Beyond Rivalry

If you need to make a choice, don't worry so much about eating local food as about eating less meat, says this study (pdf), reported at Marketplace, and cited at Marginal Revolution, where Cowen offers his suggestions for non-meat meals:

"Maybe you don't like tofu but sardines are delicious, or use Goya small red beans with shredded Mexican cheese (even the Kraft package is decent) and ground chile on a corn tortilla.  Don't forget the lime on top."

Another excerpt from George Eliot's Adam Bede.

Interchange between Mr and Mrs Poyser:

"'Hey-day! There's Adam along wi' Dinah,' said Mr. Poyser, as he opened the far gate into the Home Close. 'I couldna think how he happened away from church. Why,' added good Martin, after a moment's pause, 'what dost think has just jumped into my head?'

 

"'Summat as hadna far to jump, for it's just under our nose. You mean as Adam's fond o' Dinah.'

"'Aye! hast ever had any notion of it before?'

"'To be sure I have,' said Mrs. Poyser, who always declined, if possible, to be taken by surprise. 'I'm not one o' those as can see the cat i' the dairy an' wonder what she's come after.'

"'Thee never saidst a word to me about it.'

"'Well, I aren't like a bird-clapper, forced to make a rattle when the wind blows on me. I can keep my own counsel when there's no good i' speaking.'"

 

Barack Obama is trouncing John McCain in the race for the White House -- at least in sales of T-shirts, badges, baseball caps and other campaign merchandise. [Breitbart.com, 23 July]

Barack Obama: "I'm getting gray hair. Running for president will age you quick." On that note, Solorzano even talked to Obama's barber who commented: 'Yeah, his hair is a little bit, but you know that's normal for his age group. You know, not too much gray, just a little bit.'" [CBS Early Show, 4 Aug]

"Police in Jacksonville, Fla., said a man was arrested after he twice dialed 911 to report Subway employees had failed to put special sauce on his sandwich. [5 Aug, UPI]

Dog is taking shoes left outdoors. He's carrying them to the fire station. [27 Aug., Channel 6 News, Indiana]

Another excerpt from George Eliot's Adam Bede.

"Mr Craig had always been full of civilities to the family at the Hall Farm, and Mrs. Poyser was scrupulous in declaring that she had 'nothing to say again' him, on'y it was a pity he couldna be hatched o'er again, an' hatched different.'"

Joe Posnanski blogs in some depth about favourite childhood foods that don't taste the same to the adult palate. And so far, there are 167 comments.

Q.v., Baseball Card Gum ("As a child it tastes like: Bubble blowing magic.  As an adult it tastes like: Sugared sandpaper"); Beanie Weenies; Candy Cigarettes; Cotton Candy; Dinty Moore Beef Stew; Fig Newtons; Fluff; FunDip; Hungry Man (Turkey TV Dinner); Kentucky Fried Chicken; Necco Wafers; Pink Snowballs; Pop Tarts; Spaghetti-O’s; and Tang.

Another excerpt from George Eliot's Adam Bede.

Long argument by the author in defense of a realistic depiction of people:

"It is so very rarely that facts hit that nice medium required by our own enlightened opinions and refined taste! Perhaps you will say, 'Do improve the facts a little, then; make them more accordant with those correct views which it is our privilege to possess. The world is not just what we like; do touch it up with a tasteful pencil, and make believe it is not quite such a mixed entangled affair. Let all people who hold unexceptionable opinions act unexceptionably. Let your most faulty characters always be on the wrong side, and your virtuous ones on the right. Then we shall see at a glance whom we are to condemn and whom we are to approve. Then we shall be able to admire, without the slightest disturbance of our prepossessions: we shall hate and despise with that true ruminant relish which belongs to undoubting confidence.'

"But, my good friend, what will you do then with your fellow-parishioner who opposes your husband in the vestry? With your newly appointed vicar, whose style of preaching you find painfully below that of his regretted predecessor? With the honest servant who worries your soul with her one failing? With your neighbour, Mrs. Green, who was really kind to you in your last illness, but has said several ill-natured things about you since your convalescence? Nay, with your excellent husband himself, who has other irritating habits besides that of not wiping his shoes? These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people -- amongst whom your life is passed -- that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire --  for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.

...

"So I am content to tell my simple story, without trying to make things seem better than they were; dreading nothing, indeed, but falsity, which, in spite of one's best efforts, there is reason to dread. Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult. ... Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own immediate feelings -- much harder than to say something fine about them which is not the exact truth.

...

"But bless us, things may be lovable that are not altogether handsome, I hope? I am not at all sure that the majority of the human race have not been ugly, and even among those 'lords of their kind,' the British, squat figures, ill-shapen nostrils, and dingy complexions are not startling exceptions. Yet there is a great deal of family love amongst us.  ... I have seen many an excellent matron, who could have never in her best days have been handsome, and yet she had a packet of yellow love-letters in a private drawer, and sweet children showered kisses on her sallow cheeks. And I believe there have been plenty of young heroes, of middle stature and feeble beards, who have felt quite sure they could never love anything more insignificant than a Diana, and yet have found themselves in middle life happily settled with a wife who waddles. Yes! Thank God; human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty--it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it."

Lesbian rights pioneer and longtime activist Del Martin died yesterday at age 87. She and her partner of 55 years, Phyllis Lyons, were married in the first legal gay union in California in June in San Francisco.

"While working for a construction trade journal in Seattle, Ms. Martin met Ms. Lyon, an employee at the same firm, and the two became romantically involved and entered into a permanent relationship in 1953."

Imagine what that was like, in 1953 ...

(Photo credit: Woman Vision Productions)

Another excerpt from George Eliot's Adam Bede.

The author arguing on behalf of the Rector's character:

"... I must plead, for I have an affectionate partiality towards the rector's memory, that he was not vindictive -- and some philanthropists have been so; that he was not intolerant -- and there is a rumour that some zealous theologians have not been altogether free from that blemish; that although he would probably have declined to give his body to be burned in any public cause, and was far from bestowing all his goods to feed the poor, he had that charity which has sometimes been lacking to very illustrious virtue -- he was tender to other men's failings, and unwilling to impute evil. He was one of those men, and they are not the commonest, of whom we can know the best only by following them away from the marketplace, the platform, and the pulpit, entering with them into their own homes, hearing the voice with which they speak to the young and aged about their own hearthstone, and witnessing their thoughtful care for the everyday wants of everyday companions, who take all their kindness as a matter of course, and not as a subject for panegyric."

An essay at Oprah.com strikes me as funny and true, particularly as I am reading Adam Bede, in which even giving a man goo-goo eyes is reason enough to keep a girl from becoming someone else's respectable wife. Divorce? Ha! Better to drown yourself in a pond.

She's happily married, dreaming of divorce


Funny:

"Nor is Will the Very Bad Man that I've made him out to be. Rather, like every other male I know, he is merely a Moderately Bad Man, the kind of man who will leave his longboat-sized shoes directly in the flow of our home's traffic so that one day I'll trip over them, break my neck, and die, after which he'll walk home from the morgue, grief-stricken, take off his shoes with a heavy heart, and leave them in the center of the room until they kill the housekeeper. Everyman."

(No doubt men can think of Everywoman traits that are equally appalling.)

True:

"Women don't view divorce as a scary, shadowy behemoth. It's an unpalatable yet manageable task -- like changing schools or extreme dieting -- that may or may not yield a better result.. ... We can admit that our marriages aren't lambent, lyrical ice-dancing routines and still decide to push on together to the final flying sit spin. We also realize that divorce is an alternative that's fully within reach, be it now or later or never."

Another excerpt from George Eliot's Adam Bede, which I finished reading yesterday.

Mrs Irwine supports judging a book by its cover:

"'Nature never makes a ferret in the shape of a mastiff. You'll never persuade me that I can't tell what men are by their outsides. If I don't like a man's looks, depend upon it I shall never like him. I don't want to know people that look ugly and disagreeable, any more than I want to taste dishes that look disagreeable. If they make me shudder at the first glance, I say, take them away. An ugly, piggish, or fishy eye, now, makes me feel quite ill; it's like a bad smell."

"'Talking of eyes,' said Captain Donnithorne ..."