DON'T MISS IT! SUNDAY OCTOBER 27TH. NYC. GET IN TOUCH WITH THE DIRECTION TRUMP AND THE GOP WANT TO TAKE THE COUNTRY.
THEN GO OUT AND VOTE AGAINST THEM!
Revelations, rants, and the occasional recipe
DON'T MISS IT! SUNDAY OCTOBER 27TH. NYC. GET IN TOUCH WITH THE DIRECTION TRUMP AND THE GOP WANT TO TAKE THE COUNTRY.
THEN GO OUT AND VOTE AGAINST THEM!
Just a reminder that we would not be choking on Trump’s Vortex of Death if we had elected one of these two men as president when we had the chance. Maybe there’s still time with Pete in '28.
Last year I experienced some crunchy, bitty-ness in a side dish at a restaurant. The pieces were too small to see in the dish, and I couldn’t go digging inside my mouth at the restaurant, but somehow they seemed non-organic, so I didn’t finish it. One’s tongue can identify even small bits of paper or fishbone easily. This seemed like something that didn’t belong.
A few months ago, I noticed similar bitty-ness while eating ravioli filled with artichoke and crab. It had come from a store. This time, I found the particle, a piece of plastic, shown flattened out in the accompanying photo. I can only speculate but suspect carelessness in preparing or filling the bags of crab or artichoke. Plastic is everywhere, as we all have learned.
These two incidents and others in the past, together with recent press about ultra-processed foods leading to increased cancer cases in younger individuals, convinced me to write something about it.
The message is this: If you wish to minimize your ingestion of unhealthy food additives, intentional or accidental, that have been associated with increased risk of cancer, it would be wise to avoid all processed foods. I think about children especially.
The links below address cancer risk and foods, not plastic per se. I include a link to my blogpost on how to prevent obesity (some of it tongue-in-cheek)
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/242892/ultra-processed-foods-linked-increased-risk-cancer/
https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/about-cancer/causes-of-cancer/diet-and-cancer/food-controversies
http://james-channing-shaw.blogspot.com/2009/10/ways-to-combat-obesity.html
Many in the US and around the world are astonished by the estimates of high-functioning Americans who are voting for Trump despite who he is in 2024. They seem to admire and love his smash-your-face style and his misogyny, dishonesty, and all the rest.
Hard to fathom how anyone could put their trust in this man. However, my experience has given me a good perspective on understanding how such a thing can evolve:
I grew up in the 1950s in a family of John Birch Society anti-Communist fanatics who loved Herbert Hoover, hated FDR, hated JFK, hated Democrats, hated SCOTUS Chief Justice Earl Warren, hated all social programs, hated taxes particularly (my uncle Jake---a doctor---even chose a year in a federal penitentiary rather than pay his back taxes because 'they would just go to Communist programs!'). My parents loved William F. Buckley, Jr. and devoured The National Review weekly, listened to Paul Harvey daily and eventually Rush Limbaugh, loved Ronald Reagan of course, became affluent, classist (bow ties and champagne please) and closet racists, were hard-working, loving parents with strong family values, went to church as Episcopalians, tolerated Catholics and Jews, and viewed most other religions and denominations with what seemed to be a degree of pity. They despised Hillary Clinton, and my mother thought that the Holocaust received more attention than it deserved, the war being over for so many years and all. The makings for MAGA maniacs filled my neighborhood. The only thing missing was an obsession with gun ownership, although my father owned two hunting shotguns, a .357 magnum and a .38 handgun for my mother when she was home alone, though she had no clue how to use it.
I fell into line until young adulthood. But of their six children, two became pro-Trump Republicans. I no longer can communicate much with them. One is in finance, the other (now deceased) was a fundamentalist Christian.
My parents died of natural causes during W’s presidency. Watching Barak Obama get elected would probably have killed them. They are gone now so I’ll never know if they would be in Trump’s camp today. They certainly would have been in 2016 against Hillary and 2020 against Biden. Hard to believe, when everything else about them was so forthright, accountable and truthful.
I wish my parents were still living. I would love to have a political discussion over champagne or a very dry martini.
In the meantime, remember this: the ultra-rich will still be ultra-rich even after they pay their fair share of taxes!
GIVE ‘FOLKS’ A BREAK (from your vocabulary)
Letter to politicos, pundits and journalists:
Enough already! with the overuse of the word ‘folks’. It is so affected. Just because Obama and James Carville use ‘folks’ in their everyday language doesn’t mean you and every other Democrat need to do it. If you think it makes you sound cool or hip or like ordinary Joes when you’re not, you are misinformed.
Besides, casual familiarity to YOU might be an insult to someone else.
I mean, do we all want to be referred to as folks by our leaders? I have zero need to drink a beer with my candidates in order to vote for them, and I don’t need to be referred to as folks to accept them. Our leaders should be smarter and more erudite than most of us.
People talk of an ever-evolving living language when it comes to grammar, and apparently, anything goes these days. But a university-educated, law school-trained Senator or Congressperson talking ‘folks’ in hopes of widening his/her base comes off as disingenuous.
Try introducing alternatives like ‘people’ or ‘voters’ or ‘Americans’ or ‘individuals’ or ‘families’ or any number of other descriptors, and give FOLKS a rest.
Thank you.
OK, this may seem manic, but I have to share this one-off with those of you who like to cook because it was so unexpectedly delicious and took about ten minutes. This is how it happened. It was all done with waaay leftovers.
1. Ox tail bits from the freezer: I had made beef stock from oxtails (one oxtail sawed by the butcher into pieces, a quartered onion, some chunks of celery, some chunks of carrot, a bay leaf, some water—you figure it out, just not too much water—and cook it for two to three hours, strain off the broth to keep, ditch the veggies, freeze the oxtail bits).
2. Some of the leftover stock, gelatinized in the fridge, about ½ Cup or a little more.
3. Mashed potatoes from three days ago—equal parts potato and celery root pieces—boil the hell out of them, smash’em, add some butter and cream, salt and pepper.
4. Reduced tomatoes from, like, five days ago. (Take a can of chopped tomatoes and reduce by 50% in a pan on the stove or in the oven at 350, a little salt, a little thyme, until sort of dry-ish.)
HERE’S WHAT TO DO:
This concoction was unbelievably delicious. I was even sober. I don’t have a photo. Next time.
Wine paring: this would be a full bodied red: Australian Shiraz, Zinfandel, Washington state Cabernet Sauvignon.
Love,
How do people start believing in stuff?
My seven-year-old grandson Solomon recently said, ‘Grandpa, did you know that if you stare at a hummingbird for five minutes, it brings good luck?’
‘How do you know this?’ I asked.
‘I stared at a hummingbird for five minutes and after that my friend at school had something good happen to him. I forget what it was.’
‘Okay, I’ll try that sometime.’
Solomon had experienced one thing and observed something totally unrelated, put the two together and voila!, he believed that one had caused the other. This belief could stay with him a long time. Good thing something horrible hadn’t happened to his friend or he might have believed he caused it.
And so it goes. The human mind links cause and effect in astonishing ways. Have a positive attitude and the sun shines all day (unless it’s rain you want). Think bad thoughts and a tree falls on your car, not your neighbor’s car. Pray for a white Christmas and poof, there’s two feet of snow in the morning. Pray every night to Jesus or Saint fill-in-the-blank and you’ll live forever in heaven or whatever after you’re dead. No proof of concept necessary.
Here is the reason: Beliefs are possible entirely because of the abstract thinking capability of the human brain. Belief is a neurological process, an interpretation of one event in relationship to another (cause and effect). Dogs, horses and reptiles don’t do this (that we know). Animals learn to recognize threats and can be trained, but belief and superstition are uniquely human.
Belief often starts with a powerful personality (parent, priest, rabbi, imam) who instills the notions by repeatedly preaching what terrible or wonderful things will happen if we behave a certain way or have certain thoughts.
So, is belief good for us? In computer jargon, ‘is belief a bug or a feature of being human?’ After roughly 200,000 years of modern Homo sapiens on earth, the answer remains controversial.
And after all those thousands of years of high-level thinking, the neurological origins of belief are not understood at the cellular level. We know where language and ocular vision arise in the brain. In what lobe of the brain does belief originate? There are mappable neural signals in several lobes that have the potential for shaping beliefs. One personality trait for 'openness', associated with creativity and beliefs, has been mapped to several anatomical structures in the brain.
It is good there is progress, but much more research is needed before we understand the origin of belief. In the meantime, in the absence of indisputable factual evidence, it might be best to have doubts about even your most cherished beliefs.
HAMASSACRE
Definition
noun. any massacre resembling the October 7, 2023 attack and massacre of 1400 people in Israel by terrorist group Hamas based in Gaza section of Israel.
verb. to carry out such a terrorist, non-military attack explicitly designed to kill civilians and take hostages, esp. one conducted by an organization without statehood by choice, thereby avoiding having to take responsibility or suffer international consequences of launching such an attack, and is financed and supplied by a separate country so as to avoid having to declare war against the attacked country and risk retaliatory consequences.
Wine consumption is down in the United States. Millennials and GenZ’ers have switched to cocktails and beer, and the marketplace has happily catered to their tastes. Media sources report that those 60 and under are less interested in buying wine and have a lower share of consumption than a decade ago.
How did this come about?
Recently I stumbled onto a possible scientific explanation when I dined at one of San Francisco’s hippest and most expensive restaurants. I came armed with a fabulous Russian River Pinot Noir. We sampled the bottle, a big Burgundian-style Pinot with a long finish. Scrumptious. Then the food started arriving. And it was delicious beyond belief. But every course was fused with either Asian or Mexican flavors, each dish with serious heat from pickled hot peppers of one variety or another. The wine was a total flop. The Capsicum dancing over my tongue overpowered the wine. Beer or cocktails would have paired much better.
So that’s the reason! And it makes perfect sense. Fine wines pair better with the subtle flavors of French or Italian food. Wine has never been a big thing in the Middle East, India, Asia or Mexico. And now all cuisine is fusion.
And there might be another reason: A physiology professor in graduate school once announced to our class that he’d lived in Indonesia for a few years and it took him six months after returning to North America to get his taste buds back. Perhaps that’s also what we’re talking about: hot peppers temporarily knock out the nerves of our taste buds so the nuanced flavors of wine are lost. Apropos to that, Capsicum in creams applied to the skin effectively reduces pain and itch by exhausting the nerve endings.
French and Italian wines rightfully boast a thousand-year reputation, but here in California, upper echelon food trends with international spice and heat seem to have won out. We old geezers just didn’t get on the Sriracha bandwagon to the degree millennials and GenZ’ers did.
Wine makers are busy weighing how they can appeal to a new generation of consumers.
Let’s hope ‘bitter’ is not their solution, as it was for coffee and beer in the younger set. While they are figuring it out, as a boomer, maybe I can hope to see a reduction in wine prices.
(https://www.svb.com/trends-insights/reports/wine-report)
Picture Benjamin’s brilliance, his ability to disassemble and rebuild malfunctioning radio receivers, collect rocks and gems with scientific names, and play advanced violin two years ahead of his peers, all without the recognition he craves from his no-nonsense mother and physician father.
Picture Benjamin’s life turned upside down the day after his bar mitzvah when, on May 10th, 1940, he hears the first BBC announcement of Germany’s imminent invasion of France.
Picture Benjamin in the first year of the war as German soldiers patrol the streets and national anti-Jewish decrees strain the lives of the small Jewish section of Rouen, France. He finds solace in his fifth-floor bedroom from his pet cockatiel and hours of violin practice, a room in which he discovers the bells from the cathedral, the carillon concerts that waft into his room. And with that discovery, his future is born: he seeks out the carilloneur at the cathedral to teach him carillon, the largest musical instrument in the world, and his journey to becoming a man begins.
THE CAGED BIRD SINGS is the coming of age story of this boy, his personal struggles and the strength he finds to survive the German occupation of France.
Benjamin enters a Catholic world at the cathedral, a culture unfamiliar to him, one he cannot share with his family. Words spoken, vestments donned, all foreign to a boy who has had a sheltered existence within his Jewish community. But the music, the carillon, takes him into new realms of learning and insulates him from the harsh realities of the war while the support from his new Catholic ‘family’ builds his confidence.
The carilloneur, Monsieur deTarot, becomes a supportive father figure to Benjamin; Jacques-Milan, the frightening, disfigured caretaker becomes a helpful friend. And there is Marie-Nöelle, the beautiful-but-troubled young novitiate nun who changes Benjamin’s life forever.
So, how does Benjamin acquire the strength and courage to get through struggles of war, oppression, and existential threat? It is sometimes said that one can accomplish anything if one works hard enough. Everyone knows that is not true without good fortune on your side. And belief—whether in one’s God or in the good of humanity—might offer direction but rarely delivers on its own.
Love, true Love, is the one thing that does deliver much needed inspiration and strength in bad times. Benjamin’s falling in love with Marie-Nöelle not only unlocks the wonders of his coming of age, it also takes him out of himself, frees him to care about something other than his own self-centered concerns. It is love that actuates his bar mitzvah declaration,‘Today, I am a man’. In the same way, love frees Marie-Nöelle from the constraints at the Abbey under which she has lived since escaping from her troubled past.
Is it fantasy to think that love can blossom during wartime? Losses can be overwhelming, after all. This story sends a buoy of hope into a sea of evil during wartime. In doing so, it reaches beyond World War II, beyond the characters in the story, to calamities of all kinds, present and future.
Available in hardcover, paper, ebook and as audiobook on Audible.com or Amazon.com.
Actor Joey Shaw delivers a masterful narration of THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, the coming-of-age story of Benjamin Cohen, a gifted teen who aspires to play the carillon in the Rouen Cathedral during the German Occupation, his love affair with the young nun-in-training Marie-Noelle, his brother Emile's life in the Resistance, and his life or death decision when confronted with an imminent pre-dawn Nazi roundup of his people.
Available on Amazon.com, all audiobook platforms or these links:
https://www.audible.com/search?keywords=the+caged+bird+sings&ref=a_hp_t1_header_search
My long overdue novel with co-author Cal Orey about a Jewish boy who learns to play the carillon bells in a Catholic cathedral during the German occupation of France.
Now available in kindle, paperback hardcover at all online bookstores, and AUDIOBOOK through Audible.com and other outlets.
Links:
Book description:
1940, in the Nazi-occupied city of Rouen, France: Despite Germany's stranglehold on the French, Benjamin Cohen, an introverted but musically precocious teen defies his father to study the fifty-five-bell carillon in St. Julian's Cathedral. Hindered by the German threat and dismissed by family, his confidence grows with the help of his new 'family' in the cathedral and his pet cockatiel, Frere Jacques. Can Benjamin's mastery of the instrument and his love affair with troubled nun-in-training, Marie-Noelle, give him le courage he needs to perform the one act that can save his people from Nazi arrest and earn back the respect from his father he craves, or will it doom them all? Inspired by true events, this coming-of-age story tells of wartime dynamics between Catholic and Jewish, boy and girl, father and son, and two estranged brothers on their journeys through love, tragedy and war.
author contacts:
James-channing-shaw.blogspot.com
Coming in November!
My long overdue novel with co-author Cal Orey about a boy and a set of carillon bells in France during the German occupation.
1940, in the Nazi-occupied city of Rouen, France: Despite Germany’s stranglehold on the French, Benjamin Cohen, an introverted but musically talented thirteen-year-old, defies his father to study the carillon in the Catholic cathedral, a huge instrument of fifty-five bells. Though impeded by the German threat and his perceived dismissal by family, his confidence grows with the help of his new “family” at the cathedral and his pet cockatiel, Frère Jacques. This coming-of-age tale tells of wartime dynamics between Catholic and Jewish, boy and girl, father and son, and two estranged brothers on their journeys through war, love, and tragedy. Can Benjamin’s mastery of the carillon and his love affair with troubled nun-in-training, Marie-Noelle, give him le courage he needs to perform the one act that can save his people from Nazi arrest and earn back his father’s respect? Or will it doom them all?
Available in November at all book outlets. Pre-order information coming soon.
CNN headline today: Hospitals in US Covid hotspots: “We are seeing people passing quicker than before.”
PASSING. It looks as if no one dies any more. They ‘PASS’. To PASS has replaced to die faster than flip-flops replaced thongs for summer foot wear.
Is humanity, that highest level of evolution so far, so afraid of DEATH that we can’t even utter the word? This, of course, feeds into the afterlife myth at a time when atheism is just hitting its stride. PASSING sounds like a fallback position, something to grasp. It's like,There is still something more to come!!
When I was growing up, ‘PASSING’ in my household was either "PASS the ketchup" or PASSING gas. My dad used the medical term FLATUS. He was a doctor. He died.
Grandmas used to die. Then they started to pass away. Now, they just pass. And so now, we wait for our grandma to PASS, although the thought occurs: maybe it is to PASS along her inheritance.
This can be made in less than 30 minutes and is delicious! Servings: 2-ish
Excellent with carrots, sweet potato, or winter squash. Add apples for a lovely accent of sweetness.
Here’s All You Need:
1 or 2 medium carrots, cubed or chunks
&/or
1 small sweet potato (orange meat), cubed
&/or
½ Winter squash, butternut or other, peeled, cubed or chunks
Ginger root chopped, 1 – 2 tsp or ground ginger ½ tsp
Chopped onion or leek or both, 2 Tbsp or more
Vegetable broth, homemade*, about 1 Cup – 1 ½ Cup
Salt, black pepper
Rosemary, chopped finely, ½ tsp at most
½ Apple, any kind, chunks (optional)
Olive oil, 2 Tbsp
Here’s what to do:
Heat oil in soup pot
Add chopped ginger and onion/leeks, cook for 1 minute medium high
Add carrots/sweet potato/squash, cook 2 min medium high
Add apples (if using)
Add Veg broth enough to cover and boil medium to high until soft,10 to15 min.
When cool enough to handle, blend to fine puree or thinner with more liquid
Add chopped Rosemary
Season with salt to taste and simmer for 5 minutes
Serve with freshly ground black pepper and croutons* (optional but very good)
*Vegetable broth, homemade Prep time 15 min
Place bits of carrot, onion, celery, some parsley, and any other green veg you have, cover with about 1 to 2 cups water depending on quantity of veg. Bring to boil and then simmer for only about 10 min for freshest flavor. Taste and salt, cook more if necessary but pour off otherwise. A very fresh tasting broth, perfect in soups or plain with noodles or rice.
*Croutons: Follow Josh McFadden’s recipe in Six Seasons, or break up bread, toss in small quantity of olive oil, mix and bake at 400 for only 5 to 10 to 15 min depending on the bread, until a bit brown and crispy but not dried out (a little chewy in the middle)
This is how ignorant I am: For years, I’ve had a real hate-on for the legal system in the U.S. because trials seemed to be more about winning the argument than about seeking the truth. And the winner was often the person with the most money. If the argument was good enough, the defendant or plaintiff rich enough, seemingly guilty parties were acquitted and innocent people convicted. You could get away with murder if you had a good enough lawyer. That just did not seem right.
But, lo and behold, I recently found out why this was the case.
My friend and accomplished litigator, Robert Shapiro of Chicago, explained to me for the first time that it is because our legal system is an adversarial, or ‘adversary’ system. This is a legal technical term, not an interpretation. In an adversary legal system, presenting the better argument is precisely what the lawyers are supposed to do.
Each side presents its perspective on the facts of the case and a neutral party decides which perspective is more convincing, the neutral party being a jury, judge, or tribunal of judges. Truth, supported by evidence, is required and assumed on both sides. It is the neutral party’s conclusion regarding which perspective, which interpretation of the facts, is the better one, that determines the outcome. The exception is in a criminal trial where the jury is not 'neutral' because the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. If the prosecution leaves any doubt about guilt in a criminal case, it is the jury’s duty to acquit.
The adversary system applies to all or most legal systems that originate from English law…as opposed to an inquisitorial or magisterial system (common in Europe and most of the rest of the world) where the judge investigates the case before ruling.
So, that’s the essence. Here in the West, the argument is the determining factor. I now have more respect for the system and how prosecutors, litigators and defense attorneys operate.