QOTD: "For every Gandhi or Nader or Bertrand Russell or Thoreau, there are a hundred thousand Nixons." - Harlan Ellison
Reading: Phyllis Rose (editor), The Norton Book of Women's Lives
Listening to: nothing, since it is already past my bedtime
Decluttering accomplishments: I have two bags of stuff to go to the thrift shop in my car. I've had the two bags filled for months but surely moving them from the living room to the car counts as an accomplishment?
I must apologize to everyone in Southern California for yesterday's intense storm. You see, I had believed that it was just going to be a drizzle, so I left the bedroom window open when I took my nap. Fortunately, my bedroom is next to a drainpipe, so heavy rain makes things somewhat like trying to sleep in the shower and I woke up while the sogginess was still confined to the windowsill. They're talking more rain later in the week, so I am particularly glad I got around to getting the new tires on Friday, not to mention the new windshield wipers a few weeks ago. Yesterday was okay, since I didn't need to go anywhere. But weekdays bring the horrors of commuting and one can use all the traction one can get.
Another attempt to get through the endless pile of stuff on the living room floor, led me to a few clippings I had saved up to mention here. The first is a Reuters story from July and is titled "Count Dracula Beaten in Wine Ruling." A Munich court essentially said that Ottomar Rodolphe Vlad Dracul Prince Kretzulesco can't stop a company from marketing wines called "Dracula" since their ads refer to the vampire legend, not to the actual man. One assumes that American courts would not have seen it that way. I double checked and Marilyn Merlot has a licensing agreement on their web pages.
The second item is from the September 2001 issue of Technology Review and has to do with the "tephranet." Tephra is a type of volcanic rock and a team at the University of Hawaii has developed fake rocks to hold sensors they're using for environmental monitoring. The sensors are actually on a wireless network and I was quite amused by the description of a student with a laptop walking over and logging into a rock. Given the responsiveness (or lack thereof) of many of the computer networks I've dealt with, the image seemed apt.
Finally, today's L.A. Times had a mention of a group called the Radical Cheerleaders. These are women who dress up in little cheerleader outfits (pleated miniskirt, pompoms and all) and perform pro-choice cheers at various nightclubs and benefits. (They say men can join too, as long as they'll wear the plaid skirts.) Apparently, they have branches in over a dozen cities now. I think this is deliciously subversive. What's the point of being an activist if you can't have some fun at the same time?
The weather had improved today but it still left me in a wintry mode, which I indulged by making a huge pot of a soup full of all sorts of winter vegetables - onions and potatoes and carrots and parsnips and beets and cabbage. I ate one bowl and filled the freezer with the rest (in individual portions). I never realized before that all of the color will leech out of beets if you cook them this way. In fact, I'm not sure if I've ever bought beets before. I think I must have made borscht at least once in my life, but I mostly revert to my mother's traditional method and buy the bottled stuff. (My mother, who likes borscht and loves a bargain, once bought a dozen cases for $13 at a public TV auction. At 24 bottles per case, we ate a lot of borscht.) At any rate, there's just something transformative about making soup. You just chop everything up, throw it in a pot with water and salt and pepper and bay leaves and it simmers away for hours, warming the kitchen and making everything all cozy. It would have been nice to bake bread, too, but I didn't feel like changing my clothes and I was wearing a shirt I didn't want to risk getting flour all over. And, come to think of it, I'm not sure I know where my magic bread dough bowl is - a bowl that is large enough to knead dough for four loaves in without getting any flour at all on the counters.
Having all this soup is sure to make the weather turn balmy, of course. But that's better than causing record levels of rainfall by leaving my window open.
Copyright 2001 Miriam H. Nadel