“One of these is a presidential inauguration in 2017 for a man named Donald Trump and the other is from 2009 for a man named Barack Obama. Can you tell which?”
posted from Bloggeroid
Friday, January 20, 2017
Then v. Now
“One of these is a presidential inauguration in 2017 for a man named Donald Trump and the other is from 2009 for a man named Barack Obama. Can you tell which?”
Thursday, January 19, 2017
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
My fish stew
Salmon, sausage, clams, mussels, shrimp, my Italian tomato sauce, white wine, clam juice.
My, my.
My, my.
Pride & perfection
Started rereading my novel Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones. The best executed work I've done, the distance between goal and deed very, very small. And enough positive feedback, including reviews from strangers at Amazon, to tell me others respond appropriately. Great satisfaction to revisit this. The structure is perfect. The content is intensely personal. Almost no one has read it, but almost no one has tasted my bread either. Perfection and
popularity are two different things.
popularity are two different things.
posted from Bloggeroid
Portland today
... really sucks. A far cry from the bohemian European-feel of the 1980s, when two theater directors and a composer were on the city payroll, when "this is the way Greenwich Village used to be," according to my NY agent, when daily free concerts and shows filled Washington Park through the summer ... how fortunate to have experienced this!
Comes to mind after driving for groceries in rush hour traffic, thaw in full swing. Worse than LA when I was there. The new tech suburb of Silicon Valley.
Best to say about it: great time and place to sell a house!
Comes to mind after driving for groceries in rush hour traffic, thaw in full swing. Worse than LA when I was there. The new tech suburb of Silicon Valley.
Best to say about it: great time and place to sell a house!
posted from Bloggeroid
Reeducation
Once I've disappeared into Russellville, I plan to revisit some of the works that influenced me over the years.
Danzig, Number: the Language of Science
De Rougemoint, Love in the Western World
Brown, Love's Body
Berman, The Reenchantment of the World
Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian
Dos Passos, the USA trilogy
Weill/Brecht, Mahagonny
Listening to West Coast jazz along the way.
Eager to begin!
Danzig, Number: the Language of Science
De Rougemoint, Love in the Western World
Brown, Love's Body
Berman, The Reenchantment of the World
Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian
Dos Passos, the USA trilogy
Weill/Brecht, Mahagonny
Listening to West Coast jazz along the way.
Eager to begin!
posted from Bloggeroid
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
TS on football training
Another great post, two in a row. TS can be engaging in a thoughtful way when he takes time off from bashing Hillary.
http://roundbendpress.blogspot.com/2017/01/training.html
http://roundbendpress.blogspot.com/2017/01/training.html
posted from Bloggeroid
Monday, January 16, 2017
Retrograde
At R, I'll do my writing on the Alpha Smart. That's practically going back to the typewriter! Perfect.
Social Media suck
Too many goddamn folks like to hear themselves pontificate and social media encourage them. This discourages reflection. Discourages silence. Feeds universal dumbing down. We're already dumb enough!
Oops
Tried driving out of here. Big mistake! Lucky to get back safely after around the block.
Wait for the thaw.
Wait for the thaw.
Trump supporter
On the radio, in an alternate universe. Thrilled, because Trump has already brought more jobs here than Obama did in 8 years. Thrilled, because after years of divisiveness, Trump will unify the country.
That's what he thinks, expressed with great passion and joy. Too many like him, and it's hopeless. This guy clearly would pick up a gun to defend his savior.
Which brings this to mind.
Most of my adult life I've considered the most important human question to be: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW? Epistemology. (Hence my short story, "The Epistemological Uncle").
Our schools ignore this, by and large. A college philosophy class might consider it. I was lucky to have a renegade high school teacher, Paul Finot, who used a book entitled How To Lie With Statistics to broach the issue.
My own serious study over the years ended in two parallel concerns: the Scientific Method and Faith. In school and culture, we get too much of the latter and not enough of the former. But these are the yin and yang of knowledge.
That's what he thinks, expressed with great passion and joy. Too many like him, and it's hopeless. This guy clearly would pick up a gun to defend his savior.
Which brings this to mind.
Most of my adult life I've considered the most important human question to be: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU KNOW? Epistemology. (Hence my short story, "The Epistemological Uncle").
Our schools ignore this, by and large. A college philosophy class might consider it. I was lucky to have a renegade high school teacher, Paul Finot, who used a book entitled How To Lie With Statistics to broach the issue.
My own serious study over the years ended in two parallel concerns: the Scientific Method and Faith. In school and culture, we get too much of the latter and not enough of the former. But these are the yin and yang of knowledge.
posted from Bloggeroid
A hit
Harriet couldn't stop eating my oatmeal maple rolls. Making more (for me, ha ha) this morning.
posted from Bloggeroid
Sunday, January 15, 2017
Progressives ...
... who give KGB Putin the benefit of the doubt are naive, in my youthful experience as a Russian linguist in the Army Security Agency. This doesn't mean we should over-react but this dude plays hardball. Russia's Pussy Riot is right on!
posted from Bloggeroid
Cold!
Glad we got dug out yesterday. Need a trip to the store. Needs to get closer to 32, though.
posted from Bloggeroid
Bonanza
4 back to back Pac 12 women's bb games on TV this afternoon, including UCLA-Oregon. Beats the pro playoffs.
Strong/weak
There are things I do very well. Others, not so well.
Since Harriet's heart attack, circumstances have thrust my weaknesses to the forefront. At Russellville I can focus on my strengths again.
O may it actually happen!
Since Harriet's heart attack, circumstances have thrust my weaknesses to the forefront. At Russellville I can focus on my strengths again.
O may it actually happen!
Conflict
Trump will over-react against a considerable protest movement, which will flame protest, enrage Trump and ... what? Martial law?
When Trump is impeached, we get a theocracy.
When Trump is impeached, we get a theocracy.
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Good vibes
A neighbor phoned if we were ok, needed anything. Sweet. I baked them bread.
I hired help to dig us out. Mobile again.
I hired help to dig us out. Mobile again.
Friday, January 13, 2017
Snow, snow, snow
Going nowhere today but I need to do a couple of outdoor chores.
The last work of home ownership before Russellville.
The last work of home ownership before Russellville.
Brrrr
10 degrees this morning. Below freezing all day.
Catch up on paperwork, I guess.
Catch up on paperwork, I guess.
posted from Bloggeroid
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Women's BB
The superior game (no dunks). Tomorrow eve, Ore St at UCLA, Pac 12 network.
posted from Bloggeroid
Kid at Xmas
Too excited to sleep. I think we'll finish the deal this time. Knock on my wooden head. KNOCK KNOCK!
posted from Bloggeroid
Snow
Got out in it. Maybe 10 inches along our long driveway. Snowed in! Hopefully a shovel delivered tomorrow.
Food delivery a lifesaver today. Thaw expected next week.
Food delivery a lifesaver today. Thaw expected next week.
Snowed in
Later today, put on my boots and evaluate our isolation. No thaw for days. May have to hike to store before then.
posted from Bloggeroid
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
Confirmation
... of my local professional irrelevance came today. Disappointing but not surprising.
posted from Bloggeroid
All this snow ...
... and no shovel, which I gave away when it looked like we were moving before winter. Talk about being snowed in.
posted from Bloggeroid
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Outrageous
The leftover tomato sauce. Will make a large batch and freeze dinner portions. Difference with "commercial" us huge.
posted from Bloggeroid
Progress?
Couple last night loved house. Artist wife loved art studio. Expect offer.
More today. Very active market.
More today. Very active market.
posted from Bloggeroid
Limbo bimbo
Behind in a number of basic house chores. Too much vegetating. Catch up day.
posted from Bloggeroid
Oops
Sour dough experiment not going well. Dough dried out. But a little water resurrected it. Onward, see what happens.
Words of wisdom
From article in The Guardian by Jonathan Jones:
"Let's face it: art and serious culture are completely marginal to American life. Trump’s victory proves that."
Very sad but so true! I should have realized this as a young man and ... what?
"Let's face it: art and serious culture are completely marginal to American life. Trump’s victory proves that."
Very sad but so true! I should have realized this as a young man and ... what?
Monday, January 9, 2017
Artisan flour
Never going back. Well, not when baking my artisan breads. Superior f!our in every way, worth the expense. But now can buy it 7 lbs at a time. Saves a tad.
posted from Bloggeroid
Mellow
Great start to week. Scraped ice off car, slid out driveway, and did a few pressing errands.
Now for a quiet afternoon. No phone calls for showing today.
Now for a quiet afternoon. No phone calls for showing today.
Streep's speech
Thank you. I love you all. You’ll have to forgive me. I’ve lost my voice in screaming and lamentation this weekend. And I have lost my mind sometime earlier this year, so I have to read.
Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said, you and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places.
I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola was born in a sharecropper’s cabin in South Carolina, grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in — no, in Ireland, I do believe — and she’s here nominated for playing a small-town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.
Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick ‘em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. They gave me three seconds to say this. An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work.
There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. Okay. Go on with that thing. This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution.
So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists, because we’re going to need them going forward. And they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.
One more thing: Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, ‘Isn’t it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?’ Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy.
We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight. As my friend the dear, departed Princess Leia said to me once, ‘Take your broken heart, make it into art.’ Thank you.
Thank you, Hollywood Foreign Press. Just to pick up on what Hugh Laurie said, you and all of us in this room, really, belong to the most vilified segments in American society right now. Think about it. Hollywood, foreigners and the press. But who are we? And, you know, what is Hollywood anyway? It’s just a bunch of people from other places.
I was born and raised and created in the public schools of New Jersey. Viola was born in a sharecropper’s cabin in South Carolina, grew up in Central Falls, Rhode Island. Sarah Paulson was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn. Sarah Jessica Parker was one of seven or eight kids from Ohio. Amy Adams was born in Italy. Natalie Portman was born in Jerusalem. Where are their birth certificates? And the beautiful Ruth Negga was born in Ethiopia, raised in — no, in Ireland, I do believe — and she’s here nominated for playing a small-town girl from Virginia. Ryan Gosling, like all the nicest people, is Canadian. And Dev Patel was born in Kenya, raised in London, is here for playing an Indian raised in Tasmania.
Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners. If you kick ‘em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts. They gave me three seconds to say this. An actor’s only job is to enter the lives of people who are different from us and let you feel what that feels like. And there were many, many, many powerful performances this year that did exactly that, breathtaking, passionate work.
There was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good. There was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter, someone he outranked in privilege, power, and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it. I still can’t get it out of my head because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kind of gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose. Okay. Go on with that thing. This brings me to the press. We need the principled press to hold power to account, to call them on the carpet for every outrage. That’s why our founders enshrined the press and its freedoms in our constitution.
So I only ask the famously well-heeled Hollywood Foreign Press and all of us in our community to join me in supporting the committee to protect journalists, because we’re going to need them going forward. And they’ll need us to safeguard the truth.
One more thing: Once when I was standing around on the set one day whining about something, we were going to work through supper, or the long hours or whatever, Tommy Lee Jones said to me, ‘Isn’t it such a privilege, Meryl, just to be an actor?’ Yeah, it is. And we have to remind each other of the privilege and the responsibility of the act of empathy.
We should all be very proud of the work Hollywood honors here tonight. As my friend the dear, departed Princess Leia said to me once, ‘Take your broken heart, make it into art.’ Thank you.
posted from Bloggeroid
Sunday, January 8, 2017
Ice storm today
That's what they say. Great film in such a setting.
Sketch sleeps peacefully, the foundation of my comfort.
Sketch sleeps peacefully, the foundation of my comfort.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Scholarly hero
How ‘Sherlock of the library’ cracked the case of Shakespeare’s identity
http://gu.com/p/5jmc4?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Bloggeroid
http://gu.com/p/5jmc4?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Bloggeroid
posted from Bloggeroid
Lots of action
7 recent showings of house. Nice young couple today, said Pdx has almost nothing suitable for them, ours has little competition in this market of first timers.
Rather expect an offer soon. But suitable?
Rather expect an offer soon. But suitable?
posted from Bloggeroid
Friday, January 6, 2017
Thursday, January 5, 2017
Imported tomatoes
... from Italy on porch bright and early. Therefore sauce, 6 hr version. Already delicious, incredible canned tomatoes. I see another keeper coming. Semolina in house for pasta.
posted from Bloggeroid
Wednesday, January 4, 2017
Looking good
Retirement restructure provides better profile than my estimate. This is very good news for the short and long runs both.
posted from Bloggeroid
New adventure
I make my own pasta but not as often as I should. Now am going to try making my own sauce. Found 12 hour recipe too time consuming to ignore. I like to be busy.
Future dinner: my own sauce on my own pasta with my own bread!
Future dinner: my own sauce on my own pasta with my own bread!
posted from Bloggeroid
Aging dough
A week in refrig now. Bake after another week. Sour dough clone? That's what the book says. First time trying it.
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
2 today
...as busy house market continues.
Cold spell! Not above freezing all week. But compared to elsewhere, very lucky!
Adds up to, Just get through the week.
New retirement structure becomes operative. No glitches, please.
Cold spell! Not above freezing all week. But compared to elsewhere, very lucky!
Adds up to, Just get through the week.
New retirement structure becomes operative. No glitches, please.
posted from Bloggeroid
Monday, January 2, 2017
Quotation of the season
"In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act." George Orwell
posted from Bloggeroid
Sunday, January 1, 2017
New Year's Olive Bread
Dusting of snow. Two house shoppers today. Third in a few days. Hot market continues. Third the charm?
Friday, December 30, 2016
Here we go ...
Sure is an active market ... already folks wanting to see the house. Optimistic because both rejects were close. But in no hurry.
posted from Bloggeroid
The up side
I don't have to get into gear for moving yet!
And staying, mortgage goes down, house value goes up.
And staying, mortgage goes down, house value goes up.
posted from Bloggeroid
Here we go again
Sale fell through again. Know why and must deal with it, but this may change all plans. 2016 ends on complete uncertainty.
posted from Bloggeroid
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Superior
Just had slice of my artisan flour bread ... may be the most tasty slice I've ever eaten! A keeper, even at the expense.
posted from Bloggeroid
Ah me ah me
This transition sucks. Sure hope the end is in sight.
I sure wish H wasn't a pack rat. Could be damn easier.
I sure wish H wasn't a pack rat. Could be damn easier.
The final hour
We should have a deal, a bit below asking price. House built in 1936, elec and plumbing freak out inspectors, though no probs in 20 years.
More financial challenges ahead than I prefer. I think it's important to get out of here now.
Crossed fingers.
More financial challenges ahead than I prefer. I think it's important to get out of here now.
Crossed fingers.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Ukulele
Played favorite two songs after weeks away, not too bad. Good muscle memory. Get into regular practice at R.
posted from Bloggeroid
A good day
Need one! Relaxed, a few chores, baking, watched a movie, forgot about car. Like Thurs and Fri to be the same.
posted from Bloggeroid
Dough
I mix bread dough a loaf at a time, and it only has a few days in refrig before I use it. Therefore mixing special batch for 14 days before using, see if it has the sourdough taste as book claims.
Great spring rise this morning. Trying new KA artisan flour. Expensive ... But curious.
LATER. Outstanding bread! Special flour for special occasions?
Eager to make frequent loaves in Russellville.
Great spring rise this morning. Trying new KA artisan flour. Expensive ... But curious.
LATER. Outstanding bread! Special flour for special occasions?
Eager to make frequent loaves in Russellville.
posted from Bloggeroid
Signature scoring
Looking for my own scoring image on loaves. Not easy to create. Will try some.
posted from Bloggeroid
Renewal
Found my second wind and hanging in again.
Will get second opinion on car. Maybe repair for Harriet. I look forward to not driving.
Baking bread, of course. Sanest activity in my life. Bread makes more sense to the old man than literature does.
Inspection was very short this time. Meaning?
Will fill out R forms today.
Nice to be feeling better. More positive.
Will get second opinion on car. Maybe repair for Harriet. I look forward to not driving.
Baking bread, of course. Sanest activity in my life. Bread makes more sense to the old man than literature does.
Inspection was very short this time. Meaning?
Will fill out R forms today.
Nice to be feeling better. More positive.
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Killing time
... while house inspected. A drag. Especially in a dying car, with the dog. At SB presently. Tick tock.
I'm vegetating rest of year, I hope!
I'm vegetating rest of year, I hope!
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