GREEN PAPAYA AND JELLYFISH SALAD

There are wonderful delights of cuisine in other cultures. Japanese food presents some very interesting challenges to my American palate. Had anyone told me I would love a cold salad prepared from jellyfish and green papaya, I would have seen it as evidence that they were daft or just didn't know me!

However, the truth is, it is extremely tasty. Apparently the jellyfish is dried and can me prepared with any number of vegetables and flavorings. One recipe, a bit more elaborate than some, can be read here.

It would seem that there is no end to the combination of ingredients that can be added to the jellyfish. The search for new tastes in food is, luckily, one that goes on throughout your lifetime.

LACK OF RECTITUDE

David Brooks wrote an op-ed column in the NY Times titled In Search of Dignity. How timely since those we would assume to be the standard bearers of such behavior, a model for our children, have failed to offer rectitude to us. First there were the scandals of the clergy, especially heavy with the Catholic priests and those sworn to celibacy.

Until recently, before camera surveillance, phone cameras and home videos there was little proof when police broke laws. In the 50s in Chicago, it was a rule not to tell police to watch your house when you were away because it would have been burglarized with certainty by your return.

Clearly, in my long lifetime, politicians have made promises with their fingers crossed behind their backs. While there are probably some tucked away somewhere who actually can be trusted, they are the ones who frequently are not for reasons totally obscure to me. GB Bush was voted in with no perceivable record to indicate he cold handle the job (which he certainly proved for eight years he could not) because he was a regular guy who would drink a beer with you in the back yard barbecue. He was uncouth, rude, lied, and set an abysmal model for our youth.

Can we trust large corporations, money managers, bankers, mortgage lenders, marketers, or anyone as a group these days? Hardly! There are rotten apples everywhere. Our 'civilized' world has become a new kind of dangerous jungle.

LEGALIZING MARIJUANA

Oregon is also known for people who grow lots of potent pot plants. There is a push to legalize marijuana and tax it like liquor. Obviously there is resistance to the idea from many for their own personal and selfish reasons. Naturally the cartels would put up most resistance. Like the Mafia, they will have to find a new business to threaten the population with their fearsome tactics. As fast as our government agents catch those who are bringing and selling it, the prisons get filled and more fill in just as the level of water fills when you take your hand out.

You can read the article here.

I am wholly in favor. People who want to smoke are doing it right how. There are enough who resist alcohol though it is legal and there will be those who will resist weed if it becomes legal. If Oregon does this and is able to show that revenue from taxes raises the quality of life with medical care, education and rebuilding infrastructure...you can bet that other states will greedily follow.

INTERESTING WORDS AS CONCEPTS CHANGE

Words often suggest their own meaning but there are many that are 'surprisers'. Defenestrate has always sounded a bit ominous to me. Since it uses fenestra (French for window) it yielded a euphemism for getting rid of: throwing out the window, or another commonly used today, 'throwing someone under the bus'. Few people today would use it, sort of like deflorate, a word most people have never heard in today's world. However, once there was a concept of the 'flower of virginity'. (This preceded the invention and common use of Tampons.)

Thralldom was a psychiatric term one heard a few generations ago. It implied a virgin being bound, psychologically enthralled, to the man who claimed her virginity (deflowered her). It would be hardly likely that any mental health professionals today remember the term or have learned it...unless they are still alive with a working brain and over 80!

Scientists identified 10,000 year old words used today. Thus the words 'I', 'Who', 'We', 'Thou', 'Two', 'Three' and 'Five' registered little change. Words that will most likely disappear due to their rapid evolution are: 'dirty', 'squeeze', 'bad', 'because', 'guts', 'push' (verb), 'smell' (verb), 'stab', 'stick' (noun), 'turn' (verb), 'wipe'.

In 10,000 more years, I wonder if we will have to speak words or whether we will have something rigged up to our brains that does our talking for us!

MORE BODY MAINTENANCE

As I read romance novels set in England,1000 A.D., I imagine body odor and ,bad breath without all our modern conveniences. Since there were no dentists and cavities couldn't be filled, how romantic and for how long could kissing have remained pleasant? Given long hours of darkness and poor quality of lighting, no sun glasses, no cataract surgery, no anti-biotics, using the shortest of possible lists, it is no surprise that things moved along far more slowly than today when we have use of the whole day, a longer life building on knowledge, longevity to make use of it, and developed technologies helping to build on everything.

Apparently it is not unusual for some of us, with time, to develop a film on the back of lenses in cataract surgery. The sensation is somewhat like walking in a continuously darkening tunnel, making life literally a twilight zone. But the help, I'm told is simple. A doctor's office appointment, have the film lasered off (only one eye per session in our CYA world) and you can see without the haze again. You never need to have it repeated, of which there are two kinds, dry and wet. The Gods randomly chose the best for me, the dry. A piece of paper with a black dot in the middle of a black grid was handed to me. Happily, what used to be next to instant blindness (for all practical purposes) is now curable if caught in time.

It was suggested to eat lots of spinach and kale as they are the only sources of lutein which helps prevent the advance. With instruction from some reliable sources, I have been taking lutein daily post cataract surgery. Now thanks to modern medicine, I can add yet another task to showers, appliance of deodorant, foot spray, talcum, washing and ironing clothes, trying to eat a balanced meal, swallowing my 13 vitamin, mineral and other non-prescription pills on a full stomach while being careful not to have an intake of too many calories, I must also take care of preparing those meals after shopping for the ingredients....oh, I'm making myself too tired just thinking of it all.......

'GASTRO' AND OTHER ANATOMICAL FEATS

Fate often intrudes in our lives in disagreeable ways. Arthritis makes a pianist's fingers unable to play; the athlete unable to run due to knee pain; and the list goes on. A new one, however, is with the small, Japanese man, Takeru (Tsunami)Kobayashi, 29, who held a world record at one time for eating 56 hot dogs in 12 minutes. This year he ate 54 1/2 but lost. Sadly, his jaw is suffering enormous pain when he opens his jaw more than a half inch...he may never again be able to equal his own record, let alone beat the new record set by Joey "Jaws" Chestnut who ate 68 hot dogs in 10 minutes.

Another man ate to hamburgers and buns in 15 seconds.

The world has recorded the longest burp of 36 seconds.

As though this hasn't been disgusting enough, we also have flatulence records on YouTube...an exhibitionist trait I find startling.

JULY 5

Like much of the country, last night I watched fireworks on TV. My choice was the Boston Pops because I love the 1812 Overture. The music is stirring, It made me wonder what the 4th means to others. Those of use who lived through WW2 experienced the pulling together of the whole country in a sense of patriotism that I've not seen expressed as totally or with such dedication by so many since.

Patriotism is love of and/or devotion to one's country. The word comes from the Greek patris.[1] However, patriotism has had different meanings over time, and its meaning is highly dependent upon context, geography and philosophy.

After 9/11, many people spoke out with patriotic fervor. Sadly, our then President, spoke the words someone else undoubtedly wrote for him to say and then proceeded to make a total mockery of the entire essence of what he said. "Americans are a free people, who know that freedom is the right of every person and the future of every nation. The liberty we prize is not America's gift to the world; it is God's gift to humanity." - George W. Bush, State of the Union address 2003

How can the many immigrants and political refugees currently in the US, legally and illegally, can understand the fight Americans have had for so long to build America into the nation it took only eight years for George W. Bush almost bankrupt. It took him little time to help collapse the economy, trust in government, patriotism and values that for so long had served to bind Americans with love and loyalty for their country.