It isn’t necessary to look for evidence that the right wing is insane, but it’s fun. A small example that dropped my jaw on Friday night. I was watching McLaughlin on PBS. I don’t know why I subject myself to it but I’ve always enjoyed the shouting match, and for the past few years McLaughlin’s [...]
A friend and colleague, Dave, appeared in my office on Friday to show me this description of a talk being given here at Cornell on colonialism and Okinawa. Dave is studying Japan and thought he ought to go to the talk, but the description made him wary. He and I like to talk about economics, [...]
If a blogh is not a place to reveal ones deepest shame I don’t know what is. So I am going to confess that for a number of years in high school I was that most shameful thing of all, a Deadhead. I listened to Grateful Dead albums obsessively, I read books about them and [...]
In the late 80’s and early 90’s, when the Soviet Union was collapsing, one of my oldest friends married a Russian woman he had met in the Ukraine. She didn’t love the Soviet Union. She hated it. An only child, she grew up with her mother waiting on long lines to get the simplest things, [...]
On a fall or winter Sunday there is nothing better than a pot of slow-cooked meat with noodles, greens and root vegetables. Yesterday I made a Chinese version with chicken. It took about two hours total and was perfect after a day of raking leaves, turning the garden beds and chopping a pile of old [...]
The library I work in got rid of the last two working typewriters last week. When I arrived here, in 1991, we were still typing labels. Typed labels, especially call number labels, were subject to typos. Printing has errors too, but they are more likely to be cut and paste errors. No one I know [...]
Thomas Hardy: At the War Office, London I Last year I called this world of gaingivings The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly, So charged it seemed with circumstance that brings The tragedy of things II Yet at that censured time no [...]
We were in the city this weekend packing up the last of my mother’s stuff to bring to Ithaca. While in the city I had meant to go to Xi’an Famous Foods on 8th Street and 2nd Avenue. They have amazing hand-pulled noodles: http://xianfoods.com/ which are served with stewed meats, especially lamb spiced with cumin, [...]
I love to cook and Sunday is the one day of the week I can devote the time and energy to make a good meal without stress. Often on Monday I want to post a recipe for the Sunday meal, since cooking and food are one of my passions, and that’s what this blog is [...]
Specimen Tank
contact: jon@lastbender.com