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Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Dear Will Self,
You don't know me and I don't know you, though I think we've been in some short story anthologies together and we certainly have some friends and acquaintances in common – Iain Sinclair, JG Ballard, Nicholas Royle, for instance. And now those wise people at The Believer think it would be a terrific idea if you and me had an epistolatory exchange on the subject of walking. I suspect they're right.
What do you think?
Geoff Nicholson
Hi Will
Great. So, to get the ball rolling …
In the same week that my publisher agreed to commission The Lost Art of Walking, I set off for a long walk around the Hollywood Hills – not too far from where I currently live. I'd been walking for about half an hour when, for no reason I could see, I stumbled, fell over and broke my arm in three places.
Once I'd been operated on, had metal pins put in my forearm and while I was still in a cast and sling, I thought I'd better start walking again. And I did – being suitably medicated with (prescription) opiates. Naturally I thought of De Quincey, and about you, and I also thought of an old girlfriend of mine who liked to walk around London having taken LSD. She said she observed things – architectural details, street furniture, things in people's windows – that she'd never notice without the benefit of psychedelics.
My own, limited experience of walking in the city while tripping (in the LSD sense) was that it was horrible. I imagined I could read the minds of all the people walking towards me in the street, and they all had profoundly ugly minds.
When I talked to Iain Sinclair about this he said he thought I was very wise to avoid mind-expanding substances while walking since there was something monstrous lurking just below the surface of the city and getting in touch with it was to be avoided. I take his point re psychedelics, and yet wandering around London and even more so New York, a couple of drinks to the good, seems to me one of life's great pleasures. Guy Debord, as far as I can see, was pissed almost continuously.
So, since I think you know infinitely more about addiction than I do, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on being addicted to walking as opposed to being addicted to anything else, possibly even to writing. I know that I feel bad if I haven't walked for a while, and also if I don't write for a while.
What say you?
Well, Geoff,
My drinking and drugging days certainly saw plenty of walking: on acid, on dope (which I smoked, more or less continually, for over 20 years), on coke (a notable coked-up midnight troll included passing the Natural History Museum in South Kensington, with its facade featuring bas reliefs of the Linnaean chain of being, and becoming convinced that it was a small scale model of all organic evolution), and even on opiates. - Although, mostly, one walked through the city to score, (absurd now, but in the late 1970 and early 80s in London, it was actually difficult to get your hands on junk) and then sat still. I always preferred driving on major hallucinogens - sooo radical.
However, as I say, these were hardly derives - but purposive journeys to get or take drugs, it's only the last decade that's seen urban walking undertaken for its own sake (there's a piece called Big Dome in my collection 'Junk Mail' that anatomises the stasis of the sedated flaneur).
Initially, I've been scathing about the idea of walking-as-addiction: walking is expansive - addiction contracts; walking is about oneself-in-the-world, addiction about retreat from the world, walking - or at any rate, the kind you and I do - is about being open to vicissitude, losing control - addiction is a highly controlling undertaking: an attempt to modulate the psyche (and the body) and hence all experience - and so on. However, I have to concede that the 4/4 rhythm, the sense I have on long walks - both urban and rural - of being rather disembodied: a head floating above the ground; the meditational aspect, whereby I allow my mind to 'slip its gears' - all of these do seem akin to the kind of altered experience I sought in drugs. The bizarre thing is that while walking can produce these effects more reliably, I don't feel driven to it too compulsively... yet.
Hi Will,
Driving under the influence of major hallucinogens – radical indeed!! I once started to write a short story (soon abandoned on the grounds that it was all too Ballardian) about a futuristic theme park called Drink Drive World – where people could get as boozed up as they liked, hop into their cars and then drive around like maniacs and crash into each other. If they were hallucinating too that would really have been the icing on the cake. What role pedestrians might have played in this theme park I never quite worked out.
Seriously I do, of course, agree with you about the disembodied, meditative aspect of walking. I often find, especially if I'm walking a long way, that I start out very thoughtful and attentive, observing things, having lofty thoughts, making sentences in my head, but then after a few hours I've stopped all that. I'm just putting one foot in front of the other, just walking. I think this a good thing.
Sebastian Snow, who's one of my favorite walking writers – mildly demented old Etonian who walked the length of South America, 8,700 miles from Tierra del Fuego to the Panama Canal, says in his book The Rucksack Man - "By some transcendental process, I seemed to take on the characteristics of a Shire, my head lowered, resolute, I just plunked one foot in front of t'other, mentally munching nothingness." I like that. I think it's what we all do at a certain point.
And this is one of the problems I've always had with walking in overprogrammatic ways – you know, walking the entire length of Broadway, or back and forth over every bridge that crosses the Thames, or every street in Hampstead Garden Suburb. Sure you can do it but at some point you find yourself wondering whether it actually needs to be done.
My own contribution to ironic, or perhaps I mean absurdist, psychogeography was looking at a map of Manhattan and finding that there were certain streets in the West Village that could, with a bit of forced imagination, be seen as plotting the shape of a giant martini glass. My scheme was to walk this route, stopping at various points for a martini or three. Although this was a realizable project, and although I did in fact complete the route, after the third drink the whole enterprise seemed more rather than less absurd.
I remember an interview of yours where somebody asks you what's the difference between a psychogeographic act and a stunt. And you reply "I'm too old for stunts." Surely not, Mr Self.
PS – according to my publicity folk the proof of The Lost Art of Walking should have arrived at your door today. If so, enjoy.
Lost Art has indeed arrived, esteemed fellow pedophile, and I look forward
to reading it, although I'm somewhat put off by the 3mph collision of methodologies we're involved in, as I note that some of the walks in your book take place in Los Angeles, and I recently completed a week's walking tour of that city with a view to writing an essay entitled 'Walking to Hollywood'. So, I think I may hold off for a while - for fear of contamination. Jesus! such a big world - so few long distance walkers, you
wouldn't have thought there was that much danger of us crossing paths.
I very like the 'munching on mental nothingness' line, and it does apply
to me perfectly well, too. I liken it - again - to meditation: I set off thinking programmatically - or perhaps only troubled by what they call, in German, 'the ear worm', perhaps some ghastly mid-seventies pop ditty the lyric of which I can't chak, or maybe more rarefied composition of lines, tropes and imagery, drawn with great intent from what I see and hear and smell and feel. However, in the fullness of time the steady beat of the feet usually manages to subdue all this. I pursue very high mileages for this reason: twenty-five, thirty - even thirty-five miles in a day. Up at these high mileages (like, I would imagine, high altitudes, although such a notion is inimical to me: I adore mountaineering literature, but only read it when I'm lying in a hammock in the delta), I find that I become - like your Old Etonian - absorbed into the landmass, feeling its contours as you might those of a body one is seeking carnal - or at any rate, sensuous - knowledge of.
As to the gestural - yes, I am too old for walking lobsters on a leash through the Tuileries, or negotiating Florence by dice, or finding my way around Berlin using a map of Hartford, Connecticut. I distrust the idea that the society of the spectacle can be torn down in this fashion - although I do believe long distance walking can undermine it. I cleave to airport walks for this reason: walking to the airport, taking a flight, then walking at the other end. Not only does this negate the way prescribed folkways banalize the sublimity of international jet travel, but because the physical perception of distance is so much more vivid than the mental, it actually feels as if Manhattan has been rammed into the Thames Estuary: in place of the special relationship an hideous miscegenation of cities.
I also agree with you as to the sense of purposelessness engendered by these gestural walks - or stunts. But, I ask you, might the need to feel our peregrinations have a purpose be part of our problem? In other words: should we perhaps not simply accept that all we are doing is going for a walk?
Dear Will,
Oh god yes - the fear of contamination … I was some way into writing my book before I became aware of your Psychogeography columns in the Independent, and of course I didn't dare read any of them. Even so, somebody sent me a copy of your piece "Down and out in Beverly Hills" which bears (let's call 'em) parallels to a piece I published in a very obscure literary magazine that I'm absolutely sure that neither you, nor anybody else, ever read. My piece was called, wouldn't you know it, "A Long Walk in Hollywood." God knows the writing life is hard enough without worrying about this stuff.
What I suspect this may be about is that Englishmen of a certain literary bent - you, me, Aldous Huxley, Rayner Banham, to name very few – we all respond to many of the same things about Los Angeles – its essential strangeness, how it doesn't match with any of our English expectations of what a city is and does.
And yet we try out our English sensibilities and habits on the city, including walking, and we find that they fit rather well: suburbs, well tended gardens, lots of small, quirky shops, a surprising number of decent bookstores. Sure you have to do some driving – but, you know, try living in a small English town without a car these days.
And if LA isn't the most walkable of cities it's all part of the perverse English nature to do what isn't expected, walk where we're not "supposed" to walk. Try walking past the Scientology Celebrity Center if you really want to experience the evil eye from a security guard. Of course I walk past it all the time since it seems to annoy them so much. I haven't quite worked this up into a theory but I think there's something in it.
I come originally from Sheffield, adjacent to the English Peak District, and walkers there still like to think of themselves as part of a great radical tradition that found its apotheosis in the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass, hundreds of walkers asserting their right to roam over land that was used just once a year by the wicked land owner for his grouse shoot.
I know you used to walk with your father when you were a kid, and so did I. My dad was one of those guys who thought that Keep Out and No Trespassing signs applied to everybody except him. One of the more intense and excruciating moments of my childhood was walking with my dad and wandering past Keep Out signs onto somebody's private land and being chased off by a man on a horse who said, "How'd you like it if I came and rode my horse in your garden?" Since we lived in a council house at the time I thought this would have well been worth seeing.
Have you done any interesting trespassing?
Well, I take your point about Englishmen d'un certain age, although I am an Anglo-American myself - American enough, and raised enough in the States not to feel any visceral strangeness about the urban topos there, whether it's LA or Chicago (where I recently walked from the Loop to the nearest Wal-Mart, an economic traverse if you like it was nine miles.)
I so identify with you and your experiences of your father. Surely this is the primary ambulatory relationship? My dad was relatively timorous, although a lion when it came to trespassing, standing on the edge of cliffs - the higher and more vertiginous the better - and licensing laws.
The most embarrassing moment in my childhood came when, on a walking tour (my parents were separated and this is how my father's and mine relationship was conducted), we were thrown out of a pub in Padstow, Cornwall, when he'd bought me a whisky (I was 12).
But recently I've been walking with a still more insouciant trespasser, the artist Antony Gormley. When Antony sees a 'KEEP OUT' signs he charges towards it. We went for a walk coss Foulness Island in the Thames estuary, which has been an army artillery range since 1916 and can only be reached by boat, then traversed by a couple of rights of way. Our objective was the 'broomway' and ancient medieval causeway that is only accessible at low tide, since it heads out from the island on to the esturine mud, then runs for six miles upstream until coming ashore at Southend.
Needless to say the start of it was festooned with STOP! GO BACK! notices, warning of instant dicorporation from unexploded ordinance if you dared to go further. Antony was not to be warned off: 'Oh, they're just saying that,' he bellowed, and ramped on across the mud. It was one of the eeriest and strangest walks I've ever taken - out there in brown verglas, the great stacks of the power station at Canvey Island rising up out of the haze as, like ambulatory ships, we slopped our way upriver.
Whenever I tell people I'm going to walk somewhere utilitarian - like an airport; or even a long distance walk that seems quite prosaic to me, they always ask: 'Is it for charity?' Do you get the same response? And how do you respond to such inanity?
Fellow ambulator Will (I gotta say I'm a bit worried about using that word "pedophile." Yes, yes, WE know what it means but do the purple-lipped censors who read our emails?)
And yes, "Are you doing it for charity?" – one of the worst and dumbest questions known to man. I have a number of snarky replies, but I only deliver them in my head. Examples:
"Ah, I see you almost agree with Dr Johnson, nobody but a blockhead ever walked except for money."
"That's right – thanks to my charitable walking we've pretty much got cancer and AIDs licked."
I have others: don't ask.
I think it brings us back to what you were saying an email ago about walking just for the simple hell of it rather than to chart zones on atmospheric unity (have I got the right Debordian usage there?)
Of course for an author there's another wrinkle to this. So many terrible situations become much more tolerable if you know you can write about them afterwards, and a walk that's too easy and pleasant, and done for no "good" reason, just may not provide enough gutsy raw material. So what was the point of doing it?
I guess Werner Herzog's walk from Munich to Paris - depths of winter, 1974 (written about in "Of Waking In Ice") was the supremely "useful" walk. He did it to save the life of Lotte Eisner, "walking in full faith believing that she would stay alive if I came on foot." And she did. She didn't die until 1983. She edited "Paris, Texas" a movie with two of cinema's greatest walking scenes.
I have a personal functionalist Herzogian humiliation. I wanted to get Herzog to say something flattering about my book, that could be emblazoned across the jacket, ("Walking is virtue – Nicholson is a God among walkers" type of thing) and I knew that sending a copy to his production office wasn't going to work, so I found his home address, and I took it over there in person, on foot and dropped it in his mailbox with a humble and (I thought) winning letter, in full faith that having walked all the way from my house to his (13 miles round trip, including a jaunt up and down Laurel Canyon Boulevard - a nightmare for a walker, steep gradient, blind curves, no sidewalk, and fast moving drivers who never expect in their wildest dreams expect to see some idiot pedestrian in the road) that I'd get what I wanted. My full faith was misplaced. No word as yet from Mr H.
I once asked Iain S. what he thought was the worst place to walk in London – he reckoned the Rotherhithe tunnel.
Any improvement on that?
Ha! Small world, Geoff.
On my 120 mile circumambulation of Los Angeles, the only really dicey moment - I simply don't count being dicked by gun crews in South-Central, this is standard - came on Laurel Canyon Drive. Foolishly, I had ventured up through the park to Mullholland Drive on the (non-pedophile) assurance that there would be a sidewalk on Laurel Canyon. When I got there, there was nothing but the Divine Right of Drivers in full spate, and darkness was falling fast. I set off down the canyon, but about half way to Sunset Boulevard seriously feared for my life (I was having to cross from side to side to avoid being invisible to drivers on the bends), and ended up cowering in a carport.
I was saved by a Virgil, in the form of a guy in silk shorts and trim goatee who emerged from nowhere, walking insouciantly down the gutter of the roadway. He told me he walked up and down all the time to his house, and that sometimes in the dead of night he went down on his extra-length skateboard. As Burroughs observed: 'You wade through shit - and then there's a Johnson.'
I agree: some purpose is required for a long walk, and what better purpose than having to do something functional. On my LA walk I went to meet with Michael Lynton at Sony Pictures in Culver City. It took me a day to walk there from Hollywood, and then a day to get back. So what if the meeting was only half an hour long.
Your Herzogian experience sounds ... well, rather romantic, frankly. Difficult to imagine Aguirre turning from the wrath of God to blurb a book.
I've been thinking about what you said somewhere back there about feeling the landscape's contours as you might those of a body. There was a time when I was trying to "sex up" my book by writing about the connections between walking and sex.
In the days when I had a real job and worked in an office, I lived for the lunch hour when I could get out and walk the streets and look at all the women who were also walking the streets in their lunch hour. Once in a while some looked back but I don't flatter myself that anyone ever thought I had a sexy walk. In his book The Flaneur Edmund White says that in Paris, heterosexuals cruise each other just as much as homosexuals: I've yet to be convinced. (Incidentally my spell check suggests Flamer as a correction for Flaneur.)
Gay cruising sounds really difficult and time consuming to me: walking up and down at a park or dockside or somewhere, eyeing each other, making some kind of complex negotiation based on body language or eye contact or whatever. The walking is definitely a part of the seduction process, but I suppose it's not part of actually having sex. So I began making a list of the ways that walking was like sex and ways it wasn 't.
Essential similarities: They're both basic, simple, repetitive activities that just about everybody does, and yet they're both capable of great sophistication and elaboration. They can both be sources of fantastic pleasure, but there are times when they can both feel like hard work. They're both things that some people like to do alone, that some like to do with just one other person, and that others like to do in groups of various sizes. And some people like to wear special clothing while they're doing it.
And then, essential differences: One: although I'm sure you can catch various diseases while you're walking, they're different from the sort you can catch while having sex. Two: whereas walking is the kind of activity that can be happily and legally undertaken in public with a dog ...
At that point I abandoned my ruminations, this seemed too flippant even by my standards. I score pretty high on flippancy.
So, if you have some final thoughts about the sexuality of pedestrianism, something suitably steeped in sensual gravitas, that might be a perfect way to bring this correspondence to a close.
Ah, yes, Geoff -
Walking and sex. In my youth the madman lollopped ahead, his drool spattering the thighs of oncoming walkers, and I day-dreamed of random acts of al fresco lovemaking. But I am old, Father Geoff, and nowadays I have to tug the fucker along by his chain, and he only ever drools on me.
Well, I am being a little disingenuous when I suggest that I'm entirely beyond such things - but not altogether. Recent comments, in conjunction with promoting my
'Psychogeography' book, and that were also made at an 'in conversation' Iain Sinclair and
I undertook at the V&A in London, led to something of a backlash: these were to the effect that while plenty of women are dedicated walkers, the conjunction between less innate interest in the minutiae of spatial orientation, and the quite understandable anxiety that can afflict women walking alone in strange places, has meant - I think - that the kind of stuff we do is more of a male preserve. The obvious examples of women walker/writers were slung back at me - but I can't help but believe that these are the exceptions rather than the rule.
And perhaps that's where the de-sexing of walking exists for me: since I am, de facto, heterosexual, an extempore - or even planned - ambulatory sexual encounter is not likely. As to cruising, I don't agree - I think it sounds like enormous fun, and quite understand that even with greater liberalization, gay people - men in particular! - till feel the urge to go out, have a walk, and score. Bliss!
Hope this is a good end to it all,
Very best
That'll do nicely, walk on blissfully till our paths cross again.
Copyright Geoff Nicholson/Will Self 2008
Posted by GeoffNIcholson at 12:27 PM 2 comments:
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Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Furry Technical Support
25 comments:
Great snoopervising Shiner. I'm glad your internet is back- dogs should never be without internet! :)ReplyDelete
It's hard to get anything done without snoopervision! ;)ReplyDelete
Snoop-paw-vision is what all peeps need. We thought the limerick was well naughty and funny. Nice to see you back. Have a wonderful Wednesday.ReplyDelete
Best wishes Molly
It's a darn good thing you have such excellent tech support!ReplyDelete
I hope thise techy monsters leave you alone!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMarch 5, 2014 at 8:19 AM
I know Shiner's nickname BOL! Yay for dog daddy and his fourlegged snoopervisor! To be disconnected from www and the world is awful, I know. btw: what have we done before the internet? no idea :o)ReplyDelete
I didn't know it was Shiner's birthday. Happy belated Birthday, Shiner!!ReplyDelete
Glad you're back online! Hope you've got rid of the gremlins nowReplyDelete
shiner...chek N see if niblet putted a treet in de hard drive...that will mess stuff up...happenz round heer all de time... onlee with halibutt !!ReplyDelete
Glad to see you are back in action!ReplyDelete
Happy belated bday Shiner! :) Glad you guys got your internet back!ReplyDelete
- AnonymousMarch 5, 2014 at 12:29 PM
Great job Shiner! Woof!ReplyDelete
LOL, snoopervising! That is such a great word. I hope Shiner had a pawsome birthday!ReplyDelete
We sympathize with you as we have had a lot of outages too recently. Ended up having a whole new line put in a few weeks ago so its been a bit better. The worst part is it was always going out when I had a deadline!ReplyDeleteReplies
Yikes! Glad I finished my deadline on Monday. Is it because of the snow? We bought a new router and that seems to have fixed the problem now. No more outages. I guess it was just old because it's been going on and off for the past few months.Delete
I'm glad to see you were able to get things back up and running. Technical difficulties are the worst! It is also good to see that Shiner was able to keep her Daddy in line while he worked on things. Guys always need a little supervision ;)ReplyDelete
Glad Shiner was such a big help!ReplyDelete
Great job, Shiner! What would the humans do without you? :)ReplyDelete
Yay! We're glad you're back.ReplyDelete
Well done, Shiner! We missed seeing you guys on Facebook :-)ReplyDelete
You can always discover your dog's vast knowledge of repairs as soon as you start to work on something! They are also excellent gardeners and great with plumbing.ReplyDelete
Internet issues can be frustrating.ReplyDelete


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It's Tray Tuesday and today I'm sharing the watercoloring process I used on these cards over on the Gossamer Blue blog. In my tray, which is a vintage wooden utensil tray, I have the Get Happy holiday collection from Gossamer Blue.
Get Happy is wonderful holiday collection of patterned papers, embellishments and stamps. There's the traditional red and green plus a lot of fun colors and patterns mixed it. Just what I like in a scrapbooking collection.
So these are the holiday cards I created with the Get Happy collection. I mixed in my own cardstock bases, ledger paper, twine and sentiments.
All of the focal images on the cards are images from the Get Happy stamp set. I used journaling cards for easy bases and embossed all the images with gold embossing powder. Next I got out my watercolor set and mixed up a nice holiday green that coordinated with the patterned papers from Get Happy. I first painted over and around my embossed images with clean water. Then I dipped my brush into the green paint and let it bleed into the water soaked paper.
Lots of paper layer and some red stitching for a fun, homespun look.
I finished my cards with lots of wood veneer pieces, hand cut flags, paper clips, typed sentiments and gold baker's twine.
The gold embossing and all the little gold finishing touches really make the cards sparkle and shine.
Add in some woodgrain paper and wood accents and you a little woodland look to holiday projects.
Six holiday cards in my stash. That's a good thing.
It's early in the season so you could definitely break the steps down into separate crafting sessions. Maybe do the embossing one day and the watercoloring another day. Maybe the rest of your items could be organized and ready to go in a fun tray. You know I love that idea.
Thanks for stopping by today. I haven't forgotten about Halloween this week...or Thanksgiving...but it's always good to see samples and have a plan, right? While we're talking about the Christmas holiday....the December Memories kit is coming right along. Final products are making their way to Lori and we'll be seeing more sneaks hopefully soon. So stay tuned. :)


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I also wondered why a Catholic Church would choose Aida as a Teen show. The story is about a Nubian princess captured by Egyptians and kept as a slave. She falls in love with an Egyptian soldier and sacrifices herself for him in the end.
It sounds like a bummer, but the theme is full of ethical lessons like being true to yourself and upholding your responsibilities to others, which are noble values appropriately presented in a Church by a large cast of very capable teens.
Two of the leads, Radames and Amneris, are played by Cal High juniors Graham Harper and Kelly Iaquinta. Kim Santana, a senior from San Ramon Valley High School, played Aida. The rest of the large cast is from throughout the tri-valley.
In fact the young cast was so good it made me wonder why Glee wasn't cast with real high-school-age talent instead of professional performers in their twenties. I always felt that Doogie Howser MD was a successful TV show because Neil Patrick Harris really was 16 when he played the 16-year-old Doctor.
The auditorium, actually the basketball court, was completely filled. The audience was very attentive and appreciative, giving Kim Santana and the ensemble a standing ovation at the end.
Three more performances of Aida the Musical at St. Joan of Arc Church are scheduled for March 25, 26, and 27. Tickets are only $15 a person and seating is open. I recommend sitting in the center section opposite the band for the best view.


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|The tattoo phenomenon
|Why I got my tattoo
|Love and care of your new tattoo
|Two Golden Rules of Being a Woman
|body modification
|kanji tattoo
|genetic tattoos
|For those who wear glasses
|Getting a tattoo
|Tattoo You
|The principles of nuclear weapon safety and meeting girls are remarkably similar
|Love & Lies
|You know you're a geek when...
|If someone asks you if you're a god, you say, "Yes!"
|bad baby name ideas
|The Chatterbox is NOT the search box!
|body art
|barcode tattoo
|soda condom bracelet
|Herve Villechaize


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By Raynard Jackson
NNPA Columnist
Four years ago, President Obama made history by becoming the first Black president in the history of the U.S. I would like to think that even those who did not support his candidacy were proud of what the American people demonstrated—that anything is possible within our system of government. Play by the rules, work hard, present a compelling agenda and the American people will respond.
Obama was by far a much better candidate than John McCain and presented a more inspiring vision for America. McCain had much more substance, but an inability to speak directly to the American people.
Four years later, "Hope and Change" has turned in to "I Hope He Changes." This is a common sentiment running through the Black community. They were disappointed in the total silence of the Obama administration's on issues such s the high unemployment rate within the Black community, the lack of engagement within the continent of Africa, and the seeming lack of attention paid to domestic issues.
I will remind you that Blacks gave Obama 96 percent of their vote in 2008 and thus far has little to show for it. Gays and lesbians (two percent of the electorate has seen tangible results from Obama—repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell; the push to recognize homosexual marriage, etc.). Illegal immigrants have seen tangible results from Obama (the push for amnesty, the Dream Act, etc.). But Blacks have seen and heard speeches—"get out of bed, put your marching shoes on and stop complaining."
So, the question I have been pondering is this: Which is more important to the Black community—someone who makes them feel good (Obama) or someone who secures tangible legislation to address their concerns?
Psychologically speaking, no one can make you feel good if you don't already feel good about yourself. No one can make you feel loved if you don't already love yourself. You never hear homosexuals or illegals speaking in terms of Obama making them feel good. They want something specific or they are willing to withhold their support.
I think there is strong consensus within the Black community that the unemployment rate is at epidemic proportions and would not be tolerated within other communities. But we have shown no willingness to do anything about it other than complain.
Remember former chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus once said that "if Obama was White, we would be marching on the White House." So, why should any person take the Black community seriously when there is no fear of retribution? Was it not LBJ who said, "Better to be feared than to be loved?"
But, I am curious as to how we can have one standard for a Black president and another one for a White one? Should we not be marching on the White House regardless of color, if Black unemployment is double digits? Should we not be marching on the White House when more than 500 Blacks have been killed in Chicago (and many of them young children) and a sitting president barely mentions it publicly? Should we not be marching on the White House when our president is rebuilding countries all over the world, while ours is falling apart?
I, like most Americans, was thrilled to see a Black person elected president. But, I can't get a job based on a feeling, I can't get a student loan because I feel good, I can't prevent crime from happening because I feel good. At some point, you must take away the emotional (feeling good) and replace that with something tangible (legislation).
Our presidents represent the whole of the U.S., but sometimes different groups need special attention based on their unique needs. This is one area where Obama has been grossly derelict. But, again, what are Blacks prepared to do to get him to act? Thus far, the answer has been absolutely nothing.
So, in a kind of weird way, Obama has made it much easier for future White presidents to ignore Blacks, regardless of party. For example, we know the next president will be White, so what happens when he doesn't do something Blacks think he should and his response is, "You didn't ask Obama for this, so why should I do it for you?" This is strictly a hypothetical question, but I can guarantee that future presidents and their staffs will at least think these thoughts. How does the Black community deal with this question?
This is the problems Blacks have created for themselves by giving Obama a pass on many issues simply because he is Black. We must become more politically sophisticated and less emotional. Despite the historic nature of his presidency, his lack of a real relationship with the Black community remains a mystery.
Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC., a Washington, D.C.-based public relations/government affairs firm. He can be reached through his Web site, www.raynardjackson.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @raynard1223.


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Bananas. Containing three natural sugars – sucrose, fructose and glucose combined with fiber, a banana gives an instant, sustained and substantial boost of energy. Research has proven that just two bananas provide enough energy for a strenuous 90-minute workout. No wonder the banana is the number one fruit with the world's leading athletes. But energy isn't the only way a banana can help us keep fit. It can also help overcome or prevent a substantial number of illnesses and conditions, making it a must to add to our daily diet.
Anemia: High in iron, bananas can stimulate the production of hemoglobin in the blood and so helps in cases of anemia.
Blood Pressure: This unique tropical fruit is extremely high in potassium yet low in salt, making it the perfect to beat blood pressure. So much so, the US Food and Drug Administration has just allowed the banana industry to make official claims for the fruit's ability to reduce the risk of blood pressure and stroke.
Brain Power: 200 students at a Twickenham (Middlesex) school were helped through their exams this year by eating bananas at breakfast, break, and lunch in a bid to boost their brain power. Research has shown that the potassium-packed fruit can assist learning by making pupils more alert. Constipation: High in fiber, including bananas in the diet can help restore normal bowel action, helping to overcome the problem without resorting to laxatives.
Depression: According to a recent survey undertaken by MIND amongst people suffering from depression, many felt much better after eating a banana. This is because bananas contain tryptophan, a type of protein that the body converts into serotonin, known to make you relax, improve your mood and generally make you feel happier.
Hangovers: One of the quickest ways of curing a hangover is to make a banana milkshake, sweetened with honey. The banana calms the stomach and, with the help of the honey, builds up depleted blood sugar levels, while the milk soothes and re-hydrates your system.
Heartburn: Bananas have a natural antacid effect in the body, so if you suffer from heartburn, try eating a banana for soothing relief.
Morning Sickness: Snacking on bananas between meals helps to keep blood sugar levels up and avoid morning sickness.
Mosquito Bites: Before reaching for the insect bite cream, try rubbing the affected area with the inside of a banana skin. Many people find it amazingly successful at reducing swelling and irritation.
Nerves: Bananas are high in B vitamins that help calm the nervous system.
Overweight and at work? Studies at the Institute of Psychology in Austria found pressure at work leads to gorging on comfort food like chocolate and crisps. Looking at 5,000 hospital patients, researchers found the most obese were more likely to be in high-pressure jobs. The report concluded that, to avoid panic-induced food cravings, we need to control our blood sugar levels by snacking on high carbohydrate foods every two hours to keep levels steady.
PMS: Forget the pills – eat a banana. The vitamin B6 it contains regulates blood glucose levels, which can affect your mood.
Rose Bushes: Blend one skin (soft Part) with blender full of water and pour on base of Rose Bush. Promotes healthy roots and new growth.
Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD): Bananas can help SAD sufferers because they contain the natural mood enhancer, tryptophan.
Smoking: Bananas can also help people trying to give up smoking. The B6, B12 they contain, as well as the potassium and magnesium found in them, help the body recover from the effects of nicotine withdrawal.
Stress: Potassium is a vital mineral, which helps normalize the heartbeat, sends oxygen to the brain and regulates your body's water balance. When we are stressed, our metabolic rate rises, thereby reducing our potassium levels. These can be rebalanced with the help of a high-potassium banana snack.
Strokes: According to research in "The New England Journal of Medicine," eating bananas as part of a regular diet can cut the risk of death by strokes by as much as 40%!
Temperature Control: Many other cultures see bananas as a "cooling" fruit that can lower both the physical and emotional temperature of expectant mothers. In Thailand, for example, pregnant women eat bananas to ensure their baby is born with a cool temperature.
Ulcers: The banana is used as the dietary food against intestinal disorders because of its soft texture and smoothness. It is the only raw fruit that can be eaten without distress in over-chronicler cases. It also neutralizes over-acidity and reduces irritation by coating the lining of the stomach.
Warts: Those keen on natural alternatives swear that if you want to kill off a wart, take a piece of banana skin and place it on the wart, with the yellow side out. Carefully hold the skin in place with a plaster or surgical tape!
So, a banana really is a natural remedy for many ills. When you compare it to an apple, it has four times the protein, twice the carbohydrate, three times the phosphorus, five times the vitamin A and iron, and twice the other vitamins and minerals. It is also rich in potassium and is one of the best value foods around. So maybe its time to change that well-known phrase so that we say,
"A banana a day keeps the doctor away!"
The compiler of this article is Dr. P. Bradley Carey, who posted it at the World Natural Health Organization in 2003. There are many copies of it on the internet, so this may not have been the real source. I haven't been able to verify if all the stuff in the article is true, but it's true that bananas have many vitamins and minerals anyway.
According to TruthOrFiction.Com:
As a natural fruit, the banana undoubtedly has nutritional advantages but whether this email outlines them accurately remains to be seen.
TruthOrfiction.com checked with one of the biggest distributors of bananas, the Chiquita Banana Company. A spokesperson told us that bananas are a wholesome, nutritious food and a good source of important vitamins, minerals, and macro nutrients including vitamin C, potassium, vitamin B6, and dietary fiber. He said that although he would like to say that everything in the eRumor is true, he is not able to and added that much of the email is based on assumption.
Many of the statements in the email are made without any substantiation.


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It all comes down to this.
Glacier Peak's Amy Eloise-Neale is looking for her third straight win — and, possibly, third straight course record — in Saturday's Nike National Cross Country championship (NXN) in Portland.
Neale is coming off wins, and record setting performances, in the NXN Northwest championship and Border Clash. The former came the week after she won the 3A state title in her final official cross country race of her high school career.
The following postseason races are with clubs and organizations. Athletes don't wear their high school uniforms.
The Glacier Peak senior won the NXN Northwest championship in Boise, with a time of 17 minutes, 29.3 seconds, finishing ahead of longtime rival Katie Knight of North Central (17:40.1). The two recently committed to run together at the University of Washington next year.
On Nov. 18, Neale followed that win up with a victory in the Nike Border Clash at the Nike Campus in Beaverton, Ore. Neale set another course record, finishing in a time of 15:33, one second ahead of second-place finisher Alexa Efraimson. Knight finished third.
Now Neale looks to finish on top in the final race, the NXN championship.
One preview has Neale finishing third, behind defending champion Sarah Baxter, a junior from Simi Valley, Calif., and Bronxville, N.Y. junior Mary Cain.
The article says she's "definitely a threat" to win the race.
Another preview ranks Neale as the No. 4 runner in the U.S. This preview notes that the weather in Oregon may give Neale a home-course advantage.
"And remember," the preview states, "if conditions are really challenging out there with rain and mud Saturday, Neale is as strong as anyone in the field."
It is Neale's fourth NXN championship, with her finishing 14th, 3rd and 5th in previous races.
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Image: MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE
The product of the oldest chemical reaction studied by man<, alcohol, continues to challenge researchers. Since the original work on alcohol's neurological effects in the early 20th century, new theories have regularly emerged. What we have learned is that alcohol is a sedative-hypnotic in the acute intoxication phase for most patients. But it diminishes the quality of sleep. Individuals with sleep apnea often experience longer and more severe apneic episodes and hypoxia, or oxygen deprivation, after drinking alcohol.
In other individuals, though, alcohol may act as a stimulant. Indeed, its association with violent and self-abusive behavior is well documented. At intoxicating levels, alcohol is a vasodilator (it causes blood vessels to relax and widen), but at even higher levels, it becomes a vasoconstrictor, shrinking the vessels and increasing blood pressure, exacerbating such conditions as migraine headaches and frostbite. Researchers have also thoroughly documented the effects of alcohol on the developing fetus. Approximately one third of all babies born to alcoholic mothers will develop Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Effects (FAS or FAE), causing central nervous system (CNS) dysfunctions including Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and impaired IQ. There are also growth and facial abnormalities associated with these infants.
In the early 1900s, H. Meyer and Charles Ernest Overton originally theorized that the effect of alcohol was achieved by altering the lipid environment of cell membranes. This theory, however, requires much higher concentrations of alcohol than are clinically observed. A recent theory, supported by several researchers, pins alcohol's effect on voltage and ligand-gated ion channels that control neuronal activity. Two distinct ligand-gated channels have been identified, inhibitory ones (GABA receptors and strychnine-sensitive glycine receptors) and excitatory ones (N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) and non-NMDA glutamate-activated channels and the 5HT3 subtype of serotonin receptors).
The inhibitory aspect occurs due to a hyperpolarization of neurons, secondary to an influx of chloride ions. The neuron becomes less likely to achieve the threshold membrane potential. The excitatory receptor is dependent on the NMDA and non-NMDA glutamate receptors that control the influx of sodium and calcium, which bind to endogenous neurotransmitters (glutamate or aspartate) and depolarize the neuronal membrane. The NMDA receptor seems to have a high permiability to calcium, which acts as a catalyst to several intracellular events.
Chronic exposure to alcohol seems to alter the NMDA receptors and this may play a role in the clinical symptoms of alcohol withdrawal. In vitro studies have demonstrated an increase in the binding sites for MK801 (dizocilpine) in neurons chronically exposed to alcohol. This rise may account for the acclimation process, in which greater concentrations of alcohol are needed to cause experimental and clinical symptoms of intoxication. NMDA can cause seizure activity. Mice that have been exposed to chronically elevated levels of alcohol reveal increased numbers of NMDA receptors and NMDA related seizure activity. The NMDA antagonist MK801 has been shown to decrease the severity of seizures in these mice during withdrawal. Through a complex process of cell membrane ion pumps and neurotransmitter stimulation, the multi-faceted effects of alcohol and alcohol withdrawal are becoming better understood.


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The Unsung Heroes
"In the days of Matityahu… and his sons" is the way in which we begin our special prayer of thanks on Chanukah which encapsulates the great miracle that took place thousands of years ago at this time of the year. When we mention in this prayer that with Heavenly help "the many were delivered into the hands of the few" we automatically conjure up the image of Yehuda Macabee and the other heroes who waged war against the mighty Greek army.
But we must not forget the unsung heroes of the Greek exile – those Jews who suffered torture and death as they defied the enemy's ban on religious practice. We must honor their memory by reading and relating to our children the accounts of their self-sacrifice in remaining faithful to their G-d.
We must not make the mistake of members of the public who idolize those who actively resisted the Nazis and neglect to pay tribute to those Jews in the death camps who risked their lives in order to perform mitzvot to the best of their ability.
It is the failure of Yad Vashem and other Holocaust memorial bodies to pay such tribute which has been criticized by observant Jews as an insult to the heroism of those who kept Judaism alive. Only by appreciating their heroism and emulating their self-sacrifice can we be worthy of enjoying Israel forever.


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The early evolution of the Solar system produced a vast variety of bodies of different size, composition, and structure. On one hand, small bodies (asteroids, comets, dwarf planets) are clustered in the asteroid belt and in the outer Solar system, while rocky planets populate its inner part and gas rich planets its outer part. On the other hand, for small bodies one can distinguish between the iron-silicate asteroids with ordinary chondritic composition (like Lutetia and Vesta) and, e.g., ice-silicate bodies whose composition is related to the carbonaceous chondritic meteorites and which could contain a large amount of water ice (like the dwarf planet Ceres and the icy satellites). Furthermore, large variation of the surface properties can be observed. Vesta, the second-most massive body in the asteroid belt, displays a dry, basaltic surface produced by igneous processes indicating a differentiated structure, while Lutetia, having a smaller radius of ≈ 60 km, retained its native surface material and may still be partially differentiated. Also, among the bodies related to carbonaceous chondrites, Ceres´ surface is characterized by OH-bearing minerals, while the primary component of the Palladian surface material is a silicate that is low in iron and water. Most of the objects we observe now in the Solar system can be integrated into an accretion sequence beginning with kilometre-sized planetesimals which formed by collision and adhesion of dust grains. Larger planetesimals like Lutetia whose formation was dominated by gravitational attraction of smaller bodies follow, then the dwarf planets like Vesta which probably accreted in a runaway process dominating a swarm of smaller planetesimals, and, finally, planetary embryos like Mars, from which eventually Earth formed by a number of collisions.
Abbildung 1: The temperature fields (left panels) and the velocity fields (right panels) for a purely internally heated planetesimal with a radius of 260 km (approximately Vesta-sized) with temperature dependent viscosity. The upper panels show a conducting case and the lower panels a case where the interior convects at the Rayleigh number Ra equal 5·106 (DLR) .
The evolution of an asteroid begins with its accretion from the protoplanetary dust as a porous aggregate. Heating by radioactive decay combined with the self-gravity leads to the substantial compaction at rather low temperatures. Provided strong radiogenic heating by conduction, the iron phase and subsequently the silicate phase starts to melt upon reaching the respective solidus temperatures. The radioactive isotope 26Al partitions among other incompatible elements into the silicate melt. If melting is wide spread enough, the asteroid can differentiate (at least partially) via porous flow into an iron core and a silicate mantle. Differentiation is initiated by the iron melt sinking downward and silicate melt percolating towards the surface. The mantle and core regions, in which the partial melt increases above ≈ 50 %, start convecting. The asteroid cools due to convection and after the melt fractions drop below ≈ 50 % by conduction and melt heat transport to the sub-solidus temperatures. After cooling below the solidus, no further structural changes of the interior can be expected except by external influence such as impacts.
It is not easily understood, what are the driving forces of the processes, which have led to development of this structure variety early after the formation of the Solar system. As it is widely accepted, the differentiation of the planetary objects requires melting. In contrast to the terrestrial planets, one must account for significantly smaller radii, masses and gravity and significantly smaller accretion energies for planetesimals. Because of the latter and since the smaller sizes imply larger surface to volume ratios it must be concluded that the differentiation of planetesimals requires early, intense heat sources. These heat sources must have produced much more power than the decay of U, Th and K, the major heat source for the planets in addition to accretion heating. A widely accepted candidate is the radiogenic decay of the short-lived nuclide 26Al. Its widespread presence in the early solar system has been verified from the study of calcium-aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs) and chondrules. In contrast to the long-lived radioactive elements, 26Al features several orders of magnitude higher specific power but a half-life time of only 0.717 Ma. Most recently revised estimates of the (60Fe/56Fe) concentration ratio in the early Solar system raise the possibility that the short lived nuclide 60Fe could also contribute significantly to heating and melting even in the absence of other heat sources. In particular, a redistribution of Fe with core formation makes this heat source specifically interesting for the discussion of the thermal and magnetic evolution of planetesimals.


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Famously, Solovay showed that, if $\textrm{ZFC}$ plus $\textrm{IC}$ (the existence of an inaccessible cardinal) is consistent, then so is $\textrm{ZF}$ plus $\textrm{DC}$ (dependent choice) plus $\textrm{LM}$ (all subsets of $\mathbb{R}$ are Lebesgue measurable). And Shelah showed that, conversely, the consistency of $\textrm{ZF}+\textrm{DC}+\textrm{LM}$ implies the consistency of $\textrm{ZFC}+\textrm{IC}$.
Since $\textrm{LM}$ is a statement of third-order arithmetic, it makes sense to consider it in theories weaker than $\textrm{ZF}$ set theory. I am curious what is known about the consistency strength of $\textrm{DC} + \textrm{LM}$ in such weaker contexts. Of specific interest to me is the consistency strength of $\textrm{DC}+\textrm{LM}$ over the base logic of a boolean topos (= higher-order classical logic).


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FRIDAY, May 9, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- To mark Mother's Day, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is offering new moms tips and advice as they begin their journey into parenthood.
First, schedule regular preventive "well-child" visits with your infant's pediatrician. If you're between appointments and believe your child is ill, call the pediatrician to find out what your next move should be, said Dr. Donna Snyder, a pediatrician with the FDA's Pediatric and Maternal Health Staff.
Before giving medication to your baby, get expert advice. Certain medicines may not be appropriate for an infant. If your doctor recommends a medicine for your infant, be sure you know the proper dose.
Use the appropriate dosing device -- not a kitchen spoon -- to give medicine to your baby. Some medicines are packaged with these devices, but you can also buy them at the drug store. Talk to a pharmacist or other health care provider if you have questions.
"If your baby is prescribed a teaspoon of medicine, make sure you give a teaspoon and not a tablespoon," Snyder said in an FDA news release.
And for mothers who are taking medications, Dr. Leyla Sahin, an obstetrician with FDA's Pediatric and Maternal Health Staff, added that "it's important to ask your health care provider whether it's OK to breast-feed."
Ask this about all prescription and over-the-counter products, including supplements. Some medications can pass through breast milk and pose a risk to babies. New moms should not stop taking a medication without first consulting a doctor, Sahin advised.
Be sure to store all medicines out of sight and reach of children, said Snyder, who noted that babies can start to crawl as early as 5 to 6 months of age.
"But even if babies are under the age where you'd expect them to be able to get to your medication, get into the habit of putting medication out of their reach," she said.
It's also important to read and follow storage instructions for medicines, or to talk with a pharmacist or doctor about proper storage.
"For instance, some antibiotics need to be kept in the refrigerator," Snyder noted. "So you want to make sure you're storing it according to the instructions."
New mothers also need to look after themselves, including getting enough sleep.
"Sleep when the baby sleeps and take naps during the day. If you're a new mom feeling consistently very sad, it could be a sign of postpartum depression," and you need to talk to your doctor, Sahin said.
"Keep in mind that being a new mom is a transition period that may be stressful. But take the time to celebrate being a new mom," she urged.
More information
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention outlines the ABCs of raising safe and healthy children.
This article: Copyright © 2014 HealthDay. All rights reserved.


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The men of our Grandson's paternal lineage.
Luke with his Dad Jeff, his Grandfather Bernie, and his Great Grandfather Harold!
Luke's Paternal lineage.
Luke held by his Father Jeff, and his mom Rachel.
Luke's paternal grandparents, Bernie and me.
Right below Luke is my Mom and Dad, below Bernie is his mom and dad, four of Luke's five living great grandparents.


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The Secret Beyond Matter
Some people had many ideals in their youth. But they grow up, and by the time they have reached maturity, have achieved certain goals: They have finished school, established a career, married and had children. And, when they have no goals or expectations left to achieve, they lose their joy of life. Now they spend their time according to their situation and culture. Some sit in cafes, others by the sea; some wander around bazaars, others walk in parks. Others doze off at home, or watch television. One day is the same as the day before; each of these people is waiting for death.
When such a person opens his eyes in the morning, he thinks that this day is no different from any other. But he does not complain, as one might expect, because his goal every day is to live for another day before he dies. This state of mind is the reason for these people's quick spiritual and physical decay. Those who retire at 55 or 60 years of age are actually not very old. But their point of view is that everything good has gone away; for which reason they feel and look much older than they are. Some others of the same age look at the world in the opposite way; they are industrious and have not lost their eagerness and excitement. By comparison, they are stronger, more joyful and energetic. In the Qur'an there are verses that point out the benefit of being industrious and not wasting time doing nothing. For example:
So when you have finished, work on, and make your Lord your goal! (Surat al-Inshirah: 7-8)
That some people in superficial culture expect just to live can be seen not only among the aged and retired, but also in every segment and age group. This point of view is found partly among those who have married and had children, made a career for themselves but have no further hope of advancement. Some people go to work in the morning, come back at night, watch television and eat dinner, with nothing to achieve before they go to bed. Like some elderly people, they only want to get through that day.It's not easy for such people to have a change or something new in their lives. They have no noble thoughts about developing themselves or benefiting their community. Such thoughts and behavior would bring change and upset the order of their lives, which is not in their best interests. They do not want anyone to interfere with the shallow, monotonous little worlds they have established for themselves.
Some who choose to live in a superficial culture rather than practice religious morality pass their days without setting themselves any goal; they are actually waiting for death. Some of them can sit in their pajamas all day before a window with the curtains wide open. Such superficial people have no goals left in their lives; their aim is just to live. They do not ask themselves what their purpose in life is. Their belief in the next world is weak, and their life far removed from religious morality. They have no goals, such as winning Allah's mercy and favor, doing good works to please Him, or prevailing in a contest of merit with other moral and conscientious believers. For this reason, they have come to this point in life and have set a most degrading and superficial ideal for themselves. They even leave their worldly ideals to one side and, in the spiritual void into which they have fallen, they abandon all their will and desires, all their work, efforts and productivity. Now they are engaged only in prolonging their lives.
Not all of them, however, have severed their connections with the world. One who goes back and forth to work every day can be in a similar monotonous void and aim only at getting through the day. Those far removed from the purposes of creation, whether or not they work and whether young or old, rich or poor, men or women, all have made this their basic goal: just to live.
But when death comes to them, their awareness becomes unclouded and they want to return to their earthly lives to do good works. These people have spent their whole lives carefree without thinking and perhaps, only the day before, they were merely trying to kill time. Ignoring the purposes of creation, they spent their lives far from Allah's service. Their only goals were to eat, sleep and look after their daily affairs.
But this is the end that these people will meet in their eternal lives:
So leave them in their glut of ignorance for a while. Do they imagine that, in the wealth and children We are hastening to them with good things? No indeed, but they have no awareness! (Surat al- Muminun: 54-56)2009-03-24 15:42:55
. . . You will see the wrongdoers saying, when they see the punishment, "Is there no way back?" You will see them as they are exposed to it, abject in their abasement, glancing around them furtively. Those who believe will say, "Truly the losers are those who lose themselves and their families on the Day of Resurrection." The wrongdoers are in an everlasting punishment. (Surat as-Shura: 44-45)
They will say, "Our Lord, our miserable destiny overpowered us. We were misguided people. Our Lord, remove us from it! Then if we revert again, we will definitely be wrongdoers." He will say, "Slink away into it and do not speak to Me. There was a group of My servants who said, 'Our Lord, we believe, so forgive us and have mercy on us. You are the Best of the Merciful.' But you made a mockery of them so that they made you forget to remember Me while you were laughing at them. Today I have rewarded them for being steadfast. They are the ones who are victorious." (Surat al- Muminun: 106-111)
On the Day when the Spirit and the angels stand in ranks, no one will speak, except for him who is authorized by the All-Merciful and says what is right. That will be the True Day. So whoever wills should take the way back to his Lord. We have warned you of an imminent punishment on the Day when a man will see what he has done, and the unbelievers will say, "Oh, if only I were dust!" (Surat an-Naba': 38-40)
But as for him who is given his Book behind his back, he will cry out for destruction but will be roasted in a Searing Blaze. He used to be joyful in his family. He thought that he was never going to return. But in fact his Lord was always watching him! (Surat al-Inshiqaq: 10-15)
Woe to every scorner and mocker who has amassed wealth and hoarded it! He thinks his wealth will make him live for ever. No indeed! He will be flung into the Shatterer. And what will convey to you what the Shatterer is? The kindled Fire of Allah reaching right into the heart. It is sealed in above them in towering columns. (Surat al-Humaza: 1-9)
Say: "Shall I inform you of the greatest losers in their actions?" People whose efforts in the life of this world are misguided while they suppose that they are doing good." Those are the people who reject their Lord's signs and the meeting with Him. Their actions will come to nothing and, on the Day of Resurrection, We will not assign them any weight. (Surat al-Kahf: 103-105)


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I hope I can entice you to make this delectable dish. So straightforward in flavor, so prehistoric in cooking method. And dare I say rather stunning in presentation? In Cambodia and Thailand I think it's called kao lam. Versions exist throughout Southeast Asia, sometimes with beans or other ingredients. First you need a pole of freshly cut bamboo. Grow it yourself or find a friend who grows it. Saw it into sections about a foot and a half long. Saw below the nodes so one end is open and the other closed. Then soak some sticky rice in water for about an hour. Drain and add coconut milk. Add some unrefined sugar (salt too) and chopped bits of dried fermented sausage. I thought this was lap cheung when I pulled it from the cave, but the fennel said otherwise. No matter. Fill the tubes 3/4 way up and add coconut milk almost to the top. Then take a patch of banana leaf, which you can buy in a SE Asian grocery store and tie it to the top opened end. You can use a strip of the leaf or string works even better. Then make a good roaring fire and prop the tubes up against it. I think an iron bar running above the fire would work best. Not directly in the flame, but pretty close. They will char on the outside and maybe even catch on fire. Don't worry, just turn them around and continue cooking. After about 45 minutes remove and split them horizontally with a sturdy machete. Serve right in the tube. There's a lovely bambooish aroma and a little smoke. I made this for the first time at a party yesterday and I can't wait to go tell the lady at the Cambodian gorcery store how they came out. She was excited and perplexed that I was trying it, but I think her good luck wish hit the target.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Monday, April 16, 2012
Feed Yourself
What's more fun than cooking? (No, not that, but yes it is.) I mean FEEDING other people. I brought a mess of odds and ends to class to today, a huge honking bread, some very fresh cheese and some old stinky salame from the back of the cave. And my students devoured most of it. But sometimes, you just have to feed yourself. I mean cook something you love even though you know no one else will dare eat it, for no good reason whatsoever. It's not guts, just some simple beans for heaven's sake! They look familiar, but no, they're really young favas, not phaseolus. Cooked pods and all with olive oil, grated tomato, basil and some water so they don't burn. I can't remember the last time I found favas this young and tender, but if you see them, please promise me you will feed yourself first and don't worry who else will eat it.
Posted by Ken Albala at 8:41 PM 2 comments:
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Another Coteghino
If you can believe it, this was an accident. About a year ago I made a coteghino (aka skin sausage) and wasn't planning on doing it again. But I just a got a new knife, a lovely curved Buffalo Skinner from J. Russell & Co. which I am told is not stainless steel. So I needed something with skin to remove, hence some slabs of pork belly now curing into bacon. The skin came off easily. And a tongue is curing too. (Long story, but a tongue that was impossible to peel went into an Olla Podrida the other day in Fullerton, and so I'm into the tongue thing.) Anyway, the finely chopped skin was mixed with pork and went into this wonderfully baroque middle, which curved right around itself into this remarkably obscene form. Lots of fennel. I think I will bring it Darrell Corti's next weekend. I also baked a few monstrous breads for my class, made a little cheese, who knows what else. Every day should be such as this.
Posted by Ken Albala at 8:47 PM 7 comments:
Monday, April 9, 2012
One Bunny on a Bun?
It aint Louisiana Back Bayou Bunny Bordelaise a la Antoine. But Easter comes, and goes, and then I think of rabbit. Little time to spare. And I think, Asian cooking must have rabbit. India? Tandoori was suggested to me. Maybe. No stir fry. Not BBQ. SO how about a good SE Asian marinade? Fish sauce, lime, galangal, shallots, chilies. A touch of tomato paste for fun. Then on the grill. These were really delightful. This combination would taste great with a hunk of shoe leather. Next time I'll try that. In the meantime, I encourage you to embrace rabbit. OK, cuddle up first, then eat him for heaven's sake!
Posted by Ken Albala at 9:23 PM 6 comments:
Sunday, April 8, 2012
Gefilte Fish
For those of you poor souls who sufferred the jarred gefilte the past two nights, you know, the kind with a little wad of snot attached and some equally jarred horseradish, here's a step up. Ideally you want to find fresh pike or carp. Not in Stockfish, CA. So I tried basa. Why not? The key is to make a good stock with bones, aromatic vegs, shallots, tarragon and goodly salt. Then pound the fish in a mortar. Seriously, a food processor will cut the fish, you want everything pounded and gummy. I have to admit I departed in a heretical way, as usual, by adding a drop of sesame oil and a pinch of dried ginger, but otherwise these were gefilte, not Asian fish balls. Three big filets held together by one egg, and a half cup of matzoh meal. Then form into torpedos with two spoons and drop gently into a little pot of barely simmering fish stock. Let them chill thoroughly in the stock. Serve with ABSOLUTELY freshly grated horseradish with a touch of salt and white vinegar. Be sure to cover the horseradish after grating or it will lose the lovely heat. These were devoured, two nights in a row. I adore them.
Posted by Ken Albala at 3:57 PM No comments:
Friday, April 6, 2012
University of the Pacific Spotlight
This is a fun promotional piece from the university, including still shots and video from all over the place, including my current freshman food policy seminar. I have no idea how they got all this footage!
This is a fun promotional piece from the university, including still shots and video from all over the place, including my current freshman food policy seminar. I have no idea how they got all this footage!
Posted by Ken Albala at 1:26 PM 2 comments:
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Actor James Franco may have to shell out another arm and a leg following a lawsuit filed yesterday by his former NYU film instructor — who claims the "127 Hours'' star defamed him because he got a "D'' for playing hookey.
"Whoever was in Clint Eastwood's chair at the Republican National Convention was more present than Mr. Franco was in my classes," José Angel Santana told The Post, referring to the "Dirty Harry" actor's "conversation'' with an empty chair meant to represent President Obama
Franco is "a bully,'' said the former full-time professor. "He uses the bully pulpit of his celebrity to punish anyone who doesn't do his bidding."
Santana is seeking unspecified monetary damages in the Manhattan Supreme Court civil action against Franco, who has played a rock climber who amputated his own arm to free himself from a crevasse.
The ex-instructor, who has already sued NYU, blasted Franco for making "disparaging and inaccurate public statements."
"I didn't deserve to be on the receiving end of those falsehoods," said Santana, who has been a teacher since 1979 and was earning $70,000 when he was fired in September 2011.
"I was outraged that someone with his attendance record at NYU had the audacity to make those statements."
He insisted he was only doing his job while other star-struck professors "bent over backwards to create a Franco-friendly environment."
"When the suit was filed against him, Mr. Franco initially took the high road and said nothing," said Matthew Blit, Santana's lawyer.
"Unfortunately, he could not help himself once his new movie ['The Broken Tower'] was being released."
Franco, who missed 12 of Santana's 14 directing classes, had told reporters Santana was "awful," adding, "I didn't feel like I needed to waste my time with a bad teacher."
"No teacher will ever be fired from NYU for giving a student a 'D,' '' Franco told several media outlets in April. "He wasn't fired, he was asked not to come back after three years because they didn't think he was a good teacher."
"He is not going to be hired at another institution," Franco charged in another interview.
Santana claims the actor had access to teaching records — but defamed him despite knowing the professor had "overwhelmingly positive student evaluations."


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But at 10 a.m., the volunteers started coming by the van-load. A coordinator in Northern Virginia called to say he was sending 50 people, maybe 75. By noon, the county was awash in transplanted volunteers, and Broklawski was burning through the minutes on his cell phone and the gas in his Honda Pilot trying to keep them all busy.
"I'm being inundated," said Broklawski, chairman of the Democratic Committee in Stafford, about 40 miles south of Washington.
"But you know what, this is what's going to make the difference."
Something made a difference. Obama led Republican Sen. John McCain by 51.3 percent to 47.7 percent in Virginia early this morning with 98 percent of the votes counted. No Democratic presidential candidate had won Virginia since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
And while support from the state's traditional Democratic regions in Richmond and suburban Washington gave Obama the bulk of his tally, Democrats were also crediting an unprecedented vote-by-vote volunteer effort in regions such as Stafford. Four years ago, Democrat John Kerry won 37 percent of the vote there. Yesterday, Obama won about 47 percent.
Obama supporters flooded the largely white county of 72,000 registered voters with as many as 2,000 volunteers yesterday, many of them migrants from safe Obama territories such as Maryland, Delaware and New York.
They staffed each of the county's 24 voting precincts with at least one attorney and teams of greeters and observers. They took down names of voters they recognized, constantly revising a master list of likely Obama supporters who needed to vote.
At the campaign's county headquarters, volunteers printed updated maps showing supporters who hadn't voted yet. Then canvassers grabbed the lists and drove off, knocking on doors to offer reminders, encouragement or maybe a ride. As they left, they brushed past a sign that read: "12 doors knocked = One Obama vote."
From start to finish, the process sometimes required the work of five or six volunteers to get one additional person to cast a vote. And the volunteers considered it a fair deal.
"If I can get just one person to vote, I've multiplied my vote by 100 percent," said Bill White, a 48-year-old Annapolis resident who drove to Stafford to knock on doors after casting his vote in Maryland.
Volunteers considered the 47 percent vote for Obama a momentous success. The Democrats have won two statewide races in recent years - Gov. Tim Kaine in 2005 and U.S. Sen. Jim Webb in 2006 - and each won a smaller percentage of Stafford's vote.
"Two thousand volunteers in a county like that is incredible," said Carl W. Tobias, Williams Professor of Law at the University of Richmond. "You can't be certain what to attribute it to, but it looks as though Obama did well in a very tough state."
Democrats also scored an overwhelming victory in Virginia's U.S. Senate race, where former Gov. Mark Warner beat former Republican Gov. James S. Gilmore III by nearly 30 percentage points.
Officials at the state Board of Elections reported record-setting turnout throughout Virginia, sometimes marred by two-hour waits and glitches with electronic machines that had trouble reading soggy ballots cast by voters who waited in the rain. At one polling place in Chesapeake, officials reported that 1,000 people were in line yesterday morning, representing half the precinct's registered voters.
At 1 p.m., 66-year-old retiree Herman Jones was waiting patiently in the Stafford County headquarters office, as another volunteer printed out the address of a voter who needed a ride to the poll. With his own car and a GPS device, he'd already driven four people to the polls and was ready for a fifth.
Some didn't have cars. Most didn't know where their polling place was. But all cast a vote.
"I've seen how these elections go sometimes," Jones said. "Five votes might make the difference."
As Jones spoke, Broklawski's phone kept ringing. Volunteers who registered on Obama's national Web site, or through the Democratic advocacy group MoveOn.org, were being funneled south.
"I don't even know who these people are, but I'm not turning them away," Broklawski said. "The more votes we get down here, the less we're going to need up in Northern Virginia to win."
Broklawski sent still more volunteers to the polls, just to boost the Democratic presence or encourage voters not to drop out of the long lines. He coordinated runners to ferry paperwork between headquarters and the polling places.
He stopped in at the Holiday Inn, where members of the United Mine Workers of America had boxes of umbrellas to lend to voters. The union members, who had spent all night hanging brochures on the doors of potential Obama supporters, were catching some sleep to prepare for the final rush to election night.
And his phone kept ringing.
"More people?" he asked. "I'm at the point where I have to tell people 'Stop!'
"I've got enough people that I could form an army down here."