Tag: family

Gaah!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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Not My Happy Face

Everyone left work early today, so I decided to get Chinese at my favorite Chinese buffet in the area, as it is on the way home.

I really shouldn’t, because I tend to eat too much, and most of that stuff is really not particularly healthy, particularly if, as I do, you do lots of dumplings, kabobs, and ribs.

Well, it appears that the universe conspired to punish me for this act, because when I went in and paid for my meal, you pay upon entry, they gave me the senior citizen discount WITHOUT MY ASKING.

Hell, I didn’t even know that they HAD a senior citizen discount.

I am not amused.  Not ……… One ……… Bit.

Brings Back Childhood Non-Memories

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The recent earthquake in Anchorage is familiar to me in a completely unfamiliar way.

I was in the last big one in Alaska, the 9.6 Richter Scale quake on March 27 1964, but I was only about 20 months old, so I have no memory of the event.

The scale is logarythmic 7.0 Richter Scale trembler had about 400 times (102.2) less energy, so the damage is far less extreme, and this has been further mitigated by improved building standards since 1964, so the impact has been far less severe:

A collapsed section of road on the Glenn Highway north of Anchorage is set to snarl traffic for days as Southcentral Alaska pivoted from crisis response to cleanup in the area’s most significant earthquake in a half-century.

The 7.0 earthquake jolted Anchorage and the rest of Southcentral Alaska on Friday morning, cracking and collapsing roads and highways, damaging buildings, knocking out power and sending people scrambling outside and under furniture. The violent shaking left many homes a mess, and aftershocks continued through the night and through the day Saturday. Schools in Anchorage will be closed until Dec. 10, and many schools in the Mat-Su Borough will be closed until at least Wednesday.

Seismologists called the earthquake the most significant in Anchorage since the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, in terms of how strong the ground itself shook and severity of impact. The size of the quake and a risk of underwater landslides in Cook Inlet triggered an unusual localized tsunami warning. The day after, people all over Southcentral Alaska were rattled and anxious.

But relief was tangible as Anchorage officials reported that there were no deaths, and generally minor injuries — a broken arm, cuts from glass. And despite widespread reports of varying degrees of structural damage, no buildings entirely collapsed, which officials credited to Anchorage’s strict building codes. Hospitals and airports were fully functional Saturday and businesses were beginning to reopen.

Thankfully, the feared tsunami never materialized.
 I know that I was there, my dad was on the (generally ignored) commission that recommended not rebuilding in areas subject to liquefaction, but it’s weird as hell how this evokes non-existent memories in me.

I Have Been Tying My Shoes Wrong for Over 50 Years

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Bunny Ears Method

Around tree method

When I was 3 or 4, I’m not sure of the exact age, but I was in Juneau, Alaska before I started school, so it was 1965 or 1966 when I learned to tie my shoes.

I learned to tie my shoes using the “Bunny Ears” method, and started to work on the, “Chasing the bunny around the tree,” method, but being a clever lad, I realized that the knots were the same,
At that point, I started looking at tying my shoes with the  “Squirrel and Tree” method where you make one loop and push the final loop through, but I gave up when I realized shortly after I realized that they created the same knot.

But my shoes kept getting untied.

Well, I just figured out what was going on.

Bows are tied in a, “double knot,” and there are two forms double knot, the square (reef ) knot, and the granny knot.

The difference is that in the former, it is over-under or under-over, and in the latter it is over-over or under-under.

If you naturally lead with one hand, and I do, then the, “Chase around the tree,” method naturally produces a square knot, while the, “Bunny ears,” method naturally produces a granny knot.

I was doing a granny knot, so my shoes were constantly coming untied.

I am still doing bunny ears, but now I am consciously doing under-over, and my shoes are staying tied.

Two clever by half, and it only screwed me up for 50 years.

Kisses and Squeezy Hugs

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Natalie is giving a speech in class, and she wanted to use one of the poems that my dad had written.

She read a couple and one was about shopping, and all I could think of was, “Kisses and squeezy hugs.”

Cue the wavy flashback camera thing:

Many, many years ago, my mom sent my dad to the grocery store with a shopping list.

At the bottom were two items, “Kisses and Squeezy Hugs.”  (I bet you can see where this is going)

About an hour and a half later, he frantically called my mom from the store.

He could not find the squeezy hugs. (He thought that it was one of the new brands of cereal out there)

According to family lore, it took at least 15 minutes for my mom to stop laughing, and explain to my clueless dad that, “Kisses and Squeezy Hugs,” were not items on the shopping list, but a romantic note that spouses sometimes leave for each other.

I guess that every family has stories like this, and I’ve been thinking about ours a lot lately.

Typing with 9 Fingers

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I spent this afternoon at the SCA event Trial By Fire, a competition in which cooks attempt to produce, and document, historical dishes under “Pennsic War”  (camping conditions).

You have 4 hours to do the cooking, using things like camp stoves, etc.

I have doing this competition for about 10 years, back when it was just an informal thing done in someone’s back yard.

This time, I had found recipes (see below) in 3 (Main Dish, Grain, and Dessert) of the 4 categories (also veggie).

2 of the three dishes I did with charcoal on a sheet of expanded metal on cinder blocks that is on site, and in the process, I thoughtlessly moved a brick that I was using to put my camp oven above charcoal, and ended up with a blister on my right index finger tip, which is having me type 9-fingered now.

Things did not go exactly as planned, and I arrived about 40 minutes late to the event, which meant that I had to set up my workspace, and then start cooking with about 15% of the time already gone.

Luckily, two of the dishes were quick to make, and the last one had a lot of idle time, so I managed to get all of them to the judges in the nick of time.

I was shocked when my grain dish, Lombard Rice, won the grains category, a first for me.

Then, they announced that I had won the “Grand Master”, overall award, and I was completely dumbstruck.

It appears that my main dish, Sour Lamb Stew, kicked some serious culinary ass.

I had a lot of fun, but I’m wiped, and I’ll probably feel this tomorrow

Recipes after break:


Jurjaniyya (Sour Lamb Stew)1
Ingredients

1.5 kg Lamb, something like shoulder or neck, weight after butchering . 3 Onions
4 Carrots 25g (1.1 oz) Jujubes, dried
1½ tsp Salt, Kosher 2 tsp Coriander seed
1½ tsp Cinnamon 1½ tsp Ginger
1 tsp Black pepper 30 g (1¼ Oz) Pomegranate seeds
30 g (1¼ Oz) Raisins 200 ml (⁷⁄₈ cup) Almond milk
45 ml (3 TBSP) Wine vinegar 2 tsp Sugar
15 ml (1 tbsp) Rosewater

Method

  1. If you are using dried jujubes, put them in a bowl with just enough water to cover them, and leave aside to rehydrate.
  2. Cut the lamb into roughly equal sized pieces, removing any sinew (the silvery membrane you find on the edges of the meat).
  3. Put the lamb into a pot with just enough water to cover it, and the salt. Bring to the boil.
  4. Meanwhile, peel the onions and dice finely.
  5. Peel the carrots and slice into julienne strips, leaving out the core of the carrot.
  6. Finely grind the spices in a mortar or electric grinder.
  7. When the pot with the lamb is boiling, add the onion, carrot and spices. Stir well and reduce to a simmer.
  8. Meanwhile, put the pomegranate seeds and raisins in a mortar with enough water to cover them, and pound well.  This can also be done with a blender.  When the mixture has reached a smooth consistency, strain it through a fine cloth to remove any pieces of pomegranate seed.
  9. When the meat has started to soften and the liquid has reduced a little, add the raisin and pomegranate mix, vinegar and almond milk to the pot and continue to simmer.
  10. When the liquid has reduced and the meat is falling apart,  remove from the heat and add the sugar and the rose water, and mix well.  Transfer to a serving platter
  11. Drain the jujubes if necessary, and pour on top of the meat.  Serve warm.

Changes from the above recipe:
I am browning the meat before stewing, because I think that it tastes better.
Instead of using water, I am using lamb stock, and use it to deglaze the pot browning, because I all that lamb neck has too many bones to ignore.
I am not adding any salt because of the use of the stock, which contains some salt naturally.

Source:
Jurjaniyya: The way to make it is to cut up meat medium and leave it in the pot, and put water to cover on it with a little salt. Cut onions into dainty pieces, and when the pot boils, put the onions on it, and dry coriander, pepper, ginger and cinnamon, all pounded fine. If you want, add peeled carrots from which the woody interior has been removed, chopped medium. Then stir it until the ingredients are done. When it is done, take seeds of pomegranates and black raisins in equal proportion and pound them fine, macerate well in water and strain through a fine sieve. Then throw them into a pot. Let there be a little bit of vinegar with it. Beat peeled sweet almonds to liquid consistency with water, then throw them into the pot. When it boils and is nearly done, sweeten it with a little sugar, enough to make it pleasant. Throw a handful of jujubes on top of the pot and sprinkle a little rosewater on it. Then cover it until it grows quiet on a fire, and take it up.

—Kitab al Tabikh Chapter I (The Book of Dishes, trans. Charles Perry and published as A Baghdad Cookery Book).

Nuhud al-Adra (Virgin’s Breasts)2
Ingredients

200 g Finely ground Semolina flour 200 g Sugar, preferably powdered
200 g Clarified butter (Ghee) 200 g Finely ground almond meal

Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 180°C. (355°F)
  2. Thoroughly mix the semolina and almond meal.
  3. Melt the ghee, and combine with sugar until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is frothy.
  4. Slowly add the semolina and almond meal to the butter and sugar – it is better to do this by hand.
  5. Make walnut sized balls of dough and press in to breast shapes. (Nipples optional)
  6. Bake for around 12-15 minutes, until pale gold.

Source
Nuhud al-Adra: Knead sugar, almonds, samid and clarified butter, equal parts, and make them like breasts, and arrange them on a brass tray. Put it in the bread oven until done, and take it out. It comes out excellently.
— Kitab Wasf al-Atima al-Mutada Chapter XI (The Description of Familiar Foods, trans. Charles Perry)
Features in Medieival Arab Cookery, ed. Maxime Rodinson.

Rice Lombard3

Ingredients

1 ½ Cup Rice 3 Cups Broth
¼ tsp Salt 1 Pinch Saffron
1 Pinch Cinnamon 1 Pinch Sugar

Method
Put broth, salt, and saffron into a large saucepan and bring to a boil. Add rice, cover, and reduce heat. Cook for about 15 minutes, or until rice is tender. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon.

Source
Rice Lombard: Ryse Lumbard Rynnyng. Recipe ryse & pyke þam wele, & wesh þam in .iii. or .iiij. waters, & than seth þam in clene water til þai begyn to boyle. And at þe fyrst bolyng put oute þe water & seth it in broth of flesh, & put þerto sugyre & colour it with saferon, & serof it forth.

Rise Lombard Standyng. Recipe & make þam in pe same manere, safe take perto brothe of flesh, salmon, or congyr; & cast berto powdre of canel, & make peron lyure of brede as it is aforesaide.

—Middle English culinary recipes in MS Harley, an Addition and Commentary  5401, C. Hieatt (ed.)

1 Redaction and recipe by Mistress Leoba of Lecelade (https://leobalecelad.wordpress.com/2018/05/05/jurjaniyya/ also http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-MEATS/Sour-Lamb-Stw-art.html)
2 Redaction and recipe by Mistress Leoba of Lecelade. (https://leobalecelad.wordpress.com/2018/07/27/nuhud-al-adra-virgins-breasts-revisited/ also http://www.florilegium.org/files/FOOD-SWEETS/Virgns-Brests-art.html.)
3 Redaction and recipe by Daniel Myers. (http://www.medievalcookery.com/recipes/riselombard.html)

It’s Teach Your Daughter to Drink Day

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Tasting List Pictured

Today, the family went to an SCA demo at the Royal Rabbit Vinayards.

Because we were a part of the entertainment, we got to do a tasting, so I sat with Natalie (I had to drive) while she tasted small samples of about a half-dozen wines.

I talked to her about how to use her nose, how to let all of her tongue to taste the wine, and what sort of foods are good for different sorts of wines.

Nat turned 21 in June, so it was a perfectly legal, though somewhat surreal, child parent bonding.

A Right Wing Freakout that is Completely Wrong

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They are freaking out over a court ruling in the UK.

The court recognized that a decades long Islamic marriage was covered by British law, and so the civil divorce laws apply, meaning that the husband cannot just leave, and keep everything:

A high court judge has decided that a couple’s Islamic marriage falls within the scope of English matrimonial law, in a ruling that could have implications for thousands of Muslims in the UK.

Nasreen Akhter wanted to divorce Mohammed Shabaz Khan, her husband of 20 years, but he blocked it, arguing that the couple were not married under English law.

Akhter and Khan underwent a religious marriage ceremony, known as a nikah, conducted by an imam in 1998.

This year Akhter, a solicitor, petitioned for divorce, saying the nikah constituted a valid marriage. Khan, a businessman, wanted to prevent Akhtar from bringing a case for a divorce settlement to court, and said they were married only under sharia or Islamic law.

In a written ruling, Mr Justice Williams, who heard the case in the family division of the high court in London, concluded that the marriage fell within the scope of the 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act.

He said the marriage was void under section 11 of the act because it was “entered into in disregard of certain requirements as to the formation of marriage. It is therefore a void marriage and the wife is entitled to a decree of nullity.”

………

Previous cases involving nikah marriages have concluded that they were legally non-existent, meaning spouses had no redress to the courts for a division of matrimonial assets such as the family home and spouse’s pension if a marriage broke down.

Hazel Wright, a family law specialist at Hunters Solicitors, said the ruling had “given heart to many who otherwise suffer discrimination”. She said it was vital for Akhter that the “English divorce court rule in her favour, that the marriage should be recognised as void and not a non-marriage. Otherwise she would not have any rights to make any financial claims for herself.”

This seems to be a fairly anodyne story:  The court has reviewed religious divorces, and determined that women don’t lose their rights.

But the flying monkeys of the right wing, upon hearing that the law of the land trumps religious law, as been screaming “High Court Recognises Shariah Law in Divorce Case in UK Legal First!!!!”

Yes, that is the actual headline from Breitbart, but no link, because ……… Well ……… Breitbart.

This Takes Guts

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Silvia Foti set about writing a biography of her grandfather, Jonas Noreika, a hero of the resistance in Lithuania, and she discovered that her father was a Nazi collaborator who directed the extermination of Jews in a number of cities, and she has written about this:

Eighteen years ago, my dying mother asked me to continue working on a book about her father, Jonas Noreika, a famous Lithuanian World War II hero who fought the Communists. Once an opera singer, my mother had passionately devoted herself to this mission and had even gotten a PhD in literature to improve her literary skills. As a journalist, I agreed. I had no idea I was embarking on a project that would lead to a personal crisis, Holocaust denial and an official cover-up by the Lithuanian government.

 ………

 That is the book I started to write. My mother had collected a trove of material that included 3,000 pages of KGB transcripts; 77 letters to my grandmother; a fairytale to my mother written from the Stutthof concentration camp; letters from family members about his childhood; and hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles. A few months into the project, I visited my dying grandmother, who lived a few blocks away. She asked me not to write the book about her husband. “Just let history lay,” she whispered. I was stunned. “But I promised Mom,” I said. She rolled over to face the wall. I didn’t take her request seriously; I thought she was simply giving me a pass because she knew how taxing the project was for my mother.

 ………

 From Vilnius, Ray and I traveled as honorary guests to Šukoniai, the northern town where our grandfather was born, to see the grammar school named after him. We were shown the modest building of white bricks and oak trim. The school director, a roly-poly man with disheveled white hair, enthusiastically grabbed our hands, telling us how pleased he was that we had come to host the ceremony in homage to our grandfather. He had heard I was writing a book. I asked him, “How did you decide to name the school after our grandfather?” Stroking his chin, he answered, “It was during a meeting of the County Board. We wanted to pick a new name instead of the Russian one we had. Your grandfather’s surfaced immediately.” Then he pulled Ray and me aside so the others couldn’t hear. “I got a lot of grief at first when we picked his name. He was accused of being a Jew-killer.”

 Ray and I were aghast. Accused of being a Jew-killer? I looked around the room, at the teachers and the principal. Who were these people? Who was my mother? My grandmother? Who was I? My mind whirled: There must be some mistake. The director stroked my arm in reassurance. “I’m getting more support than ever over choosing your grandfather’s name. All of that is in the past.”

 ………

 In 2013 I spent seven weeks in Lithuania. I hired a Holocaust guide, Simon Dovidavičius, director of Sugihara House, a museum honoring Chiune Sugihara, who helped 6,000 Jews escape to Japan during WWII. We became an unlikely pair, investigating the life of my grandfather. I showed him all the monuments on my grandfather; he showed me pits of where Jews were buried because of my grandfather. I gave him the book published by the Genocide Museum stating my grandfather was a hero; he gave me Holocaust books stating my grandfather was a villain.

 Dovidavičius was the first to suggest that my grandfather conducted the initial akcija (action) during World War II before the Germans arrived. It coincided with Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, when Hitler invaded Russia, the same day Lithuania began its uprising with the Germans against the Soviets, marking the start of a Holocaust there, where 95 percent of its 200,000 Jews were murdered, the highest percentage of any country in Europe. (About 3,000 Jews remain in Lithuania today.)

 Within three weeks, 2,000 Jews had been killed in Plungė, half the town’s population, and where my grandfather led the uprising. This preceded the January 1942 Wannsee Conference, when Nazi Germany decided to make mass-murder its state policy. Put in more chilling terms, Dovidavičius claimed that my grandfather, as captain, taught his Lithuanian soldiers how to exterminate Jews efficiently: how to sequester them, march them into the woods, force them to dig their own graves and shove them into pits after shooting them. My grandfather was a master educator.

 I resumed the investigation. I sought out Damijonas Riaukia, a colleague of my grandfather during the five-day uprising. He was a 17-year-old in 1941. “Didn’t my grandfather have anything to do with the killing of the Jews?” “He wasn’t here,” he answered. “He had nothing to do with it. It was the Germans.” By this point I suspected a cover-up, but I needed proof.

 ………

 By the end of the trip I came to believe that my grandfather must have sanctioned the murders of 2,000 Jews in Plungė, 5,500 Jews in Šiauliai and 7,000 in Telšiai.

 ………

 Gochin has identified more than 100 relatives killed in the Lithuanian Holocaust. Our independent research has shown that my grandfather murdered Gochin’s relatives. We decided to join forces.

 While I had been focused exclusively on my grandfather over the past two decades, Gochin had launched a movement in Lithuania to expose multiple men lauded as heroes by the Genocide Museum who played a role in the Holocaust. Three years ago, he launched a campaign to remove my grandfather’s plaque from the Vilnius Library of the Academy of Science building. Despite wide media coverage and a petition signed by 19 prominent Lithuanian politicians, writers, and historians, the government refused to remove the plaque. This month, Gochin presented a 69-page exposé on my grandfather, charging the government with a cover-up of the Holocaust. I’m trying to play my small part in Gochin’s movement by offering an affidavit of support describing my research on my grandfather.

 In the face of tremendous resistance by the Lithuanian government, the effort to convince it to acknowledge its role in the Holocaust will be long and hard. The souls of 200,000 Jews buried in Lithuanian soil demand such a reckoning.

It’s one thing look into family history and find some skeletons, most families do, it’s another to face it head on and tell people that you have genocidal monsters in your family tree.

This could not have been easy.

I Feel Old

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I was talking to my daughter after picking her up from school.

She was talking about making jokes abut death, and I suggested that she should make an event out of this.

She has organized concerts before, so I thought that this might be in her wheelhouse.

I suggested that she call it ………

Wait for it ………

Wait for it ………

Death Comedy Jam!!!

I got a blank look from her.

I told the joke to my son.

I got a blank look from him.

I feel old.