I’m getting ready to leave for the airport, and Mary sends me a photo from home. She’s been working hard at a garden in the backyard, and I helped put up a crude fence around it. We did a good enough job. Look at that frustrated bunny, excluded from the carrots and squash and who-knows-what-else Mary planted.
It’s probably scheming to tunnel under the flagstones, though.
It’s the time of year when everyone is gearing up for the Minnesota State Fair, and one of the highlights has always been when the local newspapers write up the latest grisly, greasy, deep-fat-fried abominations that vendors will be selling there. I’d never eat the stuff, but the descriptions are always gruesomely entertaining.
But not this year.
The City Pages preview is out, and it is disappointing. These things look tasty and tasteful!
Snow Cap Mini Waffle Sundae: Mini waffle topped with a scoop of Izzy’s cream cheese ice cream, warm real maple syrup and a maraschino cherry.
At Hamline Church Dining Hall, located on the north side of Dan Patch Avenue between Underwood & Cooper streets
Stuffed Cabbage Roll: Cabbage leaves wrapped around seasoned ground pork and rice, prepared with tomato sauce and served with a dinner roll.
At iPierogi, located in the Food Building, south wall
Tipsy Pecan Tart: Pecan pie infused with Dubliner Irish Whiskey and baked in a buttery shortbread shell. Gluten-free.
At Sara’s Tipsy Pies, located in the Food Building, south wall
Turkish Pizza: A Turkish-style cracker-thin flatbread, authentically named Lahmacun, topped with spicy minced beef, onion, tomato, lettuce, cucumber salad, parsley, fresh herbs, a squeeze of lemon and garlic sauce, then rolled or folded.
At Blue Moon Dine-In Theater, located on the northeast corner of Carnes Avenue & Chambers Street
This has got to be some kind of satire, right?
Hey, I guess people have known about that cutting entry in the index to an obstetrics text for a good long while. Here’s an article on the book and general ob-gyn attitudes, in which we learn that the indexer was … the author’s wife! I guess she’d know. But doctors know better now, right?
Recall that preeclampsia was once called toxemia because it was thought to be a build-up of toxins in the maternal blood that had not been secreted through the normal monthly purification of the menstrual cycle. Miscarriages must be caused by the woman doing something she shouldn’t have done, like picking up a bag of groceries. Bottle feeding was superior to breast feeding because men had used science to outsmart the female breast. In fact, for about half of the twentieth century, obstetrics consisted of rendering pregnant women unconscious, cutting a procto-episiotomy, and ripping the child out with forceps. Sounds very efficient and modern. [Yikes. That’s how I was born.]
But surely we don’t think this way today. Have you ever recommended that a woman be on bed rest for any condition in pregnancy? Have you ever mocked a woman with a birth plan? Have you ever told a woman to “take it easy”? Do you believe that a Cesarean delivery is an improvement over vaginal delivery? Do you believe that when women suffer from depression or anxiety it is related to abnormal hormone levels? Much of the worldview of modern obstetric practiced was formed with the belief that women were inept and incapable and that science needed to fix them. Think about that next time you integrate old myths into your practice.
Hey, Dad…
James Clayton Myers 1935-1992
Just thought I’d let you know how things are going. When you left us, I was a weird nerd doing incomprehensible things with insects for a living, with three little bitty kids. Well, I’m still a weird nerd — some things never change — and now I’m doing incomprehensible things with spiders, after doing incomprehensible things with fish for a long time. The kids are grown-up adults now, and have moved out. The oldest works in a law office, the middle boy is a captain in the army, and the youngest is a grad student doing incomprehensible things with computers. You’d be proud of them. We are.
They’ve provided you with two more great-grandchildren. I wish you could meet them, and even more, I wish they could meet you. They’d like you, but then, all kids liked you. All I can do is tell them about you when they’re a little older. Maybe I can take them fishing. Read some comic books. Make some pancakes. Do some tiny fraction of the things you did with me.
Oh yeah, I’m as old as you were now. That feels weird. I’m supposed to be littler and younger than you.
Mom’s still doing fine.
Miss you. Wish you were here.
It’s the only way to be sure. There’s something wrong with those damn people, as the latest incident reveals: a dozen armed police descended on a report from a Dollar Store that a child had shoplifted a doll, and they abused and threatened a young family with murder over it. The force is a gang of thugs drunk on power.
This is madness. Those policemen are not competent or of an appropriate temperament to do their jobs.
I was kind of horrified at the idea of Quentin Tarantino making an R-rated Star Trek movie — it kind of misses the point.
Star Trek is about hope. It’s about exploration and finding the right way to do things, not the easy way. It tells us how we can be better, how we too can find peace among the stars. That thematic line doesn’t seem to line up with any of Tarantino’s previous work, so unless he proves me seriously wrong, this film won’t necessarily capture the spirit of what makes Star Trek so good. It’ll just be The Hateful Eight but in space.
Now, though, something even more incongruous: they’re making a Banana Splits movie. You may remember this if you’re above a certain age, a Saturday morning live-action kids series with goofy people in goofy costumes and goofy plots which wasn’t very good, but nowadays, Hollywood is so desperate for ideas that they’re remaking any old dreck from fifty years ago.
Only to make it “fresh”, they’re remaking it as a horror movie.
I didn’t watch it when I was 12, I’m not going to watch the splatter-movie version when I’m 62.
Hey, you know what else is wrong with this timeline? David Bowie is dead, and Donald Trump is president.
The local paper printed a description of our summer research. Now fortune and glory await!
Somehow, I produced three good-looking, intelligent, worthy children, and they’re now producing beautiful grandchildren.
I’m not sure how this works. I suspect my wife had something to do with it.
I was contacted by someone who said there are simmering complaints in the comments sections at Patheos — some are seeing heavy-handed filtering, in particular, that comments discussing Beliefnet or Patheos itself are getting blocked. You can see some of those concerns expressed in comments to this post by Ed Brayton. I don’t comment on that network, so I haven’t seen it myself.
Interestingly, there is a precursor to this concern from 2017. Several Patheos bloggers jumped ship back then, concerned that the religious conservatives who owned the network were meddling with the content.
Yvonne Aburrow, one of the writers who left Patheos, summed up the feelings of some of the writers: “If there are to be blog aggregators or multi-blog hosting sites, they need to be independently-owned, collective, and egalitarian. I (and many others) are just not comfortable with the corporate world being able to control our content, especially if that corporate world is too closely linked with the evangelical Christian right.”
Huh. Interesting. We recently killed the advertising on Freethoughtblogs (which was managed by Patheos!) because it was pathologically annoying and getting in the way of our ability to just write, at the expense of all of our revenue…yeah, we’re writing for you for free right now. I guess we’re living the dream of Ms Aburrow, but it also means we put a damper on any expansion plans for a while.
