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Monthly Archives: July 2020

The long history of hiding in the forest

Wednesday, July 29, 2020

Deer in the Forest. Painting by Eugen Krüger, Germany, 1832-1876. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version. I’m about three quarters done with William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. On April 9, 1940, Hitler’s armed forces started their attack on Denmark and Norway. Tiny Denmark fell quickly. Norway had the […]

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The other pandemic: Trumper psychosis

Saturday, July 25, 2020

Hitler in Nuremberg, 1935. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Click here for high-resolution version. Two pandemics are at present raging across the United States. Both are particularly severe in the West and South, where, for similar reasons, people are particularly likely to be infected. One pandemic, of course, is a biological pandemic, Covid-19. The other is what […]

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It was 94F in the garden, though

Monday, July 20, 2020

Vegetables don’t like to be picked in the heat of the day. Early morning is the best time. But basil wants to be clipped five minutes ago, so this basil, squash, and tomato went from the garden to the supper table in 35 minutes.

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I wore out my first copy

Monday, July 20, 2020

It was 1976, I believe, when I bought a copy of the 1943 edition of Irma Rombauer’s The Joy of Cooking at a junk shop. I am not hard on books, so I’m sure that the book was in fairly rough condition when I bought it. Over the years, though, the fabric peeled off the […]

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The German election of 1933

Sunday, July 19, 2020

The Reichstag burns, Feb. 27, 1933. It’s impossible to read William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich without making comparisons to Donald Trump. To risk an unattractive analogy, to compare the two is like comparing a hot little pustule ripe for popping to a deadly case of gangrene. Donald Trump is stupid, […]

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What’s blooming at the abbey, July 6

Monday, July 6, 2020

By the time summer leaves us, most of us are tired of summer. But would we ever tire of summer mornings? I think not. These are iPhone XR photos. The XR camera is so good, and so handy, that I think I will trade it this fall for an iPhone 12, partly to get an […]

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Food departments

Monday, July 6, 2020

A screen capture from the Washington Post web site When a newspaper is prospering and newsroom budgets are growing, that newspaper can have itself a food department. When revenue is sliding and newsroom budgets are being cut, the food department is the first to go. If the Washington Post had a notable food department ten […]

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The Fellowship of the Ring

Thursday, July 2, 2020

I first read The Lord of the Rings almost 50 years ago. Subsequently I have reread it at least twice. I often have wanted to do another rereading, but as Bilbo is preparing for his birthday party, I realize that I can quote many of the next lines before I turn the page. It could […]

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