Sixth grade love affair

by the talented Johnny Virgil.

And I always used to wonder why the little boys pulled my pigtails.  It was love, sixth grade edition.

Tasty snack

Now that we are discussing the topic of food, I want to mention a snack that bubbe (and I) liked.  It was very simple.

Take a clove of garlic, cut it in half, dip it in salt, and rub it all over a piece of good bakery rye bread.   The bread has to be strong in texture to resist the assault with the garlic.  Do not try this with Wonder Bread.

I don't know whether this snack is Russian, Jewish, or simply poverty-inspired.  If you like raw garlic, you might like it.  I like raw garlic.  I have been known to make pesto with so much garlic it brings tears to your eyes.  Mr Charm and I like it that way.

Bubbe also made a hot cabbage soup that was good.  And beet borsht with sour salts.  Does anyone use sour salts any more?  I haven't seen them for sale in years.

Bubbe and I did not always agree on cuisine.   I thought fat was disgusting.  Bubbe used to make chicken soup with circles of fat floating on top.  I hated them.  I also disliked the carrots and celery bits floating in chicken soup.   All I really wanted to eat was the noodles.  It was tough eating just the noodles or matzoh balls while avoiding the other ingredients of the soup, which perhaps explains how there was so much soup left when I finished.

I also would not eat anything glued together with mayonnaise.  That left out tuna salad, potato salad, and chicken salad, for openers.  Who knows what's in that stuff? I still won't eat chicken salad unless I make it myself and know what's in it.  (It is good with curry powder, raw celery, and green grapes.)

My grandson won't eat any food that touches another food on his plate.  I sympathize.

What was he doing on MSNBC?

What, indeed?

Falling into a trap. that's what.

The Civil Rights Act Paul was (belatedly) discussing was passed in nineteen-something-or-other when Rand Paul was in diapers.  It is settled law,  and any controversy about it is as dead as mutton.  Deader.  No-one is proposing to amend it in any respect:  not the Democrats, the Republicans, the rogue State of Arizona, the Catholic Church, the Ku Klux Klan, the Boy Scouts of America, nobody. 

Why resurrect a dead issue?  To elicit a damning sound bite from a man who talks, not in sound bites, but in philosophic terms.  Gotcha there, Rand!


Rand Paul needs to learn to give snappy answers to stupid questions.

Yeah, I'm sick of politics too. Lets discuss my ancestors

I'm becoming boring around here.  The world is going to hell in a handbasket, but that's no reason for me to feel depressed, is it?

So let's switch the discussion to my female predecessor's lawless ways with neighborhood greenery.  Bubbe, for example, used to scour the neighborhood in search of sorrel, which I understand is a weed.  So you could say bubbe was weeding her neighbor's gardens without permission.

I never saw her picking the stuff, but she would leave the house with an empty paper sack and return with a sack full of sorrel.  With this she made a cold soup called shchav, which nobody liked.  It wasn't vile, it just wasn't that good, as it tasted like soup made of weeds.  Nobody much liked it but we all ate a moderate amount when it was served in order to spare ourselves the inevitable criticism of our eating habits.  I guess bubbe was ahead of her time in championing locally grown food.  Or weeds.

What is it about these ethnic foods that makes people so irrational?  Some relatives of mine who have Swedish relatives are forced to eat lutefisk, which unlike sorrel soup really is vile.  For openers, it's made with lye, and it's all  downhill from there.  I wouldn't even want to be in the same room with it.

Mother, on the other hand, only liked flowers.  In the neighborhood I grew up in, there were alleys behind every row of  houses.  This was where the garbage cans lived, right next to the detached garage at the very rear of the property.   These alleys were only scenic if you enjoyed looking at garages and garbage cans, but mother loved to stroll down them.   Neglected and unloved plants lived alongside these garages, some of them interesting or valuable.  Mother had her own paper sack as well as a trowel, and she helped herself to some of these plants.  Her justification for this was that no-one wanted them anyway or they would have planted them somewhere else.

So far as I know, she was never discovered, and she had some interesting and beautiful plants in her garden, a win-win proposition as far as she was concerned.

Consequences of North Korea's unacceptable behavior

The international community is getting tough.

Important officials from all the countries are going to stand in a circle, hold hands, and boo simultaneously.  Moreover, they will frown meaningfully.

You want tough?  We'll show you tough!

Perfect description of an empty suit

When I read this, it made me want to holler:

He already had the résumé to be a shoo-in candidate. Rich kid, Harvard (editor of the Crimson), reporter at The Washington Post, Yale Law School (editor of the law journal), almost two decades as attorney general, the perfect knowledge-class candidate of the kind favored by modern Democrats.  Yadda, yadda, etc.

One of those Best and Brightest Harvards who have been screwing the country over for the last 16 months.  Self-righteous.  Pompous.  Full of himself.  Perfect.

Mercy, please. 

Link thanks to Instapundit.

Elevating the tone of political discourse...

in the Connecticut Democratic primary.

"He was a coward ... and he's clearly a liar...."

If a Republican said this, would it be name-calling?

My rose bush

Complaining about Greeks

Are Greek civil servants overpaid?

To cut the deficit, Greece must reduce Easter and summer bonuses for its civil servants.
Easter bonuses? Summer Bonuses? They get bonuses because the weather changes?
I wonder if they also get "showing up on time" bonuses, too.

To answer the question:  In my experience,  many civil servants --not all--get paid for showing up at all.  Doing something while at work is considered extra. And they are fireproof.

Seashore, Florida

Jack Reacher's creator lives in a Spartan apartment

Lee Child emulates his hero.

Mr. Child lives in a two-room apartment in the Flatiron district that's architecturally stark, wrapped in white and bereft of rugs, curtains, side tables or accessories.

But he cheats:

Then there's Mr. Child's other apartment on a lower floor, where he keeps many of his possessions. Smaller in size but similar in layout, this writing office has lots of visible books, New Yorker cartoons, Reacher paraphernalia and a "technology museum" consisting of all his old cellphones and his first laptop.

In addition:

He ... has the resources to prevent the sensibilities of his wife of 35 years from getting in the way of his pursuit of what he calls this "aesthetic challenge." She currently spends most of her time at their homes in the south of France and Rye, N.Y.

My readers know that I am obsessed with Mr Child's hero, Jack Reacher, and how he maintains his spartan style without carrying with him a change of underwear.  He does bring a toothbrush with him.  But what of toothpaste, which he never mentions?

Successful teacher

I recently read a book called The Devil to Play by Jasper Rees. It describes how the author masters (sort of) the French horn, after many years of playing the instrument in school.  I've never played a musical instrument, except the piano, at which I was supremely untalented.  I never realized how difficult it is to play the horn and how easy it is to play it wrong.  In the future I will regard horn players with wonder and awe, like mountain climbers.
I can't imagine doing something so difficult.  It's tough enough to sing in a choir, where there are lots of other performers to cover up your mistakes. It takes a lot of courage to face an audience, no matter what kind of performance.

There's also a lot on the history of the instrument,  and the literature written for it, which I considered fascinating.

This is by way of introduction to my main topic, which is how to be a good teacher. In the course of his book, Jasper Rees quotes reports by the various teachers who attempted to instruct him on the horn, and they are always very positive.  Each instructor invariably remarks on how much Jasper has improved during the course of the term.  At the rate he was improving, I'm surprised he did not become a famous, indeed a world-renowned, performer.

As some of you know, I take art lessons.  My art teacher looks at all the student work at the end of a session and invariably says something encouraging; the mastery of color has improved, this shape is well done, etc.  I am sure he sometimes teaches incredibly untalented clods, but you'd never know it by his critiques.  I guess teachers are in the encouragement business, not in the hopelessness business.  Tact is of the essence.

Kvetch*-in-chief

Tell us how you really feel.

Via instapundit.

A kvetch is someone who is always pissing, whining and moaning about something.

Twenty-first century puritans

Puritans enjoy making sure that others don't enjoy themselves too much.

Happy Mother's Day

 

Still waiting for an answer...

to a good question.

[I]f Mexico is so worthy of all this pride and ...respect, how come almost everyone one of those Latino kids’ relatives hauled ass outta there…?

Here's another one for you: Why is it okay for Mexican Americans to carry on like this, but when American Jews stick up for Israel they are accused of their first loyalty being to Israel?

Are Jews too white, too middle-class, too boring to qualify for victim status?

Now I'm worried

Created by Oatmeal

Is there an antidote? Or a vaccine? If not, I'd better not associate with any zombies.

British tax dollars at work...

screwing everybody up.

* Attempts to measure the ash's density were hampered because the main aircraft used by the Meteorological Office for this purpose had been grounded as it was due to be repainted.

* Computers at the Met Office, which earlier forecast a 'barbecue summer' last year and a mild winter for this year, produced a stream of maps predicting the ash would cover a vast area, eventually stretching from Russia to Newfoundland. But across almost all of it, there was virtually no ash at all, and none visible to satellites.

* Though there was some ash over Britain at times during the ban, the maximum density measured by scientists was only about one twentieth of the limit that scientists, the Government, and aircraft and engine manufacturers have now decided is safe.

How to be obscene without really trying

A fashion trend I've missed.

You have to click on the link. This is a clean blog.

Safe for work--if you work in a house of ill repute. Otherwise, not so much.

Musician