Last Bender

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 [...]

Last weekend I was in New York, winding things up with my mother’s apartment, so I thought I’d take a walk down to Wall Street and check out the occupation. I didn’t have any expectations, really, though I thought of it as a protest, and as such assumed I would be participating in a protest. [...]

News coverage of the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to be sporadic, but it’s there if you look for it. Business Week has run articles each day. Last night on WYNN, the show Capital Tonight, with the fabulous Liz Benjamin, devoted it’s evening call-in show to the movement. Many callers were middle aged middle income [...]

  This morning I awoke from my news-free weekend to hear that the Occupy Wall Street action has inspired others and that small groups are gathering across the country. The Wall Street Journal has an article that actually describes what is going on. The New York Times has confined itself to sarcasm, although on Friday [...]

NGUYEN COCHINCHINA SOUTHERN VIETNAM IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES By Li Tana Southeast Asia Program Publications Southeast Asia Program Cornell University Ithaca, NY 1998    http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-AN/102893.htm http://www.jstor.org/stable/20072012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihonmachi Nguyen Cochinchina, Li Tana’s fascinating and vitally important book about the expansion of the Vietnamese into central and south Vietnam, addresses a period and place little [...]

A friend confided to me that he is so disillusioned with the Democratic Party that he would probably not vote for Obama in 2012. He says at this point there is no real difference between the parties, given the failure of the democrats to reform Wall Street. I have heard similar sentiments from others because [...]

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN             So I went to Tony’s. The drive was terrifying. I came down out of the hills and the entrance to the freeway was a maze of stainless steel bladed walls and blinking yellow eye censors on retractable necks. By the time I reached LA Yaanga my knuckles had fused for lack of [...]

I Googled ‘Liberals with Guns’. There is a website, but it reads like a gun fanatic’s screed. I have no love of guns. I didn’t grow up with them and don’t own one. They scare me. But the right wing scares me more. Second Amendment Solutions are available to Leftists too. When AK-47 toting weekend [...]

Last Thursday I took a vacation with my family, a mini jaunt to the Eastern Shore of Maryland where my sister lives. We planned on swimming in her pool and grilling venison and then spending a day at the beach. As Thursday approached so did Irene, a category 3-4 hurricane that was expected to wreak [...]

many friends beside tequila many ears without ice at the bottom many tongues that don’t fret and yet a drink doesn’t talk back shots have no sense they only remind me of what’s gone and good the drama of the stairs of the front door tragedies in gardens by the bent daffodils or single syllables [...]