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This really is the most beautiful song I've heard in a long, long time.
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We had a great day at Hershey yesterday. I forgot the way it is with amusement parks. First you have to drive there. Then you have to stop for food. Then you go to the grocery store to get the 25% off tickets. Then you go to the park itself. Then you make your way through the huge parking area. Then you start walking. Then you stop at the restroom. And an hour after you left your car, you finally make it to the first ride you want to go on.
Nonetheless, it was a ton of fun. We went only to their waterpark, and went in the wave pool and the flume ride. The wave pool was much more fun than I expected, and we took turns holding Ryan and Lindsey and bobbing up and down with them. Then Lindsey and I went on the flume ride, where I screamed my head off as we plummeted down. She thought it was a blast. I'm sore all over today!

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is the best political song ever.
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I love this guy.



















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Here's an exercise for when you're laying in bed tonight.

Close your eyes and think of someone in your life, someone very close to you or not particularly close.

Then try to imagine, deeply, what it would be like to be them. To inhabit their physical body, with whatever strengths and weaknesses it has. To live with their spouse, have their job, have their mindset. To have their problems, worries, joys.

I've always loved the line from the novel Atonement in which Briony the young main character of the book, who longs to be a writer, first uses her imagination not to create a fantasy/romance in which she herself is the princess but to imagine what it would be like to be her sister. "Was being Cecilia just as vivid an affair as being Briony?" The idea that everyone's reality is just as enveloping and compelling as one's own is a strange and daunting thought.
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Police procedural set in the 1950s Soviet Union.

Good book. Depressing as hell.

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After much consideration, we've come out in support of Rocky's cousin from Teheran, Morfoud Ahmadinerdagh.

(If you don't get this joke, don't worry . . . it's not you, it's us.)
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My friend Deb wrote a lovely letter to the president yesterday and posted it on her blog. Click on the Just Pretty Deep link on the left to read it.

I particuarly like her observation that "history is on the side of the inclusive."

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. . . my wonderful mother, who passed away on this day.


Gone but not gone,
Far, yet near
Memories of Mom come flooding here
On this day, bittersweet.

Blessed in missing difficult times ahead,
She left us early, quickly.
This June day will always be
A special one, a reflecting one
For laughter, tears.

--Sally Weber Ribera

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Those of you who know me well know that I am virulently anti-tabloid. I will buy a People magazine once in a great while, but that's it. And I will never buy a magazine with Prince Harry or Prince William on the cover because their lives were damaged forever by the public lust for sensationalism. I really think people's lives are hurt by the massive industry of celebrity gossip.

And yet I am to be found, every Thursday, at the supermarket, picking up the latest issue of a rag called "Life & Style." Why? Because "Life & Style" has figured out that if they put Rob Pattinson on the cover, Lynn Weber and thousands of her ilk will buy it. And so they put Rob Pattinson on the cover. EVERY WEEK.

I usually buy an Oprah magazine and maybe a Time magazine to sandwich the Life & Style in between so I won't be seen buying it.
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Welcome to KitchenDuel09. My good friend Deb (she of the Just Pretty Deep link on the left of the screen) is all, "I made a lovely fresh salad with my CSA offerings." Now I'm all, "Well, I made date-filled pastries out of stuff in my pantry." The recipe:

Cut up dates and boil them with a little orange juice or water till soft.
Mix with a little sugar, cinnamon, vanilla, and chopped walnuts.
Stuff inside pastry dough of some sort (refrigerated crescent rolls, etc.).
Daub with egg.
Bake till delicious.
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I'm back to work this week, which is just a little bit painful after a week at home. Fortunately, work has the benefit of paychecks, so there's always that upside. While I was home I did nothing spectacular but lots of little satisfying things, like cooking (mom's spaghetti sauce, lentil soup, cherry tarts) and reading. I also delved into the new Green Day CD, which has gotten lots of good reviews from critics and friends alike. I can see that it's a good album, but it just doesn't do anything for me. It's like there's some music center in our brains that responds to, well, who knows what, and Green Day lights up no dendrites for me. Alternatively, my brain can't seem to get enough of Muse's seductive crooning ("You think you deserve your freedom . . . No, I don't think you do") and Iron and Wine's thumping acoustic rhythms that are somehow both slow and galloping at the same time.
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Part-time modeling for J. Crew.

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Just saw this last night. It's Catherine Hardwicke's third film, starring Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. It's definitely her least accomplished film (bad special effects, not the best dialogue) but it still has that one thing that I love most about all her films: she treats the characters as if they are real people. Like in Twilight, she tries to imagine if these extraordinary events were happening to actual grounded people, and succeeds. People are working, their homes are small and scrubby, there's often not enough to eat.

I particularly liked Oscar Isaac as Joseph, who becomes more and more heroic as the story progresses. Its an understated heroism that consists of small moments that are unimportant to the world at large but crucial for these two people. Keisha Castle-Hughes had some iffy moments, but overall was very good; and it was refreshing to see Mary portrayed as an actual, Semitic, 14-year-old girl.

John Carr Dickson

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A little more on this mystery writer.

Either Atlantic magazine or Harper's used to have (may still have) features in the back called "What Makes Good Writing Good" and "What Makes Bad Writing Bad." Each feature was short: one column, a few paragraphs. And the writer would take a piece of prose in each column and analyze what makes . . . well, you know.

Such a great little exercise, and I thought of it while reading The Three Coffins. There's something so . . . easy about his writing. Not lazy, not without interest, but it has a kind of swinging ease that is deceptively simple. Here's a short sample:

"The stuffy, gaudily coloured room was quiet. Wind rattled at the windows. Distantly there was a noise of church bells, and the honking of a taxi that passed and died. Hadley shook his notebook."

I like this because it's descriptive without being overly lyrical; specific ("stuffy," "rattled," "passed and died") without being precious or self-conscious; and genuinely rhythmical without being overwrought.

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