“I’VE NEVER WISHED A MAN dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.”
Whether or not Mr. Twain actually Why Clarence Darrow said these words I do not know. But for those having difficulty cheering one more death, yet no compulsion to weep for the decedent, it seems to capture the moment nicely. (Although Ann‘s “Osama Been Gotten” is nice too.)
— Neal, whose Facebook page today reads “…Having a surreal experience. Fortunately, so is everyone else.”
WANTED TO BE THE FIRST to claim “thinkon” as “a discrete unit of thought,” and so I have. Pbbbt.
NO MATTER HOW ABSORBING OR rewarding the discussion concerning Jedi philosophy, training and practice, someone’s always going to say, “Dude, it’s only a movie.”
TUCKED INTO MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER’S BIBLE is a yellowed sheet of paper containing the flavor of living tradition.
In short, it’s my mom’s recipe for knubel borscht (pronounced “k’nubble”): beef simmered in beet soup and garlic. That’s it: three ingredients, plus heat and time. Perhaps in part due to its simplicity, or that I’ve been eating it for most of my childhood Pesachs, knubel borscht is satisfying on a soul level. It fills the house with a scent at once sweet and savory, fruity and meaty, and which may in fact prove to be the smell of Gan Eden should the requisite air-sampling technology be designed and utilized.
The recipe originally comes from “the old country” (in our case, my Polish g’g’father or his Romanian wife); the original calls for a large pot, 5 quarts of borscht, 7-1/2 pounds of bone-in chuck roast with a packet of soup bones, and a large head of peeled garlic. Add everything together, simmer three hours or more, skimming off the foam; serve on plate and in bowl.
For our Seder Monday night, I created a lower-portion variant which is just as pleasing in all the essentials and doesn’t really suffer for the lack of soup bones. Four ingredients counting the pan:
9″ Pyrex baking pan
1 pound brisket
Quart of borscht
Head of garlic
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Peel and chop garlic. Put brisket in pan fat side up (trim excess fat first). Sprinkle garlic on top, pour over borscht, seal with aluminum foil. Three hours later, you’ll need a knife to cut through the aroma and open the oven. Put the meat on a plate, the soup in a bowl, and revel in the small blessings by which G?d or the quantum membranes thereof sustain and nurture the world.
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE Emerald Incessance, that great sprawling grassland east of epicurean Pormaris, Prosatio Silban was searching for the Exilic Lands’ tastiest meal.
The Incessance was hundreds of square miles of hummock, tussock, occasional trees and overtowering reeds, only inhabited by roving beasts, societal castoffs and furtive oal-hunters — not a likely group among whom to find something described with bliss as every man’s favorite dish, all in one skillet-fried bundle.
“Like my mother’s potato-and-pea fritters, only more so,” sighed one of three wizened indigines of the Cook For Any Price’s hasty acquaintance.
“The Soup Demons take you!” objected his friend. “Roasted oal pancakes, like I hadn’t tasted since my first hunt.”
SET YOUR THOUGHT ON THIS: “I am not this thought.”
Full disclosure: I awoke from a thundering dream last night which seemed to involve everyone I ever met and everywhere I’ve ever been, but set mostly between the Renaissance Pleasure Faire and some sort of concert promotion in a house I was unsuccessfully vacating. (“Thank God,” I said when the alarm went off.) Anyway, I went back to sleep for a few minutes and awoke, thinking “I am not this thought.” It seemed profound, somehow, and important to share, so I packaged it up in a blog post at about 5 a.m. Imagine my surprise when Google disclosed 242,000 instances of the phrase, “I am not this thought.”
I guess it is important.
A REMEMBRANCE OF FEATS PAST is a great excuse for a party — that’s the idea behind “Yuri’s Night,” which celebrates the cracking of the final frontier.
“Human Spaceflight became a reality 50 years ago with the launch of a bell-shaped capsule called “Vostok 1” on April 12th, 1961,” reads http://yurisnight.net, which is coordinating the “World Space Party” next Tuesday. “The capsule was carrying Soviet Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, who took his place in history as the first human to leave the bounds of Earth and enter outer space.”
“Yuri’s Night” (the website) features contests, party and event locations, space history and more. (The partners page alone makes fascinating reading: I consider myself a space geek but had never heard of most of these: “Orphans of Apollo?” “We Want Our Future?” “Vostok Space Beer?” Goshwowboyoboy!)
Some say (me among them) that spaceflight is less a technical achievement than an inevitable stage in the evolution of life. Whether or not you agree, I hope you’ll join me in raising a toast April 12 — or better yet, raising your eyes to the stars.
Favicon Plugin created by Jake Ruston's Wordpress Plugins - Powered by Briefcases and r4 ds card.
