Author: Simone

Disappearing Ducks!

They’re gone.
All the ducks in Lafayette Park are gone.
The grounds-crew there is in the process of cleaning out the eastern pond, presumably as part of Inauguration Day preparations (which are messing with my lunchtime walk bigtime).
The pond is empty.
I want to know where the ducks went.

Ducklings, hope, and gambling

There are ducks in Lafayette Park. I am looking cheerfully forward to the spring, when I imagine there will be ducklings.

My favorite thing about the election results is that I feel they are a triumph for hope over fear, for optimism over doomsaying, and for dreams over nightmares.

My least favorite thing about the election results is that Maryland voters approved the slot machine referendum. I’ve been getting gradually more disapproving about gambling, including lotteries and slot machines. I feel like they are an amusement for the rich and a tax for the poor. Since much of the slot machine revenues are supposed to go into school coffers, I hope the schools teach kids enough math that they grow up to never risk their grocery money on slots.

Compliant?

At acupuncture this morning my Chinese doctor said I was “very compliant.” I initially let it pass, but honestly I was a bit hurt. Crestfallen. Insulted, even. Compliant, me? No! I am belligerent and sturdy! Compliance is weak and sheeplike. I object to being expected to comply with things, because so often the things I’m complying with make no practical sense and have no positive effect. Compliance to me implies complicity, tacit acceptance of a corrupt and/or irrational system.
So I asked him what he meant, and said “Oh–I meant that you’re not doing this halfway. You’re actually following my suggestions very thoroughly. I said to eat fish, rice, and vegetables for a week, and that’s what you’ve done–you didn’t give up after three days because you really wanted a burger.”
“Oh,” said I, mollified. “That’s not compliance. That’s commitment.”

Walk today

2.0656 miles, according to gmaps pedometer (which, FYI, has a really old satellite photo; it’s from before Pennsylvania Avenue was closed to traffic, which happened in 1995).
Saw a white squirrel with a dark undercoat.
There are no mailboxes in that 2 miles, but there are at least 4 water fountains.

Sidewalk rant

I took it into my head this afternoon to try to walk all the way home from my doctor’s office, it being a beautiful day. I was pretty sure the walk was less than 4 miles, and I got out of my appointment just before 4pm, and I was wearing sturdy shoes. So I set out.
Problem: once you get past the Grosvenor Metro station on southbound Rockville Pike, the sidewalk ends. Sort of. Not definitively. There are bits of sidewalk, enough that I tried going a couple of different ways before I gave up and took the path of least resistance, which was Beach Drive to the Rock Creek trail. I asked a fellow walker if she knew where it let out, and she told me that it hits Cedar Lane. I expressed my dismay that I had been unable to walk to Medical Center from Grosvenor along Rockville Pike, and she expressed sympathetic outrage. “It’s like we’re not supposed to be walking.” So I found Cedar Lane, walked up hill and down, past Stone Ridge to Rockville Pike.
It was a lovely walk, but it was 5.25 miles instead of 3.8 (thanks to the Gmap Pedometer), and I didn’t have any water and I felt a bit panicky not always knowing where I was or how much longer it would take me to get home.
There should be sidewalks. Or there should be big giant signs saying that the sidewalk is ending and to go another way. Or preferably, a sign at the Grosvenor Metro pedestrian access point that says “no thru pedestrians to Medical Center”.

Outrage, skepticism, and joy

Outrage, courtesy of my Chinese doctor[1]: A really interesting BBC television program about modern politics, specifically U.S. Neoconservatives and Islamic Radicals and their insidious mythmaking, called “The Power of Nightmares“. (It’s 3 hours in total; I’m only linking to the first episode.)

Skepticism, thanks to Conall: It’s very sweet, but I’m not sure it’s a hedgehog.

Joy: There’s a foundation for toast!! Well, toasters, actually. People who want to make a museum about toasters. But still, it’s a “Choose Toast” thing.[2] (I read about this in Saveur yesterday.)

[1] He’s not Chinese. He’s Australian-born. But he’s my healthcare provider who uses Chinese herbal treatment, acupuncture, and various kinds of bodywork. It’s his fault that I’m driving myself crazy trying not to cross my ankles (which is my default sitting style but is apparently a big part of why my knees hurt most of the time).

[2] About 5 years ago, some reports came out about carcinogens that get created by various high-heat cooking methods, including roasting, grilling, and toasting. (You can Google it yourself.) I was pretty outraged at the thought of people choosing to avoid the joys of the best foods around, like grilled meat and toasty toast. (I have always prefered toast to bread. Even lousy bread can make OK toast. Good bread makes fabulous toast.) So I wanted a bumpersticker that said “Choose Toast”, because it would confuse other people and express something I hold dear, namely, that fear of death shouldn’t interfere with enjoyment of life.

The joy of variety

Tiny Garnet sweet potatoes are much, much yummier than big ol’ Beauregard sweet potatoes.
Also, re. the “yam” vs. “sweet potato” question: This has bothered me for ages, and this is a summary of my informal research:

YAMS (from Wolof “nyam” meaning “to taste”) are a food plant grown across Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania. The tubers involved are often ginormous, and they have oxalic acid (an irritant) in their skins. They don’t look anything like sweet potatoes to me, except for the general shape and starchiness.

SWEET POTATOES are a food plant grown across Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Asia, and parts of Oceania. Some varieties (mostly the very-orange ones) are colloquially called “yams” in the U.S. and Canada; speculation is that this is a linguistic transfer from kidnapped Africans who stuck the word “nyam” on the closest parallel big starchy tuber widely grown in the American South.

So, it’s not wrong to call a sweet potato a yam; it just might get you the wrong thing if you’re in an international market.

Not Pandora’s best day.

Tell me, friends:
Are any of these what you would consider Celtic music?

  • Something accordion-heavy called Chicago Cajun Aces
  • A fingerpicked guitar piece called Resolucion. The cover of the album has our guitarist standing in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.
  • A bluegrass version of the Moody Blues’ In Your Wildest Dreams (really, I couldn’t make this up).

Me neither.
I need direct access to the algorithms…

Roughage

Two things:
(1) Three cups of raw shredded cabbage takes a really, really long time to eat. It has yummy dijon vinaigrette on it, but it’s just a lot to chew through.
(2) I think Mead has discontinued my preferred notebook for journaling. My needs are very specific: non-snaggy double wire spiral binding, cardboard or fabric cover, 3 subjects, at least 100 pages, 9×6 not 8.5×11, and pocket dividers. I’ve been journaling for twenty-eight years (!) and I know what I want in a notebook. Snaggy bindings piss me off. Journals that you can’t fold completely in half piss me off. The backing has to be sturdy enough to write on. The pockets are necessary for corralling random notes and letters and pertinent emails and rough drafts of poems. I have looked in every office supply/school supply store around (ooh, except Bruce Variety, I should check there…) and I can’t find what I want. I am tempted to order a lifetime supply online, but I’m waiting to find out from Mead if the notebooks in question are made in China, because that pisses me off too. (It’s an outgrowth of the whole ecoguilt thing, plus the whole human rights thing. I know it’s very hard to avoid Chinese products, but the little I’ve read about untraceable organ transplants makes my “Boycott now!” upbringing rear its head.)