With the fourth Mortenson family reunion happening in early August, we decided to reprise the trip we took in summer of 1977. That time, we left from Boulder (where we’d spent 6 months with brother Jon and friends), and headed to the Hoover Dam and then north up the West Coast and back to Maryland via the Trans–Canadian highway and the NY Finger Lakes. Quite the trip in the Ford Econoline delivery van my father gave us and Charlie insulated. Here we are in Minnesota visiting the Pieri cousins (dogs!!)
I’m definitely drawn to dramas, some more substantial than others.
- Nurse Jackie 7 seasons, great writing
- Rosewood light fare w/ medical & legal sleuthing
- The Affair four people intertwined
- Chicago Med young ER & psych interns
- Shut Eye scams alongside gypsie
- Vikings back & forth to Britain, France
- This is Us 2 parents, 3 kids and then adults
- Blacklist black ops for most wanted
- Homeland “intelligence” in counter-terrorism
- the Americans
- Banshee
- the Blacklist
- the Bridge (and the original Danish production (Broen/Bron), and the UK/France production (The Tunnel)
- Girls
- the Good Wife
- the Mentalist
- Perception
- Rake (and several seasons of the Australian production)
- Resurrection
- Revenge
- Scandal
- True Detectives
- the Vikings
Shows I started watching but stopped keeping up with at some point:
- the Following
- Hannibal
- the Red Road
I use this website to help me keep track of prime-time shows: lists of episodes and dates shown, links to pages with main characters, trailers for many of the episodes.
We Americans have got it all wrong! Or so says an American living in Italy for decades. I read the article, shared it with my fellow cook (my son Alex), and then heard the interview today on the Splendid Table radio show. So tonight, we’re making Bolognese ragu, with NO TOMATOES, NO GARLIC, but some chicken livers added to the ground beef! Whoa!
It’s fascinating to think how these regional recipes developed over centuries in Italy and then changed after arriving here in the States and our mass American culture.
I’m looking forward to having tortellini and/or angel hair pasta in broth, never with sauce. Yes, ma’am!
In River Bow, Ann Goethe observes life on that hilly spit into the New River. Maxine Kumin loves her “pure unapologetic lyricism where “we can stumble upon the hysteria of turkey mothers, the/ mindless scatter of their stub-winged chirping babes” or “watch a swoop of bats embroider/ fireflies through the swarthy air of delight.”
Ann’s words take me back to that Eggleston, Virginia land and the people who live on it, including my sister-in-law up the hill and Ann’s other neighbors and friends. Kathy (who took the cover photo of the palisades across from Ann’s house) and my brother Harry built a life on the hill above and back from Ann. They watched the New River from above. Ann has it just below her, below the wild southwest side of the spit, steep and tall. But the river is in plain view on the larger, lazier side facing the palisades, a long swath of land along the banks, a perfect place for a big garden and an inviting beach. Harry and Kathy gladly shared their land with us, as did Ann and other friends, every year on our way north to Maryland.
One of Ann’s poems brings me to my mother, who also loved visiting those New River people. I miss them all, those still walking the forest paths looking for mushrooms and those who have passed on but are still near us somehow. I think my brother Harry had our mother’s hands, and maybe Tom does, too? Mom said they were her father’s, our grandfather’s, the first Harry’s…
Reincarnation
My hands have become
my grandmother’s.
This New Yorker blog answers many questions: Why do BuzzFeed and Upworthy posts jam my Facebook walls? And what makes me decide to read and share some of them? Years ago, a Wharton School researcher started looking at the Wall Street Journal‘s most shared lists; now he looks at Facebook and other social media. His answers span the millenia. Even lowly personal bloggers like me might want to pay attention.
In this 2009 Ted Talk, x-ray artist Nick Veasey reveals his tools: massive equipment, lead doors, dead people (because he doesn’t want to kill people with his art!) I love his work in nature, but I also like seeing inside everyday objects, like this oven and cupboard, side-by-side. And now that I know the people in his photos are cadavers or skeletons, I am curious to see him placing the cadaver in one seat and then the next to simulate many people on a bus, for example. But that would also be creepy…
Once again, alarmingly high levels of toxic air pollution blanket cities in China. “The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the city’s natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises.” I wonder if the many Chinese tourists visiting Tiananmen Square have these bright facsimiles in their home towns and cities, also quite polluted.
This New Zealand Herald article points to one major source of this acrid darkness: “Hebei, the country’s biggest steel producer, is home to as many as seven of its 10 most polluted cities, Xinhua (news agency) said.” Other sources are coal-burning boilers and heavily polluting vehicles.
The most dangerous effect of China’s poor air quality comes from extremely fine particulate matter PM2.5. “Scientific studies have linked increases in daily PM2.5 exposure with increased respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions, emergency department visits and deaths. Studies also suggest that long term exposure to fine particulate matter may be associated with increased rates of chronic bronchitis, reduced lung function and increased mortality from lung cancer and heart disease.”
Many think back to London’s “…Great Smog of 1952 [which] prompted Britain’s 1956 Clean Air Act.” Compare then in the UK to now in China, in this Foreign Policy slideshow. Quite the fashion statement? Unfortunately, none of those masks could stop the PM2.5 from wreaking its havoc.
Five television reviewers chose 26 series, and I am already watching:
The Americans, the Bridge, Call the Midwife, Elementary, the Good Wife, Hannibal, Rectify, Scandal, Top of the Lake
…and want to watch:
Banshee, Borgen, Broadchurch, Orange is the New Black, Orphan Black, the Vikings…and more!
#33 in this article, for example, from the Alps: une tartiflette, made with steaming cubed potatoes, browned onion and bacon (or thicker lardons), bound together with creamy reblochon cheese and dry white wine. Oh la la. Anthony Bourdain’s recipe! “Here’s more evidence that you can never have too much cheese, bacon, or starch.” 
Susie's Garden 