Apparently, the press will have Dale to keep kicking around.
All posts by Steve Stern
More Lady Gaga this time with Mr. C. Walkin
Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox Protest Schools Ruling
I really just want to post this article from the New York Times – or, as Beth keeps telling me. The Times – because the picture is so great. It just looks like a still from a very funny part of a Woody Allen movie.
It is a richer and more complicated article than I am going to summarize but, basically, the European Orthodox Jews – boy, I hate using Jew or Jews: I was brought up to use Jewish because Jew was derogatory – don't want their daughters going to school with the daughters of Arab and North African Orthodox Jews. The Israeli Supreme Court ruled that that was racism and this is a protest against that ruling.
Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday, Happy Birthday to me.
Yesterday was my 70th Birthday. It is a bigger deal than I expected. Michele suggested that we celebrate -partially – by weeding. It was a great Idea.
Part of the rebuilding of the Portola Valley Town Hall was digging up the pipe and re-naturalizing part of a creek that used to flow through the Town Hall area – only sort of re-naturalizing because, here, the creek was probably a flood plain. The new creek fragment has been planted with natives by Acterra a self-described Environmental education and action nonprofit.
The new plants are thriving but so are the invasive non-natives. The good thing about natives is that the native bugs1 like them. In the past, I would have thought that was a bad thing, but now that I am over 70 – and wiser – I realize that it is a good thing. Bigger bugs and birds like the little bugs and need them to survive. Bugs eating plants is the first step of the food chain.
Because bugs haven't yet adapted to and don't eat – in general – non-native plants, a great looking South African bulb like Crinum macowanii might as well be plastic. They look great but are not part of the food chain.
So we spent a couple of hours, under Acterra's tutelage, weeding. It turns out to be a great way to spend a couple of hours on a birthday: getting rid of those things that – while they may look good – don't add to our lives. Sort of like taking stock….with action points. And, when we were finished, the creek looked like we hadn't been there.
1 bugs as in insects, not bugs in the more limited sense of beetles only.
The wok and the stone.
The two cooking devices we most use are a steel Chinese wok and a pizza stone. Part of the reason is that, because the house is so small, we have little room to put anything. And both the wok and the stone are big, so they are always out. Sort of out, the pizza stone lives in the oven.
They are both very versatile. Tonight, Michele stirred-fried zucchini with garlic and olive oil. It was a great, easy way to cook the zucchs and tasted very Italian with left over pulled pork from yesterday's barbecue. Yesterday, she roasted cut up potatoes on the stone – easy and like very small baked potatoes with lots of skin. So, they are available and versatile; but we have also habituated on them. Often, they are the answer and we have to go out looking for the question.
All that makes me wonder how much of my life is habituated. I suspect it is a huge amount. When I step out of my everyday life – say, to go for a weekend in the Seven Trough Range – time seems to expand. While each day seems to whiz along – at the end of each day, looking back – each day seems to have been longer, more filled.
Last weekend, my daughter was talking about how long summer already seems to her daughter.
My theory has always been that the speed in which time seems to pass is in direct proportion to how long we have been alive. When we were five, a year was 20% of our life and it seemed very, very long. At 40, that same year is 2.5% of our life and it goes quickly. Now, I am not so sure.
Maybe time seems to go faster as we get older because so much of what we are doing, is what we have already done. Over and over. Maybe, if that year were filled with as many new experiences as it is for my grand-daughter, it would seem to take as long.