Musings
Yes, I mean you. Even if you’re a vegetarian!
How did I forget this phrase? Must be all the worthless information and trivia stuffed in my brain—e.g., don’t forget to buy butter, various driving routes to downtown, theories of sociopolitical evolution, and whether to spring for Chuck Todd’s new book….
Anyway, enjoy your status as an apex predator*….
* For the purposes of this entry, think of this guy as Alan Shore, not James Spader, and remember that the word predator is from the Latin for plunderer….
Posted at 2:49 PM |
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Don’t get too focused on this, but notice how many times these two words are misused in the coming days: lectern and podium.
Remember: podium has a root in pod-, meaning foot (podiatrist!); thus, you stand on a podium. That thing that you stand behind that holds your notes: that’s a lectern (its root is in a word meaning to read).
As to the picture: this detail is above the door to the stairs to the second-floor units in a four-apartment building. I think the structure was built as apartments, and is not a converted single-family home. Still, this is a lovely detail that cost extra initially, and extra money continues to be spent to keep it bi-color.
Posted at 5:06 PM |
2 Comments »
…magical. Best sorbet I’ve ever had: mango.
And one of my favorite snacks. Fresh or dried (preferably with no added sugar, thank you TJ’s).
This particular specimen was almost perfectly ripe….
It took me a while spending time in rural Mexico to figure out what the 10-cm long fibrous, beige, lozenge-shaped organic discards were that I kept seeking lurking in the dust in villages—mango pits!
Fun mango facts from Wikip: mangos are about 50% of the tropical fruits produced worldwide (>23 million tons in 2001) and the most common commercial cultivar is Tommy Atkins; the name mango comes to English from Asia via Portuguese (those wily traders!); and, apparently there are freestone varieties (never seen them).*
* Watch out for the skins and sap; some varieties contain, uhoh!, urushiol (especially KW!).
Posted at 12:14 PM |
3 Comments »
There are myriad rhyming arithmetic riddles (chistes, I think…) out there, including (possibly especially) in Spanish. I think this is one I heard in Oaxaca some time ago….
Un pato con una pata, ¿cuántos patos y patas hay?
It employs confusion that is similar to that encompassed by this riddle:
What’s black and white and red all over?*
So: patos are ducks and patas are feet, but also could be a female duck. Therein lies the confusion. Anyway, I was always confused by this riddle (they have never been my strong suit), but I think it says, if there’s a duck with one foot (or a female duck), how many ducks and feet are there? Googling suggests one cheeky answer is “un pato cojo“, meaning a lame duck.
Why do I mention all this? The pastry above is Mexican, and called a pato. And, in this case, no feet…. See how my mind works?
* See, this only works if you hear it, because to be correct you have to spell it “read” not “red”…and the answer is: the newspaper. This is the classic version, anyway. There is a subset of versions that actually rely on “red”, and their answers often refer to gruesome penguins.
Posted at 5:35 PM |
5 Comments »
We did our idiosyncratic version of shopping today, looking for loose, leaf green tea and tuna steaks for searing. Hecho*.
Heading south afterward on Buford Highway, there’s a spot where you get a good view of downtown. We got caught by a light and I took this photo of the buildings shrouded by some low-hanging clouds, residue, I think, of last night’s rain….
* Spanish for made/done. Commonly seen in the phrase “Hecho en México.”
Posted at 6:13 PM |
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When we stayed at a B&B in Britain on our honeymoon, I found out that in British English a yard and a garden are two different things when I complemented our host on all the lovely plantings in his back yard, as we looked out the picture window. He looked at me funny and said, well, here a yard is somewhere you have garbage cans and park your scooter, and this is a garden.
So, of course I replied, I love your GARDEN! while thinking, aha, that’s what Scotland YARD means!
Regarding the lovely reflecting GARDEN ornaments above, I need to route myself back down that street on a sunny day with the good camera and get some better shots.
Posted at 7:12 PM |
1 Comment »
Tangent. That’s what this site is.
I concur with JVF, the content is a window.
But the site is a tangent.
Oooh, what a tangled web we weave.* And live.
Enough!
* No deception offered, just smeary windows….
Posted at 10:02 PM |
4 Comments »
Hint, hint….
Today I added two blogs to my list of RSS feeds: by Paul Krugman (part of the NYTimes), and by Janet Van Fleet.
Krugman you probably know, the guy who just received the Nobel in Economics. I may get aggravated by him and cut him from the list sooner rather than later, though. He’s super-Keynesian, and that may get to me. Of course, you could argue that learning more about macroeconomic theory is not a bad idea, and Krugman’s certainly a good place to start!*
Janet hails from a different part of the world, spatially and conceptually. She’s an sculptor, designer, and artist who lives in Vermont. Check out her web page here, and her blog here. There’s a lovely, wry sense of humor incorporated into her pieces…. It’s a long story how I met her, and the short version is via The Guru.
* Interesting summary of Krugman’s work/position by the Nobel people linked here.
Posted at 11:50 AM |
7 Comments »
The light was crappy and I had the iPhone, yet you can get some idea of the delightful decorations on this residential retaining wall in our neighborhood….
What does this juxtaposition mean?*
As I was preparing the photo for this post, an interview with a recovering alcoholic (NPR’s Alex Cohen talking to her dad) began (I frequently listen to the WUNC stream). I was also thinking about a book review by Roger Scruton (TheObserver and Guardian) that I had just finished reading, of Kingsley Amis’s Everyday Drinking (2008), with three short books he wrote on drink/drinking published together. Notes Scruton:
The famous hangover scene in Lucky Jim is complemented here by a philosophical chapter on the hangover that is one of the great English essays of our time. Kingsley dismisses the run-of-the-mill cures that you can find in any newspaper, since they omit ‘all that vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure that makes a hangover a [fortunately] unique route to self-knowledge and self-realisation’.
I can’t say that I’ve ever been aware of a hangover as having a “vast, vague, awful, shimmering metaphysical superstructure” or that it is a “unique route to self-knowledge and self-realisation.” Live and learn!
* Aha! I have a theory! [The answer is:] ’Tis the season to be jolly!
Posted at 4:01 PM |
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Think southeast Africa, in the 1970s–90s, with upheavals, informal militias and less-terrifying times. The following bits are from an autobiography of a woman who grew up in Zimbabwe (Rhodesia when they arrived), Zambia, and Malawi; her parents had emigrated there from England, apparently seeking adventure. The book is Don’t Let’s Go To the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra (Bobo) Fuller (2001).
There is only one time of absolute silence. Halfway between the dark of night and the light of morning, all animals and crickets and birds fall into a profound silence as if pressed quiet by the deep quality of the blackest time of night. This is when we’re startled awake…. This silence is how I know it is not yet dawn, nor is it the middle of the night, but it is the place of no-time, when all things sleep most deeply, when their guard is dozing, and when terrorists (who know this fact) are most likely to attack. (p.131)
I concur with the special non-sounds just before dawn, except for some birds that get going very early, and some predators that are still trying to get a meal before light arrives. Still, much is silent.
On her first date with the guy she marries eleven months later, they camp out on the lower Zambezi River, with a cooler kindly packed for them by her young man’s friend.
We set up the tent, make a fire, and then open the cold box to reveal Rob’s idea of a romantic meal for a beautiful woman: one beer and a pork chop on top of a lump of swimming ice. (p.291)
The tenters ended up awake all night listening to the predators passing by—including a lion and a leopard—so it wasn’t quite as silent as she had observed previously….
Fast read, pretty good. Mostly from her childhood point of view, in the moment, although obviously written in her adulthood.
Posted at 6:18 PM |
2 Comments »
