You know why I like
different seasons? Well, lots of reasons, but one of them is because different
seasons call for different food.
In the summer,
probably 80% of my evening meals are salads of one sort or another. Spinach,
Niçoise, Greek… That’s one of the reasons why I’ve got an entire cupboard shelf
of vinegars
and oils.
This year I added grilled
asparagus and steak salad, with mango on a bed of cress and a hoisin
vinaigrette, courtesy of Danger
Girl. Dear God, that sucker is wonderfully good, and because I live in
California, I’ve got access to some wonderful
produce. A couple of months ago, a farm market in Sunnyvale had the most
amazingly luscious mangos for $0.79 apiece.
You could smell their ripeness from across the parking lot.
(Okay, you can see
that I went a little wild with the mangos on this particular salad. But I admit
it—I’m a complete mango whore. I love them much more than is natural.)
But Autumn signals to
me that it’s time to make cottage pie.
You can stuff your
meatloaf—even if you put anchovies in it, or ground veal or whatever. And don’t
even get me started on mac and cheese—the very thought of it makes me gag. (And
that’s not hyperbole.)
No—my comfort food is
cottage pie. That’s shepherd’s pie, only with ground beef instead of ground
lamb, which is hard to come by in the Valley they call Silicon. And expensive
when you do.
Cottage pie has the
ground meat (or “mince”, as they call it in the UK), sautéed onion, carrots and
peas; and it’s topped off by a nice layer of mashed potatoes. All your
cold-weather go-tos in a single dish. You bake it until the potatoes are all
crispy-brown at the edges, and then break through the crust with your fork to
let all the steamy goodness out.
Just don’t try to eat
it too fast, because you’ll burn your tongue. Every time. Just like I do.
A while ago a friend
of mine was telling me about a drawing meet-up she went to, in Hakone Gardens. It was on the
one day in the past five months when we had 15 minutes of rain, but I was
interested in the venue, so I went there last week.
Hakone touts itself
as the oldest “Japanese estate gardens” in the western world. Whatever.
(Frankly, any organization that officially uses a plural subject with a
singular verb has cracked its own credibility with me.)
But I thought it
would be nice to get out into, you know, Nature. Even if it is carefully
crafted. (Maybe especially if it’s carefully crafted.) So I took my cameras and
spent a couple of hours wandering about the place…not exactly lonely as a
cloud, but not bad. It's not a patch on the Huntington Gardens, where I grew up, but it'll do.
Naturally there’s the
obligatory waterfall:
And the koi pond with
bridge:
But I quite liked the
persimmon tree:
Which is rather odd,
as I was traumatized as a child by the persimmon tree in our back yard. (The
little unripe fruit that drops are like acorns when your bare feet find them.
And the ripe ones that fall squish between your toes are so gicky. For the life of me I can’t
feature ever actually, you know, eating one.)
As I said earlier this week, we don’t get a lot of leaves turning colors here in the Valley they call Silicon, but the Japanese maples
there afforded me a couple of splashes. First this one:
It’s the fifth annual
Ada Lovelace Day—the international celebration of women in STEM (science,
technology, engineering and science). Lovelace was the Englishwoman who pioneered
the precursor of computer programming in the first half of the 19th
Century.
Who, you ask?
Beatrice Shilling, the aeronautical engineer who solved the problem of engine
cut-out in the Rolls-Royce Merlin engines that powered the Spitfire and Hurricane
fighter planes that were the backbone of British defense during the Battle of
Britain. Her simple addition to the SU carburetor—a flow-restrictor (a disc
with a small hole in it)—was the fix that enabled RAF pilots to perform the extreme
maneuvers needed to outfly the Luftwaffe.
It was known
informally as “Miss Shilling’s Orifice”. Gotta love those RAF wags; really.
Shilling was a
butcher’s daughter who lucked out in an early (female) employer for whom she
was installing wiring and generators. The employer encouraged her to study
electrical engineering; then she took an advanced degree in mechanical
engineering and worked as a research assistant.
She also raced
motorcycles successfully. Meaning she beat professional riders.
Following the war,
Shilling continued studying the problems of aeronautics. She dismissed the
notion that she could be inferior to any man just by virtue of having the XX
chromosome configuration.
She refused to marry
her husband, George Naylor, until he’d matched her record of lapping the
Brooklands circuit on a motorcycle at more than 100 MPH.
Shilling was limited
in her career by her social skills, but not by her intellect, her curiosity or
her ability to develop practical solutions to critical technology problems. She
deserves to be remembered for her contributions.
Okay, I understand
that it’s October, the month when Autumn starts. And the month of Halloween and
its Jack O’ Lanterns. And I understand that, by now, Starbucks has probably
dispensed a quantity of Pumpkin Spice Lattes that equals the Indian Ocean.
But Trader Joe’s has just gone beyond
the beyond for pumpkin crap.
Don’t believe me? Here’s
my count from this month’s Fearless Flyer:
Today, practically
midway through October, I am deeply grateful that we’re finally getting an edge
to the morning air. This endless bleeding summer that started somewhere around
April is finally waning and Autumn is commencing, even if it is stealing in
quietly.
A friend of mine,
originally from Chicago although she hasn’t been in a proper fall season since
the late 80s, sniffed, “Of course, the leaves won’t turn colors here; they don’t.”
Well, actually, they
do—perhaps not the spectacular riot that we had in Virginia, on account of we
don’t get the sharp cold that seems to spark the brilliant hues I loved. But
they turn scarlet and rust and gold right outside my windows.
Coming from Southern
California, it wasn’t until I moved to Korea that I saw leaves actually
changing color on the hoof, as it were; before that it was all theoretical. I’ve
never lost my sense of wonder and delight at the show of nature, even though I
know it’s going to end in a bunch of naked trees for four or five months.
I once was standing at
a third-floor window in Morton Hall at William & Mary, watching the last of
the leaves being tugged from the branches by a brisk wind. I wondered what
students from Hawaii thought when they saw this process—if they were afraid
that the trees were dying. Probably not, but it had to be a weird sensation the
first time they ever saw it.
So even though Ms.
Chicago thinks this isn’t real fall, I say bring it on. I’m very grateful for
the changes around me.
Well, alrighty then—for
today’s Friday frolic, I’m giving you the social story of the week: the posting
on Mumsnet headed, “Do
you dunk your penis?”
And, no—I am not
making this up.
First of all, I didn’t
even know Mumsnet existed until something came across my Twitter feed. Oddly—only
my blog account; the folks in Big Data, Enterprise SaaS, Social Media advice
& the like appear to have missed it.
(But speaking of Big
Data—evidently there was so much traffic to the thread that it crashed the
Mumsnet servers. Too much of a good thing, it seems.)
Anyhow—the user named
Sara Crewe described her post-sex hygiene arrangements, for herself and her
partner, and then asked if anyone else didn’t do the same thing. Anyone? Anyone
at all?
Because, “apparently our
penis beaker is strange and not the done thing.”
Oh, yeah—Miss Manners was on local PBS radio
station earlier this week, taking listeners’ calls on how to handle (um)
various situations. I dearly wish someone had phoned in with this one.
Hands up everyone who
remembers the iconic 80s teen-angst John Hughes film, The Breakfast
Club. You know—one of the Brat Pack classics.
Well, the question
arose on social media (in this case, imgur) around whether you could remake it
today and still have the same, oh, story arc.
The conclusion,
obviously, is that you can’t,
since no one in detention would give a toss about anyone else there, being so
wrapped up in their self-entertaining devices.
That got me thinking
about how smartphones and tablets might alter other classic images of isolation
and dysfunction. I’m sorry I’ve not got the Photoshop skills, but just imagine
what Edward Hopper’s stark “Nighthawks” would be like if there were a couple of
iPads in evidence.
Or Edgar Degas’s “The
Absinthe Drinker”.
Or Jacques-Louis
David’s “The Death of Marat”.
I mean—there’s a
whole universe of new interpretation here.
Okay—as you’ve heard
me say before, the Twitter-dot-com is a strange, strange place.
The other day there
was a #AddAWordRuinAMovie trend going. You know, Finding Nemo Dead, Saturday
Night Yellow Fever, Schindler’s
Grocery List, Miracle Whip on 34th
Street, The Lion, the Witch & the
Wardrobe Malfunction…
Listen, I’m having a
hard time cutting myself off from these. If you want more, click
here.
Naturally, I had a
few entries, including Tofu Meatballs,
which I thought a rather clever oxymoron. Particularly if you recall the 1979
film with Bill Murray. But it’s hardly going to stand up against the likes of Adult Toy Story or The Fairy Godfather or Gone
with the Breaking Wind.
So imagine my surprise
when I received notification that someone had retweeted my humble effort.
And then imagine my
guffaw when it turned out that the retweeter is a pop-punk-unity band from
Indonesia. Called Tofu Meatballs.
If you’re wondering
about the thinking process of the Tea Party ’Pubs whose intransigence caused
the partial government shutdown, here’s an interview
by NPR’s Scott Simon with Jenny Beth Martin, co-founder of the political group.
In it she twists
reality like a LSD tripper on a three-day high, cherry-picks “facts” and
generally blows it out her backside like a…well, like a tea partier.
(I’ll give her this—at
least she’s not screaming, which is what her ditto-heads are doing on social
media. I find it fascinating that you can be holding a Facebook discussion on,
say, Nostradamus quatrains and someone will suddenly go ballistic on how—well,
how about a direct (anonymous) quote:
(“It is starting to
get scary as callers at night are outraged and the democrats went too far with
their shut down to run on in 2014. Many of us are from that generation who may
be democrats or republicans but they would all be speaking German if not for
these veterans who came in planes to be shut away. Fortunately, republicans
took down the baricades [sic] and republicans and ordianary [sic] Americans
wheeled the veterans inside the open air memorial. They did the same to Martin
Luther King and if the Black people are democrats, they took away veterans who
wanted to see his memorial so are you happy about that for your party? It had
to be ordered by the White House who wants to hurt us all to have his way.”
(Usual disclaimer—I did
not make this up. And this woman had plenty more along these lines before I hope
her meds kicked in. There’s heaps of the like on Twitter, too; but of course
the 140-character limitation cramps the ranting capability somewhat. So they
just do whole strings of tweets that are broken up by other people's self-promotion, inanities and non-sequiturs.)
However, back to
Martin—I found it interesting that in supporting her accusations that the ACA
is causing people to “lose their jobs, their hours, their healthcare” (in
present tense), one of her alleged sources of these predictions is…labor
unions. (It’s in the audio, not the excerpted transcript.) I’m wondering how it is that
righteous Republican lightning did not strike her the very instant that a tea
partier spoke the words “labor” and “union” in conjunction without hissing.
But the thing that
absolutely had me gobsmacked was when she said, “we are looking for ways to
reopen the portions of the government that we agree with.” As though that made
them somehow reasonable.
First—by “the
portions of the government that we agree with,” she means “the things like the
WWII monument or the parts of NIH running pediatric trials where videos of
wheelchair-bound vets and dying kids showing up on even Fox news make us look
like ignorant, heartless morons.” Even if her followers do manage to turn it
into a “democrat” fulmination.
Thus they’ve been
trying to pass limited Continuing Resolutions that would fund enough such agreeable
portions that would get the journalists off their backs. So, say—reopen the
WWII memorial, but keep the other national parks closed. Except for logging and
fracking operations, of course.
Second—you don’t get to bloody fund only those
portions of the freaking government that you agree with. Not even if you’re
a delusional, brain-dead ideologue. We may not have the government we’d like, or even the one we deserve; but we have the government you bozos have delivered. You want to de-fund
[insert agency here], you man up and pass a bill to wind it down that you can get the President
to sign in the regular course of events. You don't take over the bank with balaclavas, C4 and assault weapons and then offer to toss out a few wads of Benjamins to your BFFs while you insist that you're going to get your way or blow up half the town.
Well, if you're a tea partier, that's exactly what you do.
Oh, and—BTW: if you
think that we don’t notice that all this flapping about with the volume turned
to max on these little CRs is nothing but continuing to fail to do your job, it’s
time for someone to start trepanning on a mass scale in the US Capitol.
Finally, to get back
to Martin’s little hissy fit about how their tea party efforts to “delay” ACA
implementation is just responding to what “the majority of Americans want”, let
me give you Jon Stewart’s analysis.
People—and Congressmorons—it’s
not a debate, it’s not a negotiation, it’s not a “bridge”. It’s the fucking law—passed
by Congress, signed by the President and upheld by the Supreme Court. That’s
all three branches of our government, just like it’s supposed to work.
Which appears to be
something that sticks in these people’s throats. Although sadly not enough to
choke them permanently.
As we head into the
second week of Shutdown ’13, brought to you by those [insert modifier here] men
and women of the Senate and House of Representatives, I’m thinking about the
hundreds of thousands of federal workers who aren’t suiting up and going to
work.
You know—loan
processors, prosecutors, patent examiners, park rangers, auditors, civilian
support personnel for the military—even if, as of this writing, Defense Secretary
Chuck Hagel has announced that he’s recalling most of the latter. (Ironic,
isn’t it—if Aaron Alexis had held off a couple of weeks before going on his
shooting spree in the Washington Navy Yard, he would have come into a nearly
empty Building 197.) The people who push paper, check boxes, crunch numbers,
investigate fraud and all the rest of the quotidian operations that underlie a
functioning organization, especially one the size of the United States.
You can bitch all you
want about it being cumbersome, maybe overstuffed and under-efficient in some
areas, and blah, blah, blah. The only businesses that aren’t overstuffed are
start-ups, except with egos; and they’re still not immune from inefficiencies.
So give it a rest.
I’m thinking back to
the beginning of 2012, when I faced nearly $100,000 in medical bills because my
COBRA administrator had (as it turns out) illegally cut off my coverage based
on alleged non-receipt of one of my premium payments. And then they denied my
appeal—basically because they thought they held all the cards.
But a US
Department of Labor employee—don’t even recall what his title was—responded
within a day of my email to him, took down all the facts as I could explain
them, and made a few phone calls to my former employer (self-insured; so it was
essentially their money that was at stake). I was so dubious—not only because
that corporation basically snacks on the SEC and eats the EU for lunch, but
because we’re talking federal government bureaucrat…
And yet—a few days
later, suddenly the employer found my explanation of the situation acceptable,
reinstated my coverage, and I felt immeasurably relieved.
Because a government
bureaucrat did his job, his mundane, paper-pushing job. I imagine he’s
considered non-essential these days, and has been barred from working. And
while—in the never-ending kaleidoscoping world of Congressional politics at
least he’s going to be paid for his time away from the job (so what was the
point, again, about shutting down the government?), the current stalemate means
that his work won’t be done.
That could mean that
other people in situations like mine are not having their cases resolved, and
they’re carrying around the kind of burden of worry I was.
So, there’s the cost
of this mess: work not being done, piling up, maybe deprioritized on the return
of the workers. But it’s reminded me of how grateful I was that ET, the DOL
guy, was there and did his job competently and thoroughly when I really needed
an advocate. I was thankful then, and I’m thankful again now for him and all his fellows, on Gratitude
Monday starting Week 2 of the shutdown.
I am not, however,
grateful for those yahoos in Congress who think scoring political points with
their most extreme constituents is more important than having a functioning
government serving the people.
