A Morning Without Rain?

Could it be? No thunder? No need for buckets to catch the overflow? No wet two-foot-tall grass in the back yard? Could it be? We are done with the deluge?

On my way to work I stop at the Centennial Gardens to celebrate the end of the wettest May on record (in Madison). The peonies are terrific.



So are the irises.





But wait, this yellow gem is pictured against the background of the pond. That would be yellow against the blue waters. Why isn’t the background blue? What color is the sky anyway? Looking up I see this.-->

I wont celebrate the end of The Rains until we’ve gone through an entire day without so much as a drop of water from above.

Why Are the EU Parliamentary Elections a Lackluster Event?

According to today’s IHT (here), many think that the candidates are ill-suited to the job and so they inspire little political passion among the voters. Ill-suited? In what way?

"It doesn't attract the right people," Crum said of the Parliament. "There are a number of people who get a seat in Parliament who simply shouldn't be there. They lack qualifications and only add noise and disruption."

Candidates in the coming elections include a sprinkling of nonpolitical personalities: an Estonian supermodel, Carmen Kass; a Slovak ice hockey star, Peter Stastny; the race car driver, Krzysztof Holowczyc; and the pornography star, Katerina Bochinckova, also known as Dolly Buster.

Wait, this is a concern to voters? Just goes to show how much more tolerant Americans are of their candidate’s diverse backgrounds and past lives. You learn on the job, don’t you?

Test Your Smartness Against My Stupidity

I heard on NPR that the last widow of a Civil War (Confederate) soldier died yesterday. Hmm. That seemed remarkable. Wasn’t the Civil War in the early 1860s? How old was this woman anyway?

A fine example of how quickly your mind can warp as you drive along same old, same old streets, engaged in passive listening. Of course, she was 'only' in her 90s. She had married the guy when she was just 21; he was then 81. Figures (on so many levels).

Today is THE day

Yes, it is June 1st. Yes, a new blog is being born. Yes it still looks like the old blog. June 1st ends at midnight tonight, doesn’t it? I WILL USE EVERY LAST MINUTE OF THE DAY TO MAKE IT HAPPEN!

THIS MORNING IT RAINED

There must be good things that come with all this rain, there must be! I took a walk to Owen Woods soon after YET ANOTHER torrential morning downpour. Owen Woods are close to where I live (5 minute walk from my house), but I need the right mindset to venture out there. It is a brooding kind of forest…



…though it opens up onto lovely prairie fields, the one place where the omnipresent phlox are very welcome…



But all that rain! After five minutes, the wind unleashed water from wet leaves, leaving me looking like I had a very unfortunate experience in the bathroom or at the very least spent a productive morning chasing my shadow through the sprinkler.

Still, there must be something worth reveling in as a result of the rains.
Sure enough, a slightly modified by me sign says it all:



…Because if you look at all the wet puddles around you, you will see this:



...and this:



and this:



When I was a kid at my grandparents’ place in the Polish village, I’d go out after heavy rains and look for puddles to bike through, just for that spray of muddy wetness (especially onto mean mortal enemies passing at the side). And always, always we’d take baskets into the forests in search of mushrooms (Poles are obsessively committed to sautéing, frying and generally cooking with mushrooms). My walk today didn’t bring me any closer to what I’d put in a frying pan, but these were certainly pretty to look at. -->

But I have to say, the singular beauty of wet things notwithstanding, I HAVE HAD IT WITH THE RAIN!! Even the pine trees look depressed with all that moisture weighing them down.

A GAGGLE OF BLOGGERS

Say there are four people: A, B, C and F. (Not to be confused with the grading chart. A, B and C are stand-in names put forth by blogger F - see post here - with or without great awareness of his own brilliance as they do indeed correspond to the first initials of last names, forcing me, therefore, to resort to the failing mark ‘F’ as a label for him, at it corresponds to his own name).

Say A knows B and C, B knows A and C, F knows C, but only C knows A, B and F. Though all do read each others’ blogs religiously (corresponding to blogs A, B, C and F). What power to have been the only one in possession of knowledge about all, the translator of blog innuendo, the purveyor of important information (‘yes, his RV does come with a patio large enough to hold a set of patio furniture’ and ‘no, she does NOT have DM posters up and down her office walls’ and ‘she does indeed blog her way through faculty meetings’)!

To be privy to insider-information is, of course, something that many long for and some are now sitting in jail for and I must admit I enjoyed the elevated status that it accorded me for a short period of time (while I can’t say that such insider information was in great demand, I would occasionally be able to show off with an off-hand, person-in-the-know type comment here and there).

All that is in the past. Last night’s dinner brought together all four and any remaining curiosities (Q: ‘is his face really as round as the drawing implies?’) were clarified and put to rest (A: ‘No.’). I must now step down and rejoin the peanut gallery, switch from first class to sardine economy, tear up my ‘informer’ business cards, lose all privilege and become one of the populace.

A ROSE IS A ROSE

A climbing rose bush (which technically is a misnomer because roses never truly ‘climb’) can make a yard come alive so quickly! So why not just stick these devils in every nook to give life and color to bleak landscapes? Because, like everything else in the growing world (people included) it is an unpredictable little thing. A little disturbance and it will falter, wither and die.

Some, though, are (like humans) hardy and tough and they can stand up to the frost and the animals and the poor soil and the drought and the negligent gardener. It’s good to surround yourself with resilient types (flowers and people) if only because they free up your time to deal with the truly needy among us. Or, for the needy growth spurts of typically hardy plants (or people).

A SAD BLOGGER MOOD; IF YOU WANNA BE HAPPY, SKIP THIS POST.

There are two very real reasons why I cannot get myself to write a chipper post:

1. The pernicious rain did not creep up the un-solarium floor. It did not flood the basement. But it did crack the roof and is currently flooding the house from above. As it’s a holiday week-end, all we can do is run with buckets. Unless someone has a more clever idea?

2. I had been talking to a friend about an article that I’d read on Friday about alternative medicine. It was suggested that I blog about it, though I put it off for a while, what with the rain and the market and all sundry issues.

The study attempted to document how Americans are increasingly turning to alternative medicine for relief from life’s aches and pains. It was a curious study in that it listed a number of “holistic remedies” that I would not myself have thought to include under the rubric of alternative medicine: “prayer,” for example. If you pray for relief, is it really that you regard this as the equivalent to (or a replacement for) popping a pill with medicinal properties? It doesn’t take much to imagine that many pray for any number of convoluted reasons, perhaps too complicated to untangle for the purposes of a simple survey.

Or, another curiosity: “yoga.” A friend asked me to go with her to a yoga class this coming Wednesday. I balked: why invest an hour and a half to stretching? (Truthfully I balked because she is almost 20 years younger than I and the idea of us stretching together was … disheartening.) Ultimately she prevailed and so we’re set to go Wednesday. Which means I probably wont have time for my regular gym and/or walking. There’s only so much time one can invest in body repair in the course of a day. But are any of these “alternative healing?” I didn’t think so. I never hum meditatively when I walk or run, I do not focus on finding an inner sanctum, nor do I seek to eradicate poisons that that have seized control of my body.

But then, yesterday, something terribly sad happened and suddenly writing about all this became hugely more complicated.

I received an email from a very good friend who lives across the ocean. And I am hoping that he does not mind that I include just a fragment of his message. He writes:

My father passed away on the 30th of April, three weeks short of his 83 birthday, 59 years to the day after he was liberated from the Dachau concentration camp…But there is a more tragic side of this story. As I have told you my parents have been Christian Scientists for the last 15 years. Never went to see a doctor (except when my mother broke her leg), did not take any medicines and did not ever want to talk about their health. They believed in spiritual healing, God's ever-present love and harmony. Material world is an illusion. Mind not just over but instead of matter. Beautiful ideas and they do work - as I have witnessed several times. But perhaps not always...

You can tell where this is heading. The old man died even though he should have, could have lived. Here, prayer was indeed used as an alternative form of healing. And it became not an addition to, but a substitute for scientifically-driven medicine.

Perhaps one of the problems is that we have created this dichotomy of ‘alternative’ and ‘conventional.’ We now know that many of the alternative forms ought to have been studied and incorporated into conventional practice, but for any number of economic, social and political reasons they had been pushed to the side. Yoga may well be on that list. Certainly herbs and other non-conventional therapies have medicinal benefits that have been ignored for years. To me, alternative thus simply comes to mean “scientifically untested.”

But insofar as science cannot run tests for all illness and every permutation of every therapy, there appears good reason to try untested cures especially under desperate conditions. This would include conventional medicines used in unconventional ways (who would have thought, for example, that aspirin may decrease the likelihood of breast cancer?). My mother pops some ten or more non-conventional pills every day. She is strong as a horse for her age. She swears by her various remedies, though she also has another ten or so conventional medicines that she takes. She is a walking pill machine.

It becomes complicated when spiritual matters enter into the equation. Science is only now beginning to investigate the relationship between spiritual well-being and the likelihood of healing (the most recent research that I’ve come across does not support a link between positive thoughts and healing: cancer patients who had a better, more hopeful outlook about their prognosis were NOT more likely to overcome their illness; and, those that could not improve their outlook, were doubly burdened by their depression and their guilt for not overcoming their depression).

So, here I am, on this wet, drippy day, thinking about all this and feeling terribly sad for my friend who is so unhappy. And for the roof that is leaking. These two issues are not at the same level of sadness, to be sure, but they coincide to make me want to go out and do some brisk walking right now. Not for spiritual healing purposes, but to distract myself from the realities that are before me.

MONSOON SEASON?

My secret other life shivered through the deluge, then took on a rosy glow from the ovens.

...And it rained and rained and rained. And then it really rained. And then it poured. The wind and rain together caused temperatures to plummet. It was not a fun day to be L’Etoile’s forager, nor was it fun to be a farmer at the Market.

But the colors of the flowers looked so vibrant, even under the gray skies of the day.



The list of foods needed for the restaurant was woefully large on this wet Market day. 8 pounds of sauté spinach, 3 pounds of soup spinach and 6 pounds of salad spinach. 30 pounds of asparagus. 3 pounds of angelica, 2 pounds of tarragon. Cheeses: camembert, Fantome goat (Dane County’s biggest goat advocate is back!), nutty Swiss. 11 quarts of strawberries (pictured here: only Jordan Produce has them because they are lucky enough to have a southern-facing slope), 10 pounds of pea pods, edible flowers, on and on and on. And anything else that is new and exciting. It took five trips around the square (plus one with Odessa) to get it done. In the pouring rain.

But without misery there is no appreciation for the little things: like a hot oven. Odessa asked me to stay on to do some cooking and food prepping and I happily agreed. Toasting fresh breadcrumbs in the oven suddenly brought forth delicious moments of warmth. Typically it is an tedious task because you have to stoop (never bend!) and check for doneness too often. Today? Bliss. So warm!

When I last cooked for L’Etoile (a couple of years back) I had graduated from being a line-cook to being up there with the chef types, hence I now have my own coat. (Though technically, in the hierarchy of the restaurant, there is only one chef and we know who SHE is; to get her attention, you need only call out “Chef!” and it’s clear who is being summoned.)




And a l’Etoile cap, of course. It’s good to be wearing them again.


The most fun thing to make this afternoon? Fennel pesto with Stravecchio cheese. The most tedious? Nothing, even chopping up the spinach and the shallots was a good. To work with the hands, to allow my mind to focus on the task before me, at the same time that I could take in the steady work of my fellow cooks is pretty much equivalent for me to a day at the spa.

Tired now, but in a good way. And the glow from the ovens is still with me.

THE BLOG AS AN EDUCATIONAL TOOL

Still searching around and testing out different blog functions, I came across this piece of advice today from someone who is perhaps the business traveler par excellence (he spends, I'm told, some 40 nights per year at home; the story was in today's IHT) and so I thought I'd share it with the blogworld of travelers to educate and inform: never, ever leave those little plastic key cards in hotel rooms or other public places after you've checked out. You THINK they are all about entering your hotel room. In reality, most have encrypted information on you as well, including your credit card number.* The advice is to return them to the front desk at check-out.

*I do have to wonder, though, how many potential thieves know this AND are able to access the info AND indeed do make use of that ability, or are even on the prowl for left-behind keys. It seems remote to me, at about the same level of remoteness as someone entering a friends' house I guess. Last year he told me to stop by their place and pick up something while they were away. I protested that I didn't have the key. He answered "Neither do I, I just don't typically lock the door.**"

** Or, the same level of remoteness as having a would-be thief now search for information on my past and present friends after having read this post and having thus found out that one of these people may indeed leave the door unlocked upon occasion. Hmmm. That suddenly doesn't seem that remote. Okay then, that story about the friend and the key? Completely fabricated.

AND IN THE MEANTIME, THE MAGIC OF EARLY MORNING SUNSHINE TAKES HOLD

...of the branches of the tree outside my office window.

How can one not like being up at the wee hours of the morning?

BLOG MARGINALIA

I have noticed recently that political blog posts, while interesting, are far less provocative than the comments they inspire. Often a discussion (argument) ensues between the poster and an anonymous reader* and the third party, the reader, watches it unfold, tempted to jump in, yet also fascinated by the discourse itself-- a private argument voyeurism of sorts, for it has the appearance of being private, on the margins, accessible only to the committed, the motivated, the impassioned (or the bored).

In one recent round, a reader had responded to Ann’s blog post on the “blatantly partisan blogosphere” thus:

Isn't there really only one kind of centrist, the ideological centrist?

The ideological centrist is one whose beliefs are not driven by a core ideology that being equality vs. liberty. The ideological centrist is more concerned with practical results and will disregard the the liberty vs. equality debate. The centrist, however, will always have an ideological enemy because you can't have both liberty and equality. You will always either have more of one and less of the other.

How could one resist this provocation? For in creating this dichotomy, the Anonymous poster has both taken the steam out of the centrist position by equating it with an extreme pragmatism it doesn’t deserve (Ann’s rebuttal) and expunged the possibility of creating economic or social justice (I assume the Commentator meant economic, but this was not specified) without trampling on personal freedom (to spend? to function without government?) – at which point I had to jump in, of course, because, in my view, categorical pronouncements of this nature have to be discouraged even if they appear only on the margins of a blog post.

And all this is taking place on the side, while the happy blog reader reads on, unaware, looking for the next post, the next quirky blogger observation.

Still, I hold to my previous post’s declaration: I don’t want a “Comment” function here! I am not even sure yet how politicized this blog will be in the future. June 1st – the date for blog transformations – is fast approaching and I have done nothing, NOTHING to puff up the blog sails and head toward the changes that I am determined to make.

* I, too, dislike profoundly the new Blogger comment format which encourages anonymous posts; even I prefer to simply post an anonymous comment (and have done so on numerous blogs) than to go through more elaborate posting procedures called forth by Blogger. As a result, the reader never know whether the anonymous commentator is a new voice or an old voice saying new things. Annoying!

WINING AND DINING MYSELF

Since, for one reason or another, I have not had a regular dinner since Saturday, I decided last night to treat myself to a normal evening meal. I went somewhere where I'd not been before, though I certainly know the dining space from its previous restaurant incarnations.

Inside, the transformation to this more trendy-feeling dining room was completely successful. As for the food? I asked them to modify an appetizer – cut out the meats and concentrate on the Napa cabbage, cilantro and sprouts and they did, charged me half the price of the original and produced and exceptional, spicy and substantial appetizer (for $4.95). From the main menu I wanted something ‘standard,’ what anyone would order on a typical night. I opted for the Kung Pao shrimp with brown basmati rice and got a huge dish that was loaded with a fresh spinach sauté and monster (and not overcooked! yes!!) shrimp, priced at $8.95. The wines – their house glass of Chardonnay was under $5. So, an ample meal with fresh ingredients and good use of spices at $20 (before tip). Can you guess where*? P.S. For those who like trendy drinks, I hear their ginger-infused martini is cool – and I thought the bar ambience itself was quite nice.

*Lacking a “Comments” section (I know, I know, I've had many comments about the lack of 'Comments.' My own comment on that? 'Je refuse.') forces me to make up potential reader responses:
(Anonymous): It must be Big Bowl?
(NC): No, not Big Bowl, though there are definite similarities.

(From the East Coast): You’re not in Madison anymore! I’ve been to Madison – there is no good Asian or pan-Asian restaurant in the entire town.
(NC): You East Coast people are all the same. You think things never change here. Just because Imperial Gardens has a menu that looks remarkably identical to the menu I first encountered there some 20+ years ago, does not mean that ALL Asian restaurants are going to follow in its wake.

(A FoodFight Enthusiast): We are better than Lettuce Entertain You! We’ve got Firefly!
(NC): A biased but accurate answer. I am a card-carrying Lettuce Entertain You once-frequent diner and a fan of what they did to the Chicago dining scene (they pumped money into restaurants that they thought could revamp and produce a hefty loyal following and it worked). I am happy that Madison is benefiting from a similar entrepreneurial dining spirit.

ME, INTERESTED IN NUMBERS??

Or: what I found this morning in a paper that I never otherwise read: numbers, numbers everywhere!

It's rare that I am sitting in a coffee shop early in the morning reading the Wisconsin State Journal, but today was just such a day. I was in my office early today. So early, as a matter of fact, that I witnessed this sunrise out my window (forgive the slant, I am, after all, on a hill):

It is imperative to fill yourself with something that'll really knock your eyes open on such mornings and so I headed to Starbucks for a strong shot of espresso (but greatly diluted by milk so who am I kidding). There I picked up a paper tossed aside by someone else. I am generally dismissive of this paper, taking a position of haughty superiority, perhaps, in flaunting my commitment to the NYT or WashPost or the IHT instead.

But today I actually learned something from our local rag. There were a number of articles that threw out numbers and they were not uninteresting numbers. I'll give you four examples (directly quoting from the paper)of stories that piqued my curiosity, in the order that they appeared in the paper:

1. Only 63% of 4 year college students earn a college degree within 6 years (this is in the entire US)... At UW Madison, the 6 year graduation rate for white students is 76.9%, compared to 52.1% for minorities... America is almost unique among industrialized countries in failing [in recent years] to improve its graduation rate. [Reasons for failure to complete college here: lack of academic preparedness, lack of personal attention given by colleges to the needs of students, and the need to quit and go home to get a job and care for families.]

2. Two-thirds of divorces after age 40 are initiated by wives. The survey found that women over age 40 seemed more aware of problems in their marriage while men were more likely to be caught off-guard by their divorces. 26% of men said they 'never saw it coming' compared with 14% of women.

3. Immigrants who come to the U.S. [that would be me!] live an average of 3 years longer than people born here [oh no, I don't want to usurp the bounty and use it to my own advantage!]. A growing body of evidence indicates the life span difference reflects both immigrants' innate vitality and their reluctance to embrace Americans' drive-through, drive-everywhere mentality (bold added).

4. This year's top 10 finalists (in the 16th annual National Geographic Bee) were all boys. Bo Sun of Ladysmith WI was among them. [N.b. I would say that the winning Q wasn't that hard compared to all Qs preceding it. The Q: Peshawar, in Pakistan, has had strategic importance for centuries because of its location near what historic pass? A: Khyber Pass. Comment: Forgive me for sounding provincial, but do we even know of any other Pass in that area?]

I would have missed all this had I only done a computer scan of my standard press. Of course, I am not going to mention the other stories, the ones that make me convinced that I can never really like the Journal. Let's just give it one moment of glory and not look critically beyond these few interesting pieces.

WHY SOME BLOG IN THE BATHROOM and other abstruse observations on a hobby

Rarely have I wanted to parrot a blogger's comments as much as I did Ann's today on the NYT article that gives extensive if rather narrow and banal comments on bloggers who like to blog. I wont say a word more. Read her analysis of the article and just assume it could easily have been mine as well.

Passion for anything -- including work, family, love, food, travel, literature, bird-watching -- anything at all, always irritates the passionless.

MORE IRRELEVANT NOTES FROM AN IRRLEVANT DAY

That row of breakfast rolls from today’s breakfast in the previous post? That may have been the highlight of the day. No, wait, I have to do better than that. Other highlights:

- Sitting in a coffee shop and grading exams, I looked up to notice that a colleague was sitting at the table next to mine doing exactly the same thing. It was a good reason to stop grading and start distracting each other. I think she was better at the grading while I was better at the distracting.

- I went to the bank to withdraw all the money and fly off to some distant destination. It just seemed the clever thing to do, an investment in a worry-free existence. Ah, to travel, to see the world and let the rest toil and fret about small things like bills and tuitions and other trivialities. But on the way, I got side-tracked by this sign (on the right here). I happen to know that this particular Fest makes one of my distant readers very happy and so I stood there and contemplated the unfairness of life. Here I am, happy not to be consuming anything from the Brat Fest, while there she is, far away, wanting so much to bite into that greasy little sausage from the Fest grill. By the time I finished with these profound reflections, the bank was closed and so I could not run anywhere at all.

- Because I was being so good about grading, I rewarded myself with not only the delicious junk breakfast but also a delicious junk dinner: MANY handfuls of nuts, a bowl of soup (that part was healthy) and a huge piece of cinnamon something or other. I am also thinking that a further desert is in order. After all, coffee shops have limited menu offerings. If there are only desserts here, what can I do, right?

- A friend sent e-photos of a baby just born to one of my former students. The baby looked like -- a real newborn. There is something predictably newborn-like about freshly born babies. There's little else you can add to that description, unless they also have a huge mass of hair or an usual feature or an odd number of toes.

- I do believe the rest of America is currently watching American Idol. The build up has been tremendous. I know some of the people who voted. To them, I say this: I hope that if you can only have the results fall your way in one election in the next six months that it wont be the elections leading to the selection of the American Idol.

A PUZZLER AND A TEMPTATION

An early office visit revealed this outside (my window is large and beautiful and looks out on Bascom Mall):

What the heck? Cows on campus? An athletic event? What?





A breakfast break from grading put me in sight of these sweet little things.
<--

The up-side: it reminds me of wonderful vacation breakfasts. I mean, it’s not the type of stuff one has on a daily basis. Still, a reward for grading is in order, right?

The down-side: this is no way to start a ‘healthy eating’ day! After a breakfast of this sort, what does one do, go to Noodles for lunch, like this blogger?

EMAIL CAN BE A GOOD THING!

Something I learned today: The blogging lawyer from St. Croix, V.I. wrote the following in an email that responded to an earlier post of mine:

We don't wear tropical shirts or sandals to court, but we DO wear them to the office (I have, in fact, worn sandy flip-flops to work). Most attorneys I know have one suit jacket that they keep in their office for court appearances and that's the extent of their formal, "lawyer" wardrobe.

Comment: I would enjoy wearing sandy flip-flops to work.

Another thing that I learned today: Nuts do not a dinner make.

Comment: if you forget to eat dinner by 9, you should not think that nuts will be a good alternative. You should make or get dinner after you remember.

Yet another thing I learned today: Even when you think your sister is not reading your blog, she may be reading your blog. One of the nice emails I got today came from her and in it she wrote:
“Your travel descriptions were great. You should be doing this for a living -- get paid to travel and write about it.” I include this quote not for any other reason but because I think it was a genuinely sweet thing for her to say and because it can serve as a lesson (see comment).

Comment: I should learn not to make assumptions, jump to conclusions and do all those other awful things one does in the absence of information. I should learn this and I WILL learn this. I PROMISE!!

And one more thing that I learned today: Online translations are amusing in their worthlessness. My new friend in Japan, Masahiko, who speaks almost no English, periodically writes in Japanese and then submits his note to an ‘automatic Net translator.’ Here are portions of his email from today:

Nina looks forward to meeting it by mail from now though it is lonely
because it came back to America.

Do your best, and come to Japan again in the next year though Nina is
thought work to become hard after the return, too.

Be relieved because both Kazumi and I are cheering it up.

Well, it mails it again.

I can only guess what my reply translated to in Japanese.

QUIZ: GIVERNY, OR NINA'S GARDEN YESTERDAY?

Too easy? I know, I know, it's not the one flower, it's the entirety that counts. Still, this is one heck of a pretty little columbine.

SECRETIVE

You’re darn right, Tonya, I cling to my private thoughts with true survivor-of-political-dictatorship (that it was communist is irrelevant) paranoia and out of a desperate need for guarded secrecy to ensure self-preservation (see Tonya’s blog here)! Of course I do! You never know, YOU NEVER KNOW who will stab your back today let alone tomorrow. I say ‘favorite this’ or ‘boo-hiss on that’ and it’ll make its way to the slimy hands of some holed-in bureaucrat who is then going to make sure that every employer, politician, and neighbor is aware of my proclivities and inclinations.

Same goes for friends, colleagues, students, loved ones. You tell them what you like or don’t like and you are liable to be smeared, ridiculed, maligned, taken apart limb by limb and given over to the dogs the next day. (I checked the closet and underneath the bed before I wrote that. YOU NEVER KNOW. That I am under the grip of acute paranoia can be evidenced by the fact that I have not moved more than two feet from my spot of 8 hours ago. I just don’t trust the next room, the corridor, they seem full of mechanical contraptions and eerie ghost like-shadows, waiting to NAB me.)

Saying the wrong thing is the biggest fear of anyone raised in troubled times, political and personal, and I belong to that group, yes I do and so no one, NO ONE will ever know what my favorite movie** is. Ever.*

*I was emboldened to mention movies that ruled my life at age 15, 16 and 18 (see Sunday post). That was risky enough. The fallout is just beginning to be felt.
**I also do agree that Blogger is but another marketer of Friendster-like connections. (btw, who are the Olson twins?)