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In the Rant Room

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Ranting Is Almost Inherent in the Act of Blogging

Ranting Is Almost Inherent in the Act of Blogging

Although I didn’t know it at the time, “Rant Room” is an anagram for “Tarnmoor.” But then, so are “Man Rotor,” “Roman Rot,” “A Mr No Ort,” and “Rat Moron”; so perhaps it’s not worth reading too much into this. Looking back at some of my older postings, particularly during election years (of which this is one), I see that I have frequently indulged in knee-jerk reactions of outrage.

Outrage is so much a part of our national political scene. There is a whole spectrum of the media that feeds on outrage and slings it back magnified and undeodorized. One result is that millions of Americans have lost the ability to communicate with one another, except through the use of buzzwords and loaded talking points. Just look at this partial list of hot buttons (in no particular ordure) that have been used to poison the national debate:

Abortion. Benghazi. Socialism. Prayer. Voter ID. Unwed Mothers. Sharia. Bible. Gay Marriage. Rape. Makers. Takers. One Percent. Tea Party. Cliven Bundy. Racism. Climate Change. Evolution. Ownership. Fox News. Obama. Obamacare. Solar Power. Creationism. Nanny State. Guns. Marijuana. Welfare. Immigration. Terrorists. Hillary. Taxes. Death Panels. Fluoridation. LGBT. Sovereign Citizen.

This is a highly partial list, but it is enough to fuel years of debate and cripple the nation.

I may find myself writing about some of the above, but not, I hope, out of outrage. Please, Lord, let me shed light rather than darkness in the places where I walk.

 

It’s the Miracle Food!!!

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You Must Eat Three Pounds of Kale a Day to Thrive

You Must Eat Seven Pounds of Kale a Day in Order to Survive!

Okay, so I lied, both in the title of this posting and the caption to the photo above. I’m sure kale is as good for you as any number of other greens which have tended to be ignored. And, to my mind, kale is by no means the tastiest of the bunch. If I had my druthers, I would select Swiss chard which I use in most of my soup recipes. It’s not as bitter as kale, and probably just as good.

In fact, I used NutritionData.Com to do a comparative analysis of 1 cup of cooked, boiled, drained, without salt kale and Swiss chard. Click on either of these and you will learn more than you ever needed or wanted to know. The important thing to remember is this: Kale is not a miracle food, but like all greens is good for you.

Kale is now riding the high horse of newspaper-sanctioned prosperity, until such time as the media discovers that it causes cancer, beri-beri, pellagra, dengue, and leprosy. In the meantime, I suppose you could continue to eat your seven pounds of kale daily, not neglecting all the other vitamins and minerals your body needs to function.

I am sure that, any day now, I will see kale capsules available on the nutritional supplements shelf of your local pharmacy. Each 1,000 MG capsule will run you $3.95; and you should take three a day, one with each meal. Or you’ll be able to get kale oil. Feel free to rub it all over your skin and see how it changes your coloration to dark green. And how healthy is that?

 

 

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Iceland

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Land of Fire, Ice—and Sagas

Land of Fire, Ice—and Sagas

I was so very impressed by Czeslaw Milosz’s book Milosz’s ABC’s. There, in the form of a brief and alphabetically-ordered personal encyclopedia, was the story of the life of a Nobel Prize winning poet, of the people, places, and things that meant the most to him. Because his origins were so far away (Lithuania and Poland) and so long ago (1920s and 1930s), there were relatively few entries that resonated personally with me. Except it was sad to see so many fascinating people who, unknown today, died during the war under unknown circumstances.

This blog entry is my own humble attempt to imitate a writer whom I have read on and off for thirty years without having sated my curiosity. Consequently, over the next few months, you will see a number of postings under the heading “Tarnmoor’s ABCs” that will attempt to do for my life what Milosz accomplished for his. I don’t guarantee that I will use up all 26 letters of the alphabet, but I’ll do my best. Today, we’re at the letter “I”:

I have been to Iceland twice, first in 2001 and then in 2013, both times by myself. (The first time, Martine didn’t want to go; the second time, she couldn’t.) During the two trips, I traveled around almost the entire circumference of the island, and through the interior on the Kjölur route, where we traveled on a long dirt road and forded several rivers between Geysir and Akureyri. Would I go again? Yes, in a heartbeat, but I’d like to go with someone so that we could rent a car and see some of the lush countryside off the main routes.

What led me to Iceland was, not surprisingly for a bookworm like me, was reading the Icelandic sagas. In the 13th century AD, there was no better literature being written anywhere in Europe. Other than a handful of Arthurian legends and a few devotional books, there just was no competition to the “Big Five” Sagas of Icelanders, namely: Njals Saga, Grettir’s Saga, Egils Saga, the Laxdaela Saga, and the Eyrbyggja Saga. I have read all five at least twice; the Njals Saga, the greatest of them all, at least three or four times. The last time I went, I visited two museums dedicated to individual sagas, in Hvõlsvollur (Njals Saga) and in Borgarnes (Egils Saga).

Both times, I did all my traveling by bus. Occasionally I took tours when I had to. Otherwise, I used the public Stræto and Sterna buses. It isn’t terribly difficult, as all bus drivers and just about everyone else under the age of 70 in Iceland speaks English. This is a function not only of education, but of the prevalence of English and American television programming.

At least once a day, I would have delicious fish dinners. At the majority of restaurants where I dined, I was no farther than a couple hundred feet from the fishing boats that had just brought in their catch. Until I went to Iceland, I had no idea of what fresh fish really tasted like. Now I do. I would just order the fish special of the day, even if I never heard of that fish species before. It was always scrumptious, whether it was arctic char, salt water catfish, and most especially my favorite—cod. In Southern California, I am allergic to shrimp and lobster. In the cold waters off Iceland, I had no allergy problems.

Until global warming becomes more prevalent, the tourist season in Iceland is a necessarily short one, lasting only from June to August. Already, at the end of August, many tourist facilities are converted back to school facilities and visiting hours are slashed. People start thinking about the darkness of winter. Toward the end of June, the sun never entirely sets. It is up when you go to bed, and up when you awake. I thought I would not be able to sleep under those conditions: If I tire myself out, which I frequently did, there was no problem.

I would love to fly back to Reykjavík with a Kindle loaded with Icelandic sagas.

 

 

A Plague on Both Your Houses!

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Who Was That Masked Man?

Who Was That Masked Man?

There are so many world conflicts today in which my natural response is negative toward all sides. The Ukraine conflict is one such example. One could be for either of two kleptocracies: Both Russia and Ukraine will do nothing in particular to improve the lives of their adherents. Because the people who live there know this, I have a suspicion that the reason so many of the combatants are masked is that, most likely, the civilian protesters are supported by Russian spetznaz special forces troops who don’t want to break their cover. And why shouldn’t Ukraine do the same? They probably do.

I am in a quandary because I like both the Russian and Ukrainian people. Their governments just happen to suck. My main reason for liking Russia, other than their great literature, is that Pussy Riot performer Nadezhda Tolokonnikova (shown below) is, to my mind, is one of the most beautiful brunettes who have ever lived. (Neither Nadezhda nor I think particularly much of Vladimir Putin.)

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Nadezhda Tolokonnikova

Seriously, though, I think Russia is more in the wrong on this issue than Ukraine. Probably the best thing would be for both sides to come to some agreement without getting the whole world’s panties in a bunch.

 

Solitude Is Essential

J. S. Mill

J. S. Mill

A population may be too crowded, though all be amply supplied with food and raiment. It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. A world from which solitude is extirpated, is a very poor ideal. Solitude, in the sense of being often alone, is essential to any depth of meditation or of character; and solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur, is the cradle of thoughts and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society could ill do without. Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed in the name of improved agriculture. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger, but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it.—John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy

Tarnmoor’s ABCs: Honoré de Balzac

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Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)

I don’t even remember what it was that led to me read Honoré de Balzac’s Père Goriot around 1970. It was a Penguin paperback with a cover illustration of the last chapter’s funeral scene at Père Lachaise cemetery in muted colors. The scene, quoted below, showed the book’s young hero Eugène de Rastignac, poor scion of a good family, seeing the virtually unattended obsequies of an old man, who, like King Lear, gave everything to his daughters. Except there was no Cordelia in this tale:

But just as the coffin was put in the hearse, two empty carriages, with the armorial bearings of the Comte de Restaud and the Baron de Nucingen, arrived and followed in the procession to Père-Lachaise. At six o’clock Goriot’s coffin was lowered into the grave, his daughters’’ servants standing round the while. The ecclesiastic recited the short prayer that the students could afford to pay for, and then both priest and lackeys disappeared at once. The two grave diggers flung in several spadefuls of earth, and then stopped and asked Rastignac for their fee. Eugène felt in vain in his pocket, and was obliged to borrow five francs of Christophe. This thing, so trifling in itself, gave Rastignac a terrible pang of distress. It was growing dusk, the damp twilight fretted his nerves; he gazed down into the grave and the tears he shed were drawn from him by the sacred emotion, a single-hearted sorrow. When such tears fall on earth, their radiance reaches heaven. And with that tear that fell on Father Goriot’s grave, Eugène Rastignac’s youth ended. He folded his arms and gazed at the clouded sky; and Christophe, after a glance at him, turned and went—Rastignac was left alone.

He went a few paces further, to the highest point of the cemetery, and looked out over Paris and the windings of the Seine; the lamps were beginning to shine on either side of the river. His eyes turned almost eagerly to the space between the column of the Place Vendome and the cupola of the Invalides; there lay the shining world that he had wished to reach. He glanced over that humming hive, seeming to draw a foretaste of its honey, and said magniloquently:

“Henceforth there is war between us.”

And by way of throwing down the glove to Society, Rastignac went to dine with Mme. de Nucingen.

At the time, I was only about 25 years old myself, and I felt myself, like de Rastignac, to be a creature of destiny. The years have shown that I was deluding myself, but that wasn’t Balzac’s fault.

Over the years, Balzac has continued to cast his spell on me. By now, I have read virtually everything Balzac published under his own name, as well as two works written under the pseudonym Horace de Saint-Aubin. I am a member of a reading group dedicated to Balzac under Yahoo!—a group which at one time read and discussed all of the author’s books over a period of several years.

Interestingly, Balzac is a rare example of a great writer who is not a consistently good writer. He was remarkably slapdash about composing and editing his works, yet he always entranced the reader by the breadth of his imagination which, to this day, has never been approached by any other writer, not even Marcel Proust. He is like a candle burning at both ends, a creature of soaring ambition, poor spending habits, and a remarkable understanding of how people interact in what is a material world. At his worst, he is a tedious dimestore philosopher in Seraphita and the second half of Louis Lambert.

Ah, but at his best, he is sublime. Even when all the pieces don’t add up, the following works are among the most powerful works ever penned:

  • The Wild Ass’s Skin (1831)
  • Colonel Chabert (1832)
  • Père Goriot (1835), his masterpiece
  • Lost Illusions (1843)
  • Cousin Bette (1846)
  • Cousin Pons (1847)
  • A Harlot High and Low (1847)

If you have a Kindle or other e-reading device, you can pick up Balzac’s complete work, translated into English, for free or for mere pennies. And be sure to visit La Comédie Humaine by Balzac, which was put together by members of the Yahoo! Balzac group, and which includes dozens of reviews and summaries written by me and others.

 

Beigli

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Hungarian Ground Walnut and Poppy Seed Rolls (Beigli)

Hungarian Ground Walnut and Poppy Seed Rolls (Beigli)

Today was a combined Spring Festival and Mother’s Day Celebration at the San Fernando Grace Hungarian Reformed Church in Reseda.Martine and I always show up the first Sunday in May to help relieve the parishioners of their excellent home cooked food. Available was gulyás leves (better known as Hungarian Goulash, actually a beef and vegetable soup), Hungarian kolbasz sausage with red cabbage, barbecued pork (laci pecsenye), and langos (a fried bread concoction that Hungarians go gaga over). But the starring attraction were the many varieties of pastries, especially a type of custardy cheesecake not quite as sweet as the deli variety, and, of course, beigli.

When I was a kid in Cleveland, it was the beigli with ground walnut that I most particularly remembered. My Mom made it at least once a week, together with the ground poppy seed variety which I did not like nearly as much Although Martine made major inroads on the pastry table, including several varieties to take home, for the first time I passed up sampling any. I know what it tastes like. I love it. But I have Type 2 Diabetes and am fighting a difficult battle.

Still, we had a good time, watching a recitation, singing, and dancing presentation on the subject of Mother’s Day. Then, the local dancing master, Tibor, showed couples how to dance the csardás, the most famous of the Magyar folk dances.

Finally, there was a literary event in which the author of a book on the 1956 Hungarian Revolution had two reciters read passages about how he fled Budapest to Yugoslavia and finally settled in the United States. I didn’t understand very much, as my Hungarian is quite rudimentary, and both the book and the recitation were mostly above my head. Still, it’s good for me to reacquaint myself with my native tongue, however much I stumble my way through it.

White People Twisting in the Wind

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To the Right and to the Left

To the Right and to the Left

Go outside and look around you at the people passing by. Are they all white? If so, you must be in a gated community somewhere. We all know for a fact that the demographic of the American conservative tends heavily toward the white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, and elderly. But, according to a recent article in The Nation entitled “The Unbearable Whiteness of the American Left,” American Progressives are just as far removed demographically from the people whose interests they profess to serve. The tents at either end of the American political spectrum are nowhere near as big as they should be. Wherever the voters are congregating, it is nowhere near either of the two poles.

If voters of different races and ethnicities are disgusted by being ignored, that could result in an election where the zealots are in charge, and the middle stays home. What would be an even more desirable outcome is for the two major political parties to either morph into something other than what they are, or to form new parties. Initially, these new parties would suffer losses at the polls, but eventually, the theory is that they would draw members from the two now ideologically bankrupt major parties.

The article in The Nation makes an interesting point about all-white panels making decisions affecting non-whites: “In the United States, campaigns for social justice are always ‘a racial thing.’ That doesn’t mean they might not be about other ‘things,’ too. Indeed, they invariably are. Race does not exist in a vacuum. But in a country that has never considered equality beyond its most abstract iterations and that has practiced slavery far longer than freedom, race is never entirely absent.”

If African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, and others are excluded from the political process, the political process will become increasingly remote from the concerns of most Americans. When that happens, change can become painful and violent, as it did during the urban riots of the 1960s. I’m afraid we still haven’t learned the lesson, and that we will suffer for it.

 

 

 

 

Destroying the Amazon for Cash

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Illegal Mining Machinery To Be Wrecked by the Peruvians

Illegal Mining Machinery To Be Wrecked by the Peruvians

When we think of the Amazon being destroyed by greedy miners, we usually point the finger of blame at the governments involved. What I was surprised to hear is that illegal mining is a major problem in the jungles of Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru—to the extent that the three countries have met for a conference in Quito, Ecuador, to deal with the problem. Just to give you an idea of the extent of the problem, Peru This Week has come out strong against the practice:

Illegal mining and has proven itself to be one of the dirtiest businesses in Peru. It is estimated to have bigger earning than drug-dealing, placing itself as the biggest illegal trade in the country. For some, it is the only available means of survival, but for others it is only about the money. Exploitation of natural resources are rapidly increasing in the Amazon rainforest and Andean highlands; government officials have not done much to stop the extraction of these minerals, and local authorities are not doing enough to stop the people who now rule these resourceful lands. Special military squads have now started to confiscate mining equipment. The miners have responded with force.

During the last months there have been protests, conducted by the illegal miners, towards the government. The miners are asking the government to stop forces from confiscating their illegal mining camps. Protesters have violently targeted police forces in large protests all around the country’s main cities. Many police officers have been severely injured yet the violence hasn’t stopped.

How is this possible? Illegal mining in many cases is run by organized crime. This means that there are powerful people behind the miners making big profits. The Presidency of the Council of Ministers representative, Daniel Uresti, states that this business moves over 1 billion dollars per year, and that illegal mining is bonded with organized crime. With this amount of money at risk, illegal miners are going to do whatever it takes stop the government from taking down mining camps, even if that includes violence like the one seen on the protests. Analysts say that long term consequences for illegal mining can reach lead to the union of the two most feared organizations in Peru, the deadly drug cartel and the growing terrorist groups. If Peru lets illegal mining grow, it will only be time until an escalation of events leads the country into more conflict.

When the illegal miners are strong enough to protest openly against the government they are robbing, it’s clearly time to shut them down. In Peru, a nationwide ban against illegal mining has been in effect since April 19, and the Peruvian army is now moving to confiscate and wreck the equipment that is being used.

We all breathe the air that comes from the headwaters of the Amazon. My feeling is that the United Nations should also get involved.

Theta, Goddess of Television

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What Happened to the Promise?

What Happened to the Promise?

Back in the 1970s, the first truly great television channel was born. It was called the Z Channel, and it was available only through Theta Cable Television, a subsidiary of TelePrompTer Corporation. Here was a channel made for film freaks such as myself. I could watch not only popular films, but film classics, including French, Italian, and Japanese classics with subtitles.

The trucks belonging to Theta Cable bore the following logo, of which I could find only this very imperfect example on the Internet:

Theta, Goddess of Television

Theta, Goddess of Television

The Z Channel ended badly with a murder/suicide when program director Jerry Harvey shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself.

Around then, the Z Channel segued into the Sports Channel, which interrupted their movies with Stanley Cub playoffs. I remember calling my cable provider and demanding to cancel the hockey channel. They knew what I was talking about.

There were other hopeful beginnings, such as Headline News, CNN, Bravo, TNT, and even MTV at the beginning. Now the only cable channel of any worth is Turner Classic Movies (TCM), which still has no advertising, and which shows films uncut and unscanned (i.e., letterbox versions). As far as I am concerned, the rest is mostly sports (way, way too much sports), right wing news, and celebrity gossip. I would be in heaven if all that mattered to me were Kim Kardashian’s ass and how the Cubs are faring against the Hornets. Oh, yes, and Benghazi!

Cable television was once a land of promise. Then, I suppose, Eve ate the apple; and we were all drummed out of paradise.