"Whenever I go into a restaurant, I order both a chicken and an egg to see which comes first"

Saturday, December 23, 2017

RECIPES–Baby Kale And Cheddar Puree

Baby kale is a kinder, gentler version of mature kale.  It is more tender, sweeter, and lends itself easily to soups and purees.  When blended with a good, sharp cheddar and pureed, it is delicious!

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                             Baby kale

Baby Kale and Cheddar Puree

* 1/2 lb. baby kale

* 14-1/2 cup cheddar cheese (Trader Joe’s is particularly good)

* 1 lg. tbsp. unsalted European style butter

* 1/4-1/2 cup Half-and-Half

* salt and pepper

- Place the kale in a small put with about2” of water

- Boil over low heat until tender (approx. 10 min)

- Place the kale, the butter, cheese, cream, salt and pepper in blender

- Blend until pureed

- Reheat when ready to serve.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Broiled Tilapia In A Sesame Lemon Marinade

Tilapia is a very tame, mild fish and needs something to give it character and interest.  It is always a good substitute for catfish in a good Southern catfish fry; but it can be a good dish broiled or baked.  Broiling it after a few hours in a good marinade is an excellent way to prepare it.
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Broiled Tilapia In A Lemon-Sesame Marinade
* 1 1/2 lbs. tilapia filets
* 2-3 tsp. honey
* 1 1/2 lg. lemons
* 2 tsp. sesame oil
* 2 tsp. Bay Spice
* Salt and pepper to taste
- Mix the juice of the lemons, sesame oil, salt, and pepper in bowl and whisk well
- Let the fish stand in the refrigerator for about 4 hours (longer is better)
- Sprinkle filets with Bay Spice
- Broil for approx. 10 minutes, checking for doneness (careful not to overcook!)
- Serve

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

Notes On Graham Greene, Resurrection, And Worries About Climate Change

Despite the Christmas Season - one of hope, possibility, peace and reconciliation - doomsday climate scenarios persist.  There can be no peace, activists say, when ignorant, politically-motivated policies are dooming the planet to an undeserved and unlikely fate when with but a little intelligence, foresight, and modest commitment, the glaciers would not melt, the Tropics would retain their oxygen-producing forests, temperate zone agricultural lands would not desiccate and die, and the low-lying cities of the world would not be inundated and the displacement of millions avoided.

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Christmas, although not so hallowed as Easter, the symbol of resurrection, and rebirth, is a memorable time; and even marginally-affiliated Christians celebrate the birth of Christ as an event of religious and historical importance.  No matter what the world may offer; no matter what insurrections may defy law, justice, and community, and no matter how ignorant secular decisions may be, another better world awaits.

Non-believers of course dismiss all this as chicanery – the persistence of the Church to gain and retain converts who, dissatisfied with the real world, have at least a chance at spiritual salvation.

Believers, however, reject temporal concerns as distractions, blind alleys, and no-exit mazes.  Time is passing and no secular cause ever garnered chits with the Good Lord who decides fate on the basis of grace, election, and prayer.

There is a lot in between.  Most peorple are neither believers in a coming nuclear winter, a climate change inferno, or even geophysical structural adjustment.  They understand the nature of environmental conflict, are able to calculate current and future risk, and act accordingly.  

Of course there are those who prefer to minimize risk, overvalue human ingenuity, and rely too much on the lessons of history; and those who are perennial Chicken Little pessimists; but for the most part people are willing to take what comes, react moderately, vote within reason, and hope for the best.

Graham Greene is often described as a ‘Catholic writer’ whose stories of intrigue, adultery, and duplicity would stand any test against any modern writer even without the underlying moral context of religion, has raised fictional drama to another level by adding religious doubt to existential conundrums.  Scobie, Bendrix, and Querry are normal, ordinary men for whom marriage, love, and intimate responsibility are not merely secular markers but theological ones. 

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Greene might have set his stories in modern America amidst the political confusion and contention of the day, but he would never have veered from his moral North.  Human decisions are matters of the soul.  No Greene character would ever be a secular crusader; nor one whose moral decisions would be framed or conditioned by socially environmental issues.  The questions of right and purposeful behavior – the only legitimate criteria for redemption – would have nothing to do with politics.  Identity, civil rights, justice, equality, fairness have no relevance whatsoever  except within a moral context.

In other words it matters little whether the world is headed for an incendiary end or is on the path to peace and reconciliation.  What matters is one’s relationship or reconciliation with God.

Sarah, Bendix’s lover in The End of the Affair is concerned less with the loss of physical love and intimacy than the loss of love for God.  Both are conflated in Greene’s Catholic vision.  She has taken a vow before God.  If he spares her lover’s life, she will be forever after devoted to Him.  As time passes she expands the jurisdiction of the vow, so still in love with Bendix is she; but she refuses to nullify the more important spiritual contract she has made with her spiritual Father.

The analogy with political movements and climate change in particular is pertinent.  Scobie’s doctrinaire faith  (The Heart of the Matter) is corrosive, damaging, and ultimately destructive to those who do not share it.  His religiosity is arrogant, self-serving, and selfish.  While claiming to honor and respect God and His covenants, he is only concerned with the secular, the immediate, and the personal.  In his slavish obedience to the Church, he has lost sight of true Christian values.

Doctrinaire faith – whether religious or secular – is always blinding and neutralizing of more fundamental and temperate beliefs.  Those who perpetuate the myth of a climatic Biblical extermination as existential as The Flood, the razing of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the Final Reckoning lose credibility.  Within God’s universe there are no causes, no imperatives, and certainly no discouraging results.  God’s will and only God’s will will prevail.

Progressives insist that there is a role for human involvement– or better, engagement – in God’s plan.  Jesus Christ came to Earth not indifferently but to help promote a better world.  While the doctrine of grace applies universally and in perpetua, God never intended Man to be a bystander.  We all have an obligation to see to a better world.  No effort to promote world peace, to stave off climate change, to encourage equality and communitarian harmony is insignificant.

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Conservatives are willing to stand pat with God’s grace. Who among us has the temerity to tinker with His plan?   He created us in His image –apparently intelligent, resourceful, courageous, and enterprising – and let the chips fall where they may.  For better or worse, Man will make the bed he lies in.

So, it is normal and quite natural for progressives to be upset by climate change and what they see is a dereliction of duty by mankind and an unpardonable insult to God himself.  They cannot possibly accept the transfiguration of the natural world according to man’s law and preference, and are under obligation to maintain the Biblical purity of His vision.

It is equally normal for conservatives to accept the course of events as they happen.  Man is not the predator, interloper, or despoiler.  He is simply a part of His plan – neither actor nor acted upon, but pawn in the divine game.

Progressives veered off the moral decades ago when socialism became the pretender to Utopia.  The sharing of wealth, the doctrine of ‘each according to his need and each according to his ability’, and the belief in human perfectibility were irresistible enticements to the disaffected Left in Europe and America; and political parties worldwide dismissed more fundamental concepts of human enterprise, competition, and mutually advantageous compromise in favor of state-induced equality.  The current move to the Right is less of a political phenomenon than a philosophical one.  The time for government (secular, human) intervention is over; and individual enterprise, free markets, and especially free risk and proportionate rewards have returned. 

Climate change?  A matter of harmless speculation.  Whether the climate warms or cools is an indifferent matter for those who hope to understand the ineluctable value-free, ineluctable evolutionary change.  Neither Darwin nor God himself ever believed in a better world.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Recipes - Radicchio al brodo

Radicchio and escarole are too bitter to eat raw in salads, but when cooked they release their intense flavor and make for a delicious soup.

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Radicchio al Brodo
* 1 lg. bunch radicchio or endive cut into 3” pieces
* 2 bouillon cubes (vegetarian, low salt preferred; but any chicken-based will do)
* 1/2 cup grated parmesan
* 1 egg
* 2 cups water
* salt, pepper
- Combine cheese, salt, pepper in mixing bowl; and whisk well
- Boil radicchio in bouillon broth for approx. 5 minutes or until tender
- When radicchio is tender, slowly add egg mixture, stirring constantly
- Serve

Thursday, November 23, 2017

The Mental Breakdown Of A Very Common Man–Ordinariness Has Its Virtues But Also Its Perils

Barney Field had always thought of himself as an emotionally stable person, well-grounded in moral principle, a solid education, and a clear understanding of himself and the world around him.
His childhood was unremarkable.  Barney played by the rules, colored within the lines, was dutiful and respectful to his parents, served as an altar boy, did well in school. 

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Barney himself was only remarkable for his ordinariness and lack of distinction.  This well-behaved and polite little boy, although admired by teachers and his parents’ friend, was growing up as an emotional and intellectual cipher.  Even Father Brophy hoped to hear a serious sin in the confessional, but Barney only confessed the most venial ones.  In fact, had confession not been indispensable preparation for Holy Communion and a sacrament itself, Father would have told Barney not to bother.

Barney’s teenage years were no different.  He followed every rule in the book, continued to be honorable and deferential, treated girls and women with respect, and never so much as let an elbow rest on the table.  By every standard of the age, he was a model boy, citizen, and member of New Brighton society.

Barney could not remember when the irritability set in; when things did not seem quite right; when everything began to look off-kilter.  Perhaps during the weekend on Cape Cod where the clambake had gone bad.  Nothing he could point to really, just a feeling of displacement.  He had always been taken for granted and never accorded any interest; but on the beach he was excluded, peripheral, and insignificant.

At the same time, he began to feel befuddled and adrift.  Perhaps he did belong on the margins. Why, for example, did the most insolent, arrogant, and posturing boys have such sexual success? Why were rectitude and intelligent counsel dismissed as irrelevant in sexual affairs? Why was volubility so attractive? And sports? Why wasn’t his own serious reflection and consideration of value?

The cracks only widened as he got older.  His suspicions of became more common and more troubling.  Perhaps he was a cipher or a dry well.  Life could have no meaning if he had no meaning.
Yet, what might that be? It is very had to construct a personality let alone character.  The genetic dice had been cast and there was no way to re-roll them until something more advantageous came up.  He had to make do.

He hoped that Descartes was right.  The very fact that Barney had these doubts about himself signified some existential importance. He must have a critical, analytical mind and sensitive spirit for them to have even cropped up.

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Still, there was no intellectual hook to hang his queries on; no emotional rivers to follow; no kaleidoscopes to jog his sensibilities; no Borscht Belt nor no funny bone.  No passion, no ambition, no obsession, no nothing.

Whereas everyone else his age was planning for the future – eyeing a mate, a job opportunity, or an investment offer – he drifted, although not unhappily.  He felt no anxiety about his lack of ambition or vision, only a lassitude which, if he let himself, felt good.

Although he did not know it, Barney Field was in fact quite unique.  He had inherited genes which are more essential to survival than those of his more demanding colleagues.  He was the raccoon of his species.  Not a great hunter or predator, neither ferocious nor intimidated; but perfectly adaptable to his surroundings – to any surroundings in fact.  Prehensile, nocturnal, cunning, and opportunistic, the raccoon would certainly be the mammal to survive nuclear winter.

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At college Barney was never concerned that his first choices were taken.  A course on Melville would be just as good as one on Conrad. There would certainly be plenty of creamed chicken in the cafeteria if he came late.  There was always seating at the polo field.

The cracks sealed themselves once Barney accepted the fact that there was no there there.  Uniqueness was not his specialty, but life under the stream bank was not so bad either.  Life without bother, with no demands for notion or opinion, and outside the sexual fray was not bad at all.

There is a particularly comfortable zone within the intellectual spectrum, one in which the individual is not smart enough to obsess over existential issues but too smart to bungle.  The Three Bears Zone’ it was called by a well-known Czech psychologist.  Not many people fell within it, he noted, but those who did led very content lives.

What Dr. Milos failed to note, however, was the fluidity of the intellectual spectrum. The individual may rest comfortably well within its confines, but at times would regress or advance.  Sail too close to the edge and become suddenly and morbidly anxious about death on the one end, or make foolish decisions on the other.

It was during one of those excursions that Barney first felt angst. For no reason that he could tell, he felt nervous, prickly, unsettled, and very shaky.  His backyard looked spotty.  The trees were twisted and nasty, and the birds flew at him. It was too windy for August.

The feeling passed, and Barney went back to his business slightly unsettled but convinced that it was the ribs or sleeping badly until it happened again, this time more disassembling and insecure than before.  For a moment he couldn’t remember where he was or even who he was.  It wasn’t so much that the garden was shifting planes and that rabbits and voles were coming out but that he was deconstructing and shifting planes.

Of course it was a panic attack, and nothing that Barney felt differed from textbook descriptions.  Every attack is unique, Dr. Milos wrote in a paper written clandestinely in Prague in 1955 – clandestinely because under the Communists all psychological aberrations were due to the incompleteness of the Revolution and nothing whatsoever to do with individual, innate disturbances – and unpredictable in their phenomena.  For one person it might be rabbits and voles, another birds flying backwards, and for a third paralyzing fright.

It is bad enough for a complex person to suffer panic attacks; but far worse for a very stable, settled, and uncomplicated person like Barney Field.  Complex personalities, particularly the artistically gifted, see the world in unusual ways.  Picasso is a good example of a presumably rational and un-psychotic personality who saw the world in a scrambled way. 

Barney, however, had never seen a teapot as anything other than a teapot and a perfectly traditionally shaped one at that. White bone china, Victorian decorations, fluted spout, and slender throat.  So when the garden became a distortion far more radical than Picasso ever saw it, or more weirdly assorted than Breughel’s, Barney knew that something was seriously wrong.

He was ill-equipped to deal with his increasing anxiety.  Such discombobulation never seemed possible or even imaginable, so he didn’t have the first idea of what to make of it.  He of course had read about psychological disturbances, but psychosis and schizophrenia were never more than academic categories; and as far as modern art was concerned, he was ignorant.

All of which is to say that Barney suffered more than those with intimations of craziness.  He was totally, completely, and helplessly unprepared for his devilish visions.

Dr. Milos had offered no insights into this particular type of psychosis – i.e. a person with no known history of mental illness, a well-adjusted, loving childhood, and an adaptable personality which enabled him to cruise the shipping lanes with ease.

In other words, where did this sudden weirdness come from?  Had it been hidden deep in Barney’s subconscious for all these years?  Had the balance among Id, Ego, and Superego been so perfect that his subterranean demons had been kept underground?  Or was it chemical imbalance the result of some leaky endocrine valve or bad limbic plumbing?

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Milos even hinted at the demonic (for which he had been roundly censured by his colleagues and the Communists).  Why not consider possession, he asked?

In any case Barney went from bad to worse, was only partially salvaged by psychoactive drugs, interned in a private hospital in Connecticut for short periods over three years, and then finally committed to an asylum.  His only relatives – an aunt and uncle in Branford – were surprised that such a Victorian institution still existed let alone in Connecticut; but it was they who signed the papers.

It was there that Barney Field spent the rest of the days, interrupted from his daily routines only be squads of research psychologists who wanted to learn more about how such an ordinary, uncomplicated, and very uninteresting man could have gone so far off the rails so quickly.

They had no conclusive answers and were as perplexed as Dr. Milos had been many decades earlier.
There is too little we know of the human genome, suggested one researcher, and for all we know there are bits of DNA which don’t kick in for many years and then, for reasons we cannot understand now, drive the individual completely and irrevocably batty.


“Such cases [like Barney’s] are impossible to explain”, wrote Dr. Milos.  One would hope that ordinariness would have at least one compensation – lack of anxiety – but it clearly does not.  No matter how prosaic and dull one might be, it is no protection against the insidious infection of madness.”

Tuesday, November 21, 2017

A Better World–Tax Reform And The Patriarchal Assumption That ‘Father Knows Best’

Congress is currently debating tax reform, and the lines have been already and predictably drawn.  Democrats want to continue progressive taxation – high taxes for the rich to subsidize the poor – and Republicans want individual American citizens to keep as much of their income as possible, for they alone know how it should be spent.

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Tax reform passed in the House with not one vote of Democratic support. They see Republican initiatives as favoring the rich and the expense of the poor and refuse to be complicit.  However the opposition is more philosophical.  It is simply hard for the Left to give up the mantel of moral authority. How, they ask, can anyone grounded in insular, populist sentiments, possibly reason objectively on what is best for them and the nation?  They cannot; and therefore the responsibility lies with those who do.

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How can society ever progress if a majority of its citizens still believe in the inerrant word of the Bible, creationism, and divine fundamentalism? Such beliefs are not only errant but reactionary and counter-revolutionary; and such home-grown, nativist, and naïve convictions must be  challenged, dismissed, or completely ignored in the ineluctable path of progress.

While demurring on Marx’s conviction that ‘religion is the opiate of the people’, progressive critics prefer simply to dismiss it as irrelevant and antiquated - an incidental, peripheral aspect of life of little consequence and greater corrosive threat.  Personal religious conviction – about abortion, gay marriage, procreative surrogacy, the sexual roles of men and women – has no place in today’s modern American society.  All such issues must only be considered within the context of social reform, social justice, and social progress.

Public schools, liberals argue, are not for three R’s education but re-education – schooling in progressive social theory.  Teaching templates are simple and designed to provide the race-gender-ethnicity context through which all learning must be encouraged.   Deconstructionism – valuing context, environment, social determinants far more than individual creativity, enterprise, or insight – is the primer.

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It is understandable how, given this a priori belief in progress that the progressive Left would insist on dirigiste economics and interventionist social theory. They and their moderate associates in Congress insist that the electorate has no idea what’s best for them.  Left to their own devices they would vote for and endorse any measure which reflects their social and religious fundamentalism with little regard for the more important social movements which are intended to bring all Americans together towards a better world.

Conservatives and a significant majority of Americans beg to differ.  They know exactly what they want, how it conforms both to an originalist concept of commonweal and  individualism, and why the notion of race-gender-ethnicity not only does injustice to the democratic vision of the Founding Fathers, but is divisive, and antithetical to the concept of nationhood. They are concerned about the persistent intrusion of government into private lives. 

These Americans who reject this social and economic dirigisme are Trump supporters who, without pretense or political ambitions, simply want their due.  An acknowledgment at least that Christianity is the foundation of America; that Biblical heritage is ours , defining and essential; and that the Old and New Testaments are modern, relevant, and essential.

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How divided is America? No less divided than between conservative fundamentalism and progressive secularism.  For every feminist rally, for every Black Lives Matter or Take-a-Knee protest, there are thousand of unexpressed, and defiant Americans who resent the dissolution of common principles, the commonweal, and the Republic.

‘Tax and spend’, the mantra of American which feels right and justified in drawing down on the investments of the wealthy to create, and promote, social programs.  Despite the objection of conservatives who insist that only by leaving individuals to their own choices, freeing private money to find its own productive home, and rejecting paternalistic sentiments and initiatives, the American Left continues to promote its interventionist agenda. Democratic tax reform is only a signifier, a meme, and an arrogation of power, no different from the positions taken by the Party for decades - the redistribution of wealth and programs of social engineering.

Of course given the nature of politics, the charge of Republican cronyism - tax reform is only a cover for structural adjustments to favor the wealthy - has been made loud and clear.  Objections have been made by Democrats in this Congress and in many before that lightening the tax burden on the wealthy has never resulted in advantages to the poor.  Trickle-down theory has never worked. 

At the same time tapping the rich in the interest of the poor has no salience except in discredited socialist principle.  Despite the fact than no data has proven the assumption that for every dollar recruited from the rich a commensurate economic benefit is accrued by the poor, liberal activists continue their efforts at progressive tax reform and radical redistribution of wealth.  There is no easy zero sum in economics.

However Congress rules on the tax bill (2017), the political debate will only sharpen the philosophical divisions between conservative and progressive.  Either government is the solution or the problem.

More and more Americans are wary of government authority, of Beltway elitist arrogation of power, and of progressive intrusion into the affairs  of the common man.  This Republican Congress is not the first to challenge these assumptions but perhaps the first to so decisively throw down the gantlet.