Can't Give It Away

Monday, August 21, 2017

"I can't remember the last time I went to a Broadway show that didn't receive a standing ovation -- even though, in my opinion, many didn't earn it." https://www.tdf.org/stages/article/1723/taking-a-stand-against-standing-ovations?ct=t(TDF_STAGES_August_29_2015_copy_01_9_3_2015)&mc_cid=953161c2a8&mc_eid=02017501f5

I not only agree with the author, but with her earlier pronouncement that "I don't give entrance applause."   https://www.tdf.org/stages/article/1679/why-i-dont-like-entrance-applause   I remember my brother's out loud reaction many years ago to the applause at the entrance of a noted actress in a Broadway play, "She hasn't done anything yet." 

. . .

Viviane T. had a reasonable reaction to reading the weekend's reports of demonstrations and counterdemonstrations, protests and counterprotests, all supposedly centered on the issue of free speech.  "Who's on first?"

I am beginning to think that "free speech" isn't worth the fuss.  For us, the concept is rooted in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.  It, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was intended to rebuff tyranny by a national government crafted by the Founding Fathers, a construct without precedent.  But, from the outset, free speech wasn't free.  The unamended constitution included the explicit limitation on free speech by protecting an author's copyright in Article I, § 8, ¶ 8.  What could be a better example of free speech than repeating something you read or heard?

Since those early days there have precedent shattering, precedent bending and precedent discarding rulings by the United States Supreme Court about free speech, including granting corporations the right to free speech without obliging them to otherwise act like good citizens.  In fact, it is corporations, our employers, who more effectively muffle speech than our government.  There is no constitutional protection from your boss, since "free speech" is a matter between the citizen and the government.  What you might say about the president on a street corner without reprisal will probably put you out onto that street corner if said in the office about management.   

Admit it, only your speech should be free, the other guy's speech is dumb and unnecessary.  We don't wake up in the morning anxious to be contradicted.  Sean Hannity doesn't tune into Robert Reich at the earliest opportunity nor do I imagine that Reich seeks out Hannity's opinion on the issues of the day.  

What good is free speech anyway?  There are many sources for the concept of civil society in Western civilization.  They are far from consistent on whether we should come together to seek pleasure or avoid pain, to regain the state of nature or flee it, but I can't think of one proposing the creation of civil society in order to sit around and talk.  No, people assemble to get things done, build shelter, kill wolves, collect fresh water, trade things.  With those goals, you are more likely to hear, "Shut up, and get busy," rather than "Is there another opinion?" 

. . .

Personally, I was much more interested in the article, "Aging Parents With Lots of Stuff, and Children Who Don’t Want It."   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/your-money/aging-parents-with-lots-of-stuff-and-children-who-dont-want-it.html

This reflects a long-standing personal dilemma.  Over the many decades, I have collected things, not old, dusty, broken down things, but attractive, special things.  Of course, that includes books and recordings, much like almost anyone else.  I am more concerned about less common items, special to me, but holding little interest to others, relatives and friends alike.  Whether I am remembered fondly or not, some of my possessions might well be regarded as, shall we say, a bit focused.  For instance, my ten volumes of first day covers of U.S. commemorative stamps from May 1993 through September 2013, or one toe shoe worn by Darci Kistler in 1981, when she first danced Dewdrop in The Nutcracker for the New York City Ballet.  Is eBay my only hope?  Would any of you like to be in my will?

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

I must admit that, to a large degree, I am sustained by nostalgia.  So, the news that the Village Voice will no longer be actually printed brings back many memories even though I have not been a reader for years.  In late 1968, I moved to Greenwich Village.  The nearest subway station was Christopher Street-Sheridan Square where a hodge podge of streets intersect.  At the time, the Village Voice was located at the 12 o'clock position in this big open space.  After I went to work daily by subway for a couple of months, I noticed strange behavior, but only on Wednesday mornings.  A lot of youngish people, my contemporaries then, probably Gen P, would be hovering around the subway entrance, clustered at the newsstand right there.  Looking around, I saw others lurking in the telephone booths on the several corners of this complex intersection.  The prized location was the classic wooden telephone booths in the cigar store that still stands at the 9 o'clock position.

Here's the story -- Back then, the Village Voice was the premier vehicle for, among other things, classified real estate advertising, how to locate that hidden treasure of a rent-controlled apartment with exposed brick walls, high ceilings, maybe a fireplace, somewhere south of 14th Street.  It was published Wednesday morning and delivered first to the newsstand in Sheridan Square, explaining the crowd gathered to pounce, protecting the nearest telephone (really the good old days).  My own tiny roach-ridden apartment renting at $105 monthly was passed on by someone I knew, obviating the need to rely upon the Village Voice.  However, I read it regularly and when I moved to Los Angeles (don't ask) in 1971, I took a subscription and continued to read it in an attempt to maintain my New York hipster pose.

. . .

It seems that Black lives don't matter.   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/upshot/killings-of-blacks-by-whites-are-far-more-likely-to-be-ruled-justifiable.html

Thursday, August 24, 2107

Stony Brook Steve accompanied me to Chinatown today, where we predictably had lunch at Wo Hop, 17 Mott Street.  We shared an excellent plate of beef chow fun and a somewhat bland chicken with spinach, at least bland until adorned with hot mustard and soy sauce.  

While Steve's company is always desirable and Wo Hop always excels, I had an ulterior motive for the trip today.  Fortune cookies.  The delightful Melanie S. asked if I could get her a bunch of fortune cookies on my next sojourn to Chinatown.  I didn't ask why, just headed downtown.   

Golden Fung Wong Bakery, 41 Mott Street, is only a few doors from Wo Hop and offers bags of fortune cookies, about 40 to a bag, for a mere $2.50.  Prudently, I took 2 bags.  I hope that Melanie will tell me of any life-altering revelations emerging from the cookies.  

Friday, August 25, 2017

The issue of New York-themed movies aroused many of you to challenge the New York Times's list (August 7, 2017).   With the all-city show date for the winner approaching, the paper explained its choices today.   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/movies/the-city-so-nice-they-cant-stop-making-movies-about-it.html?_r=0

I understand some of the reasoning, such as, avoiding excessively adult language or themes (Midnight Cowboy) for an intergenerational audience, but we're talking New York here.  

. . .

You will have to squint to read the 100 or so graphs representing the literal complexion of American undergraduate education, but the headline tells the story: "Even With Affirmative Action, Blacks and Hispanics Are More Underrepresented at Top Colleges Than 35 Years Ago"

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/24/us/affirmative-action.html?hpw&rref=education&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0

The continuing inability of our black and Latino population to garner even a semblance of their share of educational opportunity is shameful.  I admit that sometimes I default to blaming the victim, a position probably held by too many white Americans.  Arthur Ashe, the African American tennis star, observed that top athletes demonstrate tremendous discipline and focus in developing their talents, yet black youth are rarely required or directed to apply the same rigor to academic pursuits.  What he said over 25 years ago remains true today, "I strongly believe the black culture spends too much time, energy and effort raising, praising, and teasing our black children about the dubious glories of professional sports."  This seems to suit the rest of us just fine.    

The only good news that I found among the data was the ascension of Asian Americans at many of the toughest education institutions, notably Cal Tech, Johns Hopkins and MIT, and throughout almost the entire University of California system.  On the other hand, the Ivy League and most of the top liberal arts colleges seem to be wary of a new race of greasy grinds.

. . .

Just as I was about to lay down my quill for this week, the New York Times released on-line a story that reflects on the sad state of our race relations.  It will probably reach print over the weekend.   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/24/upshot/how-redlinings-racist-effects-lasted-for-decades.html

The article states that "new research reaffirms the role of government policy in shaping racial disparities in America in access to housing, credit and wealth accumulation.  And as the country grapples with the blurred lines between past racism and present-day outcomes, this new data illustrates how such history lives on."  

. . .

What follows is for pedants and triviameisters only:

I recognized the headline of the story above, "The City So Nice They Can't Stop Making Movies About It," as an hommage to the song lyric, "the city so nice, they named it twice."  While several internet references point to a 1978 recording by an expatriate American musician, the phrase originated in a 1959 orchestral work, New York, N.Y., by jazz composer George Russell, featuring Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Art Farmer, Milt Hinton, Bob Brookmeyer, and Max Roach, a great collection of musicians, with Jon Hendricks in a speaking role.  Of course, I have the album, stuck in the bottom of a closet, unplayed for 25 years or more.  Which brings us back to the disposition of the loved one's unloved possessions.

Flavors of Justice

Monday, August 14, 2017

The Upper West Side's Power Couple hit the road yesterday, first stop Northampton, Massachusetts, in order to visit friends in the area.  We had a lovely lunch today at the home of Barbara and Dean Alfange, with other friends dating back to my graduate school days.  While such a gathering can be an occasion to lament the passing of time and the personal losses along the way, I reacted otherwise.  I vividly remembered the good old days, ignoring the old part and delighting in how much and how well we shared.  

Later, America's Favorite Epidemiologist got equal time when we had dinner with Shelley and Richard Holzman, her friends for many decades.  We ate at Amanouz Cafe, 44 Main Street, Northampton, which features Moroccan and Mediterranean cuisine.  While this is a small, very casual joint, the cooking proved to be relatively authentic.  I had chicken tagine, basically a chicken stew cooked in a traditional conical clay pot, including olives, zucchini, green peppers, red peppers, rice, potatoes, and lemon ($14.95), as good as it sounds.

Since we were in downtown Northampton, it was a two block stroll to Herrell's Ice Cream & Bakery, 8 Old South Street, for an extra treat.  I had two scoops, coconut chocolate chip and the aptly named "More cookies than cream" and felt amply treated.  

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

We drove to Natick, Massachusetts to present ourselves at the most important Seventh Birthday Party held in North America today.  Besides the general joviality, we enjoyed a dinner of pizza and chocolate cake.  

. . .

The high spirits of the celebration went a long way in helping us contend with the moral and intellectual vacuum that passes for presidential leadership.  Answering questions about his "fair and balanced" initial response to the Charlottesville tragedy, the loser of the popular vote said, "Before I make a statement, I need the facts."  Yeah, but what do you do with the facts then, fella?

. . .

I was surprised by the survey that claimed that 83% of Bay Area renters plan to move out of the area, probably the most expensive real estate market in the country.  https://sf.curbed.com/2017/8/15/16150828/survey-bay-area-leave-sf-renters

When I turned to the Oakland Heartthrob, my source of Bay Area real estate expertise, he said for everyone who leaves, two more show up.  Census data are a bit more conservative, but the market remains hot, hot.    

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

On the other hand, there is cool news from the ice cream front.  Ample Hills Creamery, a source of excellent ice cream, is expanding and going national.  

https://newsstand.google.com/articles/CAIiELnDuWjDuB4fUcKsB8tSpvIqGQgEKhAIACoHCAow4uzwCjCF3bsCMJrOrwM

It is moving from a 900 square foot facility to a 15,000 square foot plant.  May their tribe increase proportionally.  

Thursday, August 17, 2017

I am reading The Chosen, by Jerome Karabel, a detailed study of the admissions (and rejection) process at Harvard, Yale and Princeton in the 20th century.  Since I am only halfway through the 557 pages of small print plus 116 pages of footnotes, I remain immersed in the "Jewish problem," the result of taking merit seriously.  You don't know whether to laugh or cry when you read "that only seven students from the large and heavily Jewish Bronx High School of Science -- arguably the nation's most academically distinguished high school at the time -- entered Yale between 1950 and 1954.  In contrast, Andover sent 275 students to New Haven during the same period."  

Now that the Jews have gotten their disproportionately large seat at the table, it is Asian Americans who are sometimes denied the benefits of academic rigor, with the old arguments against the Jews retooled.   http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-affirmative-action-and-asian-americans   

Through all this is the tragic exclusion of African Americans from equal enjoyment of educational opportunity.  The irony is that, while Princeton University barred enrollment of African Americans until the 1950s, its class of 2021 reports itself as 8% African American and 5% multi-racial (non-Hispanic).  https://admission.princeton.edu/how-apply/admission-statistics 

Meanwhile, the current first-year class at Stuyvesant High School, which never had institutional barriers to diversity, is 1% African American.  At Princeton, which attempts a holistic approach to admissions, the "others" are 57% not "students of color" and 22% Asian Americans, while at Stuyvesant, relying solely on one written examination, they are mostly 20% white and 77% Asian Americans.  

I am plagued by the issue of affirmative action. The "intangible qualities" of character, leadership, and well-roundedness that the Protestant establishment governing the Ivy League found lacking in Jewish applicants (examples drip off almost every page until the 1960s in Karabel's book), are often the current basis for increasing diversity of student bodies.  In the latest, but certainly not the last, word on affirmative action, the United States Supreme Court held by a 5-4 vote that "[c]onsiderable deference is owed to a university in defining those intangible characteristics, like student body diversity, that are central to its identity and educational mission."  Fisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. ___ (2016).  By the way, save the lamentations for Ms. Fisher, the white plaintiff.  "The claim that race cost Fisher her spot at the University of Texas isn't really true."

https://www.propublica.org/article/a-colorblind-constitution-what-abigail-fishers-affirmative-action-case-is-r

The ugliest part of the affirmative action debate is the cynically ahistoric view of many conservatives, pretending that our racist past contributes no insights to the on-going quest for equality.  "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2007, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."  This pristine statement accompanied his decision that two urban school systems could not take account of the race of students, even in a small minority of cases, in order to prevent certain magnet schools from becoming racially isolated because of neighborhood housing patterns.  Hey, the world began this morning and what's fair is fair.  

Of course, fair was never fair.  One year ago, I extolled Ira Katznelson's work, When Affirmative Action Was White (July 12, 2016).  This weekend, Katznelson offered a brief summary in the New York Times, to the effect that a big, fat white thumb was on the scales when economic benefits were being doled out through much of the 20th century. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/sunday/making-affirmative-action-white-again.html?mcubz=1&_r=0 

Friday, August 18, 2017

Jue Lan Club, a new restaurant, describes itself as "[a]rtistically minded and ultra-trendy, this famed Flatiron eatery is the place for elevated Chinese." That's enough to keep me away.

. . .

Just in --- The South lost the Civil War.

Your Favorite Nebraska-Themed Movie?

Monday, August 7, 2017

Let's begin with a celebration.  It was reliably reported that a bride from Murfreesboro, Tennessee, now working in New York City, married a groom from Los Altos, California, also working in New York City.  Somehow or other, the couple arranged for the wedding to take place in Budir, a hamlet on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula in Iceland, 236 miles from Reykjavik, if you could fly there which you can't, or 404 miles driving.   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/06/fashion/weddings/alison-macbeth-daniel-cook.html 

. . .

When and if the happy couple ever find their way back to New York, we might want to treat them to chocolate chip cookies, from a choice of recipes offered by the New York Times.   https://cooking.nytimes.com/68861692-nyt-cooking/7204666-our-best-chocolate-chip-cookie-recipes?hide-chrome=true&debug=viewport

. . .

Chocolate chip cookies, however, will not make us feel better about Wells Fargo Bank.  We all remember how it invented about 2.1 million phony bank accounts to satisfy corporate goals.  Now, it expects to disclose a “significant increase” in the number of phony accounts.  But, that's not enough.  It just admitted to charging auto loan customers for auto insurance that they did not want or need involving "800,000 customers according to an analysis commissioned by the bank.  Some 274,000 people were pushed into delinquency as a result, and 25,000 cars were wrongly repossessed."   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/business/wells-fargo-insurance.html?ref=business&_r=0

Hold on.  The cowboys on the Pony Express didn't stop there.  They "charged military veterans illegal fees to refinance their mortgages, costing taxpayers money when those government-guaranteed mortgages defaulted," paying $108 million to settle the claims.  

Now if you or I presided over this potpourri of lying, cheating and stealing, we might be accused of criminal activity, maybe even prosecuted for racketeering under RICO.  Instead, John Stumpf, the bank's deposed CEO, is being forced by its board to return $69 million that he earned while at the helm.  This has to hurt, but only so much considering that his total pay from 2011-2016 was $286 million.  The other 5,299 Wells Fargo employees who lost their jobs probably did not fare as well as he did.  

Wells Fargo is America's third largest bank, with 268,800 employees.  As this series of offenses shows, it has shown little sign of cleaning up its act, treating the many millions of dollars paid in fines as simply the cost of doing business.  Should we shut it down, regarding the fate of some of its possibly innocent employees as collateral damage, akin to civilians shredded by drone strikes on demonic terrorists?  Would other corporate malfeasors take notice and get on the path of righteousness, or, as they did after the giant accounting firm Arthur Andersen collapsed under government pressure, hire more lobbyists and public relations agents to paint themselves as weak reeds, threatened by MERCILESS REGULATION.  While the United States Supreme Court gave corporations a voice by the Citizens United decision, they still seem to lack a conscience.  

. . .

Now, let's turn to something really controversial.  The New York Times has asked its movie critics to pick their favorite New York-themed movie.  The five finalists are:

Crooklyn

On the Town

New York, New York

Desperately Seeking Susan

The Wedding Banquet  

Readers are asked to vote and the winner will be shown simultaneously in theaters and public parks across the city on the night of Wednesday, September 13.  But, just like Russia, I'm going to meddle in this election.  I am withholding the link to cast your vote as a protest against the quality of this list.  Brilliant choices are omitted, such as Manhattan, The Godfather, On the Waterfront, All About Eve, Taxi Driver, 42nd Street, Rear Window, Sweet Smell of Success.  

If you Google the topic you'll find lots of best New York movie lists.  My list would include the obscure, but often dead-on, satire of New York Jewish intellectuals, Bye Bye Braverman (1968), which packs a collection of academic and literary types into a Volkswagen Beetle heading to the funeral of their friend, the unseen Leslie Braverman.  The cast notably includes Godfrey Cambridge as a Yiddish- speaking, African-American taxicab driver and Alan King as a rabbi.  

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bye_Bye_Braverman

One reason that I'll never forget this movie is the impossible route that they take trying to get from Greenwich Village to a funeral home in Brooklyn.  My obsessiveness buttons were constantly pushed as they made wrong turn after wrong turn, for instance crossing a street in Flatbush directly into East New York.     

. . .

I went into midtown today to make an installment payment on the addition to my periodontist's summer home.  It also gave me the opportunity to have lunch at newly-opened and well-reviewed Little Alley, 550 Third Avenue, named for Shanghai’s network of alleyways, long tang, the origin for much of the food served.  Possibly to give a feeling for old, dark spaces, there is a lot of black paint and wood stained a grayish brown.  Also, standing in the room was an on old wooden telephone booth that might have been lifted from a Shanghai street corner.  

I was about the tenth customer at lunch, but the number more than doubled by the time I left.  There was still ample room, about two dozen 2 tops occupied the space.  The lunch menu offers 13 dishes, priced from $9 to $12, accompanied by hot and sour soup and a choice of spring roll or marinated cucumbers spears.  Additionally, for some reason, the regular menu is presented folded in an envelope.  Were I not alone, the regular menu would have definitely come into play.

The soup was very good, hot and sour and hot, welcome on this rainy, murky day.  I chose and enjoyed the cucumbers, a rare rejection of a deep fried alternative.  My main dish was a medium size portion of Shanghai thick noodles, with shredded pork, shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and bok choy in soy sauce ($12).  It was quite good, but needed a hit of spiciness to be memorable.  

Little Alley deserves to succeed, but it is awkwardly located on Third Avenue between East 36th and East 37th Streets, more than a quarter of a mile from the office towers around Grand Central Terminal and even further from the massive NYU medical complex on First Avenue, both suppliers of huge lunch crowds.  It is closer to the entrance of the Queens Midtown Tunnel than to any subway station.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

The New York Times has come up with another interesting graphic presentation, the geographic profile of popular music support.  Who is enthusing over whom.  "Each map shows relative popularity in different parts of the country."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/07/upshot/music-fandom-maps.html

An additional feature is the ability to identify the favorite musical personality by Zip Code, yielding the information that the Palazzo di Gotthelf is located in a Drake-leaning zone.  This makes very little difference to me; I doubt that Miles Davis or Thelonious Monk appears at the top of any Zip Code.  However, I am relieved that I am decades removed from Woodhaven, where Justin Bieber is the people's choice.

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

The Wednesday food section features exotic ice creams produced by many Asian enterprises, here and abroad.  

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/08/dining/shaved-ice-cream-sundae-frozen-desserts.html?_r=0

What the article admits, however, is "in a social-media-dominated world, the picture can be more satisfying than the dessert."  My own limited samplings confirm this.  Instead of waiting around for the decorating of some of these concoctions, you can be digging into some superior Häagen-Dazs.  

Thursday, August 10, 2017

Again, the New York Times has come up with unexpected and unsolicited information, job opposites.  Based on U.S. Department of Labor analysis of needed skills and tasks, the paper posits opposites, for instance, “the opposite job of a writer and author is a  mobile home installer.”  Go figure.   

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/08/08/upshot/what-is-your-opposite-job.html

Friday, August 11, 2017

Today's dilemma seems to be the woeful visage of the Nebraska state flag, which is so ugly that it defies my attempts to reproduce it.  
https://www.google.com/search?q=&client=safari&tbm=isch&tbs=rimg:Cb3i7VmJzWGVIjiAmrXa7BjCDqNNjUAsITFKbYRN4uSLZed58pzSLPnjIXFT8lOc4jhy8Duva003U6UfKrdE3bnhOCoSCYCatdrsGMIOETwrtLnZ4JX7KhIJo02NQCwhMUoRYaayr0v4oAEqEglthE3i5Itl5xGkgpgYIe1tQSoSCXnynNIs-eMhESKyLB0GgBSPKhIJcVPyU5ziOHIRcfeEmMDyQXwqEgnwO69rTTdTpRGNDOBrBgxLGSoSCR8qt0TdueE4EcKxQm5x2qi0&tbo=u&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjj4PTRzM_VAhWB7oMKHREIBrsQ9C8IHw&biw=1440&bih=838&dpr=1#imgrc=veLtWYnNYZW54M:

Some graphics artists have suggested replacements.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/us/flag-state-nebraska-design-logo-artist.html

More interesting to me is the role of the North American Vexillological Association.  What a wonderful name.  It would take a far better lexicographer than I to recognize what vexillologic (vexillology?) means.  Does it pertain to kid brothers, fine print, mothers-in-law, plastic packaging material?  Rather, we have an organization "Focused on Flags -- The Shorthand of History."
https://nava.org

     

Thank you, Bill Freund

Monday, July 31, 2107

Today's paper has an interesting article about New Yorkers growing food right here, often items not native to the Holy Land.   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/30/nyregion/food-from-around-the-world-homegrown-in-new-york.html?_r=0

Besides the energy and resourcefulness of these farmers (what else should we call them?), the story conveys a very interesting statistic, "[a]bout 3.2 million New Yorkers, or 38 percent of the city’s population of 8.5 million, were born in other countries."  This is not an historic departure for us.  In 1910, just after the Goldenbergs settled in, New York's foreign born population was just under 41%.  See a century's worth of statistics at  https://web.archive.org/web/20110628223103/http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/pdf/census/nny_table_5_3.pdf

This profile of mongrelization seems to terrify folks beyond the Hudson River.  On the other hand, it wasn't people with 212 area codes who bought my "Hamilton" tickets for $1,200 each.

Tuesday, August 1, 2107

The Boyz Club met at Wo Hop, 17 Mott Street, to have a farewell lunch for Anthony Scaramucci.  It was a somewhat emotional affair.  Mooch, we hardly knew ye.  Our grief was substantially mitigated by the good food that we shared: 

Fried crispy noodles

Cold sesame noodles

Beef chow fun

Beef with scallions

Shrimp with lobster sauce over shrimp fried rice

Honey crispy chicken

Pork fried rice

It cost us $15 each including our normal 36% tip.

. . .

I was reminded of George Carlin's infamous seven dirty words when I read about (Red) China's "seven unmentionables," officially labelled as "Noteworthy Problems Related to the Current State of the Ideological Sphere."  http://www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation

The Chinese dirty words include "universal values," "Western Constitutional Democracy," and "freedom of the press."  As this week's New York Times Sunday magazine reported, Chinese human rights lawyers are being systematically harassed, jailed, and brutalized.   https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/magazine/the-lonely-crusade-of-chinas-human-rights-lawyers.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fmagazine&action=click&contentCollection=magazine&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront&_r=0

The Carlin case did not have the grave implications of the Chinese situation, but it set a constitutional standard for (un)free speech.  In 1972, Carlin released a comedy album entitled Class Clown containing "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television."  Later, he produced another version, "Filthy Words," which was played on WBAI-FM, a decidedly countercultural, non-commercial New York radio station.  Very conveniently and very suspiciously, an active opponent of pornography and obscenity was driving around with his teenage son, who should have been in school, when he tuned to WBAI just in time to hear the recorded Carlin routine.  The father complained to the Federal Communications Commission, which ruled against the station.  On appeal in 1978, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the FCC did not violate the First or Fifth Amendment by punishing the use of the filthy words.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_dirty_words

Today, 39 years later, the words are still not heard on network television, bleeped when uttered, but are commonplace on cable television and some even were printed in the New York Times when reporting the Scaramucci Soliloquy.  I wonder how long it will take for the Chinese to air their unmentionables.    

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

I have a problem with the list of the supposed 50 best college town food purveyors.  Akin to the Electoral College, it reserves space for each state.  https://www.tastingtable.com/travel/national/best-college-town-food

If, in fact, the Moscow Alehouse in Moscow, Idaho, home of the University of Idaho, is one of the country's best, OK.  But there are "57,799 full time students, [in] the 17 colleges and universities of Idaho" to be fed.  http://www.collegesimply.com/colleges/idaho/  

By contrast, the millions of students at the 761 four-year colleges and universities in Illinois, Texas, New York and California get one superlative choice per state.  On the other hand, this might be a form of affirmative action.  

  

Thursday, August 3, 2017

The White House press secretary announced yesterday that a 10-year old had volunteered to mow the White House grass.  At first, it was thought that the child volunteered to cut the president's hair.

. . .

An obituary today for a founder of Costco said that "[t]he company’s unusually generous salaries and benefits for workers rankled Wall Street stock analysts."  After all, according to a current New York State survey, "the average Wall Street[er] made $388,000 last year, or five times the average of what workers in all other industries got paid."  If we can drive down the pay of Costco employees, our deserving friends on Wall Street will have a greater multiple than they do now.

Friday, August 4, 2017

Nancy Freund Heller recently accompanied her 90-year old father to Germany, where he was born.  He was invited to speak to high school students by the Jewish Museum Berlin.  I think that it is important to read a portion of his journal as some in Washington yearn to launder the stream of immigrants seeking entry to our shores.  Also, just as German students heard about the events first hand for the first time, we might be hearing about them first hand for the last time.

I met with three high school classes over three days with each session lasting more than three hours. The students were 15 to 18 years old. Some had studied the 

Holocaust; all would eventually, as it is required in German high schools. None admitted to having heard about the Holocaust from their parents or grandparents. For the students, six million murdered Jews, and millions of other victims, seem to have been just data points, abstract numbers that don't spark an emotional reaction. Hitler is just a character from a history book, like Napoleon or Otto von 

Bismarck. It takes a personal witness to bring history alive, to help young people reflect on what really happened. 

Each class sat in an informal circle. I told them about long-standing Jew-hatred in Germany, about the annual Nazi party rallies in Nuremberg, about the Nuremberg laws that stripped Jews of rights and citizenship, and about my personal experiences. What happened to me as a kid interested them most. 

I told them how I was chased down a street by a gang of boys shouting "Jewish pig". When they caught me, they shut me in a wooden crate used to store sand for slippery winter streets. The lid was too heavy for me to lift. I banged on the lid 

frantically until a passerby helped me escape. I never got over the trauma.

I talked about happy vacations with my grandmother in the small town of Miltenberg. I told the students that my family had lived in Germany for 500 years and that we considered ourselves thoroughly German, until the Nazis arrested my 

father and beat him so badly that he knew we had to leave our homeland or die. I described what a near thing our emigration was, hinging on my father passing a medical exam (he never fully recovered from the beating the Nazis gave him) and providing an affidavit from a US resident to ensure that we would never become a “public charge”. Fortunately, my father had a generous cousin in the US.

I talked about settling in New York City’s Washington Heights, which in the 1930s was a magnet for German Jews. Our family of four arrived with furniture, clothing, and seven dollars in cash. My parents found menial jobs, my mother on the line in a lipstick factory, my father wheeling carts in a hospital morgue. I shined shoes on the street and delivered meat for a kosher butcher. Times were hard for Americans, too, but I wanted to be American. I stopped using the German-sounding “Kurt Wilhelm” and called myself “William Curt”, which I 

officially adopted when I became an American citizen in 1944.

Before leaving Germany, my resourceful mother Paula bribed a pastry chef to teach her to bake lebkuchen, the Nuremberg Christmas cookie shipped all over the world. Our family could not start a business on arrival since we had no capital, spoke no English, and knew nothing of business practices in the U.S. Nor could we compete with genuine lebkuchen imported from Nuremberg. However, when war started in Europe in 1939, Germany could no longer export the product. And so 

the Freund family rented a store, produced the cookie in quantity, and sold it to fine stores under the name Paula's Lebkuchen. We succeeded beyond our expectations, especially after a leading newspaper featured our shop in a big story. After the war, Nuremberg resumed exports and Paula sold the bakery and recipe. My father had died. I earned a PhD and eventually became a professor of economics and chief economist of the New York Stock Exchange. I told the students that success is the best revenge. (I wrote up this story in an illustrated children’s book sold on Amazon.)

In answering the students’ questions, I told them that our family brought German culture—cuisine, homemaking, music, habits—to America. The Nazis exploited a German history of Jew-hatred to expel me and all other Jewish kids from public 

school, rob me of my home and my childhood friends, and kill or exile my entire extended family. But in America, we adapted and thrived.

The students told me that they never had asked their grandparents and great-grandparents about what their families had done during the war, except for one student who said part of his family had gone to Argentina. It seems that I was the first person to give them a personal story of life under the Nazis.