Rosemary for Remembrance

Note to pattern sellers

2008-07-03T21:14:49Z

Anything I actually wore, sewed, or saw on the street is not vintage. Thank you.

This goes double for Retro '90s patterns. (My God, those shoulder pads! You could put out an eye with those things. Well, an eye of a short person, anyway.)

Signed, Not As Young As She Thinks She Is

Robert Harris, Imperium

2008-07-03T16:23:42Z

When Americans think about Rome, they think about the Fall of the Empire and the OMGSEX; these impressions are pretty much based on word of mouth, garbled Suetonius, dim memories of Spartacus and Gladiator, and for older Americans a smidgen of Ben Hur. The founders of the American Republic were much more focused on the Roman Republic and how to duplicate its virtues; when George Washington was called Cincinnatus, everybody knew what that meant.

Imperium tells the story of the dismantling of the Roman Republic, as seen by Cicero's slave Tiro. Tiro was a real person; he is credited with inventing shorthand wrote a life of Cicero now lost. Harris's Tiro is a great viewpoint character; he perceives the events through the machinations of Cicero, and writes from the perspective of an old man. There's quite a lot of "I didn't realize at the time how significant this was", but only a light touch of "Had Cicero but known." Tiro is a great storyteller and the details of everyday bourgeois and aristocratic life in the Republic, which of course Tiro takes for granted, are fascinating.

I don't know a lot about the Republic either -- I tend to see it through the eyes of Caesar -- but Harris seems to know what he is talking about; certainly his Cicero convinces^*. Cicero was famously driven by self-interest rather than by any sense of virtus or ethics. Through Tiro's eyes, we see Cicero make critical decision after critical decision based solely on its effect on his political career. He takes Pompey as his protector/authority early in the book, and supports Pompey in his actions while privately thinking them unwise or dangerous. In particular, he acts to make Pompey supreme head of both Rome and the armies by whipping up fear of what proves to be a minor pirate attack in Syracuse. Over and over, Cicero helps to destroy the checks and balances of the Republic to advance his own or his patron's interests.

The parallels are obvious; Harris mostly leaves them to the reader. Of course, historical parallels are not destiny; nonetheless the book is both compelling and frightening. Devotees of The Last of the Wine will enjoy Imperium, I think; I recommend the book both as a page-turner and as an object lesson.

^* A very casual perusal of Cicero's letters (I. To Atticus (At Athens)) gives this:

The consuls drew up a law by which complete control over the corn-supply for five years throughout the whole world was given to Pompey. A second law is drawn up by Messius, granting him power over all money, and adding a fleet and army, and an imperium in the provinces superior to that of their governors. After that our consular law seems moderate indeed: that of Messius is quite intolerable. Pompey professes to prefer the former; his friends the latter. The consulars led by Favonius murmur: I hold my tongue, the more so that the pontifices have as yet given no answer in regard to my house.

That is the man that Harris draws.

Sola Scriptura

2008-07-02T20:11:30Z

A hole is to dig, a fire is to burn, and a religion is to schism. It's the way of the world. Nonetheless, as a baptized (and very lapsed) Episcopalian, I am sad to see the Anglican community sighing and sinking under the waves.

There are some comedy moments, however. The splinter group Gafcon says in its manifesto, "We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God's Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today."

Dudes. If you're going to uphold a text as normative, wouldn't it be nice to read it first? The original articles, from 1562, include some gems.

Some highlights:

Article XXVI : Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacrament

Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the Ministration of the Word and Sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by his commission and authority, we may use their Ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in the receiving of the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men.

Archbishop Akinola has suggested that he will refuse to recognize priests ordained by Gene Robinson; thus the sacrament is denied because of the unworthiness of its minister.

Article XXXVI : Of Consecration of Bishops and Ministers

The Book of Consecration of Archbishops and Bishops, and Ordering of Priests and Deacons, lately set forth in the time of Edward the Sixth, and confirmed at the same time by authority of Parliament, doth contain all things necessary to such Consecration and Ordering [italics mine]: neither hath it any thing, that of itself is superstitious or ungodly. And therefore whosoever are consecrated or ordered according to the Rites of that Book, since the second year of the forenamed King Edward unto this time, or hereafter shall be consecrated or ordered according to the same Rites; we decree all such to be rightly, orderly, and lawfully consecrated or ordered.

Does Edward the Sixth's book contain an "unless they're gay" clause? Doubtful. Props to anybody who can dig up the original text online; I couldn't.

Article XXXVII: Of the Civil Magistrates

The Queen's Majesty hath the chief power in this Realm of England, and other her Dominions, unto whom the chief Government of all Estates of this Realm, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Civil, in all causes doth appertain, and is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign Jurisdiction.

Where we attibute to the Queen's Majesty the chief government, ... we give not to our Princes the ministering either of God's Word, or of the Sacraments, the which thing the Injunctions also lately set forth by Elizabeth our Queen doth most plainly testify;... that is, that they should rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evildoers.z

Elizabeth our Queen? STANDING RIGHT THERE. And she appointed the Archbishop of Canterbury you're so peeved at. (Even though the coincidence of the Queen's name is fun, the real meat is "the Queen's Majesty".)

Note that I'm not saying the original Thirty-Nine Articles *ought* to be normative; far from it. But if you're hewing to the text, you're going to have to rethink your principles.

In unrelated news: am on third day of migraine, so it's probably time to prepare for the long haul. (I'm having 14ish mig-free days a month, which is better than before.) Yesterday I took a painkiller; today it's Relpax. I started depression and brain-death a day before the migraine -- I always forget that's part of the prodrome until a couple of days after the migraine hits -- and of course the Relpax eats my brane. At least I took the train to work, so am not in danger of killinating my fellow highway drivers, and was successful in shipping the package to the Evil Vendor who (A) lied about shipping dates twice and (B) shipped a used PS3, loose in a box of peanuts, missing half the cables, when the auction called for new. Will not be entirely easy until the promised refund arrives; have, of course, opened dispute, for all the good that will do.

SQUEEEEEE

2008-06-30T00:23:05Z

I get to go to Costume College. This is a big hairy deal; tickets for this year sold out *at the previous convention*, so that it was impossible for newbies to attend. Now I am!

The poor person whose ticket I bought couldn't afford the newly exorbitant plane fare. The only limited class she'd gotten into was the fan class; even so, I'll be happy to go just for the open classes and the dance class.

Did I mention SQUEEEEE???

I think I've heard this song before

2008-06-29T20:55:30Z

"No hay bebés? Keine kinder? Nessun Bambino?" by Russell Shorto in the Sunday New York Times. Paragraph 1: The wee Italian town of Laviano, population 1600 -- but it could hold 3000 -- is not having enough babies. The mayor is offering money to parents. Continuing -- Europe's fertility is waaayyy below the 2.1 replacement rate, down to 1.3 in Italy. Woes! We has no babies! What can we do? [chicken dance]

Paragraph 11: Oh, right, immigration. "The fears on the right are of a continent-wide takeover by third-world hordes [disgusted italics mine] -- mostly Muslims." They say. Not me, they.

Paragraph 12 gets to the meat of it:

Will Europe as we know it just peter out? Will ethnic Greeks and Spaniards become extinct, taking their baklava^* and paella to the grave with them, to be replaced by waves of Muslim immigrants who couldn’t care less about the Acropolis as a majestic representation of Western culture^**? Venice has lost more than half its population since 1950; its residents believe their city is destined to become a Venice-themed attraction. Is the same going to happen to Europe as a whole? Might the United States see its closest ally decay into a real-life Euro Disney

The hordes are coming in. The hordes who don't appreciate our \Anglo-Saxon\ \Aryan\ \Nordic\ European values. We must breed to keep pace!

"“Europeans say to me, How does the U.S. do it in this day and age?” says Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington." The answer is simple: American population growth is in fact due to immigration and to reproduction by recent immigrants. Hispanic and Latino Americans accounted for almost half (1.4 million) of the national population growth of 2.9 million between July 1, 2005, and July 1, 2006. Shorto overlooks this boulder standing in the middle of his argument.

Sounds awfully familiar to me. As usual, the idea that, say, the Turkish Germans are not in fact Germans, that the Pakistani and Jamaican Englishmen are not actually English, that, in short, immigrants and their children aren't the real Europe, is repeated unchallenged.

Immigration poses enormous challenges to the inbound state; the immigrants do have a different culture, a different language, and frequently a different appearance. European countries that think of themselves as ethnically consistent are confronting these challenges for the first time. But an American should know better. It's happened before here; it is happening again. The "Germantowns" and "Little Italies" have become tourist attractions where the locals celebrate what used to be separate cultures; the Yiddish and German and Italian papers have slowly died.

Nativism is a disgraceful point of view for an American; it repeats myths that were attached to the Irish, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, and now the Hispanics. They aren't like us. They're dirty. They'll never assimilate. And yet the children of all those immigrations speak English and consider themselves natives.

^* The last ten or twenty times I ate baklava, it was in a "Middle Eastern" restaurant. The last place I bought it was a Persian grocery. My farmer's market has an Egyptian family selling it.

^** Note that the Ottoman Empire ruled Greece for 368 years; arguably the Muslims have as much to remember about Athens as anybody else. Note also that it was the Venetians who actually blew up the Parthenon.

Do you sew in Pennsylvania?

2008-06-28T17:14:01Z

There's a Singer Featherweight with original cabinet available for $35.00 if you can pick it up yourself.

This is an insanely low price for a classic machine. Even counting tuneup costs at a good sewing machine store, you're saving $200 or more. If straight-stitch only (plus buttonholing with attachments) will work for you, snap this up.

Three Things You Haven't Done (I hope)

2008-06-28T17:02:05Z

The meme is:
* Post 3 things you've done that you believe nobody else on your F-list has done.
* If anybody responds with "I've done that," add another thing.
* Encourage your friends to paste this into their own journal to list the unique things they've done.

I'm finding this one very difficult. I have nothing to compare with sartorias's waltzing in Vienna in a pink marble palace, or debg's brushing George Harrison's hair. I have lived an ordinary life.

Here's my best effort:

Been asked, in a software interview, about my obscure published short story and my thoughts about infant colic. (I got the job. I also went pseudonymous on the Internet.)
Been referred to as a "bear" on a Swedish trolley.
Made Lady Fettiplace's raspberry jam.

The flist knows all things

2008-06-23T21:47:39Z

Does anybody have a favorite book on the Cambridge Four^*? (Kim Philby et al.)

^* Or Five.

Marionberries

2008-06-23T17:43:54Z

Unlike the other berry variants (boysenberries, loganberries), the Marion berry is a full-on blackberry, the result of careful selection within an existing genepool. It's a cross between the olallieberry and another blackberry, and the flavor is intense -- like a blackberry, only more so. It's sweet on the tip of the tongue, sharp on the edges of the tongue, and round on the back of the tongue. Oregon is famous for marionberries; here, they're a fleeting fruit, available for one to two weeks at most.

Yesterday there were marionberries at the market; I snatched up nine boxes and the farmer sprinkled on half of a tenth. "That way I can eat the rest myself." He liked the idea that I was making jam. We made two other trips on the way home --hardware store, Whole Foods -- and I was wiped out.

It didn't matter. Nothing concentrates the mind like soon-to-be-rotting fruit. I took a couple of hours to sack out on the bed, then headed to the kitchen. Unload the dishwasher, reload the dishwasher with jelly jars and dishes, run the dishwasher. Sit down for another hour to let the dishwasher run. Squoosh the berries -- nine little berry boxes yielded a scant six cups of mush. Add sugar by volume, not weight; I prefer the British recipes that specify weight of berry to weight of sugar, which lets you make as much jam as you've got fruit. One of these days I'll weigh the ingredients so that I know what the actual ratio is. As usual, remember to start the boiling water a bit too late, get up, fill the spaghetti pot with hot tap water and boiling water from the electric kettle. Get out my trusty Maslin pan, essential for jam, and begin heating the fruit. My daughter wanders in, is tagged to stir the jam while I get out the lids and boil them, and says "Why do you DO this?" I explain that I like jam, that I like keeping the summer for winter, that I like the process because it makes me happy. She is skeptical -- "I only stirred that for five minutes and it was HOT." It's my obsession, dear.

Stir and stir and stir and stir -- as usual, I think the jam looks glassy when the thermometer says only 116^*. Stir some more. 118. Turn up the pot and stir, stir, stir, 120 oh my God it really looks glassy and it's jelled. Just that fast; one moment it's thick juice and sugar and the next WHAM it's jam. Turn off the heat. Start grabbing jars out of the boiling water with the special tongs, filling them with the special funnel, grabbing the lid with the special magnetic jar-lifter, and wiping the lips with the plain old wet dishtowel from my waist. Then back to the boiling water to seal. The last jar, as usual, is as thick, because it's been waiting in an almost-empty pan.

All that for six half-pints of jam, and totally worth it.

^* Jelling point is 8 degrees above the boiling point of water in your location. I'm at sea level, so 220 it is.

Moan of lust

2008-06-20T16:19:12Z

Bradbury & Bradbury, the distinguished maker of period wallpaper (Arts and Crafts era through Atomic Era), is now doing fabric.

My house is a '60s California ranch with 8' ceilings. Arts and Crafts wallpaper, which I love, would overwhelm it. But fabric....

Stop me before I PayPal again. (amaliedageek, this one's for you.)

A trip through Paradise

2008-06-19T18:46:52Z

For the first time in my life, I really love exercising. This morning my husband reminded me that it was a Spare The Air day, meaning free rides on Caltrain, meaning (potentially) no room in the bike car. I was extremely disappointed. I'd been looking forward to my morning ride a lot. Right now it's two days a week, in honor of Spare The Knees Day, but I treasure them. I was so bummed that I eventually decided to bike anyway, and to lock my bike if necessary. Then I whizzed down the hill, stopping twice to deal with pannier problems. As it happened, the bike car was practically empty; no doubt other bikers were paranoid. We'll see what happens tonight.

I love riding my bike. I love the air whizzing past, and the soft California breeze, and the smells of spicy star jasmine and honeysuckle, and the well-loved bungalows, and the bicycle path. Northern California bikers have the political clout to get serious bicycle paths. Mine is an abandoned railway right-of-way, which is pretty much standard, but it has an enormous overpass that sails over the Central Expressway, the railroad tracks, and Evelyn. An underpass avoids U.S. 101. That cost money. Another overpass, spanning Moffett Boulevard, the only grade-level crossing on the trail, is in the works.

In use, the bicycle path is a 5-mile-long, 50-yard-wide park. I pass and am passed by mothers with babies, joggers, middle-aged Asian women with hats going for a walk, serious bikers in their skin-tight suits, and other bicycle commuters. It's an actively used part of Mountain View; people enjoy being under the trees and next to Stevens Creek, even though the creek is almost dry now. And, of course, given the climate, people will be walking all summer and fall, until the rainy season starts.

Don't mess with the original

2008-06-18T20:01:39Z

Twenty-eight years ago, my husband called his grandmother in Atlanta to get the recipe for her famous fried chicken and biscuits.

"Get a couple of cups of White Lily flour* and pour buttermilk into the middle until it's right; then cut in shortening." For the chicken, the secret was stripping off the skin and then using White Lily for the breading, and very good it is, too. (My husband once got flamed for describing this as "Southern fried chicken"; even though he could testify that it was the recipe of a bona-fide Southern grandmother, that wasn't good enough.)

* Note: self-rising was assumed.

White Lily isn't so much a flour as a way of life. When I lived in Charlotte, biscuit flour came in twenty-pound sacks; bread flour, if you could find it, came in five. And White Lily is the iconic Southern biscuit flour: made from very soft wheat and bleached within an inch of its life. It makes terrible, puffy, gluey, ice-white bread; it makes light, fluffy biscuits. Southern expatriates carry White Lily home in their luggage, or pay luxury prices at the local chichi food stores.

Last year Smucker bought White Lily. What was the first thing they did? Shut down the mill that's been making White Lily since 1883. Because, you know, the brand name is what people buy, not the product. The New York Times did a blind tasting of the old and new flours with two experienced bakers, both of whom recognized the difference immediately.

I hope that this decision will be like New Coke, rescinded in response to consumer protest. I bet it won't. Next time we fly home, we'll have to ask which biscuit flour my mother-in-law has switched to.

World's Easiest Summer Drink

2008-06-16T04:58:58Z

Grab a biggish glass.
Crush a bunch of fresh mint in the bottom.
Squeeze half a lime in the bottom.
Add a couple of ice cubes and swirl to mix.
Fill glass with sparkling mineral water. (Ideally straight from the fridge.)

Sit down, put feet up, say aaaaaaaah.

Excuse me, I think I'll just cry a little

2008-06-15T23:41:09Z

Library stairs (bigger picture sorry, PDF) for sale for a mere $35K.

Damn. If I'd only joined the right two startups or so...

N.B. The stairs aren't that expensive. It's building the library to go around them.

Well, that's an enlightened 21st-century lookout.

2008-06-15T16:51:51Z

The lead anecdote of a New York Times feature article on Russell T. Davies.

RUSSELL T DAVIES ... was once confronted at a wedding by a fellow guest bristling with indignation about a scene in [Doctor Who; the one in which Jack kisses both the Ninth Doctor and Rose.]

Mr. Davies’s first instinct — as a reasonable person, as a happily gay man — was to be relaxed and placatory, he said. But something snapped.

"I was standing there saying, ‘You’re a bad mother, and your children will either grow up to be lesbians, or they will be taken into care because they’ve been badly raised,’ " he recalled in a recent interview near the “Doctor Who” set. He began to chuckle. " ‘You are ignorant, and you’re bringing up your children in ignorance, and that will backfire on you.’ "

Yup. Now that's an insult. You're a bad mother, your children will be taken away from you, or they will be OMGWTF lesbians. By their temper tantrums ye shall know them. Note that this a story he proudly tells on himself.

I've said things like that myself -- "Boy, will they be surprised when little Steve comes out" but never coupled with "and their children should be taken away from them immediately". And I have certainly never said it directly to the parents in question; that would be boorish. Threatening people with "your kid will be gay" buys into the parents' worldview that that is the Worst Thing Ever.

Oh, Louis

2008-06-15T03:01:07Z

Watched Kind Hearts and Coronets for the umpty-eth time. I am probably alone in much preferring the performances of the three leads to those of Alec Guinness. Anyway, I love the plot, love the story, and love, love, love Joan Greenwood as the seductive and sinister Sibylla. Sibylla is evil to the core, but in Greenwood's hands she is calculatedly, self-awarely adorable.

Does anybody have a good way to describe Greenwood's way of speaking? I've never heard anything like it. She stresses words oddly, she sings her sentences, and she bites off the ends of consonants.

Clothing neep

2008-06-14T18:19:29Z

I've been sewing and thinking about clothes.

It is my FATE to pin in gathers. Woooooeeeeeees. In practice, I inflict this on myself. I love big poofy sleeves; I like ease in the upper body; I don't wear the tightly-tailored clothes that are eased into the seams rather than gathered. So be it.
The 1950's smock I am working on has the sleeve darted into the shoulder rather than gathered. I like it; it's a bit more severe and the sleeve head stands up better.
Like many experienced seamstresses -- or cooks, for that matter -- I mostly disregard the instructions. I read them to make sure I know what's going on, then I go merrily on my own way. There's one modification I was taught by my mother, and that I use almost every time I sew. If a garment has a continuous seam from the underside of the sleeve down the armpit to the side of the body, I set the sleeve in before sewing this seam, rather than trying to set the sleeve into the armhole. It's much easier to gather and ease a seam when you're working curve-to-flat instead of curve-to-curve. I don't know why the standard instructions always do it the other way.

I've been watching the 1950s/early 1960s The Saint, with Roger Moore; these are the black-and-white episodes early in the run. All the women are, of course, heavily ~~corseted~~ girdled. This produces a monobuttock in the back -- note that Marilyn Monroe was criticized for was having two buttocks that shifted when she walked. It also leads to a very noticeable crease at the waist, where the woman bends. I've noticed this in women who are supposed to be very chic, which is most of the women in the fantasy world of The Saint. It's an interesting illustration of the difference between as-worn and as-designed. In the highest end of fashion, haute couture, enormous amounts of substructure were built into the dress to achieve a smooth line. In the lower income brackets, this wasn't possible; the dress adapted to the lines of the body instead, and the body had a sharp line where the girdle ended.

I think that line was tacitly not-seen, just as the line below a woman's bra (if the woman is not slender) is tacitly not-seen today. It was a part of everyday life; unless a woman wore a bust-to-hip girdle, it was unavoidable.

Now I am off to the bike shop to point out that the derailleur is slipping.

Etiquette I never troubled my pretty little head about

2008-06-13T22:45:45Z

Apparently a lady never pours her own wine. Who knew?

Courtesy of The New Yorker (Christopher Hitchens, famous drunk, is mentioned; ignore that bit.)

"It pains me, on the other hand, to see good wine not being sloshed into the glasses of those who can’t ask for it and want it desperately—frequently, women with nice manners. According to Amy Vanderbilt’s “Complete Book of Etiquette,” it is the responsibility of the male host or the male guest of honor to keep glasses filled. So, like seconds and sex, women are supposed to play coy even if they want it.^* [italics mine] (The French, unsurprisingly, are really adamant on this point.) Anna Post, the great-great-granddaughter of Emily Post, says that there’s no specific prohibition on women requesting refills, but that a man commonly attends to a woman’s glass as a courtesy, the way he might pull out her chair."

Huh. My parents never served me wine at home, so I never learned that little refinement. Me, I grab the bottle and pour, or ask for it to be passed. (I knew you had to wait for somebody else to pour your sake, but I never worry about that one either.)

How many of you know this rule? How many of you sit on your hands when your glass goes dry?

^* The person who wrote this drivel is "Lauren Collins"; s/he should take a giant step forward into the 1970s.

I wasn't expecting that.

2008-06-12T16:55:29Z

Holy shit. The Supreme Court ruled that foreigners do indeed have constitutional rights, and the U.S. can't hold them indefinitely in Gitmo without trials.

I am blown away. I thought that with the recent Bush appointees, this was absolutely hopeless. The SF Chronicle writeup refers to "the liberal judges" being in the majority, but their idea of "liberal" includes the guy who wrote the opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who is best characterized as a swing voter rather than a liberal.

But wow. You can't keep people in detention indefinitely. It violates the law of the United States. What a concept.

P.S. "It was not immediately clear whether this ruling, unlike the first two, would lead to prompt hearings for the detainees, some of whom have been held more than 6 years."

Well, of course not. The President doesn't have to follow the law. Checks and balances are irrelevant in wartime.

Tiny achievements

2008-06-12T01:29:04Z

I just removed my bicycle seat and installed a new one, with nobody helping at all.

I feel quite ridiculously empowered. The seat is also much comfier. (Terry Cite X; Terry has a 30-day guarantee that you'll like the ride, so I can swap if necessary.)

OMGWANT

2008-06-10T21:27:04Z

Seen on another costume list, and purchased immediately:

A proper pirate coat for women. Not a wench coat. A "no survivors" coat. Rah. Simplicity 3677.

Note also mostly-historically-correct men's sailor trousers.

Random things make a post

2008-06-09T16:47:12Z

* Today I first encountered the downside of mass transit commute: train problems. At least this time it wasn't caused by a fatality.
* Caltrain is going to be stuffed for awhile: all the gallery trains have been reduced from five cars to four.
* Making two jams yesterday was a mistake. No matter how much fruit I have, one batch is as much as I can manage. Fortunately my husband charged in to help me bottle the blackberry.
* I has Stuff To Do. I should go do it.

Farmer's market: the plan and the reality

2008-06-08T18:49:47Z

The pluots have been splendid for two weeks, so today I was going to make pluot jam. I went to the market, but, much to my surprise, Kashiwase Farms was having an off week and none of the stone fruits passed muster. I continued with my backup plan and bought six boxes of blackberries. I bought a small box of morels. Then, at Twin Girls farm, I tasted an aprium.

Oh. my. God. So tangy, so perfumed, so very ripe. I bought a grocery-bag full and carried it home. Which leaves me with two batches of jam to make, not one. I may have overcommitted. But, damn, the jam will be worth it. Ball Blue Book for the blackberries; Jamlady for the apriums, using her nectarine recipe. As usual, Christine Ferber (Mes Confitures) has a two-day recipe; to make any of those, I'll need to hit the Mountain View or Palo Alto farmers' markets on a Saturday.

Off to the market

2008-06-08T16:19:00Z

Today: pluot preserves. I'm going to be using Jamlady's recipe, which only boils for one minute, adds sugar, boils for another minute, then cans in hot-water bath. (Obviously, there's the additional time to get the fruit to an initial boil.) Jamlady is serious about her sterilization, so I'm sure it's safe. I'm hoping it will give a very fresh flavor.

I'm also going to ask the apple lady if she'll sell me 4 pounds of unripe apples next week; that way, I can try some of Mes Confitures's recipes, all of which call for home-made pectin in the form of green-apple jelly. This year for sure!

And that is the only spoon I'm committing to today.

P.S. Most of MC's recipes call for "vineyard peaches". Me, I'm going for orchard peaches.

Ouch. I missed this.

2008-06-08T02:09:14Z

Justice Scalia, dissenting on McCREARY COUNTY, KENTUCKY, et al. v. AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION OF KENTUCKY et al, decided in 2005.

"One cannot say the word "God," or "the Almighty," one cannot offer public supplication or thanksgiving, without contradicting the beliefs of some people that there are many gods, or that God or the gods pay no attention to human affairs. With respect to public acknowledgment of religious belief, it is entirely clear from our Nation's historical practices that the Establishment Clause permits this disregard of polytheists and believers in unconcerned deities, just as it permits the disregard of devout atheists.

...
The three most popular religions in the United States, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam--which combined account for 97.7% of all believers--are monotheistic. .... All of them, moreover (Islam included), believe that the Ten Commandments were given by God to Moses, and are divine prescriptions for a virtuous life. .... Publicly honoring the Ten Commandments is thus indistinguishable, insofar as discriminating against other religions is concerned, from publicly honoring God. Both practices are recognized across such a broad and diverse range of the population--from Christians to Muslims--that they cannot be reasonably understood as a government endorsement of a particular religious viewpoint."

Scalia is 72, so that's some comfort.