Monday, May 7, 2018
Friday, May 4, 2018
In Africa
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Before entering the Serengeti National Park, we stopped at the Olduvai Gorge, one of the richest archeological sites in the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
Before entering the Serengeti National Park, we stopped at the Olduvai Gorge, one of the richest archeological sites in the world. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/
It has yielded evidence of some of humankind's earliest ancestors, including Lucy, an austropicene, on my mother's side.
A new, excellent little museum has been opened at Olduvai Gorge displaying relics and replicas of some of the key discoveries in the area. Take a Southern Baptist on a visit with you.
Naonu Moru is the near genuine African safari experience. It is a group of tents set in the bush, reached by the merest wisp of a road. There are 11 sleeping tents and several support tents. They are not entirely primitive; a bathroom is included although not one that might be featured in Modern Plumber. Each tent covers as much space as a modest Manhattan one-bedroom apartment. It has room to host a cast party for "Mogambo."
On the other hand, we are sleeping in a tent in the middle of nowhere.
Monday, April 30, 2018
Except for a stretch from the rim to the floor of the Ngorongoro Crater, we have been driving on unpaved roads since approaching the crater on Friday. East Africa has had the hardest rain in the last two months for the last 20 years, washing out roads and bridges, and rerouting and rescheduling us. We are in a specially equipped, four-wheel drive Toyota Land Cruiser, but the muddy, deeply-rutted roads make for tough driving, sometimes slower than walking. Estimating distances is difficult under the circumstances.
We set out at 7 AM to explore the Serengeti plain. For the first hour, we moved very slowly through bush that was almost entirely empty of animals. However, the land showed clear signs of their recent presence. The trunks or large branches of many trees were snapped in half, the result of elephants making bark and leaves more accessible to feeding. Although we saw very few elephants in the Serengeti, we saw broken trees throughout. We also saw helmeted guinea fowl, Cape buffalo, wart hogs, topis (a horned antelope), African hoopoes (another horned antelope), hartebeests (yet another horned antelope), water bucks (big horned antelope), Marabou storks, hornbills, dwarf mongooses, lesser flamingos, greater flamingos, and one small crocodile.
With all that, two sights stood out. First, we saw a leopard in a tree with its cub, an exceptional sighting we were told. As big as the Serengeti is, it holds few leopards. Then, several Cape buffalos, big creatures with thick curved horns, strolled on the edge of a pond full of flamingos, lesser and greater, white and pink, while one Cape buffalo sat submerged in the pond, only its horns and the top of its head showing. It stood still, not going up down, left right, until Kip our supervising guide told us that it was no more than a Cape buffalo skull floating on the surface, the relic of an attack by a lion. Really spooky
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
We left our tent village early and drove 150 kilometers to the western edge of the Serengeti, on the road for over six hours with some breaks. At a stop at a visitor's center, we saw hyraxes for the first time, chubby rodents about a foot long. They seemed to prefer the company of sunburned tourists from around the world using bathrooms rather than hanging out with the the lions, jackals, hyenas and leopards in the bush.
Another long pause occurred when we encountered a pride of lions on and across the road - one male, six females and 12 cubs. The male sat and watched as the group marched in file right under the nose of the two-legged Intruders. It was a memorable sight.
Hours later, as we navigated a severely eroded patch of road, more water than ground, our companion vehicle fell off the edge, tilting about 30 degrees from the vertical axis. We had stopped to wait for them, so Clement backed up, took off his shoes, rolled up his pants and joined Kip and the other driver in attaching a tow line to pull the other Land Cruiser onto firmer yet soaked ground.
A short time later, we arrived at our overnight stop, Speke Bay Lodge, a beautiful facility on the shores of Lake Victoria. We got a round, thatch-roofed hut (they call it a bungalow) about 15 feet from the water's edge. It will be hard to leave it tomorrow at a typically ungodly hour to go back to Kenya.
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Goodbye Speke Bay Lodge, the place that you hope they choose for your witness protection program. On the other hand, I would like to nominate belatedly for a Nobel Prize the person who invented paving. We drove north for three plus hours into Kenya on solid concrete, allowing our kishkes to return to their natural position in our body cavity.
About a half hour beyond the border crossing, we got onto a 12-passenger, single engine airplane for a 20-minute flight to Maasai Mara National Preserve (differing from a National Park by allowing residency within). Once we landed, it was back to rocking and rolling in a four-wheel drive Land Cruiser to get to Fig Tree Camp, another tent complex, about six times larger than Naona Moru Camp in the Serengeti. Our tent is about 1/4 the size of the one in Naonu Moru, but equipped with a real tiled bathroom. It is also perched directly on a stream where four hippopotamuses were bathing shamelessly in front of us.
We were supposed to go on a game drive this afternoon, but a huge rainstorm stopped us, leaving me in the dark to compose this timeless prose, because of one of the camp's regularly scheduled blackout periods from 3 to 6 PM.
Thursday, May 3, 2018
I thought that the hippopotamus was chattering right next to our tent at 4:30 this morning, but it was only sitting in the stream 10 feet from our front flap, what passes for a door. Meanwhile, the stream has gotten noticeably closer to our tent, because of yesterday's big rainstorm.
Two of our seven person group chose to ride a hot air balloon over the Maasai Mara plain bright and early this morning. I chose not to, because of my vertigo and 450 other reasons. The rest of us were on the road (more like a swamp) before 7 AM to look for animals. They were much less densely gathered here than in other regions. However, we saw clusters of Cape buffalos, topis, gazelles, Impalas and wart hogs, with occasional jackals and hyenas lurking around. A few elephants and giraffes were visible in the distance, but no big cats could be seen. They might have been around, sheltered by the tall grass that covered most of the terrain. The only new sighting was the wattled plover, a description suitable for several of my friends.
. . .
Giuliani said what?
. . .
At 3 PM, we left for our last game drive. I was satisfied that it would be much the same as this morning's, sort of a recap of recent sightings. Well, don't you know that our luck with rare encounters continued. We came upon a group of five cheetahs strolling together directly in our path. I captured them on video, which I can transmit on What's App, but not Gmail. All reasonable requests to view, accompanied by a Häagen Dazs gift certificate, will be honored. They were most remarkable animals, rarely seen and more rarely seen under such favorable circumstances.
We continued on, encountering a family of elephants close up and seeing our first martial eagle dining on a lizard. It turned out to be a major league excursion. As we approached our tent back at Fig Tree Camp, two hippopotamuses were splashing in the water at our feet, almost a bookend to our arrival yesterday. By the way, another gift certificate gets you this video.
Friday, May 4, 2018
This was wrapping up day, the last time in the bush as we prepared to return to Nairobi on a flight from Olkiombo Airstrip. On the ride over, likely our last bumpy ride for awhile, we had some interesting sightings. We saw three giraffes, closer than at any time before. They were just hanging out, so we could observe them for many minutes. While there is no denying the beauty of the cheetahs and the other big cats, giraffes seem to have no parallel.
Almost at the other end of the size scale, a 4" chameleon caught all of our attention. It appeared predominantly light green, exactly matching the color of our vehicle. Then, back up to another extreme when we saw an enormous crocodile on the edge of a stream alongside the road. Six, seven, eight feet long; you couldn't tell because the crocodile was directly facing us. It lay still, which was fine with us, even though it was an uphill climb to reach us.
. . .
We have been entertained three times by Maasai people singing and dancing, twice after dinner at our lodge or camp. Before reaching the airstrip today, we made a scheduled stop at a small Maasai village, holding 84 people in six families. The men and women danced and sang for us and then we went into one of their very small boxy houses, built by the women after they marry. The houses are no higher than the height of the builder and are made of a crude stucco covering pieces of scrap wood and tree branches. The roofing material was dried cow dung over a plastic sheet, an upgraded feature at the house that we entered. It had no electricity or running water. The small front room (as if there was room for anything large) held a baby cow overnight, which would bring its mother each morning with milk for the children and the baby cow as well.
We ended the visit by walking a gauntlet of women offering their beadwork and other handicrafts for sale. The process was awkward. No prices were marked; you were supposed to select everything that interested you and then get a collective quote, understood to be unreasonably high. Bargaining ensued, but I backed away when I was quoted $65 for the $12-18 of merchandise that I picked. In China, I jumped into such negotiations with relish. Here, I was disheartened. I could not play act into some back and forth in the face of such grinding poverty.
My mood was affected by the whole character of the visit. The people, their customs, their crafts, their living conditions were on display, to be recorded and recounted, as strange to us as many of the animals that we have seen. The tour company paid the villagers for their time and access and, for all I know, it represented a great windfall. But, I wish that we stuck to staring at animals.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Back To Africa
Monday, April 23, 2018
I had a girl friend 35 years ago who was a great fan of "Dune," the popular science fiction novel by Frank Herbert. (Today, the term "fantasy" has apparently squeezed out "science fiction.") In my attempt to get or keep her enamored, I plowed into that 412 page novel, the first of a six book series. After Herbert went to the big sandbox in the sky in 1986, his son continued with more novels set before and after the time period of the original.
It did not take me many pages to shed the thought of reading anything else Dune-like, although I made it through the end of the work at hand. The romance ended soon thereafter, but the turgid Dune legacy has kept me away from any science fiction ever since, in any form. I haven't seen a "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" film for all this time. I went to see the first of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), to help entertain Max the Wonder Boy, then a teenager. I recall beautiful scenery, but Frodo has faded while Fredo remains vivid in my mind. As for Harry Potter, I'm sticking with Harry Truman.
It did not take me many pages to shed the thought of reading anything else Dune-like, although I made it through the end of the work at hand. The romance ended soon thereafter, but the turgid Dune legacy has kept me away from any science fiction ever since, in any form. I haven't seen a "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" film for all this time. I went to see the first of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001), to help entertain Max the Wonder Boy, then a teenager. I recall beautiful scenery, but Frodo has faded while Fredo remains vivid in my mind. As for Harry Potter, I'm sticking with Harry Truman.
One lasting sci-fi memory, however, is the immortal Star Trek phrase "Beam me up, Scotty." This came to mind as we boarded United flight 134 to Zurich, Switzerland at Newark Airport at 6:30 PM Sunday evening, connecting to United flight 9764 to Nairobi, Kenya, scheduled to arrive at 6:40 PM local time Monday evening. Even after subtracting the seven hour time difference, that's a long trip. How nice if, in fact, Scotty could arrange a much faster means of getting us from place to place.
By the way, as with "Elementary, my dear Watson" and "Play it again, Sam," the phrase was never actually uttered in ur-Star Trek episodes. http://www.todayifoundout.com/
By the way, as with "Elementary, my dear Watson" and "Play it again, Sam," the phrase was never actually uttered in ur-Star Trek episodes. http://www.todayifoundout.com/
. . .
The flights went very well, no drama, (mostly) quiet babies, approximations of food, particularly good desserts - lemon sorbet and frozen crème brûlée. I made an observation on the Nairobi leg, a full Airbus with about 300 passengers that surprised me. Others may find it naive, even stupid. About 2/3 of the people on board were white, the others mostly black, a few Asian-appearing folk. Of course, many of the whites may be African, while many of the blacks may well be American or some European flavor. It just wasn't what I expected.
Tuesday, April 24, 2018
Our first full day in Kenya opened with heavy rains, which lasted for several hours as we drove east and then south from Nairobi to Kilima Safari Camp in the Amboseli National Park, our first stop. As in other developing countries, the acquisition of a motorbike seems to be the first accomplishment after meeting the immediate needs of food, shelter and clothing. An unusual local touch, probably in response to the weather, was umbrellas sitting upright over the drivers even as they flew along. Instead of a symmetrical round canopy, these umbrellas had a platypus-like trailing section to offer the semblance of protection to a passenger.
Once in the countryside, leaving the Long Island Expressway where we spent the first hour, there were frequent roadside animal sightings in the next three hours, but only of cows and goats, often intermingled, offering an encouraging picture of intergroup harmony. But, even before we reached Kilima Safari Camp at the edge of Amboseli National Park, we hit the big time. First, a small herd of zebras, really with stripes and everything. Then, down the road, a large group of giraffes, about two dozen majestic creatures. Everyone jumped out of our vans to watch, take photographs and marvel, but it got better. After we checked into our large, beautifully furnished cabin, we went out to look for animals and we struck gold. Elephants, zebras, two kinds of gazelles, jackals and lions, plus vultures and crown cranes. The lions were the trophy sighting. We were the second or third van to pull over to see the lions, but within minutes there were 20 or more vans, minibuses, Land Rovers and Land Cruisers summoned in Swahili by the first drivers on the scene. The lion sighting was special not just because of their eminence in the jungle, but there are only about three dozen in Amboseli National Park.
Wednesday, April 25, 2018
We took an early morning drive around the park and saw hippopotamuses and wildebeests for the first time, as well as two families of elephants immediately in front and behind us.
Additionally, for Barbara Alfange and my other birder friends, we spotted some wonderful birds:
Black and gray herons
Ostriches (much larger than I imagined)
Crowned, blacksmith, spurwinged and long toed plovers
Black belllied bustards
Starlings
Pelican (1)
African spoonbill
Fulvous whistling ducks
Saddle billed and yellow billed storks
Black winged stilts
Fish eagle (1)
Egyptian geese
And that was all before breakfast!
Thursday, April 26, 2018
We left for Tanzania early this morning, but needed almost all day to get to Planet Lodge, Arusha, an urban hotel on lovely grounds that evoke the countryside. The extra long drive was necessitated by the washing away of a key bridge connecting Kenya and Tanzania, a result of the heaviest rains in East Africa for many decades. Fortunately, shortly after we we set out, we had two special sightings, which made the next many hours more bearable --three giraffes standing tall and three dozen baboons gamboling about within reach. At a rest stop on the way, I found cheeseburger-flavored Pringles on the market shelf. My curiosity was satisfied just by looking at the package.
Wi-Fi was not working at Kilima Safari Camp so reentry to the Internet at Planet Lodge was a bit like a return from space. However, I decided to reconstruct the wins and losses for the Mets since the weekend rather than keep up with the hirings and firings in Washington in the same period.
Friday, April 27, 2018
Arusha was only an intermediate stop to limit the day's driving time to about the length of some Trump appointments. Again it was early to rise and hit the road to Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, a geological phenomenon about 20 kilometers across and 600 meters deep (nearly 12 1/2 miles and 1,970 feet).
Much of the ride for the last two days was through Maasai country, who number about 800,000 in Tanzania and closer to 900,000 in Kenya. Many (most?) of them stick to the old-fashioned ways, wrapped in colorful robes, wearing bright beaded jewelery, devoted to herding their cows and horses, the men notably thin and rangy, polygamous with their wives literally doing the heavy lifting.
The long ride was broken up by a visit to Lake Manyara National Park, kept lushly green year round by spring water from the highlands in contrast to Amboseli which is usually arid except for the rainy season. While we did not see any of the park's famous tree-climbing lions, we added to our animal collection by sighting a Cape Buffalo, impalas and wart hogs. Also, we added to our existing inventory of animals were more zebras, wildebeests, baboons and ten hippopotamuses languishing in a shallow pond.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Another early wake-up call and then a drive down to the floor of the crater. The Ngorongoro Crater was formed when a large volcano exploded and collapsed on itself over 2 million years ago, or in the 1820s on the Creationist Calendar. Except for a few toilets and unpaved roads, it remains wild, populated by a wide variety of animals. Today, we saw hyenas and a black rhinoceros for the first time. We also saw lions and hippopotamuses much closer than before, as well as hundreds of wildebeests, zebras and gazelles. In the bird department, we made initial sightings of an African harrier hawk and flamingos.
So where are his pictures, you might ask? Why is he wasting my time with all of his verbiage. Well, some unannounced conflict seems to have arisen among Samsung, Google and Blogspot, leaving me unillustrated and only partially illuminating. Too bad, I really got a great shot of the lion.
Friday, April 27, 2018
Arusha was only an intermediate stop to limit the day's driving time to about the length of some Trump appointments. Again it was early to rise and hit the road to Ngorongoro Serena Safari Lodge on the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater, a geological phenomenon about 20 kilometers across and 600 meters deep (nearly 12 1/2 miles and 1,970 feet).
Much of the ride for the last two days was through Maasai country, who number about 800,000 in Tanzania and closer to 900,000 in Kenya. Many (most?) of them stick to the old-fashioned ways, wrapped in colorful robes, wearing bright beaded jewelery, devoted to herding their cows and horses, the men notably thin and rangy, polygamous with their wives literally doing the heavy lifting.
The long ride was broken up by a visit to Lake Manyara National Park, kept lushly green year round by spring water from the highlands in contrast to Amboseli which is usually arid except for the rainy season. While we did not see any of the park's famous tree-climbing lions, we added to our animal collection by sighting a Cape Buffalo, impalas and wart hogs. Also, we added to our existing inventory of animals were more zebras, wildebeests, baboons and ten hippopotamuses languishing in a shallow pond.
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Another early wake-up call and then a drive down to the floor of the crater. The Ngorongoro Crater was formed when a large volcano exploded and collapsed on itself over 2 million years ago, or in the 1820s on the Creationist Calendar. Except for a few toilets and unpaved roads, it remains wild, populated by a wide variety of animals. Today, we saw hyenas and a black rhinoceros for the first time. We also saw lions and hippopotamuses much closer than before, as well as hundreds of wildebeests, zebras and gazelles. In the bird department, we made initial sightings of an African harrier hawk and flamingos.
So where are his pictures, you might ask? Why is he wasting my time with all of his verbiage. Well, some unannounced conflict seems to have arisen among Samsung, Google and Blogspot, leaving me unillustrated and only partially illuminating. Too bad, I really got a great shot of the lion.
Saturday, April 21, 2018
Saturday, April 14, 2018
Ladies First?
Monday, April 9, 2018
The weekend's newspaper had several numbers that surprised me. First, there was an extensive study of evictions nationwide. https://nyti.ms/2GIJfrqWhile we think that Americans are afforded equal justice under the law, location, location location seems to be as significant to evictions as to real estate generally. One in 25 Milwaukee renters faced eviction, while the eager landlords in Richmond, Virginia threatened one in five renters with eviction while actually moving against one in nine. The article lists the top ten locations with the highest eviction judgment rates. Five of the ten are "in Virginia, which lacks some tenant rights available in other states." Not surprising was the correlation of evictions with poverty, a low minimum wage and a high concentration of African-Americans.
Locally, I was surprised to learn that there are 612 Dunkin’ Donuts and 433 Subway sandwich shops in New York City, obviously succeeding in the absence of my patronage. https://nyti.ms/2EprveB
Finally, how many airlines do you think there are in the world? That's a question that I never contemplated before and I don't even know what I might guess. A profile of a master chef reported that his company provides meals for about 300 airlines.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0
The International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade association of major airlines, has 278 members. However, IATA and the International Civil Aviation Organization have designators (abbreviations or tags) for about 5,000 airlines. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Not included is Mrs. Grace L. Ferguson's Storm Door & Airlines Company made famous by Bob Newhart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Tuesday, April 10, 2018
Today
is Equal Pay Day. The average woman who worked throughout 2017 and
continued until today earned what the average man earned in 2017. In
case you would like to read a tortured defense of this disparity, go to http://thefederalist.com/2018/
Back in the real world, according to the 2016 Census, where the average white male earns $1, a Latina earns 54¢, a Native American woman 57¢, a black woman 63¢, a white woman 79¢ and an Asian woman 89¢.
If you really want to groove on statistics in this subject, see
Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Republican
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan announced today that he will not run for
reelection, removing him from an office that placed him immediately
behind the vice president in the line of presidential succession. He
acted in deep disappointment at being omitted from the latest edition of
"Profiles in Courage."
. . .
. . .
At first, I was surprised to read today that Il Laboratorio del Gelato, a provider of high quality ice cream to local restaurants, has 275 flavors.
That seems like a large number, but a quick look into the Gotthelf
Files shows that it is really not that unusual. Herrell's of
Northampton, Massachusetts has a master list of 300 flavors; it
regularly offers about 40 in its flagship store.
http://www.herrells.com/frozen
Quality does not suffer at Herrell's because of quantity. On two visits to Herrell's last year, I really enjoyed coconut chocolate chip, "More cookies than cream", "Emerald City" (peppermint ice cream with Andes mints and green sprinkles), and mudpie (espresso ice cream with Oreos and a fudge swirl). Before I reach for the car keys, I remind myself of the proximity of Ample Hills Creamery, in the Gotham West Market, 600 11th Avenue (45th Street). It only serves 12 flavors at a time, but it comes up with some that Herrell's hasn't imagined yet, such as, Salted Crack Caramel (salted caramel ice cream, with saltines covered in butter, sugar and chocolate) and "Ooey Gooey Butter Cake" (vanilla ice cream with cream cheese and "St. Louis-style" butter cake). Isn't ice cream wonderful?
http://www.herrells.com/frozen
Quality does not suffer at Herrell's because of quantity. On two visits to Herrell's last year, I really enjoyed coconut chocolate chip, "More cookies than cream", "Emerald City" (peppermint ice cream with Andes mints and green sprinkles), and mudpie (espresso ice cream with Oreos and a fudge swirl). Before I reach for the car keys, I remind myself of the proximity of Ample Hills Creamery, in the Gotham West Market, 600 11th Avenue (45th Street). It only serves 12 flavors at a time, but it comes up with some that Herrell's hasn't imagined yet, such as, Salted Crack Caramel (salted caramel ice cream, with saltines covered in butter, sugar and chocolate) and "Ooey Gooey Butter Cake" (vanilla ice cream with cream cheese and "St. Louis-style" butter cake). Isn't ice cream wonderful?
Thursday, April 12, 2018
It
is Stony Brook Steve's birthday and we celebrated at lunch at LaSalle
Dumpling Room, 25 West End Avenue, a frequent destination when foregoing
Chinatown. We ate up a storm: pan fried pork dumplings ($9 for 6 pieces), spicy chicken dumplings ($9 for
6 pieces), popcorn chicken ($11.95), cold sesame noodles ($8.50) and beef wrapped scallion pancake ($9.95). To further celebrate the occasion, I had a
passion fruit slush ($4.25). A fine party.
Friday, April 13, 2018
"Knowledge Gap Hinders Ability of Congress to Regulate Silicon Valley" This a headline in today's paper that could be used in Mad Libs (that wonderful series created by Roger Price, Leonard Stern and Larry Sloan). Ask for any noun in place of "Silicon Valley."
. . .
Tonight, we went to dinner at Riverpark, 450 East 29th Street, a restaurant indeed edging on the East River. The occasion was in honor of the recent Bat Mitzvah of Leonore Max, only a few decades after she graduated from medical school. While she has never wielded a scalpel around me, she handled the Hebrew texts with care and confidence.
Her husband Jon Silverberg picked the restaurant, which the New York Times describes as "hard to find, . . . occupying a chasm between the New York University Medical Center and the sprawling wards of Bellevue Hospital Center." The review concludes that "[i]t is a sophisticated restaurant with an excellent kitchen, moderately priced, with good service," an opinion we now share with the vital exception of the immoderate pricing. With that understood, you can have a very lovely evening.
Saturday, April 7, 2018
Sand In My Shoes
Monday, April 2, 2018
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Mel Brooks reminded us that it's good to be the King. A recent group of studies reported by the New York Times (referenced
herein in the last two weeks) show that generally the way to the top in
America is to start there. The exceptions are black boys who have a
difficult time maintaining an elevated socioeconomic position and
Asian-Americans who doggedly move up the ladder even from woeful
circumstances.
A report by the Equality of Opportunity Project gives us some interesting collateral data. "For people born over the five years from 1980 to 1984, the marriage rate for upper-income students who attended Ivy League institutions was 14 percentage points higher than the rate for lower-income students." https://nyti.ms/2uyfC6q
Another disparity in the measure of "success" emerged from a study of women who started college in the same dormitory at Indiana University in 2004. ("Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality," by Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton.) None of the working-class students had graduated five years later, while the affluent ones "all graduated. Even the ones who chose easy majors, did very little studying, got mediocre grades and spent most of their time partying were able to find jobs after graduation." https://www.nytimes.com/2013/0
. . .
A report by the Equality of Opportunity Project gives us some interesting collateral data. "For people born over the five years from 1980 to 1984, the marriage rate for upper-income students who attended Ivy League institutions was 14 percentage points higher than the rate for lower-income students." https://nyti.ms/2uyfC6q
Another disparity in the measure of "success" emerged from a study of women who started college in the same dormitory at Indiana University in 2004. ("Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality," by Elizabeth Armstrong and Laura Hamilton.) None of the working-class students had graduated five years later, while the affluent ones "all graduated. Even the ones who chose easy majors, did very little studying, got mediocre grades and spent most of their time partying were able to find jobs after graduation." https://www.nytimes.com/2013/0
. . .
Digesting
the weekend's seder meals is almost complete, so I can report on my
ingestion. First, Friday night from daughter-in-law Irit's kitchen:
Crudités (mirabile dictu, her children eat raw cucumbers)
Crudités (mirabile dictu, her children eat raw cucumbers)
Potato leek soup
Salmon with Savta Mila's sauce
Squash kugel
Matzah lasagna (yes, it works quite well)
Chocolate frogs (which melted quickly when rubbed over children's faces)
Chocolate chip biscotti (a/k/a mandelbrot)
Almond butter chocolate chip cookies
Chocolate cream cheese cake with blackberries and raspberries
Saturday night from Aunt Judi's kitchen:
Deep-fried gefilte fish balls (such a wonderful creation, it should be protected by copyright)
Sweet and sour meatballs
Corned beef (begging for rye bread)
Carmelized onion chicken
Dermaless derma (when Jews got embarrassed at the sound of the word kishka -- beef intestine stuffed with meat scraps, fat, and grain -- they started calling it derma, for skin, or stuffed derma; once a staple at any catered affair, it has been pushed into the compost heap of history.) Aunt Judi serves a meatless version without a casing.
Cauliflower soufflé
Broccoli kugel
Cous cous
Matzoh jam pudding
Apple strawberry relish
Cole slaw
Health salad
Trifle with chocolate mousse and whipped cream
Strawberry mousse
Chocolate chip mandelbrot
Almond cookies with chocolate chips
Brownies
Fruit (for the big eaters)
Deep-fried gefilte fish balls (such a wonderful creation, it should be protected by copyright)
Sweet and sour meatballs
Corned beef (begging for rye bread)
Carmelized onion chicken
Dermaless derma (when Jews got embarrassed at the sound of the word kishka -- beef intestine stuffed with meat scraps, fat, and grain -- they started calling it derma, for skin, or stuffed derma; once a staple at any catered affair, it has been pushed into the compost heap of history.) Aunt Judi serves a meatless version without a casing.
Cauliflower soufflé
Broccoli kugel
Cous cous
Matzoh jam pudding
Apple strawberry relish
Cole slaw
Health salad
Trifle with chocolate mousse and whipped cream
Strawberry mousse
Chocolate chip mandelbrot
Almond cookies with chocolate chips
Brownies
Fruit (for the big eaters)
With this intake, it was hard to make a running start into the Sinai Desert.
Tuesday, April 2, 2018
In
what has not been recognized as an international competition
in principled decision making, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu
yesterday reversed his position on settling and resettling African
refugees in one hour and 53 minutes. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0
This easily beat President Trump's volte face on gun control after a meeting with the NRA, an interval of almost two weeks.
Immigration
and refugees are hot buttons almost throughout the world. The
administration has just funded a replacement plaque at the foot of the
Statue of Liberty, reading, in part, "Give me your Norwegians, yearning
to spend their trust funds . . ."
Israel
has its own problem -- Eritreans and Sudanese escaping genocidal
regimes, who entered Israel at the border between Egypt and Israel in
the Negev Desert. The border has since been sealed, but nearly 40,000
Christian and Muslim refugees remain from a total of 60,000 who
arrived. Israel has been trying to eject them with some success,
although it recruits manual laborers and household help from far away,
jobs that Jews refuse.
It is
particularly ironic to be discussing this during Passover. The
Haggadah, the Jewish text that vies with the food for centrality at the
seder table, says, "All who are hungry -- let them come and eat. All
who are needy -- let them come and celebrate the Passover with us."
Then, get lost?
By coincidence, I
saw "Levinsky Park" tonight, a documentary film about these African
refugees who cluster in this South Tel Aviv park day and night. Here is
a trailer for the film. https://www.youtube.com/watch?
We
visited the park on our recent trip, escorted by a director of Hotline
for Refugees and Migrants, an organization trying to assist these
African refugees, now labelled infiltrators by the government. https://hotline.org.il/en/main
I drew two positives
from the film. Israel offers the semblance of due process to the
refugees; maybe someday it will be full fledged. The refugee detention
camp in Holot, deep in the Negev Desert, was considered much better than
a Sudanese jail, according to one young man who experienced both.
Wednesday, April 4, 2018
I
prefer things to be intuitive, so that I might handle them effectively
without having to read the homework. But, sometimes nature, Mother or
human, throws us a curve. So, I was surprised to learn that male fans
of the Montreal Canadiens hockey team, under 55 years old, are more
likely to suffer a heart attack the day after a victory, not after a
defeat. https://www.sciencedaily.com/r
I
imagined that these fans, fiercely devoted to a team that represents
their beleagured Francophone heritage as well as ordinary sports
loyalty, would be driven to physical as well as emotional despair by a
loss, a feeling that I have frequently had as a Rangers fan this
season. Instead, it is the thrill of victory rather than the agony of
defeat that leads them to the emergency room. Go figure.
. . .
. . .
A further note on fors and againsts: It seems that Israel may expect more support from Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman than British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
https://nyti.ms/2q3oziJ
https://nyti.ms/2q3oziJ
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Republican
Senator Ted Cruz is running for reelection with the slogan TOUGH AS
TEXAS. This is the guy who CNN describes as "suddenly Trump's biggest
fan" after Trump insulted his wife and accused his father of being
involved with the assassination of JFK.
https://www.washingtonpost.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com
Hang tough, Ted. By the way, donations to his Democratic opponent Beto O'Rourke can be made at https://betofortexas.com/
Friday, April 6, 2018
Today's headlines:
"Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s Ousted President, Gets 24 Years in Prison"
"Judge Orders Brazil’s Ex-President ‘Lula’ to Begin Prison Term on Friday"
Today's headlines:
"Park Geun-hye, South Korea’s Ousted President, Gets 24 Years in Prison"
"Judge Orders Brazil’s Ex-President ‘Lula’ to Begin Prison Term on Friday"
Does it give you any ideas?
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