Monday, July 20, 2020
The book review this weekend had this dubious
recommendation: "if you’re intrigued by humanistic, hopeful vampire lore,
I can’t recommend 'Fledgling' more highly."
. . .
. . .
Some people believe that you cannot
have too many friends, while others are more than satisfied with the number
currently surrounding them. Wherever you stand, I recommend that you
buddy up to Joan and Steve G., because the 16-story rooftop of their Upper West
Side building has two shady gazebos with unobstructed 270˚ views. We were delighted to
share bagels and lox with them in that lovely setting yesterday even though
Sunday was the hottest day of the year.
That evening, we enjoyed the
hospitality of Toby and Butch in their backyard in Englewood, New Jersey.
Even though dinner was at ground level, an abundance of fireflies provided a beautiful view.
. . .
As I noted last week, Sunday was
National Ice Cream Day, also appropriate to fall on the hottest day of the
year. Stony Brook Steve forwarded "12 Perfect Places To Celebrate
National Ice Cream Day In NYC" https://gothamist.com/food/
I must be slowing down, because I
haven't gotten to several of them. However, omitting Ample Hills Creamery
severely compromises the validity of this report.
There was another report that, upon
closer examination, proved of even more dubious value. "According to
a new study, your favorite ice cream flavor may actually say a lot about your
character. Some flavors predict finding love young while others determine
whether you love dogs or cats. The study was conducted by OnePoll on
behalf of Breyers, Southwest News Service (SWNS) reports. In it, 2,000
Americans were split up by the favorite ice cream flavors."
What's the problem? The
analysis was limited only to vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. If you
look into the freezer compartment holding Ben & Jerry's or Häagen-Dazs
lately, as I did last night at the enormous ShopRite Supermarket in Englewood,
you would find it difficult to pick a pint of vanilla, chocolate or strawberry
among the panoply of flavors on hand.
My choices of Ben & Jerry's
Cherry Garcia and Caramel Chocolate Cheesecake far exceeded the boundaries of
the survey and, thus, deprived you of insight into my character.
. . .
There is a petition going around
that I am not going to sign, accusing Trader Joe's of racism because it "labels some of its ethnic foods with modifications of ‘Joe’ that belies
a narrative of exoticism that perpetuates harmful stereotypes. For
example, ‘Trader Ming’s’ is used to brand the chain’s Chinese food,
‘Arabian Joe’ brands Middle Eastern foods, ‘Trader José’ brands Mexican
foods, ‘Trader Giotto’s’ is for Italian food, and ‘Trader Joe San’
brands their Japanese cuisine."
What's wrong exactly with
exotic? Would you rather spend time and money enjoying the cuisine of
Mike Pence?
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
This article offers some details
about the origin and success of blue jeans, including the factoid that Levi
Strauss's first product was brown canvas, not blue denim. https://www.triptrivia.com/
However, if your first television set was black and white
and only got 7 channels, you grew up wearing dungarees, not blue jeans. "Before there were jeans, there
were dungaris. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the
word we now spell as 'dungarees' entered the language in the late-17th Century,
and referred to the thick work overalls worn by Portuguese sailors."
https://amuse.vice.com/en_us/
On the other hand, "Jeans as name for trousers come from city of Genoa in Italy, a place where cotton corduroy, called either jean or jeane, was manufactured." http://www.historyofjeans.com/
On the other hand, "Jeans as name for trousers come from city of Genoa in Italy, a place where cotton corduroy, called either jean or jeane, was manufactured." http://www.historyofjeans.com/
I will stick with dungarees, though. It definitely
sounds more rugged than jeans and, primarily, I will always remember Esther
Malka Goldenberg, my beloved maternal grandmother, a master of Yinglish, the
marriage of Yiddish and English, criticizing my mother for sending der
Klayner (the little one, that's me, if you can believe it) to shul
in "tangerines."
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Covid-19 "is often said to be transmitted through droplets generated when a symptomatic person coughs, sneezes, talks, or exhales." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
Covid-19 "is often said to be transmitted through droplets generated when a symptomatic person coughs, sneezes, talks, or exhales." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/
In case you are skeptical of this proposition, this
interactive map will allow you to seek out those places where people are less
likely to wear masks, and damn proud of it. https://www.nytimes.com/
. . .
"White Fragility" by Robin
DiAngelo is a best-selling book and the focus of training courses being
"given to school faculties and government agencies and university
administrations and companies like Microsoft and Google."
I haven't read the book, but the title seems to be askew,
since the article identifies dominant white superiority as the basis for our
country's racial dysfunction. White superiority, exploiting, harming,
punishing and oppressing our Black population, takes two basic forms -- white
privilege and white culture. “White privilege is like an invisible
weightless knapsack of special provisions, assurances, tools, maps, guides,
codebooks, passports, visas, clothes, compass, emergency gear and blank
checks.” I believe this, although my experience is almost exclusively
gathered at the favored end of the telescope.
On the other hand, I believe that this discussion of white
culture, a seeming monolith of manners and mores, is just plain wrong, an
attempt to sanitize individual and community differences, real or imagined. I
find it interesting that this purported gulf between white culture and Black culture
is perceived most vividly by those at opposite ends of the racial justice
debate.
"[T]here is one group of whites that stands out in the degree to which it
holds dehumanizing views of black people: Trump supporters." https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2016/11/the-majority-of-trump-supporters-surveyed-described-black-people-as-less-evolved.html
While those who promote Afrocentricity believe that the attempts "to
formulate a primitivist black aesthetic and to engage in revisionary history
and myth-making about Haiti and Africa, are intended as anti-racist
celebrations of black people, modes, places and histories." https://www.jstor.org/stable/
White culture, according to those quoted in the article, privileges "particular forms of knowledge over others (e.g., written over oral, history over memory, rationalism over wisdom);” it relies on “scientific, linear thinking. Cause and effect;” it has “validated and elevated positivistic, White Eurocentric knowledge over non-White, Indigenous and non-European knowledges." One author calls for "multiple cultural standards and multiple perspectives . . . [with] multiple understandings of what achievement is and what qualifications are."
Bushwah! I am reminded of
Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia saying, "There is no Democratic or Republican
way of cleaning the streets." I do not believe that there is room
for multiple cultural standards for piloting a passenger jet
airplane, performing open-heart surgery, writing computer code or other tasks requiring measurement
and precision. In many areas, including the arts, multiple standards and
perspectives are welcome and propel the subject forward. However, race
may be only one of many factors influencing the perspectives and a simple
binary approach ignores so much of human experience and personality. For
instance, separating white music from Black music tells us nothing about whites
or Blacks, even if such a distinction could be made.
Additionally, there are more than
150 shades of white, at least in a paint store. https://www.mercurynews.com/
Thursday, July 23, 2020
Everyday
there is a report of some folks indignant enough about a sinful act
that they remove, censor, destroy, ban or denounce the person, place or
thing responsible. Often, I fully endorse this conduct. A traitor to
the United States, for instance, deserves an unmarked grave, not his
name on a public institution.
Occasionally,
however, the quest for purity overreaches, leaving some reasonable men,
women and gender fluid folks apprehensive about the exercise of
freedom. I admit to squirming when James Bennett was fired from the New York Times
for publishing an essay by a United States Senator demonstrating how
unfit he was for public office or reading the attacks on J.K. Rowling
for questioning whether trans women are women. Error will always be
with us. "Nobody should be judged forever on their worst day," said Andrew Gillum, former candidate for Governor of Florida, even before he was found drunk in a hotel room with prescription pills spilled on the carpet and bags of crystal methamphetamine.
On
the other hand, allow me to offer a brief defense of the zealous
purists. They or the group that they speak for have been on the outs
for so long, absorbing real hardships, not just scorn or insults. Now,
that they garner attention, some exaggeration and overwrought demands
may be a small price to pay on the path to the Land of the Free and Home
of the Brave. Had we arrived there sooner, our dissenters might have
been effectively disarmed.
. . .
Friday, July 24, 2020
We've turned a corner. The front page of the New York Times
printed the classic reference to carnal knowledge today, in gerund
form, quoting Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez quoting
Representative Ted Yoho. She spoke the common vulgarity on the record
on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, where the
rhetoric is usually limited to vulgar ideas expressed in polite
language.
While
I retain a streak of Puritanism that would keep such language out of
the halls of Congress, allowing Ted Yoho in is a bigger offense, to my
mind.
. . .
FLASH!
In
case you were up in the air about planning your kid's Bar Mitzvah on
short notice with the relaxation of coronavirus precautions, there is
good news. A large block of hotel rooms and party space have just opened
up in August for Jacksonville, Florida. Mazel tov. 
Quite a weighty volume, this one.
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