Archive for January 27th, 2023
“A Virus Killed My Mom. It Took 30 Years. Nobody Knew What Was Wrong.”
CONTENT WARNING: This article is a brief memoir, and it’s grim. I found it worth reading, so I wanted to call your attention to it, but it’s tough.
Jessica Wildfire writes at OK Doomer:
It started sometime around my fourteenth birthday.
My mom began acting stranger than usual. She said things that didn’t make sense. She didn’t seem to understand what year it was. She talked about things that happened decades ago as if they’d happened yesterday. She remembered other things that had never happened at all. She said she’d lived in Paris.
My dad got frustrated and went to bed early.
He asked me to keep an eye on her and my brother, who was seven or eight at the time. “See if you can get her to talk sense.”
I tried.
Somehow I took it as a personal mission to lead my mom out of her fog. I listened. I tried to see if she was playing some kind of game with us. Maybe she was acting confused on purpose. Maybe she was angry about something and wanted me to figure it out. I stayed up with her until two or three. Then I crashed.
The next morning, she was still up.
She hadn’t slept.
She’d spent all night smoking cigarettes and drinking black coffee, sitting in pretty much the same place, barely responsive.
That went on for a couple of days, into the weekend. My dad made sarcastic remarks. Then he started giving her commands. He told her to stop acting weird. He told her to go outside and get some fresh air.
He made threats.
Finally, I convinced him to take her to the hospital. He treated it like a punishment, and an inconvenience. He acted like he was calling her bluff, that faced with a night in the ER, she’d admit it was all an act.
I remember walking my mom into the emergency room on a Friday night. She moved like she was underwater. It just seemed to make my dad even angrier. He walked so far ahead of us that I lost sight of him.
He acted embarrassed.
We spent all night there, waiting for . . .
Continue reading. The mystery is explained, but the damage has been done.
To protect the children, let’s make churches adults-only venues
Guy Lancaster writes in the Arkansas Times:
When Sen. Gary Stubblefield (R-Of Course) spoke up in committee on January 19 in defense of his bill, SB43, which would designate drag shows as “adult” venues, he quoted at length from an ostensible communique he received from a drag queen, begging him to protect Arkansas’s children and assuring him that “a lot of nudity, a lot of sex, a lot of things” goes down at drag shows.
Granted, Stubblefield could give no actual examples of any child being assaulted at a drag show, but let us give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is genuinely interested in protecting Arkansas’s children. On January 25, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders expressed total support for SB43, saying, “I think we have to do everything — I’ve been very clear and talked about this pretty extensively — to protect children. And I think that’s what this bill does, and so would be supportive of it in its current form. We’ll continue to take steps and do things that I believe protect the children of Arkansas.”
n that case, Sen. Stubblefield and Gov. Sanders will want to take the next logical step and put forward a bill designating the state’s many, many churches to be adults-only venues. We need to protect the children, after all, and we know that the church is a hub of child sexual abuse by clergy in Arkansas and the nation.
The Diocese of Little Rock maintains a website disclosing a list of all those Roman Catholic priests who have been credibly accused of abusing children. The list was made public in 2018, 16 years after the Boston Globe broke the story of a massive coverup of known pedophile priests in the United States. Then, in 2019, the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News started reporting on sex abuse in Southern Baptist churches; a 2022 third-party report highlighted how the Southern Baptist Convention, like the Roman Catholic Church, had been hushing up cases of such abuse for years and years. The SBC eventually released its own list of accused sex offenders, which included many in Arkansas.
Churches make opportune places for pedophiles to set up shop. First, most Christian ideologies position priests and pastors in the role of God’s emissary upon this earth. It’s hard to argue with “God’s will,” or to speak up from the very bottom of this well-established hierarchy. And in a church culture that prizes “sexual purity” above all else, children who have been molested are even more reluctant to come forward. It’s no wonder churches have been at the center of child sexual abuse scandals.
And children in church are also exposed to materials that would easily qualify as obscene or harmful to minors. For example, take this passage, Ezekiel 23:19-21 (New Revised Standard Version): . . .
The comments are pretty good, too. One includes the almost-certain rebuttal from Sen. Stubblefield (and Gov. Sanders): “Well, that’s different.”
Tempeh Spinach, a What-I-Have-On-Hand™ recipe
I have eaten through the dishes previously prepared, and so I looked around for what is possible with what I had on hand. I came up with this, for which I used my 4-qt sauté pan:
Tempeh Spinach
• extra-virgin olive oil
• 10-12 oz diced tempeh (chickpea and rye)
• 1 big red onion, chopped
• 1 enormous carrot, diced
• 1 red beet, diced
• 2 jalapeños, chopped small
• 3 Thai red chiles, chopped small
• 1 tablespoon chipotle-garlic paste
• 5 dried tomatoes, chopped
• 3 cloves red garlic, chopped small
• 1 small piece ginger root, minced
• 2 turmeric roots, minced (only 1 in photo; didn’t seem enough)
• 3 small Meyer lemons, diced
• 2 tablespoons dried marjoram
• 1/2 tablespoon Spanish smoked paprika
• about 2 tablespoons ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon Windsor salt substitute
Sauté the above for a while. Then add:
• 2 pkgs frozen spinach
• about 3 tablespoons tomato paste
• good splash of tamari
• about 3 tablespoons Bragg’s apple-cider vinegar
• about 1/4 cup no-salt-added vegetable broth
Cover and simmer 25-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.
This recipe covers seven of the Daily Dozen:
Beans, Grain: Tempeh (chickpeas+intact whole rye)
Greens, Cruciferous Vegetable (cabbage) – Spinach, red cabbage
Other Vegetables – Onion, carrot, beet, chiles, tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic
Fruit – Meyer lemons
Herbs & Spices – Marjoram, paprika, ginger, turmeric pepper
And breakfast took care of
Berries (frozen mixed, dried barberry, amla)
Grain (rolled oats)
Flaxseed
Nuts & Seeds (walnuts; chia seed)
Herbs & Spices (cloves, marjoram, spearmint, cinnamon, cocoa)
Fruit (3 pieces: mandarin, Bosc pear, apple)
Beverages (1 pint of tea)
But no real Exercise today, I admit.
I’m having a bowl of Tempeh Spinach now, generously sprinkled with roasted pumpkin seeds (more Nuts & Seeds). Very tasty, and not so hot as the chiles might suggest — but definitely some spicy warmth, good on a cold night.
Next day: I put some fermented beets in a bowl, topped it with Tempeh Spinach, and sprinkled roasted pumpkin seeds on top (a good source of zinc).
RazoRock Superslant razors back in stock (for now — limited quantities)
Just to be clear: I get no kickback from Italian Barber, and this is not an affiliate link. But as a service to my readers, I wanted to let you know that the Superslant — one of the best slants I’ve used, both extremely comfortable and extremely efficient — is back in stock for now. I got the L1++, and my review is here.
Retrospection for a Ragtime King: Scott Joplin and the American devaluation of Black art
I found the above in a post that collected seven performances of Scott Joplin’s compositions. I wanted to go beyond the familiar pieces — The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag. I was looking for a Joplin introduction to Adrienne Davich’s fine essay in Van Magazine, which begins:
In 1991, when I was eight years old, I found a simplified version of Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” and relished playing it for most of the year that I was in third grade. My parents had recently divorced. I’d moved from Las Vegas to Reno with my mother, a kindergarten teacher. Before and after school, I played “The Entertainer” on an out-of-tune piano in my mother’s classroom. I played it obsessively, perhaps because it occupied my hands and sounded jolly. I didn’t feel sad when I played it, though I missed my dad fiercely; instead, I felt indefatigable and industrious. The lyrics on my sheet music described a clownish performer doing “snappy patter and jokes” that please “the folks.” I know I imagined a Black man on stage, but I didn’t know about minstrel shows or much else about America’s racist past and present.
My babysitter, who was 13 and also white, loved “The Entertainer” so much that she asked me to teach her how to play it. She’d never taken piano lessons, but she patiently learned the right-hand notes and I accompanied her with the left-hand part. We created a duet and took turns singing the words. I don’t know about her, but I never once thought deeply about what the lyrics evoked: a “mask that grins and lies.” The entertainer I envisioned was a lot like Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, who looks happy tap-dancing alongside Shirley Temple in her childhood movie series. I presumed that the imagery associated with minstrelsy was normal and innocuous, just as I thought topless showgirls performing in my city’s casinos was. I’m not ashamed of this, but it’s baffling to think that in the 1990s I lived in a place where I was able to spend a year playing “The Entertainer” and learn absolutely nothing about the history of African American music, specifically ragtime, and the life of Scott Joplin.
I still knew nothing about Joplin, the man, when I was 14 and my piano teacher asked me to learn “Maple Leaf Rag.” Or I knew almost nothing. I’d at least learned that Joplin was Black because his photo appeared on my spiral-bound volume of his music. His race didn’t register with me as particularly important, but on the other hand, from somewhere I’d absorbed the idea that ragtime music was simpler and less important than the music of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms. When my teacher, who was a professor of music at the university, handed me the “Maple Leaf,” I presumed it was because he’d disqualified me from playing other, “more serious” pieces. I felt bad about being asked to devote my time to a piece that’s often programmed into player pianos.
That is, until something unexpected happened: I began playing it reasonably well and people loved it. When guests came to my mother’s house, my stepfather urged me to play it. He never asked for Mozart or Scarlatti. Joplin’s rag was more delightful and impressive. It is, after all, a vivacious, happy piece that looks harder to play than it actually is.
Can you play a piece of music well without knowing its background? Is everything you need to know really on the page?
During the years I studied piano, we presumed yes. At weekly lessons, I learned theory, practiced sight-reading, and played pieces from every musical period. Although I was expected to know the dates and features of different musical styles, my teachers rarely if ever contextualized the music they asked me to play. It’s curious to me now that we didn’t talk about historical backdrops and personal tragedies. I know for certain that my teachers had rigorously studied classical music history. Did they think that I didn’t care? Or had they found that students fared better focusing solely on the music as written and their technique in playing it?
I’ve asked these questions because the pieces I played during my formative years are embedded in my soul. They’re part of my identity. I didn’t choose to bring them into my life (a teacher usually did), but ultimately, I did choose them, because I stuck with them. The two pieces that have haunted me the most are ones I started playing at 13 and 14 years old. I felt proud to play the first of these, Debussy’s “The Girl with the Flaxen Hair”; I believed it represented me, with its melancholic air and evocation of loneliness and longing. But the other piece, Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag,” didn’t flow from somewhere inside me. I would have to inhabit it in a different way.
Joplin was born around 1868, possibly in the vicinity of . . .
A slant revisited: Phoenix Artisan’s Alpha Ecliptic
A new soap and razor today. The soap is Phoenix Artisan’s CK-6 Tombstone: “Gunpowder, Leather, Tobacco, Geranium, Bergamot, Lady Banksia White Rose [sourced from Tombstone, AZ].” The blend of fragrances — the rough-tough stough (gunpowder, leather, and tobacco) and the florals (geranium, bergamot, and white rose) — is an intriguing (and pleasant) scent, and the CK-6 lather of course is excellent. And I do love the RazoRock Amici brush.
For some reason, I kept putting off ordering this slant, but I finally succumbed, and now I realize I have had the same slant in the past and found that it didn’t work all that well for me. I started the shave this morning hoping that my greater experience would result in the razor’s working better, but based on today’s shave, I might have to once again pass the razor along.
See this post (first shave with my earlier purchase) and this post (comparison of Alpha Ecliptic and Eros slants) and this post (trying the plastic version of the Alpha Ecliptic).
Based on all that, I would have to say that this slant is just not my cup of tea. I still like the French Eros a lot, and the design is so similar that I think the Eros is either a knockoff of the Walbusch or a rebranded licensed copy. (Walbush, BTW, made the first adjustable slant, something I would dearly love to have, but they are exceedingly rare (and expensive).)
While I was browsing through my old posts, I came across this deep dive into slants and why they work for some and not others. I updated it somewhat (it’s from 2016), and I think it’s still a good reference.
Three passes produced a smooth result with a couple of nicks. I’ll try again with a different brand of blade, but I am not hopeful. I don’t understand why I can’t find the right angle, but we all know that what works for A may not work for B. With this razor, I’m B.
A splash of Tombstone Aftershave & Cologne augmented with a couple of squirts of Grooming Dept’s Aion Hydrating Gel, and I’m ready for the day.
The tea this morning is Murchie’s Black Currant Tea: “Dried blueberries and blue cornflower are added to the sweet-smelling tea blend to add to the allure.”
Later On 