Good stuff to read!

Rock Creek Free Press - August issue is out now!
The new August edition of my favorite DC newspaper, The Rock Creek Free Press is in the honor box at Dupont Circle North Metro exit now--hopefully. Last month, the July copies disappeared in a flash, and the opportunistic Washington Examiner--on my sh*t list already for running a prominent ad for handguns the day after the shooting at Virginia Tech--took to filling the box with its own freebee paper.

A Chronicle Review article this week,"The Science of Satire" by Harvard University psychology professor Mahzarin R. Banaji, spells out just what's wrong with that New Yorker cover, why it's far from "just satire," and why Remnick's incredulous response to the outcry is so embarrassing.

Excerpts:

The brain, Blitt (artist) would be advised to understand, is a complex machine whose operating principles we know something about. When presented with A and B in close spatial or temporal proximity, the mind naturally and effortlessly associates the two. Obama=Osama is an easy association to produce via simple transmogrification. Flag burning=unpatriotic=unAmerican=unChristian=Muslim is child's play for the cortex....There is no getting around the fact that the very association Blitt helplessly confessed he didn't intend to create was made indelibly for us, by him.*

***

What made Blitt (artist) and Remnick's response to the public outcry even more problematic were their justifications that tumbled out in response to challenges about the cover. Remnick showed off other covers by the same artist that were, in his mind, similarly offensive. In one cover image, Vice President Cheney is shown to be the boss of President Bush; in anther, there's a flood in the Oval Office, with the administration afloat..When the artist's intention was to depict Cheney as the boss, he faithfully drew Cheney as the boss. That's satire? When the artist's intention was to depict the drowning of the administration, he sketched the drowning of the administration. Far out!

I said that Remnick's response was embarrassing. Why? Because it was so freakin lame and because as the editor of the New Yorker and thus presumably knowledgeable and sophisticated, he should have KNOWN BETTER.

If you can't access the Chronicle Review online, perhaps your local liberry will have a copy in the print edition. It's well worth your time and effort to go read it.

*(Doesn't this also make you think of this week's ad mashup--Obama and the two starlets?)

Just for fun....

the concert to the right is a funny thing i found on another blog i liked. Wot is it about those young british empire women that is soooo funny? by british empire i mean she's canadian. i found her blog when she commented on whoopee, which is a riotous blog belonging to a most beautiful, polished young londoner who keeps her outward self well hidden in her blog.

i am still befuddled, but my temperature is what would be normal in a normal person. my normal temperature is more reptilian. maybe this is why i liked ravello's little green lizards so much?

July 28, 2008...Happy Birthday, Peggy!!

Peggy is another year older, wiser, and lovelier today. In case she's forgotten, here she is with her birthday present around her neck (not in her hand...tsk).

She's put in quite a year: Diving in the Red Sea at Christmastime, visiting Budapest with pals this spring, and then a fambly holiday in the south of France (with a couple of jaunts over the border to Spain and Andorra) just this month. That's in addition to being mom to her three strapping sons, working full-time, and doing the animal & vegetable husbandry bit on her microestate in Scotland.

She takes incredible photos and shares it all on her wonderful blog. Please pay a visit and wish her a happy birthday!

Sparkle on, baby...You're doing a fabulous job!!

xo, ma

Feed a fever....

I'm still feeling sick as a dog (well, not the dogs i know, anyway...they're all bright-eyed and tail wagging), but these are the things that have made me feel better all day:

* squeak came to visit, and he was on his best behavior. He insisted on sitting RIGHT NEXT TO ME. gee. and i was fresh out of bacon for him, too. i know he was dying to get up on one of the couches or my bed, but he only tried it once. (CULTURAL NOTE: in the culture in which i was raised, dogs didn't even get to come in the house except under dire circumstances. my dad brought his dog lady in the house when the tornado hit fargo back in the 50s. It was a good thing, too, because the tornado lifted the roof off lady's doghouse and sucked out all the straw and her water dish. the roof was sitting right next to the doghouse, as if my dad had lifted it off himself, but lady would have gone for a looong swirling ride if she'd been in there and not in the basement with mom and dad as they prayed the rosary.)

* Cathy brought back some laundry she captured from me last night. It was all nicely folded in one of those beautiful African baskets they used to sell last year at the Dupont Circle Farmers Market. I couldn't believe I let her take my laundry and do it for me, but she did, and it was VERY KIND of her!! Typically very kind, I should say.

* A fabulous ripe peach from some place called Brown's, probably a farmer's market (it belongs to a farmer named Brown, actually) north of Baltimore. As luck would have it, Cathy drove her Aunt Ruth (let's see...she has two Aunt Ruths...this is the 88-year-old...the other one is 92) to Brown's on the day I was having my HOT HOT fever. She dropped off two peaches, six apricots, and a pint of huge sweet blueberries on her way home. She tried to force me to drink regular orange soda on the theory that real sugar was much better for a sick person than the diet kind. But i convinced her that since that diet sweetener stuff is so much like pesticide, it would help kill the bug.

* A hot dog from 7eleven down the hill. Just a plain one this time. Usually I get a Spicy Big Bite.

* A Haagen-Dazs Vanilla ice cream bar with dark chocolate and almonds.

* At least four big glasses of water. Cathy did not believe the glasses hold 12 oz. of liquid, so I dragged myself from my sickbed, got out my measuring thing, and tada...it actually holds like 14 oz., but that's filled right to the brim.

Nothing else in terms of food or drink has appealed to me.

I found two very cool blogs today, though: Nailing Jello to the Wall, which is an outlet/safety valve publication by an educator in Maryland, and Suburban Lesbian Housewife. The last one just goes to show that they're here, they're queer, and we should all get used to it.

Malaria....

When I was a kid with my nose in a book, I always wanted to get malaria....all the best people had it--Charlemagne; Sts. Augustine and Teresa of Avila; Genghis Khan; Christopher Columbus; US Presidents Washington, Monroe, Jackson, Lincoln, Grant, T. Roosevelt, and JFK; Jane Goodall; Mother Teresa. There were NO tropical diseases to speak of in North Dakota where I grew up, and it seemed very romantic to suffer from a disease, one of the salient symptoms of which--high fever--meant I'd be HOT all the time instead of half frozen.

Since i got back from Italy, the jet lag has really lagged! I've been feeling more and more punk and tired for the past two weeks. Today that finally segued into a splitting headache, high fever and chills, aches, cough, pains in the stomach: all symptoms of malaria.

It's highly unlikely that I have malaria, but I remember how voracious the mosquitos were in Capri. and I don't get headaches often--just when I've come down with a spectacular bug. They have home tests now for malaria. I wonder if they have them at CVS?

The Amalfi coast, Naples, Capri in ancient times had lots of cases of malaria. Now, with new pesticides and antibiotics, cases are rare to nonexistent. But they say global warming may cause malaria to come back. Gee....

Farewell to the Hotel...and my hat

The front of our hotel in Ravello celebrates peace.



(I wonder in which language "fred" means "peace"?)




The inside of the hotel is hung with lithographs by a friend of the hotel owner. In fact, the whole hotel, inside and out, is virtually his personal art exhibit. He created the Peace works on the front of the hotel, and he created every picture in the place--in the public rooms, the hallways, and the private rooms. At the moment, I do not know the name of the artist. Like the owner, he is in his 80s. The owner is on the job every day. Nothing escapes her attention.

The artist rarely puts just one thing in his pictures. He specializes in life forms of all kinds. The many death images are not at all macabre, being part of life and expected in such a vital place.










Rainieri, the youngest son of the hotel owner, and Cathy picked me up at the Naples airport when I arrived, and he drove us back there when we left. Here he is posing for our last photo in Italy. All of the owner's children work at the hotel. Rainieri says his mother still thinks of him as age 8, his brother as 15, and his sister in the middle. He says she doesn't dare take a day off and leave the care of the hotel to such kids.



When we changed planes at the Paris airport, a rather officious security person made me take off my orange Positano hat. "Take off your hat," she said. No please, no thank you. There were two colors of hats--orange and yellow--at the little shop in Positano where I went to get something to shade my eyes. Oranges and lemons...their colors are pervasive on the Amalfi coast. And of course, since the hat wasn't on my head, I lost it in the Paris airport. I lost the umbrella, too, scusi, but I was glad of that. It was always in the way. I'll have to go back to get another hat. It was comfortable and did a great job of shading my eyes.

More Capri

And here is Carey climbing the stairs to the street of our hotel. It's really interesting for a flatlander like me to experience the mountains firsthand. You can look up or down the mountain at something and realize it's very close. But you can't always just go out of your building and walk straight up or down to it. It often involves walking up or down a switchback street for a couple of blocks.

Carey has visited Capri several times, so she volunteered to take us to Capri's only industry (other than tourism): a perfume factory. We got on the funiculare to go up to Capri town.


Here, Carey is telling us about the Carthusian monastery near the perfume factory.


Here's a view of the formal garden next to the monastery.


The monastery itself is called the Certosa (charterhouse) di San Giacomo (St. James), and the perfume factory is on the same street where I'm standing to take this photo. There are no monks left in the monastery now, although part of the garden is in use by a very fancy hotel as a swimming pool. Looking at the monastery's murals, other artwork, and buildings joins the Blue Grotto as things to do on our next visit. Carey told us of the local story that says the monastery originally was built by a nobleman and his wife with eight daughters in thanksgiving for the birth of a son. The German industrialist Friedrich Krupp spent a lot of money restoring the place in the early 20th century and also constructing a road down to the smaller harbor, Marina Piccola, which is on the other side of the island from Marina Grande.


Also on the same street, just very short stroll from the perfumery, is this snack stand. I don't know if the lemons and oranges are for sale, but the small glass bottles of limoncello are for sale--and they are everywhere, not only on Capri but also in Ravello, Amalfi, and Positano. Limoncello, the famous liqueur of this part of Italy is very....lemony, but it has none of the punch of Grand Marnier, which is made from oranges.


Statues in the Augustini gardens:




Our always animated tour guide...


Fambly statues


This is looking down from the Belvedere (a formal overlook, usually on top of a cliff in these parts) in the gardens to Marina Piccola. If I had been more enterprising, I'd have snooped around until I could see the Via Krupp for myself.

Capri...with more coming soon

The day after the big walk from Ravello to Amalfi, Cathy and I rode the bus down to Amalfi, where we boarded the hydrofoil to Capri. The last time we rode a ferry was on the way home from Cape May a day or two after the last Harry Potter book came out. The ferry lounge was full of pre-teen Hogwarts fans deeply engrossed in their reading and totally ignoring the TV over the bar.

There was one feeble TV on the Amalfi-to-Capri hydro, no HP readers, and no bar, either. The trip took less than half an hour, and the older gentleman who kept trying to tune in an Italian football game gave up very soon. By the time he realized the TV signal was too weak, we already were in sight of Capri. People over there pronounce this COP-ree instead of the usual yankee cuh-PREE.

The fuzzy picture at the top shows the three Faraglioni rocks that are Capri's trademark. The one closest to Capri's western shore (and actually joined to it) is called "Stella." The middle one is Faraglioni di mezzo, and the outermost is called "Scopolo" or Faraglioni di fuori.

The following photo, taken from the Augustini formal gardens in Capri town, shows the sparse vegatation on these rocks--dwarf pine, most visibly. Scopolo also is home to a rare blue lizard, doubtless the cousin of all the little green lizards we saw on our walk down the mountain. Perhaps living on the rocks so close to the sea, they've taken on the beautiful blue coloration from the surrounding water. Capri, by the way, is home to the famous Blue Grotto. Since it involved another boat trip, we did not see it.



We dropped our bags at the hotel and rode up the funiculare from the harbor area to Capri town. By the time we got to the town square, it was raining, and a nice waiter at the sidewalk cafe was using a broom handle to arrange the umbrellas and awnings so that the water would run off the canvas, not drip down in between onto the customers. Italian men work hard, and the ones we encountered were very kind and friendly, too. This man was there in the morning when we sat down for a cup of coffee at his cafe. At night, about 9:30 p.m., when we were going back to the hotel after dinner, we passed back through the piazzetta, and he was STILL THERE!! They are no strangers to the art of sweeping, either. I saw only one woman sweeping the streets with those ubiquitous brooms made from twigs, the manufacture of which has been going on since medieval times or before.



It was not raining hard, but it was enough to make these two nuns hurry to shelter. I just barely had time to snap this picture before they were out of sight.


We started to shop a bit (i.e., enter shops, look around and smile, and go on to the next one--the American peso does not go very far in Euro Land), but since it was after 1 p.m., we decided to get in out of the rain and have lunch. The place was jammed, so we sat at the bar. It's always fun to sit at the bar because not only can you avoid waiting for a table, you get to see what's going on. Here is
the salad guy making DOZENS of caprese salads: fresh buffalo mozzarella, RIPE tomatoes, basil, and other little greens and veg for color. Of course, we had to have one:
The head bartender was emptying this bottle into a glass with the young woman watching him fill it too full. With her dark hair and eyes and sensitive face, she made me think of Gemma when she was that age.


Boats coming to Capri land at Marina Grande, Capri's main harbor. Here is the scene at the docks. I took these photos from our hotel room balcony. I don't know what kind of cactus this is, but I found it fascinating that such a watery place could have so many cacti!




Standing outside in the street and peering through this window, we watched this chef filet a fresh fish, cut it into chunks, flour and season it, and fry it in hot oil. Next, he added some chopped peppers and onions, prepared by his helpers at the tables along the back wall, then he added a ladle of broth and a splash of wine (from a big jug that he kept on the floor). He tasted his cooking frequently with a small spoon that he kept in the pocket of his chef's jacket. After each taste, he dipped the spoon into the boiling water and slipped it back into his pocket. Then he'd add a pinch of salt and a sprinkling of fresh herbs. While the fish & vegetable dish was cooking, he went to the big stainless refrigerator to the right and took out a portion of fresh noodles. He dropped the noodles into the well of boiling water on the right corner of the stove nearest the window. He also tossed TWO HANDfuls of salt into the water. When the noodles were cooked, he lifted out the basket and added them to the fish & vegetables. He let it all cook for a little while longer, then he plated it and stuck a sprig or two of basil on the side. We clapped our hands, to which he grinned, and then we left to walk back to the funiculare.



These highly ornate tiles decorated the waiting room at the top of the funiculare. They show a bit of Capri's salient points, including a Saracen pirate (maybe the famous one who wrecked the Carthusian monastery in the 1500s) and the Blue Grotto.



As much as we loved the food and the people watching, however, the highlight of our trip to Capri was a visit from my niece Carey, who lives in Naples. Carey was always smart as a whip even as an infant. She was less than a year old when she could say simple sentences--especially after being coached by her late, beloved Uncle Jim-- "Jimmer boom deers!" "Jimmer 'mash cars!" She called us Saturday morning about 9 a.m. and said she was taking the hydro from Naples. Our hotel looked down on the harbor, and maybe 15 minutes later, Cathy pointed out this one at the dock.
It was too soon to expect Carey's boat, but then a few minutes later, we spotted a very fast ferry approaching from the east.


And there she is....

the delusion of privacy

i applied for a job at a major jesuit university listed on monster.com inc, last week, and three days later, i received a Monster.com NEWSLETTER for....i kid you not....ELDERLY and DISABLED readers.

Um, huh?

i happen to BE elderly and disabled by certain standards, but who told MONSTER.COM that?

pas de moi!!!

and i'll let you guess....do you think i've also heard from the major jesuit university department advertising the job for which i applied??? Is to laugh!!

i had everything they wanted--in spades--and i live very close to the place, too. i could roll 1 block down the hill most mornings to the bus stop across from the likker store, and 10 minutes later, hop off at the MJU front gate!

and i'll tell you this, too: i may be old and funny, but i can still work circles around all the young punks i currently work with.

my point is, i know i've been a bit sniffy about old crocks who complain about not getting hired, but hey....i was thinking the playing field was still level...that nobody would know how old or stoopid we were just from looking at our resumes (and covers letters with exquisitely correct speling an gramer).

i was wrong. i apologize. the spies have found out all about us, and they're spreading the word.

eff the spies!!!

wot in hey do they know about ANYTHING???