This week’s installment of the Republican race for the honor of running for President bought us the eye-rolling scene of Herman Cain rolling his eyes trying to answer the question, “Do you approve of how Obama handled the Libyan matter?” The media leapt on this as an example of Cain’s lack of knowledge and expertise in foreign policy. What do they think is expertise? If one simply read the daily newspaper or watched the evening news with any regularity over the last year one could readily come up with a range of critiques of Obama’s policy in Libya, none of them expert, though many trenchant and much more interesting than Cain’s fumbling. This as not a lack of expertise in foreign policy. This is an example of a man who clearly is not even involved in the day to day news of world let alone a deep thinker. In...
Mystery Truck with Chimney – source of pizza?
This morning’s jog took me down to the South Bay, then along the Holcim roadway to 3rd St. From there I ran along the back side of LB Furniture to The Basilica. On passing the Basilica, I saw this aluminum step van rigged out with a chimney. A well placed rumormonger informs (can a rumor be information?) that this is a wood-fired organic pizza truck. The black soot around the chimney suggests that it must have been fired up and tested out. From the outside, everything seems ready to go excepting the absent front bumper. Where and when with the pizza?? BTW – watch out for the criminally high speed bumps along the LB Furniture building. I am sure that low riders like my Corolla will loose their oil pans on those things.
Ghostly Gallop 2011
Despite an ominous Saturday evening marked by the threat of 12 inches of snow and a declared snow emergency, the 11th Annual Hudson Area Library Ghostly Gallop 5K Race/ Walk got off Sunday morning (10/30/11). I don’t know who won. I managed 41 minutes (much more than twice the winning time to be sure) and Karen came in at 52 minutes. The kids had their one mile race too.
Cod: a biography of the fish that changed the world by Mark Kurlansky
This wonderful little book (283 pages including 40 pages of recipes) by Mark Kurlansky is a great introduction to viewing history through a different kind of lens. We are all to used to history as told from the point of view of great men (almost always me) and nation states. Codis about the fish, fishing, processed food, ecology, trade, slavery, rum, fishing technologies, food around the whole of the Atlantic and beyond and more. It is a wonderful example of regional history. How did the “sacred cod” sculpture end up hanging from the ceiling of the Massachusetts State House? Or, how did salted cod come to be such a prominent part of the cuisines of Spain, Portugal, France and other countries? How did it come that European fishermen competed for access to cod fisheries along the coast of New England and Canada well before the Pilgrims ever arrived? Where did cod fit...
