Saturday, January 31, 2026
It’s good to be the Queen. Melania’s “Mar-a-Lago closet (where she has a drawer just for sunglasses).”
. . .
One of the challenges for a legal system is the wrong without a remedy. A set of circumstances, reeking of injustice, that evades legal resolution. A crime identified beyond the statute of limitations is one example. Another might be conduct by an immune party. While there is the maxim “Equity Will Not Suffer A Wrong To Be Without A Remedy,” often the remedy was a fine or cash payment as ineffective to restoring harmony as giving flowers to an aggrieved spouse.
Affirmative action is an attempt to correct the injustices (crimes) of centuries. Lyndon Johnson said, “You do not take a person who, for years, has been hobbled by chains and liberate him, bring him up to the starting line of a race and then say, ‘you are free to compete with all the others,’ and still justly believe that you have been completely fair.”
A broad variety of endeavors followed this understanding. Where there had been legal, social and economic barriers to full citizenship for Black Americans, government, industry, educational institutions and other organizations began to provide opportunities to opportunity.
These days, we have a surge of ahistoric freedom fighters who seem to have just awakened to injustice.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/
They seek remedies without recognizing the wrongs. They tout color-blind policies without understanding or acknowledging the corrosive effect of color on American society over 400 years. Chief Justice John Roberts may be the most notorious example in public life. In the PICS case, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), he wrote “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” The discrimination on the basis of race that concerned him was the preference given to non-white students over white students in high schools selection under certain conditions in a school system not previously legally segregated. It was sufficient for Roberts to wake up that morning to a legal landscape free of segregation. His tautology easily followed. He placed us in a legal, moral, economic, social and psychological Garden of Eden.
They seek remedies without recognizing the wrongs. They tout color-blind policies without understanding or acknowledging the corrosive effect of color on American society over 400 years. Chief Justice John Roberts may be the most notorious example in public life. In the PICS case, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), he wrote “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” The discrimination on the basis of race that concerned him was the preference given to non-white students over white students in high schools selection under certain conditions in a school system not previously legally segregated. It was sufficient for Roberts to wake up that morning to a legal landscape free of segregation. His tautology easily followed. He placed us in a legal, moral, economic, social and psychological Garden of Eden.
Sunday, February 1, 2026
I have an inconsistent history with rabbis. Those few that I liked I knew well. Maybe I had to know them well in order to like them. At a distance, I was inherently skeptical. These days, two rabbinic couples have my admiration. One I’ll spare the embarrassment of being associated with me, but I want to cite the other.
Rabbi Raysh Weiss is the co-spiritual leader of Temple Israel Natick, a healthy Conservative congregation in the Boston suburbs. Her husband Rabbi Jonah Rank is the rosh yeshiva (Capo dei capi) and President of the Hebrew Seminary -- a Rabbinical School for the Deaf and Hearing in Chicago. This morning, it is Jonah’s father that I sought.
Wednesday, February 4, 2026
Friday, February 6, 2026
Rabbi Perry Raphael Rank, retired as a pulpit rabbi for over 40 years, just published Two Minute Torah, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Thought For Every Day and Every Night. The book is structured to follow the Jewish calendar and offers two passages of Torah with some commentary for every day, one for the morning and one for the evening. Each section takes only two minutes, a radical contrast to the amount of time that it usually takes a rabbi to express her/himself. At best, the two-minute episode will echo much longer.
. . .
Son, daughter-in-law, #2 grandson and one-and-only granddaughter joined us for dinner at Bosse Enoteca, 310 Speen Street, Natick, in the Natick Mall, a major shopping center just across the road from our hotel. Until 2022, the site was a 94,000 square feet Neiman Marcus department store, closed by bankruptcy. The space now is jointly occupied by the restaurant and pickle ball courts.
We ate well, on the whole, sharing arancini, three cheese-stuffed rice balls ($17); tuna tartare ($23); cheesy garlic bread ($9). I then had pappardelle, very al dente broad noodles with duck ragu ($24), while a couple of large portions of eggplant parmigiana were divided up ($22).
Monday, February 2, 2026
Our return home was totally uneventful, clean windshield, no police.
From hole in the ground to hole in the wall to about 20 locations in the Northeast, most in the Holy Land, Xi’an Famous Foods is a remarkable success story. Starting in a kiosk in the basement of a shopping mall in Flushing, Queens, it moved to a tiny space under the Manhattan Bridge on the Lower East Side, just big enough for one customer at a time.
Today, I had lunch at 328 East 78th Street, a newer spot. It has 20 low fixed stools against three stainless steel counters. The menus seem to be universal. I had a spicy cumin lamb burger ($7.65) and Coke Zero ($2.30).
Be advised that XFF is not like other Chinese restaurants. There is no eggroll, no rice, no fried stuff in sweet, sticky sauce. Spicy, everything is spicy. Bright red Szechuan pepper oil coats everything, including your hands by the time you finish eating.
Thursday, February 5, 2026
Paul Hecht, Thespian Emeritus, informs me that the British government announced on February 5, 1953 that rationing and price control on chocolate and sweets had officially come to an end across the United Kingdom. They had been in effect for more than 10 years. Had I been in Bristol rather than Brooklyn during those years, my baby fat might have been shed more quickly.
More significantly, this illustrates the level of hardship and deprivation the UK experienced during and after WWII, unknown to most of us then and now.
. . .
Today’s headline:
“Are ski jumpers enhancing their penises to fly further?”
Fortunately, Tina’s Cuban Cuisine, 940 Third Avenue, is right around the corner from the retina specialist who dilated my pupils and gave me a shot in the eye. Had I stumbled further I might have wound up a speed bump on a crosstown street.
It was a good choice on its own terms. The front of the joint is occupied almost entirely by a steam table holding many items, mains and sides. Down a narrow corridor is room to sit with a dozen two-tops. I asked for a steak sandwich, bistec a la plancha, strips of broiled steak, lettuce, tomatoes and mayonnaise on a grilled sandwich roll ($12.95). It was good, slightly messy. Or maybe not, my sight so unfocused that I couldn’t really see where things belonged.
. . .
The Spars hosted a lovely Shabbos dinner tonight, serving Tuscan bean soup and Chicken Marsala made by their collective efforts. Which reminds me that when a peasant eats a chicken, one of them is sick. The wonderful meal ended with chocolate chip biscotti f/k/a as Mandelbrot from the delicate hands of America's Favorite Epidemiologist.
From Neiman Marcus to pickle ball--this is how the world ends.
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