Random and Sundry

Maybe I belong here

On October 3, 2024, I reached an amazing milestone, one that will never be possible again.  As of that day, I had lived at our current home in New Jersey for exactly half my life.  The only time that happened before was on May 18, 1951, on which date I had spent half my young life in our family home in Bayside, New York.  Our street number now is 3, which is the number of our sons.  October 3 is four days before my wife's birthday and May 18 is four days after our first son's birthday.  And get this: our current home is near three streets with names that connect to my earlier  life: Macdougal (the street name of our apartment in Greenwich Village when I was born),  Route 206 (our Bayside home was on 206th Street), and Seminary (my high school was the preparatory seminary for the diocese of Brooklyn, Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception Preparatory Seminary).   In August of this year, 5 months after the birth of our 5th grandchild, the house next door at street number 5 was purchased by a young couple, Andrew and Gianna, which happen to be the names of two of our grandchildren. Finally, the daughter of our neighbors on the other side of our home is exactly one day older than our granddaughter Nellie.

"Do you think music has the power to change people?"

"Oshima nodded. 'Sure that can happen.  We have an experience - like a chemical reaction - that transforms something inside us.  When we examine ourselves later on, we discover all the standards we've lived by have shot up a notch and the world's opened up in unexpected ways.' " - Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

How did Bugs Bunny once emerge from a coma?

I get Britannica's daily One Good Fact email.  I particularly enjoyed this one from Friday Oct 4:

In 1961 Mel Blanc, best known as the voice of Bugs Bunny, was in a car accident that left him in a coma. According to his son Noel, on the 14th day, the doctor attempted to rouse Blanc by asking, “Bugs, can you hear me?” to which Blanc responded, “Yeah, what’s up, Doc?”

For those old enough to remember and love books and libraries

"When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages - a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.  Breathing it in, I glance through a few pages before returning each book to its shelf." - Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Realtor-challenging street names

Stump, Swamp, Sugar Bottom are actual street names in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.  Colorful and descriptive as they are, they must be a real challenge for realtors trying to sell a house there.  [On recent trips, we have also discovered the less imaginative Street Road and New Old Road.  I guess the developers just gave up trying to think up street names.]

MAGA-land's unintended ironies

I don't think the cheerleaders and denizens of MAGA country realize how ironic their messaging about the election is.  A few amusing examples as they scramble to recover from Biden's withdrawal:

"Kamala Harris's communist plot to fix prices" - After whining for a couple of years about inflation being Biden-Harris Administration's fault, the New York Post took umbrage with Kamala's plan to fight price-gouging at grocery stores - incredibly calling up that old bugaboo from the 1950's ..."communism".

"Dangerous San Francisco liberal" - TV ad...hmmm...a bit lower key than a communist but how does that compare with "an election-denying seditionist cheerleading a deadly attack on the Capitol"

"Soft on crime" - A woman in a TV ad tells of an attack by a "convicted felon" who had been released on parole when Kamala Harris  was the attorney-general of California.  Sad story, but the standard bearer for the GOP is a convicted felon himself.  In fact, the contestants in this presidential race can be described as "The Attorney General vs. The Convicted Felon". Is the convicted-felon-Trump looking for some kind of presidential pardon from "soft on crime" Harris?   And this just in from Judd Legum's Popular Information blog: "Murderer whose life sentence was commuted by Trump convicted of domestic violence"

It's a beautiful morning

Sunny and just warm enough to remind you that it's still summer.  It's not one of those "no deeds to do, no promises to keep" Simon & Garfunkel mornings.  I got plenty to do.  It's more like John Sebastian's "Daydream" or even better, the Rascal's "Beautiful Morning."  And what's the cause of this euphoria? One of my niggling 4 am concerns fixed itself!  Xfinity messed with my landline yesterday and we couldn't get an incoming call.  Woke up, called the number from my cell, and it worked!  Feeling lasted until I returned a library book and asked a librarian if I could just place it on the desk.  "Next time place it in the box (ed. note: where she would have to reach down and in and get it).  When there are a lot of items on the desk (ed. note: there were none), it can confuse us."  Well, ok.  I always aim to please.  I returned quickly to my equanimous state.  Nothing trivial is going to bother me today, and I'll follow the eponymous advice of  Richard Carlson's book "Don't sweat the small stuff..."

How Beethoven set the size of compact disks

The Compact Disk was a marvelous innovation.  Less prone to damage and more portable than vinyl records and vastly more sturdy than cassette tapes, CDs provided a clear and rich listening experience.  Introduced in the 1980s, they were quickly adopted as the dominant format for high-fidelity recorded music for decades.   They remain my favorite method of music listening in the car, although, sadly, it is becoming more difficult to find new automobiles with CD players installed. 

How did it get to be the size that it is?  Why is it 4.75" in diameter instead of 4.25" or 5.0"?  What eventually decided the size of this late 20th century innovation was the early nineteenth-century composer, Ludwig van Beethoven.  The backstory: In the late 1970s, Sony and Philips collaborated to create the Compact Disk.  They asked world-famous conductor Herbert von Karajan for his opinion as to how much music a standard CD should hold? His response? Whatever it takes as long as it allowed uninterrupted listening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9. No more LP or cassette flipping between movements!  Sony scoured the music archives and found Wilhelm Furtwängler’s 1951 recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, clocking in at precisely 74 minutes. And so, the CD’s capacity was set at 74 minutes, ensuring Beethoven’s masterpiece could be enjoyed without interruption. 

The story behind the 3.5" floppy disk is not nearly as well documented.  Is it just a coincidence that it fits nicely into a man's shirt pocket? I don't think so.  At the time of its introduction, c.1981, the computer industry was still a male-dominated industry.

Do they teach these things somewhere?

MMORPG enthusiasts will know what I'm saying.  Every single one of these games has an inventory limit and players, along with battling monsters of incredible strength, need to keep their inventory under a certain number of items.  The latter is often more of a challenge than the former.  Perhaps "Inventory 101" in Game Programming School?

Beware of roofers who admire a car in your driveway.  "That is a nice car.  Are you thinking of selling it?"  They invariably overcharge you.  Perhaps "Advanced Small Talk" in Roofing Scammers Charm School?

Miscellany

Sirius XM satellite radio has a Classic Vinyl station.  I got a kick out of one of their promos: "...a reminder of the days when the hardest decision you had to make was whether to put Jethro Tull under J or T."

From a Farnam Street newsletter: “Writing is often the process by which you realize you do not understand what you are talking about.” 

Sometimes you just gotta take out the garbage

My father's family was big on large family gatherings, holidays or parties to celebrate one birthday or another.  Usually they were at our grandparents' sixth floor walkup on Thompson Street in the Village.  One party, held late in my grandmother's life - perhaps for her 80th birthday, was at Aunt Angie and Uncle Dom's in Brooklyn.  Angie, my Dad's sister, was a wonderful hostess, outgoing and always ready with one of those light-up-your-whole-face smiles, and the party proceeded with the usual camaraderie and good will.  Domenic was a quiet and unassuming man, pleased to see the party going so well and his wife being her usual charming self.  Several times during the day, Domenic took a trash bag filled with party debris out to the trash can.  Low key but an essential contribution for keeping the party on track.  Sometimes you just got to take out the garbage, and that is enough.

Spandex in athletic socks?  Who thought THAT was a good idea?

I thought it was just me getting old.  Athletic socks, crew socks - sweat socks in the vernacular - were getting harder and harder to put on.  Then I was talking to a neighbor - at least 20-25 years younger - and he says, "When did putting on socks get to be a thing?"  Some time in the past few years, some bright bulb decided to put spandex and other materials into a perfectly good item of clothing.  100% cotton athletic socks became a thing of the past.  Google "100% cotton socks" and you get this for cotton crew socks "Cotton/nylon/polyester/ spandex blend".  What part of "100% cotton" doesn't the search engine understand?  Even Amazon is fairly useless.  But I did find one crew sock there that was actually 100% cotton.  Here it is: Davido Men's Crew Socks Made in Italy.  Bob Dylan to the contrary (you know, "Spanish boots of Spanish leather"), Italian footwear has for many many years been considered the best in the world. Okay, socks are not as big a deal as shoes, but still...

An al fresco breakfast

sunlight filtering through the leaves of the maples

birdsong

a light breeze whispering through the pines

June morning 67 degrees 

a glider on a shady deck

Taylor ham, egg and cheese sandwich

orange juice

a handful of cherries

a peach

a slice of lemon pound cake

a cup of Lavazza dark roast

potted red and shades of pink geraniums 

a squirrel making his way from tree to tree bending branches as he goes 

the occasional drone of a passenger jet high overhead

Even Trump supporters deserve love

The day after Trump's conviction on 34 felony counts, a proud 60-0r-70-something Trump supporter with a huge "Trump 2024" poster on his black truck's side window drove into the strip mall's parking lot.  No sooner did he leave his truck when the driver of a white SUV started shouting at him.  I didn't catch much of the exchange but "you're an imbecile" and "fucking arrogant Democrat" were two phrases hurled during the encounter.  I actually felt sorry for the Trump supporter.  He wasn't bothering anybody - just lost in his support for the convicted felon who did such a great job dividing the country.  Five or six days later, as I was going to cast my Democratic presidential primary vote for "Uncommitted", I ran into several Republican neighbors (my town is like 90% Republican) - one was a kid I had coached many years ago and the others were parents of one of my son's childhood friends.  We exchanged pleasantries and went about our voting, and I remembered the encounter in the Walgreen's parking lot.  When we angrily attack others for their political beliefs, the Divider-in-Chief wins.  Even Trump supporters deserve love.

A Snow Crash put down

Hiro Protagonist, the cleverly named, well, protagonist of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash has this to say about his encounter with Juanita Martinez, a computer programmer renowned for her skill at creating faces for avatars in the Metaverse...

...when he came into her office that day, she told him to close the door behind him...blacked out the screen on her computer...started twiddling a pencil between her hands and eyed him like a plate of day-old sushi.

Juanita points to an amateurish painting of an old lady set in an ornate antique frame and tells Hiro that it was her grandmother, "my role model."  Hiro inanely asks if the grandmother was also a computer programmer...

...She just looked at him over the rotating pencil like, how slow can a mammal be and still have respiratory functions?

Bellini Bliss

I have a new favorite sparkling water.  It's bubly's bellini bliss, "peach, pineapple, mango flavors with other natural flavors."  bubly helpfully tells us it is non-alcoholic if we were wondering about our great find in the water aisle.  

That it became my favorite sparkling water is not surprising.  The Bellini, made with Prosecco and peach purée or nectar, is my favorite cocktail.  I had the pleasure of having a Bellini on my 29th birthday at Harry's Bar in Venice where it was invented in 1948, coincidentally the year of my birth.  The inventor himself Arrigo (Harry) Cipriani was there welcoming customers to his restaurant and we enjoyed a wonderful meal.  

Thirty seven years later, we stopped by on our way home from a most amazing vacation in Italy.  In 2014, Harry's granddaughter was then running the place, and its legendary hospitality was still going strong.  We had a great pasta dish and when we arrived back in America, I emailed the restaurant asking for the recipe of the dish who's name I had forgotten.  There followed this exchange

My wife I had lunch at Harry's Bar this past Sunday.  It was an enjoyable experience and our meal was excellent.  Thirty seven years ago, I had celebrated my 29th birthday at Harry's Bar and determined to see it again on this trip to Venice. So, we had "Harry's Menu" for lunch.  I especially enjoyed the pasta dish on Harry's Menu but cannot recall the name of it.  If possible, could you let me know the name of the pasta dish and the ingredients/recipe for it?  We'd like to make it here at home. 

Cuold you please tell me wich pasta you had

Tagliatelle amatriciana

Tagliardi (pasticcio) with bolognese sauce -No

Pappardelle with saffron and bacon

Baked green tagliolini with veal ragù - No

Paccheri (pasta) à la Genovese

Veal cannelloni - No

Piemontese ravioli - No

Tagliardi with pesto sauce

Baked tagliolini with ham

Rice pilaf à la valenciana - No

Primavera risotto - No

Scampi thermidor with tagliardi(pasta) - No 

Dear Mr Coccaro

Please enjoy,

·         Tagliatelle amatriciana

·         Baked tagliolini with ham

When it will be ready give me a call I would like to be invited.

We had narrowed it down to two dishes, and Harry's Bar graciously sent me both recipes! (below)

There's a Harry's Bar Cookbook which also has these recipes, and CNN had this great write-up:

CNN.com - Food Central - Harry's Bar of Venice -- a modern Italian landmark - October 13, 2000