Nipped in the bud, or nearly so

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Unseasonably warm weather teased my spring-blooming camellia into unwisely blooming too early. Some buds survived the weekend freeze, and this partly opened flower survived, but the other blooms turned brown.

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It was the same story with the Carolina jasmine.

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The late roses are all gone.

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For several years, I’ve been observing the work of the moles in the yard. Sometimes they’ll work an area so thoroughly that the ground feels weakened and soft. But ultimately, if they do any harm, I can’t detect it. In fact, I think they improve the soil and the growth of the grass by aerating the soil. They particularly seem to work areas where the grass is not growing well and needs aeration, so that’s a good thing.

A new iMac at the abbey — and three Mac reviews

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iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015)

My old iMac was dying. It was eight years old and had served me well — no glitches, no grief, no fuss, no drama. But hard disks can’t last forever, and its hard disk was dying. The old Mac had started to limp — freezing and making racheting noises as the hard disk tried to read bad sectors. The old Mac is fine except for the dead disk. Sometime soon I will open it up, replace its hard disk, and it will live again as a backup computer. iMacs are not cheap, but in the long run they’re a bargain. I got my money’s worth, and then some, out of that Mac.

The new iMac is a 27-inch model with the Retina 5K screen, built in late 2015. It has eight gigabytes of memory and a 1 terabyte fusion drive.

I had considered buying one of the new 21-inch iMacs with the Retina screen, but the high-end reviews recommended against the 21-inch iMac in favor of the 27-inch iMac. For one, the price difference isn’t all that great. For two, the 21-inch models are a generation behind with the Intel processors. For three, the 21-inch models are not expandable. Their memory is soldered in, so you can’t change or add memory chips. For four, the 21-inch model has a slower and inferior graphics controller. So, for the few extra hundreds of dollars, you get not only a much bigger screen with the 27-inch models, you also get better internal hardware.

What I like:

• The screen is enormous! The clarity of it is incredible. At 227 pixels per inch, it’s impossible to see individual pixels. Black type on a white screen looks like fine printing on glossy paper, nicely lit. This monitor also has a larger color gamut than earlier LCD monitors, meaning that it can display a wider range of colors.

• It’s fast. My old iMac was pretty slow by comparison, especially when starting up applications or while paging through a lot of photographs. The fusion drive in the new Mac is probably a major factor in permitting most apps to start up in less than a second.

• Migration was easy. I used Apple’s Migration Assistant application. I had made regular backups of my old iMac onto an external hard disk, so Migration Assistant pulled all my files in from the backup disk. That took about 45 minutes. Then, when I first logged into the new iMac, all my stuff was there — mail, photos, bookmarks, and documents.

• The sound quality is remarkable. They seem to have made the whole computer into a speaker cabinet. There’s a little too much resonance (a little like the acoustics of a bucket), but the bass response and overall sound quality are much better than my old iMac.

What I don’t like:

• The keyboard that comes with the new iMacs is small and hard to use. The keyboard does not have page up/page down keys (which I use all the time). Even worse, to save space, the up-arrow and down-arrow keys are actually merged into a single key — half a key each. I have no idea who designs Apple keyboards. They seem to think that laptops now set the standard for keyboards. I despise laptops, not least for the keyboards. The keyboard that comes with new Macs, a Bluetooth keyboard, has no USB ports on the sides. So I went back to my nice, wide extended keyboard.

All in all, the new 27-inch iMac is a magnificent piece of hardware. I hope it will last eight years like its predecessor.

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Macintosh OS X 10.11.2 (El Capitan)

El Capitan looks and behaves pretty much just the same as the previous version of OS X, Yosemite. In the previous couple of OS X updates including Yosemite, Apple concentrated on getting OS X to interact smoothly with iOS (iPads and iPhones). In El Capitan, like it or not, Apple seems to be concentrating on internal changes in the operating system to make it more difficult for rogue software (and dumb users) to screw things up. In iPads and iPhones, iOS prevents you from getting under the hood at all. In OS X for iMacs and laptops, you can still get under the hood. But, increasingly, Apple is limiting what you can do (unless you really, really know what you’re doing).

It’s easy to understand why Apple is doing that. They have millions of devices in the field. Apple’s reputation depends upon those devices working properly. But users are highly inclined to do stupid things, and there are criminals and predators all over the Internet trying to hijack every device they can and install their malware on it. When Apple makes these kinds of changes that shut you out of your own computer, they always talk about security. But I suspect that a bigger issue than Internet security is keeping owners of Apple devices from monkeying with things, and making it harder to install crapware.

Before I went to the Apple Store to buy the new iMac, I looked up the address and hours on line. Google also showed me customer reviews and customer ratings for the Greensboro Apple store. There were lots of angry, one-star reviews. A typical one-star review might come from an iPhone user whose iPhone was giving trouble. This user would go to the Apple Store irate, blame Apple for whatever was wrong, and demand that the problem be fixed right there on the spot, right this instant. If that didn’t happen, they wrote a one-star review.

Over the years, the advice I’ve always given to people about keeping their computers running smoothly is not to install a bunch of crap on it. Most of the time, when something goes wrong, it’s because of a crap app. In El Capitan, Apple has new safeguards to keep crap apps out. For one, Apple wants signed certificates in software now that identify the software developer and the develop’s good standing with Apple. For two, it used to be that with the “root” password, or system password, you could tinker with any part of the system on an iMac or laptop. In El Capitan, “root” no longer has absolute privilege. There’s another layer of protection that keeps owners — and software — sandboxed to limit the damage that can be done. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, as a veteran Mac user (since the 1980s!), I want to be able to do whatever I want to a system that belongs to me. On the other hand, less experienced users, when they (or a crap app) screw things up, they think it’s Apple’s fault and expect Apple to fix it for them.

It’s sad, in a way, to see an Apple store getting so many bad reviews for customer service. But is there a Microsoft store in your town? Can you walk into a Microsoft store, step up to a bar, and get a Microsoft “genius” to work on your device? Can you even call Microsoft on the phone? Of course not. Even if the Apple stores are packed, and even if you have to wait for someone in a red shirt to help you, at least Apple is there. When you buy a new iMac, you get 90 days of free “Apple Care” in addition to the one-year warranty. A lot of one-star reviews from angry iPhone users does not necessarily mean that Apple is bad at customer service.

My big concern is about how quickly these restrictive updates in Apple’s OS X cause older software to stop working. I absolutely depend on the Adobe Creative Suite, which includes Photoshop and, for publishing work, InDesign. I have version 5.5 of this Adobe software, which is one of the last versions that you can actually own outright. These days, Adobe sells this software in “cloud” versions for which you buy a “subscription” and pay for the software monthly or annually. You don’t own the software; you just rent it and keep on paying. Sooner or later, because Adobe no longer supports or updates Creative Suite 5.5, a new OS release from Apple will break the Adobe software, and I’ll be up the creek. But, so far, Photoshop and InDesign seem to work OK with El Capitan.

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OS X El Capitan: The Missing Manual, by David Pogue. O’Reilly Media, 846 pages, November 2015.

Do you need this book? Probably not, not unless you’re at least a bit of a nerd, and if you have limited experience with Macintoshes, and if you’d like to do more with your Mac. At 846 pages, I wanted this book to get more under the hood and describe the mysterious inner workings of Apple’s OS X operating system. But that’s not really what the book is about. It’s about the kind of stuff that regular Mac users might want to do. If you’ve been using Macs for years, then much of what’s contained in this book is stuff that experienced Mac users “just know.”

Personally, I’m curious about the inner workings of Macintoshes. OS X has changed significantly in the past few years. I have been a Unix user since 1984. Unix, for years, has been my preferred operating system and the operating system that I’m most comfortable with. That’s one reason I use Macintoshes — they’re Unix boxes, under the hood. Apple, however, has taken Unix in a direction very unlike where Linux (now in many flavors) or Sun’s (now Oracle’s) Solaris has gone. Without some documentation, it would be pretty near impossible to see what changes Apple is making in the Unix system that lies under the graphical user interface.

To really know what’s going on under the hood, you’d need to see documentation of the type that software developers use. You’d have to get it from Apple, and I assume you’d have to sign a nondisclosure agreement. But for a technical overview of what’s under the hood in El Capitan, here’s a link to a 40-page “white paper” from Apple.

On the other hand, if you’re a person who can learn from books, and if you’re a little afraid of your Macintosh and would like to become better acquainted with it, then Pogue’s book is probably the best book that you can get on the subject. There are lots of illustrations to show you what you should see on the screen. There’s a good index. The book is nicely organized. And there’s an appendix on troubleshooting.

With books like this, you just might be able to solve some of your own Mac problems without standing in line at the Apple store.

Sesame sauce — a vegan option for noodles

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A common supper at the abbey is pasta and vegetables. The default pasta sauce probably (I’m ashamed to say) is parmesan and cream. But variety is nice, and parmesan and cream make a pretty heavy sauce.

I’m still working on refining this recipe, but here’s a working version with some ideas for improvement.

Toasted sesame sauce


2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon pepper sauce (such as harissa sauce)
4 cloves of garlic

1 to 2 tablespoons peanut butter

Combine the sugar and vinegar in a small skillet. Simmer it until it starts to thicken. Pour it into a small bowl and set it aside.

Sautée the garlic lightly in the sesame oil. Add the soy sauce and harissa sauce and let it simmer for a few minutes.

Add the peanut butter to the vinegar mixture. Stir it until it thickens.

Add the peanut butter and vinegar mixture to the contents of the skillet. Stir and simmer. It doesn’t have to mix perfectly. A sauce that’s slightly broken is just fine.

Peanut butter makes a great thickener for sauces — soups, too, for that matter. Vary the amount of peanut butter to get the thickness that you want. If 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil is a little strong on the sesame for you, then substitute olive oil for some of the sesame oil. Any vinegar will do. Obviously rice vinegar gives it a bit more of an Asian flair. Harissa sauce is available at some grocery stores, including Whole Foods. In a pinch, use ketchup and a dash of hot sauce! Don’t hesitate to use more than a mere teaspoon if it suits your taste.

This recipe makes a modest amount of sauce. Double it or triple it as needed. Top it with nuts, if you like. Crushed roasted peanuts work great.

By the way, I use whole wheat linguini.

Juniper berries

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Here in the South, where they are a common wild tree, we call them cedar trees. They actually are a juniper — Juniperus virginiana. This time of year, many of the trees are heavily loaded with berries. I think that not all birds like juniper berries, but some birds certainly do. I had a large flock of birds (were they cedar waxwings?) feasting on juniper berries in my largest tree just this week.

Birds also use these trees as night roosts. This particular tree has a bunch of doves in it every evening.

More abelia

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I posted a while back about abelia, an old-fashioned flowering shrub that the bees and butterflies love. I asked my local plants and landscaping shop to find me some more, and this week six new abelia plants went in at the edge of the yard, up against the woods.

No place could possibly have too much abelia. Its dense, tiny flowers go on blooming for months. It makes a fine hedge. I figured that the rabbits, which are humorously abundant at the abbey, would appreciate a new hedge at the edge of the woods. Plus the birds love to shelter in hedges.

Celestial divination

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Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination, edited by N.M. Swerdlow. MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1999.

An Analysis of Celestial Omina in the Light of Mesopotamian Cosmology and Mythos (master’s thesis), by Robert Jonathan Taylor, 2006.

How did the ancients predict the future using the stars? Why do I care?

I care because, in Oratorio in Ursa Major (to be released April 1, 2016), Jake will meet characters in 48 B.C. who do celestial divination. As with all the science and history in my novels, I don’t want to just make stuff up. Research is required. A year or so ago in another post on another book, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy, I described how the ancients knew quite a lot about the science of astronomy. They were careful observers of celestial events, they developed pretty accurate theories, and they were much better at math than we might think today.

But divination — that is, prediction — obviously went much farther than astronomy. What were their methods?

As with astronomy, much of the work that went into celestial divination was done first by the Babylonians, and from there it spread throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Kings were particularly interested in predicting the future, and kings could afford astronomers. Will the crops be good? If a war begins, who will win? Is the king at risk of dying? Those were urgent questions, and the stars were believed to hold the answers.

Books such as Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination are more concerned about how the ancients did the observations than the kinds of predictions they made. The master’s thesis by Robert Jonathan Taylor was a lucky find, because Taylor is less concerned with the science and more concerned with the predictions.

Briefly put, the ancients composed catalogs of omina, also called omina series. The catalogs of omina lists celestial conditions determined from observations, then tell you what the observations mean. [If … then.] These predictions were based on experience, it seems. Though no doubt there was an intuitive element and some kind of reasoning.

Here are some examples of omina (taken from ancient clay tablets that have survived and that scholars have carefully catalogued and published):

If Venus is dimmed in month I: in that month the crop of the land will not succeed, the market will decrease.

If Venus enters Jupiter: the king of Akkad will die, the dynasty will change, either a soldier will go out or the enemy will send a message (asking for peace) to the land.

If the star of Marduk is dark when it becomes visible: in this year there will be the asakku-disease.

If an eclipse begins and clears in the north: Downfall of the army of Akkad.

Eclipses were very ominous. The observations listed in the omina had to do with the moon, the planets, certain stars, the sun, and even the weather. The planet Venus was of particular interest because (since Venus is close to the sun) it moves across the sky pretty speedily. Jupiter was thought to be especially predictive of dynasty changes.

As you can see, ancient celestial divination was not really the same as the kind of zodiacal astrology that many people believe in today.

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Stromboli

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Once you’re on the slippery slope of good homemade pizza, you’re bound to fall into the decadent land of stromboli. I saw a stromboli at Whole Foods (where they bake very good pizza, by the way) and I knew that I was doomed to try it at home.

This stromboli is filled with cauliflower, seared brussels sprouts, fake sausage, mozzarella, parmesan, and garlic. I partly cooked the cauliflower by steaming it before putting it into the stromboli. The crust is like a pizza crust. This crust is half unbleached flour and half whole wheat sprouted flour.

This was my first effort at stromboli. It came out a bit ugly, but it was good. It seems there are multiple methods for shaping stromboli. I’d recommend some Googling and watching some YouTube videos to find a stromboli method that works for you.

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I used the slash-and-braid method of shaping the stromboli.

New music on Dec. 18?

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My mention of John Williams’ “Leia’s theme” in a recent post got me wondering about the sound track for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which will open on Dec. 18.

The Wikipedia article confirms that Disney commissioned John Williams to compose the score. We also know that Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and Mark Hamill will return (somewhat older) in their old roles. So it stands to reason that the score will include the old themes. In the Wikipedia article, Williams confirms that we’ll hear the old themes, but he doesn’t say much about new musical themes:

[The old themes] “will seem very natural and right in the moments for which we’ve chosen to do these kinds of quotes. There aren’t many of them, but there are a few that I think are important and will seem very much a part of the fabric of the piece in a positive and constructive way.”

As you can imagine, Star Wars fans worldwide have been sleuthing and looking for leaks. Amazon France apparently accidentally leaked the track list for the soundtrack CD:

1. Main title and the attack on the jakku village
2. The scavenger
3. I can fly anything
4. Rey meets bb-8
5. Follow me
6. Rey’s thème
7. The falcon
8. That girl with the staff
9. The rathtars!
10. Finn’s confession
11. Maz’s counsel
12. The starkiller
13. Kylo ren arrives at the battle
14. The abduction
15. Han and leia
16. March of the resistance
17. Snoke
18. On the inside
19. Torn apart
20. The ways of the force
21. Scherzo for X-wings
22. Farewell and the trip
23. The jedi steps and finale

It sure looks like there’s some new stuff there. I have pre-ordered the soundtrack CD from Amazon. Though I have a lot of doubts about what Disney will do with Star Wars, we can surely count on John Williams to get the music right. Dec. 18 will be not just a big day for cinema. It also will be a big day for music.