clutch (pull in the lever, even if you ARE in neutral)
Choke (also irrelevant on fuel-injected bikes)

On a fuel-injected bike like my GL1800, I would edit this to NICE

Neutral
Ignition on
Clutch level pulled n
Engine switch on

or perhaps NECK

Neutral
Engine switch on
Clutch lever in
Key on

The current SEE

Scan the environment
Evaluate the situation
Execute your maneuvers

used to be the far more useful SIPDE

Scan the environment
Identify possible hazards
Predict what is going to happen
Decide what you're going to do
Execute your move

PLP = Parking Lot Practice; going out, finding a big empty place, dropping your bricks, and working on low-speed skills. I don't do this nearly often enough.

Honda provided a nice little booklet for PLP with my bike. There's a great page of advanced stuff from the Alameda County Sherrif's pages available as both html and ad a pdf. But I'd try to get good at the basics first.

Having been taught the Smith system of defensive driving way back in the day, the MSF emphasis on watching people around you and always predicting what will happen and knowing what your reaction should be was marvelously useful. I still remember the pop quizzes in drivers' ed where the instructor would cover the rear view mirror and ask me what was back there. Always be aware; always know what your route to safety is.

BTW, the Smith system is basically:

Aim high in steering (look way down the road)
Big Picture (what is happening and how does it all relate? How will this one guy's actions affect everything else?)
Scan (keep your eyes moving; know what's everywhere)
Know your out (always have an escape route)
Visibility (make sure everyone sees you)

This is as good for motorcycling as it is in a cage.

Chromed Tires?

2007-03-24T23:30:00.002-04:00

On 10 July 2006, I rode 1200 miles to see my brother in Austin, TX. The next morning, when I did my morning T-CLOCK exam on the bike, I noticed that my rear tire had cracks in the carcass. So as well as catching up with a brother I hadn't seen in over a decade, I spent part of Skylab Day 2006 getting new rear rubber. It was a Metzeler ME880, the only rear tire for my bike that was in stock. It has been a decent rear tire. Good grip in the rain, and it was wearing quite well. Was.

Last Thursday night, I changed my spark plugs and checked the tires. It looked to me like I was going to get another 10K out of the rear, and it had not lost a single pound of pressure (I've only had to add air once since I got the thing, and I think that was only from the little bit that escapes every week when I check.) Little did I know.

While riding in to Lake Lure to pick up a couple more riders (Phil & Barb), I thought my leg was twitching. Then I realized that it was my foot peg that was pulsing against my foot, and not vice versa. Cruising slowly through Chimney Rock, I noticed a wobble. It was not the dreaded decel wobble. It happened most severely ~20 mph, accelerating, decelerating, or holding steady. As we headed up NC 9 toward Black Mountain (and coincidentally crossing the eastern continental divide), I rode more conservatively than I usually do and paid closer attention.

I wondered if maybe the front tire were severely out of balance, and was dreading the talk I was going to have to have with the shop that only a couple thousand miles ago rebuilt my 80K front end. Tapered bearings gone loose? There was no clicking, so I didn't think it was wheel bearings. But those handlebars sure did want to dance. By the time we got to Black Mountain, I was wondering whether and how we would be getting home.

I mentioned this over a lunch of some fine smoked brisket (really; you HAVE to go to Perry's) and there was a good bit of discussion as to possibilities. I didn't want to actually put hands and gauges on the tire until it had cooled down and I had filled my belly, so this was a good delaying tactic. And people suggested the things I had been mulling over. Phil mentioned a possible de-lamination, which I had NOT considered, but which has been a problem with E3 fronts (built by management during the recent Dunlop strike). My front is a Stone.

A couple of us poked & prodded the front end a bit and found nothing obvious. It took Dan walking up from behind and asking, "what's on your back tire?" to spot the trouble. What Dan was seeing were the steel belts on the left side of the tire. I HAD had a de-lamination and had thrown the tread off the rear. Steve mentioned that while following me over 9 at one point he had though that I had picked up some road trash when he saw something fluttering on my rear tire. Ah.

I had had well over 1/8" of tread in the center of that tire a day and a half earlier; a good 1/4" toward the outer edges. Now I had steel belts. How do you measure thread depth? Does steel grip well in the corners? Can you have it chromed as the ultimate Wing accessory?

After a brief discussion of best course of action, we put Lizzy behind Jim (sorry, Dixie) and Phil took point toward MR Cycles in Asheville. I rode second, and the other seven bikes rode behind, making sure no one ran over me should the worst happen. We even took some of the BRP this way to get around Asheville traffic. MR had an E3 in stock, and 90 minutes and $221 later, we were back on the road.

For the record, that tire had 9774 miles on it. (Yes, I know -- only 10K miles in 8 months; I'm not going to make my average this year. I blame it on the new commute; only 20 miles a day instead of 50, and I won't have as much chance to catch up this summer, given the nature of our vacation plans.) I ran it at 42 psi.

And thinking about it now, I'll bet that this explains why the back end has felt so squirrelly in a lean lately. I was just talking about trying to sort this one out last Saturday at McGuire's in Summerville. Every time I've leaned aggressively lately, the back end has slid a bit to one side. I haven't touched a peg down in months.

So... Good news: 1) I've still been sensitive enough to notice when there's trouble and to adapt my riding style as necessary. 2) The steel belts held well enough to get us up NC 9 two-up and then over to MR Cycles solo. 3) No get-off, no harm, no foul. 4) MR was fast, friendly, and reasonable. I can see why Phil & Barb ride up from Brevard to use them (aside from the fun roads betwixt & between). 5) We didn't hold up the group ride too long. 6) Mike Parks bought a new helmet. 7) We met some new riding friends. 8) Excellent brisket. 9) Fun roads. 10) 400 miles with an average 40 mpg for the day, with lowest top up at 38 and highest 42.

Bad news: 1) I would have sworn that the problem was in the front. I should have been able to tell that it was in the rear. My backside used to be more sensitive than that. 2) The frikkin rear tire threw off half its tread! We coulda died!

Next steps: 1) Write a letter and send a picture to Metzeler. 2) If there's a ride next weekend, sit it out and give our guardian angels the time off. They must be exhausted.

Izzy

Update: Lizzy has also blogged about this, and has included a couple of pictures. She has also put in her linked photo album some of the pictures sent by Jim and Mike.

Cicero on the nature of graduate studies

2007-03-17T20:30:00.000-04:00

Cicero is referring here to training in oratory, which was the Roman equivalent of going for a professional degree. If you wanted to take your place in and make your mark upon Roman society (upper-class male variety, of course), you had to learn to persuade groups of people; you had to study oratory. I think the parallel is obvious.

Pro Caelio sec. 19/46

"An vos aliam causam esse ullam putatis cur in tantis praemiis eloquentiae, tanta voluptate dicendi, tanta laude, tanta gratia, tanto honore, tam sint pauci semperque fuerint qui in hoc labore versentur? Obterendae sunt omnes voluptates, relinquenda studia delectationis, ludus, iocus, convivium, sermo paene est familiarum deserendus. Qua re in hoc genere labor offendit homines a studioque deterret, non quo aut ingenia deficiant aut doctrina puerilis."

"Or do you suppose, in the face of such rewards for eloquence, such pleasure in speaking, such praise, such favor, such honor, that there is some other reason why why there are and always have been so few who turn themselves toward this endeavor? All pleasures must be obliterated; all pursuit of enjoyment left behind; games, jokes, bonhomie, nearly all conversation with friends must be forsaken. It is for this reason that this sort of endeavor is offensive to people and turns them away from its pursuit, and not because the youth are lacking in either ability or prliminary education."

Think on this as you apply for grad school.

Izzy

Eco on the 'Puter Wars

2007-03-17T19:11:00.000-04:00

While I'm filing good stuff from Eco, here's a nice piece on the state of Mac -v- PC wars from the mid-90s. Remember, aging readers, that back then Windows still had a lot of command-line work to do, and that the old MS-DOS was still seen lurking behind the Windows darkly. This was pre-Windows '95. This was Windows 3.x.

Pax,
Izzy
who still remembers CPM dot commands and WordStar, which were the de facto standard in many offices when the Mac showed up

English translation of excerpts from Umberto Eco's back-page column "La bustina di Minerva" in the Italian news weekly Espresso, 30 Sept. 1994:

*********

Insufficient consideration has been given to the new underground religious war which is modifying the modern world. It's an old idea of mine, but I find that whenever I tell people about it they immediately agree with me.

The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant. Indeed, the Macintosh is counter-reformist and has been influenced by the 'ratio studiorum' of the Jesuits. It is cheerful, friendly, conciliatory, it tells the faithful how they must proceed step by step to reach - if not the Kingdom of Heaven - the moment in which their document is printed. It is catechistic: the essence of revelation is dealt with via simple formulae and sumptuous icons.

Everyone has a right to salvation.

DOS is Protestant, or even Calvinistic. It allows free interpretation of scripture, demands difficult personal decisions, imposes a subtle hermeneutics upon the user, and takes for granted the idea that not all can reach salvation. To make the system work you need to interpret the program yourself: a long way from the baroque community of revellers, the user is closed within the loneliness of his own inner torment.

You may object that, with the passage to Windows, the DOS universe has come to resemble more closely the counter-reformist tolerance of the Macintosh. It's true: Windows represents an Anglican-style schism, big ceremonies in the cathedral, but there is always the possibility of a return to DOS to change things in accordance with bizarre decisions; when it comes down to it, you can decide to allow women and gays to be ministers if you want to....

And machine code, which lies beneath both systems (or environments, if you prefer)? Ah, that is to do with the Old Testament, and is Talmudic and cabalistic...

Umberto Eco

2007-03-17T18:29:00.000-04:00

A recent e-mail question about Umberto Eco provoked the following response, which I'm storing here for later reference.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, I'm a big fan of Eco in all three of his guises: semiotician (and literary critic), novelist, and columnist. I'll paste one of his columns/essays into the end of this note.

Eco the Semiotician
For anyone who has about had it with modern literary theory, I highly recommend Eco's LitCrit works. He has given us back Intentionality -- although he agrees that the author's intent (intentio auctoris) is not the best guide to interpreting a text, he argues for the intention of the work itself (intentio operis). That is, he makes a credible argument that a work of literature is trying to communicate, and that the best method of interpretation is to try to listen to what the work WANTS to tell us and how it achieves (or fails to achieve) that intended communication.

For my money, far too much time is spent with tools like Deconstruction, which has, I have to admit, its uses. The ability to gain anthropological insight from literary texts is especially attractive to people who work with the ancient world. But I just know that some day at a conference some deconstructionist is going to ask me a question and I'm going to treat their question like a text and deconstruct it rather than answer it. This would make absolutely clear something that I believe about deconstruction: it's rude; useful at times, but essentially impolite.

[*he slips into a fantasy*

Question from the floor: I agree with your presentation overall, but wonder how you would distinguish between gendered issues and power issues in the Late Republican period.

Answer from the lectern: Notice that this very brief text, a questioning text, begins with a first person singular pronoun. This reveals the academic's self-involvement; she has given the self-referent a privileged position, and so privileges herself. Further...

*he comes back from the world of dreams*]

What was I saying? Oh, yes. The primary focus of deconstruction is on what the work gives away about the culture in which it was produced. This is fundamentally rude. It ignores what it trying to be said in favor of what the reader's agenda might be. It is a useful anthropological tool, but should not be the first, and never the only, tool brought to bear in interpreting a text. The first question should always be, "what is the message? what is being said?" And Eco has given us back the right to ask such questions.

The best introduction to his work in this area is a seven lecture series in which Eco gives the first three, three LitCritics from other schools respond, and Eco replies. It's a slim volume published by Cambridge UP entitled Interpretation and Overinterpretation. From there, take a peek at The Limits of Interpretation and his earlier work, The Role of the Reader.

Eco the Novelist
As for the novels, they are all very different. Easily the most accessible (and the only one made into a movie) is The Name of the Rose. A mystery set in a medieval abbey with riffs on Dante, assumed knowledge of theology and Classics, and footnotes in Latin. Look for the edition that has Postscript to the Name of the Rose in it. It's a nice essay.

If you're into conspiracy theories (like Dan Brown's ubiquitous book), Foucault's Pendulum might be the place to start. It is set in a modern vanity publishing house, but ranges throughout the late medieval and early Renaissance periods. Don't try to follow the evolving logic of the knights-templar-ridden plot; I think you're supposed to feel disoriented while thinking "that makes sense". If you read and like this one, try his non-fiction The Search for the Perfect Language.

The Island of the Day Before is set in the same age-of-exploration world as Dava Sobel's Longitude. It dabbles in alchemy and is a great introduction to the errors of courtly love. I used to have a sig from this one:

"He thought that he would become accustomed to the idea [of being orphaned], not yet understanding that it is useless to become accustomed to the loss of a father, for it will never happen a second time: might as well leave the wound open."
-Umberto Eco, Island of the Day Before, end of Ch.7

There are also Baudolino (which Otter once described as "Forrest Gump for Medievalists") and his memoir for an entire generation of Italians, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. (Which, for a change, does NOT turn out to be a father-quest.) For a long time, I had as my sig a line from Bishop Otto in chapter 4 of Baudolino:

"The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things."

Eco the Columnist
Eco used to write a weekly column for a local (to him) paper. Some of his best essays have been collected in several volumes. Travels in Hyperreality, which includes a great piece on the semiotics of wearing pants; Misreadings, the shortest and funniest if you have a background that includes lots of academic nonsense -- several good pastiches of scholarly papers here; and How to Travel with a Salmon, probably the best for a general audience. The entire essay that I'm going to paste in below is from that collection.

But first, my favorite take on postmodernism, from the PttNotR. Enjoy.

Pax,
Izzy

~~~Begin Quotation 1~~~

Umberto Eco on postmodernism:
But the moment comes when the avant-garde (the modern) can go no further, because it has produced a metalanguage that speaks of its impossible texts (conceptual art). The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her, "I love you madly," because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly." At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly that it is no longer possible to speak innocently, he will nevertheless have said what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her, but he loves her in an age of lost innocence. If the woman goes along with this, she will have received a declaration of love all the same. Neither of the two speakers will feel innocent, both will have accepted the challenge of the past, of the already said, which cannot be eliminated; both will consciously and with pleasure play the game of irony.... But both will have succeeded, once again, in speaking of love.
Postscript to The Name of the Rose [Harvest combined edition 1994] 530-1
~~~~End Quotation 1~~~~

~~~Begin Quotation 2~~~

"How to Justify a Private Library" from How to Travel with a Salmon & other essays (HBJ 1994) by Umberto Eco

Generally speaking, from my childhood on, I have been always subjected to two (and only two) kinds of joke: "You're the one who always answers" and "You resound in the valleys." All through my early years I believed that, by some strange chance, all the people I met were stupid. Then, having reached maturity, I was forced to conclude that there are two laws no human being can escape: the first idea that comes into a person's mind will be the most obvious one; and, having had an obvious idea, nobody ever thinks that others may have had the same idea before.

I possess a collection of review headlines, in all the languages of the Indo-European family, going all the way from "The Echo of Eco" to "A Book with Echoes." In the latter case I suspect the printed headline wasn't the first idea that came into the subeditor's mind. What probably happened was this: the editorial staff met, they debated some twenty possible titles, and finally the managing editor's face lighted up and he said, "Hey guys, I've had a fantastic idea!" And the others responded, "Boss, you're a devil! Where do you get them?" "It's a gift," he must have replied.

I'm not saying that people are banal. Taking as divine inspiration, as a flash of originality, something that is obvious reveals a certain freshness of spirit, an enthusiasm for life and its unpredictability, a love of ideas--small as they may be. I will always remember my first meeting with Erving Goffman, whom I admired and loved for the genius and penetration with which he could identify infinitesimal aspects of behavior that had previously eluded everyone else. We were sitting at an outdoor café when, looking at the street after a while, he said, "You know something? I believe there are too many automobiles in circulation in our cities." Maybe he had never thought this before because he had had far more important things to think about; he had just had a sudden epiphany and still had the mental freshness to express it. I, a little snob infected by the Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen of Neitzsche, would have hesitated to say it, even if I thought it.

A second shock of banality occurs to many people in my condition--that is, people who possess a fairly sizeable library (large enough in my case that someone entering our house can't help but notice it; actually, it takes up the whole place). The visitor enters and says, "What a lot of books! Have you read them all?" At first I thought that the question characterized only people who had scant familiarity with books, people accustomed to seeing a couple of shelves with five paperback mysteries and a children's encyclopedia, bought in installments. But experience has taught me that the same words can be uttered also by people above suspicion. It could be said that they are still people who consider a bookshelf as a mere storage place for already-read books and do not think of the library as a working tool. But there is more to it than that. I believe that, confronted by a vast array of books, anyone will be seized by the anguish of learning, and will inevitably lapse into asking the question that expresses his torment and his remorse.

The problem is that when someone says, "Eco? You're the one who always answers," you can reply with a little laugh and, at most, if you want to be polite, with "That's a good one!" But the question about your books has to be answered, while your jaw stiffens and rivulets of cold sweat trickle down your spine. In the past I adopted a tone of contemptuous sarcasm. "I haven't read any of them; otherwise, why would I keep them here?" But this is a dangerous answer because it invites the obvious follow-up: "And where do you put them after you've read them?" The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: "And more, dear sir, many more," which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: "No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office," a reply that on one hand suggests a sublime ergonomic strategy, and on the other leads the visitor to hasten the moment of his departure.
1990
~~~~End Quotation 2~~~~

Brie in pastry with red onion confit

2007-03-17T17:13:00.000-04:00

Among the things we served on the last night of our Winterim cooking class was crostini with goat cheese mousse and a red onion confit. The goat cheese mousse was dead simple:

set out a six ounce tube of goat cheese to warm
chop about a tbsp of parsley
whip up about a quarter cup of heavy cream
fold everything together
season with kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

The confit went like so:

slice 2 lbs red onions (about 4 large onions)
simmer in a pan with
1/2 c. honey
1/2 c. red wine
5/8 c. (1/2 c. + 2 tbsp; 5 fl. oz.) red wine vinegar
until the mixture is the consistency of marmalade
S&P to taste

Upon tasting the confit, Lizzy proclaimed that it would be good with brie. So last Sunday night, that's what I did. I cheated with the pastry and used a small thwack packet of croissant dough.[1] I just twacked the tube, pulled out the four ready-made croissants, and instead of rolling them up, I rolled them out into one big sheet. (I used a small tube because of Lizzy's diabetes-induced bread restrictions, but next time I will probably use a regular-sized tube of dough.)

I made a quarter recipe of the confit (one huge red onion, 1 oz each of the honey & the wine, and splash more than that of the vinegar).
I took one six inch brie wheel and cut it in half.
I set the brie in the middle of the croissant dough to make an impression, then took it off and set it aside.

I put half of the confit within that circular impression on the dough, put half the brie down, put on the rest of the confit, then the rest of the brie, then wrapped the dough over the brie and pinched it closed. I then flipped it (smooth dough on top) and baked it in accordance with the instructions on the thwack tube.

It was very tasty.

Next time, I will do at least two things differently (apart from more dough, which was requested by SWMBO). 1) Chop the onion instead of slicing it. 2) Add some walnut pieces to the confit that ends up on top (the bottom layer as it is assembled). And Lizzy suggested adding raisins to the confit close to the end, but this is getting very close to a chutney, don't you think?

Izzy

[1] Are Lizzy & I the only ones who call those biscuits that come in tubes "thwack biscuits"? I think that Pillsbury is the best known purveyors of these things. You know the ones. You peel the outer layer off the tube and then there's that cardboard with the line tha says to press here with a spoon. But why press when they usually pop open on their own? And when they don't, isn't it much more satisfying to thwack the tube sharply against the edge of the counter?

Speaking of omelets

2007-03-16T22:11:00.001-04:00

There's a scene in the movie Deep Blue Sea (about intelligent sharks and an isolated research station; essentially a haunted house story) where LL Cool J's character (Sherman 'Preacher' Dudley) believes that he is about to die, and all he has is a video camera, so he figures he should record his last words. What does he have to say in this, his final hour? He looks into the lense and says, "We will start with the perfect omelet, which is made with two eggs not three. Amateurs often add milk for density. This is a mistake."

Truer words were never spoken.

Among the few good things I'm known for is my ability to turn out a tasty omelet. So in the interest of full disclosure, I should mention that the cream in the omelette Lyonaise was a departure for me; I did it only because the recipes all said to. My usual omelet procedure runs thus:

Put a hefty skillet on medium heat (a heavy pan makes for more even heat transfer; lower heat & longer time make for a fluffier omelet).
Whisk two eggs.
Prepare your fold-ins (cheese, olives, whatever).
Toss a lump of butter into the pan, and slide it off-center on the burner (if your stove isn't level, you'll want the uphill side of the pan on the center of the heat).
Pour in the egg and give the pan a quick wobble to spread the egg evenly.
Put your fold-ins on the side of the omelet that will stay down.
As soon as the side directly over the heat will no longer run, fold it over the other side.
Slide the skillet over so the other side of the pan (with the folded omelet) is over the center of the heat.
When it starts to puff up, slide it onto a plate. It's done.

The keys for me are 1) medium heat and 2) not bothering it too much. Just let it sit there and cook. (This despite that wonderful reconciliation omelet scene at the end of Big Night.)

A word about spinach. I like it. I like omelets. It was inevitable that I would try a spinach omelet. The recipes had me wilting the spinach in the skillet and puring the egg on top of it. I didn't like the way this dried the spinach that stayed in contact with the pan. I tried wilting the spinach, removing it from the pan, and treating it like any other fold-in, but I found the spinach just a bit to moist this way for my tastes. What I do now is

whisk 2 eggs and set aside,
wilt the spinach in a skillet (throw a lot in, it shrinks way down),
remove it from the skillet and whisk it into the eggs,
pour eggs and spinach into the pan, and
cook that omelet.
I often fold in a little cheese (brie or a sharp cheddar both work admirably well).

That's a spinach omelet I can eat.

Omelette Lyonnaise

2007-03-16T21:16:00.000-04:00

Also known as a half-baked onion omelet. Well, half-broiled anyway. But half-baked sounds better.

The first step will take the better part of an hour. The finish will take less than ten minutes.

Step one: carmelize a pound and a half of onions. I used sweet onions, cause we have quite a few in the fridge. I was going to slice them with a knife, but decided that I could get them thinner with a mandoline. Now a pound and a half of sliced onion looks like an awful lot, but it will cook down to a large handful. To carmelize 'em:

melt a few tablespoons (it looked like ~3 to me) of butter in a large saucepan on medium
add the onions
let 'em simmer until the onions start to sweat out their liquid
make sure you have nothing else to do for a long while
turn up the heat
stir continuously until the onions turn dark brown
remove from heat

Now at this point, all the recipes say to put the onions into a pan and pour the beaten egg mixture onto them. I did not do it this way.

I had previously whisked up four eggs and a three tablespoons of heavy cream and set this in the fridge. When the onions were ready and I could finally stop stirring, here's what I did:

remove onion pan from heat
place large skillet on heat, turn down to medium
turn on broiler to preheat
whisk onions into eggs & cream
pour into now-warm skillet
let cook for ~3 minutes (until the bottom is cooked and the center is starting to firm)
remove skillet from heat and put under the broiler for about 2 minutes (until the top is browned)

The recipes say that the omelet should be slightly runny, but Lizzy doesn't care for eggs that flow downhill, so I cooked 'em a little firmer.

Cut that baby in half, toss it onto a couple of plates and splash on some balsamic vinegar.

Note that this did nothing to diminish our supply of strawberries. We had some for dessert with coffee. Lizzy made a couple of quicky drop-biscuit shortcakes for hers (bread may now be her enemy, but she still needs some), and I whipped up a little cream for mine. (Why would you ever buy that stuff they call whipped cream in tubs and tubes when it's so darned easy to toss a little sugar, a splash of vanilla, and some cream into a bowl and whip it up all tasty and fresh?)

I have a feeling my next recipe might be for a shortcake. It kind of depends on how tomorrow's ride down to McGuire's in Summerville goes.

Yet another use for little-visited blogs: Recipes!

2007-03-16T20:45:00.001-04:00

I've been experimenting a bit lately and thought I'd put here a few recipes that have worked well. It beats leaving them on the hard drive until a catastrophic crash. We'll start with last night.

I brought home a mess of strawberries from the Freshman Strawberry sale at school (for two people, half a flat is definitely a mess -- not a half-mess, a whole mess). They smell very ripe and on the verge of going bad. They are, sadly, not local, but shipped up from Florida. So despite their smell, they are very hard and not very sweet. Be that as it may, I knew we needed to use some. We also have a hefty supply of spinach, so I figured it was time for a salad.

I've made berry vinaigrettes before for other sorts of salads (berries, white balsamic, sweeten to taste, stick blend till pour-able; toss with olive oil on the salad). But berry vinaigrette on a berry and greens salad seemed like too little variation. So I went searching for a different dressing. Some of the ingredients I found recommended seemed verrrrry odd. Nevertheless, it came out quite tasty. Here's what we had:

Salad

10-12 oz. spinach, washed & large stems removed
~2 oz. goat cheese, tossed into the spinach to evenly coat the leaves
1.5 cups whole strawberries each, sliced after measuring
1.5 hard-boiled eggs each, sliced
pecan pieces, toasted (2 minutes in our convection toaster oven does the trick)

Dressing

1/2 c. sugar
1 tbsp. minced onion
1 tbsp. poppy seeds
1/4 tsp. paprika
1/4 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 c. light olive oil
1/4 c. red wine vinegar
1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Stick blend to a smooth emulsion

I know it sounds odd, but trust me on this one. It's quite tasty.

It Beats Drunken Exhibitionism

2007-01-21T14:08:00.000-05:00

There ARE a million monkeys sitting at a million keyboards, but the internet looks nothing at all like Shakespeare.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Why are we here? And by "here" I don't mean the big existential question. I mean here in cyberspace? Is it, perhaps, to collect our fifteen?

No, not the fifteen minutes promised us by Warhol, but the fifteen people promised us by Currie.

It turns out, Nick Currie was only partly right. Reflecting on the technological innovations of the early 90s, he issued a now-famous riff on Andy Warhol's already-famous maxim that "in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes." Warhol had been commenting on the nature of celebrity and the inability of the public to intentionally focus rather than to flit from amusement to amusement. A generation later "fifteen minutes of fame" was part of our cultural psyche, and Momus / Nick Currie was able to repurpose the tag. He decried the control of the suits and the tyranny of "units sold" over the music industry. Looking forward to the end of the industry's hegemony and the rise of innovative, creative musicians through relatively simple and inexpensive self-production, he predicted that "in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen people." How one would make a living with such a small fan base he did not speculate. Presumably, a pure artst doesn't care about such things. In 1999, Currie revisited his theme and saw the revolution nearly realized, with artists controlling both the means of production and global distribution. He says, "the era of stars... is over, and that worries the critics."

Currie was at least partly wrong. The age of stars goes on, it's just that those who previously would have been completely ignored or crushed beneath the big wheels' roll now move in a parallel track on MySpace or in the blogosphere, famous for fifteen people and sometimes getting called up by the suits who hope to profit by them. I think Rabo Karabekian hit much closer to the mark back in 1987.

Early in Chapter 9 of Kurt Vonnegut's Bluebeard, Rabo Karabekian says this:

I was obviously born to draw better than most people, just as the widow Berman and Paul Slazinger were obviously born to tell stories beter than most people can. Other people are obviously born to sing and dance or explain the stars in the sky or do magic tricks or be great leaders or athletes, and so on.

I think that could go back to the time when people had to live in small groups of relatives--maybe fifty or a hundred people at most. And evolution--or God or whatever--arranged things genetically, to keep the little families going, to cheer them up, so that they could all have somebody to tell stories around the campfire at night, and somebody else to paint pictures on the walls of the caves, and somebody else who wasn't afraid of everything and so on.

That's what I think. And of course a scheme like that doesn't make sense anymore, because simply moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.

The entire planet can get along nicely now with maybe a dozen champion performers in each area of human giftedness. A moderately gifted person has to keep his or her gifts all bottled up until, in a manner of speaking, he or she gets drunk at a wedding and tap dances on the coffee table like Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. We have a name for him or her. We call him or her an "exhibitionist."

How do we reward such an exhibitionist? We say to him or her the next morning, "Wow! Were you ever drunk last night!"

So now with the mass-media superstars AND Currie's fifteen people, we are all being compared not only with the world's top dozen, but also with the moderately gifted stars of the internet. And you know what? I think if I had to choose just one form of fame, I would take the drunken exhibitionism. Because that way, at least we're in the same room with one another, physically present in a community. This cyber-stuff can be a useful adjunct to, but is no replacement for, a real life.

So log out, and go share a meal with some friends.

I Carrion Happily

2007-01-07T22:02:00.000-05:00

hat tips to Gashwin and Mattheus

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Bishop Lord Isidore the Mirthful of Leighton Buzzard

Horace and the Thunder: notes on a recension

2007-01-02T23:36:00.000-05:00

I’m a fan of Seamus Heaney. I’m also a Latin teacher who has on occasion set his classes an exercise in which they must rewrite the preamble to the US Constitution using no Latin or Greek roots. They complain about how hard it is and how impoverished Anglo-Saxon must have been. Then I read them some Seamus Heaney, usually something from his Beowulf. It is astounding to hear those old Germanic roots thundering off the page. (BTW, does anyone know of an unabridged edition of Heaney reading this epic? I have the two disc abridged version and lust for more.)

I also tend to trot out Heaney’s resetting of Horace’s Odes 1.34 at least once a semester -- on 11 September and when we start a unit on Horace. It is an astounding poem -- not a translation but a cathartic reworking. It is apparently also a work in progress and has been published in several different forms.

I first saw a version of this poem early in 2002 and scribbled it down by hand. I did not then note from where I was copying it, but some scruple kept me from either tearing it out or taking the magazine / newspaper with me. Were it on the web, I would have mailed myself a copy & paste. Whatever the source, what I wrote down was virtually identical to the text as it subsequently appeared in Alexander Nehamas’ comments at Princeton on the first anniversary of the September 11 attack. One difference I take as an uncorrected typo on the Princeton website, where line 6 reads “the clogged underneath” instead of “the clogged underearth.”* (I ignore this variant in my tiny little app. crit.) The other difference between my handwritten version and that on the Princeton website is in line 10, where Nehamas’ version has “hooked-beak Fortune” rather than the usual (and far better) “stropped-beak Fortune.”

While poking around in late summer 2003 for a more authoritative version to use with my classes on the second anniversary, I came across a free-lance Armenian translator whose website has a version of the poem nearly identical with my handwritten version. The single difference is in the final two words, “boil away” instead of “darken day.” (Pipoyan’s Armenian version does not appear in the Amnesty edition, which is a shame; it would have made a nice diptych with Turkish.)

When I got my copy of the Amnesty International edition (ISBN 186059235X), I found two English versions. One entitled “Horace and the Thunder,” dated 2001; the other, “Anything Can Happen,” dated 2004. Aside from internal differences, both have differences from the poem as I had known it up to that point. The “esteemed” of line 10 has been wisely changed to “regarded,” lines 11 and 12 have undergone significant revision, and line sixteen has two new versions.

And now I’ve received (as a birthday present to myself) a copy of last year’s District and Circle (ISBN 0374140928), where I find yet another version of “Anything Can Happen,” one that is (oddly) more in agreement with Amnesty’s “Horace and the Thunder” than with Amnesty’s “Anything Can Happen.” It also has a unique variant, “tallest towers” at the end of line 8 instead of “tallest things.”

So what’s a Latin teacher to do when it comes time to talk about Horace’s influence on other poets and / or the usefulness of poetry in processing these dark days? Simple enough; use the variants he prefers to construct his own recension. Which is what I’ve done below. As far as I know, the version that I’ve posted below exists nowhere else, and is in no way authorized by the poem’s author. I’m enough of a pinhead that I’ve even included an app. crit. to remind me what and where the variants are. In those notes, I’ve used the following abbreviations:

Aa “Anything Can Happen” as printed on p. 11 of the Amnesty edition, 2004
Ad “Anything Can Happen” as printed on p. 13 of District and Circle, 2006
Ha “Horace and the Thunder” as printed on p. 20 of the Amnesty edition, 2004
Hn “Horace and the Thunder” as printed in Nehamas’ comments, c. 2002
Hp “Horace and the Thunder” as printed on Pipoyan’s website, c. 2003

This is meant to be neither exhaustive nor authoritative; it is entirely idiosyncratic, and all I’ll ever do with it is use it in my Latin classes. If anyone wants to talk about which variants you prefer and why, that’s what com boxes on blogs are for. But as far as I’m concerned, poems are better savored than dissected.

*Postscript: Be careful to avoid reading lines 5 & 6 as “It shook the earth / And clogged the underearth.” Sure, that rhythm works better, and your mind naturally wants to read clogged as a verb instead of as an adjective, but the and is joining earth and underearth, not shook and clogged. It’s NOT “and clogged the underearth”; it IS “and the clogged underearth.”

Horace and the Thunder: an Unauthorized Recension

2007-01-02T23:34:00.000-05:00

HORACE AND THE THUNDER
after Horace, Odes I, 34
Anything can happen. You know how Jupiter
Will mostly wait for clouds to gather head
Before he hurls the lightning? Well, just now,
He galloped his thunder-cart and his horses

Across a clear blue sky. It shook the earth
And the clogged underearth, the River Styx,
The winding streams, the Atlantic shore itself.
Anything can happen, the tallest things

Be overturned, those in high places daunted,
Those overlooked regarded. Stropped-beak Fortune
Swoops, making the air gasp, tearing off
Crests for sport, letting them drop wherever.

Ground gives. The heaven’s weight
Lifts up off Atlas like a kettle-lid,
Capstones shift, nothing resettles right.
Telluric ash and fire-spores darken day.

by Seamus Heaney

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
8 things Aa Ha Hn Hp; towers Ad
10 regarded Aa Ad Ha; esteemed Hn Hp -- Stropped-beak Aa Ad Ha Hp; Hooked-beak Hn
11-12 tearing off...wherever Hn Hp; tearing the crest off one / Setting it down bleeding on the next Aa Ad Ha
13 heaven’s Ad Ha Hn Hp; heavens’ Aa
16 Telluric ash and fire spores Ad Hn Hp; Telluric ash and fire spore Ha; Smoke furl and boiling ashes Aa -- darken day Aa Hn; boil away Ad Ha Hp