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Feeding body and soul
A friend lent me two hard science fiction novels, one sword & sorcery fantasy novel, and one Arthurian romance. I thought I’d enjoy the hard sci-fi (and I do) but her brand new paperbacks are in such perfect condition I’m afraid to open the pages wide enough to read because I’ll crease the books’ spines […]
It was enormously disappointing to watch Jon Stewart fluffing Mau Mau Mike Huckabee on Wednesday’s Daily Show. Oh, Stewart gently nibbled at him about his support for right-wing fundamentalist David Barton, but he didn’t challenge any of his evasive answers. He didn’t mention Huckabee’s advocacy of religious indoctrination at gunpoint, nor did he bring up […]
Positive bloggage fallout: a cousin I haven’t seen since the late 1950s discovered this site and established contact. Nice. Along the way my blog has helped me reconnect with former co-workers and school friends. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does it’s always a pleasant surprise. There are other kinds of fallout. I blogged […]
I make a dish called pasta puttanesca; literally, “whore’s spaghetti.” The sauce is made of olive oil, garlic, anchovies, chopped tomatoes, capers, basil, and perhaps a few olives, tossed into pasta. Last night, since I was about to sit down to watch President Obama deliver the annual State of the Union address to an assembly […]
Last week I got an urgent message from the fine folks at WordPress, telling me I needed to upgrade to the latest WP release lest a security flaw in the version I was currently using bite me in the ass. They sounded genuinely concerned, so I figured I’d better do it. I’ve never forgotten the […]
This is Sinterklaas, the Dutch Santa. Formerly the Archbishop of Turkey, Sint Nicolaas, Sinterklaas is shown with two of his Zwarte Pieten (there are six to eight Zwarte Pieten — “Black Petes” — originally Moorish slaves, but today more gently described as servants or even companions). Sinterklaas arrives in The Netherlands each November by steamboat […]
Every year about this time Donna goes crazy over gingerbread houses. Old school gingerbread houses — Donna makes the dough, rolls it out in sheets, cuts forms for walls, doors, window shutters, roofs, and chimneys, puts them together with frosting, then invites kids over to help decorate them. When our own daughter Polly gets involved, […]
And it’s almost upon us. Our son Gregory, daughter in law Beth, and grandchildren Taylor and Quentin will arrive tomorrow and stay till Monday. The occasion’s an away game for Taylor’s high school softball team. That’s where we’ll be all day Saturday, cheering her on. Sometime Sunday, my niece Gwen may drive down from Phoenix, […]