tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3155406217405670042024-03-27T19:53:34.850-04:00Extravelganza411Syarra Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05349110900722674588noreply@blogger.comBlogger280125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-9167684994785296472024-02-28T00:07:00.001-05:002024-02-28T00:07:19.660-05:00The Off Putter<p><i>Question:</i> the thing that puts me off, that's an off putter, right? Or is it an off puter? Because I don't want a putter like I'm golfing. But I don't want some slangy way to say computer either. I mean putter as in that which puts. Off, in this instance.</p>
<p>Earlier in this month I was put off from blogging by an incident. I was going to blog about the Parque de Carolina. It is a large and beautiful park in Quito. And it has everything. Okay maybe not everything, I didn't see a helipad or roller coaster. But it has:</p>
<ul><li>Soccer fields</li><li>Volleyball courts</li><li>Track</li><li>BMX track</li><li>Skate park</li><li>American football field (though clearly unused)</li><li>Paddle boats and a paddle boat stream</li><li>Science museum</li><li>Botanical garden</li><li>Vivarium</li></ul>
<p><br /> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmFjL57b7IFqSk9m7izDai7WYP6hhTi1TBpc1_437gO8BEvbKY45T_RWw3nliJKW8VKeew-PRNMdJnGNnkiMPiV29eUU2_vvLRbbdXrJxFAQUTcS3e1b3QAg9xHZKplG6KuTLRYP9RL5gnzrhGYGlYSpEdoyONriBtkjQQJkpo4Piz1q7hHGNohpqiWY/s4000/Carolina%20Bell%20of%20World%20Peace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrmFjL57b7IFqSk9m7izDai7WYP6hhTi1TBpc1_437gO8BEvbKY45T_RWw3nliJKW8VKeew-PRNMdJnGNnkiMPiV29eUU2_vvLRbbdXrJxFAQUTcS3e1b3QAg9xHZKplG6KuTLRYP9RL5gnzrhGYGlYSpEdoyONriBtkjQQJkpo4Piz1q7hHGNohpqiWY/s320/Carolina%20Bell%20of%20World%20Peace.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A Bell of World Peace - in the park<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p><p>Point is this is a very lovely place. And I wanted to blog all about it.</p>
<p>But for the incident which occurred in the park.</p>
<p>I got pick pocketed. My wallet was stolen.</p>
<p>So this isn't life or death. I had $10 in cash. The thief got credit cards and probably did get some money with those but I don't have to lose that money so that's good. And my driver's license was in there.</p>
<p>So while that wasn't a tragedy it did leave a metaphorical sour taste in my mouth. It has also caused some slight modification to our plans, nothing major. More on that in a future post.</p>
<p>That incident kept me from having much desire to blog for a bit. But I am on the comeback trail.</p>
<p><i>Story:</i> When Carver was four, he loved to play War. You know the card game where you flip cards and the higher one wins the cards. Sometimes when I was losing but then something went in my favor I would say I was on the comeback trail. And Carver, in his early days of learning how to talk trash would say no, instead I was on the go away trail. Put me in my place.</p>
<p>But that was a place putter, not an off putter. And regardless of which trail I am on now, think of this post as an up catcher. Or an on putter.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-65619145587574819772024-02-27T12:37:00.027-05:002024-02-28T22:07:20.556-05:00By Way of Africa?<p>The date was February 11. It was a Sunday. And an amazing coincidence happened. In truth it was of no life shattering consequences. But it was unusual enough that I took notice.</p>
<p>That day Alrica and I traveled from Quito, Ecuador to Lima, Peru. We took a plane. The two cities aren't that far from one another. So why did we go by way of Africa?</p>
<p>That would be mysterious, right. Well it didn't happen, not in terms of physical location. We were in or above South America the whole time.</p>
<p>But in the car ride to the airport in Quito, our driver turned on a radio station playing American music of the 80s and thereabouts. For example, we experienced a total eclipse of the heart. But we also blessed the rains down in Africa.</p>
<p>When we landed in Lima we took a car ride from the airport. Different car, I promise. But this driver also turned on American radio from the 80s and vicinity. This time I was watching you (with every step you took, every move your mook, every bond you brook.) But guess what, we once again blessed the rains down in Africa!</p>
<p>Twice in one day! In two different countries, neither of which are secret hotbeds of the English language.</p>
<p>It was enough to catch my notice. And I wonder if it could ever go the other way. Could I hear songs about South America while in Africa. Are there any songs whose lyrics include the name South America? Is this a gnawing absence in need of repair? Here is my attempt to address the issue.</p>
<p>I bless the maize in South America.<br />
It could be choclo and it might be mote too.<br />
Some maize is purple, some is white, and some is blue.<br />
Come cook with maize in South America.</p>
<p>Void filled!</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-7058307462212860742024-02-03T11:58:00.001-05:002024-02-03T11:58:53.523-05:00The Mixed Stomach<p>When it comes to Ecuadorian food, it’s really a mixed bag. But since the ultimate bag is my stomach, it is a mixed stomach. Some things in Ecuador are amazing. A couple things are not to my taste. But the majority of traditional Ecuadorian cooking is fine. It’s not bad, it’s just not… flavorful. Sometimes my tongue screams, “Discover cumin and garlic and oregano!”</p>
<p>So for my tastes, which I am sure differ from those of the Ecuadorian people, I would group Ecuadorian foods into three major categories: the good, the bad, and the bland.</p>
<p><b>The good:</b> First and foremost, the fruits here are varied and wonderful. Some of them are very sweet, like maracuyá (passion fruit). Others are very tart, like taxo (I don’t know it’s English name). Some of them are both sweet and tart, like uvillas (which I have seen translated as gooseberries, but when I think of gooseberries it’s not this.)</p>
<p>And as the fruits are so good, so are the juices of those fruits. That’s not a surprise, right? But along with fruit juices, you know what else is just better here? Powerade. They have better flavors of Powerade in Ecuador. Instead of fruit punch, you have tropical fruits and it tastes better. Instead of whatever our orange one is, here it is maracuyá citrus. The addition of the maracuyá flavor (chemical no doubt) just improves it. You go Powerade!</p>
<p>Leaving drinks, encebollado is a seafood soup. It is very good, and it is served with lime and a lime juicer. You can add your freshly squeezed lime juice to taste. Sour soups are amazing.</p>
<p>Breads are wonderful here in much the same way that they are at home. But here, you can buy small fresh breads (like croissants about 1.5 times the size) at most any corner minimarket. Or you can go to a panaderia, a bakery, and buy them there.</p>
<p>Chifa is a genre of cuisine. It is Chinese food. But it is more properly a fusion of Chinese and Peruvian food. Chifa is generally built around a serving of chaulafan. This is fried rice, and it is dark and usually has some meat in it. Often that is shrimp, but it could be something else. Then you can get something along side your chaulafan which is similar to the kinds of things you get at Chinese restaurants in America. There are chicken dishes, or pork, or seafood, or beef. They come in flavorful sauces and with lots of vegetables. But here is where it gets weird. At the chifa place we tried, this is also served with French fries. (They call them papas which means potatoes.) Don’t misunderstand, it is very good. But I am unused to serving both rice and French fries as sides (or maybe the rice is the entrée and the meat is the side) on the same plate.</p>
<p>Pizza is good enough here to be on the good list. The toppings are great. The cheese is mozzarella which is very similar to, but slightly different from, the mozzarella to which I have become accustomed. It has a slight aroma of being a goat cheese rather than a cow cheese. (Why don’t we say cow cheese. We say goat cheese if it comes from a goat. But we don’t mention the cow when the milk came from a cow. We just call it cheese. Are cows missing out on their right to recognition? Then again, maybe it is like not putting a little two on a square root sign. It is the default, so we don’t bother.) The thing that holds pizza back in Ecuador from being as good as at home is the sauce. The sauces aren’t as seasoned. There is oregano, but not as much oregano. There is garlic, but not as much garlic. In fact, there isn’t even as much sauce. More sauce, please!</p>
<p>Chocolate is certainly a thing here. In Ecuador it is very high in cocoa content, and also expensive in comparison to other Ecuadorian prices. But if you like chocolates that have a lot more chocolate than you are used to in American candy, then it is for you.</p>
<p><b>The bad:</b> I personally did not like ceviche. I know it has many devotees and I don’t want to say it isn’t good. I will just say it isn’t good to my tastebuds. But it is something you should try, because you might love it. Alrica enjoys it. What is ceviche? It is fish, but rather than cooking it (denaturing it with heat) you soak it in citrus juice. This also denatures it. There is some debate about whether or not it eliminates all the bacteria. After it is denatured, various spices like chili pepper and garlic are added. (See, they do know about garlic.) And it is often served with chopped onions in it. And I like chili peppers and garlic and onions. But I still didn’t like ceviche. More than the sum of its part, as the old saw says. (I know saws don’t talk.)</p>
<p>Next up, lemonade. Okay, this shouldn’t properly be in the bad category, because bad isn’t the right word. When you order limonada at a restaurant in Ecuador, there’s no sugar in it. It is lemon juice (or maybe lime juice) and probably water. But you better be ready for sour!</p>
<p>I ordered habas con queso which literally translates to beans with cheese. I was very curious as to how this would be prepared? How would the cheese be incorporated. What kind of sauce would it be in. I figured it would be like rice and beans. Rice and beans is not literally merely rice and beans. There are other things in it.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5HqAJCzUYG0mlT_G8NMi3XM7BkL8Iks6IsGHPKAd1I1nrnGPQy8dXqE69Vu3o2uY5yUySrH6ICgaqUNeP2mLdErayG_hhba2cMh_5vN6_CM0kyGkiY7zHoPJinQmyyvaG1LFvceoYvs9Nh9VMz5V8vmtkSXU47djDs41Xgdg_Vqv7atYV6HATIIGykk/s4000/Habas%20con%20Queso.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv5HqAJCzUYG0mlT_G8NMi3XM7BkL8Iks6IsGHPKAd1I1nrnGPQy8dXqE69Vu3o2uY5yUySrH6ICgaqUNeP2mLdErayG_hhba2cMh_5vN6_CM0kyGkiY7zHoPJinQmyyvaG1LFvceoYvs9Nh9VMz5V8vmtkSXU47djDs41Xgdg_Vqv7atYV6HATIIGykk/s320/Habas%20con%20Queso.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Why is this even a meal?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Boy, was I wrong. Habas con quest is entirely literal. I got a plate of boiled lima beans with a thick slice of queso fresco sitting on top. Not shredded on top. One thick slice. Now I like beans, but in the rankings of the beans of the world, I think many people would agree with me that lima beans sit at or near the bottom of any such list. Still, even with the world’s worst bean, you could do all kinds of interesting things with them. You could at least boil them in water that had seasoning in it. But no, these beans were cooked and that’s all you can say about them. I like queso fresco, but it cannot save a plate full of unappetizing grass-colored lima beans.</p>
<p><b>The bland:</b> I find the majority of traditional Ecuadorian cooking to fall in this category. It’s kind of like when you are in London and you wonder why don’t the British season anything. Well, the British and the Ecuadorians are flavor soul mates.</p>
<p>Before I talk about specific Ecuadorean dishes, let me talk about rice. Most dishes are served with rice. Plain rice. Plain white rice. This would be great if, like when you go to an Indian restaurant, there were plenty of sauces on the other parts of the meal that you mix with the rice and eat all together. I’m sure you can guess what I am about to say. That is not the case here. There isn’t enough sauce to mix with all that rice. And there isn’t enough flavor in the sauces to make the rice, well, interesting.</p>
<p>Menestra is the kind of dish I should love. Its main ingredient is lentils. (I’ve read that it can be beans instead, but so far I have only had it with lentils.) Now, I like lentils. And menestra has those lentils cooked in a brown sauce. It is served, you guessed it, with rice, and usually some meat. Either you get a piece of chicken or a slice of beef. It’s so close to being good, but there just isn’t enough seasoning to make the lentils exciting. And then the rice just drags it further down into blandness.</p>
<p>Mote is popular here. You know how grits are made from corn, but if you looked at them, or ate them, you wouldn’t immediately know it was corn. That’s mote. It is like hominy. It’s corn kernels that have been peeled and boiled. (I’m not sure which comes first.) It is chewy in an unexpected way, and it isn’t super flavorful. Usually mote is served with some sort of meat.</p>
<p>Locro de papa is a potato and cheese soup. We held out high hopes that this would be the traditional Ecuadorean food that tipped the scales toward yummy. But it didn’t. It’s fine, but it’s not amazing. Locro de papa is usually served with sliced avocado, so that has some flavor.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-jybWZS8jJrUuNyQdCwVSzf5ecmnYeG3BfHdkTVIJPWK9mG5JTgWuSHw22HX2U6mpi4tIImneNANYswsnp-eJzW_7StcXPirZjWX1Xt8BzZCW3CZ95YjLfH9105C5LLC3E5Xrg1G-NkoUvkPdmU_o4Zu-GvQz76QgQUN4g2aUAvGMOxxorrT1pN3dP8/s4000/Locro.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-jybWZS8jJrUuNyQdCwVSzf5ecmnYeG3BfHdkTVIJPWK9mG5JTgWuSHw22HX2U6mpi4tIImneNANYswsnp-eJzW_7StcXPirZjWX1Xt8BzZCW3CZ95YjLfH9105C5LLC3E5Xrg1G-NkoUvkPdmU_o4Zu-GvQz76QgQUN4g2aUAvGMOxxorrT1pN3dP8/s320/Locro.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It looks like it's going to be good<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>I know you’ll think this is lame, but one of my favorite meals in Quito has been fried chicken at KFC. Why? Because they use the exact secret mix of eleven herbs and spices that Colonel Sanders formulated all those years ago. And that’s about ten herbs and spices more than I get in anything else.</p>
<p>But I wouldn’t say my mixed stomach is suffering. I get enough food and it is plenty nutritious. It’s really my tongue that dreams of something better.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-67582510816457179692024-01-25T15:22:00.000-05:002024-01-25T15:22:22.472-05:00American Comparison Day<p>Familiarity breeds contempt, so says the idiom. But familiarity can also breed comfort. So says I. And I hope that I am neither an idiom nor an idiot.</p>
<p>Today, Alrica and I decided on an American comparison day. We wanted to see how certain Ecuadorian experiences of American-y things compared or contrasted to the American-y experiences of the American-y things. (I do recognize that American-y is not a word. Not only that, I am taking an adjective and adding the letter y to the end to make it more adjective-y. I make no apologies. Because I am not apology-y.)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4eMij5RqiXQQGczy9m76TOTUtVr6VLfVAoPL__Y48u7MGov4L98UkKd_HXZVMw7Xeurt0G_FX48OGtb9WL-3tegbUoSf9IIHG77aozRgyje7RsO-5mhYLjXVGSc_H2EvA2tPz_LFOVKb-IRnWQNtpndTEqStlS4W29wkpRSrppmWeWWVT7hx0cKvd0Qk/s4000/Quito%20Mall%203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4eMij5RqiXQQGczy9m76TOTUtVr6VLfVAoPL__Y48u7MGov4L98UkKd_HXZVMw7Xeurt0G_FX48OGtb9WL-3tegbUoSf9IIHG77aozRgyje7RsO-5mhYLjXVGSc_H2EvA2tPz_LFOVKb-IRnWQNtpndTEqStlS4W29wkpRSrppmWeWWVT7hx0cKvd0Qk/s320/Quito%20Mall%203.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">They don't have our Thanksgiving, but they have our Black Friday? Capitalism rules!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>We visited the Multicentro Shopping Center, also known as a mall. It was laid out in three floors with a central atrium you could look through, very much like some American malls. However, this one was much smaller than the malls at home. It also included kinds of businesses we don’t see in our malls, like an orthodontist’s office or a barber shop.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLuJrXXcsA7NiG7EpZcR9N5iOsfPw-SAih14HDnmGteFTE0VQFuV2g_trB6mzqbMnX7FDVpy6IhxNW2Tbz1DIeY9fXHoV6GNOhuFYQnMcon7nf92h77Yf10mMcXQmwSlda6ju3R5FbpnI1IpYAUO1SFWicrA35mvyrQy2WvwX93oQlSG-6hnltQCnAzpk/s4000/Quito%20Mall%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLuJrXXcsA7NiG7EpZcR9N5iOsfPw-SAih14HDnmGteFTE0VQFuV2g_trB6mzqbMnX7FDVpy6IhxNW2Tbz1DIeY9fXHoV6GNOhuFYQnMcon7nf92h77Yf10mMcXQmwSlda6ju3R5FbpnI1IpYAUO1SFWicrA35mvyrQy2WvwX93oQlSG-6hnltQCnAzpk/s320/Quito%20Mall%202.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shopping and teeth, what convenience!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>These are the sorts of things we have seen in other places in the world. In fact in December of 2016, my whole family got haircuts at a shopping center barbershop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. <a href="https://extravelganza411.blogspot.com/2016/12/tropical-smoothie-erich.html">Here’s a blog post about that.</a></p>
<p>A big difference between malls at home and malls here are the anchors. In the states, the anchor stores of malls tend to be big department stores like Macy’s or big sporting goods stores like Dick’s. But they don’t tend to be grocery stores. In fact, grocery stores in malls is almost unheard of in the USA. But that’s not the case in many other countries. And in Ecuador, the big anchor store was SuperMaxi, a grocery store.</p>
<p>We went into the SuperMaxi to buy a few things. The grocery store is much like the ones we have at home, aside from everything being labeled, as you might expect, in Spanish. But one thing that was new to me was hanging fishnet bags of vegetables. Mm, I want a sexy stocking full of potatoes! Oh papa! (Papa is Spanish for potato.)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGV9FkuduuyD9MqqODr2JomOcQ3qpRTyUsXk8IXpaUHieD5HJBgnwIhgtXmqhs6sjgVP81_yuiB1h2Pf1zQcMRH3pbdlDjy754wUxIkuoAJ0nqDJVLBf9YVUWoZLD_2hKwV2p00M2Ul1Yiem3Cv3Vbe26GFYA-tG9WsqGaekOl-B5jGMZL9RpoexQQI2Y/s4000/Hang%20Bag%20Foods%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGV9FkuduuyD9MqqODr2JomOcQ3qpRTyUsXk8IXpaUHieD5HJBgnwIhgtXmqhs6sjgVP81_yuiB1h2Pf1zQcMRH3pbdlDjy754wUxIkuoAJ0nqDJVLBf9YVUWoZLD_2hKwV2p00M2Ul1Yiem3Cv3Vbe26GFYA-tG9WsqGaekOl-B5jGMZL9RpoexQQI2Y/w300-h400/Hang%20Bag%20Foods%202.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Admit it, those are some sexy potatoes. Well, each has appeal.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>We also visited two American classics: McDonald’s and KFC. Here is something very interesting, both of them had a separate counter for postres, desserts. In fact at the McDonalds, the postres counter was outside so drive by traffic could stop for ice cream.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx60YN1escEN0orKhhScbs55KyyDsO6S3pTtE4ScS5L4YUZMDSw_xzpmWUJok2tRtn4wwEVJOewZBATEuGsKO9TqCIzLGTpKy_38_Tc-ltZivUGfLvhOqK-6i1VaTfbVSWIkpk_8ld45HWn3o_uNN3bAbT1GZuPxwmGLkglTw0NBJ04IRkJp7VP8jb5Y4/s4000/McD%20Outdoor%20Postres.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhx60YN1escEN0orKhhScbs55KyyDsO6S3pTtE4ScS5L4YUZMDSw_xzpmWUJok2tRtn4wwEVJOewZBATEuGsKO9TqCIzLGTpKy_38_Tc-ltZivUGfLvhOqK-6i1VaTfbVSWIkpk_8ld45HWn3o_uNN3bAbT1GZuPxwmGLkglTw0NBJ04IRkJp7VP8jb5Y4/s320/McD%20Outdoor%20Postres.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drive up convenience<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>We didn’t eat at the McDonalds but did check it out. They have kiosks for ordering and you could change the language to English. That was fantastic. However, we were surprised by how expensive the various burgers were. There were a couple of combos you could get for $3.50 which is more in line with the prices of Ecuadorian meals. But several of the items would cost you over $8 for the sandwich alone. That might not be so surprising in America, but in Ecuador that is sticker shock, baby!</p>
<p>The KFC had an upstairs seating area which stretched over its KFC only parking lot. KFC also had kiosks for ordering, but unlike McDonald’s the only language choice was Spanish.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS4QLuzrizoxSggUVQdLExx-UWhETqEBfT4tdFP8HJ_KFsC6BQHGq1L2mpAMR4sEeIenYu1oZ8uKsd5HYmewV4I686XPTO2q9aJ9c-LCvhYdv-VRsJC4MKFze2r6iGhlDnofViEheukn851bcEVzGbl3-rdtr3rDcS9-6r1594iU4NnEkY54rSIE6NW9I/s4000/KFC%20Overseating.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS4QLuzrizoxSggUVQdLExx-UWhETqEBfT4tdFP8HJ_KFsC6BQHGq1L2mpAMR4sEeIenYu1oZ8uKsd5HYmewV4I686XPTO2q9aJ9c-LCvhYdv-VRsJC4MKFze2r6iGhlDnofViEheukn851bcEVzGbl3-rdtr3rDcS9-6r1594iU4NnEkY54rSIE6NW9I/s320/KFC%20Overseating.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Parking below, eating above<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Surprisingly, of the two restaurants, the KFC had the bigger play area for children. I wanted to eat at KFC. You may know, KFC is in more countries than any other fast-food chain. I don’t think it has the most locations; I think that is McDonald’s. But it is in more countries than McDonald’s or anyone else. I wanted to know if the chicken tastes the same. Do they really use the Colonel’s secret recipe of 11 herbs and spices? It says on the wall that they do. But is it true?</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixClww5MdmIr0lhl1R34VFk_07oM653QyXRZepzskNwybMpO6zRstYRS7McMKCOZVIXhrfUNiuDkhfPNqO91pq_exbzF1b6EdetnTF9OoMkAhpfB-O72YIbrqsyLOrx-vsx6CS7csfwes6EANlW3V-bADhr4nzZTWjh4Au1Y3BBsucUQL169kYG8cTtPo/s4000/KFC%2011%20Herbs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixClww5MdmIr0lhl1R34VFk_07oM653QyXRZepzskNwybMpO6zRstYRS7McMKCOZVIXhrfUNiuDkhfPNqO91pq_exbzF1b6EdetnTF9OoMkAhpfB-O72YIbrqsyLOrx-vsx6CS7csfwes6EANlW3V-bADhr4nzZTWjh4Au1Y3BBsucUQL169kYG8cTtPo/s320/KFC%2011%20Herbs.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Would a wall lie to me?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>I will leave you in suspense on that for a moment. Let me tell you about some of the combos you could buy. You could of course get chicken, but with what? French fries were a choice, not so out there. But several of the combos offered menestra and rice. Menestra is a savory dish made of either lentils or beans. It is usually served with plain white rice, so you can mix the two if you want. I have tried menestra here in Ecuador and it is tasty. But not at KFC. Well, it may be tasty at KFC, but I didn't try it at KFC. I was going for American Comparison Day.</p>
<p>I got a drumstick and thigh with French fries and a 12 ounce Pepsi. (It was in ounces!) My friends, I bring you the news of the Andes. Yes, the chicken at Ecuadorian KFC tastes exactly like the chicken at American KFC. Independent of elevation or latitude, those eleven herbs and spices hit the palate in precisely the same way. It was a little taste of Kentucky in Pichincha. (Pichincha is the province of Ecuador in which Quito is situated.)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9gv9N0Cc3_VybT_vEXmlsTEq4z5ksnCbI7MODd6Eb_PGMD_vGtNjuebNlx_KOXIMiOfYwTXoSg6q07kBbHUjQf3Pm95OLyggqvTwF6Nk153rwZWXwkri5uVG_t9LbkNQPSmJcBEdtBlid9ZNc0u6wJ9e9i3KH8zxa91xEfU0QTdvCdqgiCO7LCdq_1tU/s4000/KFC%20Meal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9gv9N0Cc3_VybT_vEXmlsTEq4z5ksnCbI7MODd6Eb_PGMD_vGtNjuebNlx_KOXIMiOfYwTXoSg6q07kBbHUjQf3Pm95OLyggqvTwF6Nk153rwZWXwkri5uVG_t9LbkNQPSmJcBEdtBlid9ZNc0u6wJ9e9i3KH8zxa91xEfU0QTdvCdqgiCO7LCdq_1tU/s320/KFC%20Meal.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Alrica got a sandwich. Also very true to the KFC flavor spectrum.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>I am not suggesting that Americans abroad should try to eat only American foods. Part of the joy of travel is to try new dishes, like menestra. But let’s not be completely contemptuous of familiarity. Sometimes it helps make being away feel right at home.
</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-71727989732912089322024-01-22T12:01:00.000-05:002024-01-22T12:01:30.536-05:00Unexpected Differences<p>When you travel to a foreign country, you expect a lot of things to be different. Like here in Ecuador, of course I expect most things to be written in Spanish. I expect temperatures to be given in degrees Celsius. I expect there are different foods in restaurants and even some of the foods I think I know won’t be quite the same.</p>
<p>But there are unexpected differences too. These aren’t like “Wow, I never would have imagined!” It’s more of day to day things that I never would have imagined, because why would I think about it?</p>
<p>Let’s take an example: Coca-Cola. The Coke here is much like the Coke at home, but they don’t use high-fructose corn syrup. And they use less sugar. It says so right on the bottle: Original Taste, Less Sugar. But this isn’t Diet Coke. It has sugar, just less.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Rgph6_U9pkdlzhaZaz0XIAFKC-emm9k9HGZHlzKkQLeg224TZkukyXv__dmuMyg0mzA2gKfaQZs9ZmhfYo62xovYSsfnRE9sAYgI2QLxNLPrQBTrrkxOZO9rq6iSxsnGVEJveg18UcdDe9meJkN1mcMTOk-VCF1JpvAVSK3Y8ulSUKxjt6RBRkDWPAU/s4000/Coke%20Liters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Rgph6_U9pkdlzhaZaz0XIAFKC-emm9k9HGZHlzKkQLeg224TZkukyXv__dmuMyg0mzA2gKfaQZs9ZmhfYo62xovYSsfnRE9sAYgI2QLxNLPrQBTrrkxOZO9rq6iSxsnGVEJveg18UcdDe9meJkN1mcMTOk-VCF1JpvAVSK3Y8ulSUKxjt6RBRkDWPAU/s320/Coke%20Liters.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Check out the volume?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>At home you could look at the nutritional information and get a lot of details you probably don’t retain or care about. Here, the nutritional information is only three things: Sugar, Salt, and Fat. And they don’t give you a precise measurement (not a ratio level of data for my statistician readers), but just a scale: Alto (high), Medio (medium), Bajo (low), or "no contiene" (Doesn't have any). For those keeping track, that is the ordinal level of data. You know, for your edification.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWJ4i0mGojDi8ynjRTkLEDu7cdF5JusF0qOmmsAkGwACcLXqP917_pGg9IyA_t7g9H4XzCsv7X84-V82lIW0NsJi4p6T5bW-PMjCf0c_jRnDYcdGKahgm90vsfMau1fO_WdW4-1_A5o2MwOiEuC8oWBYwE7K4XCW7oafwuHvK1AGBQd6kNSrc3I932OTA/s4000/Coke%20Nutrition.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWJ4i0mGojDi8ynjRTkLEDu7cdF5JusF0qOmmsAkGwACcLXqP917_pGg9IyA_t7g9H4XzCsv7X84-V82lIW0NsJi4p6T5bW-PMjCf0c_jRnDYcdGKahgm90vsfMau1fO_WdW4-1_A5o2MwOiEuC8oWBYwE7K4XCW7oafwuHvK1AGBQd6kNSrc3I932OTA/s320/Coke%20Nutrition.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not the healthiest, huh? Buy hey, no fat!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>What’s more, you can buy Coke in a 3.05 liter bottle. You can’t do that at home! Incidentally, why are beverages the only things in America that we measure in liters? And it isn’t even consistently all beverages. You can buy Coke in 12 ounce cans but also in two liter bottles. Weird.</p>
<p>Here’s another difference that, had I thought about it, would have been apparent. Ecuador, being situated as its name might imply, on the Equator, does not have Daylight Savings Time. Why would they need it? When your days are always twelve hours long, what would be the point?</p>
<p>I think this difference is leading Google to a savior complex. I was looking at my Google Calendar, and I noticed that these classes I teach at 8 PM Eastern Time were listed at 8 PM Eastern Time up to a point. After that, they were listed at 7 PM Eastern Time. In fact, all of my appointments from a certain date onward were shifted up an hour. I puzzled over this.</p>
<p>My first realization was that the shifted calendar appointments begin in March, just after Daylight Savings Time begins. I think Google is trying to save me! Certainly my Android cellphone knows I am in Ecuador. So Google knows. And it wants me to realize that 8 PM appointments in Eastern Time in the US will really be 7 PM appointments if I am still here. (At least after Daylight Savings Time begins.)</p>
<p>So now I am curious what will happen when I return the U.S. Will Google automatically move all those appointments back? Or will I have to shift them myself? I guess only time will tell. (Pun, get it. “Time” will tell. The time. Of the appointments. Have I over-explained it?)</p>
<p>At least my bad puns haven’t changed. Ah, consistency.
</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-34029374890227164272024-01-19T13:47:00.000-05:002024-01-19T13:47:09.706-05:00Eaten by a Bear<p>The trouble with knowing each other through our social media is that our social media lives are stellar. We post the interesting things, the exciting things, our great triumphs, or our fun encounters. We don’t tend to post the other parts of life. And so everyone is jealous of everyone’s life if they only see the social media happy side of it.</p>
<p>This includes our blog. For the most part, I blog about the amazing, interesting, or at least humorous experiences I have had in my travels. I perhaps get too pedantic, but I don’t usually get too pedestrian. No one wants to read about tedium like what settings I use for laundering my clothing or how I get confused as to which key opens which lock. Maybe I am over-generalizing. I shouldn’t say no one wants to read about that. Maybe someone does, but I don’t necessarily want to write about the tedium. (Those of you who would make the valid argument that most everything I write is tedium, well, keep your thoughts to yourself.)</p>
<p>There is a saying that goes “Sometimes you eat the bear. Sometimes the bear eats you.” I think the bear is a metaphor for life. It can’t really mean bear, right? I have actually never eaten bear. I don’t think I have even been in a situation in which bear was a menu choice. Also, while I am sure some people are, in fact, eaten by bears, it isn’t exactly common enough that we carry around bear repellent. I don’t think I know anyone personally who was eaten by (or had a loved one eaten by) a bear. So let’s all accept the bear as a metaphor and say sometimes you win at life and sometimes you don’t.</p>
<p>At present, I would say the bear is tucking a napkin into her collar and picking up her fork and knife. So in the spirit of #unvarnishedlife let me blog a bit about when travels aren’t going all that well.</p>
<p>I will begin with another idiom, “Into every life a little germ must fall.” (I know it is supposed to be rain, and it does rain here. But germ is more appropriate in this context.) Early this week I got sick. It really wasn’t terrible. No fever, no stomach pains, no headaches. But I completely lost my voice. I was also slightly fatigued. And the muscles where my spine and skull meet were not happy with me looking any direction but straight ahead.</p>
<p>This was awkward. For one thing, we are living in an apartment on the third floor. To get here involves walking up 38 steps. (Not quite Hitchcock.) Even pre-germ, the altitude sickness from being at 9,650 feet above sea-level meant we needed a moment to catch our breaths after each ascent. Now with my fatigue, well, that moment grows into a siesta.<br /></p><p>Still, this didn’t stop Alrica and I from going out. We tend to go out for lunch each day. In Ecuador, almuerzo (lunch) is the big meal of the day, not dinner. Here, it is more cost effective to go out for lunch than to cook (at least in a place you’ve rented that doesn’t have any spices. I don’t want to buy spices only to leave them when we leave.) Now, I am no master of Spanish, but I tend to understand it and speak it better than Alrica. She took German when she was in school and that does her very little good in Ecuador. So my being unable to speak made things, let’s say, trickier.</p>
<p>However, here is one amusing sight I saw as we were out. And I have a whole story to go along with it. We must travel back in time to when I was in high school. My AP American History teacher was, I'll be gentle, not good. Early in the year she decided which students she liked and were good at the subject and which were not. She didn’t pay much attention to the assignments we turned in, and she tended to give us work that took up tons of time with very little learning.</p>
<p>One thing she started was giving out these sheets that had names of historical figures, names of places where historical events happened, or names of historical events. And we had to scour available resources to write a paragraph about each of these names on the worksheet. Mind you, this was pre-Google. This was when scouring meant finding books in libraries. And there were about forty names each week. So this took up a ton of time.</p>
<p>I had a friend in the class, Abdul. I still have Abdul as a friend. Well, Abdul and I realized that Mrs. C (see how I protect her identity) never read any of the worksheet answers. She just put a grade on them based on, who knows, her reading of tea leaves, and then handed them back. So we decided that rather than treating each name as a miniature research project, we would treat each name as a creative writing assignment. We made things up.</p>
<p>And it worked. Week after week, we got reasonably good grades, even though we hadn’t taken the assignment remotely seriously. That is until Marshall Ferdinand Foch. He was a name on one of the worksheets when we were studying World War I. If you don’t know, he was, at times during World War I, the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces. Foch is known for having been very courageous and ordering his troops to do some pretty reckless things. But they worked! Go Foch.</p>
<p>I didn’t know this when I was taking AP American History. And I didn’t bother to find out. Both Abdul and I wrote something based on the similarity of the name Foch to another four-letter word. After all, how do you think military blunders came to be know as Foch Ups?</p>
<p>I am sure you can see where this is going. This was the week that Mrs. C finally looked at the worksheets. Needless to say, she found our answers far less amusing than we did. Punishment ensued.</p>
<p>I bring this up because I am living near Plaza Foch in Quito, named, as I am sure you guessed, for Ferdinand Foch. In fact, many of the streets in this part of town are named for military leaders who fought the good fight. Not too far away is Jorge Washington Street. But back to Plaza Foch. While walking through it the other day, I saw this on one of the walls:</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrZaGksYeUknL1HrOQe5e5FZGpsuBLrP_LtAQgTcPPoNMYQTZMttHpkg1MaorQ_KndRgb85V-eg6ffxX79OK9A7h7U6KiTIAlmOp53Tcw_MwUO5KvcjOR3gjoY5LmFQDdjPL1x_sYnNrsIw2pXsu67LSuYOpB5gesmE4WyALIHMYcxxV50zjvDxG-knaM/s4000/Foch%20Pun.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrZaGksYeUknL1HrOQe5e5FZGpsuBLrP_LtAQgTcPPoNMYQTZMttHpkg1MaorQ_KndRgb85V-eg6ffxX79OK9A7h7U6KiTIAlmOp53Tcw_MwUO5KvcjOR3gjoY5LmFQDdjPL1x_sYnNrsIw2pXsu67LSuYOpB5gesmE4WyALIHMYcxxV50zjvDxG-knaM/s320/Foch%20Pun.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What the Foch?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Not only is this amusing in the same way that Abdul and I were amusing all those years ago, but it always interests me on another level when the puns in a non-English speaking country only make sense in English. I recognize that English is a lingua franca of the world, though here in Ecuador, almost no one speaks it. How many people find that joke funny? Maybe in this case it turns bawdy, lowest common denominator humor into something that only the select, in-the-know few can appreciate like certain fine wines which only true connoisseurs can appreciate for their subtle bouquet.</p>
<p>Enough of that tangent, back to the bear. Through the healing salve of time and the extrication through expectoration of a good deal of phlegm (which is a word you don’t find in just any blog, my friends), my voice is improving. I can’t yet master my Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget imitation, nor my Gizmo from The Gremlins. But when I just talk normally, I sound like a slightly scratchy version of myself.</p>
<p>But the bear wasn’t done with us. Yesterday, Alrica got very sick; we think most likely food poisoning. Her stomach was in agony, no position was comfortable, she could barely sleep, and other things. (If you were squeamish about me mentioning phlegm, I will just let your imagination fill in “other things.”) Note: I considered putting “other things” in single quotes just to make Alrica go a bit crazy, but since the bear is already upon her, I decided to she had enough on her plate. Or she was enough on the bear's plate.<br /></p>
<p>So, at this moment, we are not having the best time in Quito. Alrica isn’t up for going out. I made lunch at home, and it was terrible. I bought pasta and pasta sauce at the grocery store. But the pasta sauces here aren’t like the ones we have at home. I bought this one, a brand called Los Andes.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXHCRJxKSC-FyGBG42oiULZ7UCUU3t3MrMq-K6vUKobs18gAjRtr7lmE2dgwJPdQudQuJHEAUf1xLgVZinph3gEQ9lo8WGcZnIPTiG-ILXvFlyK03Wy9dGirBzkcqy-nXkx8jTaasBLtr6PRqOTrFd8Ii0ma8vZPeA4EK0CN_1RARzwDX6C2EwAKybBY/s4000/Salsa%20Para%20Spaghetti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXHCRJxKSC-FyGBG42oiULZ7UCUU3t3MrMq-K6vUKobs18gAjRtr7lmE2dgwJPdQudQuJHEAUf1xLgVZinph3gEQ9lo8WGcZnIPTiG-ILXvFlyK03Wy9dGirBzkcqy-nXkx8jTaasBLtr6PRqOTrFd8Ii0ma8vZPeA4EK0CN_1RARzwDX6C2EwAKybBY/s320/Salsa%20Para%20Spaghetti.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No bueno<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>The Andes Mountains are not a region of the world one associates with high-quality Italian seasonings. That should have been my warning. Whoever the chef at Los Andes is that was put in charge of formulating their spaghetti sauce, I can only imagine it is someone who has never eaten spaghetti. They did know that the base is supposed to involve tomatoes, but beyond that, I think it was guesswork. What we end up with is something closer on the scale to barbecue sauce than spaghetti sauce, but even that is a generous description of its qualities (or, in truth, lack thereof.)</p>
<p>I recognize that my treatment of this fine Los Andes chef is a bit unfair. After all, the United States has many Italian immigrants and their descendants to carry on the fine tradition of sauce making a la the Italian palette. Ecuador does not.</p>
<p>Still, I ended up throwing much of my pasta away. And Alrica, who needs to eat as her stomach is more or less a vacuum at this juncture, found my lunch offerings insufficient to overcome her natural revulsion at foods in her present state.</p>
<p>So, yeah, the bear is enjoying her feast and we are the victuals. But this too shall pass. As soon as my vocal chords are back at one-hundred percent, I’ll let that ursine beast know who’s boss. In my best Dr. Claw impersonation, she will hear me growl, “I’ll get you next time, Bear. Next tiiiiiiiiime!”</p>
<p><i>Exit, pursued by bear.</i></p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-43023966133727135122024-01-18T13:52:00.000-05:002024-01-18T13:52:20.681-05:00Market Marked Differences<p>What it means to go to the market can vary from place to place. When we were traveling with our kids from 2015 to 2017 we often when to the market. There were different words for them, and there were different styles. We even have them in the United States.</p>
<p>Of course, there is the supermarket. You find that in most (but not all) places. They are not all entirely the same, but they aren’t all that different either.</p>
<p>Whereas the market can be quite different. In the United States we have farmer’s markets in which farms send people with goods to sell from a stand on certain days of the week. Some of them are temporary; they build the stand and take it down each time. You can find these in many cities. Other places, the stands are permanent and inside a building. Though it is generally not open seven days a week (or even five), they are open multiple times during the week. This is closer to the market we find in other countries.</p>
<p>One big difference is that these markets tend to be open every day. (Sometimes closed on whichever day is the Sabbath for that country.) They are usually much larger than the markets in the States. Some are laid out with meat sellers spread around and fruit sellers spread around and baked good sellers spread around. Others are more like department stores. There is a fruit section and all the fruit vendors are around that. There is a meat section and all the meat sellers are there.</p>
<p>Also what many of these markets have is a food court. They might call it various things, but that’s what it is. Here you find stands with prepared foods along the walls or the pillars and then tables throughout the area where you can sit to eat. Just like the food court in the mall, right? Well, there are differences.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKt3pYUWQprW5L6QpFeGdO4wxakQLw4jsMkyEWTwrVfQ_FKwZT2Nb8rVf8m_7zn438CmAv4oJdABKfFG1wOajC0AassFo-RyTJCy8Sw2FTb8-Eya3LG05bem75BVpEnQ0ih2W6CbD3eCca5P2ECNyvL6KXMgSjLr9lP9lyfydr93-RAzm67A8kcGau-KI/s4000/Market%20Santa%20Clara%20Flowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKt3pYUWQprW5L6QpFeGdO4wxakQLw4jsMkyEWTwrVfQ_FKwZT2Nb8rVf8m_7zn438CmAv4oJdABKfFG1wOajC0AassFo-RyTJCy8Sw2FTb8-Eya3LG05bem75BVpEnQ0ih2W6CbD3eCca5P2ECNyvL6KXMgSjLr9lP9lyfydr93-RAzm67A8kcGau-KI/w400-h300/Market%20Santa%20Clara%20Flowers.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mercado Santa Clara - flower section and fruit section<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Yesterday, Alrica and I went to Mercado Santa Clara. This is a market of the sort I was describing, what here is called a Municipal Market. This market is set up in sections, a fruit area, flower area, dry goods area, meat area (on the middle floor) and at the top is the patio de comidas (the food court.) There are entrances from the street which take you in at the bottom level (fruit, flowers, dry goods). There are other entrances from the street which take you up exterior stairs and land you in the patio de comidas.</p>
<p>We got lunch in the patio de comidas. Alrica had a rice dish and I don’t know what it was called. I got Caldo de Gallina (which is chicken soup with some delicious grain in it.) But they don’t cut up the chicken into bits. They must use chicken to make the broth, but when it is served, they put a quarter chicken in it, skin and all. I got a drumstick and thigh with my soup. This would be fine, except the only utensil I received was a spoon. I guess you eat it with your hands? That’s what I did.</p>
<p>I found the patio de comidas overwhelming. There were many choices and I walked around seeing what I could have. Of course, multiple stands were serving the same things. But one key difference here is that many of the stands have a woman shouting at you. You could just read the sign that tells you what they serve. But in addition, the woman is calling out the items on the menu. Even when I was within three feet of her, trying to read the sign, she was still shouting, and facing me. And this goes on all around the patio de comidas. So, the space is loud and difficult to concentrate in.</p>
<p>For the locals, this is probably the norm. They didn’t see bothered at all by it. For me, I had a hard time reading the signs and decided what to eat within the cacophony.</p>
<p>I discovered other differences too. You say what you want but then they don’t give it to you. Someone walks you to a table and sets it down there. You ask how much it costs and then give that person your money who goes away to make change. I assumed I was supposed to follow her to get my change. That was apparently not the case. They weren’t mad, but it was apparent I was not following the social norm.</p>
<p>Here is another difference in the market, imprecision. This isn’t meant to be deprecating. In some ways, this is wonderful. Let me explain.</p>
<p>Alrica bought some red bananas. Side note: Much like when we were in India, we are experiencing many types of bananas here in Ecuador. In the U.S. you only get one variety, the cavendish. But here there are finger banana and red bananas and more that I don’t know the names of. Okay, back to our regularly scheduled blogpost.</p>
<p>Alrica asked for cuatro, four of the red bananas. But the woman at the fruit stand took a huge bunch of them and just broke off a piece. (Not four of them, it was actually five because that was easier to break off.) At an American market, these would then be weighed and a price per pound would be used to calculate what you owe. No, here she breaks it off and looks at it and says it will cost one dollar.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE1znQzRNjzib3DsZ9eMOrncK9luIkvv9o6HRutBMIOdu43Kj7Nl1wwMIxb14icuTA08iGre1JZ-G2dfdI3Amn6RfyYn6cv6Bwdl7FToxXRdwUA45fppYSHjEQQyeHKszcqWMWS4WBXu8d9VvBsbmGzEdVbzodvR67qYaDHv3w840qKY685aU88ilxGUY/s2605/Tropical%20Fruits%20Cropped.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2222" data-original-width="2605" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgE1znQzRNjzib3DsZ9eMOrncK9luIkvv9o6HRutBMIOdu43Kj7Nl1wwMIxb14icuTA08iGre1JZ-G2dfdI3Amn6RfyYn6cv6Bwdl7FToxXRdwUA45fppYSHjEQQyeHKszcqWMWS4WBXu8d9VvBsbmGzEdVbzodvR67qYaDHv3w840qKY685aU88ilxGUY/s320/Tropical%20Fruits%20Cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Red bananas, Cherimoya, Uvillas, Tuna (not the fish, the prickly pair)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>We have found this at the fruit stands throughout the city. They don’t seem overly concerned about weighing most items. (They weigh things like berries, but not much else.) They just give you a price, usually rounded to the nearest quarter.</p>
<p>I like that imprecision. I’ve often thought in the U.S. that if I just peeled my bananas before I got to the register, think of how much money I would save. Yes, my bananas would get smushed and rotten, but I’d just have to eat them fast. Here, that’s not a concern. So long as no one is yelling at me from three feet away.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-31023168194659976202024-01-15T12:00:00.000-05:002024-01-15T12:00:18.424-05:00Crossing a Line<p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxj85i-yA5tUVcQiN11SoNqjfHPx-uoFQo2L42LI_rrW6_aZgH22wmDC5P5py7bzR0X8WZtuLpZOV3cOO9lVMeRjdiw1nlpxf8Ps0YQ4RpAHOLbl5MzfRKiByOkuaGGtFJ4M1LmmlWzq-oEKC81ccbN_SwgDIPCFjBvyCCCEJzsXB3iZj5V245fcv_G4/s4000/Mitad%20Top%20View%20East%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxxj85i-yA5tUVcQiN11SoNqjfHPx-uoFQo2L42LI_rrW6_aZgH22wmDC5P5py7bzR0X8WZtuLpZOV3cOO9lVMeRjdiw1nlpxf8Ps0YQ4RpAHOLbl5MzfRKiByOkuaGGtFJ4M1LmmlWzq-oEKC81ccbN_SwgDIPCFjBvyCCCEJzsXB3iZj5V245fcv_G4/s320/Mitad%20Top%20View%20East%202.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Guess what that yellow line is<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p><p>When someone says to me, “You crossed a line!” (which you can only imagine how often that occurs in my life,) it generally means I have broken some social code or caused offense in a way that cannot be easily remedied. In this case, the line is a metaphoric line in the sand, and the sand is just as metaphoric as the line. In full disclosure, I did recently cross a line, but of a different sort.</p>
<p>There are many kinds of lines, metaphoric or actual. There are the aforementioned lines which bound social dictates. There are mathematical lines which stretch indefinitely in two directions. I suppose these are neither metaphoric, nor actual, but intellectual constructions, abstractions. You can’t really cross an abstraction, at least not concretely. There are picket lines, and those can be crossed! They aren’t truly lines, but groups of people with a metaphorical boundary, but we all know what it means to cross one. If you are wondering if that is what I crossed, no, I am not a scab.</p>
<p>But what about actual lines? There are a lot of these actual lines, though usually you can’t see them, and most of them are not really straight. They might seem locally straight, but they curve or bend. So here I need to expand my definition of a line to a one-dimensional curve in which corners and cusps are allowed, or to be mathematically precise, a shape which I can describe parametrically with only one real variable. (Many of you likely shudder at that last description, sorry, ignore it. You will know what I mean by a line.)</p>
<p>But even these actual lines I would separate into two categories: Lines that humans invented and lines that humans use to describe natural phenomena. This last category is, in my opinion, the coolest.</p>
<p>Let me explain what I mean. A month ago (and it feels like a lot longer ago than that,) Alrica and I visited Mount Sassafras Observation Tower. This is on the border of North Carolina and South Carolina. And we were able to stand with one foot in each state. Does it matter which state I am standing in? Well, I guess if Alrica had chosen that moment to murder me it might determine which set of state police had to solve the crime (Alrica is too smart to leave much evidence) and arrest the perpetrator. How would they decide that? Where the attack came from? Where the body fell? Where a larger proportion of the body fell?</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd0vuwdfWorswWAYMBEVE-_SOZ19nlm6c_wwPa3Oxb0bJVebRHMglcuvm6kZP4gPn_S460mV1fYpWIZvPCM9e8Q5pAixgbxChWl11wQbsEGW5f1c771NkbJxRkkJCxDSyEESkaA7j57bjM0FH0U-EcZ2BU4ICuy5RyRw0lE5zk-7bCvPo6ByaElbNDpUc/s4000/Carolina%20Border%20Overlook%203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd0vuwdfWorswWAYMBEVE-_SOZ19nlm6c_wwPa3Oxb0bJVebRHMglcuvm6kZP4gPn_S460mV1fYpWIZvPCM9e8Q5pAixgbxChWl11wQbsEGW5f1c771NkbJxRkkJCxDSyEESkaA7j57bjM0FH0U-EcZ2BU4ICuy5RyRw0lE5zk-7bCvPo6ByaElbNDpUc/s320/Carolina%20Border%20Overlook%203.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My body (still alive) straddling the border<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>The border is one of these lines, the ones that humans invented. In fact, all borders are invented lines. We, as a people, have decided that this is where one set of property or governmental jurisdiction ends, and another begins. There is nothing in nature that describes a shift there, only in our minds. In a thousand years, those borders could be different. Think of the world a thousand years ago. Not too many borders have stayed the same.</p>
<p>Another example of these lines that are a product of our imagination is lines of longitude. Don’t misrepresent me. These are very useful lines and they make logical sense to encircle the Earth that way. But why is the Prime Meridian, the zero line, where it is? Because humans arbitrarily chose to put it there. Astronomers working out of an observatory in Greenwich, England set the line so it would go through their observatory. Had Muslim astronomers defined the zero line of longitude while math and science were flourishing in Arabia and Europe was in the Dark Ages, we might have Baghdad Mean Time.</p>
<p>At least the Prime Meridian is a semicircular arc! (I might say it was straight, but you and I both know that’s stretching the word straight.) If you want to see just how active the human imagination is, check out the International Date Line! Yeah, it is supposed to be the meridian directly opposite the Prime Meridian. But that would be so inconvenient for places that it cut through the middle of. It’s Friday at my house but Saturday at my workplace down the street. Do I have to go in today? To handle such inconvenience, we use our imagination once again. What the heck, don’t go round the bend getting bent out of shape if we bend over backwards to bend it like Beckham! (Though Beckham’s bending is of a very different bent than that of a meridian.)</p>
<p>What about lines of latitude? Some of these are more than just our imagination, they have astronomical reality.</p>
<p>Take, for example, the Arctic Circle (or the Antarctic Circle). The Earth revolves about an axis (another line which you can’t see but describes a real world phenomenon.) And the Earth orbits the sun in a plane we call the ecliptic. But our axis and the ecliptic are not perpendicular. The axis is tilted about 23.5° (from being perpendicular. It is tilted about 66.5° from being a line in the plane of the ecliptic.) The Arctic Circle is the line of latitude at 66.5° north (and the Antarctic Circle is at 66.5° south) corresponding to this tilt in the Earth’s axis. Beyond these circles, there will be some winter days without sun and some summer days where the sun never goes away. These two circles represent a physical reality.</p>
<p>The Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn do as well. These are the circles at 23.5° north (Cancer) and 23.5° south (Capricorn). They are the northernmost and southernmost latitudes where the sun could ever be directly overhead. And its all about that tilt!</p>
<p>There is a certain irony for me personally about these two circles. When we were in Namibia in December of 2015, we crossed the Tropic of Capricorn. <a href="https://extravelganza411.blogspot.com/2015/12/little-things-amuse-me-erich.html" target="_blank">I blogged about it then</a> and you can check it out. You can even see pictures of my adorable children, much younger, at the Tropic of Capricorn with Alrica and me. But what’s the irony?</p>
<p>Even though I have lived most of my life in the northern hemisphere, I have stood upon the Tropic of Capricorn in the southern hemisphere, but never stood upon the Tropic of Cancer in my own home hemisphere. I’ve crossed it in airplanes and even on ships, but they don’t have signs you can stand next to midair or midwater. We were pretty close to it in Al Ain, UAE. But there is a limited list of when close counts, and I’ve never heard Tropic of Cancer included in that list.</p>
<p>Finally, there is the granddaddy of all the lines of latitude: the equator! (Granddaddy is also metaphoric. There is not biological descent among lines of latitude.) And that brings me to our recent trip to Mitad del Mundo! (Yes, it took me over 1,100 words to get to the story. But hopefully at least 315 of those words were interesting.)</p>
<p>Mitad del Mundo, which translates as Halfway Point of the World, is a destination of the equator, by the equator, and for the equator. (Apologies to Lincoln.) This is a real line (or circle really). It is the circle around the surface of the Earth that is equidistant to each pole. Here the days last twelve hours and the nights last twelve hours all year long.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFEjFXJxvL2s_K_F3LIgcMc3wWlISZJeCbBYPYcevtpULAQReiDLKDnQJgj7A0eRVh3E-FNkyy7gBGH4Y_fNeHZJUQz4pLtkqEa2k-NCk8YP1twIWLKABtbcJwqdW7b1S6wK9kmSQrgsMlx81FinC9awpi_KNBNbaPErthx09nhoCoha0AeqAVoDxG8Q/s4000/Mitad%20Couple%20Chilling%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNFEjFXJxvL2s_K_F3LIgcMc3wWlISZJeCbBYPYcevtpULAQReiDLKDnQJgj7A0eRVh3E-FNkyy7gBGH4Y_fNeHZJUQz4pLtkqEa2k-NCk8YP1twIWLKABtbcJwqdW7b1S6wK9kmSQrgsMlx81FinC9awpi_KNBNbaPErthx09nhoCoha0AeqAVoDxG8Q/s320/Mitad%20Couple%20Chilling%202.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Head in the Northern Hemisphere, Feet in the Southern Hemisphere<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Friends, I have stood upon the equator! I have sat upon the equator! I have laid upon the equator! I have risked being pulled apart by Coriolis Effect forces to have part of me in one hemisphere and part of me in another. (That last sentence is only half true. I was in two hemispheres, but there is no risk of being torn apart by the Coriolis Effect.)</p>
<p>If you make it to Quito, I recommend this attraction highly. We came in the morning when it is a lot less busy. We visited the monument built on the equator. You get to go up in the elevator and walk around it, crossing hemispheres as you go. But there is a lot more there than just the monument and the line.</p>
<p>At one place, tables have been set up, each with a nail sticking up so that the nail is on the equator. You can try to balance an egg on the head of the nail. Alrica tried, no success. And it doesn’t make any sense to me why this would be easier or harder at the equator than anywhere else.</p>
<p>There are museums here, shops, and historical recreations. For example, there are houses, recreations of the houses that the indigenous people built before the Spanish came. All of the houses were built of local materials like mud, reed, and grasses. This portion was split into three parts. There was a house of the natives from the Amazon region. There were two houses of the natives from the mountains, one round house which showed techniques before the influence of the Spanish and one rectangular house that showed techniques after the influence of the Spanish. Finally, there was a house of the natives of the Pacific coast.</p>
<p>One of the museums was all about the expeditions that were sent to Ecuador to find the equator and measure the curvature of the Earth at it. The expeditions were French, but Ecuador was controlled by the Spanish at the time. Spain allowed France to send the scientists. Did you know that after Newton proposed Universal Gravitation, there was some disagreement about what that meant for the shape of the Earth?</p>
<p>Many of us are taught that the Earth is a sphere. It’s not, but, to be fair, it is close. Newton proposed that the Earth was an oblate spheroid, like an M&M. In an M&M, it is like a sphere got squashed pushing on its poles, so its equator bulged out and its poles got closer together. Well, Newton didn’t think the Earth was as squashed as an M&M (in fact, all reliable evidence indicates that Newton never once even ate an M&M), but he did say it was the same sort of shape, just not squashed so much. The radius at the equator, said Newton, is greater than the radius at the poles, but not by a huge amount.</p>
<p>There was another school of thought that said, no, the earth is a prolate spheroid, where you would pull on a sphere at the poles, more like an American football or a rugby ball. They believed that the earth’s radius at the poles was greater than its radius at the equator.</p>
<p>No one really knew for sure which was right. No one had ever made the appropriate measurements before. The French, believing this to be an important question, both scientifically, and due to its impact on mapmaking and worldwide commerce, decided to send out two expeditions. One would go to the North Pole, the other to the equator. Each was to measure the curvature of the earth at their destination to settle the question.</p>
<p>The expedition to the equator chose the province of Quito. They thought it would be very close to the equator (they were right) and would give them enough access to enough land that they could make the measurements needed to calculate the curvature of the earth. They built checkpoints over a huge area of land in the Andes mountains. They made measurements of the stars in Orion’s belt from these various checkpoints. Then mathematically, they measured the curvature of the Earth using their observations.</p>
<p>It turns out that Newton was right, the Earth is an oblate spheroid. The equator is further from the center of the Earth than the poles are. This is because the Earth spins. When the Earth was forming, that spin caused a bulge in the middle, a centrifugal force effect.</p>
<p>So if anyone out there is still holding onto a belief that the Earth is a prolate spheroid (or that it is flat), I’m sorry to tell you this: that’s not the case. If, in so challenging your belief, I have crossed a line, well, I think we’ve pretty well-established that I'm a line crosser.
</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-1421467421937040902024-01-13T13:41:00.000-05:002024-01-13T13:41:22.377-05:00Double Chocolate<p>I’m sorry if I have you thinking about muffins or ice cream flavors at this point. Not my intention. Instead, I wanted to share the results of two recent adventures we had into the fascinating society of chocolate.</p>
<p>The first of these was called the Chocolate Experience. We met a woman named Ruth who brought us to her house. It began in her garden and we picked some flowers and herbs that we would later use in the chocolate we were making from scratch! You could probably guess that after the garden it was on to the kitchen. The other adventure was visiting Chocolate World, a shop in la Cuidad de Mitad del Mundo.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiISgTXNhRmoI8t6KbqkKDFLr3NQWzSbgYfURZyaVH-flMH2ONgrKrPY2obCt5DloqfroAJBmRIY052hnsw2JpEiiQhlgaXBD7-s8FR2qnFkiZXf2B0weFk5QjVrGCuzVr2bow87TkLtW-DRWgWNfb8j099yBSerGIuRkWv_Mn9BOXP0zU_BQqaH1O3J9Y/s4000/Cacao%20Cocktail%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiISgTXNhRmoI8t6KbqkKDFLr3NQWzSbgYfURZyaVH-flMH2ONgrKrPY2obCt5DloqfroAJBmRIY052hnsw2JpEiiQhlgaXBD7-s8FR2qnFkiZXf2B0weFk5QjVrGCuzVr2bow87TkLtW-DRWgWNfb8j099yBSerGIuRkWv_Mn9BOXP0zU_BQqaH1O3J9Y/s320/Cacao%20Cocktail%201.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chocolate cocktails! (Though one is alcohol-free)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Between these, I learned a great deal about chocolate, its history, its present, and its variety. Where to begin? Logic dictates: the beginning.</p>
<p>When the Spanish arrived in the New World, chocolate was already being consumed in much of Mesoamerica. It was completely new to the Europeans. Chocolate comes from the cacao plant which had been domesticated and spread throughout the region. But where did it originate?</p>
<p>Cacao is a rather short tree that grows in the canopy of taller trees. It requires a lowland region with lots of heat and lots of rain. That still leaves a lot of possible locations for the origin of cacao. Yet, scientists have pretty good evidence of where it all began.</p>
<p>Anthropologists were able to find organic remnants of cacao on pottery artifacts that are 5,500 years old. This is the earliest known evidence of human interaction with cacao. These artifacts were found in the Amazon rainforest in what is today eastern Ecuador. Thus, the best evidence we have so far indicates this is where chocolate originated.</p>
<p>But you must understand how far it is from a cacao tree to chocolate to wonder how the earliest cocoa pioneers figured this out. The cacao plant, after pollination by bees or hummingbirds, produces cobs. They are bigger than an ear of corn, shaped somewhat like a football (an American football, a rugby ball for those unfamiliar with American football), but about half again as large.
Within those cobs is a pulpy fruit and within that are what we call the cocoa beans. Each cob has between thirty and forty cocoa beans. (It takes about ten to fifteen cobs to make a pound of chocolate.) The process to get from tree to bean has many steps. The cobs are harvested. Then they are placed in a wooden box, covered by banana leaves, and allowed to ferment for several days. The banana leaves help keep the heat of fermentation in the pile to allow it to happen better.</p>
<p>After two days, the outer leaf of the cob has biodegraded. Now there is the pulpy fruit. The yeasts eat the sugars in the pulp, creating acetic acid as a byproduct. Everything smells like vinegar and the pulp turns into slime or liquid and drains out of holes in the bottom of the box. Acid is an important part of preparing the beans.</p>
<p>Four days after going in the box, the cocoa beans are taken out. Then they are dried in the sun for a couple weeks. Cacao farmers don’t want to take the beans too early or they won’t make good chocolate. They need to get down to 7% humidity or less. The beans themselves are in a thin shell, and the farmers press on this shell to see if it is still pliable (too wet) or starting to get brittle (dry enough).</p>
<p>Now the beans are ready to be roasted and this is where we came in during our Chocolate Experience. While cacao is grown and sold in many places in Ecuador, it is not grown in Quito. It isn’t grown anywhere in the Andes Mountains. That’s because cacao needs low elevation and lots of heat. The Andes are high are very temperate.</p>
<p>Ruth, who led our Chocolate Experience, travels about three hours by car toward the coast of Ecuador to find the cocoa beans fresh. One could also travel east out of Quito and head into the Amazon River region to find cocoa. In fact, the most elite, sought after, and expensive chocolate comes from that region, the birthplace (we believe) of chocolate. It is called Arriba Chocolate, but this is because of a problem in translation. When the Dutch and English traders came to the ports of South America to buy the cocoa beans, they would ask the Ecuadoreans what it was called. The Ecuadoreans (now Spanish speakers) didn’t really understand the question. They told the traders this chocolate was arriba (which means above), trying to indicate it came from upriver. The traders took that to be the name of the chocolate.</p>
<p>Where you get the cocoa beans does matter. Remember I mentioned the bees and hummingbirds that pollinate the plant? Those animals also collect nectar from the taller trees which surround the cacao plants. So some of the nectar and pollen of the taller trees gets mixed into the cacao flower and affects the flavor of the chocolate that will be produced by that cacao plant. The seeds that Ruth purchased came from cacao that grows in the shade of banana trees and so has just the subtlest banana flavor.</p>
<p>Recall the beans themselves are in a thin shell. You take these beans, with their shells, and you roast them. We used a clay pot to roast them. The shells get very black, and sometimes you hear a loud pop similar to popcorn popping. Legend has it that if you are more calm and at peace when you are stirring the cocoa beans as they roast, you will hear more pops. If you are stressed, you will hear fewer. I don’t think I am particularly stressed, but no beans popped while I was stirring. Syarra got one pop. Alrica didn’t get any pops either. The blessings of childhood, I guess.</p>
<p>After they are well roasted and the shells are black on all sides, you take the beans, one by one, in your hand. Yes, they are very hot! Now you crack the outer shell and pull the bean out of it. The bean is brown and shiny and has an outer layer of oil. This not only protects the bean during the roasting and makes it shiny, it also makes your fingers soft. The broken shells are collected in one dish and the released beans in another.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRIHre2u3gJ2tfVkPAxcLRKKjoAsXoroV5aNenangDwFqOUciJJBlK3eTRagAY0BmlT6ni-FnLagKw1t16S3iYal9kOJNwGSgLACz9dkqSMLgsAQ7SiFIkzJU_WCwo9w97GVTn6VCg7qZ5HmA8MfvejvI7bPZ_YTm2-0zq8GfI_KGaYVIqhvmYuQoH9fk/s4000/Cacao%20Beans%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRIHre2u3gJ2tfVkPAxcLRKKjoAsXoroV5aNenangDwFqOUciJJBlK3eTRagAY0BmlT6ni-FnLagKw1t16S3iYal9kOJNwGSgLACz9dkqSMLgsAQ7SiFIkzJU_WCwo9w97GVTn6VCg7qZ5HmA8MfvejvI7bPZ_YTm2-0zq8GfI_KGaYVIqhvmYuQoH9fk/s320/Cacao%20Beans%201.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Shells left on the left, shiny on the right!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>The shells are ground with a mortar and pestle. This powder can then be used to make tea or it can be used to make a lotion for your hands. The beans are also ground, but not by mortar and pestle. They are ground in a large crank grinder, like a sausage grinder. It is a lot of work to turn the crank and grind the beans. What comes out are thin shavings of brown cocoa. Tasting them at this point, they are very bitter.</p>
<p>That’s one big irony of chocolate, it’s actually quite bitter. Of course, sugars are going to be added in the cooking process.</p>
<p>Here is another interesting historical happy accident. Before the Europeans came to the New World, there were no cows in the Americas. In fact, the Americas had very few animals which could be domesticated. Wolves had been domesticated and became dogs. In South America, llamas and alpacas were domesticated to be used as pack animals and for wool. They were not generally eaten. And they were certainly not milked. So the natives didn’t have milk.</p>
<p>When the indigenous people of Mesoamerica cooked their chocolate, they mixed it with water. The Spanish were the first to bring the beans back to Europe where it was to be prepared for the king. The explorers had asked the natives how to prepare it, but in a multilingual game of telephone (metaphoric telephone, as telephones were not yet invented) mistakes were made. A group of nuns in Spain were preparing the cocoa for the king, and they thought they were supposed to use milk when they cooked it. So milk chocolate was born from an accident.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMaycLkBJQBEbY7PFbHhpULNEqp4iSvAeY4ykxva6pSRGuWt0iHuFIesAYhPZwEWZ6AsvOCA4CmOGcTNAFrkl0qiMfsPgCAvQvtRbU8LwClOaZTaIYzcomw90YEZwPG_jhtclIfFlfc7jROEf76fp8HWRdGoU3R0C6u2YfMMzWMtRfGdxNwIkw4Z1CRl0/s4000/Cacao%20Boil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMaycLkBJQBEbY7PFbHhpULNEqp4iSvAeY4ykxva6pSRGuWt0iHuFIesAYhPZwEWZ6AsvOCA4CmOGcTNAFrkl0qiMfsPgCAvQvtRbU8LwClOaZTaIYzcomw90YEZwPG_jhtclIfFlfc7jROEf76fp8HWRdGoU3R0C6u2YfMMzWMtRfGdxNwIkw4Z1CRl0/s320/Cacao%20Boil.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Before</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Back in present day, we took our ground cocoa beans and mixed them in orange juice (for some natural sugars), milk powder, some lavender, and some white sugar. This is not really how the pre-Columbian natives would have made it. They didn’t have white sugar, and they didn’t have oranges. Oranges are native to East Asia. We cooked it for about thirty minutes to get a beautiful bubbling pot of brown goo.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lk3PUWlvhd8vztqAeDDGDp7iXlm0X_4zn69_vrxOtVVYsU1aIAFfjpBoRBcv0tGrksxuSLMNZHqHjQK0YTzA6Yl5Ao4Fp3aku_94-bxY_Tb-yu2BNYWryh597VPtWNq_UBBE6RYi9dlcDNBF2Vk_Gd7hcy_w-908dxzVp2dpefznn_Zb73f6qxF_dNM/s4000/Cacao%20Boil%20Change.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1lk3PUWlvhd8vztqAeDDGDp7iXlm0X_4zn69_vrxOtVVYsU1aIAFfjpBoRBcv0tGrksxuSLMNZHqHjQK0YTzA6Yl5Ao4Fp3aku_94-bxY_Tb-yu2BNYWryh597VPtWNq_UBBE6RYi9dlcDNBF2Vk_Gd7hcy_w-908dxzVp2dpefznn_Zb73f6qxF_dNM/s320/Cacao%20Boil%20Change.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After</td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Also, chocolate making is about joy, so you have to dance while you stir. Naturally, right? We listened to “Bate que bate el chocolate” and showed off our swaying hips as our spoons and feet when round.</p>
<p>We tried our chocolate with seven different flavors (one at a time): Rose (actual rose petals we had picked in the garden), peanuts, salted caramel, ginger, chili pepper, cinnamon, and coconut. They were all very different, even using the same chocolate. Alrica and Syarra liked the cinnamon best. I was all about the chili pepper. (You don’t really notice it at first and then there is a delightful transition of flavors in your mouth.)</p>
<p>At Chocolate World we got to experience chocolates made in Ecuador and the region. We learned how each company is a community or a village. Some are in the Amazon region, others nearer the coast. They are working to sustainably produce their chocolate and have various social justice initiatives. One community on the Ecuador-Colombia border is giving young men jobs and skills as chocolate makers so they won’t become drug mules making border runs. In another place, a group of indigenous women wanted to make chocolate, but their tribe restricted what women are allowed to do. So they moved to a nearby village and started their own chocolate harvesting and making company. They help other women to greater autonomy.</p>
<p>We purchased some chocolates from some of these communities. We also got cups of hot chocolate. They were so thick and so rich that the stirring straw stands straight up when you leave it in the liquid!</p><p> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiWZn-AD9xqYQcQlxNfMOBI-158axXmFGvL0i_0WhmHGRD0xGFCU7I-jQLhCovgHW-8YJnb63RLnmb5XP4FmUqgQXtO1OHbhd0t6wZvStoXcgk4fARuk1OYtrKVjMhdzZF39KqxHpDluqAyRtFbfy5x6GJOPcrvLP22C96fBwLCwLvvveiYyI8tt2m68/s4000/Chocolate%20Thick%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfiWZn-AD9xqYQcQlxNfMOBI-158axXmFGvL0i_0WhmHGRD0xGFCU7I-jQLhCovgHW-8YJnb63RLnmb5XP4FmUqgQXtO1OHbhd0t6wZvStoXcgk4fARuk1OYtrKVjMhdzZF39KqxHpDluqAyRtFbfy5x6GJOPcrvLP22C96fBwLCwLvvveiYyI8tt2m68/s320/Chocolate%20Thick%202.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Straight up (and not because we are on the equator)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /></p>
<p>The next time you enjoy chocolate (even in muffins or ice cream), look at what percent cocoa it is. It’s likely not that high a percent. And when you consider how time-consuming and labor intensive it is to get and prepare the beans, you’ll understand. True 100% cocoa is expensive. But so worth it!
</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-90344939381114692502024-01-11T10:46:00.000-05:002024-01-11T10:46:01.261-05:00Highs (9350) and Lows (-2)<p>One week can change everything! Well, maybe not everything. I didn’t change my name, nor did I gain or lose toes. So, there are a few minor things that stayed the same. But plenty of things changed. Speaking as a mathematician, I would say I have had great changes in two axes, the vertical and one of the horizontal axes. I’m not even in the same hemisphere as I was.</p><p>
</p><p>So let’s lay it out from a Wednesday to a Wednesday. On Wednesday, January third, I woke up in Leesburg, Florida where I was pet sitting a dog and two guinea pigs. On Wednesday, January tenth, I woke up in Quito, Ecuador where dogs roam the streets and people eat guinea pigs as a delicacy. That may already sound like a lot of change, but I didn’t even get into what happened in between.</p>
<p>That first Wednesday was the last day of our housesit in Leesburg. Note: “Our” in this case is Alrica, Syarra, and me. Syarra is on break from school and is spending her Winter Break traveling with us. We left in the late Wednesday morning and headed to Destin, Florida to visit Alrica’s sister, Adana, and Adana’s husband, Don. Destin is a very pretty area that is 26 feet above sea level. Though, you can go to the beach (which we did) and be at sea level. Because you are at the sea. See?</p>
<p>We had a wonderful two days in the Destin area, dare I call it the Destin destination? But then, on Friday we traveled through a rainstorm to reach New Orleans, Louisiana. Here we met Alrica’s brother, Kevin, Kevin’s wife, Mandy (or Amanda, but she has always been Aunt Mandy to my kids), and their two kids, Konnor and Rosie. The rain tapered off and we did a bit of an exploration of the French Quarter that evening.</p>
<p>We had a fantastic seafood dinner. We shared so I got to try crawfish etouffee, gumbo, shrimp with a heavy-in-horseradish cocktail sauce, and delicious seafood boil on flatbread. Next, we wandered Bourbon Street. We heard some lovely live music and danced in the street (which is not the least unusual for Bourbon Street.) Alrica went into a bar she had heard of after which the bouncer freaked out that maybe Syarra (holding the hands of the two elementary school age cousins) was going to follow.</p>
<p>On Saturday, Adana drove in to spend time with us. This was the first time the three Green siblings had all been together in, well, awhile. (I should note that Green is an appellation not a description. They are neither emerald in hue nor, at this stage of life, wet behind the ears.) We did a more thorough exploration of the French Quarter, visited some amazing art galleries, watched a street magician whose finale was “the Frodo” (where he throws a ring up in the air and catches it on his outstretched index finger), saw the Cathedral of St. Louis, ate hand pies in Jackson Square, bought pralines, and visited the French Market. We played some dice games and board games, and then we bid goodbye to Adana.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2R23nb9ZryjehpFJ5wrQZ4Jb0QzAR8SC-uZHsaZ9ZUvcWHKKYMjuopTkGp_GBNWZbXbb1wqEXh6LT4Pxr866hs3-I0nhA7qfpg-pSPQIdohCehZF0qHIBj6j9HHl76zTvOktEG2Y1XoQQzb2yZ8cP0AmdjBpvXjDn8WTuhzBoevVoHYZ9ff-XH4_FlE/s4000/NOLA%20St%20Louis%20Green%20Siblings%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-2R23nb9ZryjehpFJ5wrQZ4Jb0QzAR8SC-uZHsaZ9ZUvcWHKKYMjuopTkGp_GBNWZbXbb1wqEXh6LT4Pxr866hs3-I0nhA7qfpg-pSPQIdohCehZF0qHIBj6j9HHl76zTvOktEG2Y1XoQQzb2yZ8cP0AmdjBpvXjDn8WTuhzBoevVoHYZ9ff-XH4_FlE/s320/NOLA%20St%20Louis%20Green%20Siblings%202.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pics or it didn't happen! Adana, Kevin, and Alrica together in front of the Cathedral of St. Louis<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>That evening, we returned to Jackson Square. There was a parade honoring the birthday of Joan of Arc, part of an unofficial start of the Carnival season in New Orleans. This was a parade unlike any I have attended. It had a plot! First, they honored various saints such as Saint Andrew (including bagpipers), and Saint George (with a huge dragon with moving parts and lit eyes controlled by several puppeteers). Then the parade went through various stages of Joan’s life, her victories, her trial for heresy, her death, her posthumous pardon, and her eventual (like 450 years later) canonization.</p>
<p>The next day we visited the Garden District with its amazing architecture. We had incredible Po’ Boys for lunch. There was this gravy on my Po’ Boy which was so savory and delicious, I wonder what was in it. We took a ferry across the Mississippi River and visited Algiers Point. This is an adorable neighborhood in which the houses have bright colors and beautiful detail work. We ate beignets at Café Du Monde. I got coated in powdered sugar. And you can see the ground littered with powdered sugar for a block in each direction. Also, not to neglect the most important details, I saw the distinctive fire hydrants of New Orleans. They are narrower (smaller diameter) than most other cities and they have caps of various shapes, designs, and colors. (I know, most of my regular blog readers are in it for the hydrants.)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFcVi3j5sGI3WrBTfSegqOicmN26pdubCXzWK3G0idgQ_X0ev8aEiRUMy2IjFr6JBhp6TANiNv3pxV6UcHQlMLEAKifIv_ePJqbBVk_AaB4KlUyMSYG8e_WjRw5V9N-22GmAzX_YckvLZ9ZvoQ0nPYWHmj6Y47FkpRw7sto-7ZG8iraovDppx8FdfirM/s4000/NOLA%20Double%20Cap%20Hydrant%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNFcVi3j5sGI3WrBTfSegqOicmN26pdubCXzWK3G0idgQ_X0ev8aEiRUMy2IjFr6JBhp6TANiNv3pxV6UcHQlMLEAKifIv_ePJqbBVk_AaB4KlUyMSYG8e_WjRw5V9N-22GmAzX_YckvLZ9ZvoQ0nPYWHmj6Y47FkpRw7sto-7ZG8iraovDppx8FdfirM/s320/NOLA%20Double%20Cap%20Hydrant%201.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA05O2z0xTfNFAXtlxRBUFgdJcGHD6c1qknzpDgwqIT7x76DwBJVJgLU145rSiXtolAPq6eY5RHW6Q2pCchajldyzOYmPBvAZilaDQW7hmTjl0NsGSV_YM87qqIi9V77-LrCAb9DWgD50vQetfCvIu0LYvUjZgxZj9N0usVTYhgabP3Uf0JdbYokpItsQ/s4000/NOLA%20Gold%20Cap%20Hydrant%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="3000" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA05O2z0xTfNFAXtlxRBUFgdJcGHD6c1qknzpDgwqIT7x76DwBJVJgLU145rSiXtolAPq6eY5RHW6Q2pCchajldyzOYmPBvAZilaDQW7hmTjl0NsGSV_YM87qqIi9V77-LrCAb9DWgD50vQetfCvIu0LYvUjZgxZj9N0usVTYhgabP3Uf0JdbYokpItsQ/s320/NOLA%20Gold%20Cap%20Hydrant%202.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pair of hydrants for my peeps!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> <p></p>
<p>On Monday, we left New Orleans which has points two feet <b>below</b> sea level to fly to Quito, Ecuador at a staggering 9350 feet <b>above</b> sea level. That’s our change in the vertical axis. (For full disclosure, we actually spent a night in Miami, Florida so we didn’t reach Quito until Tuesday.) But now we are in the Southern Hemisphere! Not by a lot, we are at 0.2 degrees south latitude. But that’s still south! (For those keeping track, that is the change in the horizontal axis.) As for the other horizontal axis, well, Quito is at almost the same longitude as Miami. Still, it is a change from New Orleans.</p>
<p>Yes, it was a lie, not everything has changed. I was being hyperbolic (meaning I was using hyperbole, not living on a hyperbola.) But wasn’t this sufficient justification for a bit of puffery? I’ll leave it to you to decide.</p><p></p><p></p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-89387636088165078602023-12-08T16:18:00.001-05:002023-12-08T16:18:48.686-05:00First Things, One Would Hope, First?<p>Back in the day, this is as opposed to now which is also day, but not the day. So, back in the day, when I was at NYU which is in Greenwich Village (in Manhattan) and Alrica was working at Scholastic which is in Soho (in Manhattan), we would often meet for lunch.</p>
<p>A digression for those who don’t know the layout of Manhattan. You can be comforted to know that Greenwich Village and Soho share a border. That border is called Houston Street. Two things about this: Soho is short for South of Houston, so as you might guess, Houston Street is the northern border of that section of town. The other thing, Houston Street is pronounced HOW-stun and not HUE-stun. It is not a city in Texas. It is not named for Sam Houston. I am not entirely sure for whom it is named, but whoever that Mr, Mrs, Miss, or Ms was, the person pronounced the name HOW-stun.</p>
<p>Now to regress (which probably isn’t the opposite of digress. Maybe to progress?) Many of our lunches were purchased at Hong Kong. No, not the one in Asia, but a restaurant conveniently close to both of us in our respective offices. Hong Kong was wonderful. It sold delicious foods such as Chicken with Cashews and Beef with Broccoli and other <i>(Meat)</i> with <i>(Plant)</i> which were not required to start and end with the same letter. Plus it was a very reasonable price.</p>
<p>The place had no atmosphere worth mentioning. If you wanted to eat there, you had choices of benches rather like picnic tables. But most of the time we took our food back to one of our offices or ate outside in a park. And it was scrumptious. Except the one time it wasn’t.</p>
<p>Once, when Alrica and I visited this fine purveyor of Chinese delicacies, we discovered the whereabouts of Jimmy Buffett’s famous lost shaker of salt. Someone had poured the entire thing into the sauces for the food made that day at Hong Kong. Our food was so salty it was inedible.</p>
<p>But we took it as a one-time error and the next time we returned there, the food was excellent as usual. That led me to realize (and probably Alrica too, but while I do not hesitate to speak for her in some things such as preferred ice tea making methods, I would not dare to do so in regards to realizations), it led me (us) to realize that it was lucky this was not our first trip to Hong Kong. (The restaurant in Manhattan, not the region in East Asia.)</p>
<p>If that had been the first meal we ever received from Hong Kong, we would have assumed that their recipes called for salt as the main ingredient and meat and vegetables as an afterthought. Why would we have possibly returned? The correct answer is: <b>there is no reason or E) None of the Above.</b> We would not have returned.</p>
<p>This supports the idiom which says you only get one chance to make a first impression. Though in this instance, that’s not entirely true. There could have been several people who bought food that day from Hong Kong for the first time. So Hong Kong had multiple changes to make first impressions, not just that day, but everyday it was open and serving meals. I suppose the more precise idiom would be you only get one chance to make a first impression per impressionable person on whom you are making an impression. But brevity and wit make it clear why the less precise version of the idiom is better known.</p>
<p>At present, Alrica and I are in South Carolina. My friend Jeff, who lives in North Carolina, told us we should try a fast-food chain of the south called Bojangles. I love trying regional fast-food chains. I like to see what is different, the same, and, for lack of a better term, regional, about them. Plus, if the chains ever spread nationwide, it is fun to think you knew about them when they weren’t so ubiquitous. For example, they have Culver’s in South Carolina. Of course, I remember Culver’s from living in Iowa and Wisconsin, when it was a Midwestern chain. It’s fascinating to see Culver’s locations spread like pancake batter emanating from Wisconsin and spreading across the United States. (And if you think I should have used a custard reference, rather than a pancake, I get that. But I am going back to a pancake theme below. Just have a little faith.)</p>
<p>Jeff recommended that we get, as our side, Bo Rounds. He accurately described the shape of them. He told me to imagine a tater tot, but someone had pounded it so it was much flatter and way more spread out. I like his metaphor of pounding it, presumably with a mallet or something malletish. As a mathematician, I would have probably said “Imagine a tater tot in which, while still cylindrical, no longer had a height greater than the diameter, but instead had a diameter greater than the height.” Mathematics is a wonderful language for expressing exactly what you mean, but it is rarely poetic.</p>
<p>Of course, we took Jeff’s recommendation and did eat at Bojangles on our drive to South Carolina. We got the Bo Rounds, as suggested. And while Jeff’s description did him credit in terms of shape and size, it was less on the nose about flavor. Because the moment I tasted my first Bo Round, I realized these are not a form of tater tots. No, these are latkes.</p>
<p>Latkes, also called potato pancakes, are shredded potato and onion with salt and other seasoning which are fried in a skillet, made almost like a pancake. (See, I promised a return to pancakes, and here it is!) It is a common food associated with Hanukkah. (Hanukkah involves miraculous oil, so foods fried in oil are a Hanukkah tradition. I’m sure even Judah Maccabee enjoyed a good jelly doughnut before revolting against the forces of oppression.) My first bite of Bo Round and I felt that ketchup was not the appropriate condiment. I hankered for either sour cream or applesauce. And given that now it is Hanukkah, how appropros!</p>
<p>But what I also found, at Bojangles, was Cheerwine. I had seen a billboard for Cheerwine on the road south. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I guessed, from the aluminum cans in the picture, that it was not, as the name might imply, wine. I just think most vintners grimace at the idea of putting their product in a can. (I know there is wine in a box, though probably not your finer wines, but I am unfamiliar with wine in a can.)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgL7uTUSFHqvl8ZpA9FF3stq-DtBxZSkd0nEJ09ZQC9b7-t0r5S_8Qo4G9SHAfp__us7Ub4p9svUELCTzYqt1c1sUmoSKZhsSo4xEsQ6oLxEh-lpWLEoOH-BLDisEVWZdBjdMDQ-RUQx50OS-U3uJJRGGAzycdHbiDnHA93CILuM8yg7-_udl158oo2X4/s226/CheerwineLogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="129" data-original-width="226" height="129" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgL7uTUSFHqvl8ZpA9FF3stq-DtBxZSkd0nEJ09ZQC9b7-t0r5S_8Qo4G9SHAfp__us7Ub4p9svUELCTzYqt1c1sUmoSKZhsSo4xEsQ6oLxEh-lpWLEoOH-BLDisEVWZdBjdMDQ-RUQx50OS-U3uJJRGGAzycdHbiDnHA93CILuM8yg7-_udl158oo2X4/s1600/CheerwineLogo.png" width="226" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Been around for 106 years and I am just learning about it?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>It turns out Cheerwine is pop, if, like Culver’s, you originated in the Midwest. It is soda if, instead, like Subway, you originated in the Northeast. (On that note, and on a tangent, you would think Subway started in New York City given that there is NYC subway map wallpaper on all the stores. But no, it started in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Yes, that’s still the northeast, but it makes you wonder if this is a tepid form of cultural appropriation.) And if, like Bojangles, you originated in the South, you probably think Cheerwine is a kind of coke.</p>
<p>Regardless of the regional term you use for fizzy soft drinks, Bojangles has Cheerwine in the self-serve soda fountains. And I wanted to try it, and it was great. It is a cherry soda, refreshing and bubbly. But why do I bring this up?</p>
<p>Because a week later, I had a second chance to get Cheerwine from a soda fountain. And I found it wanting. It was barely any of the red cherry syrup and way too much of the colorless carbonated water. Bleah! Not good, let me assure you.</p>
<p>But, like Hong Kong, I realized how fortunate it was that this was not my first encounter with Cheerwine. I knew this was just a problem of that particular soda machine having too little syrup, either through the bag running out or a problem in the brix. (Aren’t you impressed that I know a technical term like brix? It refers to the ratio of the soda syrup to the carbonated water, so it is exactly what I want for this paragraph. And so many people told me my trivial knowledge would never be useful. Ha!)</p>
<p>Had that been my first drink of Cheerwine, my first impression, I might have disdained it. I might have declined future chances to repeat the experience. But having found it to my liking the first time, I know that this was more likely the fluke, and I will return to Cheerwine at some future opportunity.</p>
<p>This makes me wonder. How many things are there in the world that I think I dislike, but really it is a matter of my first experience with that thing being a negative one? I will give you an example: shrimp. <i>Mom, if you are reading this, I love you very much and I enjoy many of the wonderful recipes you made for our family when I was growing up. But not your shrimp.</i> For years, I thought I didn’t like shrimp and I wouldn’t eat it. It wasn’t until college, while dating Alrica, that she convinced me to try shrimp. I was surprised to find that I enjoyed it. It turns out I don’t dislike shrimp. I just didn’t enjoy the way my mother made it the first time I had it. That initial encounter led me to an erroneous conclusion. How many other such erroneous conclusions have I come to on the basis of a sample size of one?</p>
<p>I have tested some of my dislikes to be sure they are not just a one-time affair. For example, I am positive there is some chemical that cucumbers and melons have in common which most people seemingly cannot taste, but I can. And its flavor is reminiscent of a sour citrus juice which was breaded in baking soda and ashes, then left to rot in a tomb for a few centuries, and then reintroduced into the offending flesh of the fruit or vegetable (though horticulturally, cucumbers are also fruits.) I am also fully convinced that tea is a revenge plot by trees in response to the incessant human desire for paper and two-by-fours, offensive to taste buds, and probably a ploy by the sugar industry to maintain their profitable business.</p>
<p>But now think grander than just foods and beverages. Are there places that someone doesn’t like because of bad first impressions? Are there religions that some sectors of society demonize because of early impressions, possibly even those not personally experienced? Is this the root of bias, implicit or explicit?</p>
<p>I know I am a mathematician, not a sociologist. But how important are those first impressions on our way of thinking about big, important things? Can we overcome them with a good second impression, like my experience with shrimp? Or are some things so ingrained that we won’t allow ourselves to take that second chance?</p>
<p>Well, this is heady stuff now, way beyond Hong Kong and Cheerwine. But to paraphrase Jimmy Buffett:<br />
I’m wastin’ away again in First Impressionville.<br />
Hating foods with whole shakers of salt.<br />
Some people claim that there’s whole subgroups to blame.<br />
But I need to reset default.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-81389296179652718212023-11-23T14:39:00.006-05:002023-11-23T14:39:49.690-05:00The Fourth Thursday<p>Today’s the fourth Thursday. It’s likely I may<br>
Be asked, now, for what are you thankful today?<br>
And I guess, if you asked that, here’s what you’d be told.<br>
I’m glad that I don’t have to stay in the mold.</p>
<p>This life where we nomad<br>
And somehow don’t go mad<br>
Come and go without pomp, without guilt<br>
Though it’s plenty of fun,<br>
It’s not easily done<br>
‘Cause it’s not how America’s built.</p>
<p>Not to say we are homeless, but home we have not.<br>
And a home is expected for really a lot.<br>
Car registrations<br>
And voting locations<br>
Depositing royalty checks for creations.</p>
<p>There isn’t a system to do those with ease<br>
But that is the price for the life that I please.<br>
So I’m thankful that, even though sometimes it’s wild<br>
We are able to live this way: undomiciled.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-29384358248702287292023-11-21T14:15:00.000-05:002023-11-21T14:15:41.351-05:00A River Cuts Through It<p>Here is an amazing story of geological history. And it began around 270 million years ago (give or take). It’s a pretty dramatic beginning too because the African plate and the North American plate collided. (Neither of the continents looked exactly as it does today.) This occurred on the eastern side of the North American plate, pushing massive volumes of rocks to the west. These rocks crunched and bent and piled and became… (any guesses?)</p>
<p>This rock pile became the Appalachian Mountains, version 1.0. These were big mountains. We’re talking size of the Himalayas big.</p>
<p>Then what happens? Erosion, same as is happening now. But this is the part I never knew before. Over millions of years, the Appalachian Mountains eroded away completely, down to the roots of the mountains. So, the Appalachian Mountains of that time would be better called the Appalachian Plains.</p>
<p>Those of you paying attention should be saying, “Wait a sec, there are mountains there now!” Yes. The movie is never as fun if you already know the ending. Like when I saw the movie Titanic, I already knew the giant squid was going to win. But, unlike that story, there is an interesting twist to our already known ending.</p>
<p>In the time of the Appalachian Plain, there was a river called the Taeys River. (Taeys rhymes with daze or maze or the phrase that pays.) The river began in what is present day North Carolina and ran northwest, which was downhill at the time. It flowed through present day Virginia, then West Virginia, and then into Ohio. It flowed as far north as what today is Columbus and then turned west. Here it ran through the middle of what is now Indiana and Illinois before turning southwest and hitting the Gulf of Mexico.</p>
<p>Again, if you’re paying attention, you probably think, “It must have gone through some other states before hitting the Gulf, right?” Surprisingly, no. The Gulf of Mexico stretched as far north as present-day Illinois in that time.</p>
<p>So yes, the Taeys River is very old, but you are justifiably asking, “Why is the Taeys River the twist of the story? And you still haven’t explained why there are mountains in this supposed plain!” Calm down, reader, I’m getting to it.</p>
<p>The Appalachian Plateau started to rise again, buoyed and thrust by magma from the Earth’s mantle. But the rise was very slow. Geologically slow. While this changed the courses of some rivers, not so the Taeys. The Taeys River managed to cut through the land at the same rate that the land was rising. So it isn’t that the Taeys cut down to form a canyon, but rather that the land rose on either side of it forming the canyon. Meanwhile the Taeys River stayed pretty much where it had already been. It survived the rise of the Appalachian Mountains 2.0.</p>
<p>However, while the river survived the rise of the mountains, later, the downstream part of the river wasn’t so lucky. Though it wasn’t mountains that wiped it out, rather glaciers. Glaciers came down through Ohio and Indiana and Illinois. They pushed earth and rock and filled in the channel that the Taeys River took through those states. In fact, the earth pushed by the glaciers dammed the Taeys River. A huge lake with several fingers of water was formed called Lake Bright along the present day border of West Virginia and Ohio.</p>
<p>Eventually Lake Bright got too full and had to go somewhere. A new outlet formed that tumbled down the present-day path of the Ohio River. From then on, the downstream part of the Taeys was gone.</p>
<p>That wasn’t the last change to the Taeys. When a new river out of the Appalachian Mountains formed, the Gauley River of West Virginia, it met the Taeys and changed the course of the Taeys downstream of their confluence. That new path is the present-day Kanawha River which runs through Charleston and eventually to the Ohio River. Interesting note: Kanawha is pronounced K'naw.</p>
<p>Still, the upriver part of the Taeys, the part that runs from North Carolina to the junction with the Gauley River in West Virginia, that part is still in its same bed. It is the oldest river in North America and one of the oldest in the world. Some geologists believe it may be the second oldest river in the world, second only to the Nile River of Africa. (Presumably, everyone knew where the Nile River was, but clarity is a virtue.)</p>
<p>This river is the only river that cuts across the Appalachians. It begins east of the mountains, but cuts through them and drains out to the west of the mountains. Not many rivers in the world do that!</p>
<p>One final note for the readers, who, as I mentioned previously, are paying attention. I would like to think that is many of you, but let’s be realistic. Still for those intrepid few, if you go looking for the Taeys River on a map or a globe or most likely the internet, you won’t find it. Because that isn’t its modern name.</p>
<p>And here is the irony: The river that run in this ancient bed, the oldest in the continent, the one that survived the rise of mountains, it’s called the New River. That brings a different meaning to the idiom “everything old is new again.”</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2UDYw5g6yFdCuo9wxntS30JWujmOQ4R5ndXwlhVsX7l_71MvAyeSCgHCUzQrje3rjNOTaKnuf31yjAbDf_l1D5EJjat21d6b_F0JB3pTQVgN3LTq_KA-w6XCC8n9wF9nN1FEF_iySQnvEj50SIEbTJ4ZEWtu7fBdXVmhZxgpmIctnHX3ykr2unvWpgzk/s3264/New%20River%20Gorge%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2UDYw5g6yFdCuo9wxntS30JWujmOQ4R5ndXwlhVsX7l_71MvAyeSCgHCUzQrje3rjNOTaKnuf31yjAbDf_l1D5EJjat21d6b_F0JB3pTQVgN3LTq_KA-w6XCC8n9wF9nN1FEF_iySQnvEj50SIEbTJ4ZEWtu7fBdXVmhZxgpmIctnHX3ykr2unvWpgzk/s320/New%20River%20Gorge%201.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The New River Gorge<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>We got to experience that amazing canyon that formed as the Appalachian rose around the river while we were in West Virginia. It is called the New River Gorge, and it is a national park. If you are ever in the area, you should check it out and know you are standing in a place not only of history, but prehistory. Really even pre what we usually call prehistoric. Though not so pre-prehistory that its primordial. Maybe just ordial. For those who are paying attention.</p>
Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-48808047058354156462023-10-29T16:33:00.001-04:002023-10-29T16:33:39.696-04:00Authentic Chili Diving<p>When I was in college, my roommates and I made a distinction we called swimming vs. diving. It will likely come as no surprise that this definition came about while the Summer Olympics were going on. None of us were likely to achieve our dreams of standing on the awards platform, so we found tangential ways to be a part of the events.<br /></p><p>The distinction between swimming and diving is this: In swimming events, meaning the races where you must do the breaststroke or backstroke for so many meters, there can be little argument about who wins the event. The person who swims the required distance in the minimum amount of time is the gold medalist. This is as opposed to diving which requires judges to give scores and hold up their scorecards. These scores are summed and the person with the highest total wins.</p><p>But the number of points given by two different judges who just watched the same dive may not agree. There is an element of subjectivity here. In fact, the entire event is subjective. Why is a small splash better than a huge splash that wets the first three rows. (This is transparently biased against breaching whales trying to enter the Olympics.) What determines if an tuck is more difficult than a curl (or whatever the terms in diving are.)</p><p>At some point, a group of self-proclaimed diving gurus decided upon the rules, what was good, what was bad, what was ugly. If a different group of gurus had decided upon the rules, the event might look very different. Well, the scoring would look different. The fundamentals of leaving a board and going downward into water would be the same. We can't overcome gravity. Even if the same group had decided upon the rules after having a very unpleasant meal, the event could look very different. This means the rules in diving are not only subjective, but arbitrary, as opposed to swimming where fastest is fastest and slowest is slowest and never the twain shall meet, because if they met, slowest would be going as fast as fastest and wouldn't be slowest, would it?</p><p>This post is, at its core, about several authentic experiences I had recently. But I want to make clear one point: Authenticity is diving. It is like deliciousness. It is possible for two people to eat the same thing and for one to say, "That's yummy," while the other believes the victuals have strayed far from delicious, tasty, or even palatable. </p><p>Case in point: I made chili today. I would rate my chili's deliciousness at about a 5.5, but my wife would likely give it a 2 or less. I used too many jalapeños for her liking. There's an irony there. The very ingredient which, arguably, makes the chili authentic (namely, the chilis) is what detracts, in my wife's mind, from its deliciousness. So deliciousness is clearly diving. It is subjective, arbitrary.</p><p>I claim authenticity is similarly diving. So when I say, as I am about to say, that I had authentic experiences, you may disagree. It's just my arbitrary vision of what is authentic to various locales or foods or experiences.</p><p>Even above, when I said chili peppers are what determine the authenticity of chili (which does seem to follow from the name), that's still very diving of me. Just look at the insistence of Texans that real chili has no beans and the rest of the country's acceptance that beans are normal in chili. You can see that authentic chili has no universally agreed upon set of ingredients. (Or go to Iowa and get chili with a cinnamon bun, or go to Wisconsin where it is served over spaghetti. There's a lot of region flexibility to chili.)</p><p>I think the point is made. Let's move on to the experiences, shall we?</p><p>In Schenectady, NY, which is very fun to spell, Alrica and I had lunch one day at a place called First Prize Mike's. Alrica got a burger, I got a hot dog and a shake. We both had onion rings. The food was fine, not incredible, not bad, but fine. But the experience was so New York.</p><p>First Prize Mike's is laid out like a diner. It is long and narrow with a big bar around the open kitchen and then there are booths on the wall opposite the open kitchen. But it was the people who made it such an experience. The employees: cooks and wait staff, constantly razzed one another, griping that each was making everyone else's job harder to do. The waitress called her patron's "honey" and treated them like she'd known them all her life. She probably had known some of the regulars for a long time. But Alrica and I were first-timers, and we got that treatment too. It took forever to get our food, my chocolate shake, when it arrived, was strawberry, and when I tried to clean up my own table, I got scolded for taking away my waitress's job. It was fantastic, fast-talking, and friendly in that authentic matter-of-fact New York style. Or at least what I consider authentic for New York. It felt authentic to me.</p><p>When we traveled from Schenectady, NY to Cambridge, MA, we took a scenic route. This led us through country roads in Vermont. It so happened that we passed by a huge outdoor farmers' market and so we stopped. This market was so Vermont (a diving statement if ever there was one.)</p><p>What do I mean? The port-a-potties were sawdust compost toilets. If you bought food to eat on site, the utensils were all wooden or cardboard so they could be recycled. (There were multiple kinds of recycling at the recycling station, so you had to figure out which bin your utensils went into.) One vendor made a point to tell me that everything sold at the market was made or grown by the vendors selling at the market. And I found my fashion peeps, or at least I could camouflage as a Vermonter.</p><p>I like to wear t-shirts. I find them comfortable. But I do make concessions to the temperature. And one of those concessions is that when it is nippy, I put on a flannel shirt over my t-shirt. Usually I leave it unbuttoned in the front. For some reason I don't entirely know, the vast majority of flannel shirts are plaid. Mine are no exception to that rule. (In fact, now that we live out of a car and backpacks, I only have one flannel shirt. And it is plaid.) So, point being, I was wearing my plaid flannel shirt over my t-shirt.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjs4ltC5ebmWVc_U0WNNd5YBwljCtf25NXlWGn3PSBp0p8Njn-120XIYXxxVGzZf3y1L75YkKWCKkqtu2DGcid4CT6i3RK7jLwNUxC_kf8zYkBB0JO9lGDI4dX4LijcEaEhgxFhi5bVWcZI0mkeHqCkjIG8Ou1S_Zfs5JP3DvsAflAx7kJNtRTl6Uxrrk/s3264/Mohawk%20Erich.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjs4ltC5ebmWVc_U0WNNd5YBwljCtf25NXlWGn3PSBp0p8Njn-120XIYXxxVGzZf3y1L75YkKWCKkqtu2DGcid4CT6i3RK7jLwNUxC_kf8zYkBB0JO9lGDI4dX4LijcEaEhgxFhi5bVWcZI0mkeHqCkjIG8Ou1S_Zfs5JP3DvsAflAx7kJNtRTl6Uxrrk/s320/Mohawk%20Erich.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Proof of my flannel shirt (and my ugly hat (and the Mohawk River))<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p><p>As I looked around, I was astonished to see how many of the men were wearing plaid flannel shirts. (They did not have them open in front.) But by buttoning up my plaid flannel shirt, hiding the t-shirt beneath, I became one of the crowd, indistinguishable from lifelong Vermonters (or at least I couldn't distinguish between them and me, except I have the secret knowledge that I am not now nor have I ever been a Vermonter.) It's possible that the Vermonters could tell I wasn't one of them, but if so, I don't know what gave it away. I was certainly wearing the uniform.<br /></p><p>You could argue this is more about stereotyping than a quest for authenticity. You might be right, but they were all dressed in plaid flannel. You can't take that away from me. That's swimming.<br /></p><p>Alrica talked to a sugarmaker (a person who makes maple syrup, but isn't called a syrupmaker) about what causes the different grades (colors): golden, amber, dark, and very dark. Spoiler: It's bacteria. We got hot mozzarella (on a compostable wooden fork, of course) which is an entirely different experience from not hot (though not exactly cold) mozzarella, or so we were told by the cheesemaker (a person who makes cheese, though that word was pretty self-explanatory.)</p><p>Authentic Vermont, right? Unless you have a different definition of Vermontiness (or maybe Vermonticity,) which is totally diving of you.</p><p>In Charleston, West Virginia we visited a fast-food restaurant called Tudor's Biscuit World. (Sadly, people who make biscuits are not called biscuitmakers. They are called bakers. But it rhymes.) The biscuits were great. They are served with a variety of things inside, mainly products of pork, cheese, and potato. Definitely delicious (diving) and arguably authentic (diving).</p><p>Regardless of whether or not you agree with my various diving arguments, we all must concur that I need a deep dive into the leftover chili. I'm not likely to get much help in eating it. That's okay, because I think its reasonably good (diving), but not really good enough for a chili cook-off (which is completely a diving event.) Though maybe I could train for the Leftover Chili Eating Olympics. Then, just like all those years ago in college, I can dream about being an Olympian.<br /></p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-19022267139832682712023-09-21T12:26:00.000-04:002023-09-21T12:26:52.546-04:00Spy vs. I<p>We wandered a museum devoted to the spy.<br>
Those spies, you may not see ‘em, adrenaline is high.<br>
Such craft to learn, and assets turn, and drones to glide and fly.<br>
Would I become a spy, they asked. Now I’m asking, “Why?”</p>
<p>Are you a wandering ranger? Yes<br>
Are you seduced by danger? No<br>
Do you like solving puzzles? Yes<br>
Do you like guns and muzzles? No<br>
Are you good with disguises? No<br>
Do you watch for surprises? No<br>
A fan of obfuscation? No<br>
Or one who’d serve his nation? Now, hold on a minute.</p>
<p>Is what I do any less important to the nation than what a spy does? I’m not sure that it is. But for comparison’s sake, let’s say we are talking about a really good spy, one who obtains critical intelligence that saves many lives. We won’t talk about the ones who turn on the country or who cause civil unrest in a foreign land that comes back to haunt us twenty years later.</p>
<p>What do I do in comparison? I help people to learn mathematical techniques that will propel them through college. And I would like to think maybe it gives them vital skills that will prove useful in their lives. This isn’t to say I think they will all be differentiating functions or writing proofs by contradiction. But I hope they will be thinking not only about what things are like now, but how they can change (and how we can predict that change.) I hope that when presented with some supposed “fact” that they can think critically, be a skeptic, and analyze it to determine if it is true or not.</p>
<p>It is like the parable of the frog in the pot of water. The story says if you drop a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog will jump out immediately. But if you put the frog in a pot of room temperature water and then heat it up to boiling, the frog will stay there until it’s boiled.</p>
<p>This is a story. Remember the analyzing-something-to-determine-if-it-might-be-true-or-not? Well, this doesn’t ring particularly true to me. The slowly heating water will eventually start to hurt and the frog will notice that and jump away. That’s how it seems to me.</p>
<p>And then I did a bit of research. I am not the first to ask this question. Guess what, I was right. Frogs thrown into boiling water may jump out, but they will be badly hurt by the time they can do so. Frogs in room temperature water that is being heated will jump out before it gets hot enough to hurt them.</p>
<p>You might wonder, what do frogs have to do with spies?</p>
<p>The spy is the hero of the moment. At that one moment, Spy gets crucial information and saves lives. Or if Spy is of the James Bond type, Spy defeats Villain and saves lives. We think that is impressive, because we just judge the spy in that moment. We ignore the months of slogging or undercover work. We ignore all the times the spy lied or hurt people who got in the way. That moment is hitting the boiling water and we frogs jump out (meaning we give our congratulations to the spy.)</p>
<p>But the educator is the long-slogging hero. There’s not one moment that defines it. But through the many lessons, the years of influencing students, the knowledge that has been obtained, bit by bit, Educator changes our nation, hopefully for the better. Sometimes, like Spy, for the worse.</p>
<p>Almost everyone can remember that teacher who touched their life and gave them a new idea, a new confidence, a new outlook. Almost everyone can remember that teacher who put them down, made them doubt themselves, or turned them off a subject. (I’m looking at you, math.)</p>
<p>But this is the slowly heating pot. Since it isn’t one moment of huzzah, we, as a society, don’t see it, we don’t celebrate it.</p>
<p>In 2001, someone sent some anthrax through the mail. Four such letters were sent. Four out of over 100 billion letters that are sent in a year. I need not tell you, that is a tiny, tiny percentage. (Maybe I do need tell you, if you were turned off from math at a young age.) Yes, this was terrible to imagine what could happen. And because it was short term terrible, we spent billions of dollars refurbishing the postal distribution center. I’m sure that saved some lives, a few lives.</p>
<p>Climate change is happening, slowly, creeping along. And it is killing people all over the world. It is changing economics in region after region. It is causing droughts and floods and gigantic hurricanes. And yet, we do little about it. In some state governments, we have done more to ban a state employee acknowledging the existence of climate change than we have done to help people affected by it.</p>
<p>Why is that? Because anthrax is the boiling water and climate change is the slowly heating pot.</p>
<p>This isn’t about the museum. If you are ever in Washington, D.C., you should go to the Spy Museum. It is amazing, interesting, and there are so many stories you either only half knew or never heard of that will make you gape.</p>
<p>But don’t forget those slowing heating pot professions that make your life as good as it is: road work crews, trash collectors, water treatment plant operators, electrical line maintenance workers, researchers, engineers, oh, and teachers.</p>
<p>So ask me, “would I be a spy?” I’ll say no, through and through.<br>
But I would like to ask the spy, “Would you do what I do?”</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-43027987705970064862023-09-16T19:47:00.001-04:002023-09-16T19:47:42.455-04:00Howe vs. Yankovic<p>Long ago, in this very blog, <a href="https://extravelganza411.blogspot.com/2017/02/ordinal-awareness-fallacy-erich.html" target="_blank">I posted about something I discovered which I called Ordinal Awareness Fallacy</a>. It is when you assume that things happened in the same order that you knew about them, but they didn’t.</p>
<p>That particular post was when I first encountered a pomelo, a citrus fruit somewhat like an orange. I assumed that a pomelo was hybridized from an orange and some other fruit. But when I did some research, I found out I was exactly wrong. The pomelo came first. In fact, the orange is hybridized from a pomelo and a mandarin.</p>
<p>But I had known about oranges my whole life and only recently encountered the pomelo. And that’s where the fallacy came in. Just because I knew about one of them first doesn’t mean it existed first.</p>
<p>I recognize that I may not be the first person who ever made note of this phenomenon. Maybe it has been written about before, but I didn’t know about it before I discovered it. So I could have Ordinal Awareness Fallacy about Ordinal Awareness Fallacy.</p>
<p>But I also had Ordinal Awareness Fallacy about something else. Here at the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park, we went to the John Brown Museum. It is about John Brown, his life before the raid on the U.S. Armory, the raid itself, and the aftermath of the raid including his death. In one of the videos at the museum, there was a chorus singing “John Brown’s Body.” It goes like this:<br />
<i>John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.<br />
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.<br />
John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.<br />
His soul is marching on.</i></p>
<p>You may have guessed, it is to the same tune as The Battle Hymn of the Republic. So I assumed that someone wrote new lyrics to the existing Battle Hymn of the Republic, but about John Brown. I was wrong on both counts.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipcYingXkrgA3VYg5Ay4rqCCmNDC36YajfgUnkNUBqWMkH0RHWsuBWgusgmXtENyZsSgKN_omcYZapcb8CCl_T7hxoCPpW9SRl73_OlUhdbFd96TSLTTf0ea8PGQKnoSGeEXs4JPL3ACOtLNqAReE7NpmTjVdEovFRXRdqQc9vj2MdW0ZaRlsT9SDqvp0/s3264/John%20Brown%20Fort.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipcYingXkrgA3VYg5Ay4rqCCmNDC36YajfgUnkNUBqWMkH0RHWsuBWgusgmXtENyZsSgKN_omcYZapcb8CCl_T7hxoCPpW9SRl73_OlUhdbFd96TSLTTf0ea8PGQKnoSGeEXs4JPL3ACOtLNqAReE7NpmTjVdEovFRXRdqQc9vj2MdW0ZaRlsT9SDqvp0/s320/John%20Brown%20Fort.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Brown's Fort - where he made his last stand<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>The Ordinal Awareness Fallacy is that John Brown’s Body existed before The Battle Hymn of the Republic. However, it is also a set of new lyrics to an older song called Say Brothers, Will You Meet Us?</p>
<p>But I was also wrong that the song was about John Brown, or I was sort of wrong. The origin of the song is way more interesting.</p>
<p>The lyrics were written, originally, by Union soldiers in the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia. They had a sergeant named John Brown. What amused them so much was that John Brown the abolitionist was a larger-than-life figure, depicted as gigantic, with powerful arms, an unwieldy beard, and blazing eyes of judgment. Whereas Sergeant John Brown was small, quiet, and even-tempered. It was this juxtaposition that so amused the soldiers of the Massachusetts Volunteer Militia, and that led them to write the lyrics. The body a-mouldering in the ground was John Brown the abolitionist. The soul that was marching on was the mild-mannered sergeant.</p>
<p>The song caught on with other Union regiments, and they wrote more lyrics, bawdier lyrics, bloodier lyrics. Eventually it was being sung by soldiers who had no idea it was about Sergeant John Brown. They thought it was only about the abolitionist. And it became very popular among Union troops.</p>
<p>Writing new lyrics to existing songs, that’s something I enjoy. I am a big fan of Weird Al Yankovic, Allan Sherman, and Spike Jones. These are just a few of the artists who have engaged in the practice of song parodies. The idea goes back millennia. In fact, the word parody comes from the ancient Greek para (beside or altered) and ode (song). Parody songs are funny. Even in Ancient Greece where the word parodia referred to burlesque songs. (So maybe they weren’t all funny, maybe they were dirty. But that was probably funny.)</p>
<p>But how did this bawdy song become The Battle Hymn of the Republic? Julia Ward Howe was a published poet of some repute at the time of the Civil War. She was in Washington with some other dignitaries and was invited to see a marching and inspection of Union troops. And while the soldiers were marching, some of them were singing John Brown’s Body.</p>
<p>One of Howe’s colleagues, a reverend, suggested that she write “better lyrics”, probably meaning cleaner ones. And she did, the very next morning. Howe said that she woke up in the middle of the night with words in her head, hastily jotted them down, and then in the morning discovered she had written The Battle Hymn of the Republic. That’s an amazing story that must have involved a lot of midnight jotting, because the full song has five verses (plus lots of glory, glory hallelujahs.)</p>
<p>The song was soon published and became a huge hit among Union supporters. It also became wildly unpopular in the south, because the song placed God on the side of the Union. It reframed the war as a war for what was capital R Right and capital G Good. For example, in verse five there is a line that reads “As he died to make men holy, let us die to make them free.” (The “he” in that sentence is Christ.)</p>
<p>So here is the question I pose to you. What do you call this, writing lyrics to an existing song but not to make it funnier? Rather to make it more serious? It’s not parody, right? Maybe intrody? Serody? Dramody? (I suppose that’s too close to dramedy, which is already a thing.)</p>
<p>I don’t know. But it is not the same fine art of the Honorable Yankovic and Squire Sherman. It is another fine art of its own.</p>
<p>And I wonder if I am wrong about assuming that parody songs came first and serody songs came second? I am drowning in my own fallacy. Or someone else’s.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-75061841108369326522023-09-15T17:04:00.001-04:002023-09-15T17:04:59.677-04:00Happy Accidents<p>You know how Bob Ross, while painting, would talk about happy little accidents? There were no errors, because you could make the error into something that seemed intentional.</p>
<p>We experienced our own happy little accident, though it wasn’t any sort of error. Alrica and I are staying in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia at the moment. And here in Harpers Ferry is the Harpers Ferry National Historic Park. Naturally, we wanted to visit that while we here and we waited until the weather was going to be very nice to do so.</p>
<p>So it turns out we first went to the park on September 14. This, so it happens, was a happy little accident. The Harpers Ferry National Historic Park commemorates many things. Certainly high among them is John Brown’s Raid on the U.S. Armory that was once here. But it also marks various battles from the Civil War in which possession of Harpers Ferry changed hands.</p>
<p>You see, Harpers Ferry is a very strategically important point. The Shenandoah River and Potomac River meet here and then flow downstream, as the Potomac, through the Blue Ridge Mountains. This pass cut by the Potomac River is the only easy way through the Blue Ridge Range. So it became an important transportation center, basically a bottleneck.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgEmPLI6LqsrV88TWCUIEBIkwWHD7vLz5J67TwgWduGJ67iCbI6SjvZ9uxTOFbtaS69siy8AqOu-cDHwhRPQTIz-D3-vNldckImPPTnDVJVcwXn01aLK5l2L2KLO2lM0FZrJYBKC9vVULI1CUpUuNwvbPc3hSR5v2FnX3aNxfL_sGFx_MCC_Nv-BqhmA/s3264/Potomac%20Pass%20Cemetery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCgEmPLI6LqsrV88TWCUIEBIkwWHD7vLz5J67TwgWduGJ67iCbI6SjvZ9uxTOFbtaS69siy8AqOu-cDHwhRPQTIz-D3-vNldckImPPTnDVJVcwXn01aLK5l2L2KLO2lM0FZrJYBKC9vVULI1CUpUuNwvbPc3hSR5v2FnX3aNxfL_sGFx_MCC_Nv-BqhmA/s320/Potomac%20Pass%20Cemetery.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, the view is from a cemetery, but it is a view of the<br />Potomac cutting through the Blue Ridge Mountains<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>The B&O Railroad (for you Monopoly fans) connects Baltimore with the Ohio River. (Hence its name, Baltimore and Ohio Railroad.) And how does it get through the mountains? Right through the pass, following the Potomac River and passing through Harpers Ferry. Also, the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal (called the C&O Canal) followed the Potomac River. And the Winchester and Potomac Railroad ran along the Shenandoah River until it met the Potomac River in Harpers Ferry.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4jvI5mdOugdjIPKAxG8WUoC5s1XFqdmiOKYUxwq1lEvu1Dq-L7iVPwvYt7ZMGxbUGehjdIefjTSiCENOhiA79I8LHWaZnmqFkrvjghrzhoTGTJHDcb5kgR7VjhHiwrB2zBMywchV5HcqXJmkhuFSEjXhGOFSyag8UU7JpUtarJk6THmKwrHX3FJ2hDZs/s3264/The%20Point%20Marked.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4jvI5mdOugdjIPKAxG8WUoC5s1XFqdmiOKYUxwq1lEvu1Dq-L7iVPwvYt7ZMGxbUGehjdIefjTSiCENOhiA79I8LHWaZnmqFkrvjghrzhoTGTJHDcb5kgR7VjhHiwrB2zBMywchV5HcqXJmkhuFSEjXhGOFSyag8UU7JpUtarJk6THmKwrHX3FJ2hDZs/w300-h400/The%20Point%20Marked.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Rivers and States<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>All this transportation made Harpers Ferry a big prize. To control your supply lines, it's nice to control the trains and canals. Add to that the fact that Harpers Ferry is right at the border between the Union (West Virginia and Maryland) and the Confederacy (Virginia) and this area saw more different battles than most anywhere in America. It is estimated that Harpers Ferry changed hands eight times during the Civil War.</p>
<p>The biggest of these battles took place when General Robert E. Lee invaded the north. He was on a winning streak in battles in Virginia and decided to take the war into the Union’s lands. This is going to lead to the Battle of Antietam (as the Union soldiers call it) or the Battle of Sharpsburg (as the Confederate soldiers call it). But before that occurred, Lee wanted to capture Harpers Ferry from the Union garrison that was stationed there.</p>
<p>Here comes the happy accident: That battle took place September 13 through 15, 1862. So we happened to go to the national historic park during the anniversary of that fight. Because of that, we were treated to special ranger programs about the battle.</p>
<p>We went up to Bolivar Heights where the Union troops were stationed. Interesting note: Bolivar Heights is in a town called Bolivar which borders Harpers Ferry. Before the town incorporated, it was usually referred to as Mudfort. But the people didn’t want that to be their city name. So they asked the state of Virginia (it was still Virginia at that time) to incorporate as the town of Washington. But the State of Virginia had so many places already named Washington that they said, “Not gonna happen.” The people had to come up with another name.</p>
<p>This was in 1825, when Simón Bolivar was in the news, liberating South American colonies from Spanish rule. So they asked to incorporate as Bolivar. Except newspapers don’t give pronunciation guides. So the local name of the place is pronounced Bolliver, rhymes with Oliver.</p>
<p>On Bolivar Heights we met Ranger George. He hiked us down the heights to the skirmish line. He hiked us back up. He told us about stages of the battle, how Jackson (confederates) outflanked Miles (union), about the different regiments there, about the Union surrender, and then about the hard march of the confederate soldiers to Sharpsburg, Maryland. After their decisive victory in Harpers Ferry these exhausted men would have a pretty rough defeat two days later.</p>
<p>It was fabulous. There were plenty of signs to tell you about the battle. But the ranger gave lots of extra information, answered questions, described it and how the land looked then, and made the story come alive in a way that the signs couldn’t have.</p>
<p>So just like Bob Ross assured us, sometimes accidents work themselves into something beautiful.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-11545974929465537632023-09-12T18:52:00.000-04:002023-09-12T18:52:04.339-04:00A Tale of Two States<p>When I first got to NYU, I was waiting in line to get my NYU ID Card. Also in line with me were a young man and a young woman chatting about where they were born. And I heard the young man say, “I was born in West Virginia or East Virginia. Whichever one of those is a state.”</p>
<p>I’m thinking, “You don’t know what state you were born in? You are an incoming freshman at a university, meaning you presumably made it through high school, and you don’t know whether or not the U.S. has a state called West Virginia or East Virginia?” I sometimes wonder what happened to that young man, if he made it through college, if he knows his address or if he lists it as being in North Connecticut or Old Hampshire or Rhode Isthmus.</p>
<p>I happen to know which of those two is a state. In fact, I happen to be in West Virginia right now. Today, Alrica and I visited Charles Town, WV (not to be confused with Charleston, WV. Unlike West Virginia and East Virginia, both of those exist.) Charles Town was founded by Charles Washington, younger brother of George Washington. And one of the sites we saw in Charles Town was the Jefferson County Courthouse.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuXtue39xclVS1xbfcH7hFotyD2LlNueAYziD279UIE7rGh_24rngVjSlwKxzHfSi7qoNIap2DfGVshxuWpB_NCS3wveq06nZEX49-nE9n3TX91bU76pcb3NHw1lf9kk90rYAhCqd1CkP9g0ko0yt1jT68OEVI8UzP219xWfLrubayVNqPgGOb0tyq_Cg/s3264/Jefferson%20Co%20Courthouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuXtue39xclVS1xbfcH7hFotyD2LlNueAYziD279UIE7rGh_24rngVjSlwKxzHfSi7qoNIap2DfGVshxuWpB_NCS3wveq06nZEX49-nE9n3TX91bU76pcb3NHw1lf9kk90rYAhCqd1CkP9g0ko0yt1jT68OEVI8UzP219xWfLrubayVNqPgGOb0tyq_Cg/s320/Jefferson%20Co%20Courthouse.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Jefferson County Courthouse<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>This courthouse has an interesting claim to fame. It is the only county courthouse in America which has been the site of two different treason trials against two different states. How is this possible?</p>
<p>Before the Revolutionary War, the colony of Virginia included both present day Virginia and present day West Virginia. When the Constitution was ratified, this entire area became the state of Virginia. At some point after this, the counties of Virginia in the Shenandoah River Valley and further west wanted to form their own state, to be separate from Virginia. They didn’t feel that Richmond represented their interests. But this was a non-starter. The U.S.Constitution didn’t allow new states to be formed from old states unless the old state said, <i>sure, you can leave</i>. And naturally Virginia wasn’t keen to let this northwest part go.</p>
<p>Enter John Brown. Brown was an avid abolitionist. He believed slavery was an offense against God. On the other hand, he was okay with murder if the people he were murdering were slavers or pro-slavery. Brown came to Harpers Ferry, Virginia with a plan. He gathered men together to complete his plan. And then one October night in 1859, he and his 21 men attacked the U.S. Armory in Harpers Ferry.</p>
<p>They captured the Armory, killed a couple people, freed slaves, and then abducted Armory employees when they arrived to work the next day. The townspeople didn’t take too kindly to this. They began firing on Brown and his raiders inside the Armory. Deaths ensue, but the townspeople managed to oust Brown from the main armory. He and some of his remaining raiders took refuge in an engine house.</p>
<p>The next day, a party of U.S. Marines arrived in Harpers Ferry. They raided the engine house. One marine was killed, but they prevailed. Brown was terribly wounded, but alive. And interestingly, who led that party of marines? General Robert E. Lee.</p>
<p>This leads to the first treason trial at the Jefferson County Courthouse. John Brown and his raiders were convicted of treason against Virginia and they were hanged. And yet, many Americans felt that Brown was right (not necessarily to kill people, but to rebel against a government that allows slavery.)</p>
<p>Of course you know what happens just a few years later: The Civil War. But this has an important implication for the people in the northwest counties of Virginia.</p>
<p>In 1861, Virginia held a Secession Convention and decided to secede from the Union. This was overwhelmingly popular in Virginia as a whole, but not as popular in the northwest part of the state. Lawmakers there held a convention in Wheeling. They stated that the Virginia Declaration of Rights said that any substantial change in the government of the state had to be approved by the people, not just the legislature. This was certainly a substantial change. So the Wheeling Convention said that the lawmakers of Virginia had broken Virginia Law by seceding without making sure it was the will of the people. So the people in Wheeling established the “Restored Government of Virginia”. They elected their own governor and other officers.</p>
<p>Now there were two different governments claiming to represent Virginia, one in Richmond which had seceded and one in Wheeling which said, “We do not secede!” The federal government chose to recognize the “Restored Government”. And one of the first acts of this restored government was to grant permission for the northwest counties to form their own state separate from Virginia.</p>
<p>Originally this new state was going to be named Kanawha, named for the Kanawha River. But there was already a county named Kanawha County. Many lawmakers were worried there would be confusion if there was a county in a state with the same name as the state. Besides, most people in this new state considered themselves Virginians by birth. So the name West Virginia was chosen instead. It became the first of two states to be admitted to the United States during the Civil War. (I bet my friends in Reno know what the other one was.)</p>
<p>What about the other treason trial? In 1921, a group of coal miners in West Virginia wanted to unionize. The coal mine owners didn’t want to allow them to do so. The owners hired strikebreakers and were also backed by law enforcement. The miners armed themselves and confronted the strikebreakers. The ensuing melee is called the Battle of Blair Mountain.</p>
<p>The Battle of Blair Mountain is the largest labor uprising in the history of the United States. It is also the largest armed uprising that has occurred in America since the Civil War. The miners had numbers, but the strikebreakers had better arms. Eventually the miners lost, but many people were killed in the process.</p>
<p>Though the fighting had occurred in southwestern West Virginia, the leaders of the labor movement were put on trial in northeastern West Virginia. Guess where? The Jefferson County Courthouse. It was another trial for treason, but this time it was treason against West Virginia. One of the miners’ leaders, Bill Blizzard was acquitted of the charge of treason. He was tried first as the state thought it had the best chance of convicting him.</p>
<p>In the end, one miner, Walter Allen, was convicted of treason and three other men were convicted of second-degree murder.</p>
<p>It’s an interesting distinction for a courthouse that didn’t move but still changed states. And unlike the young man at NYU, it knows which state it was born in and which state it is in now.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-58353273930191602402023-09-09T13:00:00.000-04:002023-09-09T13:00:26.683-04:00The Curse of the Mummy<p>When we were preparing to leave Reno, one thing we did was put some things at the end of our driveway that we were giving away for free. This was signified by a paper with “FREE” written on it which was taped to the end. I thought the meaning would be clear. Take things, they’re yours. And people did come and often took things.</p>
<p>But not everyone seemed to glean the purpose of the free pile. Someone, I don’t know who, had another idea. They added a box full of things to our free pile. When I went out, at the end of the day, to pull it in, I found things we hadn’t put there. This defeats the purpose people! We were trying to get rid of things, not gain new things.</p>
<p>That being said, there were several interesting finds in the box. There was a PS2 and some PS2 games. We managed to sell those to a game store for $60. Not bad for items left at the end of our driveway. There was a harmonica which we gave to Carver. I have no idea if he has yet tried to play it. There was a VCR (yeah, those still exist) and a VHS tape of the movie Stand By Me.</p>
<p>Our saga of this blog post begins with one more item in the box: A iPod Shuffle. Since we were going to be spending our lives in a car with no CD player, we thought this could be a useful tool to have. We would put songs we wanted on it and we could listen to those.</p>
<p>The iPod already contained several songs. For example there was “I Got a Feeling.” Have you ever listened to this song? It begins:<br />
I got a feeling<br />
Tonight’s gonna be a good night<br />
Tonight’s gonna be a good night<br />
Tonight’s gonna be a good good night</p>
<p>It continues in much this way for its remaining two and a half minutes. So I wonder: Why is this called “I Got a Feeling?” Shouldn’t the title be “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night” given that those lyrics will be repeated 490 times in the course of the song? (Writing other lyrics was clearly too hard. At least give it the right title.)</p>
<p>Syarra took on the project of culling the songs that were already on the iPod and adding new ones. She did a great job, with the eclectic mix to make both Alrica and me happy. There’s songs by Weird Al and Tom Lehrer (to make Erich happy) and songs by Bette Midler and Madonna (to make Alrica happy). There are songs from shows like Avenue Q and Little Shop of Horrors (Erich) and songs from shows like Les Miserables and Scarlet Pimpernel (Alrica). There are songs and bands that please us both like Queen and They Might Be Giants. And then there is the song we can’t get rid of.</p>
<p>Whenever Syarra would connect the iPod to a computer or other device to edit the song list, one of the songs that was on the iPod when we got it doesn’t show up in the list. You can’t delete it. It isn’t there. Except it is there, because whenever you play the songs on the iPod, it is one of the songs in the playlists. Syarra called it a zombie song. No matter how much you kill it, it won’t die.</p>
<p>Except the particular song holding zombie status on this iPod is “Walk Like an Egyptian,” the 1986 classic by the Bangles with their very 1986 hair. And since it is about Egyptians, we decided that it isn’t a zombie song, rather it must be a mummy song.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMfbXlA7kIHTXus5PrKxga0zxcbYft6Y1V2VLCgLDktXFRA251abVDHb7SjKjPvNlYDwUgSl4t1Cilw0ZP6uXTZziAW9HhOg1TQySm4AlZJT1cBCvo-Zwd8z2XE8z8z87E2zec8d3w-ktEasuYMupjM_bZiSoAjTozpwGkrJVQGiNEoV0pEZs6Rgxtjx0/s225/EgyptianWalk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="225" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMfbXlA7kIHTXus5PrKxga0zxcbYft6Y1V2VLCgLDktXFRA251abVDHb7SjKjPvNlYDwUgSl4t1Cilw0ZP6uXTZziAW9HhOg1TQySm4AlZJT1cBCvo-Zwd8z2XE8z8z87E2zec8d3w-ktEasuYMupjM_bZiSoAjTozpwGkrJVQGiNEoV0pEZs6Rgxtjx0/s1600/EgyptianWalk.jpg" width="225" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Whey oh whey oh<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>And so once every cycle through our songs all the cops in the donut shops say “whey oh whey oh ay oh whey oh” (Note, this could be “way” like direction rather than “whey” like milk, or even “weigh” like find out how much you are pulled down by gravity. I’m unclear on which “whey” is being used in the lyrics and context is little help here.) The tomb which was sealed in 1986 is breached once more and the mummy rises again.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-53089561631412330422023-09-08T16:45:00.000-04:002023-09-08T16:45:20.741-04:00The Canadian Myth<p>There are certain myths that are so common, well-known, and repeated that everyone accepts them as true. Even when there is evidence to the contrary, that are hard lies to kill.</p>
<p>Some examples:</p>
<ul><li>The tongue map - that there are certain parts of your tongue that taste sweet and other parts that taste salty and others bitter and so on. Not true. All parts of your tongue can taste all flavors, but some parts have higher concentrations of specific types of taste buds.</li>
<li>Humans only use 10% of our brains - we use all of it. All the time. Every part of your brain is incredibly active. (Maybe I shouldn't speak for you. My brain, active. Your brain? You'll have to let me know.)</li>
<li>Canadians are very friendly, so much friendlier than Americans - from first hand observation, not true!</li></ul>
<p>Having just returned from Canada, I can tell you that this myth is just that, a myth.</p>
<p>This is not to say that all Canadians are unfriendly. Many of them are delightful, helpful, and welcoming. But there is an appreciable percentage who are not.</p>
<p>Let's start with driving. Ontario drivers are kind of aggressive. They're not New Jersey level aggressive drivers, but they aren't Iowa laid back drivers either. They are comparable to California license plate drivers in Nevada. They will cut you off and think their horns are the best tool for communication. Once we were waiting to make a turn because there was a pedestrian in the crosswalk and the car behind us started honking at us. Dude, you want me to run over the woman with the baby stroller? (I never asked the Candidates if they say stroller or perambulator.)</p>
<p>We didn't find our fellows particularly patient about waiting in lines. (I didn't ask the Canadians if they wait in lines or on lines.) We had a man honk and yell at us about where we parked. So we moved and then he wanted the spot we moved to.</p>
<p>I'm saying that Canadians are just like Americans in this respect, at least Ontarioans are very much like Americans of the East Coast. I wonder if in Alberta and British Columbia they are more like Americans of the Mountain West.</p>
<p>I don't know, that will take further study. I'm just starting that Canadian friendliness is not supported by the existing evidence. So next time some TV show makes a joke about the Canadians being so nice they (fill in the blank) don't you believe it.</p>
<p>It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Which I can taste with my entire tongue.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-90112754316210270902023-09-04T15:57:00.000-04:002023-09-04T15:57:39.203-04:00Labor Doodle<p>You probably think I meant to write labradoodle and I desperately need to spell check. But alas, I meant what I wrote and I wrote what I meant. My title is faithful one-hundred percent.</p>
<p>Today is Labor Day. And today when I saw the Google Doodle, it commemorates Labor Day. I first saw it today when I was on the Virtual Desktop for my work. This desktop thinks I am in Maryland and naturally gives me an American version of the browser. I noticed that when you mouse over the doodle, the little box that pops up says “Labor Day.” That got me curious.</p>
<p>So after I finished on the Virtual Desktop, I checked the Google Doodle on my local desktop. Same doodle. Same message when you mouse over it. Why would that be strange? Well, I am in Canada.</p>
<p>Yeah, Erich, but it is Labor Day in Canada too. (That was your line. Now my response.) Yes and no. It is, but they would spell it Labour Day. So I thought that when I mouse over it, it would say Labour Day. But it doesn’t. It says Labor Day. And I am definitely on the Canadian site for Google because it says Canada at the bottom.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_25CvcxBuBisqRGxOKwrzLETzZ1VpYs1eakcasMZNAMirmZvEbIZbqZxII7FjrwSShvaqmU-zPewX1ikFMRWAXK5Ea3QVP0LZIzjS9BhO8C6yqc13EvDfW5s0iLy1veqk9-La7ncCN5R-INfT-YLM6g08mQfySsudrxJ2lHUTqSk5GfjSyP4ptcD_30k/s1920/LaborDoodle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1296" data-original-width="1920" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_25CvcxBuBisqRGxOKwrzLETzZ1VpYs1eakcasMZNAMirmZvEbIZbqZxII7FjrwSShvaqmU-zPewX1ikFMRWAXK5Ea3QVP0LZIzjS9BhO8C6yqc13EvDfW5s0iLy1veqk9-La7ncCN5R-INfT-YLM6g08mQfySsudrxJ2lHUTqSk5GfjSyP4ptcD_30k/s320/LaborDoodle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">See, it says Canada and Labor Day<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>What’s more, if I click the link, it takes me to a search page for “Labor Day” and not for “Labour Day”.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjMZGGPesfnOpb67uIj9L0V4gLofMQr3OAXaS4g-4Z5TiRDNE09Tu_GInIajaRYQlgPgaTe5JdBGGT3V06ViHrfCiDDu59g4JYumfr71zI5cGVSjazHLuL-xuQ7k_bFDHiv_H56y_yb2dgTe6HMfNbrN8hHmiikOmMQNDUqtvXntum4cyKE5GUqtHghCc/s1096/LaborLink.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="685" data-original-width="1096" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjMZGGPesfnOpb67uIj9L0V4gLofMQr3OAXaS4g-4Z5TiRDNE09Tu_GInIajaRYQlgPgaTe5JdBGGT3V06ViHrfCiDDu59g4JYumfr71zI5cGVSjazHLuL-xuQ7k_bFDHiv_H56y_yb2dgTe6HMfNbrN8hHmiikOmMQNDUqtvXntum4cyKE5GUqtHghCc/s320/LaborLink.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Search Results from clicking on the doodle<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Maybe it is because my computer is set to American English? But I doubt it. I suspect that was in the coding for the doodle.</p>
<p>Incidentally, most countries do not celebrate Labor Day on the first Monday of September. The majority of countries celebrate it on May 1, International Workers Day. Why don’t we celebrate it then? I guess it’s like not using the metric system. One of those things that separates Americans from their former British overlords. Like spelling Labor without the u.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-51533185719252822492023-09-03T17:00:00.000-04:002023-09-03T17:00:29.866-04:00Fire and Water<p>This post is not, as the title might imply, about what the ancients believed were the four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. Nor is it any sort of incantation meant to bring about rejuvenation. Nor is it a metaphor for alcohol. Instead the title, Fire and Water, is much more literal.</p>
<p>This is a post about fear.</p>
<p>If you are thinking, that’s not literal, wait. You haven’t read it all yet.</p>
<p>When I was younger, I had a fear of fire. Let’s call it a healthy fear of fire, because fire can be bad for your health. I don’t know how young it began. There isn’t an inciting incident I can point to and say, yeah, that’s what did it. Or maybe there was, but it is buried deep in my subconscious. And I don’t have a submarine, so I can’t go there. (And given the weirdness of my dreams, I don’t think anyone would want to go there.)</p>
<p>It wasn’t a crippling fear. I could sit around a campfire with my fellow scouts or campers. But I didn’t love getting too close. I was perfectly okay with my marshmallows only slightly roasted. I never wanted to get them really into the fire so they could get warm and gooey and brown. A fire in the fireplace, that was great. Because there was a grate. Or a screen. Or some device that kept the fire inside and away from me.</p>
<p>But I was unable to have personal interactions with fire. The very idea freaked me out.</p>
<p>This is logical when you think about it: fire is dangerous. It destroys homes. It causes burns on people. It spreads across huge swaths of forested land every year. I’m not saying my fear was rational, but it had some justification.</p>
<p>I did get over that fear, because I had to. When I lived in New Jersey, I got a job at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City. I was a demon! Okay, I was a demonstrator, meaning I did science shows for the guests of the museum and at schools throughout the tri-state area. Demonstrator is a cool title, but demon, that’s dope. (Hoping I am using dope correctly. Also hoping if my children read this they roll their eyes at my attempt to use dope.)</p>
<p>This job required, as you might have guessed, personal interaction with fire. I had to use a propane torch to heat a pop can with a bit of water in it so I could turn the can upside down in a dish of water and watch air pressure crush the can. I had to submerge lit candles into aquariums filled with carbon dioxide so you could see them extinguished by the lack of oxygen. Most dangerous of all, I had to demonstrate the difference between a physical change<code>—</code>in which I ripped a piece of paper in two<code>—</code>and a chemical change<code>—</code>in which I took one of those remaining pieces and set it on fire with a match, then put it out with my bare hands. Why would anyone do that? Well, it demonstrates science. And it earns you some street cred.</p>
<p>Discovering that I could use fire, work with fire, befriend fire (that may be going too far, but at least we weren’t enemies) helped me overcome my fear. Or forced me to overcome it. It wasn’t like a helping hand offered in generous benevolence. It was do or do not. There is no try. There was no try? There will be no try? Whatever the correct verb tense should be, assume I used that.</p>
<p>Today, I experienced that sort of fear again. Though it wasn’t about fire. It was about water. Or at least it was related to water. I’m not afraid of water itself. I’m not avoiding toilets and showers and sinks. I can still have a drink when I’m thirsty. (I mean a drink of water. Of course, I could also drink juice. I don’t have a fear of juice either.)</p>
<p>One of the items that Alrica and I still own, living in the trunk of the car (or the boot since I am in Canada) is an inflatable two-man kayak. Today we inflated said kayak and we kayaked in said kayak. We were on Collins Bay. It’s a small bay shaped sort of like a dragon’s claw. It is on the northeast end of Lake Ontario.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRflneeIxEUipIHQ12fQAlOxUIVh1oKa9u3-lYXWihOhexhWnPycZS4NbKdpmFfER5pvj8m8rbSzZvLn_USGMonlX73hSS4-zEcu31VnsDLCV-sb0UblehHbgfxgzS3E6qM_LEmXSYwG7gLdG44XZzfLZUXJz2u7XzUep4GdUE625m9HhKB6reghRnoD0/s519/Collins%20Claw%20Comparison.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="311" data-original-width="519" height="192" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRflneeIxEUipIHQ12fQAlOxUIVh1oKa9u3-lYXWihOhexhWnPycZS4NbKdpmFfER5pvj8m8rbSzZvLn_USGMonlX73hSS4-zEcu31VnsDLCV-sb0UblehHbgfxgzS3E6qM_LEmXSYwG7gLdG44XZzfLZUXJz2u7XzUep4GdUE625m9HhKB6reghRnoD0/s320/Collins%20Claw%20Comparison.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not saying it is an exact match, but there is a similarity!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>We entered at a boat launch, I was in front, Alrica in back. And it was great. For about thirty seconds. And then it was not great. My legs were uncomfortable. Every time I moved to paddle, the boat wobbled too much. The bay was choppy and the wake of motorboats was unfun.</p>
<p>About a minute later, I was getting more concerned, and a couple minutes after that, I was freaking out.</p>
<p>That’s weird. Let’s think about why. (Note: when you are a compulsive overthinker, you can’t just accept you were afraid. You have to analyze it, nay, overanalyze it, even though the analysis will likely come to nothing, you know it will likely come to nothing, and yet, you cannot stop yourself from doing it. Those of you who are not overthinkers can probably understand this intellectually, but not on a visceral level. Those of you who are overthinkers are probably, this very minute, overthinking whether or not you are overthinkers. Sorry if I brought that about.)</p>
<p>Before I analyze why I was afraid, let’s first consider, why would it be weird that I was afraid?</p>
<ul><li>This isn’t my first time in this kayak or in kayaks in general. In fall of 2022, we took the kayak to Lake Tahoe and had a delightful time. And that was just the most recent of several such trips.</li>
<li>There was no threat of drowning. I had on a life jacket and I know how to swim.</li>
<li>I’m not a notably jumpy person. This is not to say I am fearless, but only that I am also not generally afraid.</li></ul>
<p>Let’s get to the real analysis (which in my line of work usually means a course in which you relearn calculus but you rigorously prove all the theorems. But that’s not what I mean this time.) Why was I afraid this time?</p>
<ul><li>Alrica thinks maybe I am developing a fear of being in a small craft on such a large lake. I’m not sure I agree. Lake Ontario is huge, but Collins Bay is narrow. I could see the shore we left and the shore across from us the entire time. I could even see the tip of the dragon’s claw.</li>
<li>There were more motorboats with more wake than I had been used to recently. That’s true. But why did that freak me out and whitewater rafting doesn’t?</li>
<li>After we pulled out, Alrica realized we forgot to attach the keel. For any non-boaters, the keel is a fin shaped piece of plastic on the bottom of the boat. It sticks down into the water and keeps the boat from pitching from side to side as much. That’s because the water pushing on either side of the keel keeps it from moving side to side easily. That could have made a difference. Maybe we were rocking more than I was used to.</li>
<li>I have a cord which I can attach to the back of my glasses so that they won’t fall off easily, but I forgot to bring it to Collins Bay with us. (I know I packed it, but honestly, I don’t remember where it is in our trunk full of goods. It must be somewhere. But I didn’t remember it until I was out on the water.) Maybe I was afraid of losing my glasses. That might seem a bit unlikely, but I definitely remember that I was thinking about the fact that I didn’t have the cord for my glasses when I started to feel panicked. So if not the whole cause, it could have been a contributing factor.</li>
<li>There is no reason. Fear can be irrational, and sometimes it just pops up and there’s nothing you can do about it. I don’t like this reason. I like to believe that we are our brains, that we make our own decisions, that we have some semblance of control. You may think that is an illusion, but I am happier believing in the illusion. Don’t tell me how the magic is done!</li></ul>
<p>So, once you have overthought the entire thing, what are you going to do then? For me, it would appear one of those things is to write a blog post about it. Does writing said post make me feel better? Eh. I wouldn’t say yes and I wouldn’t say no.</p>
<p>The other thing to do is get back on that horse. That isn’t literal like the title was. There were no horses involved in today’s kayak incident. We weren’t playing water polo. And yes, I know they don’t use horses in water polo. The horses would drown. They use hippocampi or hippocampuses. What’s the plural of hippocampus? (Here I refer to the hippocampus of mythology, not the part of our brain that helps us learn and remember and process the experience of fear. That hippocampus might have been involved today.)</p>
<p>So at some point I should go kayaking again. I can think scientifically. I can change one of the factors or all of the factors that might have caused my feelings of fear and see if that changes the situation. Of course, knowing that I should go kayaking soon and in action kayaking soon are not the same thing.</p>
<p>For right now, I am just happy to back on the firm earth. Ooh, that’s a third of ancient elements. Air, air, air? I’m breathing air! Now I can say this post was, in retrospect, about the elements and had nothing to do with fear.</p>
<p>I feel so much braver. Maybe denial is the fifth element.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-11035614802843841212023-08-31T09:28:00.000-04:002023-08-31T09:28:25.826-04:00Canals<p>A Dan, a clan, a canal, Canada! (That is a palindrome in the style of an already well-known palindrome. But this story doesn’t really involve anyone named Dan, nor any clans. But it does include canals and Canada. So well worth the reversibility.)</p>
<p>Thinking about some of the places we have visited—Chicago, Illinois; Midland, Michigan; Kingston, Ontario—as well as many other cities we didn’t get to, I realized that many of them wouldn’t exist or would be much smaller if it weren’t for canals.</p>
<p>Water is essential for a big city. Certainly we need it to drink and wash. But just as important in the development of trade, we need water for shipping. Big cities are generally cities where lots of trade can occur. There are inland big cities, like Atlanta, which was a major trading location due to the railroads that crossed there, and later the interstates. But most big cities are on major waterways or on the coast.</p>
<p>The Great Lakes are massive. But for realistic shipping, you need to be able to go from one lake to another. And more importantly, you need to be able to connect to the ocean. That’s not the case with the Great Lakes as nature left them.</p>
<p>You might be saying, “What about the St. Lawrence River?” Great question. The St. Lawrence River does run from Lake Ontario to the Atlantic Ocean. The trouble is that the river isn’t navigable the whole way.</p>
<p>Prior to canals, if you entered the mouth of the St. Lawrence River, you could go upstream a long way. But then you hit a set of rapids. Where? Right at Montreal. That’s why Montreal is where it is. It was the furthest into the interior you could get by river. But this meant you had to transport goods over land from Montreal further west or from the west to Montreal. That’s heavy work.</p>
<p>The rapids were originally called Sault Saint-Louis (sault is the French word for rapids.) They were named for a teenage sailor, Louis, who drowned in these rapids during an early expedition up the river. But they were later renamed the Lachine Rapids. That’s a funny name. They were named for a city called Lachine, just southwest of Montreal and very close to the rapids. But Lachine is the French term for China. It’s kind of a joke name, because the original nobleman who was granted the land, René Robert Cavelier de La Salle, thought he could use the St. Lawrence River to find the Northwest Passage, a way across North America to the Pacific and eventually to China. That didn’t work out, but ironically they named this piece of his land Lachine, so he could say he had reached China.</p>
<p>Narrow boats with little draft can actually go down the rapids. In fact, there are whitewater excursions that run them. But it wasn’t possible to go upriver over the Lachine Rapids. So ships from the Atlantic couldn’t reach Lake Ontario. Montreal was as good as it got.</p>
<p>Then someone had an idea! Let’s build a canal that goes around these rapids. And they did. The earliest canal was called the Lachine Canal. These days that has been replaced by the bigger South Shore Canal which is part of the St. Lawrence Seaway. The St. Lawrence Seaway project was a joint venture between Canada and the United States to make it possible for ships to go from the Atlantic all the way through any of the Great Lakes to reach as far as Duluth, Minnesota or Chicago, Illinois.</p>
<p>But passing the Lachine Rapids was only one necessary step. It isn’t generally possible to get from one Great Lake to another. There are two exceptions. The first is Lake Michigan and Lake Huron. They are connected by a channel called the Straits of Mackinac which is deep and navigable. In fact, the water levels of Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, and the Straits of Mackinac are all the same elevation. Hydrologically this means it is really all one big lake. But historically we think of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron as being separate lakes.</p>
<p>The other exception is between Lake Huron and Lake Erie. You get from one to the other through rivers and another lake. Lake Huron drains into the St. Clair River which runs to Lake St. Clair. Ironically, this lake is in the middle of the great ones, but it’s not big enough to be great itself. Maybe it is great adjacent. From Lake St. Clair, you go downstream through the Detroit River and reach Lake Erie. These rivers are navigable upstream as well.</p>
<p>Lake Superior is the highest of the lakes in elevation. It connects to Lake Huron through a river, St. Mary’s River. But that river also has a set of rapids: Saint Mary’s Rapids. Or, in French, Sault Ste. Marie. On each side of the rapids is a city called Sault Ste. Marie, one in Ontario, Canada, and the other in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, United States. How does one get past these rapids? With a canal, of course!</p>
<p>But the biggest, scariest barrier to navigation is between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. These are also connected by a river, but the barrier here is no set of rapids. That river is the Niagara River and that barrier is Niagara Falls. No ship is going upstream or downstream across that massive obstacle.</p>
<p>Ships passing between these two lakes avoid the Niagara River entirely. They use the Welland Canal, a north-south cut through the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario. It is an impressive feat of engineering, such a long canal.</p>
<p>But the Welland Canal isn’t the longest canal connecting the Great Lakes to the ocean. That honor goes to the Erie Canal, 351 miles long, which cuts across upstate New York to connect the Seneca River which empties in Lake Erie to the Hudson River which empties in the Atlantic Ocean. The Erie Canal is the longest canal in North America. But it is only the fourth longest canal in the world.</p>
<p>The longest canal in the world is also the longest duration for any canal to have ever been built. It’s called the Grand Canal and it is in China. It connects the Yangtze River and the Yellow River and it runs 1,104 miles. But what’s crazy about this canal is that work began on it in the 5th Century BCE and it was completed in the 17th Century CE. It took over 2000 years to build this monster and it was completed before any of the canals of the Great Lakes was even begun.</p>
<p>Well, I had plenty to say about canals and certainly Canada was mentioned. If anyone has any ideas as to how to work a Dan or a clan into the story, let me know. I hate to waste a good palindrome.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-20003211799143790672023-08-28T12:01:00.000-04:002023-08-28T12:01:00.415-04:00Canadian Eats<p>Part of the fun of going to new places is trying the local foods. As foreign nations go, Canada’s foods are perhaps the least foreign. In many ways, Canada offers similar choices to the U.S. You can find a great variety of good ethnic foods and barbecue and burgers and all the things you might find at home.</p>
<p>Canada has plenty of fast food options. One difference is that their most frequently encountered fast food chain is Tim Horton’s. Where we are staying, there are two Tim Horton’s so close to us (and by the Triangle Inequality, so close to each other) that I could easily walk to each in ten minutes. Tim Horton’s serves coffee and donuts, but also has grilled sandwiches (like grilled cheese or grilled cheese with some sort of lunch meat included.)</p>
<p>But we have tried two uniquely Canadian foods. The first, and perhaps most well known is poutine. Poutine is a dish originally out of Quebec, but has spread through the rest of the country. It’s french fries with brown gravy on top and then cheese curds atop that. That is the classic poutine québécoise. There are many variations on it. Some use a marinara sauce instead of gravy, or mozzarella instead of cheese curd. Others use different gravies. (I’m not sure I have ever needed to use the plural of gravy before.) Or different cheeses. Some even use some other form of potato.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYF5XKvj6r7LW919hd55k0_yIsRqvDKNv_y-fTBN9fnovmCegz2Wq1hIa5Ox2k1-UCGcyoKOYGJxmAFhKoPPHhSOx2C2jg4btZTgynUCofqfvZl47aVO7O-DzpD0OT4pePIXKdERWctmptKEaj7_HzdW_p9TXp5BdrhGN_vam6F2PQojZ3J3VMTluJsss/s3264/Poutine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYF5XKvj6r7LW919hd55k0_yIsRqvDKNv_y-fTBN9fnovmCegz2Wq1hIa5Ox2k1-UCGcyoKOYGJxmAFhKoPPHhSOx2C2jg4btZTgynUCofqfvZl47aVO7O-DzpD0OT4pePIXKdERWctmptKEaj7_HzdW_p9TXp5BdrhGN_vam6F2PQojZ3J3VMTluJsss/s320/Poutine.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Poutine (and forks which are not part of the poutine)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>This really gets us to the philosophical question of the Poutine of Theseus. If Theseus replaces the cheese curd with another cheese, say parmesan, then replaces the gravy with a different sauce, say marinara, and then replaces the french fries with a different potato or a different starch, say pasta, is it really still poutine? Isn’t it now spaghetti? Are spaghetti and poutine just different varieties of one another? And is all of this irrelevant since Theseus wasn’t Canadian?</p>
<p>We tried poutine and found it delicious. I can only imagine how much cholesterol it has. (I could do better than only imagine, I could look it up. But I am happier not knowing the exact amount.) The cheese curd was pleasantly squeaky. The gravy was pleasantly savory. And the fries were pleasantly… um, fry-y is not a word. Let’s just say they were good french fries. As with so many things, when you combine three good ingredients, you get something that transcends the flavor of all three.</p>
<p>Another Canadian victual is beavertails. Before you panic, no beavers were harmed in the making of this blog post. Beavertails are named for their shape, not for having any beaver ingredients.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDTKyA3FyT4LKyZJ7J5QOkeyXiZrxGolLSlmtHfS6ByK9hTmzmZCpDgmW9uvIWhd-YkyhbORfH9M6vwIi0SQS2JPQeuLeJh-phXPd35Karqh1qkfJIw6H-UYAvUW5eQUjjQDJBfXeG1zttc6s9Dt1iOUuoAezZLtF_TV4O-jCM4QIyeCYIJeFEuFmIe9A/s3264/Beavertail%20Image.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDTKyA3FyT4LKyZJ7J5QOkeyXiZrxGolLSlmtHfS6ByK9hTmzmZCpDgmW9uvIWhd-YkyhbORfH9M6vwIi0SQS2JPQeuLeJh-phXPd35Karqh1qkfJIw6H-UYAvUW5eQUjjQDJBfXeG1zttc6s9Dt1iOUuoAezZLtF_TV4O-jCM4QIyeCYIJeFEuFmIe9A/s320/Beavertail%20Image.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Picture of a picture of a beavertail<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>A beavertail is deep fried dough that is similar in shape to, you guessed it, the tail of a beaver. The fried dough is similar in crunch and flavor to a funnel cake, but it is flatter and ovaler (again not a word, but neither is ellipser. So I am at a loss as to how to explain that the shape is more ovular or elliptical. I’ll have to think about how that could be expressed.)</p>
<p>You might think that this fried dough would, by itself, be delightful. It probably would, but I wouldn’t know. Because a beavertail is then covered in toppings. You can have savory beavertails or dessert beavertails. The original beavertail was topped with cinnamon and sugar. Very classic. But now you can have all kinds of frostings, candies, jams, and more.</p>
<p>We tried an Avalanche. This had a cheesecake frosting and Skor toffee bits on it. As you can imagine, it was tasty! (Let’s not talk about the cholesterol in this delicacy either. Or maybe we should. How do the Canadians survive if all their foods are deep fried and chock full of unsaturated fats?)</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhucz72DBoIVC2Z9gVCIxx6aIc3ZsrHjQAmTfx5mvxWjR5l0Q9xTM1mQeaZRlh6eYWUlZ-vU431mSmsFEL1SuUZlQzDRrUhsN3iH1U5o-gKbbV_daOwtwduES2ZswgNQia37opUGuAHLrT-ibHt8aFEzLZcpeTwErMqi9Sf4Oi9SL59FUHqgBMk78vV3jM/s3264/Beavertail%20Eaten.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhucz72DBoIVC2Z9gVCIxx6aIc3ZsrHjQAmTfx5mvxWjR5l0Q9xTM1mQeaZRlh6eYWUlZ-vU431mSmsFEL1SuUZlQzDRrUhsN3iH1U5o-gKbbV_daOwtwduES2ZswgNQia37opUGuAHLrT-ibHt8aFEzLZcpeTwErMqi9Sf4Oi9SL59FUHqgBMk78vV3jM/s320/Beavertail%20Eaten.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Avalanche! (partially eaten)<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>Here’s something that isn’t exactly a Canadian food but a Canadian flavor. Check out this Ben & Jerry’s. Ah! More empty calories!</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSsftSi1Jf28umrbKKqNsb9OJE866VAd70L6PfIsIgLlBTwnMVmBtaNyOeXH17pqOh25eQ1xBRi1FhY2-HUdn8e33Q0wcIHgAdNCcJLrHvz5Z_47Ag6Wi1PPaEhqrndeBx7-nbIxvZ3pGcWjCXg1TI9IdmVk5dQG2bmtdhJzirhPRQnLyXQ0E2CD1bSg/s3264/Oh%20Coneada.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguSsftSi1Jf28umrbKKqNsb9OJE866VAd70L6PfIsIgLlBTwnMVmBtaNyOeXH17pqOh25eQ1xBRi1FhY2-HUdn8e33Q0wcIHgAdNCcJLrHvz5Z_47Ag6Wi1PPaEhqrndeBx7-nbIxvZ3pGcWjCXg1TI9IdmVk5dQG2bmtdhJzirhPRQnLyXQ0E2CD1bSg/s320/Oh%20Coneada.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My home and native dairy dessert<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p>
<p>The only way to work off all those calories is to walk. And the walk signals here have a jaunty head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted attitude, unlike our walk signals with more regular posture. I know that’s not about food, but do you think I could get away with a blog post about walk signals?</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXIUmxdw_a9uhkppapDDLKfat5KuHVgNDm9GjSdWBePHjTbYKpeCEbuLH70JsW2mDKbXTSad5sN_T5wPedkhkbSaLbaFQsGDk-aHu5EVjlt5YPQoFISQyVklJLfnRS0f9s6DFk7Ue8O2768UnPKownbf9dmqF7z5UD-SaV6YvmKOEO6UOM0G7detw4GCM/s3264/Walk%20Man%203.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXIUmxdw_a9uhkppapDDLKfat5KuHVgNDm9GjSdWBePHjTbYKpeCEbuLH70JsW2mDKbXTSad5sN_T5wPedkhkbSaLbaFQsGDk-aHu5EVjlt5YPQoFISQyVklJLfnRS0f9s6DFk7Ue8O2768UnPKownbf9dmqF7z5UD-SaV6YvmKOEO6UOM0G7detw4GCM/s320/Walk%20Man%203.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm walkin' here!<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf5UZXqZy-0i0q_4i7t4z5veZ957yJmsBVWFZATAzlWbVNhwDZI0YLCcqS9uJHrRmmne92P3dw-22kcJj-2S2rGl4UYHEg2vk-CmxcQJ0lGtRiUY3wJD2Yx9621xTbMD7BtirW-Ec4oXKXgH0J-wfyDndXWLamxksB6gcuNrKzLMb6-uQ89e6B9n63tIY/s3264/Walk%20Man%201.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhf5UZXqZy-0i0q_4i7t4z5veZ957yJmsBVWFZATAzlWbVNhwDZI0YLCcqS9uJHrRmmne92P3dw-22kcJj-2S2rGl4UYHEg2vk-CmxcQJ0lGtRiUY3wJD2Yx9621xTbMD7BtirW-Ec4oXKXgH0J-wfyDndXWLamxksB6gcuNrKzLMb6-uQ89e6B9n63tIY/s320/Walk%20Man%201.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Walk this way! Talk this way, ay?<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />
<p>Maybe I could get away with it, because no one could stop me until they had mastered the head-thrown-back, shoulder-lifted walking style of Canada. Of course, I haven’t mastered that yet. Something to work on.</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-315540621740567004.post-42413061505213265362023-08-27T17:09:00.002-04:002023-08-27T17:09:58.547-04:00Sweet Sorrow? Seriously?<p>William Shakespeare is often revered for having written plays that are telling in all times, not just his own. But when Juliet says, “Parting is such sweet sorrow” in Act Two of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, I have to wonder if maybe the Bard missed the mark on this one. I get the sorrow, but sweet? Where do you detect sweetness, Will?</p>
<p>I say this finally writing the blog post I have not been writing. Have you ever had a project that you knew you had to do, but you had no great desire to do it. So you found other projects, maybe of lesser importance, so you could work on those, never getting around to the one hanging over your head. Of course, when you eventually finish the one you must do, it is a big sense of relief, but you can’t bring yourself to do it until you just do it. (Not in a Nike way, just in a resigned-to-your-fate way.)</p>
<p>For example, when each new semester approaches, I have to set up the learning management system. This is the computer portal where students get the videos and problems. This set up is tedious in the extreme. I set due dates and load videos and write the syllabus which is mostly standardized, so there is little interesting about it to me. (Probably none too interesting to my students either. I write an amazing syllabus, but no one is giving Pulitzer Prizes for best syllabus.)</p>
<p>So instead I say to myself, “I could write a better problem for the midterm!” (The midterm is two months away, but writing problems is interesting.) I find things that I do need to do, but not really right now, so I can avoid the right now course set up that is so dry.</p>
<p>That’s what I have been doing as a blogger of late. There is a blog post in me that wants to come out. But I also don’t want to think about it, so I have been writing other posts so as to not write this one. I can’t not write it forever. (In truth, I could not write it forever. It’s not like I’m being paid to do this and there are job requirements. But it does feel dishonest not to write it forever.)</p>
<p>This past Monday was momentous; a change of season in the life of a man (this particular man) if you will allow the metaphor. We dropped off Syarra at Syracuse University. Our youngest child is now no longer a child. She’s off to pursue her adulthood, to get an education, to take steps in the life that is outside of our home.</p>
<p>I’m not the first parent to go through this. I’m probably not even the most verbally fluent parent to go through this. What can I say that hasn’t been said? My own experience of it.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYrXCdTrLHkSeakqqF-eexbAupGpX8lV7PmF3KRxraQSAOD3Em38T2FDQEJ_S2wxwXR9q3qkcEPdyBZ-wZiA_keoTxjlCrSLG3oQwOvcxhfsAFoCGWym3ZsRN20AWldo-d1wfw6SauYqSCrZsmjPbF5n5BhJfTKeu3OmQz4kUKhyQLY22AAVfwbyDPbzQ/s3264/Dorm%20Room%20Bare.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYrXCdTrLHkSeakqqF-eexbAupGpX8lV7PmF3KRxraQSAOD3Em38T2FDQEJ_S2wxwXR9q3qkcEPdyBZ-wZiA_keoTxjlCrSLG3oQwOvcxhfsAFoCGWym3ZsRN20AWldo-d1wfw6SauYqSCrZsmjPbF5n5BhJfTKeu3OmQz4kUKhyQLY22AAVfwbyDPbzQ/s320/Dorm%20Room%20Bare.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Barren dorm<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br />Monday itself was good. I was upbeat, so excited for Syarra. What an adventure? A new dorm room. New friends to be made. So many activities to participate in. We got to Syracuse. She checked into the dorm. We brought her stuff upstairs and helped her unpack. We gazed at the view out of her window. (It was grassy, but it is not the quad. Not all that is grass on campus is a quad. Or so I am told.) We bought some supplies and ate lunch. And then we left her.</p><p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjifF7QchXLonHUZkMLMl-bYaDl79_XSJeJ-V1G3fdj_b1fRrsprLS2yjFvYPgzCm7a3lxuYXN-pNFt5YutVravBlhYV1E6QOi3wZYHf2hGW0GkBc9XyeKC6_IGwyzZ5X1a466bzIBiXjy5iuCaXjc4FXDvQFzjIj9i_elFm1Q9ZiKd5EQ4btAssXzbras/s3264/Dorm%20Room%20Set%20Up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjifF7QchXLonHUZkMLMl-bYaDl79_XSJeJ-V1G3fdj_b1fRrsprLS2yjFvYPgzCm7a3lxuYXN-pNFt5YutVravBlhYV1E6QOi3wZYHf2hGW0GkBc9XyeKC6_IGwyzZ5X1a466bzIBiXjy5iuCaXjc4FXDvQFzjIj9i_elFm1Q9ZiKd5EQ4btAssXzbras/s320/Dorm%20Room%20Set%20Up.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not barren dorm<br /></td></tr></tbody></table>There were no tears, no long clinging hugs. She was ready to go and to meet people. We were ready to let her be ready.</p>
<p>For me, Sunday night was the hard part. Looking at my daughter, knowing it was the last night of her just being a kid. For sixteen years, she had been ours, depending on us, bringing home love and tears and frustrations and laughter. This is my culinary adventure partner. (We love to try new things when we cook together.) This is my little mind reader. (When she was very young, she told us this was her superpower.) This was a face I could look at forever and enjoy seeing it. And I knew that Sunday night, it was the last of this.</p>
<p>Of course I will see her again. But she won’t be just a kid. She won’t be living with us. She will be growing in all kinds of ways and Alrica and I will find out who she is becoming from the sidelines now.</p>
<p>Really, I’m lucky. Syarra gave me a trial run. She spent her senior year abroad in Sarajevo. I didn’t get to be with her for ten months straight. But even then, I knew when she did return, she was still my child, my kid. Next time I see her (which will be a lot less than ten months) she will still be my child, just not my kid. She will be my young woman. And I will be proud.</p>
<p>I can hardly wait to find out who she becomes. I can hardly wait to find out what kinds of friends she makes, what clubs she joins, what classes she loves and hates, what stresses her out and what makes her smile. This is a huge adventure for her. I couldn’t be happier for her to sally forth into her own future. Happier for her.</p>
<p>This is also the launch of a huge adventure for Alrica and me. We have nothing tying us to any one place. We are living a completely nonstandard lifestyle. We might love it, we might hate it. But we’ll find out. We are using this new freedom our own way.</p>
<p>So I guess it’s not all sorrow. There is a lot of wonder, imagination, and hopeful anxiety mixed in with it. Parting is certainly sorrowful, plenty of it, but, I hate to admit, it's also a little bit sweet. Damn it! The Bard was right again. That guy!</p>Erich Goldsteinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11359066086438209418noreply@blogger.com0