Author Archives: oook

Silly Season unreels

I have to keep reminding myself NOT to become embroiled in electoral nonsense that has almost nothing to do with MY life, but I do keep getting sucked in to caring about the events of the passing stream of the Grand Cloaca of the Media.

Can it be that BOTH Rush Limbaugh AND Barack Obama have it exactly right?

Rush: Palin = Babies, Guns and Jesus (quoted here and elsewhere)

Barack: “I think people’s families are off-limits, and people’s children are especially off-limits. This shouldn’t be part of our politics. It has no relevance to Gov. Palin’s performance as governor or her potential performance as a vice president.” (CNN had this one)

These two may be clearer in the context of Doc Searls’ post which cites Lakoff, and reminds me to listen yet again to Christopher Lydon’s conversation with Lakoff which ought to give your ears something to chew upon.

uborka szezon

My affection for gustatory exotica is, well, a byword. Among the food-oriented (or even -orientated) blogs I follow is Dumneazu: Ethnomusicological Eating East of Everywhere, and today’s posting, on half-sour pickles, would be wonderful even if it didn’t include this bit of lore:

Readers of this blog already know my attachment to Katz’s, the only place in the world where I would not think of complaining about paying $15 for a pastrami sandwich. The sandwich is really only a vehicle for the mustard and pickle. And the New York half-sour garlic pickle is the perfect food for the summer, hardly defined someplace between a raw veg and a salad. At Katz’s you should tip the counterman a dollar – he’ll cut your meat more generously, but more important, he’ll dump a half kilo of mixed pickles on a plate for you. It pays to tip your man at Katz’s.

Almost enough to entice me to New York. Not quite…

Just back from Monhegan

We’ve lived just down the road from the ferry to Monhegan Island for the last 3 years, but hadn’t ventured out there until today. Unfortunately, the digital camera chose this morning to announce its retirement (thus creating an Opportunity for the impending Birthday Month), so I was unable to record anything of Monhegan’s fabled visual wonders. It occurred to me that Flickr might stand in for me, and sure enough a quick search discloses more than 6000 images tagged ‘Monhegan’ and quite a few of the first hundred-odd will give an idea of why people rave about the island. We walked about half of the cliffy Atlantic side, mostly in hazy/foggy obscurity, and clearly it’s worth many return trips.