A Little Bit of Truffle Oil is Too Much

by | Oct 31, 2007 | 0 comments

I can’t pinpoint the time or place when or where truffles (genus tubar, sub genus hypogecous ascomycetes)  first came into my consciousness, but I know it wasn’t in San Angelo.  I suspect it was in the mid 80’s and in Paris…..France that is.  S. and I were wandering the streets and found ourselves in Place de l’Opera.  On the one hand, the edifice of Palais Garnier, home of the inestimable Paris Ballet de l”Opera and on the other, Fouchon, the pinnacle of French gourmet foods.  Of course, I opted for the food instead of culture.  It was there, I think, that I first saw a blackish, golf ball sized orb that resembled a desiccated monkey brain.  I remember...

America’s Values

by | Oct 2, 2007 | 0 comments

I’ve been ambivalent about John McCain since my host in Hanoi showed me gleefully the lake in the center of his city where dear John floated down to four years of inhuman imprisonment and a subsequent lifetime of fame. John, now a senator and seeker after the presidency, seems less a paragon of American heroism as he ducks and bobs through the runup to the republican primaries.  I will admit that I know nothing of dear John’s spiritual life, nor do I want to inquire. If only he would keep his views private as well. His recent interview with beliefnet.org wherein he dug a theological hole, jumped in, and then dug deeper, is a perfect example of why...

The Little Rock Nine

by | Sep 26, 2007 | 0 comments

I normally react negatively to a group name with a number appended.  Except in the case of the Little Cyclone five (my high school basketball team), this naming convention normally connotes a number of individuals who have done something illegal or socially unacceptable but are being treated as a group so as to avoid individual accountability, often at the behest of third parties with a separate agenda. Not so the Little Rock Nine.  This group of nine young black Americans, who played such an important role in changing the face of public education in America had dropped from my consciousness due to the passage of time, events and, I guess, apathy.  Jim Lehrer...

War in Error

by | Sep 11, 2007 | 0 comments

I was drawn to the telly to take in the testimony of Gen. David Paetraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker like a moth to a flame.  The result was undesirable, but unavoidable.  I sat transfixed listening to politicos of both stripes produce rhetorical statements of huge pomposity which may have contained the hint of a question, while The General (TG) and The Ambassador (TA) tried to figure how to react to a non-question question and  staying on the pre-agreed talking points. Seeing TG handle his own charts recalled a more virtuous and tender time when I was a chart holder for another general giving a presentation of great moment.  I was a 1st LT in the service of...

It Doesn’t Get Better Than This

by | Aug 5, 2007 | 0 comments

“Grandchildren are god’s reward for not having killed your own kids.” anon When S. and I were rewarded with our first grandchild, my first act was to go to Amazon to look for books that would tell me how to be a good grandparent or at least not screw it up too badly.  I ordered six of them that have long since gathered dust on my bookshelves in my office at the farm.  I glanced at them and may have even skimmed through the table of contents, only to quickly realize that whoever these books were written for, it wasn’t me.  If there is a grandparenting skill that I could have taken lessons on, it would be titled, “How to tell your friends and neighbors that your...